Grace is gift. A gift is free.

You cannot buy what is not for sale. You cannot become who you are already. Anything you seek to add to what God has done for you already makes grace a goal to achieve not  a gift to receive. It would be like taking the brush of your efforts and add more color to a Van Gogh painting. Unthinkable! How could you make better what is perfect now?

Today, I will stop trying to paint on the canvas of God’s perfect world. Instead, I will enjoy its beauty everywhere. It is perfect. I am perfect. I give up the need to win God’s approval…an approval that’s brushed over by my awkward efforts to paint myself in a way that will please the critics around me…make them like me…admire, respect, even love me.  It is that inner colorless feeling of unworthiness…the feeling that I’m being judged almost continually by virtually everyone I meet.

Instead, I will live today within the beauty that I am…the awareness that I am colorful, complete, perfect.  I’ll not walk around it, analyze it, or try to figure it out. But, I’ll just remind myself…and, for me, that will have to be continually…that I am perfectly pleasing just as I am.  I need not add anything to the canvas that is my life. Rather, I will give thanks that I’m not the failure my ego says I am. To the contrary, I am “Saved!” “Enlightened!” “Awakened!” “Grace-Aware!” I am God’s latest Van Gogh!

And oh, by the way, So are you!

You’re beautiful!

There is a place in you and me that is the place of Divine Grace – where we’ve been touched, or are being touched even now, in ways inescapable…inexpressible…inexplicable.

Psychologists call this place the PSYCHE; theologians call it the SOUL; Jung called it the UNCONSCIOUS; Hindus call it ATMAN; Buddhists call it DHARMA; Sufis call it QALB; Jesus called it the KINGDOM OF GOD. He said,too, it lies within you (Luke 17:32).

It is a place deep within you where God is; where God is found; or, more accurately, where God finds you. Go there now. That is to say, just give your attention to the stillness within–it’s there. It’s always been there. It is beneath and beyond thought, busy-ness, prayers, words. Go there daily. Make this your practice throughout the new year. If you will, you will change. You will experience this Grace. You will walk with God. This IS the Enoch Factor.

There is no religious belief that, once you know it or say you believe it, will magically unlock the door to God. So, I would advise you to remember this: the impulse you feel to know God…that impulse IS God.  But, having said that, don’t get too attached even to the impulse because, the truth is, God is more than any impulse you feel.  I realize it sounds like I’m speaking from both sides of the mouth and I suppose I am.  It’s a great paradox, but I know of no other way to put it.

Start with the impulse because that’s closer to the truth of who God is than anything else.  By giving your attention to the impulse, it’ll grow and expand.  There is nothing more you need to do in order to know God.  God’s presence is not the reward you get for believing the “right” things.  If you will follow the inner longing you feel to know the living God, you will become conscious of God.  Just try this and see what happens.

Albert Einstein once said, “I want to know the mind of God; everthing else are details.” I have often wondered whether he recognized the significance of his own words. The desire to know the mind of God is to know God. There is no need to make a problem of this. Yet, most religions do. God wants to be known. Why would she make it difficult? It is religion that complicates knowing God, saddling it with a carload of beliefs as onerous as the proverbial Sears catalogue. The prophet Jeremiah put it this way: “I (meaning, God) will put my law within them—write it on their hearts…they’ll know me firsthand.”[1]  It doesn’t get much simpler than this.

The prophet Isaiah once said, “Seek the Lord while he may be found…”[2] On the surface, that sounds like good advice to give a spiritual seeker. But, upon closer examination, it’s not so wise either. To seek God implies effort, even struggle and neither is necessary in God’s Kingdom.

It is true Jesus said, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”[3]  But, these words have been greatly misunderstood by Christians, as have most of the other words attributed to him. Even very devoted followers of the Christian path assume Jesus meant we are to ask, seek, and knock, and continue doing so, as if there’s some kind of Divine resistance which can only be overcome by our persistence.

To the contrary. God desires that you know her, which is precisely why you feel the inner impulse to pursue him. So, again, start with the inner impulse. Know that, as you do, you have met with Mystery already. St. Francis of Assisi put it this way, “What you are looking for is what is looking!” Jesus provides his own clarification, too:

“Don’t bargain with God. Be direct…This isn’t a cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game we’re in. If your child asks for bread, do you trick him with sawdust? If he asks for fish, do you scare him with a live snake on his plate?…You wouldn’t think of such a thing. You’re at least decent to your own children. So don’t you think that God who conceived you in love will be even better?[4]

There’s a line in A Course in Miracles that goes, “When we are ready, God will take the final step in our return to him.” When you ask, seek, and knock, it is not to overcome God’s resistance. You ask to know God, and keep asking, you seek to know God, and keep seeking only because, as you do, the result is an ever-expanding awareness of this Presence you know already. That is to say, the asking, seeking, and knocking are the spiritual practices necessary to grow in God-consciousness…to live a God-realized life.

You can make knowing God a struggle, if you’d like.  I did for most of my early adult life.  What’s more, most religions, including Christianity, have succeeded in making a personal relationship with God into a problem. Know, however, that it takes no effort to know God. Yet, if you ask many religious people about their faith experience, they will say things like, “I’m trying to be a good follower.” This is so unnecessary, as I gratefully learned on the Sunday afternoon of my own awakening.

Being Christian is simply the recognition of and response to the inclination you feel to know God.  That’s it.  Everything else are details.  Take a step today toward what you feel, and you will likely discover that what you feel is the God you wish to know.  Add anything else and you’ve made it into a religion and not a relationship.  Responding to the inclination brings you face-to-face with Inspiration.  To be inspired is to be “in-Spirit,” a word made up of two others, the prefix in and the root word spirare meaning “to breathe.” Hence, to know God is as simple, indeed as natural, as “breathing in.” Whether you are conscious of it or not, with every inhalation, you are literally breathing in the presence of God.  Remind yourself of this today and celebrate.

This is the Mystery that is God, the miracle of God’s grace: the desire you feel to know God can only mean one thing:  a spiritual awakening has occurred in you already

I get it now. What really needed fixing was not the “everything” in the world over which Saint Paul broke into song, but the “I” who sees the world and so judges it.

I get it now. Which is why I could not be anything but thankful. It all began to change for me on that Sunday afternoon a few years ago. I had not been in church that day and, frankly, had not been personally involved with a church since the day my Dad died–the day when something in me died, too.

I was reclining on the couch, beer in one hand, remote in the other, and it happened. What was it? To this day, about the best I can come up with is that Grace dawned.  I had not been praying for anything special. I wasn’t looking to wake up from the resignation that the world, as well as my life, was some indecipherable riddle, fraught with failed dreams and disappointments.

But Grace dawned and, from that day, I began to see everything differently…myself, others, this world.

I get it now. It’s not the world that needed changing; it was I.

I used to be so concerned about everyone’s opinion of me; today I am free. How could I not be thankful I AM THAT I AM, instead of the incessant and exhausting attempt to be whatever I imagined someone else expected me to be?

There was a time I said “I believe” to things I really didn’t–incarcerated as I was in my fear of your negative opinion of me. I confused “faith” for “beliefs” and so vigorously defended my beliefs, as if I was defending my faith. I get it now and so I live by faith and believe a few things.

Little things used to irritate me continually. Leaves that blow from a neighbor’s yard after mine have been gathered; the rains and snow that can make travel longer and tiring; the family member who still chews with her mouth open because she enjoys too much the sound of her own madness. I could complain, and I did, about lots of things.

Today, however, I get it. “That the things that matter most too often lie at the mercy of those that matter least.” It’s different for me now.  Infinitely different.

I get it. In fact, I get many things today that I missed through much of my life–a life filled with judgment-making, complaining, pretension, and confusion. I’m older now and I’m sure that has some to do with it. But it’s that Sunday afternoon I’ll never completely escape…wouldn’t if I could.  Life changed for me.  No, I changed for life.  Today, everything, including my own life, is so much simpler and infinitely more meaningful.

So today I wish for you a most blessed Thanksgiving. And, if I have a prayer, it is this: That, if it has not happened in you already, I pray that you, too, will have an “I get it now” moment…when Grace dawns and everything changes…everything in you, that is.

Older now, and awake, I find beauty in all that is.

How could I not be grateful?

Grace Dawns

1.  I know who I am…

2.  I question everything

a. The stuff I’ve been taught to believe

b. The thoughts my mind thinks A pretty high percentage of the time, both are wrong.

3.  I do unto myself as I’d have myself do unto me Everybody bitches and complains about the world and the need for change. That in you which incessantly bitches and complains IS the world that needs changing and THAT change will only come from within.

4.  I’ve let go of my regrets (and I’ve had more than my fair share) Anybody who’s been asked, “If you could live life over, would you change anything?” and they respond, “No.” Know this one thing! They’re lying through his/her teeth. Which makes them the same people who’d steal your wallet and never bat an eye. Honest people have many regrets and, given the opportunity, would make different choices.

5.  I look for the lesson in every life experience. There really are no mistakes, said Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

6.  I meditate more often than I medicate…usually!

7.  I practice living in space, not time.

8.  I am FOR – GIVING I am forgiven; I am forgiving; As a consequence, I am FOR – GIVING – if there’s a deficit in generosity, there’s a deficiency of grace.

9.  I think about DEATH daily It is only ever the ego in you that is afraid to die. The deeper you that came from God knows it will one day return to God. How could it ever be fearful of Perfect Love out of which it merged and to which it will return. The ego, on the other hand, your illusory self, what Martha Beck calls “your social self,” well it has plenty to fear but especially death. The ego dies at death. Jesus said, however, the key to life is “to deny self” (his way of saying, let the ego in you die). Muhammad put it like this, “Die before you die or you will die a thousand deaths.”

10.  I die daily, too. I’ll show you how to do the same. This is the ONLY way to, as Gandhi said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Jesus said, “Take up your cross daily” – that’s death daily. But, death to what?

11.  I know why I’m here. The greatest disservice our culture (and that includes the church’s culture) is to teach people, and so create within everyone the expectation, that they showed up for some grand purpose in life that only they could fulfill. Almost daily new books are written on helping you find your destiny, fulfilling your purpose. It’s a whole lot of bullshit, to put it as plain as I know how. You showed up for one purpose and one purpose only: I’ll share what that is in the book.

12.  I am One with all that Is – the UNIVERSE is UNI “one” VERSE or “song” So, the universe is “one song.” This is the enlightenment or, as Christians call it, salvation that changes the world. It is the profound awareness that we are all really ONE – as long as there is the feeling of separation in you to anything or anyone, that’s your growth curve. I’ll show you how to remove the barriers and build bridges. The survival of humanity depends on it. I thought about the Unity pendant being part of the design on the cover too.

Like to know your thoughts. So, what do you think? On the right track? Dump it? Keep going? New title? Other points I’m missing? I’m open to all your wisdom. (Copyright)

I grew up in a very conservative Christian environment. But, if you regularly read my articles, you know I have moved beyond many of those early beliefs, most of which can work as long as you live in a very small, narrow, exclusive, and illusory world.  Which, of course, I did. But, no longer. Given my exposure to other cultures and religious traditions, and at a very young age, I can remember wondering how Christians alone could be right and everyone else wrong. But, I tried for some decades to ignore those inner questions. And, so, I went the way of most Christians. I tried to conform to everyone’s way of thinking and believing, graduated college, went off to seminary, earned a doctorate in theology and pastored for nearly twenty years among Baptist people.  All the while, wondering in my heart, do I really believe all this narrow-minded nonsense I’m expected to preach every Sunday?

You don’t ignore such questions or live an inauthentic life for long. Life will give you whatever you need, or so Eckhart Tolle reminds us, to bring you to a place of awakening.  And, of course, that’s exactly what happened to me. It took the unexpected death of my father and my world crumbled beneath me.  I left the ministry and divorced. And…well…the rest is history, as they say. I wandered and wondered for many years.

Then, one day, I quit struggling, looking, searching and then it happened. I woke up. Might be why I like the Buddha so much. His name means, as you perhaps know, “the awakened one.” In a little way, I think I know what his name means.

Today, I am a devoted follower of Christ.  His way of knowing God is the path I follow. However, I also know that Jesus said, “I have other sheep that are not of this fold…”(John 10:16) meaning, as the Sufi poet said, “There are many gates into the garden; and you need pass through only one.”

So, I prefer to refer to my beliefs today as “perspectives,” as that leaves room for growth and change.  That openness has enabled me to embrace what’s wholesome and good about the diversity one finds even within the Christian community.  In fact, I can say today, “I am Christian, first, as well as a Baptist, a Roman Catholic, a Methodist, a Lutheran, a Presbyterian, an Independent, and so forth.  It also enables me to affirm and embrace the spiritual truth I find in other traditions.  This is what Gandhi meant when he said, “I consider myself a Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Jew…and, so forth.”

If this resonates with your spirit, permit me to make a few recommendations that might help you continue growing in the same direction.

1. Stay open to everything and attached to nothing.  It’s our attachments, in this case to a particular belief system or way of thinking, that creates much of our mental suffering. You can have firm convictions, provided the platform upon which you build your life is made of wood, not cement.

2. In the Christian tradition, St. Paul said, “Work out your own salvation.”  Most Christians misread his meaning. What he’s not saying is that one’s experience of transcendence is manufactured by you or me. Grace is grace because it’s surprising. It shows up the moment you stop struggling to know God, as I try to make clear in my book, The Enoch Factor.

What Paul does mean is that your spiritual growth, in whatever tradition seems right for you, does depend on the attention you give it.  This is the real meaning of the Law of Attraction. There’s so much nonsense written about this fundamental spiritual law. Most of it from very greedy little egos looking for some magical way to make their dreams come true.  The real meaning is that the universe will work with you–it can’t do otherwise–in helping you advance in self-realization and God-realization but…and this is a big but (pardon the pun),–when you make it your intention to awaken and so give your attention to your spiritual awakening.

3. Then, I would suggest you meditate this day, and a little every day, on the rich diversity of spiritual truth experienced and expressed through countless spiritual traditions–not just your own. Sure, affirm your own perspectives and spiritual convictions. But, ask God, or, if you prefer, the universe, to give you an open heart, an open mind, and open hands to embrace all whose perspectives and experiences might be different.

Just a little wisdom today from the myriad of rich and wonderful spiritual traditions – and this from a former Baptist minister.  How’s that for openness?

The spiritual wisdom expressed below has not only been around for centuries but is available to anyone.  The key is to know it for yourself and this kind of knowingness is more than head stuff.  It is the kind of knowing that could only eer be fashioned in the crucible of your spiritual practice.  In other words, to live the life you really want means you must make the following wisdom your spiritual practice.  Daily.

1. Know your real purpose in life.  Leo Tolstoy said, “Without knowing what I am and why I’m here, life is impossible.”  Your purpose has nothing whatsoever to do with career or calling, your profession or position.  Virtually everyone looks for it in such things because our culture is wired this way.  We tell people that there’s some grand purpose that only they can fulfill and that their first task is to figure out what it is. Unfortunately, however, most people who believe this nonsense spend the greater part of their lives searching for this purpose but seldom finding it.  You showed up for one purpose—to know and to walk in oneness with the Divine, in self-unity and oneness with all that is.  I describe all of this at length in The Enoch Factor.
2. Question all of what you hear and most of what you think.  Why? Until you question what you’ve been taught or learned by osmosis, it cannot be yours—really yours.  Also, most of what we think is not accurate anyway, which is why Byron Katie counsels people in whatever situation they’re in or whatever the thoughts they might be having about the situation, to do “the work,” as she calls it. The “work” is a series of questions you should ask yourself: “Is what I’m thinking true?” “Can I be absolutely certain it’s true?” If you’re honest, you’ll admit to yourself at this point of self-inquiry that you cannot be absolutely certain about much of anything. Then, given that reality, there’s the question, “What do I feel or think, or how do I react, whenever I believe this thought is absolutely true?” And, finally, “Who would I be, or how would I feel, if I gave up this thought?” What Katie calls “the work” works. Euripides said, “Question everything; learn something; answer nothing.”
3. When Saint Paul said, “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 4:13-17), he was not suggesting that we kneel continually or lock ourselves in some synagogue, temple or church and recite prayers all day.  He’s talking about a way of living, a kind of meditative practice…what easterners would describe as “mindfulness.”  So, meditate at least twice as often as you medicate.  The former is foreign to most westerners; the latter isn’t.  Furthermore, most of us could use a whole lot more of the former and a lot less of the latter.  What’s the point of mediation?  Pema Chodron answers that best: “We sit in meditation, not to become good meditators, but to become more awake in our lives.”
4. “For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been’,” or so wrote the abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier.  In other words, Let go of your regrets.  When asked if they’d change anything were they to have the opportunity to live their lives over, those who say, “No, I would change nothing,” are lying. Everyone has regrets. And, most of us have many of them. Regrets are normal.  But, to carry them around like one would tote a backpack is not.  Think of regrets as Divine reminders of what’s needed now—some kind of action, as in first and foremost self-forgiveness.  Write the letter. Make the phone call. Instead of waiting on their apology, reach out to the person who offended you.  Take action and do it now.
5. Do unto yourself as you would have your self do unto you.” Slightly different twist on an old truth.  Jesus said, Judge not (Matt. 7:1).  Make no mistake. He’s not suggesting you never exercise discernment or make choices or even judgments about what’s right for you.  Instead, he calls for an end the incessant fault-finding, complaining, and finger-pointing that’s so characteristic of many interpersonal relationships.  You do to others what you do to yourself.  You do to yourself what you do to others. So, do unto yourself what you’d have your self do unto you. Try it and see what happens, both in your relationship to yourself and in your relationship to others.
6. There’s something else Jesus said, “Love your enemies” (Matt. 5:43-48), which means, have no enemies. The Buddha put it like this: “My enemy is really my friend.” These are radical teachings, which is why they’re almost universally ignored. To live like this, however, is transformational.  And, what is transformed is YOU.
7. When you have the choice of being right or being kind, choose kind. Can’t remember who said this but I’ve never forgotten it.  It’s the key to avoiding needless arguments and debates and the resulting division that too frequently occurs between people.  Words are like arrows. Once released, they can never be reclaimed. Their harm can be almost irreparable, too. So, choose to be kind.  Kindness is always a choice.
8. Know that there are no accidents.  Saint Paul said, “All things work together for your good…” (Rom. 8:28).  Know that everything in your life is not a coincidence but a Divine-cident.  This is why, in A Course in Miracles, the question is asked, “How would you live if you but knew that everything that happens to you is planned by One who has nothing but your best intest at heart?”  Or, to state it another way, as it is in The Enoch Factor, “All events in life, though they may seem coincidental or random, are actually conspiring together to bring you into unity with the Divine.”  The more you come to know this, the less you will resist what is.  Or, in the words of Pema Chodron, “Nothing you are experiencing disappears until you learn the lesson it was sent to teach you.” When you learn the lesson, the consequence of that kind of knowingness could only ever be tranquility and peace.
9. Think about death at least as often as you think about life.  Does that sound morbid?  If you deny, or simply disregard the reality of death—your death, it will.  Woody Allen once quipped, “I’d like to achieve immortality through not dying.”  Cute, but the fact is, death is your destiny—your only real destiny. So, work on knowing for yourself what Leonardo de Vinci said. “All my life I’ve thought I was learning how to live; now I realize I’ve really been learning how to die.”
10. Be For-Giving.  There are two ways to understand this. One is to be on the side of generosity—that is, to be for giving.  Why? It’s the secret of happiness. You will never meet a genuinely generous person who is, at one-and-the-same-time, an unhappy person.  The two realities cannot coexist in the same person. Miserable people are miserly people. The other way to understand the words, “Be for-giving,” is to be forgiving—that is, to practice the art of forgiveness.  What I’ve learned is that the deeper your experience of forgiveness, the higher your capacity to be forgiving.  If you cannot forgive, know that there’s something inside of you that you’ve never forgiven.

These are the secrets to living the life you’ve always wanted.  But again, they’re not really secrets; instead, simple wisdom to the pathway of living.  So, think of yourself, as Ernest Hemingway put it, “as an apprentice in a craft where you could never become a master.”  Life requires practice.  Daily.

Out-of-the-blue and instantaneously, something happened to me or, more accurately, in me that literally transformed the way I felt about life, including that of my own and the way I viewed the world and everyone in it.  It changed my view of and experience of the Transcendent, too.

The event was simple and ordinary. I don’t recall having a vision of anything. In fact, I saw nothing at all. Yet, in an instant, I saw everything, too.  I did not see God, but there is a sense in which I did, too. Deep joy was so unmistakably real and near to me.  Instantly I felt in the presence of God and that feeling has been with me ever since.

Today, no matter how out-of-control things may be around me, there is in me a sense of calm, peace, and a feeling that everything is just as it should be.  Peace, contentment, and tranquility are my normal states of consciousness. Joy, too. I know this all sounds like a huge enigma and, in many ways, it is. I cannot explain it otherwise.

Easterners often speak of something they call “the law of least effort.”  What they mean by this is, “Do less and accomplish more.”  Now, such a notion is strange to westerners who are taught from the cradle that they must do more and more and still more and then, and only then, should they expect to be duly rewarded for it.

What I’ve learned, however, is that this is not the behavior of grace at all.  When Grace is understood and experienced, and it isn’t understood and hasn’t been experienced by many religious people, grace is really about doing nothing and enjoying everything. I like to tell the story of the poor beggar who was rummaging through a garbage heap looking for his next meal when, suddenly, he finds a discarded lottery ticket. To his chagrin, he discovers it bears the winning numbers to a multi-million dollar jackpot.  Grace. It occurs when you least expect it, and often to those you believe to be the least deserving.

Since that day of awakening, my life has not been some fairytale but I would be dishonest to say anything else but that it has been pretty close.  I once heard a highly regarded spiritual teacher from the east say, “In my world nothing ever goes wrong.”  Everything in me revolted against such an absurd statement prior to my spiritual experience.  Today, however, I cannot say that about my own life, but I understand it much more now.

The best I can say is that, for me, life is no longer the struggle or the burden it used to be. Instead of swimming upstream, one of many metaphors that would aptly describe my life prior to the awakening, I now flow with life.  How could I not be at peace when, instead of resisting what is, I now accept, often forgive, but always flow with life itself?

I’ve called this my “spiritual awakening” because, in many ways, it was as if I woke up and started living.  In eastern religions, it could be called a “satori.”  Satori is a Sanskrit word meaning “sudden insight,” “awareness,” and “consciousness.”  It is often the word used to describe a transformative experience.  What happened to me on that couch may not be filled with a lot of drama, fireworks, lights and sounds, but, whatever it was it changed my life forever.  And, for the better.