Well, who doesn’t feel this way at times? So, what’s the cause for this? Why do we just keep repeating the same mistakes? Why do some people get out of one abusive relationship only to step right back into another? “Why,” as Saint Paul so pointedly put it, “do I do the evil I wish to avoid but the good I long to do, I do not do?” (Romans 7:19).

I suspect it has something to do with our stubborn resistance to learn the lessons life’s experiences are designed to teach us. Again, in Christian teaching, Saint Paul said, “All things work together for good…” (Romans 8;28) meaning, “There are no mistakes,” as E. Kubler-Ross repeatedly reminded us.

There was a time when I vehemently rejected such an idea. No more. “So,” you ask, “how do you know that what you’re experiencing is designed to teach you something of importance? That it’s given to take you into a deeper understanding of yourself? Or, that it’s fashioned so as to create in you a keener consciousness of the Divine?”

You should know that what you’re experiencing you must simply because you are experiencing it. Period. What more proof do you need? Besides, trying to figure out whether what you’re going through you need to go through changes not the fact you’re going through it.

Why not look for the lessons life’s experiences are designed to teach you? In Buddhism, there’s this teaching as well…that what you’re experiencing will never completely disappear until the lesson is learned. The names may change. The circumstances may show up in slightly different clothing. Like the proverbial rabbit in the magician’s hat, however, the lesson you must learn in order to evolve…to become more completely who you really are…to know Source herself…or, to be happy yourself…will just keep appearing. Again and again.

Today, do not resist what appears. Instead, peer deeply into it and ask, “What have you to teach me?” See what happens.

Blessings this day my friend.

Then, are you and God one? The implied answer is “Of course.” But how would you know? Is there some proof? The fact that you are concerned to know is itself the proof. Why else would you wonder if the reality is not so already? It is the ego in you that feeds the doubt, raises the questions, makes you feel as if you’re always just one step away from Eternal Bliss.

Enjoy who you are. It’s a whole lot better than spinning the wheels of human effort to become who and what you are already.

All of life is a choice, isn’t it? To be or not to be, as Shakespeare framed it. To choose happiness or to look for it where it could only ever be temporarily found? To enter life, or to live on its periphery? To walk a spiritual path or to mistakenly think that, by going to a church, synagogue or temple, you’ll arrive where you long to be?  To read and reflect on such words as these or to simply skim over them in a hurry to find something more interesting?

Why not choose today to enter more deeply into whatever appears before you on your journey? Instead of rushing headlong into an imagined agenda of importance, why not pay attention to Destiny’s agenda?

Is what shows up in your life today simply some random accident?

Another choice you must decide. So is it, or is it not?

For me, what shows up does so in order to take me up to a higher level of consciousness. To guide me more deeply into Presence itself. Or, to enable me to take life by the hand, as well as to take others by their hand, and enter more fully into everything, as well as everyone.

I’m hardly there yet. But, if you think I’m self-absorbed today, you should’ve met me ten years ago.

Mark Nebo put it like this: “Being half anywhere is the true beginning of loneliness.” I’ve been lonely most of my life.  Why? I know why. Because I’ve lived half connected to everything.

The loneliness you feel within is the consequence of being halfway present within yourself.  Why not decide now to be more fully present everywhere?  By starting within yourself?

Jesus said, “Love yourself…” What does that mean? It means to take your time at learning to be with the one person without whom you could never be happy–yourself. This is the secret to improving all other relationships, too. How could you ever love someone else when you despise yourself? Or, be with someone else when you can’t stand being with yourself?

Know that your journey…your journey into this day…has secrets to reveal to you.  don’t be content to see the sun go down on today but what you rise up with some new understanding,  some new awareness, a deeper sense of peace, greater joy, or grander awareness of Life itself.

This is a choice you’re making now. The road you take.  Your destiny is unfolding. Trust that even your reading of this today is Destiny’s reminder that secrets await you today. Stop. Stay alert. Don’t miss Life. This is the secret of happiness, the road that makes all the difference. It is precisely why Lao Tzu said, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with this step.”

Rumi said, “I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons…knocking on doors. The door opens. I’ve been knocking from the inside.”

Know today that who you really are is the self you hide from others but, first, from yourself.  Why not remember instead that the door to personal freedom…to your happiness is no door at all?  Why not remind yourself over and over today that you…that is, the real you, lives inside the room you seek already!

The religious establishment (or, you might say, the collective ego) was offended by Jesus’ words. Imagine that? Jesus explained, “Look it isn’t what goes into the stomach and out of the body that infects everything; instead, it is that which comes from a person’s mouth – which is really from their heart…this is what defiles a person.”

In our culture, we carry an inordinate amount of concern over what we eat, what’s in what we eat, how that which we do eat is prepared, and so forth. For example, I have myself worried more about what I consume than what is consuming me already. If what you see in the world is negativity, has it occurred to you to look for negativity within? If you feel the world is filled with hatred, evil, and violence, is it possible that your mind and heart are filled with the same?

The reason the church is often perceived as judgmental, critical, and negative by the world around it, as well as by many who’ve chosen to leave it, is because the church is too often more obsessed with what’s happening outside its walls instead of what’s happening inside–and, inside each heart. The church that heals is the church that knows that to be “salt” and “light” in the world, it must not  judge the world but love the world.  When the church sits judgment on the world it is only succeeding in marginalizing itself and revealing to the world that it is unaware of itself.  As such it is creating the very evil it abhors.

Overeating and obesity may be examples of what Jesus is saying too. I’ve often wondered if these social challenges are not an indication Americans are inwardly starved…out of balance…neglectful of their inner need for spiritual nourishment. No matter how many “All You Can Eat” establishments you frequent, I can assure you, you’ll get hungry again. The problem is not overeating but underfeeding our inner spiritual stomachs.

So, today, why not give your attention to connecting with the Bread of life? Find your deepest hungers satisfied in that inner connectedness with Source itself. This is the secret to enlightenment. Until you find the Satisfying Source that is within you already, you will constantly look outside yourself, as well as blame everything and everyone around you, for the emptiness, the hunger, and the lack you feel within.

The Bread of Life is within you. You need not look anywhere else for the Fresh Loaf within the oven of your soul.

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!

I had all but forgotten about how much superstition still dictates our behavior, as it is associated with the number 13. But, come to think of it, I do not suppose I’ve seen any of the newer hotels I stay in across the country with thirteenth floors. Frankly, I do not ever remember being personally paralyzed by things like this.

But, mind you, I’ve lived much of my life with other fears…

The fear of your opinion of me and that of virtually everyone else; the fear of failure…of not making it…of not being popular…or successful…or of achieving the recognition that, in spite of my spiritual awareness, the ego in me still craves; the fear of not having enough, and the fear associated with some diabolical illness or cancer…or, the fear of dying itself.

These fears have made me do all kinds of strange things over the years. The fear of everyone’s opinion of me has made a liar of me. I’ve not expressed my opinions or beliefs or doubts for fear someone would judge me. I know many minister’s today who secretly agree with the freedom they hear me express with my beliefs today. But, because of their own fear of losing their position or status in the congregation, or even losing their job, they keep silent, play the game, live the lie. I understand this. I did the same for years.

My fear of not succeeding…not achieving greatness causes me to fret over every business decision I make, to live daily with this haunting awareness that time is running out – I’m 56 and haven’t quite made it. Oh, how the ego loves to dog you daily, reminding you that you haven’t quite made it. Every success is short-lived. No sooner do you feel you’ve achieved something significant, someone else gets a little more recognition for their accomplishments and the madness in you starts all over.

Well, you get the picture. Some of you read my musings and you think, “Wow, he’s so advanced…so spiritual…so free.” If you only knew. What’s worse, the ego in you follows your admiration of me with self-recriminating put downs, “You’ll never make it. Look at you. A spiritual flop, you are.”

We all have our fears…our superstitions. Here’s what you need to remember. Saint Paul said, “Perfect Love casts out fear.” I’ve read that for years and have mistakenly thought that the Love he was talking about was beyond me, outside of me, only in God, somewhere but anywhere than in me. When I awakened, however, I realized I AM that Love. And, so are you. So, today, be mindful of your own superstitions…your own fears. You do have them. But, you are Love, too. Give your attention to who you REALLY are. See what happens to the fears.

Blessed Love. You are.

We will likely see more books and studies in the months to come because, for all practical purposes, the church is dying. There is no question about this, except among those who refuse to see the truth of what’s happening in churches all across American.

In my last post, I wrote about the decline of the church. So there is no reason to repeat the reasons for it. If you have not read the post, then of course I hope you will. There are many, many reasons for the decline, and I would hardly know enough to diagnose all the reasons. What I do know I see almost daily across this country. As a coach and consultant to executives, leaders and other religious leaders across the spectrum of the Christian community — Evangelical, Protestant and Catholic notwithstanding — I have witnessed firsthand this steady decline everywhere.

The few Catholic churches that are growing are finding most of their growth is coming from within the Hispanic and Spanish-speaking communities, as they are outpacing all other groups of growing populations within the U.S. Most Hispanics are Catholic, too. Virtually all Protestant churches are in decline and annually hundreds of them are closing down. Most Evangelical churches are just holding their own and the few that are growing are drawing most of their newer members from among the disgruntled, disappointed and often disenfranchised Protestants.

Again, the reasons for the widespread abandonment of the Christian church are varied. But none more important than this on-going madness within the church that Scripture is in conflict with science. Unthinking religious leaders have made it out to be an either/or prospect. You must either accept that Scripture is as much a science book as it is a spiritual book or the entirety of the Bible’s reliability as a spiritual guide is in question.

This is poppycock. There is no word strong enough to highlight the insanity of this thinking. I love the sacred Scriptures. They are a “light unto my path.” But, no, I do not accept that the Bible is a book of science. It is a spiritual book for those interested in spiritual things. You do not have to deny your mind or force the Bible to be something it is not. I’ve written extensively about the point and purpose of spirituality and how to read the scriptures within the context of the modern human experience in “The Enoch Factor: The Sacred Art of Knowing God.”

So, if this is the kind of nonsense your church is promoting and you’re thinking you have to deny your mind in order to believe, you have my permission to leave that place of incarceration. It is a prison Jesus came to free you from, as much as he sought to free those bound by a religion system gone mad in his day. As much as I love the church and have devoted my life to its service, I assure you the church is neither infallible nor is it even necessary to the nurture and care of your soul. The rabbis’ were right when they said, “God has but one sanctuary … the human heart.” Jesus himself said, “The Kingdom is within you” (Luke 17:32).

Church leaders and ministers must know it is this kind of madness — the war it wages with science — that is driving thinking young people (and adults) away from the church. If these religious leaders do not know this or refuse to admit it, they should know that they are themselves the “blind guides” and the “wolves in sheep’s clothing” about whom the spiritual master once warned us to avoid. They make the Scriptures into some kind of god, instead of a spiritual guide to God it was meant to be. They have made the Bible into a problem instead of map to guide the pathways of those in search of the Sacred.

I, for one, truly believe, unless this sort of insanity ends, and very soon, the church will gradually disappear. And, no, the disappearance won’t be consequence of the Rapture. Irrelevancy and insanity will be instead.

Eckhart Tolle says, “Even belief in God is a poor substitute for the living reality of God manifesting every moment of your life.” The church, indeed the world, is full of “believers,” people who believe in God. You can recite all day whatever it is you believe without ever knowing the reality of the Presence now…this very moment.

Well, do you?

I am not asking, “Do you believe in God?” “Do you say the right words?” “Go to the right church, temple, synagogue?” “Do you subscribe to the ‘right’ beliefs?” “Which version of the Bible do you accept?” “Do you believe in creationism?” “What about Jesus? What do you believe about him?” “Is he the way? Your way? The Only Way? Everybody’s way, or the Highway?”

On and on, such madness goes. Even the charade one often finds in religious circles around such comments, “Concerning non-essentials…we believe in tolerance; but concerning THE essentials…we expect unity.”

Really? So, who decides THE ESSENTIALS? You? Me?Our denomination? Some say, “Jesus himself” decides the essentials. OK, so Jesus said, “love your enemies.” So, is that essential? Then, why do most churches only pray on Sunday, “Protect our soldiers from harms way?” Shouldn’t the church be praying “Help us END this and all wars, Jesus. Give us the courage to peacefully protest against US policy that promotes violence in the name of protecting ‘our’ interests?”

No, no, of course not. This would be to take Jesus too “essentially.”

I, for one, am weary of all the mindless rhetoric one hears in most religious sanctuaries across this country – and I’m in many of them – where the emphasis is more on “Come Lord Jesus,” which, translated means, “Let the Rapture begin and rescue us good folks from all this mess we’ve failed to change on earth!” It is madness. And, where does this lead? Nowhere. To nothing…I repeat…nothing but disagreement, debate, and eventually division. Which is, of course, the story of the church, is it not? Even some of you reading this find yourself reacting, even resenting my words. Know that anytime you feel reactionary (and I do often so don’t think I’m pointing any fingers at you). Just know, any time you feel resentful, reactionary, this is nothing more than the little ego in you circling its wagons around it’s little “beliefs”–beliefs from which it derives it’s little, illusory sense of self.

It is the ego in you and me that must die! It isn’t interested in PRESENCE; it’s only interest is in packaging a set of propositional pronouncements it can stick in its back pocket and pretend to be religious. It has succeeded in fooling many people, too. I know. I was one of them.

Jesus said, “Deny yourself.” The Buddha knew this, too, and so taught that every moment the self in you is striving to renew itself…that is…to stay alive in you. You must let it go. Don’t make war. The battle is over. Jesus showed us that. In its place, know that YOU KNOW GOD already. “God is with you. Saint Paul said, “Nothing can separate you from the love of God” (Rom. 8). It isn’t about what you believe. It isn’t about the denomination to join. Or, the group that’s “figured it all out.” There’s no creed you must subscribe to. No, you know God. Celebrate this! You’re free. Walk with the Divine. What could be better than entering this day…no, entering this moment, with the reminder, you will take no step today alone. NEVER, no never, not one. With every step, be aware of who walks with you. There’s nothing else you need.

Happy stepping…today!

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.