reflecting...reflecting...? REFLECTING!!!!
I've had to leave off blogging for while. My latest trip into reflecting (more about that in a moment) took me away from the computer to an intensive workshop on Undefended Love (see the review on this site). While I was there processing and being processed ... I asked myself ...repeatedly "Why do you do this to yourself?" I woke up at 3AM on Sunday morning after a really restless sleep with the answer. In my dream I was angrily polishing a mirror. I lay there for the next few hours until it was time to get up praying to go back to sleep. I had only two books with me (on purpose), Undefended Love and The Purpose Driven Life. Needless to say I had had quite enough of the Love one and was rapidly reaching my level of tolerance for the Purpose Driven Life. I'm trying REALLY hard but all of the satan, evil, temptation, sin, struggle, suffering and pain is getting to me. I gotta tell you I don't get the appeal of this religion!
I thought it would get easier when I started the section on identifying with Jesus/becoming more Christ-like ... but that is when the pain and suffering and sin got really heavy. Before it was just happiness deferred now it's hard core pre-ordained and to use Rick Warren's term "Father-filtered" pain and suffering.
Then it hit me ... polishing the mirror! REFLECTING! What I'm doing, what we're all doing in in our own way, whether in relationships, professional life, family, even stopping by Save-On (hmmmm? I never thought of writing that before...Is that how it looks on the sign?) anyway ...I'm just a mirror for that Christ quality that Rick is talking about and everything I do, and every interaction, every thought, ... is just polishing the mirror.
The first mature spiritual book I ever read at 18 was Thomas a Kempis The Imitation of Christ. I still refer to my battered copy from time to time and never fail to be caught there by something. What am I trying to tell you here? Whether I'm a Buddhist, a Christian, a Catholic, a Moslem or a Jew, in whatever manner I approach life, I'm never doing anything more than polishing the mirror that reflects my idea of God back to the world. I say my idea of God and I mean my idea of myself ... and just like clean up around the house there is always more to be done. In the very act of living those mirrors get spotted and cloudy and collect grunge from just about everywhere ... and like it or not I just go back to polishing. Call the polishing sin, temptation, struggle ... hell ... call it consciousness, it doesn't change the fact that when I look in the mirror what I see is what I think I recognize as me ... and what is there to be revealed is more of God.
People ask me to articulate my vision for CPL. I do ... ALL the time. And like most of my/our communication is it everywhere, hanging in the air in the space between the words, hidden in the middle of a sentence in a newsletter, or on the webpage under ...About us. It's in the glance that I give you from the podium on a Sunday when I catch your eye or the hug in the Social Centre. It's hanging in the air as I take a breath before I tell you ... "Welcome to the Centre for Positive Living". Mostly, it is in the polishing of the mirror so that the reflecting REALLY takes place. Can I truly live as grand and faithful and beautifully as I know I've been called to? Rick Warren says "You'll never know God is all you need until God is all you've got."
POLISHING time!!!!
You'll never know God is all you need until you KNOW God is all you've got. Right now ... keep polishing ... Confucius said that if by time time you're 50 you've spent your life taking your armour off (polishing the mirror) then you've established a pattern in mind for the rest of your life, you wont be able to stop. If by 50 you've become really good at keeping the armour on ... well ... you get the picture. Wanna know my vision for CPL? You just got it! Namaste!
I thought it would get easier when I started the section on identifying with Jesus/becoming more Christ-like ... but that is when the pain and suffering and sin got really heavy. Before it was just happiness deferred now it's hard core pre-ordained and to use Rick Warren's term "Father-filtered" pain and suffering.
Then it hit me ... polishing the mirror! REFLECTING! What I'm doing, what we're all doing in in our own way, whether in relationships, professional life, family, even stopping by Save-On (hmmmm? I never thought of writing that before...Is that how it looks on the sign?) anyway ...I'm just a mirror for that Christ quality that Rick is talking about and everything I do, and every interaction, every thought, ... is just polishing the mirror.
The first mature spiritual book I ever read at 18 was Thomas a Kempis The Imitation of Christ. I still refer to my battered copy from time to time and never fail to be caught there by something. What am I trying to tell you here? Whether I'm a Buddhist, a Christian, a Catholic, a Moslem or a Jew, in whatever manner I approach life, I'm never doing anything more than polishing the mirror that reflects my idea of God back to the world. I say my idea of God and I mean my idea of myself ... and just like clean up around the house there is always more to be done. In the very act of living those mirrors get spotted and cloudy and collect grunge from just about everywhere ... and like it or not I just go back to polishing. Call the polishing sin, temptation, struggle ... hell ... call it consciousness, it doesn't change the fact that when I look in the mirror what I see is what I think I recognize as me ... and what is there to be revealed is more of God.
People ask me to articulate my vision for CPL. I do ... ALL the time. And like most of my/our communication is it everywhere, hanging in the air in the space between the words, hidden in the middle of a sentence in a newsletter, or on the webpage under ...About us. It's in the glance that I give you from the podium on a Sunday when I catch your eye or the hug in the Social Centre. It's hanging in the air as I take a breath before I tell you ... "Welcome to the Centre for Positive Living". Mostly, it is in the polishing of the mirror so that the reflecting REALLY takes place. Can I truly live as grand and faithful and beautifully as I know I've been called to? Rick Warren says "You'll never know God is all you need until God is all you've got."
POLISHING time!!!!
You'll never know God is all you need until you KNOW God is all you've got. Right now ... keep polishing ... Confucius said that if by time time you're 50 you've spent your life taking your armour off (polishing the mirror) then you've established a pattern in mind for the rest of your life, you wont be able to stop. If by 50 you've become really good at keeping the armour on ... well ... you get the picture. Wanna know my vision for CPL? You just got it! Namaste!
posted by Rev-T at 6:35 AM
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