The Miracle Self
MONTHLY LETTER 6
- June 2018 -

God Is Manifest in the Flesh

June 1st, 2018

Dear Friend,

     “Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness:
      God was [is] manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit,
      seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on
      in the world, received up into glory.” (Timothy 3:16)

"God is manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit.” Flesh refers to form, image and likeness, objective sense devoid of belief.

“Justified, [evidenced, proven] in the spirit, seen of angels, [seen of spiritual awareness, awareness empty of material belief, physical belief, human belief] preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.”

Your very presence, your very existence – every breath you breathe, every thought you take, every moment of awareness – is God. Not one cell of you, breath of you, moment of you or of your objective and subjective awareness lacks or is separate or different from the fullness of God, within and without.

However, we harbor collective belief and concept about ourselves and our universe. Collective belief and concept are what we see, hear, taste, touch, smell at the physical level of sense, until our senses are so lifted and full of God that “He that sees me sees the Father.” (John 14:9) We see through collective belief to the true image and likeness, the true person, thing and condition. The true person and universe are not physical, not structural, not solid, but are spirit. Therefore, we see truth when we see spiritually—spirit to spirit, consciousness to consciousness, incorporeality to incorporeality.

How do we see spiritually? “We” do not. We cannot. “I of my own self can do nothing; it is the father within me that does the work.” Only God exists, therefore only God sees God. Only God is, therefore only God can. We know the truth, then yield and let God live us. We cannot do anything, we cannot see God. Only God sees God because only God itself is God.

Realize that the very presence of you, the very mind and body of you, the very you of you, the very awareness with which you are aware, with which you are alive, which is you, and every person and object you are aware of – no matter how belief and concept are disguising or distorting it, no matter what you believe or do not believe about it – is God.

“God is manifest in the flesh.” God is manifest in the flesh, not God will become manifest in the flesh. "Justified in the spirit, seen of angels" – seen of those of God consciousness, those of undivided Awareness Itself, those who are in the throne, in the seat, in the secret place of the most high, empty of self, therefore empty of belief and concept, experiencing God living itself as all of existence.

At this stage of consciousness, God is not only manifest in the flesh but becomes evident as so to collective sense wherever an individual of God consciousness is. This is the healing consciousness.

Both those who receive and those who observe healing (apart from the very few who understand what has taken place, or catch a glimpse of something deeper and open to start seeking it) are satisfied with the healed body, finances, relationships or businesses themselves. They miss the great secret. They still see their human, physical or material concept except now that concept has been filled with the light of truth brought to the scene by the practitioner's God consciousness. This makes the concept appear healthy, abundant, happy, joyous but it does not last if the consciousness of it is not present to sustain it. Then the people are back to the practitioner for more “quick fixes."

However, we know the truth and as we maintain truth consciousness we are able to continually set belief, concepts and appearance off to sea. We are not interested in or disturbed by the appearance; we are interested in the one truth.

God is manifest, God is visible as itself, to itself, and for itself and we sense it objectively in and as the flesh, form. But remember, flesh is spiritual form, not physical or material. God is spirit and truth, and does not have matter in it, humanity in it, structure in it, solidity in it. There is only the spiritual. God is manifest in and as the spiritual flesh, the spiritual form. God is the spiritual form objectively sensed through the undivided consciousness, that which has become pure of belief, pure of want and need for God to convert itself into humanity, physicality, materiality – the consciousness that is full of God. God to God for God, spirit to spirit for spirit. Nothing else exists so why would we attempt to get God for something that is not of God? If we do, we are wasting our time

Who Are You?

Who are you? Your true identity is spirit, the child of God, the Christ. "Jesus asked his disciples saying, Whom do men say that I the son of man am? And they said, some say that you are John the Baptist, some Elias, and others Jeremias, or one of the prophets. He said unto them, But whom do you say that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, You are the Christ, the son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:13-16)

Peter recognizes the Master as Christ. Christ is the Greek translation of the word Savior, or Messiah. The Master is the Savior, the Messiah, the supreme truth of truths. You are the light itself, objectively sensed as the man we call Jesus or Master. "And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed it unto you, [truth cannot be recognized materially, structurally] but my Father which is in heaven." (Matthew 16:17)

Simon Peter was living the undivided consciousness and knew that the being presenting itself to him, even though objectively sensed, was the one presence, God. "And I say also unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock [upon this certain God consciousness] I will build my church [I will build my teaching, practice and demonstration] and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." (Matthew 16:18) The gates of hell shall not be able to because God consciousness, even as objective sense, is invisible to the gates of hell, invisible to the devil, invisible to the world, invisible to the pairs of opposites.

Who are you? What do you have this instant and forever? Who is each and every individual, whether or not they know anything about truth? They are the Christ, the presence of God, I. They do not know it, or may not know it. That doesn't matter. One with God is a majority. When we know this truth, and live by it, we are the illumined presence to our world wherever we are. Then, even those who do not know their truth can come to you and me to find their healing, their prosperity, their love, their happiness, their freedom.

Who Are You?

Never entertain anything about yourself or your world other than the very presence of God itself. Your I is the very presence, the very infinity of God, objectively experienced. Objective experience is not erroneous. Only belief makes it appear so. Drop belief, drop concept. Live in and as is. Come empty to God. Be empty every minute. There is nothing more glorious. Be empty of self. Nothing more miraculous can be experienced than losing the personal sense of self and living as the impersonal infinity of God.

We have never known who we are and we cannot until the moment of complete emptiness in and as God. At this point, there is not “we” and “God,” just God as individual being being its universal experience.

You are infinite universal being, yet you have believed that you and your universe are finite. Belief is finiteness and is pairs of opposites. Finiteness and good and bad are only belief. No belief is reality; therefore there is no reality to finiteness or to the pairs of opposites. This is why they never have to be resisted or struggled with. Sit with this for a few minutes.

(A few minutes of silence)

You are the infinity of being and you have the freedom of infinity. Everything of your world is infinity despite what you may believe about him, her or it. This is not theory or impractical “inner” truth that leaves our “outer” experience finite. Nothing of what we hear in the Miracle Self (or the Infinite Way or the teachings of the Master) is theoretical or impractical. This is the very way, the very practice, the very state of being that reveals all as infinite. Knowing this, let us hear closely.

All is God, therefore all is infinite, all is omnipresent – is, is! Never is there a limitation, a lack, an absence of infinity even in or as objective sense. Heaven and earth contain no limits, lacks, absences. Heaven and earth are the same place, the one “holy ground” which is infinity and the omnipresence of infinity. Nothing is ever ill, diseased, injured. No one is poor or unhappy. No one is born, lives, then dies. The earth is not twenty-four thousand miles in circumference. The earth is infinite. The earth is consciousness which is limitless and omnipresent.

You cannot get more consciousness. Consciousness is God which is one, whole, indivisible and inseparable. All of infinity, omnipresence and eternity is yours this instant. However, you or I may not be aware of this truth. As we begin to awaken, our awareness of consciousness or God expands. We become ever more palpably aware of the infinity of all people, things, and places, but infinity does not become manifested. Infinity is. Eternal life is; abundance, prosperity, success is; love is, harmony is. God is already fully manifested and demonstrated; we become more aware of the finished kingdom. We awaken to what is.

God Is the Finished Kingdom

Never lose sight of the truth that God is the finished kingdom. Not one fiber or breath of God is missing, is yet to be completed, “will” unfold, “will” become, “will” evolve. God is. The finished kingdom has no past or future. It is the kingdom of is; it is this instant of Now and so is its objective experience.

Realize:

I am. This instant I am, and the I that I am is unconditional and unchanging life infinite, life omnipresent, life eternal. I am “the same yesterday, today, and forever” – unchanging.

Nothing can be added to you, nothing can be taken away from you, nothing can be withheld because I already and eternally is all that God is. The I that you are, the very I that you are aware of these words with, is the I that is life eternal, is life infinite and omnipresent. I is all that constitutes God, infinity, omnipresence. Is, is!

Now, what do we do when faced with a problem, even after years of “in truth”? We have still looked at that problem and attempted to evidence is opposite by going to God to achieve it for us. In this way we failed before we took our next breath.

Bring to mind a problem that is presenting itself to you (and if not a problem of “yours,” a problem “another” faces. Never believe you are not faced with a problem. Your universe is “yours” and always presents pictures of both good and bad).

As experienced spiritual students we tend to look at a problem with disappointment and often frustration. We are a little baffled because we believe that by now we should be sufficiently lifted in truth to avoid problems or be able to quickly see through them. We often discover this is not the case and find ourselves in the middle of a battle between inner truth and outer discord. Why the battle? We believe the problem. We accept it as a reality – even an “untrue” reality. “I have broken my arm; I do not have enough money; I have a relationship problem; my business is not doing well; I have a problem with a customer or supplier; I am homeless; I am hungry; I and my family and friends are being threatened by a person, organization, condition or circumstance.”

We accept it as real even though we describe it “spiritually” as an appearance or a claim. These words do not lessen our belief in the problem. Then we get busy attempting to apply our spiritual awareness to it in the hope of seeing it heal or dissolve or harmonize itself. We reread all our favorite chapters and re-listen to all our favorite classes; we meditate attempting to rise higher in consciousness so that we can see the problem yield. Our belief, attention and hope is out there even though we are making our effort in here. No such possibility exists.

All is God. If we walk around with a head full of concepts we are still invested in appearance. In that case, it is not surprising that we seek God for a solution to a bad appearance. It should also not be surprising that our failure is infallible. If, by our effort, it so happens that we experience a relief of the problem – a little more health, a little less pain, enough money to get us through the next few days or weeks, an expression of love or safety or security, let us not believe that this is the evidence of God in action.

We have not seen God in action if the “it” yields and provides us with some relief. That is just the evidence of manipulating the pairs of opposites – which enough hardcore mental effort can achieve. But all we witness is mentality in action which can, and invariably does, quickly change again, leaving us with the same if not worse problem.

All is God. Whatever the problem seems to be, whatever its name, definition, nature, character, form and activity – whatever it all is – isn't. Only God is; and God is present, visible, and tangible, and freely available to your and my apprehension this instant.

Realize, if only God is present – if we truly, deeply know this truth – we do not battle with the problem. We do not seek God for the solution to the problem. “Agree with thine adversary quickly while you are in the way with him, lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge and the judge deliver thee to the officer and thou be cast into prison.” (Matthew 5:25)

If we believe what appears, in itself, to be good or bad, then we are immediately plunge ourselves into a sense separation and division from God. We deliver ourselves to the judge, and the judge will deliver us to the officer, and we are cast into a prison of belief, a prison of pain and suffering, of the pairs of opposites, of personal self. As we all know, the prison of belief and personal self is hell. I know that some reading this are going through it now. I was there with you, my friends. I know how much pain and suffering belief and buying in to appearance, causes us.

Now, seated in truth, looking out from the secret place of the most high, let us be rid of “ourselves,” rid of belief and concept, in the realization that these have no reality.

I do not know who you are or what you look like, and you do not know who I am or what I look like. We do not know what money looks like, what business looks like, what home and neighborhood looks like, what love looks like, what the world looks like. We do not know what teaching and what realization looks like. If I believed I knew what teaching looks and sounds like, we would have no teaching or we'd have a very poor interpretation of a teaching. It would be of no spiritual value to us. No, I certainly do not know what teaching is, nor what home is, what wife, husband or partner is, what family is, what a bank is, a credit card or a credit card company is. I do not know what my purpose is. I cannot name it or define it. “I of my own self can do nothing.” We can all say that we and everything we experience is God, yes. But we cannot describe or define anything, and if we try we fail to evidence the freedom of truth.

The message of the Miracle Self serves one purpose only – to get us up into God, naked of self, empty of concept, want, and desire, to be able to rest in and as the infinite unknown. Our fulfillment is, and is for the glory, the love of God. Our joy is the gratitude of being one as God, of being gods, and of being able to rest, empty and receptive, letting God get on with being God for its own sake; giving God the freedom within us to be what it is, to reveal itself to our experience as it is and for the glory of what it is. Do you see? We can never go to God for a reason. A single reason blocks all of God from our experience.

“Agree with thine adversary.” How? Do not take thought for – be concerned about – the problem. It is a lie. Treat it as the lie, the non-entity it is. Only God is, therefore do not care about the problem. Do not buy into it. Do not start battling it. Do not start bringing forth some spiritual practice you've learned along the way to deal with it, to dissolve it, to pacify it, to harmonize it, to prosper it, to make it safe and secure. This is buying into it hook, line, and sinker. Do not do it. Instead, ignore it of its own self – ignore it and get on with your life.

If you really know that all is God, why would you need to do something to or for an appearing problem? Why would you seek God? Do not go to God when a problem presents itself if you were not going to go to God this hour anyway. If you are motivated to seek God when a problem presents itself you obviously believe the appearance. Don't go to God to heal it, prosper it, pacify it. You will fail. Why? Because you have bought into the adversary.

Even if we attempt to convince ourselves that the problem is nothing of itself, and that only God exists, yet we turn to God in the hope of seeing the problem dissolve, we obviously believe it. If we believe it God cannot do anything for us. The only way God is evident in our experience is when we abide in God as a god. We must be lifted into a god state of being before we go to God. In other words, we must be free of the problem before we go to God. Then God shines as and “through” our transparency of being and good is revealed where the false sense of a problem appeared to be.

If we go to God with the problem the only possible result is a continuation or worsening of the problem. We are feeding our belief in it. Feeding it, pampering it, serving it will only make it flare up like pumping oxygen into a fire. Do not do it. Instead, "Agree with thine adversary." Just keep walking on. Do not even look at the problem. There is no need because the problem is nothing but an illusion, a mirage, a nothingness. All is God, despite appearance, and God is within, God is consciousness. You already know that, so why would you need to look “out there” at an appearing problem? Why would you need to do anything with it, about it, or for it? You do not.

How then is the false sense witnessed as true? In exactly this way: we have to already be in God awareness, satisfied with God as the only existence before we step into the world and meet with adversaries. We have to be ready and prepared, seated in God awareness. It is no use waiting to make our God effort until the adversary hits up at us. That is like waiting to prepare for the Olympics until the starting gun is fired.

If we find ourselves caught off-guard, we walk on through anyway. Resist the temptation to become invested in the appearing problem. Ignore it as the mirage it is. Then gently refresh your realization of God being the only existence, therefore of the problem being nothing of itself, and needing no attention or action from you.

If we believe we need God we have bought into an adversary. God already is; we can never be in need of God. The is consciousness evidences God-is, the is-not consciousness evidences God-is-not. We must make sure we are lifted in a God-is state of consciousness before we go to God. Then we rest and relax in God – not to deal with the adversary, but as a god, for God, to God itself; for no other reason than for the glory of God itself, the experience of God itself.

Seated in the throne of God, we have not come with a problem, with a need or with a desire. We have to come to God purged of every need, every want, every sense of self, every belief, every concept, every desire for God to do something. We must never come to God with a reason for coming.

Only God is, so why would we care what appearance is doing, even if (this maybe hard to hear for some, and it would be impossible for me to say if I had not experienced it) the cancer or other disease or injury is unbearably painful and full of frightening pictures.

Even in extreme cases, we have to lift to a state of awareness that enables us to look at any problem and say, so what? It is only a picture.

Thankfully, by the grace of God, I was able to do that with the cancer. I finally understood. If God is the infinitude and is the omnipresence of itself, then even this appearing late stage cancer which is aggressive and extremely painful is not an entity unto itself. It does not have form or activity of its own. It has no law to sustain itself in experience. Despite its appearance it must actually be God. Any and every presence must be God because God is the only existence. God is love, God is good with no bad in it whatsoever; therefore what I am experiencing as collectively believed “cancer” is actually God even though grossly mistranslated.

Because disease is a presence, an “it,” it can only be, and is, God despite its appearance and all belief about it. Any bad is a false or mistranslated experience of God, good.

The only presence, the only “it,” the only “is” is God itself. Well, that changes everything. Now I know that the way I am experiencing it, the pain, the frightening appearance, is all false imagery. The whole picture is belief about the idea cancer – just belief unwittingly accepted as real. The belief is not yours or mine or anybody else's. It is collective belief unwittingly, innocently accepted by us.

In the midst of experiencing disease or injury, lack, limitation, hate or any other painful problem, the appearance and the consequences appear to be so real. The reason is that belief believes itself.

For a long time early on I struggled with money. I intellectually understood that all form, including money, is infinite and omnipresent but that truth was certainly not making itself evident where I was! Another end of the month was approaching and yet again bills were pressing and I did not have the money to pay them. That picture looks and acts very real to the believer.

Starvation, poverty, injustice, immorality, atrocity look very real if we believe the pictures, and they are real to the believer – just as real as the snake is to the hypnotized person observing an innocent coil of rope. Living with belief, how can we be unaffected by reports of starving families, orphaned children, the atrocities of war, the plight of hundreds of thousands of refugees, millions of homeless families or families without sufficient food and shelter? These pictures look very real and the temptation is to do everything we can to help on the material level.

Now then, "Agree with thine adversary quickly while you are in the way with him [immediately the picture presents itself], lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge." Do you see? “Agree” with the pictures; know that they are false sense testimony, and carry on with your day in God consciousness. We are not ignoring the pictures but realizing their falsity, and then staying in God as and for God, not to heal the problem. Do you see the difference?

So prepared and able to dismiss even severe pictures of falsity, we are the consciousness that beholds the presence and activity of God dissolving every lie. This is why rising from sleep early in the morning for meditation and silence evidences much fruit. While the rest of the world sleeps we can enjoy uninterrupted meditation and silence. It is a beautiful time to get up, make a coffee if you want to (as I always do) and start pondering the wonders of God and the miracles of truth—for no reason except for the glory of God.

Just the realization of God being the only existence, the on law, the one form, the one being, the one body, the one presence is miraculous.

Only God is – only God. Nothing except God exists. It doesn't matter how I may see it, hear it, feel it, taste it, touch it. Whatever my senses report, all is God. Moment by moment sense testimony is unimportant; God is the only importance because God is he only reality.

To awaken and realize that all it takes is rising in God awareness for the true good to be tangibly and visibly evident wherever we are is a miracle unto itself!

Rising from sleep early and enjoying the privilege of pondering these great truths in the stillness and quietness of the first hours of the day is one of the great gifts of life!

Only God is. God is infinity. God is omnipresence. God is the one power. No other power exists in the universe. Only God power is – which really means God presence, not power. The presence of God is the only presence, the almighty God presence, the almighty power of oneness.

God is the all-knowing, the all-wise, omniscience. Only all-knowing God exists. Well, if God is all-knowing and all is God, what do we have to know? God knows and is all before we have a need to know. We are way too late if we believe we need to know something of God, and then attempt to know it.

“Your thoughts are not my thoughts; your ways are not my ways.” (Isaiah 55:8) In that case, let us stop wasting our effort and time. All is in order because all is God. I walk free, now, because all already is God. When I am up in the heights of the allness of God, free of belief, I am free in God. I experience the freedom of infinity, because I am consciously aware and feeling the presence of all being God.

God is now palpably in charge. God is the government of infinity, therefore God is the government of being. As long as we have lifted ourselves up into what God is, and are feeling the presence of God, this truth becomes real and practical in our experience. That is when, and that is the only state of being in which and as which, God has become real and practical in experience. God is right here seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling as us and for us, as every moment of awareness and as every object of awareness.

We have to lift ourselves up to that which God is, then God is practical and real, and then we are free, then we are and we have the freedom of infinity, and then we can carry on walking through our days, no matter what appearance presents itself, in the God consciousness we have attained, and witness the freedom of infinity. In God consciousness within and without we witness the real and palpable truth of all being infinite, all life being God-life, therefore eternal life.

We witness the world devoid of disease, devoid of lack and limitation, even though the pictures still present themselves to us. Let the pictures come. What do they matter as long as we maintain our awareness is God within and without? In God awareness we are the causal presence of harmony to all discordant pictures.

The first thing the Master did when faced with fifteen to twenty thousand hungry people was “lift his eyes to heaven.” (Luke 9:16) He did not care about the imagery of a multitude of hungry people. He was not interested in the pictures of people because he knew that God is infinite individual being, therefore no person is hungry. Only God person exists, forever fulfilled. So what does Jesus do? Ignores them and the bewildered disciples who have not quite yet risen to this degree of awareness. He lifts his eyes to heaven; he lifts into the highest of God consciousness, knowing that in God a God state of being the fulfillment of the scene is revealed.

Think Not

Think not. “Take no thought for your life.” Take no thought for every picture that presents itself to you throughout the day. Take no thought for the detail. Ignore it, and stay in God awareness – God as God for God. Do not take either good or bad, the problem or the solution into thought or consideration – not yours and not the world's. Turn away. Get these pictures out of your awareness. Do not entertain them. Do not go to God with them.

You cannot come to God with them. You may have believe you can, and you may have believed you need to in order for God to see the problem and heal it. No, this is not the way. God already is, and the one way of witnessing the true is of every picture is by being the god that God sees itself as and through.

We cannot bring our concepts to God. We cannot bring what we believe we know is the problem and what we also believe is the solution, for God to bring forth for us. We have to come naked into God. That “nakedness” is the taking no thought for your life and bringing no good or bad thought about your life to the throne of God.

Give yourself the gift of rising early in the morning and pondering God. Start pondering God immediately you awaken – God as God is and for what God is, not God for self or humanity or thing or condition. Be naked of self and thing; bring nothing to God except your bare, receptive self. Ponder infinity as infinity and for infinity itself. Ponder omnipresence as omnipresence and for omnipresence itself. Ponder truth for the revelation of truth, for the greater awareness of God itself, and for the glory of God itself, never as anything to do with your nameable, definable sense of being. We have to be empty of self in order to see Self.

You will quickly discover the miracle of such practice. Then you will feel the beautiful satisfaction of devoting yourself completely to and for God, giving yourself to God, and in so doing you are filled with stillness and peace – with the tangible experience of God. As you feel the presence, stop pondering and be silent. Yield your entire being God and let God get on with being God as God is, for what God is, for as long as you feel you want to remain there, whether it be 10 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, two hours, four hours.

Simply be present in and as and for God, devoted to God, letting God “use” you as a window of heaven. The window is not required to know what's going on, and actually it cannot. As God shines through the window of being it is infallibly evidenced sooner or later just as sunshine pouring through our windows is infallibly evidenced filling our homes. Then, when you feel it is complete, get up and on with your day.

You discover, with a little discipline to begin with, that you can walk through your days without taking thought for a single person, thing, place, or condition, without ever looking twice at the pictures of sense. You simply stay attentive to whatever you do – working, communicating, selling, serving, giving, resting – without being distracted or disturbed by the pictures, never looking to the left or to the right. You response to the world is like the Master's when the woman came up behind him, touched the hem of his garment (the garment of consciousness) and was healed.

You begin to realize that a whole series of fulfillment has come about in your day simply by your maintained God consciousness, without taking a single thought or having a single concern for the things. This is the entire key. You must be so detached and free of “this world” that the fulfillment you evidence is a surprise. If you are not ready for fulfillment to be a surprise you will have none. Your mind has been on solutions to problems, and if the mind is so occupied there is no room for God in it.

The secret of witnessing God is like the secret of the garden. We plant the garden and then take no thought for the crop. We simply let and observe, and in our letting and observing, sooner or later our garden is bursting with shoots, buds, flowers and fruits. It is like this because in detachment from finiteness you are free in infinity, and freedom in infinity infallibly evidences itself.

We must be released and free in God in order to experience the presence of God as the objective sense of our lives. If we attach ourselves by thinking about, by being concerned about, by trying to bring truth to what we believe needs it, we fail from morning to night.

"Be sober; be vigilant, because your adversary the devil as a roaring lion walks about seeking whom he may devour." (1 Peter 5:8) Indeed, be sober, be vigilant in truth. Then, as you walk around the world as I, taking no thought for appearance, attaching to nothing and no person, true peace fills you. "My peace I give unto you [unto the whole of you including your objective sense]; not as the world gives [not human or material peace, but the real, everlasting peace] give I unto you." Then, “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” (John 14:27) Your heart will no longer be troubled, neither afraid, for I am now tangibly with you.

Blessings,

Paul

- By a Student -

This a Hard Saying, Master

“Take no thought for your life.”

It is impossible for a personal sense to take no thought for its life. Personal sense is bound up in belief – belief that it has a life of its own that it of its own self is responsible for. How can it take no thought or not be concerned for that life?

It cannot. It tries; it prostrates and denies itself; it lifts and claims the self it glimpses; it sits and silences its own noise. But all along – it maintains the self it is denying by that very act of denial! This believed self is the same one who is prostrating and denying and lifting and claiming and sitting and silencing. Personal sense perpetuates itself by believing (feeding) itself – a perfect paradigm of the dreaded vicious circle.

A personal sense of self which is constituted of belief cannot stop believing itself.

Belief is the heartbeat, the breath, and the bread of the personal sense of self.

The personal sense will not simply disappear of its own accord, and it will not die by its own hand (ego is never suicidal). Personal sense leaves the room as soon as Awareness Itself walks in, just as darkness “goes poof” when light appears. Like darkness, personal sense never was anything of substance to begin with. But darkness sure has a funny way of showing up again the instant light disappears.

The great paradox is that the personal sense of self cannot hear and see what could finally set it free.

That they listen/ed from personal sense, as a personal sense, must be why most of Jesus’ disciples and students found his teachings and principles so hard to hear – “This is a hard saying; who can hear it?” The personal sense of self cannot hear it. Maybe that’s why Jesus frequently said, “He that has ears to hear, let him hear.” (Mt. 11:15)

Our beautiful Master, who was of clear sight, understood that although he recognized the throngs who followed him for his healings as God-beings, the throngs did not recognize themselves as God-beings – far from it. They, as personal selves, saw themselves as downtrodden and brokenhearted and lame and miserable and sick and dying. Even the so-called spiritual leaders of the day were blind and deaf to Jesus’ truth: “Leave them, they are blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.” (Mt. 15:14)

Jesus used the metaphors of blindness and deafness frequently in his teachings because he knew that the problems the people experienced were not real in themselves, did not exist out there in their experience as they appeared to, but, rather, were forms of belief that they had accepted, belief that they were separate from God and personal unto themselves. Being of belief makes the believer blind and deaf to the truth, and Jesus knew this:

“Having eyes, do you not see? Having ears, do you not hear?” (Mark 8:18)

“For the hearts of these people are hardened, and their ears cannot hear, and they have closed their eyes – so their eyes cannot see, and their ears cannot hear, and their hearts cannot understand, and they cannot turn to me and let me heal them.”

But blessed are your eyes, for they see; and your ears, for they hear.

I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, but they didn’t see it. And they longed to hear what you hear and did not hear it.” (Mt. 13:15-17)

Personal-sense believers cannot communicate with God, although they may long to, cannot hear/see God, although they may long to. Neither can God hear/see belief, believers, personal sense. Personal sense does not exist for God. Only God exists for God. God sees only God.

And so we must finally ask – to what degree are we blind? To what degree are we deaf? And we must hear the answer – to that degree will we suffer on our own dung heap of piled up belief.

Isn’t it time to quit this misery?

Yes. It is time to yield these beliefs and attachments, to lift awareness away from any degree of personal sense of self and go to God empty, naked, trusting, open for God, for God’s sake, for God’s glory. Then we will be able to hear and see God – as God, for God.

The personal sense is blind and deaf to truth. That is why Jesus’ teachings are “hard sayings.” However, they are not hard sayings to those of yielded, lifted consciousness, to those of Christ consciousness, God consciousness.

I can only take no thought for my life if I have realized that it is not “my” life, but is God’s life. In this realization, the I of me (the me of I) has disappeared and only God is – not just as a principle, but truly, really, actually, as the evidence of my universe. In that case, surely there is no need for thought-taking.

God is always evident to those who can see, to those who look as God, as a god (a Godbeam), not as separate human sense, not as personal sense – “Having eyes, do you not see?” No, if my eyes are human, physical, personal, I cannot see. If my eyes are spiritual, then yes, I do see – God is evident because, according to spiritual eyes, God is all. If God is all, then what else could I see other than God?

This is like saying that Awareness Itself and the awareness it is aware with and the who/what it is aware of are all the one Awareness. All is Awareness.

The God Self and the eyes it sees with and the who/what it sees, are all the same Self, the one God Self, the only Self.

No personal self exists, and if we believe that the personal self is real and that we are that self, then woe unto us – no wonder we are blind to God evidence. “Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight!”
(Isaiah 5:21)

It is impossible for us to be suffering from anything “out there.” The only thing “out there” is God, is Awareness Itself.

We are suffering from our own belief. Can we see this? Can we hear this? The “we” that struggles to see and hear this, let us remember, is the personal sense of self – a substance-less perception, a belief, a puff of nothingness.

“Instantly something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he regained his sight.” (Acts 9:18) What changed for Saul except his beliefs and his name? The “scales on the eyes” are metaphorical, but the metaphor is effective because it emphasizes how we see the world. So the scales on the eyes are beliefs – we “squint through” our beliefs, and perhaps we could say, how we see depends on the density of the scales. Can any light at all get “in or out” – what we see and where we see from? “The one you are looking for is the one who is looking.” (St. Francis of Assisi) Can we hear this?

But when Christ Consciousness (Light) arrived, the scales fell from Saul’s eyes instantly.

“And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” This statement is surely not simply a one-time declaration that God made at what is called the creation, but truly it plays to all on a 24-7 heavenly earthly loop, over and over and over, “There IS light, there IS light, there is light” – nothing but light, infinite light, eternal light. And those who can hear respond, “I AM light, I am light, I am light.”

Let us see with spiritual eyes, with eyes of light. Let us have the “eyes of [our] hearts enlightened that [we] may know what is the hope to which he has called [us]” (Ephesians 1:18).

Copyright © 2018 Paul F. Gorman