“Peace
I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let
not your heart be troubled,
neither let it be afraid. “These
things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye
shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. (Words of Christ Jesus
recorded in John 16:33; King James Bible Version (KJV). “Your
ear shall
hear a word behind you, saying,
“This is the
way, walk in it,” Whenever you turn to the right hand Or whenever you turn to the
left.” (Isaiah 30:21; NKJV). “It
is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The
words that I speak to you are
spirit, and they are life.”
(Words
of Christ Jesus in John 6:63; NKJV). When
we gaze at the world around us, we can often feel despair at the unhappiness we
find among all Earth’s inhabitants, including ourselves. Despite the good things that come into our
daily experiences, the bad things always seem to take center stage in our
thoughts and attention. Our thinking
becomes riveted to whatever is wrong, and we might wonder why the divine Love of
God isn’t taking better care of all the world’s problems! But
when human conflicts cover the globe, as they are doing today, that’s a good
time for each of us to stop and answer a larger question: Just where
is God in any, or all, of this world’s turmoil? Does the Almighty exist only in the mist of
our own imaginations? And (we sometimes also
wonder) where, on this Earth, is that peace
Christ Jesus spoke of when he said, “My peace
I give to you...”? (See 1st quote at top of article). Yet, we ask ourselves: how can we feel peace
when there are so many reasons to be upset in our daily lives, here in this
material sense of being? The
answer to these questions can make all the difference in our own, individual
human experiences. To know where
God dwells, (or has Its spiritual presence) is relevant to that question. After all, no one has seen God walk the earth;
so, it seems reasonable to think that God isn’t here, where we are. It then follows that if God isn’t here, God’s
power can hardly protect us. So, the
common mental perception of God goes something like this: ‘Since God’s present isn’t apparent in this
materially human existence, we’re obviously on our own when trouble comes in
the physical form of conflicts, health issues, or lack of any needed things. Having
come to the conclusion that we can’t find God anywhere in the physical scene, we
have just dismissed the presence of God based
solely upon the evidence (or lack thereof) of the five material senses of
perception (sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell). We then, erroneously, live with the mental
decision that the Creator can do little to help us in troubles, if anything at
all, especially if we need help quickly.
This
is the mistake that material reasoning makes.
The physical senses simply do not perceive God, the divine Presence, or
the harmony of the unseen, spiritual realm of the Almighty. Not perceiving the presence of the spiritual
realm, or remaining ignorant of the fact that all Life exists only in the spiritual dimension, or realm, we
remain mentally hidden from the
existence of life in Spirit, which is NOT conflicted, or troubled, in any
way. The divine Creator has set
harmonious functioning within us, for eternity.
It dwells within each of our own innate, spiritual consciousness every day. We need
only to realize that! Despite physical appearances, Life does not actually
exist in a finite, material realm; so don’t be afraid to embrace meta-physics. Meta-physics is the mental perception of
reality beyond the material-seeming realm. Life is the presence of our innate consciousness
within our spiritual identities. This deeper
consciousness holds the only real truth of being that exists, on any level of
existence. Life
is the conscious awareness of spiritual, not fleshly being, even while we seem to be finite, material creatures,
but are not. Even the fleshly brain is
not our mind. It is only the material symbol of our spiritual consciousness. The brain is the material-seeming ‘home’ of a fragile,
finite mind we believe to be real, but the material brain is not our true consciousness. Our spiritual consciousness exists outside of
the fleshly body and cannot be imprisoned in a material form. Educated in the science of materiality, we, as citizens of Earth, have been taught to believe finite, material-seeming cause and effect as laws or realities. But these 'rules' are really established, collective human beliefs that change, every time some 'expert' has a new idea, or theory, about what is true. Often, we have followed these so-called material 'laws' or 'truths' to our own destruction. Take our bodies, for
example: We have been taught that we ARE
the physical forms of bodies. We’ve been
taught that these finite, physical forms are us. So,
believing that the fleshly form should dictate who and what we are, we
become slaves to the flesh for fear it will end our life. We
treat the body form before all else, forgetting the fact that it is our consciousness
that is our essence. Without consciousness, our flesh can do
nothing. The hand moves when we tell it to. That's
because we are not the fleshy form; we are that which activates the form. We are the spiritual beings who activate (give
life to the form) until we abandon it. Even death
of the form isn’t our death. Our
spiritual consciousness goes on before, during and after we have used the form
to enter, and interact, in this physical-seeming realm. In this realm, or dimension, we can only be
detected by others when we are ‘in’ the physical form. The realm of materiality is like a play, or
holograph. We have taken the form in order
to enter the material dimension and interact with it. This
is where Christ Jesus’ played such a starring role in the material scene. It was his mission to come into the illusion
of finite being to show us our real selves…our spiritual Selves whom we had
forgotten in memory. Someone had to come
into the material realm of thought in order to correct a few things going on with
the whole of humanity. Jesus the Christ was
the one. But notice that he didn’t stay
here, even after rising above the material belief in his own death. He lingered on this human experience only
long enough to show us that, like himself, we are all spiritual beings who
cannot, really, die. The
mission of Christ Jesus was to bring the truth of spiritual being into the
chaos of material belief. He was our
spiritual brother, showing us our real spiritual, not material, selves. He preached that the spiritual kingdom of God
is ever-present, right where our humanly, physical, finite material forms of
everything and everyone seems to be
our identity. But his mission was much
more than that. He was showing us who
we really were, are, and will ever be. Right
where we seem to exist as material creatures, our spiritual identities (signified
as the universal Christ-identity) are always right here, underlying this
appearance of finite materiality. It is our
divine Selfhood; for all God’s children are divine. This spiritual Self is our real being, never
even touched by the material-body form. Jesus,
the chosen messenger, came into this collective, materialistic dream of
life-in-matter to show us the way out…back to our spiritual Home (awakened state of
mind) and to our heavenly realm of harmony.
He also came to show us the better way to live while we were here, in this material experience. Primarily, he wanted us to follow his own path of spiritual
awakening so we would remember who we really are while we are here (God’s own spiritual children, who never
die.)
Then we would trust the invisible presence of the divine kingdom
that we had never, really left; and then we would turn to God for deliverence of
the bad things that this false, material sense of life creates. We are
each a spiritual child (off-spring) of God alone, and we can lay claim to no
other identity. That’s why all
earthly-identities pass away; they were never real to begin with. Whatever, and whoever God has created does not
die. It is our belief that we live in
the flesh which causes us to believe we must die out of it. But our soul’s journey isn’t quite like
that. God’s children cannot die, or
cease to exist. They must only awaken out of the material dream-illusion
of an existence outside of God. The kingdom of God is more than
a place we live in; the kingdom of God is a place that lives within us. It lives within our sleeping memory of our
own spiritual (Christ) identity. Notice
this: Every material function of the physical
body-form relies on our spiritual consciousness, in order to function. When consciousness withdraws from the
physical form, the body is deserted. Without
consciousness, the body disintegrates into dust, and then into nothingness. That’s because the physical form never
existed, by itself, in the first place. So, Spirit
is the only life-force that exists anywhere, at anytime. We are divine Spirit’s off-spring. Like produces like. Spirit does not produce finite, mortals. Right where we appear to be finite mortals,
right there we are really God’s own image and likenesses, each in uniquely
different ways, but true to the laws of Spirit…not matter. So, our
spiritual realization of Life is our mental pathway into the invisible kingdom of
God. This kingdom is ever-present, even wherever
we seem to be materially. The flesh
occupies no real realm at all. It's the stuff that dreams are made of. The physical
sense of being is the collective illusion of being. It doesn’t perceive reality because the ever-present
kingdom of God is a spiritual place. It can’t
be bound by borders owned by people, or in the ways that we physically divide
up our earthly world. So in summary, we need realize that the
illusory material world, and universe of finite forms, all disappears into
nothingness when the sleeping remembrance of our divine Home is perceived, and
we discover that it was always with us. Then all the troubles of material existence
begin to disappear from our human experience, even while we are still wearing a
physical form. Christ
Jesus was the great meta-physician who was sent into the dream of materiality
to awaken us from humanity’s erroneous, collective thinking. He walked the human path until he was
completely awakened to the spiritual truth of all being; and when he had
completed his mission to show mortals that life is spiritual, not material, he
didn’t die again; rather, he ascended (rose above all the beliefs of material,
finite being) and transformed back into his true, spiritual identity. (John 14:5-7; (NKJV). My
interpretation of his words is that Christ Jesus was showing humanity that
mentally putting on ‘the Christ’ (spiritual identity) was the way to go, the truth of
being, and the only form of life
that actually exists—spiritual being. It
is the only way Home. He had been chosen
to make the demonstration of deathless, harmonious being; and that demonstration
awaits all of us who are still here, in this material sense of being, still
dreaming that we are separated from God, our divine Source. No
matter how many times we enter and leave this human experience, one day, when
we are completely awake to spiritual reality, the dream of a duel-place of good
and evil will vanish from our thoughts. This
will occur because God has no contenders.
Then, when we each are fully awake to our spiritual life in God, we all
shall have realized that only God’s divine Love was ever real and eternal, and
we will be Home. |
