Good Morning Garden

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you… Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid (John 14:27).

This true, interior soul-peace was known to the mystics as serenity, and they are never tired of telling us that serenity is the grand passport to the Presence of God—the sea as smooth as glass that is round about the Great White Throne. This is not to say that one cannot tackle even the most serious difficulties by prayer without having any serenity at all. But before you can make any true spiritual progress you must achieve serenity; and it is that fundamental tranquility of soul that Jesus refers to by the word peace—the peace that passes all human understanding.

The Peacemakers are those who bring about this peace in their own souls; they surmount limitation and become actually, not merely potentially, the children of God. This condition of mind is the objective at which Jesus aims.

Of course, to be a peacemaker in the usual sense of composing the quarrels of other people is an excellent thing; but, as all practical people know, an excessively difficult role to fill. But once you understand the power of prayer, you will be able to heal many quarrels in the true way; probably without speaking at all. The silent thought of the All-Power of Love and Wisdom will cause trouble to melt away almost imperceptibly. You will become a peacemaker.

Once we truly understand and accept that God’s power and love are always available to all we face each day will yield to that love, then we can experience true serenity. All our doubts, fears and problems will be resolved for our best good when we live according to God’s will. The faith, hope and confidence that flows from our trust in God becomes the foundation for our peace. When we achieve this, we can recognize the Eden around us and are then able to exist there in joy and gladness filled with God’s peace.

In peace,
Z gardener

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Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God (Matthew 5:9)

To the casual reader this Beatitude might sound like a mere conventional religious generalization, even a sententious platitude. Here we receive an invaluable practical lesson in the art of prayer—and prayer is our only means of returning to communion with God. As a matter of fact, prayer is the only real action in the full sense of the word, because prayer is the only thing that changes one’s character. When such a change takes place, you become a different person and, therefore, for the rest of your life you act in a different way. If you should get a very strong realization of the presence of God with you, it would make a very great and dramatic change in your character, so that, in the twinkling of an eye your outlook, your habits, your whole life would completely change. Many such cases are on record, including cases of what used to be called “conversion.” Because the change is radical, Jesus refers to it as being “born again.”

The great essential for success in obtaining that sense of the Presence of God is that we first attain some degree of true peace of mind.

How do we achieve peace of mind? It begins with prayer. Effective prayer requires that we actively seek God’s presence in the present moment. To do this one must separate one’s self from the material world, address God and invoke God’s presence.
One method that works for the author is this. Breathe deeply and ask God to relax the body, release all tensions and earthly concerns while lifting our spirits, hearts, minds, consciousness and wills (attitude, feelings, thoughts, awareness and desires). Then ask God to enable us to demonstrate God’s Holy Spirit, divine will and universal consciousness and express them (press out) in th e material world through God’s grace. This prepares our body and mind for communion with God.
Next, we should express our gratitude and thanks to God for all our spiritual and material blessings. Then we should confess our sins to God, take personal responsibility for them, forgive those who have hurt us and ask forgiveness for ourselves. CONFESSION IS THE GATEWAY TO FORGIVENESS WHICH IS THE BEGINNING OF PEACE.
Once we have faced our failings, asked forgiveness and forgiven others, our hearts are cleansed and we will attain true peace of mind and are then prepared to be in the presence of God and in communion with mankind. Then we can turn our burdens over to God with a grateful and hopeful heart. Then we can visualize with confidence a day or an eternity in peace. Then we can enter and live in the joy and gladness of the Eden God created for us.

In peace,
Z gardener

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Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life (Proverbs 4:23).

Most people, and learned people especially, have all kinds of knowledge that does not in the least affect or improve their practical lives. Doctors know all about hygiene, but often live in an unhealthy way, notwithstanding; and philosophers, who are acquainted with the accumulated wisdom of the ages, and assent to most of it, continue to do foolish and stupid things in their own personal lives. Now, knowledge such as this is only opinion, or head knowledge, as some people call it. It has to become heart knowledge, or to be incorporated into the subconscious, before it can really change one. The modern psychologists in their efforts to “re-educate the subconscious” have the right idea, though they have not yet discovered the true method of doing so, which is by single-minded prayer, or the Practice of the Presence of God.

Jesus, of course, thoroughly understood all this, and that is why he stresses the fact that we have to be pure in heart.

All the world’s accumulated knowledge has not made our hearts any purer. Nor has it defiled us. Both purity and defilement come from within and both are linked directly to our relationship with God or the lack of it. All that we know and all that we believe consciously have little or no impact on our true selves until we feel it in our core and act on it in our outer lives. First our hearts must be pure so that what we express into the world is pure and undefiled. The only way to a pure heart is through communion with God. Human nature presents barriers and obstacles to purity that alone we can not overcome. In order to “keep our hearts with diligence” we must give them to God. Then we will be living in our Gardens with pure hearts.

Seeking purity within,
Z gardener

Author’s note – The computer is back and so is the Good Morning Garden. Today’s thought picks up The Beatitudes where the last devotional left off. It is good to be back in the Garden.

Z

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…for they shall see God. In this wonderful Beatitude we are told exactly how this supreme task is to be accomplished and who they are who shall do it. They are the pure in heart. Purity, in its full and complete sense, is recognizing God alone as the only real Cause, and the only real Power in existence. It is what is called elsewhere in the Sermon “the single eye.”

Note that Jesus speaks of the pure in heart. The word heart in the Bible usually means that part of man’s mentality that modern psychology knows under the name of the “subconscious mind.” This is exceedingly important because it is not sufficient for us to accept the Truth with the conscious mind only. At that stage it is still a mere opinion. It is not until it is accepted by the subconscious mind, and thus assimilated into the whole mentality, that it can make any difference in one’s character or life.

…as he thinketh in his heart, so is he (Proverbs 23:7).

Are we going to see God? For believers the real question is “do we have the ‘single eye”‘ described above? Do we believe in our hearts and our subconscious that God is the only cause and true power? If so, then we must examine our lives to determine if these beliefs manifest themselves in our behavior. For instance, on matters of faith or doctrine, do we treat those with which we disagree in ways that denote love and respect for them. Or do we criticize and condemn while organizing others to force our beliefs on those with which we disagree. Do we say “I love you, but I must disagree with you”? Or, do we call names, question motives and condemn their actions? As we search our hearts, let us also search our actions to ensure that they make a positive difference in ours’ and other’s lives and character. Then, and only then, shall we live in the Garden and see God.

Hoping we all see God,
Z gardener

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Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God (Matthew 5:8).

This is one of those wonderful gnomic sayings in which the Bible is so rich. It is a summing up in a few words of a whole philosophy of religion.

Let us begin by considering what the promise in this Beatitude is. It is nothing less than to see God. To “see” in the sense referred to here, signifies spiritual perception, and spiritual perception is just that capacity to apprehend the true nature of Being that we all so sadly lack.

We live in God’s world, but we do not in the least know it as it is. Heaven, lies all about us—but because we are lacking in spiritual perception, we are unable to recognize it, to experience it, and, therefore, so far as we are concerned, we may be said to be shut out of Heaven.

We are very much in the position of a color-blind man in a beautiful flower garden. All around him are glorious colors; but he sees only blacks, whites, and grays. If we suppose him to be also devoid of the sense of smell, we shall see what a very small part of the glory of the garden exists for him. Yet it is all there, if he could but sense it.

Our task is to surmount these limitations as rapidly as may be, until we reach the point where we can know things as they really are—experience Heaven as it really is. That is what is meant by “seeing God.” To see God is to apprehend Truth as it really is, and this is infinite freedom and perfect bliss.

The day we fully understand and accept this truth is the day we can experience being in the Eden God gave us. When we, with God’s help, have overcome our human limitations, we can then live each day in our Gardens.

Seeking understanding,
Stan

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Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled (Matthew 5:6).

Righteousness is another of the key words of the Bible, one of those keys that the reader must have in his possession if he is to get at the true meaning of the book. Like earth and meek and comfort, it is used in a special and definite sense. Righteousness means not merely right conduct, but right thinking. In the Sermon on the Mount, every clause reiterates the truth that outer things are but consequences. As within, so without.

When people awaken to a knowledge of these truths, they naturally begin to apply them in their own lives. Realizing at last the vital importance of “righteousness” they begin immediately to try to p ut their house in order. The principle involved is simple, but unfortunately the exemplifying of it is anything but easy. Now, why should this be so? The answer lies in the potency of habit; and habits of thinking are at once the most subtle and the most difficult to break.

Perhaps failure to achieve righteousness is the failure of half-heartedness; you long but not too deeply. Your hunger and thirst do not rise from a sense of total need. Have a mental stocktaking or a review of your life. It could not happen that a wholehearted search for truth and righteousness, if persevered in, should not be crowned with success. God is not mocked, nor does He mock His children.

How can we seek truth and righteousness in the outer world, when we refuse to accept it within us. Of course, we can’t. It is much easier to say what is wrong with the world than to say what is wrong with ourselves. Yet with out that internal accounting of our inner righteousness, there can be no outer peace. Our environments will reflect our inner feelings and motivations more surely than our words and deeds. When we can not live and go forward without truth and righteousness within and without, then God will fill us with it.

In hunger,
Z gardener

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Let us see how we are to go about inheriting the earth. This Beatitude says that dominion, that is, power over the conditions of our lives, is to be obtained in a certain way, by nothing less than meekness.

The word meek in the Bible connotes a mental attitude for which there is no other single word available. It is a combination of open-mindedness, faith in God, and the realization that the will of God for us is always something joyous and interesting and vital. This state of mind also includes a perfect willingness to allow this will of God to come about in whatever way divine Wisdom considers to be best, rather than in some particular way that we have chosen for ourselves.

This mental attitude of teachableness, willingness to be led, is the key to dominion, or success in demonstration. There is no word for it in common speech, because the thing does not exist except for those who are up on the spiritual basis of the20teaching of Jesus Christ. If we desire to inherit the earth we must absolutely acquire this “meekness.”

The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice…(Psalm 97:1).

Another aspect of meekness is acceptance of God’s will and sublimation of self-will. We will only express the full power of God when we fully become attuned to and demonstrate God’s will. When we are open to God and willing to be a vehicle for God’s will, our meekness allows God to manifest through us. This is dominion through obedience. It begins by giving all power to God and finds full expression through God expressing himself through us. It brings new meaning to the term passive aggressive. It really means being passive to our will and active toward God’s will. Although this is exactly contrary to human nature, God gives us dominion through attunement to our divine nature, not through force of our will.

In tune,
Z gardener

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One of the saddest passages in all literature is the story of the Rich Young Man who missed one of the great opportunities of history, and
…went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions (Matthew 19:22).

This is really the story of mankind in general. We reject the salvation that Jesus offers us—our chance of finding God—because we “have great possessions,”; not so much that we are very rich in terms of money, for indeed most people are not, but because we have great possessions in the way of preconceived ideas—confidence in our own judgment, and in the ideas with which we happen to be familiar. We have pride, born of academic distinction; sentimental or material attachment to institutions and organizations; habits of life that we have no desire to renounce; concern for human respect; or perhaps fear of public ridicule. And these possessions keep us chained to the rock of suffering that is our exile from God.

The poor in spirit suffer from none of these embarrassments, either because they never had them, or because they have risen above them on the tide of spiritual understanding.

Most of us do not fully understand that the material, worldly or cultural priorities we have have block our communion and communication with God. When we focus on the material, the worldly and the limited human aspect, we become an obstacle to the power, spirit and Grace of God. It is when we attune ourselves to the spiritual plane that we become one with the Holy Spirit and then remove the static that blocks God’s signals to us and God’s pathways into our consciousness. It is when we empty ourselves of the spirit of self, and fill ourselves with God’s spirit that we find ourselves freed of the worldly yoke and empowered by the will and grace of God. Then our eyes will be opened, and then we will see the Garden God gave to us.

Z gardener

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The sermon on the Mount opens with the eight Beatitudes. They are actually a prose poem in eight verses and constitute a general summary of the Christian teaching. A general summing up, such as this, is highly characteristic of the old Oriental mode of approach to a religious and philosophical teaching, and it naturally recalls the Eightfold Path of Buddhism, the Ten Commandments of Moses,and other such compact groupings of ideas.

Jesus concerned himself exclusively with the teaching of general principles, and these general principles always had to do with mental states, for he knew that if one’s mental states are right, everything else might be right too. Unlike the other great religious teachers, he gives us no detailed instructions about what we are to do or not to do.

… the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.
…the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to worship him.

God is a spirit; and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and truth
(John 4:21, 23-24).

As humans, we yearn to be told what we should and should not do. Jesus knew that what we do results from how we think and feel. His instructions address theses causes of our actions. Until we are addressing the cause of our actions, we are merely treating the symptoms. When we become a new person in Christ, we are effectively changing what we think and how we think. The behavior that results from such activity will always be correct if we worship in spirit and in truth instead of action based on our limited human understanding.

Praying in spirit for truth,
Z gardener

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The setting forth of the Sermon on the Mount is an almost perfect codification of the religion of Jesus Christ. It covers the essentials. It is practical and personal. It is definite, specific, and yet widely illuminating. Once the true meaning of the instructions has been grasped, it is only necessary to begin putting them into practice to get immediate results. The magnitude and extent of these results will depend solely upon the sincerity and thoroughness with which they are applied. That is a matter which each individual has to settle for himself.

If you really do wish to become a different person altogether in the sight of God and man, then Jesus, in his Sermon on the Mount, has clearly shown you how it is to be done.

If you are prepared to break with the old man, and start upon the creation of the new one, then the study of the great Sermon will indeed be to you the Mountain of Liberation.

But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves
(James 1:22).

The most important decision any of us will ever make is whether or not we will become the new person that God intended us to be. Multitudes upon multitudes have already embarked on this journey of being reborn as a child of God. Many more have not made the decision or have faltered in their transformation. Our success in this most critical process depends upon a true understanding that is put into practice with sincerity and thoroughness.

On the Mount,
Z gardener

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