Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Spirituality’

On Self

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on June 24, 2014| Leave a Comment »

 
A rejection, or in Scripture’s strong language, a crucifixion of the natural self is the passport to everlasting life. Nothing that has not died will be resurrected.
 
The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses. Copyright © 1949, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1976, revised 1980 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Words to Live By: A Guide for the Merely Christian. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

 

Christian baptism is the symbol of dying to the self and being resurrected to God. It prefigures our literal death and resurrection. When we bury the self, God shines through us into the physical world. When we bury our bodies, we shine through into the spiritual world.
 
Dying to live,
Z gardener

Read Full Post »

On Heaven

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on June 19, 2014| Leave a Comment »

 
 
But God will look to every soul like its first love because He is its first love. Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it—made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.
 
The Problem of Pain. Copyright © 1940, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright restored © 1996 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.Words to Live By: A Guide for the Merely Christian. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

 

All the love lacked or lost; all of the dreams dashed or deferred; all of the peace denied or delayed; all that is good and right and joyful will be ours when we are one with the one from whom we came.
 
Being one,
Z gardener

Read Full Post »

On Hell

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on June 3, 2014| Leave a Comment »

[The fictional George MacDonald is speaking.]“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell choose it. Without that self-choice, there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek, find. To those who knock, it is opened.”. . .
 
“Hell is a state of mind—ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly.”. . .
 
“Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world: but it is smaller than one atom of this world, the Real World. Look at yon butterfly. If it swallowed all Hell, Hell would not be big enough to do it any harm or to have any taste. . . .
“A damned soul is nearly nothing: it is shrunk, shut up in itself. Good beats upon the damned incessantly as sound waves beat on the ears of the deaf, but they cannot receive it. Their fists are clenched, their teeth are clenched, their eyes fast shut. First they will not, in the end they cannot, open their hands for gifts, or their mouths for food, or their eyes to see.”
 
“Then no one can ever reach them?”
 
“Only the Greatest of all can make Himself small enough to enter Hell. For the higher a thing is, the lower it can descend—a man can sympathize with a horse but a horse cannot sympathize with a rat. Only One has descended into Hell.”
 
The Great Divorce. Copyright © 1946, C. S Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed 1973 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.Words to Live By: A Guide for the Merely Christian. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
 
We create our hell by accepting the false illusion of separation from God and others. It is indeed a state of mind, and that state of mind does not have to wait for death. In fact, it conceived and birthed here below, because it can not exist in heaven, the true reality.
 
So, let us open ourselves to heaven here, so we will have a home and be at home when we fully arrive there forever.
 
Thy will be done, Father,
Z gardener
 

Read Full Post »

On What We Shall Be

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on May 28, 2014| 1 Comment »

“We know not what we shall be”; but we may be sure we shall be more, not less, than we were on earth. Our natural experiences (sensory, emotional, imaginative) are only like the drawing, like penciled lines on flat paper. If they vanish in the risen life, they will vanish only as pencil lines vanish from the real landscape, not as a candle flame that is put out but as a candle flame which becomes invisible because someone has pulled up the blind, thrown open the shutters, and let in the blaze of the risen sun.
 
The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses. Copyright © 1949, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1976, revised 1980 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works. Copyright © 2003 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights 
 
We are now but a mere reflection of our heavenly existence, a three dimensional finite image of an infinite reality; like viewing a three dimensional hologram of something instead of experiencing the actual thing itself.
 
So, when we find heaven, we will not be something else, we will be the ultimate manifestation of us, our best and true self. Then we will be experiencing instead of looking at a reflection of experience.
 
No, our candle will not be dimmer, nor will it be something else. It will become the light so bright that the reality around it is fully illuminated. We will become the light yet will remain the candle. 
 
Becoming the light,
Z gardener
 
Image

Read Full Post »

On Knowing God

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on January 16, 2014| Leave a Comment »

 
 
When you come to knowing God, the initiative lies on His side. If He does not show Himself, nothing you can do will enable you to find Him. And, in fact, He shows much more of Himself to some people than to others—not because He has favorites, but because it is impossible for Him to show Himself to a man whose whole mind and character are in the wrong condition. Just as sunlight, though it has no favorites, cannot be reflected in a dusty mirror as clearly as in a clean one.
 
You can put this another way by saying that while in other sciences the instruments you use are things external to yourself (things like microscopes and telescopes), the instrument through which you see God is your whole self. And if a man’s self is not kept clean and bright, his glimpse of God will be blurred—like the Moon seen through a dirty telescope. That is why horrible nations have horrible religions: they have been looking at God through a dirty lens.
 
It is only when we strip ourselves of self-primacy and return control to God’s will, that God fully reveals himself to us. It not because the light shines differently on those who do this. It is because we, the instrument are better prepared to perceive and receive God’s light.
 
God calls and we respond. The way we respond will determine the level to which we absorb and reflect God’s light. The light is always there, it is we who must be fully ready to live in it. God will take care of the rest.
 
Polishing the mirror,
Z gardener

Read Full Post »

The Use of Intelligence

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on September 20, 2013| 1 Comment »

 
It is your duty to God to run your life on intelligent lines. God gives us all as much intelligence as we can possibly need, but, unfortunately, in most cases we use very little of it.
 
Ask yourself today if you are really conducting your life intelligently. Are you eating and drinking intelligently? Do you select your reading intelligently? Do you spend your money intelligently? Do you consider intelligently the things that you hear, or do you just accept them uncritically? Do you exercise intelligence in carrying out your daily work? Do you seek to approach each new problem with intelligence instead or mere emotions?
 
Have you intelligent plans for the future? Do you know what you would really like to do or to be, and if not wouldn’t it be only intelligent to go to work and find out and then draw up an intelligent plan for gaining your desire?
 
The world needs more intelligence. There is plenty of will, but because people will not use enough intelligence, mankind everywhere is in difficulties. Your intelligence is the light of God in your soul.
 
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus (Philippians 2:5) 
 
Our intelligence is God’s consciousness working through us.But we must exercise and direct our intelligence or we become an obstacle to God’s will. By the way, would God give us the intelligence to question our faith if he were not supremely confident that our faith would be affirmed? 
 
Think intelligently, question intelligently and live in peace with the conclusions. It is God’s way for us.to find our way.
 
Finding God’s way,
Z gardener

 

Read Full Post »

Be Specific!

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on July 1, 2013| Leave a Comment »

 
 
Man has dominion over all things when he knows the Law of Being and obeys it. Do not put off your study of the law any longer. Take stock of your life this very day. Write down the things you really wish for. Be specific, not vague. Then write down underneath the conditions that you wish to remove from your life. If you do this candidly, you now have an extremely valuable analysis of your own mentality. In course of time this will tell you a great many things about your self that you do not at present suspect, and as your knowledge of spiritual Truth increases, you will be able to handle the new knowledge about your self in a surprising way.
 
Having forgotten your main points in front of you, work on each one separately with all the spiritual knowledge you possess. Remember, it is not really very important how much of this knowledge you have so long as you make use of all that you do have. Repeat this treatment every day for a month, and by the end of that time it will be very unusual if a change for the better has not manifested itself in your conditions.
 
For those unfamiliar with spiritual treatment, an effective method of working is this: Claim gently but definitely that the great creative Life Force of the universe is bringing each of the needed changes into your life in its own way, in it own time, and in its own form. Do not try to dictate the exact form in which the new conditions shall come about. Do not be tense or vehement. Do not let anyone else know that you are doing this. Do not look impatiently every day for results.
 
Keep therefore the words of this covenant, and do them, that ye may prosper in all that ye do (Deuteronomy 29:9).
 
Lord, bring to all your children the needed changes into their lives in your own way, in your own time and in its own form. And, let each of us accept it wholeheartedly.
 
Being specific,
Z gardener

Read Full Post »