A post on Francis Berger's excellent blog discussed how many people have been distressed by the apparent lack of divine support in these dark times. Why are the faithful not given spiritual aid when the world is so much with us and people feel attacked by it more than ever? I completely agree with Francis's response to this question and would advise anyone who hasn't read it to do so in order to gain a better understanding of the current spiritual situation.
I commented on his post as follows:
"It is just as you say. God is communicating with us and doing so all the time but he is doing so on a spiritual level, through impression and intuition. It is up to us to raise our minds up to spiritual levels and not expect to be spoon-fed like spiritual babies. We are not just required to believe nowadays but to know and this knowledge can only be acquired if we work for it by preparing our minds to respond to the Word of God spiritually which means from the soul. God wants us to come up to him and will no longer come down to us except in extreme circumstances and maybe for many of us not even then.
This may sound cruel but is actually a great compliment for he wouldn't do it unless he knew we were capable of it. At least we have to make a start."
Here I'd like to elaborate a bit on my comment. First of all, I'd like to offer something from my own experience. Those who have read my book Meeting the Masters will know that I was spoken to by spiritual beings who described themselves as messengers from God over a period of 21 years, regularly at first but increasingly rarely as the years went by and it was assumed I had enough to be working on. Or, if I didn't, I should have. This was essentially spiritual instruction, tailored to my particular needs. But I was also told that I was additionally instructed through what was called impression and this was the preferred method because it put the ball in my court. I didn't just have to obey, relatively easy and passive, but to take the initiative and be responsible for myself. I had to attune myself to true spiritual levels and develop response to those levels to hear this impression. In this way, I could develop what one might think of as spiritual muscles.
Imagine the human being as a multi-levelled creature. The levels we are most familiar with are the physical, emotional and mental but there are instinctive and spiritual levels too, one often below the threshold of consciousness, the other usually above it. The spiritual level is the soul which is the source of our individuality and free will. There is no free will on a purely material level but we all know free will exists. Even those who deny it do not live as though it were not a real thing. Free will does exist but is exists at the spiritual level of the soul.
Now, those people who are yearning for a sign or a communication from God are expecting it at a material level. A voice or a sign that can be perceived by the senses. Something like I experienced years ago. But this is the desire of a spiritual adolescent. Someone who may be growing in the spirit but is still interpreting it in terms of the material self. God wants us to advance into the spiritual self, the soul which exists above the strictly phenomenal level. And he knows we are now capable of this. We have developed intellectually and are ready, or some of us are, to move on to the next stage. Thus his communication to us takes place nowadays largely at the level of the soul and is not in the form of words or even visions (both sensory) but impressions which we have to first pick up on and then translate into a mental form to understand clearly. This is where our own spiritual development comes in. We have to have enough sensibility to respond to the soul and also a mind capable of interpreting it correctly. Both are important.
This is not to say that God never sends us more direct experiences or communications but often we find that is at the beginning of an individual's spiritual journey. It is to get him started, to show that the spiritual world does indeed exist. But it is a mistake to demand these things continuously or to expect them as a regular favour. It will keep us trapped at a low level of spiritual understanding if we do that. It might even stimulate egotistical desire which is the very thing we are aiming to grow out of. (Not desire per se which is good since without it we would have nothing to call us to God, but egotistical desire).
We have moved into a new world but this new world is simply a development of the old one. Nonetheless, our spiritual approach must be different to that of the past. It must be more creative, more co-active meaning we work with God. We don't just sit there passively and expect him to move us. We move ourselves but always in his direction. God will communicate with us but through the medium of our own soul. If you want to hear him, you must work hard to become aware of that soul.
Thanks for the link to your blog, William. As I mentioned before, the comment you left on my post was both encouraging and uplifting, and I fully agree with your elaboration of that comment here. As you say, key is to get out of spiritual passivity and become spiritually active.
ReplyDeleteOn a side note, I haven't read your Meeting the Masters book, but I found the outlines of your experiences with the Masters that you included in Remember the Creator extremely insightful and helpful.
Thanks Francis. Here's a link to a talk I gave last year that covered the same ground as the book.
ReplyDeletehttps://meetingthemasters.blogspot.com/2019/10/meeting-masters-talk.html
@William - I would be amazed if it was not easier to establish contact with God now, than for many decades. There seem to be so many synchronicities lining-up all over the place, for a start. Things are much clearer than they were. I sense that the situation has brought across some who were wavering. That's my impression, anyway.
ReplyDeleteThis also suggests that people *currently* complaining of God not communicating need not be taken at face value: may not be serious, may not have made any genuine efforts in that direction, may be wanting God to do selfish things, may simply be mouthing demonic propaganda to discredit God.
Of course they may be sincere but simply not sufficiently aligned with God; in which case their difficulty will surely be temporary.
Well, Bruce, I'm not sure it's ever easy to establish contact with God in the sense that what we contact is not heavily coloured by our own thoughts, fears, desires, prejudices etc. But what we can do is make every effort to render our mind sensitive to the always shining spiritual sun. As I say in the post, God is always there but he requires us to approach him in the right way if we are to hear his voice properly, and that means with honesty, purity, imagination and a heart turned towards him for himself not for what we might hope to get out of him. On the other hand, sometimes God leaves us to our own devices to see how we get on, the experience known as the dark night of the soul in its most extreme form.
ReplyDeleteTo complain about God not communicating often means not communicating in the way I want him to. A real believer must know that God does not leave us without the guidance that is most appropriate for us to develop further. It's not meant to be easy.
@William "If you want to hear him, you must work hard to become aware of that soul."
ReplyDeleteI suppose my point was that nowadays even to *want* to hear God is so unusual, that in a sense much of the hard-work has already been done, in getting to a position where contact with God is wanted.
That's true and yet I've met a number of people who want to hear God but on their terms rather than his. In a way that's where the New Age fell down.
ReplyDeleteWilliam and Bruce - The point you are discussing here in the comments is an interesting one. I am of the belief that God is waiting for us to step up to the plate, so to speak. In this sense, I imagine it is easier to communicate with Him. I suppose the crux of the matter is the communication itself, which ties back into William's post.
ReplyDeletePerhaps it is easier to get in touch with God today than it was earlier, for some of the reasons Bruce mentions (so few people seem interested, apathy, disbelief), but I imagine the kind of communication God expects from us, well, that's where the "hard" part of the equation comes in.
Berdyaev says the next step forward in Christianity requires no Scripture. One can't but feel a little bewildered by a statement like that, but I feel B is on the right track in this regard. The communication God expects from us now extends well beyond our comfortable notions of what it means to be an 'active' Christian.
That no scripture thought is an interesting one. Without knowing the context I would interpret it as meaning we must learn to rely on inner spiritual intuition and not outer things even the best of them. We can use them as supports and checks and balances, as it were, on our intuition but it is this latter on which we should be increasingly relying.
ReplyDelete@ William - Context is tricky with Berdyaev. Part of this has to do with translation, part with culture. In any case, your interpretation is a good one. The way forward involves relying on spiritual intuition or deep knowing rather than the tried-and-true outer things. Of course, this does not completely negate or render outer things obsolete. If anything, I imagine approaching these things through a reliance on spiritual intuition will influence or completely change our understanding of outer things per se. Perhaps we will still rely on them in some way, but not in the way we have relied on them until now. All the same, Christ will remain central.
ReplyDelete