Recovery

What is this angst that grows within me more and more each day as I pursue my ‘death to self’ journey. I die each moment to immerge the next. Only at times of complete surrender do I feel the Joy and Peace of God. My angst lingers. My ego mind fearing that it will loose control of my will; handed over to the Holy Spirit within me. (Gods Will – Not by mine but Thy Will be done). I am beginning to finally understand Paul’s (Christian Apostle – see esp.1&2Corinthians) continuous referring to death and suffering as the first step to feeling the Love of God within. The angst, the pain, the thorn in the flesh.

The more I feel this pain, this death, the harder the practice of feeling it (this pain) becomes. It is all too easy to simply let the egoic mind take back control and return into the laws of man.  Money, power, ambition, greed, fear, material possession, status, etc. I know it would be wrong to let go of my practice and let everything return to the way I was living. My practice must continue along with the angst. I am beginning to understand the necessity and importance of ritual. The ancient religions had this all along. The annual, weekly, daily and hourly call to prayer - contemplative prayer. The letting go of egoic mind thought; the constant chattering, the controlling opinionated, judging voice. A ritual for communicating with Gods Being without thought or spoken language which is very limited when you try to communicate with  Gods Infinity. Words just don’t cover it.  A ritual that allows you to be openly receptive as apposed to expressive or wanting.

The Christian calendar (Liturgical year) includes the period of Lent, leading up to Easter. A time of 40 days devoted to fasting (self-denial), penitence, alms-giving and prayer. (more on this in a post comming soon)
The Islamic calendar too has the month of Ramadan (9^th month). I remember a Muslim colleague a few years back who would not put sugar into his tea during the day and no food before sunset. I admired that but I could not understand such radical obedience to ritual and I labelled it institutional and fundamentalist. How wrong I was! I understand now, the need for ritual and re-enactment. How else do I stay dedicated to my faith while at times of this painful angst? How else do I drag myself by my bootstraps and face my death, to emerge from this death; to face each moment as it comes. To have faith in God! Absolute Faith!

I feel such pain when I am silent. The human race is in such a mess. We are in so much trouble. So lost in ego, so lost in the past and the future and so, so selfish. I don’t believe God feels pain nor sadness nor joy nor happiness. We feel it. God IS and that’s it! God is action not feeling – or words. God is Love. Simple! God is Being. And thats it! The Beginning, the End, Was, IS and always Will Be.  Our job, as man, is to understand this and be in tune with God. If all is right with the world then we get to experience (feel) permanent JOY. And so too, if all is not all right we get to feel the pain. Through the Holy Spirit of God we allow ourselves to be guided. That is how we stay in tune.

And to do that we need to be silent.

Be still and know that I AM GOD.

I don’t care if you are a Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Wicca, Hindu, whatever… just choose a ritual and stick to it.

Be Jesus, be Paul, be John, be Moses, be Noah, be Mary, be Buddha, be Krishna

Just Be Still

For a moment

And do it as regularly as you can.

It worked for Mandela

Peace.