Читать книгу Hineni: My Walk Into Beautiful Life - S. Joshua Mendel - Страница 5

Fear is exhausting. Mistrust is exhausting. Needing to justify your right to take a breath on this planet by every last thought you have or action you take. Denying the truth of who you really are. . . carrying out a script handed to you by someone else—and trying to be perfect through it all. There must be a word more exhausting than "exhausting"!

Try doing all of this while carrying an ongoing feeling of hopelessness. Depression is like dragging a mental weight day in and day out; a vise that squeezes the lifeblood out of you. It takes a lot to get through the day so there isn't much energy to reach out to others, or a desire to give to others. So you are largely left alone in your depression. And that just feeds into the depression.

I coped to survive one day at a time. But not in healthy ways. I didn't eat well and too much. I took up smoking although I knew it killed and was killing my father for one. I drank, although I learned that alcohol had screwed up and led to the death of many in my family. I studied/worked too much, too hard, and too long. I didn't exercise much. When I did take breaks, I lost myself in the unreal world of TV and movies. But I didn't take many breaks because I couldn't give myself a break. I didn't sleep well or deeply and I woke up unrefreshed.

Go back to that last paragraph, stir it all up, and repeat this toxic recipe for let's say, 25 years. Does anyone seriously want to tell me that all of this did not affect every aspect of my health? I consider it amazing that I had as few physical health challenges as I did by that point. (I wonder if those years have shortened my life.)

Double the time of this toxic recipe. I maintain that if something hadn't intervened I would not be here today. You pick the killer. Include AIDS, addiction, or suicide as very possible causes.

* * * *

But Something did intervene; gratefully, early in my life. When I was five, I had the first of many peak spiritual experiences. Sitting in the main sanctuary of my reform temple, I looked up at the dome and saw a shadow on the bricks. At that moment, I felt certain that God was in that dome and that He was speaking to me ⁸. I don't remember any words; just a feeling of total openness, total freedom, total acceptance, completeness, peace. . . ecstasy.

From this vantage point and understanding, I know God was not in that dome. Looking at pictures of the sanctuary, I see the same dark spot on those bricks! In that and all of my peak experiences, God did not come to me, nor did I come to Him. For the first time that I had awareness of it, my ego let go and my mind naturally joined with that Something greater than my own mind.

There was only one mind—one Power. This is my experience and definition of Grace.

* * * *

Lest you think that I am some crazy religious freak at this point, I will describe what I mean when I use the words, "God" and "Grace". The answer is: I don't know. I only have working concepts!

In a Course in Miracles workshop I attended, someone became Inspired to impart this:

We are nothing, thinking we are something—to keep from being Everything.

That pretty much describes what I believe about God. God is not a separate entity or any entity. It is Everything; a perfect whole beyond my limited mind's ability to perceive and impossible to impart successfully in words. And that is the challenge here; there is no way I can or should adequately be able to cover this subject. I am reminded of the story of the blind men who each touched a different part of an elephant and thought they could describe the animal in its entirety. So I, too, will fail in this attempt. (And I ask: how many problems do we create in this world because of our blindness yet certainty that we know the entire truth about God and what He expects?)

I believe in Something greater than my own mind. But I am a convinced nontheist; I don't believe in what I call a "Creator/Planner/Daddy God". I don't believe there is any Being who started all of this and needs. . . demands. . . my prayers. Especially for what I want: God is not a cosmic, short-order cook! I conceive of nothing to fear about God. In fact, I believe there is nothing to conceive: "Nontheism is relaxing with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment without reaching for anything to protect ourselves. . . nontheism is finally realizing there is no babysitter you can count on."⁹

God is "just" Totality. I am always and forever a part of God. (In my humble opinion, you are too.) This is a Truth with which my conscious mind chooses to recognize, join with, and act from. When I choose to join God in a state of Grace, I Know my choice and responses to issues on this plane of existence. These are not made out of my ego's want, hope, or fear, but with perfect understanding of what is happening, what needs to be done, what I need to do—or maybe, what I should not do. On more than one occasion in my life, that choice or response makes no sense from the rational facts of the situation, but it is clear to me that it is the right choice; in my words, "the Light choice".

My experiences with God are visceral and they go well beyond the senses. At my best, I am a receiver and there is a Oneness I tune into with my whole mind and body. That reception often comes to me through a Voice I hear in my mind. The Voice is quite gentle and yet It has immense strength that "says": "This is Me speaking!" In my experience, when I Listen, the relationships and events in my life happen—what else—gracefully! It's when I choose not to join with God that things don't go so well!

God is a Wisdom outside of space and time. It is a Power I ignore only at my own great discomfort and on more than one occasion, disastrous results.

Why don't I believe in deist/theist concepts? My answer is two-fold: 1) I can't buy any of the theories offered by the deists/theists out there¹⁰; and 2) practically, those concepts don't work for me as I live my life. What we see around us could have numerous, non-Creationist God causes. I have read and heard a number of theories that offer viable, physical/mathematical theories for everything we see and our supposedly-separate existence on this plane. I resonate with the theory laid down in the book, The Holographic Universe. That theory says everything here is merely the indivisible, "explicit" order of a deeper, "implicate" order.

As I think and feel it, I just came out of Everything—who the hell knows for sure why! And that is where the molecules and energy trapped in my body will return. That being said, it is my duty to keep my connection to Everything clean and strong, to be awake enough to consciously recognize Grace, and to act in its Integrity in this world. And when it is time for "me" to return, to let go and die in peace.

During my channelings with Grandma, one of the wisest statements ever to come through me was this: "Every notion of God is equally valid, for each is equally wrong. Spirit cannot be described; for once it is described it is no longer Spirit." In the Course in Miracles, Jesus says: "We say God is and then we cease to speak." So I stop here. If I am wrong about all of this and there is a Creator/Planner/Daddy God, what I think about Him "down here" won't matter. If there should be that kind of God, He is interested in knowing how I live my life with my limited concepts of Him!

* * * *

Did that peak experience change me? Yes and no. Like so many who have peak experiences, this one didn't change my life dramatically, then and there, and forever. I went back into my story about myself, The Script, and my life, such as it was. And that was a real shame, because for what I estimate was 16 more years, my ego chose to believe a lot of self-negating lies about myself. I tolerated external abuse and even inflicted upon myself a host of abuse.

But an important seed had been planted. In Mark 4, Jesus is said to have told the parable of the sower. Only some of the seed that was cast fell on good soil. "It came up, grew, and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times." It took another 20 years to prepare my soil so that Grace could truly take root in my life. That isn't God's fault—I don't believe in that kind of God! Nor is it mine. It's just the way things came together for me. I accept that preparing my soil is my responsibility; perhaps the ultimate job I have in this world.

I believe that is everyone's job.

* * * *

In late 2009, I was hiking and thinking about all the changes happening in my life. I heard a Voice: "This name no longer fits you." (For those not in the know, my birth name is Sydney.) I asked what name did. "Joshua" was the response.

Joshua is the English rendering of the Hebrew word Yehoshua, meaning "Yahweh is salvation." Yahweh is the unreadable word for God. Jesus' name in Hebrew is Yehoshua.

I never liked my birth name, but I had never thought about changing it. I didn't know what the meaning of Joshua was when I Heard it. But I did as I was Directed. Because Grace is amazing.

It saved the wretch that was me.