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Today's
Meditation:
What
would our lives be like if we could admit and accept our
oneness with the "all-pervading wisdom and
power," what most of us (including Ralph) would call
God. There was a man named Jesus on this planet a
couple of thousand years ago who spent almost his entire
lifetime trying to convince us that we are, indeed, one
with God; for his attempts to empower people with
knowledge of this reality, he was seen as a threat to the
established religion of his area and was killed.
Even now, those people who claim to follow him tend to
focus more on their supposed "separation" from
God rather than their unity with God.
Lao-tzu (there are several accepted spellings of his name)
taught of the Tao, the force behind all life. We are
all part of the Tao, and the Tao is a part of all of
us. It is a force of kindness and goodness, and we
all have access to it all of the time, yet we get caught
up in the things of this world and we neglect the Tao.
Imagine
a series of computer processors all hooked up to a huge
supercomputer. On their own, the processors have
very limited capabilities, but when they take advantage of
their networking, their potential is unlimited.
Someone, though, has put a virus into the processors that
causes them to close the connection to the supercomputer
and to function individually, effectively rejecting the
immense potential that they have when they're accessing
the amazing potential of the supercomputer.
We're
a lot like that. In our lives we're taught by people
that it's important to be independent, to do things on our
own, to function without the presence or assistance of any
power other than our own. We thus reject the notion
that any unseen, untouchable "deity" can in any
way help us, and we spend our lives trying to deal with
life and living without the benefit of any sort of
connection to the higher power that is there for us.
He doesn't want to control us as if we were puppets;
rather, he wants to give us access to the peace and wisdom
that is his, making our lives much richer and fuller.
It
really is a miracle when we are able to acknowledge,
accept, and make use of this incredible power in our
lives. The miracle lies in the rejection of our weak
and damaging egos and the acceptance of outside help, even
if we can't actually see and touch our helper. And
when we take advantage of this connection, we really do
start to see the higher laws that are helping to run our
lives, and we're able to live our lives according to those
higher laws rather than by the limited ones that our
limited minds are able to access.
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Questions to
consider:
Why might we be more comfortable with limitations in
our lives rather than seeking out connection with the
unlimited?
Why do many religious leaders try to get people to
focus on their "dependence" on a deity rather
than on the potential and possibility that we have in this
life?
How can we access and utilize the higher powers and
laws in our lives? |
For further
thought:
Wistfully, we remember that once he said: "Verily, I say
unto you, they
that believeth on me, the works that I do shall they do also; and
greater
works than these shall they do." Why are we not
"doing works" like that? What is wrong? His was a way of living that made weakness and
trouble
drop away like withered leaves in the fall. Is it a lost art?
How shall we find it again?
If the art has been lost to many of us, what can we
do? The answer is,
go back and examine it at its source. And when we go back and
analyze
the life of Jesus, the source of his power, and of his Divine energy,
we are impressed by his faith in God. He believed God was near
to him,
using him. He believed in God with the faith of a child.
He kept in close contact and communion with God and as a result he was
an open channel for Divine energy.
Norman
Vincent Peale
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Filled
with infinite possibilities and one with the dust, the Tao
unites the world into one whole like a deep pool that
never dries up.
Lao Tzu
Tao Te Ching
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