Sunday, March 31, 2013

an Easter Sunday renewal of Life!



WANTING FROM WHOLENESS: As human beings we have fantastic opportunities to participate in and contribute to the process of divine creation, but oh what a learning curve we face to know and enjoy our own amazing potentials! We are spiritual beings who can remember perfect origins and imagine perfect destinations, even as we may struggle deep within the current imperfect realities that we inherit and continue from our families of conflict. In comparison, nature seems enviable for so much beauty and balance already attained; flowering plants and agile creatures of spectacular grace have all they require from genetic design to belong and thrive within fertile ecosystems, while we hairless vulnerable apes must push and be pushed to survive in clumsy communities of our own ongoing invention. Our animal needs remain embarrassingly close and tangible, even as our soulful desires reach so poignantly high as to depict heavenly ideals not yet seen on the planet. We ache and yearn so tenderly, so urgently, and each in our own ways, as we dream toward fantastic utopias of abundant love, creativity, productivity, and prosperity, for places where we can share the joys of inspiration and well-being that will unleash a more magical nature. As a people we seem made to want so many things that we do not yet have, and to such points of folly and pain, that many have blamed our capacity to desire itself, saying humanity was wrong to long for more than it had, and we should have never left a garden of simpler times. But I have to say no, because I’m astounded at the diversity of talents and dreams latent in people and closer to the surface than ever. There is no doubt in my mind that the human journey will have been worth it when we have attained our divine mastery here, so we must comfort and guide each other as best we can on the way. Understanding how to want from our souls is a key to making Heaven on Earth, and it always has been and will be.

In the Gospel of Thomas it is written that "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." Desires are like this, and they come from our souls. There are dreams that we were born with, things that God and the entire universe have planned for us to have and call our own, but because we are each unique creators in training our dreams cannot be only handed to us. We must be in on the game, we must want enough to choose and believe in ourselves. As we learn to uphold our desires and delight to observe how the process of creation unfolds, we become what we were meant to become, and we discover our love for the design of the ongoing eternally self-fulfilling self. If not, we destroy ourselves in the shame of desires that we cannot stop wanting and yet never have, at least not in any healthy sustainable way. Too many people have made an art of cycling through short-term pleasures that actually oppose their own long-term satisfactions, with dead-end behavior patterns like addiction and manipulation that have given their desires a bad name. Desire is so much more than sexual chemistry for example, yet a host of related terms including attraction, sensuality, arousal, excitation, and passion all get attached to little more than a temporary physical high. Then when people get burned on too many roller coaster rides in the body, they often swing too far in the opposite direction, wanting God and spirit to somehow be impersonal, supernaturally calm, and outside of a too fecund nature. It would be funny if it were not so sad, for how reflexively people have taught themselves to separate Heaven from Earth, and throw the baby out with the bathwater. Theories get made for how creativity sublimates sex for all those creative people who can’t deal with sexuality, when in fact it’s the other way around. Sex sublimates creativity, and the universe is vastly, richly, seductively fertile beyond imagination. You can’t help but desire with abandon more of everything that’s right and good for yourself, as you open up to your very own soul in creation. Rejoining the chorus of infinite celebration will bring you so much bliss and joy from your own synchronistic places of belonging, that you will never want to follow a self-destructive self-abandoning path of aloneness again. Even if repeatedly finding your way back from old habits and falls from grace must become the challenge for a lifetime of healing, sooner or later you will make it Home to having every good thing. You promised yourself this as a soul incarnating for its “last lifetime” on the old Earth, which is really of course just the first lifetime in the new world of love without end.

So the next time you find yourself returning to a dream of desire that you have either proudly or shamefully carried within you for most all of your life, pause to look at how the images of its procurement are making you feel. The wisdom of any true desire is that you cannot want something you do not already have the seeds for, and which you were not made to have more of steadily. You don’t have to work hard to make anything happen to receive your own divine plan and soul inheritance; the way to your fullest joy is full of receiving magical love from the whole universe, which wants nothing more than to see you become more of your true loving self. So if there is a future You who is fully enjoying the best dreams you can have, then the question to answer today is, are you more or less connecting with that future self?

There are two ways to be with your wanting, and one is from wholeness, and the other from lack. All creation is a projection from the present moment of infinite depth, so a future-oriented image of what you need or want to have in your life someday is just a higher octave, a greater extent, a clearer picture, for something that you have available to let in here and now. Your imagined desire is a signal from the future to get on the path now, be alert to what you already have, because this is your destiny starting from your current location. So if a desirable goal brings you pain for how much you want that and yet have no idea how to get there, don’t get caught in the trap of heaven and earth separating. Relax, trust that the future is finding you already, and focus on what’s happening around you right now. Locate your feelings for what you didn’t have, and let the emotional holes become filled until you become whole. It may be hard to believe at first, given how very satisfying the future looks compared to the present which doesn’t have that dream job, relationship, inspiration, opportunity, skill, or whatever else it is you’re wanting so much more of. But the fact is that God is giving you all you need starting now, which is exactly why the desire came to entice you more with its scent. There’s something within your current grasp, a subtle and energetic next step perhaps but concrete in its ability to satisfy you and set you on the path of knowing that everything’s going to be alright and work out. If you can connect 100% with your present moment, then you will become 100% happy and confident, with a bliss that will steadily melt and heal the old wounds so the future will be guaranteed. Always, the present you in your soul center is the one who is functioning at the fullness of your current ability, so that is the giving of 100% that makes all the difference.

This then is the secret to wanting eternally. The old way to want was from pain, from lack, from the stress reaction to get out of a bad place and become happy again. The future was seen as the antidote to the present, starkly different, and this separation consciousness was supposed to motivate us to build and get ahead, but instead it overwhelmed with the need to numb out and disown the self of lost hope. Humanity is burdened with a lot of destructive habits now, for pleasures and escapism which disconnect us from our true future selves. The only real way to want is from wholeness, because then you’re right: that future self you imagine with the dream come true is incredibly happy, and so must you become to get there. Just as the future self is content, so too you can be content in the present if you tune into the fullness available now, and then you will be on your easy self-fulfilling path of the connected continuous self. The way to want sustainably is not about the discontinuity of contrasting future and present, but the continuity of being an eternal soul, here and there, everywhere, balanced and always complete and full.

For too long people have feared that contentment will mean a lack of motivation and consequent stagnation, but this is not so, because that was a false belief bolstered by the false contentment of addictions and numbness to pain (think couch potatoes). The peace of the fulfilled soul is very dynamic, full of growth in the naturally appearing opportunities for ever increasing joy. The secret of life’s abundance is in learning to let it happen, to receive the love that always gives more and thus transforms and grows you from the inside out. Wanting from wholeness is a fantastic fabulous ride, because you are 100% fulfilled every step of the way. Of course then all your future dreams are inevitable and on their way, because they’re more of who you really are as you naturally grow. There is no pain, no anxiety of what must you do to make and ensure the right thing to happen or else you might fail. When you are so busy discovering how good you can already feel as you fully attend to the richness of the present moment, then the unfolding manifesting magnificent presence of eternity is always expanding in all directions and carrying you forward effortlessly. You’ll be amazed at how quickly dreams can come true then, by the letting go of old ill-fitting karmic clothes, and the appearance of miraculous synchronicities of connecting what you’re ready for, with what roles other people have been looking to fill with someone as wonderful as you! A symphony of delight soars heavenward faster than you can say “boo”, or better yet “thank you”, as you learn to trust and not fear the effervescent way of love’s miracles. After all, boundless gratitude for what you and the universe can create together in love has always been one of the greatest hallmarks of who and what you truly are! Love in the flesh, joy in the form, your own uniquely rich, generous, and beloved identity of the All-loving mother father God who creates without end for the eternal wonder of the greatness of Life.

- Carl J. Schroeder, Easter Sunday March 31, 2013

http://www.facebook.com/HowToMakeHeavenOnEarth

“The wisdom of desire is that you can only want more of what you already have. Therefore find and enter your best moments today, to grow the seeds of your perfect foreseen tomorrows.”

(my photo of a common and so uncommonly beautiful barn owl at the local Stone Zoo - taken with my children on Holy Saturday, the day before Easter when Jesus lay in the tomb like the phoenix before resurrection - and the phrase that came to me that evening to crystallize my awareness of a healing reconnection I was being given to rise again from the ashes of another lost love. The wisdom of this magnificent animal came to me in the form of its flying regularly about its enclosure as birds flew overhead in the sky, their shadows crossing in a flock that must have reminded the owl of its lack of freedom to be on exhibit for us. As I felt the presence of a greater power and remembered Athena whose symbol is the owl, the eerily faced creature came to roost and stare at me, so I could lean forward and take some pictures through the gaps in the fence. This week had been a return of Orphic mysteries to me, as the myth of Orpheus has resonated with me all my life, and recent looking back to the past caused yet another hopeful Eurydice to vanish into the underworld. Well, I don’t mean to become too mythic or esoteric here, only to say that the way that this owl flew around its cage to match the freer flight of birds overhead seemed to set the stage for a breakthrough of understanding for how to attain my own dreams of desire. Find and feel a connection to your destiny now, and you will be on your way to that timeless place of soul wisdom from which all good dreams are fulfilled in the steps that make the most of what we have to work with, now and forever. Thank you God, for helping me feel more alive.)

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