The Face of God

Today I read something in the Koran that struck me. The words I read were “the face of God.” That struck a chord with me. I had experienced the face of god myself and I know what it means to look at the face of god. Besides looking at it, seeing it and knowing that it is the face of god, there is this almost overwhelming power “blasting” from it. It is the experience of absolute power.

So, those words in the Koran reminded me of this experience. And I thought to myself, why am I fooling around with experiences of other powers, when I had this absolute experience of the face of god? Absolute power. Raining down on me. Filling me. What else is there left in my life to find?

Liberation

The ego is that which identifies itself with this body, its circumstances, its history. Liberation occurs when awareness separates itself from identification with this ego. You no longer are “this” or “that,” but there is only the awareness of different aspects of life. There is the body, but it is no longer “your” body. There are feelings, but they are no longer “your” feelings. This is not a negation of the body or the feelings. It is just a decoupling of awareness from body, mind, and feelings. There is the experience of freedom from them.

You may ask, who is experiencing this freedom? The entirety of your being is experiencing this freedom and you are constantly amazed how beautiful life truly is. You do not have a “stake” in this life anymore. You are living it, but more in the sense of stepping into a river and being carried along by it. There is love of life and there is inner stillness.

The Four Goals of Life

Life needs to be celebrated, constantly, jubilantly, quietly, exorbitantly, masterfully; with dignity, highest respect, always upwards towards something higher, higher ambitions, purer, more essential, to the point, honestly, truthfully, non-hurtfully, sensitively, in an open and accepting way.

The goals life wants to achieve are fulfilling on so many levels of a person’s being. Happiness resides in these achievable goals. There is constant, uninterrupted striving towards these goals at every stage of one’s life.

The driving force behind these goals is curiosity about how things are and what they could be. What are the possibilities one an uncover? How many creations can one produce? How many paintings, novels, songs, etc. can flow from a person’s creative impulses?

These four goals are generally listed in order in which they appear on a Vedic Astrological Chart: Dharma – Artha – Kama – Moksha: Law – Wealth – Pleasure – Liberation.

Dharma is a kind of driving force behind a person’s individual choices and actions. These are the core drives, e.g., what environment one feels most comfortable in, what people one surround oneself with, the basic thoughts that go through one’s mind.

Artha is the material resources we need to exist in this life. How well do we live? How much material comfort do we surround ourselves with?

Kama is the enjoyment we experience while on this earth. What are the pleasures we enjoy and who do we enjoy them with?

Moksha is the end of things, the endings of our undertakings. How well are we able to renounce our attachments to the things we strove towards with our Dharma, that we accumulated through Artha, and that we enjoyed through Kama, because, ultimately, all our undertakings bring about an evolution in spirit, which exists beyond material things.

There is love for life, all of it, with its ups and downs, valleys and peaks, triumphs and defeats, successes and failures, tragedies and happy endings, highs and lows, and everything in between.

There is the celebration of life, with its heartbreaks and reunifications, empowerments and enslavements, material successes and spiritual enlightenments.

Religious Tenets

The tenets of every religion are declarations of war. Religious places are not meant to be places of peace. They are places where followers gather to get charged up in their ongoing struggles against the forces of darkness and materialism.

This is especially true with the Abrahamic faiths. In all of them, there is an endgame, where all souls will face a day of judgement, when it will be determined whether they end up – for eternity – in a pleasant place, or in a place of torment.

So, living out their earthly years is really a constant battle people face between the forces of life that promise to bring pleasure right now through indulging in material glitter, or heavenly bliss after having rejected the lure of earthly desires.

Peace can only be experienced when the soul has been completely freed from any material bond and finds itself in a state of eternal purity. A temporary excursion into this pure state can be achieved through deep meditation while one still inhabits this body.

However, the battle for one’s peaceful state of mind begins anew when one is faced again with the forces of life, once one opens one’s senses again to the whispering temptations of the material manifestations surrounding us.

We are all imprisoned

We are all imprisoned in this body. We must be liberated from the down-weighing influences of the body. Our minds must lead us towards the freedom of the higher, unlimited spirit.

Body has its qualities, and there is nothing wrong with those. The body acts on the level of all the other material bodies in existence. There are rules in that material world. There are birth, maintenance, decay, and death. All those rules and tendencies are quite natural.

But, we, the soul, are imprisoned in this body and are struggling to get free. This struggle has been going on since we were born. We want to express who we are, our inner truth of our being.

We search for this freedom everywhere. Some of us find it, most of us do not, in this life. But, regardless of whether we are aware of this search for freedom or not, it goes on in all of us, and even in spite of us. The spirit never rests. We may sleep during the night and become unaware of what is happening, but inside of us, there is constant evolution toward the freedom of the soul.

We humans are not the only living species on this planet that desires to find liberation. Other species have the same naturally inborn tendency. When we get the chance to assist others in finding liberation, we must step up and provide help and guidance.

Freedom is what we all seek. Or: freedom is all we seek.

Improving Life

We, and that truly means everyone of us, must make efforts to improve the conditions of life.

These efforts are really twofold: a) improve ourselves, and b) improve everything else.

Unless we completely understand our own position in life, we cannot truly have the conviction to go out and improve the conditions of the rest of life.

Often times, we feel inadequate and incomplete in some ways, and we immediately begin by attempting to change our surroundings, by moving the chess pieces around the board. That is not the best way to start. The first question always has to be: “How can I improve myself so that I can find my center again, and with that, my inner strength?” The immediate response should not be: “I am perfect; therefore, you need to change your ways.”

Yes, on some deeper level of existence you are perfect, but so am I. We all are perfect. This equality in perfectness has to be respected by everyone. And if someone acts in ways that cloud this perfectness in any way, then we, all of us, need to bring out this perfection in all of us once again.

Honor and own what you do

Honor every action and own every action. Honor every thought and own every thought. Honor every emotion and own every emotion.

Honor them, because they are your service to the All. Own them, because it is you who are bringing them into the ALL.