09-16-01 Moving Toward God

[Guest guest]

Emerson Center for Spiritual

Awakening

Redwood City, CA

Dr. Susanne Freeborn

 

Moving Toward

God

09-16-01

 

Join

me today in affirming for your self:

" Blessed

be this day and this place. "

Kahlil Gibran

" The

thing that matters is not what you bear, but how you bear it.” Seneca

Readings:

 

We do not move toward God by understanding.

As long as we cling

to what we can understand,

imagine, or even desire,

especially as long as we depend

on our own efforts,

we will not reach God,

who transcends all that we are,

all that we can achieve.

We must move

from knowing to unknowing,

from daylight to the night of faith.

Our spiritual ascent

is a journey by night.

Faith is our only light.

Therefore we must begin our ascent to God

with minds and souls emptied

of whatever images, whatever ideas of him

have come through our senses.

The light of faith

does not improve our human intellect;

it overwhelms it.

St. John of the Cross

 

“Be still and know I am GOD.

I will be exalted among the heathen. I will be exalted in the earth.”

Psalm 46:10

" I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are really good

inside. "

Anne Frank

" With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of

despair a stone of hope.” Dr.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

" I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about

beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I

understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of

all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live

together like one being. And I saw

that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle,

wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering

tree to shelter all children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy...but

anywhere is the center of the world. "

Black Elk

" God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be

more divine in the lapse of all the ages.” -Henry David Thoreau

Moving Toward God

When I was a kid I used to mix up Albert Schweitzer and Albert

Einstein. Both smart men, both men

who contributed greatly to the collective consciousness. But I don’t think that is why I mixed

them up. I think it was that both

of their names violated the “I before e rule” (I was a competitive speller) and

they both had bushy white hair in the pictures I saw as a child. It wasn’t because they were both

Albert. Later I became a great

admirer of Schweitzer because of his amazing commitment to being of

service. Later still I found the following quote that

explains the underlying idea that reached out and touched me when I was a small

girl,

Example is not the main thing in influencing

others, it is the only thing. "

Albert Schweitzer.

Clearly, today we are a nation that will require of each of us that we

be of service in getting through recent events. Schweitzer also said “I don’t know what your destiny will

be, but one thing I do know, those among you who will be happy will be those

who have sought and found how to serve.”

As we look around for ways that we can help

those who seem so far away, let us not forget these words of two of our former

US Presidents,

“My faith demands -- this is not optional -- my faith demands that I do

whatever I can, wherever I can, whenever I can, for as long as I can with

whatever I have to try to make a difference.” Jimmy Carter.

And Abraham Lincoln said the same thing in another way: “I do the very best I know how--the very best I can; and I mean to keep

on doing so until the end.”

We have the say of

how this thing turns out and one of the primary ways that we can express this

is through loving service to one another and to the very world itself. We are not alone in this tragedy and I

would suggest that we remember that we might give up the isolationist view and

notice that there is tragedy all around us that needs to be alleviated. We cannot put our heads into the sand

and forget the suffering of the rest of the world. Just as after a massive earthquake here in California, a

Hurricane in the tropics, a tornado, or a flood, we have to return to our sense

of groundedness and safety. We have

to trust our homes and the earth on which we live again. I suggest to each of you that in seeing

to the feelings of safety and belonging of one another we regain those same

securities within ourselves. The

world joins us in our suffering but it will be ours to see and choose to come

out of this experience conscious of our co-creative abilities.

Perhaps we can view

this in a human evolutionary sense.

In the most recent Science of Mind magazine which I received just

yesterday, there is an excerpt from Barbara Marx Hubbard’s new book she shares

with us her view of the evolutionary process that has led us to this

moment. She tells us that we are

crossing the threshold of a shift from maximum procreation to cocreation. This transition is not complete but we

are able to see the changes that we have made. We can choose again, right now to be inspired by the

innovation that created these affirmative changes. To find that innovative place within ourselves and step into

the current moment, prepared to contribute to the evolution of consciousness of

not only our individual selves, but all of what God is. I think simply of a switch from the

small “I” to the I AM. If what I

think, say, and do affects all of mankind, then I choose to keep my eyes fixed

on the Divine as the source of my

thoughts and actions. I stay my

consciousness on the Divine as I move into any creative act.

Thinking of recent

events, I am reminded of an occasion when I was participating in some

mountaineering events. In the past

I have not done very well with edges.

In this particular event I was trussed up like a chicken with all manner

of straps and carabineers and I was to walk out on this platform, lean forward

and ride a zip line downhill on a 1/8th of mile long steel

cable. This was about as likely as

my becoming an astronaut before that day.

Yet I did step out on the platform, lean forward and ride down to the

bottom. I kept my eye on the place

and people where I would arrive. I

saw security all the way there. At

the time I wouldn’t have thought I was keeping my eye on God, but the level of

trust and confidence I had in my cohorts was that same trust that we must place

in God.

I also knew when I

stepped off that I would never have to do this event again. There would never be another first time

and I wanted to create a memory of courage to which I could refer. So I did step forward, lean out, and

ride down that mountain on a little pulley hooked to a steel cable. And I did it again on at least six

other occasions. The last time I

did it I noticed the guide who I saw I noticed danced around on the edge of the

cliff as if there wasn’t a 500 foot drop inches from her feet. She was like a bird and I was still

nearly as frightened as the first time I had done it. I asked her how it was that she could dance along the edge

like a bird, I wanted to know so that I could experience that freedom. She said if I had done it 5000 times I

too would dance along the edge of the cliff as free as a bird. We have to choose our own challenges

and responses. I wasn’t going to

go down that zip line 4,994 more times.

But I took my guide’s lesson in mastery with me and have applied it in

my life. Sometimes we have to step

forward, lean out, and ride down the hill. There is still a moment of choice and a moment of faith that

what one is stepping out into will support us securely and deliver us.

While I thought I was finishing my Sunday

talk, I remembered a sage bit of advice from Dr. Domenic Polifrone, one of the

founders of ANTN. I can still see

him standing in front of the stone fireplace at Lake Arrowhead, with a twinkle

in his eye, and in a deep mellifluous spiritual intonement, bringing down the

house with:

" Everybody

goes through Hell sometimes.

(Pause) You don't have to

stop and build your house there. "

As we move through this experience of great

national tragedy, I am grateful to be so reminded. Great leadership stays with us and arises like a warm mist

when we need it in the years to come.

Sometimes it is Spirit moving so directly through us that we just feel

its arising and are informed of its presence within. Sometimes it arises in a memory such as this one. I wish to Thank you Dr. Domenic for

being such a great teacher and such a fine leader, I find your example coming

out through me from time to time and I am grateful. Each of us seeks to serve in whatever way that we can. I know that in these times of challenge

we remember our teachers and the mentors who have blessed us and empowered us

to do our perfect work in the face of things we could never have imagined. I am so grateful for the time and the

studies and spiritual practice with all the teachers I have been so fortunate

to have known. What we shared

embraces and uplifts me now. I

hear Rev. Scott Foglesong saying " You are not now, nor have you ever been

alone. " I hear Dr. Bill

Little saying " This too is God! " and I know that it is without

doubt. I feel the signal that Rev.

Rick Moss taught me how to recognize when I am feeling the Truth in my body and

it confirms what I know in my heart and in my mind. I feel the deep love that we all share for spiritual

community, for the thrill of what is within each and every one of us. I am excited about the possibilities

that lay ahead of us.

Yes, I have been through Hell before. I took a different route the last

time. But it felt like this. There was sorrow, confusion, anger,

frustration, and now there is a sense of horror in my companions on this

journey. I got through Hell

before. I got stronger. I did not give up. I did not build my house there. I will not build my house there

now. I move slowly through this

Hell now because there are so many companions here this time. I am moving on, but not so quickly as I

might have in the past. I feel my

companions sorrow and loss and I am not afraid to share their sorrow. I know what is unbroken in me now. I know what cannot be stained by

tragedy. I can feel this sorrow

without flinching now, it is not mine, it is a companion on this road through

Hell. In Religious Science we call

this “companion” the collective unconscious or race mind, meaning the sum total

of all thought. Right now there is

a great deal of sorrow in the global consciousness and it has us all stirred up

because we wish to avoid such feelings.

Frederick Douglass, was born into slavery on the Eastern Shore of

Maryland and managed to escape to freedom. He went on to be instrumental in the triumph over slavery

and worked to aid this accomplishment of other slaves in Rochester, New York,

where he was a stationmaster on the Underground Railroad. Douglas was a very wise and eloquent

man who wrote and spoke in the interest of liberty before the Civil War and

after the war he moved to Washington, DC and served the interests of liberty

there in a variety of capacities.

He is a true American hero.

Douglass wisely said

" If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and

yet depreciate agitation…want crops without plowing up the ground, they want

rain without thunder and lightening.

They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters…. Power concedes nothing without a

demand. It never did and it never

will. " I believe that he was

right. If we look to Nature for an

understanding of God, as was suggested by Thoreau and Emerson, we find that many plants will not

thrive if you do not disturb the soil around their roots. That the nourishment of the soil and

water is not available without such violence and destruction of the status quo

is apparent. But as human beings, often

we resist such change, we become attached to what has been and then we begin to

fear tomorrow when we are so busy trying to make the present like

yesterday. In this we fail to

experience and develop the potential of the present, and thus, we fail to see

the past clearly. We lose the

ability to glean the gifts of the past to the degree that we resist living in

the present.

“The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit, the second is to look

things in the face and know them for what they are.”

Marcus

Aurelius

In our current national crisis there is so

much to learn, but we have to turn from thinking first of the past, we have to

turn away from our fears, we have to consider each and every thing we encounter

newly if we are to find the wisdom in this current situation. We have to know that we are facing

toward God when we “look things in the face and know them for what they

are.” No matter how wise what we

have known may be, and what courage our prior experience might have instilled

in us, each new experience presents the opportunity of a new and present

wisdom, and new courage, a new experience of intelligence and an opportunity

for cocreation that we have not met before. " When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but

often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has

opened for us.” Helen Keller

Without disrespect for those who suffer the greater losses in this crisis, we

as a national family need now to look for the door that has opened. In the coming weeks and months we need

to keep our eyes stayed upon God who stands on the other side of this new

doorway. We must do this in memory

of those whose lives have been lost and whose lives have been irretrievably

changed. We honor their memory by

continuing to glean the possibilities of the sacred lives we are given.

I heard Tom Costa quoting Rev. Jack Boland at

my first INTA conference: “Don’t let the good interfere with the better and

don’t let the better interfere with the best. I am not all I could be and I am not all that I want to be,

but thank God I am not what I used to be.

How many times I have thanked God that I am not what I used to be.” I add to that a hearty THANK GOD! And so it is!

We all know the movement we have made in our

lives, and we have an inkling of what progress lay ahead of us. Let us be glad for the progress we have

made, grateful for the lessons we have learned, and the teachers we have

met. Let us employ the various

spiritual practices that support us through these challenges, and thank God for

the lives that we have shared and the courage with which we have met what life

has presented us. Perhaps

something I have said will have been useful to you today and in the coming

weeks as together we grieve our losses, find ways to be of service and move on

with our lives with a new found humility.

Love is the source of our being, let us honor and exemplify it always.

" I am

that living and fiery essence of the divine substance that glows in the beauty

of the fields. I shine in the

water, I burn in the sun and the moon and the stars.” Hildegard of Bingen

Thank you for being here today!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

© Dr. Susanne Freeborn   Page

1          9/16/01