Forgiveness and Judgment

To forgive or not to forgive, should not be the question. If Jesus or God is who They say They are, then They are the only ones with the right to truly exercise frue forgiveness and judgment. But we are taught to forgive others for their wrongs against us. In this case, forgiveness is for the forgiver to feel better about the wrongness they feel about the one they feel has wronged them.

What if the person who acted wrongly, offended, betrayed, or otherwise made you feel victimized didn’t actually do anything malicious to you? What then?

Forgiveness and Judgment Cougar on the <Loose

For instance, I live in the Pacific Northwest where we enjoy a certain amount of natural wildlife with which we share the environment. I heard a story that a cougar had been spotted lurking around a predominant neighborhood in an upscale community nearby. Radio and media alerted the city that a cougar had been spotted and to take special precautions.

Around this time, a mother playing with her young son in the fenced yard went inside to move the laundry from the washer to the dryer. When she returned, the boy was gone. There was blood on the grass, and it appeared that the cat had followed its natural instincts.

The community gunned up, hunted down the cougar, and ascertained that the cougar was the culprit. A truly tragic story.

But who was wrong? Obviously not the child who was an innocent victim. The mother? The cougar?

Certainly, the mother and the neighbors assumed the cougar was wrong. But the cougar is a cougar. Yes, no doubt it was a tragedy, but that’s what cougars do. No, they don’t usually go around attacking children, but they do prey on living food, the easier the food is to get, the quicker they satisfy their hunger.

Not unlike your pet cat. If your pet cat sees a mouse, it is fair game, it can be fun or food or both fun and food. A wounded bird is even better.

In the case of the cougar and the child? It is easy to jump to the conclusion that the cougar is the offender, and the neighbors were the judge and jury, as they took matters into their own hands. Justice, as it were, was served. The cougar paid the price for its sins with its life.

The mother may someday wonder if she should forgive the cougar, or pray to Jesus or God that the sinning cougar is forgiven. But did the cougar sin?

No. The cougar just did what cougars do, what they were born to do. Did the cougar extend its practices beyond reasonable boundaries? Yes. Doing so may have put the cougar at additional risk, for which the cougar did pay the price.

But the cougar was just a cougar.

So it is, when someone commits a crime, possibly any crime. If the perpetrator is a cougar, could they have done anything else besides commit said crime? Maybe not. May he or she be just a cougar? It’s all they instinctively know to do. They have a hunger or a yearning to do something, and they do whatever they need to do to satisfy it. Just like the cougar.

If I have been offended by someone, another person, and I feel victimized, did that offender purposely intend to hurt me, or was he or she just doing the only thing they knew how to tend to themselves?

Are these offenders just doing the best they can with what they have?

I know I’m not perfect. I’ve hurt people’s feelings while in the act of doing the best I could with what I had. I didn’t even know that I was hurting anyone. Yet here it is. I can clearly see now in retrospect, that I did inadvertently offend someone in a manner that had never occurred to me while I was about the business of doing the best I could with what I had.

Should I Ask for Forgiveness?

If I am aware of my transgression, yes. I feel an obligation to appeal to that person and ask him or her for forgiveness, even if I was unaware of my transgression when it occurred because I never intended to do that. And I am ashamed of myself for not being more aware that someone else might have been hurt in my doing the best I could with what I had.

Should I Expect Someone Else to Ask Me for Forgiveness?

There was a time when I felt that would be appropriate when I thought that if someone hurt me in some way that I was owed an apology, or begged for my forgiveness for their sin. Later, I realized that forgiveness was a God issue, and not a “me” issue. So, I let go of that expectation.

I might still like an apology, but I wouldn’t expect it. Especially if the offender was a cougar.

Anyone Could be a Cougar

What if the person who offended or victimized me was a cougar? A cougar could take almost any shape or human form. A drug dealer, addict, drunk driver, lawyer, judge, doctor, neighbor, friend, spouse, sibling, or priest.

Anyone could be a cougar. Just doing the best they can with what they have. Nonetheless, a cougar. Even me. And like the cougar, if I offend the wrong person at the wrong place and time, I too may have to pay the price for doing so.

Superiority of Judgment

Yet, we feel so superior that we would expect to have the right to be asked for forgiveness and feel as though we have the right and power to offer such forgiveness. So, we judge them, until they have paid the price for offending us.

Then I am reminded of a Jesus story about a woman who had been accused of adultery. The self-righteous Pharisees were standing around her with a fistful of rocks ready to execute their brand of justice when Jesus interrupted them.

Let He Who Is Without Sin Cast the First Stone

Were the Pharisees authorized to execute this action in John 8? Were they following Jewish law? Pretty much (though there were some concerns that possibly they may not have had all their ducks in a row at the time the punishment was to be delivered by the law. Certainly, all the players did not appear to be present as the law may have suggested).

Did the Pharisees have hidden sins? Apparently. When Jesus challenged them, they drops their rocks and walked away.

Were the Pharisees cougars?

Jesus did not condemn her and simply told her to go and sin no more. Maybe she was a cougar. She was the only person that Jesus told to change her life, and I think that was because she was in so much trouble with the overseers that they intended to kill her for her misdeeds, and maybe He might not be there on her behalf, the next time. Like the advice I might give to a repeat offender, especially in my state where we have a three-strikes rule.

In Matthew 7, Jesus says not to judge lest we be judged, and if we judge someone harshly, we will be judged likewise. Then he asks how can you help a brother with a splinter in his eye when your own eye is blocked by lumber?

Good point. Right?

I like Jesus’ examples because He loved many people and had a heart for those who were less fortunate, most likely unworthy, and of questionable character, and His influence on their lives was undeniable.

The price of sin is death (ultimately) but Jesus by His death and resurrection was the sacrifice by which we all have forgiveness for our transgressions, and claim the right to life more meaningful and long-lasting (eternal) than any of us might have been entitled to otherwise.

When we judge and are so self-righteous to think we are authorized to do so, are we not nullifying the words of Jesus or the perfection of His work on the cross?

These days, I would not run to usurp His authority.

Is it polite to forgive? Yes. Would it be nice if someone apologized or asked for forgiveness? Yes.

Should we expect or demand it?

From a cougar?

In this respect, forgiveness may be required by people who may not understand the divinity of all things, though being willing to let go and let God work out the details, especially if someone is a cougar, may lead to the higher road to travel through this life.

After all, aren’t we all just doing the best we can with what we have?

Something to think about…

 

 

You Can’t Do God Wrong

I meet people who are struggling with “God” all the time. Some of these people are so broken and in pain and suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and have decided to reject God because of the suffering they’ve endured in His name.

Stop defining God by religious activity. Not that there is anything wrong with religious activity, in and of itself, unless it is performed in the absence of Love.

God is Love and without Love there is nothing. Do not choose to opt out of Love because you suffered at the hands of men serving religion.

If you love, God is there. If you live and breathe, God is there. If you hate, God is there. If you’ve ceased to live, God is there, for there is God’s Love is everywhere, all the time. God will never leave you, or any thing. God is there, 24/7, limitless, eternal, and if you believe this, if you can have an understanding of God’s limitlessness, God is more. God is more than you could ever conceive of.

I’ve known the most scholarly students of God, who know more than I could ever comprehend of God and He is so much more. You cannot define God, but you can seek God and there is no dishonor in attempting to knowing God in the best way you can.

Do we miss the mark? Certainly, for any of us are only doing the best we can with what we have, but if you have all the knowledge of God, all the power of persuasion and miracles, all the words and best intentions, and have not love, you could do better.

It’s easy to sit back in your religious easy chair and judge others for doing God wrong, but you, any of us, cannot do it wrong.

If you’ve been wronged, hurt, victimized by those who are trying to learn everything they can about God, serving God the best way they can with the information they have at the time, God is there, and when it seems like there is no love there, God is there, in you.

When it seems like all is lost, and feels like there is no God, God is there. God will never leave or forsake you. People, on the other hand, are fallible and can do things which are void of love, but God’s love is still there.

The problem with people who stop learning, growing, and expanding, is that they think they’ve arrived at their Godly knowledge destination, and maybe they have, but God is greater.

Whatever you (and I’m including myself, here) think God is, God is infinitely more.

People can let you down, talk behind your back, betray you, stab you in the back, and victimize you, but God will only love you.

Please, do not blame God for the actions of others, who may have acted in His name. Some of the worst events in history were atrocities performed in the name of God, but just because someone claimed God’s anointing, doesn’t supersede God’s love. Just because a person claims to be acting on the behalf of God, doesn’t make it so.

So, the ownness is on you. You are loved, you are love, and without God, anything that is would cease to be.

You may have been told that there is only one way to be one with God. This is true, but people get bogged down by the definition of the “one way,” when in reality, there is no way to do God wrong, but we could have done or could do God better.

You can seek God, continue to learn and grow in any way you see fit, and if someone challenges you in your pursuit of God, bless them, for they are only doing the best we can. Could we do it better? Yes, any of us could, no matter where we are in our spiritual journey.

Know this,

You Can’t Do God Wrong

All any of us can do is the best we can with what we have, and you are allowed and encouraged to maintain your relationship with God in whatever way suits you best at any time. You could try to not create the separation of exclusivity and allow others to find their own way, blessing them all the way.

And above all,

Love

Love. That’s who God is

And so much more.

Religious Recovery

You’ve suffered at the hands of clergy who you’ve entrusted with the keeping of your very soul. You’ve pledged your allegiance to a religious order, given of yourself in service, sacrificed for the benefit of the organization, then found out it was not what you thought it was. Now, you’re in religious recovery.

Religious recovery is not to be confused with AA, which assumes that you’ve failed if you ever take a snort of alcohol again. No need to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

There is hope for you.

You have had a relationship with God, and you can keep your relationship with your higher power without having to submit to your previous religion. God is not the God of any particular religious organization. Individual religious organizations are stepping stones to a greater relationship with the source of all life.

Had you not had this experience, you might not have been aware of the existence of a higher power. Now that you have been introduced to God and started to develop a relationship, you can keep growing and expanding as you keep pursuing a greater relationship with the creator of all life on your own.

You’ve taken the first step. You’ve exited the influence of an organization whose intent it was to control you, which has held you back from moving forward and beyond the capabilities of the faction you had associated with in the past.

The will attempt to deploy all the fear-based intimidations they can to make you feel like you are unworthy, unwanted, and may even threaten your survivability, tell you you’re going to hell, or decrease your own will to live, and you may occasionally feel like you can’t go on another day.

Your initial reaction might be to rebel, and judge the organization for treating you badly, deciding,

If that’s the way God is, I want nothing to do with it.

But remember, your problem is not with God. It is with the organization run by the people who are doing the best they can to serve God in the only way they know how. They have been programmed by the generations that went before and they live within the confines of a religion based on fear. Fear of doing it wrong, fear of punishment, fear of eternal damnation.

God is not a God of fear. God is a God of love. And you know it.
Now that you’ve taken a step toward your own religious recovery, you have the wherewithal to start your own relationship with your higher power without having to succumb to the heavy-handed mechanisms of religion.

You are empowered to follow your own path to enlightenment in any way that you see fit, sort of like a modern-day shaman. The traditional path of a shaman is more structured, not unlike an organized religion, but the modern-day shaman is widely expanding and evolving along with the rest of the human race.

The times are changing, and the whole planet is evolving from a fear-based system (which is not sustainable) to a love-based system which is heart-centered and seeks peace and harmony for all.

God is loving you, so excited about your finding your own way, and waiting for your awakening.

See you at the Recovery from Religious Trauma Event in Olympia, September 21st

The Sound of Expansive Evolution

Where does all the weirdness come from? Images and scenarios that play out when you sleep, that feeling of Déjà vu, when you find yourself nowhere you’ve ever been before, yet have the knowingness that you’ve been here before, meet someone who seems so familiar, done or said something before, when you know better. Or have you?

There is a great field of energy that we all walk around in. It surrounds us and permeates every tiniest piece of everything that is, and even assists in the assembling and holding together of molecules and provides order so we can have the privilege of enjoying all matter has to offer, including the bodies we’re so blessed to inhabit.

The very thought of us, floating in space on a planet in a solar system, in a universe that contains millions of galaxies ever-expanding (if you thought you were feeling insignificant before, I apologize), but there’s good news.

If you allow your mind to consider the idea, you could access and meld with the intelligence that makes sense of all chaos and powers everything, everywhere, at all times. Yes, the same One that hung all the stars and planets in space, made our little blue ball and put us here to enjoy all the amazing things which surround us.

Obviously, attempting to define this intelligence and power in any intelligible manner, would be like trying to teach a worm how to build a Mercedes from raw materials. The only hope you have of getting any idea about what’s happening is to spend time experiencing this energy and allow our minds to expand enough to hopefully get some idea about what’s going on from the perspective of our human experience.

Now, this is not a new idea, and people are doing it every day. People from all walks of life wield this limitless energy every day. Some on purpose, some witness it’s power by accident, yet there it is.

Trouble is, when someone gets a glimpse of the power, and discovers a duplicatable method to predict a plausible result (that may well be unexpected at first blush) from accessing and deploying this energy, they’d like to patent it, if they could. Instead, they start a movement of some kind based on this very narrow scope of their discovery.

I am not discounting their discovery, God bless them for figuring out how to expand beyond the constraints of thought which keeps any of us other structured thinkers from doing so. Yet, this harkens to the idea that there is hope for those of us who see them embroiled in the ecstasy of their discovery, and have hope for ourselves.

Each and every discovery of this accessing and/or harnessing of this intelligent energy is but a spec, a very small sampling, like discovering a grain of sand among all the grains of sand all over our planet (and other planets, too).

The only hope of accessing this energy is to use a powerful tool we are all imbued with from the moment we are introduced to this planet, and that is your imagination. Your imagination is far more effective and powerful than any manmade weapon, and more effective, sensitive, and intricate than any scientific instrument ever conceived on this planet.

Expansion explorers are only scratching the surface of what the potential and power of the imagination is, but as much as we’d all like to release the information freely, we all realize there is a great opposition to the dissemination of discoveries of this type en masse.

We, all of us, you and I, have been programmed from birth to reject any of these magnificent high-level thought processes, to laugh at people who would dare think outside our comfortable little thought boxes. Some even go to school to learn how to diagnose, treat, or otherwise remove these energetic rebels from society altogether, for our own protection. To protect us from evolving past the limitations (and control) of our socialized humanity.

Okay, so there’s a growing underground movement that is slowly expanding and integrating with The Source of all that is, was, or ever will be. And while we may be few, our numbers are increasing, and one day, when this energetic evolution reaches critical mass, a very different world will emerge.

In the meantime, we will remain to be somewhat quiet about our expansion, while we continue to do so.

Shh… That’s the Sound of Expansive Evolution

Spiritual Awakening

It’s happening all around us, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, people are waking up from a spiritual slumber that has plagued our planet and stunted our evolution for thousands of years.

And guess what? God doesn’t care who you are, what stature you occupy in society, how educated you are, where you’ve come from or where you think you’re going, and He’s got your back one hundred percent.

spiritual awakening god holy spirit spiritual gifts spirit science enlightenment

What do you have to do to be part of this spiritual enlightenment?

A hundred different spiritual leaders will tell you 100 different answers to “What is spirituality? or how to grow spiritually breaking through to the next level of spiritual growth.

The truth of the matter is this:

It’s not that complicated.

All you have to do is to embrace the spiritual science that surrounds each and every one of us, acknowledging the spiritual energy that flows through every cell of our body and every living (and non-living, if there is such a thing) thing on this planet and throughout our universe. This includes the space (that we think is empty) is completely populated with this spiritual energy.

Spiritual Energy

If God is energy, then all you have to do is to plug in to the energy. Once you’ve established a spiritual connection with God, the source of everything, you immediately have access and can begin your personal spiritual journey.

Spiritual Journey

Your spiritual journey will look much different from the journey that you had previously found yourself on. As your spiritual awareness begins to become more adept at piquing your interest and ramping up your spiritual intuition, you will begin to notice the things of this world begin to appear very different to you. As your awareness of the spirit world continues to increase your sense of truth, as you peel back the layers of ambiguity that surrounds those lost in the darkness, a calm sense of spiritual intelligence begins to emerge.

Once you have decided to travel your own individual path to your unique spiritual enlightenment, you will begin to attract spiritual leaders, with their own individual spiritual systems that have helped them get to where they are along their spiritual journey.

Spiritual Guidance

Your spiritual calling is not to follow some other spiritual leader’s footsteps. Your spiritual journey has not mirrored anyone else’s journey step-for-step, why should you start now. No, God has placed these individuals to give you clues. Clues about where you are going, and understand how someone else on their path has achieved their own individual spiritual empowerment can be very helpful in your navigating your own spiritual journey.

Your spiritual guidance system is a part of you, who you are. You are hardwired to be a part of the spiritual evolution that is visiting the peoples of our planet and you are perfectly on track, in the right place at the right time as you find peace in the realization that everything is perfect and connected.

Spiritual Power

Your new spiritual life will not be without conflict. As you begin your spiritual metamorphosis, you will attract both earthly and spiritual forces intent on thwarting your spiritual progress. This is a challenge of spiritual warfare that faces each and every spiritual traveler, paving their own way.

This process includes imbuing your personal nervous system, mind, body and soul with an unparalleled spiritual power to assist you as you embark upon your new spiritual journey.

You may encounter various and sundry forms of spiritual attack and you will find that God has already provided you with ample resources back by His holy spirit gifting you with spiritual gifts and weapons far superior than any man, principality or power can devise to prevent your spiritual development. If called to engage in spiritual battle, you will win, victorious as a testament to your individual spiritual beliefs.

Spiritual Science

As you are further spiritually awakened you discover your enlightenment is constant and never-ending and your spiritual consciousness reveals the secrets of the science of spirituality which far exceeds the science of man. Yet there exists a correlation between science and spirituality that the less enlightened cannot understand.

Spiritual Tolerance

And you find your new spiritual self okay with that, allowing every individual to embrace their own journey in their own way. You are respectful of those who have not awakened, or are only newly awakening spiritually, never judging or measuring anyone, nor comparing to your spiritual experience or spiritual practices for you allow everyone to be their own individual spiritual person.

You respect other’s right to express their spirituality and applaud them as they exercise their rights in any way they choose, as long as it does not impinge on the rights of another spiritual being. You do not hold any judgment, nor differentiate between religion and spirituality, because everyone is a spiritual being on their own spiritual journey, and they are all doing the best they can with what they have.

Your journey is one of growth and spiritual balance as you evolve spiritually moment by moment and continue your awakening spiritually.

God bless your continued evolution.