The spiritual source

Alex Thomson asks: Christmas – with or without Christ?

After being told I had cancer, I became aware of God’s presence, and the realisation that the only separation between ‘me’ and God is created by my belief in being separate! Coming back into the ‘real’ world, I did not want to leave behind this awareness of God’s presence. But living in a world of separation I exist as an individual, with billions of other individuals, where there is an increasing movement towards individualism. The collective belief in being separate individuals is causing so much suffering, I wonder if this is a world I want to live in.

Living in a culture of selfishness, greed, hatred and fear is poisoning my awareness; so much so that I feel my awareness of God’s presence slipping away just as dark clouds block the light of the sun.

Yet, I am not alone. Within Quakers I know others can sense God’s presence and are nourished by the Light of that Presence. Knowing there are such Quakers gives me hope. I feel in these troubled times we need to make our presence felt. We need to help mend a broken world.

Each day I begin this mending process by turning my awareness to the divine source within, and from that source to let a loving, healing spirit flow outwards into the world, to hopefully touch everyone I meet; so we may be cured of the belief in separate ‘selfs’, awakening us to the wholeness that is Life and Love, and to live with awareness of God’s presence in which we live, move, and have our being. There is no need to convince anyone. My aim is to offer love and understanding to people, no matter how different their views and life may seem, so they may become aware of ‘that of God’ for themselves.

Quakers say that each person is unique, precious and a child of God.

Each is an expression of the wholeness and oneness of ‘that which is beyond birth and death’ – of the temporary form we perceive as being ‘me’. How do we help people become aware of our true self where there is no separation between ‘me’ and ‘God’, ‘me’ and ‘other’, the Kingdom of Heaven? By seeing through the eyes of God, each one of us is a unique, precious child of God, all held within the ‘love of that which is eternal’.

Why do we need a Christ if we have God? God is pure spiritual love, being human is a manifestation of that spirit, but in manifesting it we lose our identity as spirit in becoming an individual and all that means in a world of individuals where there are winners and losers. No one wants suffering, but we all suffer, we are all losers in some way.

Being Christ is to accept being human and, not only realising the pure spiritual love that is our source, but to be that love in action, speech and thought. We have our faults, yet we can accept our faults and others as we are accepted by God. We are not pure, but by letting the spiritual source live through us we can live as Christ.

In following the inner path we find that divine source within and we come to know the mind of Christ, where the belief in an individual self dissolves into the vastness of spiritual love, which is the source of all beings. The individual may continue to exist in form but this is no longer his, or her, self. Christ is not a physical body, and yet takes physical form. Our being Christ is to live from knowing we are both divine and human, perfect and imperfect.

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Comments

Thank you for this - a fine article. You say, “The only separation between ‘me’ and God is created by my belief in being separate!” This is indeed the case. The Quaker practice of communal silent worship is a great tool for realising the illusory nature of our sense of separation.

By JohnE on 19th January 2017 - 20:55

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