What do you really want?

                        Spirituality

 We live in two different worlds…..I live in two different worlds. I suspect that each of you do as well, but I can’t speak for anyone but me.

Most of the time I live in the world described as regular, ordinary, everyday, rational…… you know, the world we’re all probably in right now. In fact, it seems kind of silly to even describe the nature of this world. It’s the world our parents initiated us into, as their parents did them. We may not agree on what’s important, what’s right or wrong, or what we believe, but we do agree on what’s REAL. If we can see it, touch it, measure it, quantify it in some way, then it’s REAL. A chair is a chair, a carrot is a carrot and a river is a river.

Rational thought is the tool our brains provide us to perceive, to describe, to categorize our world. Those of us who do this better are described as more intelligent. We value intelligence, so we value most those who are the most intelligent, especially those whose brains expand our knowledge of our world.

It’s a wonderful and indispensible tool, our intelligence, and it works well. We couldn’t manage our lives without it. We couldn’t have found our way here tonight without it.

This is the world I’ll describe as the world of “ordinary” reality, or one experienced through the lens of a rational mind. The other world I live in has a very different world view. This is the one I call the world of “alternative” reality; this is my “spiritual” world. In this world, the REAL cannot be perceived with the senses. In fact, if I can see it or touch it, it’s not REAL. The rational mind is not at home here; in fact, this world is unavailable to the rational mind.

I find my spiritual world reflected in the words of the mystics, mediums the quantum physicists  and some persons who’ve had a near death experience

I’d like to invite you to my other world tonight. Maybe it or one like it is your Spiritual world, too.

Just a word of caution: this may very well feel strange, silly or even ridiculous to you. (You may decide to accept my invitation, or you may decline it and just observe the proceedings.)

There are so some aspects of our life we cannot make sense of no matter how great our minds are. We cannot know how we got here or why we’re here, and we can’t know what happens to “me” when we die. These things remain a mystery. When we get uncomfortable with that fact, some of us, sometimes, create a story. Our religions come from these stories. It seems rather important that we not forget that we “made it up” and thus it’s not TRUE. What our species has done has taken stories which were essentially spiritual or metaphorical “truth” and made of them an “actual” truth.

It’s said that all religions are born in the LIGHT of someone’s Experience. It may well have been one in which this person had a near death experience or fell into a “revelation” of some sort. These experiences result from someone’s “dropping into” the world of mystery which finds him or her transformed into this world of non-ordinary reality. Sometimes this person seems to emanate what might be called a “light” which is observed by others who feel somehow drawn to it. Sometimes these people become followers of this “enlightened one.” And sometimes on organization builds. When it does the magic of the mystical experience is gone and shortly after the death of this ONE his followers create from what they remember of his teachings a RELIGION.

There are many doors to this place. We find stillness in a mountain lake at dawn. Not a ripple; not a sound; we find it in the depth of a forest, or at night, just before the dawn. We seek this stillness and rest in it because it gives us relief from all the clamor of our lives; because it nurtures us. We seldom realize the noise we live with until it stops. The silence seems to beckon us. We may experience a sense a longing. At first it may not be clear what we’re longing FOR. But we feel it nonetheless. It’s in this stillness and this longing that we intuit the possibility that maybe there’s more; more than we experience in our “everydayness.” Maybe we’re missing something. It may be hard to put a description on what it is that we’re missing or longing for, but the feeling persists.

Guided                Rhythm of life in and around me

     Breath

     Day-night

     Seasons….tree

     Water

     Birth…..death

Mysticism is the pursuit of communion with, identity with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate reality, divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight.