Life is a Challenge, the God Challenge

In saying that life is a challenge, I do not mean the usual cliche, as in "life is challenging." No, the other night while in contemplation I saw life as the power, pure power, within everything, and it was conscious.


That the power of life--or rather, the power that is life--is conscious blew me away.  I suppose this power-and-wisdom combination is the quality of the Dreamer, the Ineffable, in Its dream. Like a brightly burning filament within a light-bulb, life is in every thing as the life of the thing, giving it existence--photons, quantum particles--everything big and small.


I realized that this power, conscious, intelligent, and cognizant--is God himself. As I lie down to sleep in some pain from my arthritis, I said to the power ("life" in my mind), "You can heal me." It did. THAT life--the present, cognizant, intelligent, conscious power of God that vivifies us--is the challenge I speak of.


It--life--is what we are, but it seems distant, and we disconnected from it. I spoke to life as another, even though I knew it is what I am. I realized that the challenge is to undo the illusion of distance between ourselves and life. This is the God challenge.


The challenge is to get back to being the fully aware, conscious, intelligent power we were before we descended into the consciousness of humans. To descend and become humans we had to imagine that we were human and ignore--forget--everything that we actually were. We are doing that right now, and it is working really well: we are humans now. Except we are also still God; which would be cool if we knew it.


I often refer to God, life, and/or Jesus Christ as being "in" us, as us. In and as, though, are illusions of distance. The only real distance between ourselves and God is our level of awareness. The challenge is to get past the illusions to simply flat-out being God/life/Jesus Christ constantly and directly. This we shall do by becoming aware of being God, life, and Jesus Christ.


Aware-er. Easier said than done, eh?


How shall we do it? "The only way to do it is to do it." One way is keeping God in mind all the time: "And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house and upon thy gates" (Deuteronomy 6: 6-9). 


What words? "YHWH, my God, YHWH is all (Heb, e'had: one made up of many). And I shall love YHWH my God with all my heart, and with all my soul, and with all my might" (Deuteronomy 6: 4-5, KJV adapted).

I suggest finding Dr. Frank C. Laubach's books Letters by a Modern Mystic and/or his Game With Minutes, both of which deal with keeping God in mind.


I have shared elsewhere that I believe that YHWH is mystical code for the nature of God. The Ineffable has no name (when I truly think of It, I am reduced to trembling--what could I possibly ever call It?). But Its nature is revealed in healing, increase and answered prayer.


YHWH is a picture of the Ineffable's power and love channeled by Its desire to bless effectively manifest here "in" us and as us. Interestingly, the sender, the sent and the receiver of the sent are all included in the picture. This indicates that the Ineffable is all, quite literally. There in nothing in the world but God.


We will have to come up with methods of being/becoming aware of being God. "Consciousness-of-self erasure" comes to mind. Sensing the Presence's AMness in the present, too. "Be still and know that 'I' am God." This could get pretty deep mystically and philosophically. Not sure there is anything wrong with that, though.

MY point is that we can make ourselves ready. At least we can accelerate the process.  "The kingdom of God has to do with attitudes," like love, kindness, grace and gratitude. Like discipline, self-control, and humility; and like hunger for the living Word of God. 

We--the consciousness within us that is us--are the animating "breath of life" given into our brains in Genesis 2: 7. We got down here all right--descending was easy: we just imagined that we were a human and forgot that we are God. But now we have to get back up! Our returning to conscious Godhood is the divine plan to which these ignorant minds are the obstacle.  Overcoming the ignorance we incurred in becoming human is the God challenge.