The Becoming God

Monday, December 30, 2013

More on the Lord’s Prayer as a Statement of Faith in God’s Standing Order



The Lord’s Prayer as I noted earlier is less a prayer than an attitude of prayer. It is the utterance of faith and recognition of God’s Standing Order. The Lord’s Prayer is the attitude you strike when you are ready to pray. It is surrender!
 
When I was praying for the gift of tongues at Grace Bible Church in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1975, which became my baptism in the Holy Spirit, I came to see that the life I had was God’s. I saw that I am mud animated by the gift of life given by God, and I had done whatsoever I had pleased with it. This was rebellion. I had never thanked God for making me alive, nor had I ever asked God for what purpose he had made me alive.

Think about it for a moment, please. We were mud, and God has infused us with life. He imbued us with the life we have lived up till now as “us.” For what? Why did he do it? He must have had a purpose. We might have wondered, but have we ever stopped and asked pointedly and waited until he answered?

In the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, I asked. “This is your life. You animated me with it by your grace. I belong to you. You are Glorious God. I am mud. You had a purpose for making me to live. Whatever you want me to do, I will do.” I cast self-lordship, my rebellion, out of myself I went into free-fall, not even willing to hold myself up. With surrender as far as I could find it, I submitted myself utterly unto God. I shut up, and I waited.

If God never said another thing, I suppose they would have had to carry me out of the way for the next service. I knelt at the felled tree in silence. I sensed the glow of Almighty God’s glory spreading across the sky above me, and me, a lump of mud utterly submitted to him, utterly dependent upon him, below in utter surrender. After a minute in the silence, I heard the softest of voices, “Remember this, and it is all right.”

That I was elated over being forgiven and accepted by God is the greatest of all understatements. I entered an ecstasy. And here is a most important point often mentioned by Neville, “If it works, then you have found him.” It “worked”:  I had found God and the ecstasy of real life.

This is the Lord’s Prayer! “Your nature must be being hallowed! Your kingdom must be being restored! Your will must be being done! As in heaven, so also on earth!” We are surrendering to the purpose of Almighty God! “Whatever you want me to do, I will do.”

And you thought it was for bread. It is the recognition of the Standing Orders of God: “I have said, and I will do.”

“Bread” is what you are going to be doing tomorrow. “To do your will is my bread, O Lord.” That is what you are asking for today. “Let me see itgive me a desire in my heart to do whatever you purpose for this life you have graced me with. Would you have me scale a mountain, swim across an ocean?”

“No, but that bum at the off ramp, would you tell him that I love him and give him a twenty for me? Call and tell your mother that you love her nearly as much as I do? Offer to teach an illiterate how to read and write his own language?”

We ask God to let us in on the project. That life that he gave us is one with us now – the two have become one flesh. And it has the power to create, for it is his spirit. (Of all oddness, it is the one with the power of Mind and Speech, the consciousness we think with, Deity within us, yet inasmuch as it became us, it is us: the recipient of itself.)

It creates by imagining. “Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and He shall bring it to pass” (Psalm 37: 4-5). We are asking to be given the desire to imagine. “That bum? Can I love him with the love you have for him? Can I think your thoughts for him; yearn your yearnings for him; see him the success your purpose for him is?”

The Lord’s Prayer is a weighing of our anchors. It is saying, “Okay, that is enough of me and my affairs, of my selfishness and of my fears and of my rebellion. You are Almighty God. You gave me life and animated me for your purpose. What is it? Let’s go!”

If it works, you have found him. Life is supposed to be an ecstasy! I hope we find our pace.

Monday, December 23, 2013

Abbreviated A Standing Order by Neville Goddard and The Lord's Prayer from Fenton's Translation.



"A Standing Order" is a lecture by Neville Goddard regarding the proper attitude to have for praying. The title comes from an observation made by Ferrar Fenton (1832-1920), that the nature of the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6: 9-13 and Luke 11: 1-4) is that of a standing order, "a thing to be done absolutely, and continuously."

The Lord's Prayer as Fenton saw it:
"For your Father knows your necessities before you ask Him. Consequently, you must pray in this way: Our Father in the Heavens; your name must be being hallowed; your kingdom must be being restored; your will must be being done, both in Heaven and upon the Earth. Give us to-day our to-morrow's bread; and forgive us our faults, as we forgive those offending us, for you would not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from its evil." (The Lord's Prayer, The Complete Bible in Modern English, emphasis Goddard’s).

My own observation is that the Lord's Prayer is not a prayer at all; it is an attitude of confidence to strike, parenthetical instructions for a form of meditation, guidance to the "frame of mind" that is to be had in that form of prayer. The Lord's Prayer is set of directions regarding how to pray, not words to recite. It is a manual for a mystical exercise, because these guys were mystics -- this is what they did. We are supposed to be mystics, too. Life is supposed to be an ecstasy.

We have to understand the point of view of the authors, which is that Jesus Christ is the spirit of God within us. He knows the mind of every man because he IS the mind of every man. Jesus Christ is that spirit of God who became man that man might become God. We actually are God (there isn’t anything that isn’t), but we presently need to reacquire consciousness of that fact.

Says Neville in A Standing Order: “If I use the word 'God', or the word 'Christ', the word 'Jesus', the word "Lord', and in any way it conveys the sense of an existent someone or something outside of yourself, you have the wrong concept of God or Christ! We are told, ‘Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? Do you not realize that you are the temple of the living God, and the spirit of God dwells in you?’”

There is no distance or separation in these states. "In" means is. Or maybe I should say "as." The only distance between God and us is our lack of understanding that there is no distance. And he is working on that.

In the event of my own baptism in the Holy Spirit, in a meditative state I saw the figure of a man raised from the mud of the earth. I watched as the mud was made into bone and sinew, muscle and blood and skin. The man became alive, shocked and confused at its own existence, and wandered off wondering what to do.

I watched as consciousness aware that I was watching, and I felt compassion for the ignorant man-animal. Empathetically imagining its point of view, I became the one having that point of view. I guess I annexed his brain, because instead of wandering in blind instinct, he became imbued with my consciousness, the power of thought and speech, and he, or rather we, became a deliberate being. I became totally involved in being him and completely forgot that I was ever anything else.

I admit I am an alien invader. And so are you.

The thing to remember is that we are God. Not a god, nor becoming gods, not "like" or "as" God -- we, the conscious beings that we are dwelling in the bodies of humans -- are God. We are not sharing or stealing his glory: we are his glory. However, we became completely ignorant of our own divine nature when we entered the ignorance of humans. We forgot that we were ever anything else, but God hasn't forgotten us! Our connection with him has never been severed, nor can it ever be. He shall lose none. Not one in all eternity. Jesus Christ is our live-wire connection.

So, with this comprehension, this view of truth that we are the spirit of the eternal Living God and God is ultimately in control, we approach the task of praying. Shall we beg and plead or wonder if we are being heard? Should we fear that we have offended God and are rejected??

For certain, our lives in this ignorance are at a variance to the holiness of our Father, but also as certain is the fact that we are in his program of forming himself in this dimension. This is his doing -- all of it.

With that in mind, that this literally is God’s doing and that he has issued standing orders which are to be obeyed absolutely and continuously, we SUBMIT to his lordship and acknowledge in attitude that these things ARE: "According to your standing orders, your nature (in me) must be being hallowed, your kingdom (in me) must be being restored, your will (regarding me) must be being done -- as in heaven, so also on earth. This is YOUR doing, I am in agreement and I completely accept what you are doing."

You see? The Lord's Prayer is a frame-of-mind to be had, an attitude to be struck. "You have issued standing orders that demand and receive obedience. This is my reliance, that my divine nature is at all times receiving your attention: you will provide my needs."

It is just like when we sought the baptism in the Holy Spirit and the only thing we could do to get it was to relinquish our self-lordship and receive what was freely given. Well, the baptism in the Holy Spirit isn't the only thing we get that way, but everything else, too! This is what the Lord's Prayer is all about -- He knows our necessities, surrender and receive them.

Like the baptism in the Holy Spirit, the world is ours for the asking and receiving. But we have to ask -- we have to be involved, for our attention and involvement in the right attitude is being cultivated. Godding is a full-time enterprise, and we are being trained for management positions. The frame-of-mind engendered is a door for us to go through -- relinquishment is a portal to his power. We surrender to a divine experiment: "How fully can you surrender and not be afraid?" (Frank C. Laubach. His Letters by a Modern Mystic (Fleming H. Revell, 1937) -- in my opinion one of the greatest books on Christianity ever; this quote, though, is from Open Windows, Swinging Doors (Regal Books, G/L Publications, 1955), p. 24).

The proper frame of mind to establish is that we are submitted and relying on him and cognizant of our receiving of God's attention under his standing orders. Then, we ask to be set right, for our lives to be corrected in concert with him. We must undertake our part of the enterprise, which is that anything of us that failed or in any way was not as perfect as the Heavenly Father is perfect be submitted for forgiveness and correction. It was "sin"; it missed the mark of what God knows we need, and the standing orders are for such errors to be corrected. We engage the lordship of him who loved us and gave himself for us.

We submit our sins to him, because we need what went wrong to be corrected. Otherwise they will proceed into our future to confront us there. We create our own afflictions in this world because our sins go round and round until they get corrected. We need to own up so that the Father might forgive them (which is to correct them) and break the cycle.

How? This is a dream world. Sure, it is a physical, concrete reality, but it is also a dream. Sorry, but all your gold is cankered – it is a dream. We create our reality by imagining, and we are quite miserable at it. We take whatever misery-creating imaginings we sinned with today and imagine the right thing that should have happened. We imagine what would have been right, noble, pure, clean and acceptable for us to have thought and done. We imagine it vividly, experientially, feelingly, and repeatedly until it "takes on all the tones of reality."

What will be the bread of experience tomorrow, we receive as imagination today. The sin is forgiven and we will not be tempted by its evil again.

This is a dream world. The instructions in the Lord’s Prayer sets the tone for dreaming correctly.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Stop Misreading the Bible: The Gospel of Neville Goddard's A Standing Order and Ferrar Fenton's Version of the Lord's Prayer

Before December 24, 2013, I am going to post an abbreviated and more direct article about A Standing Order by Neville Goddard and the Lord's Prayer by Ferrar Fenton.

A fresh insight: the Lord's Prayer isn't a prayer at all. It is directions for a form of meditation, a guide to the attitudes to strike, the attitudes in which to pray -- guides in a mystical exercise.

Fenton was right, the "Lord's Prayer" is about a standing order, the observation of which effective prayer depends upon. In short, God's knowing of our necessities means he knows their completion. But the prayer does not ask God to complete them. It simply puts us in the attitude of RECEIVING that completion.




Every time I listen to "A Standing Order" I hear something new. “God's Law and His Promise,” “Believe It In,” “Call Upon Self,” “I Am the Lord Jesus Christ” -- each time I listen to them it is "Oh! I never heard that before," even though I have listened to them a dozen times over.

For example, I am quite familiar with Neville Goddard's philosophy that God became man that man may become God. He repeats it so often that I almost tune it out while I am listening to him. In "A Standing Order," though, he speaks emphatically and enthusiastically about Ferrar Fenton's translation of the Lord's Prayer, and I had a difficult time trying to catch Neville's point about the significance of the Greek aorist imperative passive mood being a standing order. I brought up Fenton's translation of the Lord's Prayer on the internet and tried to figure it out.

Fenton (1832-1920) determined to achieve near native fluency in New Testament Greek. He did well and was asked by his father to render the most literal translation of the Lord's Prayer possible. As a model, the Lord's Prayer doesn't tell us to pray "with these words" but rather "after this manner." What Fenton found was that the "manner" specified by Matthew and Luke was aorist of the imperative passive mood.

This Apostolic intention is conveyed in the original Greek, but the traditional Lord's Prayer we know from church liturgy came from the Latin, and Latin had no such tense! So for as long as the church has fashioned its praying after the Latin model, it has prayed incorrectly.

Oops.

Well, what is the Greek aorist of the imperative passive mood? It would seem a contradiction in terms. Aorist is a verb, an action completed in a single motion. It is done and that is that.  Imperative is a directive, a command -- "Duck!" "Run!" "Go!" These examples, though, are active voice: the hearer to do them.

What stands out in the scriptural model is the passive mood. This escapes us in the Latin. In the Greek, God is being told to RECEIVE the action. So biblical praying isn't like the imperative active, "Duck!" but the imperative passive: "Be ducked!"

Weird, huh? How do you figure that? You are telling the person, in this case God, to NOT do the action but to receive it as being done to or for him. The motion is to be completed and the directive is to passively accept it.

(I think this was Charles Fillmore:) "Fenton says that the Aorist is a tense expressing complete action in a single movement. So we see that according to the preface of the Lord's Prayer as originally given by Jesus, He wants us not to pray for something to be done in the future. Instead, since God has already provided the things we need before we ask Him, our prayers should be in the nature of a command implying our recognition of the fact that they are now appearing in our world. As Fenton says, the prayer is of the nature of a standing order, 'a thing to be done absolutely, and continuously.'"

This wasn't really helping me much. "A thing to be done absolutely, and continuously" -- and passively? If God wasn't going to do it, who was supposed to be doing the hallowing, restoring, etc., to him?

I could see that, in contrast, we commonly pray the Latin Lord's Prayer as a series of platitudes and pleadings. "O God, resolve our problems: You are great! Your kingdom come (for me)! Your will be done (by them)! Help me! Help me! Give me! Give me! And let me get away with what I have done!"

I do, however, have a grasp on standing orders. As both a sailor and a civilian I worked on Navy bases where the base commanders had issued standing orders regarding things such as the speed limits of traffic on the base. Marines performed police duties on the bases, and if I as much as looked at a Marine and nodded in the direction of a speed-limit violator, in about one second whistles would be blowing all over the base as that driver was flagged down and stopped by any number of Marines and informed in no uncertain terms that the base commander had issued standing orders regarding speed limits and that the driver would henceforth comply with the orders. "This is the directive from the base commander, sir! You will comply with the standing orders issued by the base commander, sir! Do you understand me, sir? Very well, you may proceed, sir!" And believe me, that driver would comply. Got to love the Marines.

I understand that standing orders are to be honored and obeyed. They are enforced. But who is the base commander here? It occurred to me as I wrote this that the Hebrew for "base commander," the representative Biblical character, that is, is Sarah (Strong’s Concordance, Hebrew Dictionary #8283<8282<8269<8323: sarar, to have dominion). Abraham = the exalted, merciful Father; and Sarah = the Base Commander.

Hmmmmm. Sarah is to Abraham as Eve is to Adam, and each is God. Oh! It's the mechanics -- the two hands of YHWH! The God "up there" giving is the same God "down here" receiving. And the Father passively receiving is us. The Father actively giving is the Ineffable.

Let's take a look at the Lord's Prayer as Fenton saw it:

"For your Father knows your necessities before you ask Him. Consequently, ye must pray in this way:
Our Father in the Heavens;
Your Name must be being hallowed;
Your Kingdom must be being restored.
Your Will must be being done both in Heaven and upon the Earth.
Give us to-day our to-morrow's bread;
And forgive us our faults, as we forgive those offending us,
For You would not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from its evil."
(Ferrar Fenton, The Lord's Prayer, The Complete Bible in Modern English.)

Ah ha! There it is: 1) "'Your Father knows your necessities before you ask Him," and 2) "Our Father in the Heavens" -- two different Fathers that are not separate at all except in office. The Ineffable in his office knows our necessities because he became us and is our imagination in the "Heavens," the office of our minds.

The model prayer, then, is affirmations of faith and statements of confidence that the Ineffable hears our every thought and knows our every need because he is the Father in our selves. The Lord's Prayer is a picture of advaita, the e'had nature of YHWH: the LORD is a composite One; all the "sons" of God make up the Father, and though they are not the same, neither are they two. All parts are engaged in the same project, the increase and expansion of the Ineffable into form.

God's name, of course, is his nature, and hallowing has to do with observing or pronouncing his nature clean, i.e., accepted. HIS nature IN us, AS us, is being hallowed. God's kingdom is the quality of king-ness had by his king, i.e., it is the King, and our consciousness of OUR kingdom is being restored. God's will is OUR established intention, the perfect world we determined to accomplish in our original mind in Genesis 1. We have said it, and the Ineffable will do it, for as it is created in the heavenly mind, it shall be manifested on earth.

We "pray" to the Infinite in us affirming our faith that the Infinite beyond us is conscious of all our needs, is powerful to meet each one, and has a standing order that they be met. The Apostolic sense is: "Human Imagination, the Infinite, Eternal and Almighty YHWH Elohim has issued standing orders that your nature must be being hallowed, your kingdom must be being restored, and your will must be being done!"

That made me stand to my feet. We are to be quiet on our beds and know that "I am God." Our "I." And God wants to back it up.

Don't like it? Take it up with Matthew and Luke.

Q. How is it that the Ineffable knows what I want and need while my life continues to suck so bad?

A. Well, yeah. We already covered how you've been praying the Lord's Prayer all wrong -- begging and pleading instead of affirming your faith in his faithfulness. The afflictions from our wrongs are inducements to fly right. We talk to the Infinite in our imagination, “office to office,” so TALK NICER. God, by the way, can tell a good joke (e.g., he made you), but he doesn't take them very well. If we in our ignorance imagine misery, he takes it as a special request. If we imagine all the misery we don't want, well, he still takes what he SEES as a special request. As much as you can, EFFECTIVELY IMAGINE ONLY THE GOOD THINGS YOU WANT.

As you lie on your bed before going to sleep, know that you are God and, reviewing your day, REWRITE IT! Correct your tomorrow by thinking it right today. This is your daily bread: imagine each thing that went wrong AS THOUGH IT WENT RIGHT. Put yourself in the good places you want to be. Vividly and clearly imagine doing the good things you want to do. Imagine every good and noble thing you would have happen AS THOUGH THEY DID.

You are the divine consciousness imparted to man by God. Rest confidently in the standing orders of the Base Commander that your divine nature must be hallowed, your divine kingdom must be restored, and your divine will must be done! Think and do everything in love, mercy, and forgiveness -- the loving-kindness of God.



Okay, why on earth would God do this? Was the infinite and eternal Most High God lacking in anything? I do not know. Maybe It was bored and needed a diversion. Eternity is a really long time if you have nothing to do. The best explanation I have heard is that the Eternal had no form and decided that It wanted form. Such need and desire is the Mother of invention (this, by the way, is Miriam, Mary, our Mother who knew not a man).

Well, infinity and eternity are pretty big fields; it takes a lot to fill them. Endlessness has lots of room to expand in! And there is a goal in it: form that is the Ineffable. The end form will be bliss of the highest order -- full consciousness of being the ineffable, Most High God. Anybody up for that?

Wait a minute -- the ride has one little caveat: the full likeness of the Ineffable in form has to be generated through countless lifetimes of experience in complete ignorance of being the Ineffable, until awakening, consciousness and awareness are kindled and break forth. You can take the ride, but you have to completely trust the faithfulness of the Ineffable to pull you through to "the day of Christ Jesus." His dominion (do I hear "Sarah"?), will act to hallow your divine nature, the restore your divine kingdom, and to bring forth your divine will.

Abraham -- the Exalted, Merciful Father -- said to his friend the Ineffable Source, "Dude, I believe in you. I will trust your standing order until I become fully generated as you. I trust your faithfulness: I will go for the bliss of becoming fully God-conscious form. I'm all-in!" Abraham is the Infinite who became you. And I. Abraham launched into the deep of ignorance, the death of forgetfulness, and has for a long time thought he was a man. He sort of is, too, because he is in men as their enlivening consciousness – the human imagination. We are his seed "as the sands of the sea." For however many lifetimes we have ridden this ride, I figure we are closing in on the end, IF we go on and wake up.

The consciousness that you are, eternal Spirit imputed down into man, God has promised to raise up to the effulgence of his glory. Go his way, trust him, and receive.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

The Greatest Secret in the World



The greatest secret in the universe is no secret at all: it is advaita. 'Advaita' is Sanskrit for no, or without, division. The “secret” is that there is no real separation between, well, anything. While any two things may seem be separate and not one, they are not actually two. The "field" of existence of all things discernible and things beyond discernment is one integrated whole.

The patchwork of ideas that is the Bible is understood by advaita. Scripture is not biographies of people or history, it is theology, and the conclusion of theology is that God is everything. "It" is not any distance from us but comes “closer” by our increased understanding and awareness of It. This is what the Bible plainly says, but we misread it.

Moses did not believe in a Hindu God, but he arrived at the same conclusion: I BECOME. YHWH is advaita. Each letter of YHWH represents a value in the nature of God. It doesn't matter in which order the values are arranged, it is always the same God that is pictured. Pictured, because God speaks to us in illustrations, and YHWH is a portrait of God.

YHWH is Adam and Eve. Yod (Y) and Adam are the divine life-force of the Source of all, the Ineffable. Hey (H) and the rib, or phallus, are the nature of the divine life-force to increase, the driving force to expand. Vav (W) and Eve are the desire for effective existence. The second hey (H) is us. We are copies of the first, recipients of the divine life-force's nature to increase. We all together -- yod, hey, vav and us -- are YHWH, God. "The Lord our God is one," and we are in it! THAT's what Moses was talking about.

Tuesday, December 03, 2013

The Deep Inside and Out: Seeking God's Back




We only know the Ineffable, "God," by Its actions. Of the substance of God, the "deep," we have barely a clue. I believe that we are actually part of the Most High's substance. We are Its consciousness emanated, and presently we are lifting human souls to be more like It. But there is precious little we can sense of the deep, the Most High's being, even within ourselves. Our senses are long on action and very short on existence.

Inhabiting humans seems to be little more than a carnival ride for the Eternal. It is a diversion. I guess it gets boring to just be, to just think, so the Ineffable has broken up eternity with some entertainment. It wanted form, yet It is only Its base self and Its experience of thinking. So, what form is It going to take? Maybe consciousness and experience? Hello. Welcome to the project.

What are we? We do not know. We are aware of imagining, of thinking and sensing things, but just where and what is the mind that is thinking and experiencing? We are spirit beings/consciousness riding in human beings and are totally involved in their thoughts and senses. That is how we got here. But what is our substance?

Okay, again, I get the collective spirit/consciousness of the E'had (Deuteronomy 6: 4, the collective One that is God's spirit, Elohim, "Over The Flames"); the flow of YHWH into existence (Jethro); the life-giving of the living branch (Joshua/Jesus); and our innermost being bearing Light, Life and Love into man . . . but the first "Thing," the home boy Ancient of Days who first experienced the movement of thinking and who is in us as us on this ride–I think he has gotten lost in all the attention we give to action. We know him as Creator, Deliverer, Savior, Healer, Revealer–all really neat things, but all totally "distant" and actions.

For example, we thank the Healer, but we only sense the healing. We think of the Healer as being without instead of being within, as if the healing was done by some kind of remote-control, magical transcendence. That that which healed us is within is beyond us–we do not sense Its presence: we do not see home boy back there.

It seems that all we can know of God is Its actions. I think. I hope to prove myself wrong. I have a philosophical line on "there is no separation," and I am trying to reel it in.

The “child” Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs chapter 8–he doesn't exist. He is the fantasy of the Father reveling in the discovery of his own nature. We also are just fantasies, fanciful thoughts of experiences, seat-takers on an amusement park ride–"ride the wild man"–agents for the Ineffable's biding the endlessness of eternity. We are farmed-out attention, the Ineffable's distraction, but integral to the Ineffable Itself.

And what a ride!!! Absolute genius.

In the seat on the ride is the Eternal. In all the playing, do not forget him. No, I don't know what to do about him either. I just heard him calling the other night, "Hey, what about me? Don't forget me." Actually, I just caught a glimpse. He is that dwelling behind all the actions we perceive, the doer of them. Can you see him back there? 

I have said that "'ehyeh 'asher 'ehyeh" (the "I AM THAT I AM" in Exodus 3: 14) is Moses' epiphany of his being God, that is, of God's being him. It was not a separate God saying to Moses, "I AM," but Moses himself. He realized that his own imagining had created and was creating his world, hence: "I become (the literal meaning of 'ehyeh) what by imagining I become." Because we are God, we become–because becoming is what God does. That is the deep in us. We are like little spigots, channels of spiritual power. 


In the creation of what we imagine, the deep of the Ineffable calls to the deep within us. This is Psalm 42: "Where is thy God?"–happy countenance or troubled, the doer of our world is Him. It is him when we imagine and it works, and if it works, then we have found him.

So, it may be both: God in us is the rider, “I AM”; and God as us is riding, “I become.” We are "Jethro-ing"–increasing man by manifesting his imagination.  

Steer your imagination. You must take control of your mind and direct it to the creating of what you want. I figure that the reason we can do this is so that we will learn to do it. The world allows whatever we think, be it good, bad or indifferent, so go for what you want.  

God spoke to Moses "face to face" (Exodus 33:11). We read that and think, hey, that is great, they stood there looking at each other, talking as friends. But Jewish mystics put a different spin on it–you can't speak face-to-face with God with an opposing face, because you would have to be separate from God to do it. No one can so see God and live. "Face-to-face" refers to the style of their individual communion in light of the corporate failure of Israel.

The mystics say that in Exodus 34 where Moses saw God's "back," Moses was aligned with God so that he was "face-to-face" from the backside, seeing through God's eyes and perceiving God's thoughts and perspective. He experienced being God. This was Moses’ individual communion with God (Moses had "removed the shoes from his feet," so to speak, to experience God directly).”

They say this was also the experience all Israel had at Sinai when God spoke to give them the Law. When God said, "I am . . . ," all the people had the experience of being God and seeing the Law from his perspective. It so frightened them that they fled. This was their corporate failure (they “put their shoes back on,” hence, a mechanical religion).

We are going to where our eyes see through God's eyes, our minds think God's thoughts, and our hands touch as God's hands. He shall be with us as he was with Moses in Exodus 34: 5-7. We shall walk barefoot in God, our perceptions totally synced with his perceptions, our perspective synced with his perspective. We shall have the same nature. We shall experience the Eternal, the No-Thing who flows into manifestation as YHWH, and perhaps so also the Most High's being, which we are.

The good news is that we do not have to wait long for this experience. The Joshua (Jesus) of the New Testament is the same Joshua who took Israel across the Jordan River into the Promised Land, Canaan, the perfect country. This is the same Jesus who became us and immerses in the Holy Spirit, which is our alignment with God’s rightness. We already have the same nature; we just have to purge the crap that is accumulated in the bowels of our humanity.

We are not presently aligned with God's rightness . . . but He can align us from within in a heartbeat, if we will hear his voice and repent of our independence and submit to his lordship. It is that close -- we just have to accept It and submit to It in our hearts. The deep is here to save us: "Whoever believes in me as the scriptures proclaim, 'Rivers of the living waters shall gush from his stomach'" (John 7: 38, Alexander). The Life of what we really are comes welling up from within, and joy, appreciation and gratitude swell in the heart.

This experience is a vision of the real composition of reality. And this vision breaks into sound as our connection with Original Mind brings forth a clear language not learned in this lifetime. The mouth appears to operate on its own with no input or control from oneself. This is the presence of David, who the totality of human experience had by the Father. David is present because he is with his father, you!

Millions and millions of people have partaken of this experience. Why tarry? Accept the lordship of the source of your life, Jesus Christ, the “deep” of God in you.
 

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

On Victor Alexander's Translation of Genesis: The Book of Creation and the Meaning of YHVH



Mr. Alexander,

Thank you for your translation of Genesis. I was excited to discover on the first page of your translation that the Aramaic title for the book is Breetah -- Creation. For me, this is a both a relief and an insight.

I am sure you know that Christians are typically taught that the Hebrew title for the book of Genesis comes from its first word, beresheeth, "in the beginning," so it is "the Book of Beginnings." The idea of beginnings leads naturally to expectations of subsequent history, and the narrative stories in Genesis do not disappoint. But I think Moses had something else in mind.

The Pentateuch, of course, started with Moses at Exodus chapter 3, the burning bush episode. No burning bush -- no Bible. There Moses encountered the living God, and I think that experience is what all the rest of his writings are about. (Meet any one man of the many thousands who have encountered God and you will find that his life is polarized to that moment -- he does not eat, sleep, or think about anything without its gravity exerting its pull on his mind. The event doesn't just affect his worldview, it becomes his worldview, and his life is spent both trying to comprehend and to express it.)

So, when I read, "In the beginning, God . . .” my mind filters it through "'ehyeh 'asher 'ehyeh," because that, I believe, is what Moses is talking about. And that is why I am going to share these points from Aryeh Kaplan's Jewish Meditation (Kaplan, Aryeh, 1985: Jewish Meditation. New York: Schockton Books, chapter 7, Contemplation, p. 72-76, [emphases and parentheses mine]):

The meaning of the four letters of YHVH, God’s nature:

Each individual letter has special symbolic significance to be understood on the basis of ancient Kabbalistic teaching . . . that these four letters contain the mystery of charity.

Yod denotes a coin (think of the power and value of money, what it can do, a kind of force).
Heh denotes the hand that gives the coin (fifth letter of alphabet = five fingers = grace).
Vav denotes the arm reaching out to give (strength/a hook = connection, the power to effect).
Heh denotes the hand which accepts the coin.

Charity is the act whereby God gives us existence.The four letters represent the mystery of the creative link between God and man.

Yod, the coin, is existence itself (tenth letter of alphabet = the Ten Sayings = the entire act of Creation = Life given to us).
Heh is the hand by which God holds the existence he desires to give to us. Vav is his arm reaching out to give us his existence.
Heh is our hand (given to us, and this is still his nature - we are in his nature) which accepts this existence.

Yod = "coin" is the initial point of creation, the Ten Sayings that brought existence out of nothingness.
Heh = vessel holding power of creation and channel of that force to the arm.
Vav = effective connection, the desire reaching out, wanting to give the force of creation to us.
Heh = our ability to connect to and receive from the arm the creative forces of existence.

Yod, the Ten Sayings, is "seed" put into the
vessel or womb (heh) of creation so that it can be brought forth.
Vav is the power of divine providence which directs the world.
Heh is the vessel or womb which holds that power and expands to give it birth.

It is my own understanding that this increase is "Jethro" in the Bible. What the forces were behind this increase bothered (Zipporah - little chirping bird) Moses to find out.

The first three characters, Y-H-V, are masculine: the divine seed of the forces of creation, the seed in the womb, and the seed in providence. Only the last, the second heh, is feminine and can be separated from the others, as when God turns his face away from the world (which is when we are in rebellion; we make the disconnection).

We also make the reconnection of our hand to his arm, unification, by repentance. This opens us to the forces of providence, makes us aware of divine guidance and of the Divine Presence, because if it works, we have found Him. What the symbolism is about concretely is Jesus Christ.

Let me share also this from Jeff Roth (Roth, Jeff, 2009. Jewish Meditation Practices for Everyday Life: Awakening Your Heart, Connecting with God.  Woodstock: Jewish Lights Publishing, p. 113), who conveys from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi:

Yud = the world of the divine attribute of Being.
Hay = the world of the divine attribute of Knowing.
Vav = the world of the divine attribute of Feeling.
Hay = the world of the divine attribute of Acting.

When the two million Jews were at Mount Sinai to receive the Law, the Jewish mystics teach, and God said, "I am the Lord your God . . ." the people didn't hear words, but at “I . . .” all experienced the sense of I AM as one. That blew their minds and they fled (p. 128).

When Moses wanted to see the glory of God and was told no one can see God and live, he was hid in the cleft of the rocks and saw God's "backside." That is, Moses experienced seeing God's Goodness in the world through God's eyes – God’s perception becoming Moses’ (p. 130-133).

Okay, my turn. The concept of duality does not work. What Moses is saying in The Book of Creation is, "This is how we participate in creation. This is how we create our lives. It is by recognizing the unity of existence. Reconnect to God's strength by repenting from the rebellion -- the concept of separation and division – of independent self-lordship. Unify with the Seed of the Divine Life-force within your own 'womb,' your mind inside your skull."

Moses wanted to express "'ehyeh 'asher 'ehyeh," so he encapsulated the concept in Creation 1: 1, "Before the beginning, the Ineffable (yod) created e'had, "God" (heh) the Heavens (vav) and the Earth (heh)."

God (yod)
said (heh)
let us make man in our (vav)
image (heh).

Adam = yod
Rib = heh
Eve = vav
Cain and Abel = heh.

Noah (a perfect Ten), yod
Shem, heh
Kham/Canaan, vav
Japheth, heh

Japheth means expansion. Christians are this enlargement has to do with stretching out tent pegs. I think it is about childbirth -- our world stretches like a woman bearing a child. Jacob said, “I crossed this Jordan with but my staff, and now I am become two bands," because while he was with Laban he practiced yod, heh, vav, and heh.

Moses tells us how to create our lives, our worlds, according to God. "God in heaven" is the imagination (the spirit “breathed”) into our heads: 'ehyeh 'asher 'ehyeh.

Sorry for preaching.

I think that what the world needs is a movie about The Mind of Moses. Not another telling of Exodus historical narratives a la Cecil B. DeMille but the untold story of a mystic’s mindset, the molding experiences which led to his experiences of creation,  of oneness with YHWH. This would be a movie about what the Bible is about.

Central would be the development of Moses' concept of YHWH. His life, his times, his experience as an Egyptian priest, his knowledge of certain ancient Egyptian myths and contemplation of their meaning -- all the things contributing to his consideration of Jethro, which I take to be phenomena of increase rather than a person.

Jethro, as you know, means "his excellence." It is the idea of provision, expansion, increase. A man desires, has sex with a woman and, after time, "his excellence" expands the birth canal as increase comes forth. Seedtime and harvest – it is all imagic.

God = yod
so loved the world = heh
that whoever believes on him = vav
should not perish but have everlasting life - heh.

So YHWH is not a word but a picture, a pattern for the creation of life. It is what brings Jethro. We can create whatever lives we want -- AHYH! And so Moses began to write and teach the thing most important in his mind -- YHWH. The stories are simply illustrations of the YHWH pattern.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

What Ecclesiastes means? That God was bored?


Oh, Qohlat,

A day without night, no end in sight -- what a weariness it must be! Ah, to sleep, perchance to dream. What would you do if you could neither sleep nor slumber, if awareness never departed?

Not just one day after another, but constant day with no nights to break it up –- never a fresh morning or "that was yesterday, tomorrow is another day" -- from eternity past through eternities future.

Well, how about a little diversion -- something to do, something to occupy your mind? Give yourself some distraction, and before the day drags on and your diversion becomes monotonous, find something else to do. Maybe lots of things. 

"Hey, wait a minute," he said to no one in particular. "What if I didn't know this? What if I forgot this and thought that I slept and dreamed? What if I imagined that day gives way to night, that I had a beginning and an end, and that there was difference and purpose in things? What if I could be born new and die before long tedium, or at least thought I could."

I heard Neville say that the world is to appease a hunger, and I wondered, what hunger? The hunger the Eternal has for diversion, for distraction and entertainment. Hunger for escape. Eternal day is constantly the same to the Infinite: no night ever takes away its sight.

The world's being, and all distractions in it, will eventually pass. The earth will be no more. The Eternal faces eternal consciousness. "I have got to get out of this place!" Death for us is a blessing.

Vanity means "doesn't mean squat; accomplishes nothing." Everything here doesn't mean anything at all -- it is all going to pass away. Day will still be on the other side of our living and dying though we live and die a thousand times a thousand. Light being and crystal cities to attain? Oh boy! More terrestrial spheres, and all the universe to make God -- until all is back at the start. Oh well, there is nothing better to do.

Well, maybe there is something better for us than we are doing now. We can toy away this life "Godding" -- doing good, loving and healing people, hearing good news about them, lifting them up. They also are God in distraction, blind as bats to the deity within them wasting in their dissipation. No loss, but maybe we can bring future goodness into their experience and help make this a happier, more pleasant distraction for all of us.

Friday, November 15, 2013

An answer to "Why does God allow suffering?"



"Is there a short answer to the question, 'Why does God allow suffering?'"

My answer: Yes. God allows suffering because he does not know that he can stop it nor how to stop it.

Which raises more questions: Why doesn't God know that he can stop suffering or how to stop suffering?

Because in order to have a certain human's conscious experience, the spirit (or consciousness) of God imagines the conscious experience at the level of that human being, and, becoming that, the spirit annexes the human's brain and dwells there as the human consciousness. 

Yes, God became you, and is now consciously aware only of being human and is NOT conscious of being God. He voluntarily laid aside his divine prerogatives -- the expression of his divine wisdom and power -- in order to wed the soul of the human. The two have become one flesh: the divine consciousness and nature of God and the carnal consciousness and nature of human are now one.

This is what Moses was talking about in the first chapters of Genesis: God formed aboriginal man from the dust of the earth and breathed his spirit of life into him or her, and the man became a living being with the spirit of God within him. That happened to each of us individually. Adam was not the ancient progenitor of the human race; he is the spirit progenitor of each of us individually.

Each of us is God's consciousness "self-ignoranced" of the awareness of being God. We dumbed ourselves down to the level of humanity. We became this level of man's consciousness so that man, whom we have now become one with, may be lifted to the level of God's consciousness when we ascend again. "Who shall ascend but he who descended?" That was us, and we're taking these dudes with us!

We "married" man to save man, but we had to become temporarily ignorant of being God to do it. We had to forget being Life in order to become enjoined with humanity in this experience of death. So it is we, God, who are allowing man to suffer, and we do this because we do not recognize that we are the one God who can stop it.

There is not another God in all the universe besides the one we are from and of. We are the Sent and are stuck with the God who we are, so if we want to stop the suffering in the world, LET'S SMARTEN UP! -- Let's receive the Holy Spirit and learn how to use the power and wisdom of God. Then we can stop the suffering. The ball is in our court -- we just haven't playing the right game!

This teaching is not common in the church because churches are made up of other self-ignoranced consciousnesses. We need to get our ultimate religion "wholesale," that is, directly from God. Learn how to read the Bible correctly and translate the proper names. The “names” are natures and states-of-being we either were, are, or are going to become. The whole Bible is about us and has to do with the psychological.

The characters in the Bible are vehicles for ideas, concepts and principles. Get a better translation of the Bible, such as Victor Alexander's translation from the Aramaic, or at least a better study Bible, such as Ethelbert Bullinger's Companion Bible. They may not hold to my doctrine, but they have been faithful to translate as well as they can what the Bible actually says. Then you yourself can discover what God means by what he says, as the spirit illumines.

I find this message in the Bible as plain as day, but few people believe it. It is so wonderful, so fantastic, they excuse it and make it to mean something else: "Christ in me is the hope of glory? Oh, that must mean something else!"

No, it doesn't.

We read the Bible, but we misread it, because our minds are keyed low. The Bible reads like history (a great mnemonic), and we believe it to be literal and historical because our minds are keyed low. Scripture's meaning is keyed high – much higher than we are used to thinking. The prophets wrote of spiritual dynamics, of consciousness and creative forces. How can we possibly understand scripture's meanings without ourselves being lifted up to its level? We can only be keyed up to God’s level by spiritual experience – he has to raise us up. Seek the living God and find him, become born to awareness from above. Then you can read, learn and "God."

'God' is a verb. God is what we are to DO. We are the Ineffable Most High's ACTION. What does he do? He creates by imagining: "Before the beginning, (the ineffable, Most High) IMAGINED the glorious spirit God of multitudinous spiritual "flamelets" (Hebrew: echad), the Heavens (I think these are minds/brains), and the Earth (physical representation)" (Genesis 1: 1, my translation).

And you, my little flamelet, entered the "heaven" of a human and now dwell here on earth, dumb-down to the level of its organic life plus whatever you have learned in this world. Yet, witness this: what you have imagined, believing, you have made your experience here. Now, remember where you came from and strive to return there.

Jesus said, "Come unto Me" (Matthew 11: 28). He is our imagination attached to our brains in our skulls – "heaven."

The Ineffable dreamed Its creative strength and glory as a "flame" composed of innumerable individual "flamelets." This is real meaning of 'Elohim': "Above the Flames"; that is, God, the strength above the flames of its glory, is manifest in the flames of his glory! Elohim is a singular word compounded with a plural ending – us! The Ineffable is One with myriad living “branches” emanating from it.

The great secret and revelation in Elohim isn't that the Ineffable, the Power above, is the flames; but that "flame" is its method of creating! "Flame" corresponds to the intensity and heat of focused, all-consuming, passionate, imagined desire, hence Adam's "rib." The Most High "so loved the world that It gave Its only Son (the entirety of Its experience in passion), that whatever 'flamelet' thence should enjoin Its experience would awaken to Its creative power and become aware of being It" (sounds like something John said somewhere). This is the process of creation!

The word LORD in Deuteronomy 6: 4 is YHWH in Hebrew, variously translated as Yahweh, Jehovah, Hashem and the LORD (Master/Father), AS THOUGH ITS SUBJECT WERE A SEPARATE BEING. The "word" YHWH, I believe, is actually a picture created from symbolic characters of the Hebrew alphabet which represents the process of the Ineffable's becoming. It is the flow of action undertaken by the Ineffable in imagining Itself into existence. The results of this flow indicates the reality and nature of the Ineffable. Moses called these indicative results "Jethro, -- His abounding excellence."

The New Testament is not a new episode of Israel's history, it is an explanation of the original, Mosaic perspective: Israel, God ruling as man, is Joshua – “Jesus.” The power and the wisdom of the Ineffable which is displayed in the flowing of YHWH is Jesus Christ -- "he hath revealed" (John 1: 18).

Why God doesn't stop suffering is because we are just asking the question instead of becoming the solution. We can imagine to be a world without suffering, and become it! It is given to us to so imagine -- for us to create the peaceable flow of the Ineffable. He said, "Ye are God . . . Arise, O God, for thou shalt inherit all nations!" (Psalm 82: 6, 8).