 |
|
|
|
ONE GOD - MANY NAMES / ONE SON - MANY PATHS / ONE TRUTH - MANY FAITHS |
|
Weekly Message 7/16/2010 The Meaning and Purpose of Life – Part 3 It’s not just perceiving and receiving the goodness and love we’ve talked about, it’s also giving and radiating the goodness and love outward to all in our world. Keep in mind, we have free will and because of having free will, we become responsible for all we create. The wonderful blessings of life won’t happen unless we live a life close in communion to God and we choose these blessings and contribute to their creation. We can use our God given ‘free will’ for good or ill. Life does not tell us what we have to think about. It is out thoughts that precede our words and our words that precede our actions and our actions that become our acts of creating. Why did God grant us free will? Rev. Tom and I have seven children. When I think about being parents to these seven children I think about God being our parent. We as parents want our children to love us, not because they have to, but because they choose too. To make the choice to love us, our children must have free will. We want our children to choose good just as God wants all of us to choose good. As parents we know the choices are our children’s to make (we can hope that we taught them how to make good choices.) As a parent God needs the choice to be ours as well. (He has a unique way of teaching us how to make good choices too.) We choose God in our lives. We choose to live a life with love and joy. In our choices we are responsible for all that happens in our lives.. Let’s think about this for a moment. Because of our ‘free will’ to make choices we indeed become co-creators with God. It behooves us to ‘align’ ourselves with God allowing his energy to flow through us at every moment. Every moment we co-create using God’s energy and light, the source from which all matter is made. Is God’s energy Holy Energy, Holy Spirit, Holy Ghost? This is what we are creating with. Every one of us is constantly creating. Are we doing it responsibly, purposefully and with intent? We are constantly thinking and that is the start of creation. With our ‘free will’ that creation can be good or bad, positive or negative or somewhere on the scale in between. With every thought in every moment we are using divine light and energy to create the world around us. Free will is a huge responsibility. Some of you have heard the term ‘Akasha’ or ‘ Ahashic Record’. Akasha in Sanskrit means ‘primary substance’ that out of which all things are formed. Our Akashic Record is a record of our every thought, word, action, deed. Here’s another word to think about, ‘karma.’ Karma is often called the law of ‘cause and effect.’ How we have used this ‘primary substance’, this ‘energy’ of God is our karma. We are responsible and accountable for all that we create. We are forgiven as we forgive others. God’s grace can transmute our (negative) karma as we acknowledge and understand our past errors. In order for us to understand the consequences of certain things we have done, sometimes it is necessary to physically experience for ourselves what we have done to others. At other times, we can do this mentally with an empathetic consciousness. Either way, it is necessary for us to experience similar circumstances and actions as those we have caused others. Everything that we say, think and do that is good – is God in action – our divine reality. Everything that we say, think and do that is not worthy to be called God/goodness still utilizes God’s divine energy. But these negative actions do not contribute to raising ourselves higher and closer to eternal reality, but take us in the other direction. What we create for others, we create for ourselves. As we continuously qualify God’s energy each moment for good or ill, what we send out eventually returns to us. When we radiate positive and loving feelings and thoughts, we receive the many benefits, rewards an blessings. Our lives are filled with joy, love, abundance and more. Fortunately, God’s grace does not always require us to suffer as much as we have caused others to suffer, in our ignorance or purposeful harming of others. We are responsible, however, for learning from these experiences and transmuting some portion of the energy we have misqualified. Trust in divine justice. Even if justice is not witnessed on earth, know that justice is always eventually served. I ask each and every one of us as ministers, “Are we manifesting a Divine plan?” Is each and every one of us responsible for one or more projects that only we can do to be of service to God and to our neighbors, our fellow man. The time that each of us spends on his or her divine plan is a joy and a passion, for it involves doing something that inspires us. Life itself affirms ‘we are responsible.’ Christianity affirms ‘we are responsible’: Galatians 6:7: “Be not deceives; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Matthew 16:27: “He shall reward every man according to his works.” Matthew 5:16: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your father which is in heaven.” 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Islam affirms ‘we are responsible’: Qur’an 17:13-15: “And We have made every man’s action to cling to his neck, and We shall bring forth to him on the day of Resurrection a book which he will find wide open. Read thy book. Thine own soul is sufficient as a reckoner against thee this day. Whoever goes aright, for his own soul does he go aright; and whoever goes astray, to its detriment only does he go stray. And no bearer of a burden can bear the burden of another.” Qur’an 82:10 - 12: “And surely there are keepers over you, honourable recorders, they know what you do.” Qur’an 41:46: “Whoever does good, it is for his own soul; and whoever does evil, it is against it. And thy Lord is not in the least unjust to the servants.” Judaism affirms ‘we are responsible’: (Tanakh) Proverbs 24:12: “If you say, “We knew noting of it,” surely He who fathoms hearts will discern (the truth), He who watches over your life will know it, and he will pay each man as he deserves.” (Tanakh) Psalms 62:12-13: “One thing God has spoken; two things have I heard: that might belongs to God, and faithfulness is Yours, O Lord, to reward each man according to his deeds.” (Tanakh) Proverbs 28:6: “Better is a poor man that lives blamelessly than a rich man whose ways are crooked.” Hinduism affirms ‘we are responsible’: The Laws of Manu 4:240: “Single is each being born; single it dies; single it enjoys the rewards of its virtue; single it suffers the punishment of its sin.” The Bhagavad
Gita, Chapter 16: “Godly qualities lead to liberation; godless to bondage.” The Bhagavad
Gita, Chapter 7: “The sinner, the ignorant, the vile, deprived of spiritual perception by the glamour of Illusion, and he who pursues godless life –none of them shall find Me.” Buddhism affirms ‘we are responsible’: The Dhammapada 116 - 118: “Make haste in doing good; check your mind from evil; for the mind of him who is slow in doing meritorious actions delights in evil. Should a person commit evil, he should not do it again and again; he should not find pleasure therein: painful is the accumulation of evil. Should a person perform a meritorious action, he should do it again and again; he should find pleasure therein: blissful is the accumulation of merit.” The Samyutta-Nikaya 42:
“But every deed a man performs, with body, or with voice, or mind. It is this that he can call his own, this with him to take as he goes hence. This is what follows after him, and like a shadow ne’er departs. Let all, then, noble deeds perform, A treasure-store for future wealth; For merit gained this life within, wil yield a blessing in the next.” Taoism affirms ‘we are responsible’: Tao Teh
Ching, chapter 51: “Tao gives them life, virtue nurses them, matter shapes them, environment perfects them. Therefore all things without exception worship Tao and do homage to Virtue. They have not been commanded to worship Tao and do homage to Virtue, but they always do spontaneously. It is Tao that gives them life: It is Virtue that nurses them, grows them, fosters them, shelters them, comforts them, nourishes them, and covers them under her wings.” Tao Teh
Ching, chapter 54: “Cultivate Virtue in your own person, And it becomes a genuine part of you. Cultivate it in the family, And it will abide. Cultivate it in the community, And it will live and grow. Cultivate it in the state, And it will flourish abundantly. Cultivate it in the world, And it will become universal.” Confucianism affirms ‘we are responsible’: Confucian Analects, book 4: “The Master said, “Shan, my doctrine is that of an all-pervading unity.” The disciple Tsang replied, “Yes.” The Master went out and the other disciple asked, saying, “What do his words mean?” Tsang said, “The doctrine of our master is to be true to the principles – of our nature and the benevolent exercise of them to others – this and nothing more.” Confucian Analects, book 15: “The Master said, “What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the mean man seeks is in others.” The Doctrine of the Mean: “Only by perfect virtue can the perfect path, in all its courses, be made a fact.” Life is meant to be good, especially when we share it with God. Despite outward appearances of negativity and suffering in the world, it is essential to remember that with God comes goodness. Love is the ultimate goal. This must be known and demonstrated for the conscious increase of Love on earth – despite all appearances and situations. We are responsible for what we do as well as what we were supposed to do but failed to do (acts of commission and omission.) A record is kept of our every thought, word and deed. We are accountable for this record. God wants us to live in a very loving way. We will make errors along the way, and we will receive much forgiveness and grace for our errors to the degree that we offer grace and forgiveness to others who wrong us.
|
