In mystical matters, I'm a skeptic! I test everything. I especially doubt and test my own spiritual experiences. It's too easy to deceive ourselves into thinking more highly of our spiritual states and experiences than they really are. I also have seasoned spiritual advisors who help to keep me accountable. If something can't be examined, if it's a deep secret entrusted to few, or too holy, your discerner should be standing straight up and the warning bells going off.
Jesus always led from the bottom up. He never lorded it over anybody, even when he was revealing peoples hearts and motives. Jesus did all his miracles right where he found himself. Wide open accountability. So should all pastors, priests, spiritual masters, prophets, and leaders.
We serve from humility, the lowest up, bathing them with honor, not from the platform down. It took the foolish humility of St. Francis to restore humility back to the Catholic Church at a time they were dying from the inside out. It' not too light a statement to say that if is wasn't for St Francis, there would be no Roman Catholic Church today. We have such a Pope in Francis who's bringing back that same spirit of humility in such a time as this.
For me, it happens every time. I'll be walking in a mystical experience with God, sometimes it feels like I'm walking in an expansive state, timeless. That's when it hits me. Is this psychosomatic? Am I creating this? And God will say, or show me something profoundly simple that floors me.
You see, only God can answer our deepest doubts. Remember Job. Let me repeat it: Only God's presence will ever answer our deepest doubts.
It's not wrong to have doubts. In fact, it's part of the discerning process. It's how we learn to discern. We question. Our learning curve is to ask good questions.
Here's my story. I was burned slap out of 40 years of failure after failure in the church. I learned, but I couldn't go on, something had to change. I was leaving for good. That's when I felt God tell me to get back in touch with my mystic roots and go back into Buddhism as a Believer. That went over like a led balloon. So I fought with God over that one for 5 long years.
So I was back, and one day I was doing a meditation practice called Great Doubt. It's when you doubt everything. You doubt God. That there ever was a God. You doubt your beliefs. You doubt yourself. Your heart. Your motives. You doubt your doubts. And then, when there's nothing left. When you're about to disappear as a being. You step out in faith. It's likened to stepping off a hundred foot cliff or a fifty foot pole. An act of total surrender.
So I stepped out into this transcendental fog, like a mist swirling around me, deafening in expansive stillness. I was wide open not knowing what to expect. But I was there, wherever there is. I hadn't fallen into endless nothingness. Then I saw it. It was like smiling eyes breaking through the swirling clouds. There came Jesus, striding up to me with open arms and a hug of welcoming acceptance and love like I've never felt before. I had found my way back. Swallowed up in the mystery of God. I'm still there.
So I encourage you to doubt, and test and taste and see. God waits to be examined and found true. Such is true humility.
Jesus always led from the bottom up. He never lorded it over anybody, even when he was revealing peoples hearts and motives. Jesus did all his miracles right where he found himself. Wide open accountability. So should all pastors, priests, spiritual masters, prophets, and leaders.
We serve from humility, the lowest up, bathing them with honor, not from the platform down. It took the foolish humility of St. Francis to restore humility back to the Catholic Church at a time they were dying from the inside out. It' not too light a statement to say that if is wasn't for St Francis, there would be no Roman Catholic Church today. We have such a Pope in Francis who's bringing back that same spirit of humility in such a time as this.
For me, it happens every time. I'll be walking in a mystical experience with God, sometimes it feels like I'm walking in an expansive state, timeless. That's when it hits me. Is this psychosomatic? Am I creating this? And God will say, or show me something profoundly simple that floors me.
You see, only God can answer our deepest doubts. Remember Job. Let me repeat it: Only God's presence will ever answer our deepest doubts.
It's not wrong to have doubts. In fact, it's part of the discerning process. It's how we learn to discern. We question. Our learning curve is to ask good questions.
Here's my story. I was burned slap out of 40 years of failure after failure in the church. I learned, but I couldn't go on, something had to change. I was leaving for good. That's when I felt God tell me to get back in touch with my mystic roots and go back into Buddhism as a Believer. That went over like a led balloon. So I fought with God over that one for 5 long years.
So I was back, and one day I was doing a meditation practice called Great Doubt. It's when you doubt everything. You doubt God. That there ever was a God. You doubt your beliefs. You doubt yourself. Your heart. Your motives. You doubt your doubts. And then, when there's nothing left. When you're about to disappear as a being. You step out in faith. It's likened to stepping off a hundred foot cliff or a fifty foot pole. An act of total surrender.
So I stepped out into this transcendental fog, like a mist swirling around me, deafening in expansive stillness. I was wide open not knowing what to expect. But I was there, wherever there is. I hadn't fallen into endless nothingness. Then I saw it. It was like smiling eyes breaking through the swirling clouds. There came Jesus, striding up to me with open arms and a hug of welcoming acceptance and love like I've never felt before. I had found my way back. Swallowed up in the mystery of God. I'm still there.
So I encourage you to doubt, and test and taste and see. God waits to be examined and found true. Such is true humility.
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