The Paradox of Love and Presence
It’s hard to imagine
Ever wishing we had loved any less.
Getting to the end of our lives
and not regretting being asleep most of the time.
To presence and the true source of love that comes from beyond us all.
Lost in fear and anger and the dramas which are as transitory as soap operas,
But which keep us asleep to reality
as we swap it for illusion over and over again at the swap meet of our souls.
Maybe none of it would matter,
If time wasn’t a limiting factor.
But it’s trippy to think about how difficult it is to actually be present in our own lives.
How little true presence
we see reflected back at us,
But rather a tail spin of division and drama,
Wrapped in the fake glamor of escapism and hedonism.
The devil always out here vying for control.
But over all of it,
And underneath it,
And throughout it,
God resonates the true heart of love.
He pushes to glow us up from inside.
His pushing though is the pain of the wrong way down the road.
Jesus came here to show us how it’s done,
And his example got him crucified.
Which shows the kind of world we are in.
The upside down.
And yet God is here,
And so is love,
And those that we could have loved more,
Including ourselves.
Every now and again
we have those moments of presence,
When we see through all the distractions and debris and straight into the heart of the matter.
Our whole past comes around us,
Like a theater troop whose chief design was the evolution of your soul.
And even with that troop
to the enemies you say,
“I wish I would appreciated you more.”
(For did they not push us to dig deeper?)
And of course to the loves you had…
We all could have loved more,
Been more present,
Had more gratitude for the gift of every single day.
But now this is veering off into emotion,
Nostalgia and regret,
And none of those are any good.
But in a way how can we not regret?
And yet still it’s useless to spend much time there,
Except in as much as it can help us shape our experience of the now.
To be more present.
Anchors of Divine Reality: Presence and Purpose
Presence and purpose,
Are our anchors to our divine reality.
To be present or the observer of our own mind space or thoughts,
Is to be at least in part liberated from them.
And as thoughts are largely psychological stumbling blocks from the disjointed childhoods all of us have had,
Or demonic possession if you believe what the Bible says that our battle is with principalities and not with flesh and blood,
We can’t negotiate with deep psychological wounds or with demons (however you want to frame it),
We can only shine the light of our awareness on those things,
And pray to God that it is a healing light,
Which can help us remain in his presence,
And in that presence,
Be revealed to our purpose,
As our purpose is being revealed to us.
Purpose is not optional.
Either we find it in presence and in the light of God,
Or we are given it by demons and broken psychologies.
Or as Bob Dylan puts it,
“It may be the devil or it may be the lord,
But you know you gotta serve somebody.”
There is no neutral ground.
And very narrow is the path,
Full of slings and arrows,
And scary monsters telling us to turn back.
The world will tell you to take it easy,
And provide you with an endless array of distractions.
Just as it will call anyone pointing basic reality,
Crazy.
And yes, reality can be abstract,
But the truth never is.
It sits there like an annoying beacon of absolute impenetrable light,
Singing a holy song in silence,
Waiting for you to belong to it.
As it will never belong to you,
But rather present itself as an opportunity to be served by you,
If you should be so lucky to overcome your anger enough to even recognize what it is.
The Journey Toward True Purpose
But purpose we must find here.
Victor Frankel has all the best things to say about it:
“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”
And it’s true that without purpose life becomes unbearable.
But in our modern times,
The unbearable has gotten easier to bear.
In Frankel’s day you couldn’t as easily drown out the urging or the voice of your soul.
Sure people could drink themselves into oblivion,
But back then the avenues of escape were more obvious and extreme,
And harder to justify without acknowledging that one had given up in total.
These days,
You can scroll yourself into oblivion all while keeping your so-called wits about you.
The escape routes have become slicker,
Less overtly destructive,
And so much easier to hide from everyone else,
Including ourselves.
But the end result is the same.
Getting to the end of your life and realizing,
You were never really there at all.
You never arrived until the fade out.
Escaping the Nightmare: Embracing Love and Awareness
So how do we avoid that nightmare scenario that perhaps on some level most of us are doomed for?
How do we make sure we love ourselves and the people who populate our lives and the moments that make up our lives enough, or well, or perfectly?
Here’s a list I find helpful:
- Forgiveness
- Presence/Awareness
- Prayer
- Purpose
- Consistency
- Vision (or positive imagination)
1. Forgiveness: The First Step to Liberation
Letting go of anger
and forgiving means
we can escape the entanglement of our ego or thought-based identification, which is the same as being asleep to our reality or trading our reality in for illusion.
Jesus says in order for us to be forgiven, we have to forgive.
This is when our own sinful nature can come in and help us.
Because even being vaguely honest with ourselves, it’s hard to deny that we ourselves need to be forgiven for much.
This should help us forgive others depending on how trapped by our own egos (or demonic influence) we are.
But hopefully (and for argument’s sake, let’s assume) that we are at the level that we know we also need to be forgiven.
Still, actually forgiving is no small deal.
Is forgiveness even in our power?
Is it a spirit?
Lord knows many can say they have forgiven while still harboring all kinds of rage and resentment.
So for me, forgiveness is a continual work in progress,
a daily practice utilizing the ho’oponopono prayer mantra of total responsibility, empowerment, and self-accountability.
Whenever a reason for resentment arrives (And let’s face it, they arrive all the time until they don’t), for instance,
if you feel you’ve been betrayed, past, present, or future,
you simply say to that spirit of betrayal,
“I love you, I’m sorry, please forgive me, and thank you.”
And you repeat the mantra where the resentment would fester.
The idea simply is that whatever happens in our field of consciousness belongs in total to us.
We can imagine someone else doing something to us, and in a typical framework of so-called reality, it could even appear that way.
But in spiritual terms,
we have brought that situation into our lives, and therefore the responsibility is solely our own.
The spirit loves this.
The ego hates it.
The ego wants to dig into resentment and tell a story of betrayal to anyone that will listen. And plenty will listen.
Egos love egos
going haywire, and there are no shortages of those to choose from.
But all that does is leave you in a tailspin of useless drama, reinforcing thought-based identification, trading presence for illusion, and keeping you out of peace, out of purpose, out of the kingdom of heaven,
and completely insane.
But we follow the deeper wisdom of the spirit and allow the power of the Ho’oponopono mantra/prayer to work its spiritual magic.
We become like ninjas
on the spiritual battlefield of the spirit war we are all in.
Or we become NEO in the Matrix
when the bullets flying at him simply stopped in mid-air and fell to the ground.
I’ve had as much anger as anyone, and I can attest that this strange little prayer is a superpower in the field of forgiveness.
Anger itself is a spirit looking for expression. If we invite it into our domain, if we entertain it, if we give it hors d’oeuvres and martinis, the level of destruction it can create in our lives is unparalleled.
That’s why forgiveness is step one. Because without forgiveness, presence is merely a concept that sounds like hogwash.
It’s important to notice that spiritual forces are in fact vying for control over souls.
For many, that will sound matter of fact. And for others, that will sound like woo-woo nonsense.
But the truth of it doesn’t care how it sounds. And with a little honest personal investigation, it’s hard to deny that our souls are the prize of a spirit war.
One side of which being anger,
the other side forgiveness.
When framed that way, investing daily time working on forgiveness just makes all the pragmatic sense in the world.
And it works. Ho’oponopono. Starting with our mothers and fathers, and then on up through every relationship we’ve ever had.
And in cases where the other party is unreasonable, there is never a need to let another know you are forgiving them.
Often that just leads to more madness. But within, holding them in your heart and mind and saying that prayer over and over again until the love of God wells up inside, until the spirit of forgiveness allows you to transcend the ego.
This is when step two is ready to begin.
2. Presence: Cultivating Our True Essence
Making a practice of presence,
The power of now,
The space of no thought,
Non-duality.
Every guru worth his salt makes this his primary teaching;
Because there’s really no way around it.
Being present,
Knowing God,
Opening the space for healing and God’s revelations,
Lifting us to a place of purpose,
But not centered in the ego,
Because this place of presence can only be arrived at outside of the ego.
The self kicks and screams on the way to peace,
Because the nature of the self is disruption,
The self is reinforced by conflict and despair.
In order to make it to presence and remain there,
The self and the story of the self,
And the fantasy of the importance of the self,
Has to be shattered.
To die of self and be born again of the father.
This, of course, is a process,
And at the same time, a graceful transcendent happening,
But also a work in progress as the dying self reasserts itself,
Comes back like a zombie in some B-grade version of your life,
Only to reinforce the non-reality of it all.
The self we built as a defense against a life,
Of inevitable traumas of childhood,
And being flung into an insane asylum of a world,
That mostly barters in cruelty.
It’s no wonder we built an illusion to live within,
And it’s no wonder that we are terrified to let it go.
I have a daughter, and I watch as her own imagination blossoms her into a self-protective shell.
I see it as a positive garden for future dreams,
But also a potential minefield for fear to fester.
And of course, the imagination isn’t all bad.
It’s the vehicle for the co-creation of our lives with God,
But only if we forgive and practice presence.
Outside of that, the imagination is Satan’s playground and nightmare machine,
The springboard for fear, chaos, and phony emotions.
Further motivation to forgiveness and the practice of presence is to access and utilize the power of our imagination for a force of good,
To build a life of purpose and dreams coming true. Dreams we didn’t even know we could have.
So just as forgiveness needs to be a daily practice,
It can beeline and automatically will beeline into a practice of presence.
Because in the light of forgiveness,
There is no place to build an existence on thought-based identification.
The energy and pressure from thoughts deflate into a natural and peaceful presence,
And even peace.
Where identifying with presence becomes more and more natural or second nature,
To the point where relapses of thought-based identification act as an alarm bell that you’ve gone back to sleep,
That some hidden resentment has revealed itself.
And so you simply have a habit of awareness to thoughts,
Springing you back into the steps of presence.
Hooponopono and a quiet space to wake back up into reality and in the presence of God.
Another way of praying ceaselessly,
Peace is a prayer.
There can be no peace without presence,
There can be no presence without God,
And so peace itself is kind of the ultimate prayer,
Or the place where you become the prayer.
Which leads us to
- Prayer: Embracing Divine Connection
When in presence,
It becomes natural to say thank you.
Without anger or drama,
There really is only love and gratitude.
Love coming from the Father,
And gratitude coming from us.
In a way, gratitude is the closest we can get to cultivating love from within.
Gratitude being the love that’s coming from us to Him,
As we are in presence and open to receiving the healing love from Him.
Asking Him to shape our lives,
To give us purpose,
To show us the way.
As we can only really be in that space from the death of our egos.
We surrender to Him and invite Him to work through us,
We invite Him to become our soul,
Or to utilize our lives for His purpose.
We find ourselves in deep communion with our Father,
And no earthly pleasure comes close to this.
It becomes homebase.
To the degree that when we lapse into ego-based consciousness again,
We feel homeless because we are.
The old reality becomes increasingly more painful and more difficult to exist within.
Distraction and sin become more absurd,
And anger (any amount) becomes a three-alarm fire you can’t take seriously and a calling for self-investigation and forgiveness work rather than a springboard for drama.
It’s like a cocoon is broken and there’s no going back.
The wings of awareness have opened,
And for a time, you may still dream of being a caterpillar.
You may even hide your wings and pretend to be one for old times’ sake.
But the truth is, once you are born again,
The old you is dead and gone.
Maybe you bring him to a party every once in a while like Weekend at Bernie’s.
But the truth is, nothing is more interesting or as expansive as presence with God,
And the gift of His love blooming through you,
And the shape your life takes as a result.
4. Purpose: Finding Meaning Beyond the Ego
The ego had designs on what and who it was we were to become.
It had plans and a morning routine.
It was completely self-sufficient and was gonna make it all happen.
It oscillated between getting things done and the misery of not doing enough.
Sometimes it was proud and sometimes ashamed,
And it didn’t really care just as long as you didn’t question it as the ultimate reality.
And like any toxic relationship, it operated on a sweet-mean cycle.
Sometimes it told you that you were doing great,
And soon the world will know how great you are.
And sometimes it shamed you into years of depression,
Bashing you over the head with memories of the failures of the past,
While feeding you nightmares about a catastrophic future.
Many a night spent negotiating with the terrorist within,
Asking the imagination to paint pretty pictures as you read books or watched videos about the power of positive thinking.
Maybe being able to pull off a couple of weeks of positive visualization,
Until sin or anger or both sent the mind haywire and you descend into a mind full of garbage yet again.
This time with the added beat down of knowing you messed up the power of positive thinking.
You couldn’t even do that right.
As smiling YouTubers told you how easy it was from their apparently crazily successful lives.
Feeding into the lashings you gave yourself for being a failure yet again.
With promises to turn it all around and so begins the negotiations with an insane asylum for a mind.
Because no matter what’s happening on the outside,
Thought identification is hell on earth.
Identifying yourself as the protective character you became (which only exists on the level of thought) to protect your authentic self,
Can only lead to misery.
And thank God for that because it’s only in that misery that we moved to investigate further.
If it wasn’t miserable,
We would never escape it.
We would never question it.
We would never seek presence outside of it.
So as bad as that misery is,
When you’re living through it,
We can only thank God for it.
And perhaps begin to see that misery as one of God’s greatest gifts.
All that said,
On the other side of ego-based identity,
We still have motivation.
We still have a will and presence in and of ourselves.
We still have a purpose that requires ego in its healthy state to egg it along,
And requires imagination in its healthy state to build and bolster.
The difference is the place our sense of purpose arrives from.
If it’s from the ego,
Or the mind,
Or thoughts,
Its nature can’t help but be fear-based.
And what kind of garden grows with soil made of fear?
Alternatively, if our purpose comes from revelation arising out of presence,
It has a whole different character altogether.
It’s coming from love (His not ours),
And from the natural prayer that arrives from us all in that state,
Which is:
Help me be of service,
Help me add value to the lives of others,
Put me where you would have me be,
Help me to operate from your love,
Help me to forgive and be present,
And keep revealing what you would have me do and become.
If that is the springboard for your actions,
If that is in the heart and mind,
Then the ego is tamed beneath all that,
And the healthy expression of ego can arise.
None of these things are evil in and of themselves.
But they become that way when exaggerated and totally out of balance.
The imagination and the ego are powerful forces.
If allowed to dominate the self,
They create a nightmarish world of misery.
If tamed and utilized from a consciousness rooted in God’s revelation and putting presence and God first,
They become invaluable tools the Holy Spirit can utilize for His vision.
Purpose will arrive.
For we all need purpose to survive.
And perhaps on the transition from ego-based to spirit-based, there is a period of feeling lost.
But God is shaking and healing the self to bring something to humanity beyond the self.
Faith is needed before the wings appear.
(Faith is needed before the wings appear.
For love to thrive,
In presence, we are clear.
The ego doomed,
To scatter here.
Faith is needed before the wings appear.)
5. Consistency/Organization: Navigating Life Post-Ego Transformation
Based on presence, the ego can come back onboard (careful about inviting him).
When the ego first shatters from thought-based reality to presence-based,
It disappears completely and gives way to peace,
And a sense of rest from a lifetime of torture that really is mind-blowing.
It’s easy to think you will never do anything else again,
As the enjoyment of simply being is more than enough,
And this lasts for months.
On the other side of a collapsing ego is bliss,
And the sense from the presence of God that all else will be fine.
You want for nothing,
You dream for nothing,
You hope for nothing,
Because you are nothing,
And finally, everything.
(And you wonder if you are deluded and if this state is permanent? Yes and no. Or if you can lose it? Yes and no.)
It’s actually scary but the fear doesn’t stick,
Because it can’t survive in the vortex of peace you have become.
Whenever anything resembling fear shows up,
You simply practice presence and realize that in the present moment,
In the now, there is no need for anything,
And now is all there is.
There is no need for striving,
Or for goals.
And when you think about it, your relationship with striving and goals had always been rooted in fear,
So it only stands to reason that you would have no real way of relating to things like “goals.”
When born for the first time into His presence,
Of course, healing will need to occur,
And just like the ego itself,
Your relationship with goals and motivation will be built up again from the ground.
All this takes time,
It’s not instant.
There was a lifetime or multiple lifetimes of out of balance and crazy ways of going about goals and dreams,
Often they were merely a fantasy to get the love and validation we never got from our parents,
They were illusions rooted in fear and motivated by unmet needs which traumatized us,
How was that ever going to succeed?
Even if you so-called “succeeded,”
It wouldn’t have been success,
How many stories are there of people killing themselves or overdosing at the height of worldly success?
You don’t need a master’s degree in psychology to figure out why,
Chasing a dream that turned out to be a lie.
But when we are born again into presence,
And after a significant time of healing and rebuilding,
A sense of purpose does arise,
A sense of work that needs to be done,
Not rooted this time in the ego,
But arriving out of that consistent work we do, coming to presence again and again.
(Not to mention we have the business of surviving to do.)
Our ego becomes like a defragmented computer,
There is an ease of use.
It’s a good soldier in terms of telling you things like,
“Hey, let’s get up early and get that writing done.”
“Let’s move the wake-up time a couple of hours earlier,
And let’s prioritize goals in order of importance of things we need to get done.”
It’s pragmatic and on point.
It’s not rooted in fear and shame,
It’s not hoodwinking you into a story about how everyone is gonna love you,
Or hate you.
You already know all of that stuff is nonsense, and you don’t care.
You want to succeed, but you don’t need success,
You already are complete.
You’re not coming from a deficit,
And producing like a madman in panic.
But you understand you have a calling,
And goals arriving from that calling,
Being called in on God’s revelation hotline.
And so in the game of life, it becomes a fun challenge to overcome distraction,
And negative habits,
(Which by the way are still there, although ever less so and less demanding.)
It’s not like you just wake up perfect.
You had an entire life of building and surviving on bad habits. They don’t just disappear when the ego dies,
They just become a lot less powerful and way more clear.
So the ego is employed this way,
Like a garage that’s a mess and full of dust and clutter.
One day at a time, you get to organizing,
Clean a little bit here,
Clean a little bit there,
And pretty soon you’re operating at full capacity.
Thoughts will come in and tell you that because it’s not all instantaneous, that it’s all nonsense and that you are the same broken piece of crap you always were,
Merely deluding yourself.
But you will laugh at that flagrant and basic, and ultimately harmless attempt to hoodwink you out of presence.
It’s the devil’s last gasp.
He knows it’s hopeless but that won’t stop him from trying.
6. Vision: Harnessing Our Divine Imagination
Vision or imagination,
That’s the superpower.
Well… God is the superpower,
But imagination is like a tiny slice of God power we get to wield.
With great power comes great responsibility.
And when we are rooted in a fractured ego as our self-identity,
The imagination, by and large, is a nightmare machine.
You could say it was nothing but that,
But that’s not true.
We only have to look at all the great works of art, music, and literature to know that,
Humanity, even in a fractured state, is capable of tapping into the divine,
Is capable of making great works of art.
And so the imagination (which is where it springs from)
Can’t be entirely discounted.
However, in the field of building a happy existence, it pretty much can be.
Yeah, Van Gogh could paint timeless and immortal masterpieces, but that didn’t stop him from cutting off an ear and shooting himself in the stomach.
The myth of the tortured artist,
Who made great works but lived an awful life, are more common than ants on an anthill.
So much so, they don’t need recalling or retelling.
But just to say, the imagination is an interesting beast indeed.
And like the ego,
And like all aspects, it also undergoes a significant shift when we are born again into presence.
In short, it becomes our friend.
And like any friend, it is multifaceted, so of course, it cannot just be trusted in full.
It requires monitoring and maintenance.
But when it’s employed from the station of a sound mind,
Rooted in presence,
With the right-sized ego acting as the utility man,
Then the imagination becomes a vision machine,
No longer able or motivated to fill you with nightmares.
Its power can be utilized to build visions of the future you actually want and the future God wants for you.
Not so much the power of positive thinking,
As it’s becoming aligned with God’s vision for us,
Seeking that vision and playing that vision back in our own internal vision or imagination.
Positive visualization becomes almost matter of fact when living within the confines of a clear mind rooted in presence.
