Choosing Your Words Carefully

Mark Twain once said, "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is like the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. So...choose your words carefully today.

The Beauty of Nature

Dinner tonight at a pristine little restaurant on the Ohio River. Enroute, we were graced by nature itself. What a beautiful world this truly is.

Favorite Quote from Maya Angelou

"The greatest agony is bearing an untold story inside of you."

Part Two: Enoch, Archetype of the Sacred Art

Part Two

Enoch: Archetype of the Sacred Art

“And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.”
-- Genesis 5:5

“An infinite God...does not distribute himself that each may have a part, but to each one he gives all of himself as fully as if there were no others.”
-- A. W. Tozer

“The truth is, God talks to everybody.”
--From Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch

A God-awakened life is a transformational shift in human consciousness that brings the sacred Presence into immediate awareness. In this awakened state, one knows there is an Intelligence beneath, behind, beyond, but also, within all living things. This awareness is not hypothetical or speculative. To the contrary, in the awakened state, awareness of this Presence is personal and private. The ever-present sense of Presence causes everything to look different to the awakened person precisely because this person is waking up to what is really real—not what’s seen, but what’s unseen. In this sense, it is very personal. Saint Paul put it beautifully: “The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever.”[1]

If you are waking up, a shift is taking place in your consciousness. You are becoming more and more aware of yourself—that is, your own feelings, hopes and dreams, disappointments and failures, and there is an intense acceptance of it all. You feel at peace with yourself and your purpose in this world—which is, of course, to wake up to the Divine Presence. But, this is not something you can talk to others about very easily. Few would understand anyway. So, in this sense, there’s a confidential nature to the inner transformation you are experiencing.

You are ending the madness of looking for yourself outside yourself—in things, relationships, a career, a religious belief system, and so on. You know that any of these may add richness to your life journey, but none of them is your life. Furthermore, you sense a deep connectedness to all sentient beings. The prejudices, stereotypes, opinions, and beliefs about others, part of your conditioned upbringing, are coming into the light of your consciousness. What needs changing, changes. What needs to disappear fades away. What needs to expand does so, too. None of it happens overnight but, on your spiritual path, you are yourself amazed at how the landscape of your thinking, feeling, and living change on this journey. You are living the life Jesus described as “abundant.”[2]

The abundant, God-aware life is flawlessly illustrated in the life of Enoch, an enlightened spiritual master who lived hundreds, perhaps even thousands of years ago. Early Jewish and Christian saints, including many of the early Church Fathers, regarded Enoch as an enlightened soul whose writings were both sacred and inspired. In spite of this widespread reverence, however, by the fourth century, his writings had been excluded from the Canon of Scripture or what we know as the Bible today. This is most regrettable because Enoch’s example of an enlightened life holds the secret to life and death. Enoch lived as God desires all to live. He died as God desires all to die. But, because his writings have not been widely accessible, his example has been virtually hidden from countless generations.

Enoch has much to share with us. Our Jewish anscestors knew this, which is why, long before Jesus, as well as long after him, Jewish and Christian saints revered him, underscored by the fact that there are only two persons in the Bible credited with having “walked with God.” They are Noah and Enoch. That alone is provocative enough to warrant an investigation.

To walk with God.

What does that mean? Is this simply an anthropomorphic way of describing a spiritual life? It is this, of course. But, it is manifestly more than this, too. The implication is that, between Enoch and God, a depth of intimacy existed, unknown to almost everyone else.

[1] 2 Corinthians 4:18
[2] John 10:10, KJV

YOUR GUIDE

When the voice within you is a greater guide than the opinions around you, then you have begun to live...and to enjoy living. Author Unknown

Excerpt # 1=3 from upcoming book THE ENOCH FACTOR: SACRED ART OF KNOWING GOD

“Do not believe in anything simply because you heard it…because it is spoken or rumored by many…found written in your religious books…Do not believe in traditions just because they have been handed down…But, after observation and analysis, when you find anything that agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”
--Buddha (c. 563 BCE – c. 483 BCE)

Excerpt # 2 from upcoming book THE ENOCH FACTOR: SACRED ART OF KNOWING GOD

From the first day I met Enoch, and that was some thirty years ago now, I have felt drawn to him, fascinated by the mysterious life he lived. A few times, I’ve actually sensed his spirit with me. That will explain my acknowledgement at the front of this book. Although it may seem strange to some readers, a psychic would understand what I’m saying. Do not get me wrong, however. It’s not like I’ve had conversations with Enoch or witnessed an apparition of him. Instead, I have just been aware of his presence, much like being aware of another’s presence in the same room with you. You might not be in conversation with the person, but you know he or she is there. Perhaps it’s a vibrational sensation you feel—their energy field, I suppose.

Maybe you’ve had an experience like this yourself—the kind of experience the psychologist Abraham Maslow called a “peak experience.” Whenever I do, the sensations may not last very long but, in the instant they occur, it’s as if time momentarily freezes. If you know what I’m talking about, or have had such an experience yourself, my guess is you’ve said little about it to anyone else. Well, I understand and, no, you haven’t lost your mind. The experience is real. I know for such has happened to me on more than one occasion.

In the months that followed my father’s death, for example, I had a couple of encounters like this. While a psychologist might be inclined to suggest that what I experienced was a natural consequence of a grieving heart, I don’t buy it. It is true I grieved my father’s passing. But, I can not dismiss what happened to me as a mere trick of a mourning mind. I will always believe my father’s spirit was present with me.

On one of those occasions, I was driving down a busy street in the middle of a torrential downpour. It had been but a few months since we said our last good-byes to Dad and buried his body at Cave Hill Cemetery. As I drove, I strained to see the road, in spite of the fact that the windshield wipers were working overtime. All of a sudden, I had this sensation that my Dad was occupying the passenger seat beside me. The aura of his presence was so pervasive, I was overcome with emotion. I had no choice, therefore, but to steer the car to the shoulder of the road. When it came to a stop, I turned and looked, certain that I would see Dad sitting right beside me. But, of course, he was not. Almost as quickly as the sensation surfaced, it subsided.

Enoch has never spoken to me, although I would not be alarmed if he did. Mystical, inexplicable things like this no longer frighten me. Nor do they seem odd or all that out-of-the-ordinary. The unseen, spiritual world may be more real than the material world we see.

Excerpt # 1 from upcoming book THE ENOCH FACTOR: SACRED ART OF KNOWING GOD

Introduction:

“The most important matter in life is your relationship to the Infinite.”
-- Author Unknown

“You were born to walk with God; why would you walk alone?”
--Author

“The yearning to be reunited with the Ground of Being…seems to be rooted in human consciousness, perhaps even encoded in our DNA.”
--from “Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Lao Tzu,” by Richard Hooper

This book is about knowing God. It is not a defense for the existence of God, however. If that’s the type of book you’re looking for, then you’ll need to go somewhere else. There are plenty of them around. Frankly, I find such books amusing. What’s the point of arguing for God’s existence when it is as impossible to prove he does as it is to prove he doesn’t? It’s like debating about whether there’s intelligent life on other planets. Either there is or there isn’t. But, until there’s an indisputable encounter it’s one person’s word against another and, too often, that just turns into needless debate.

One thing is for certain, an encounter with a UFO will have to be more believable than some of the preposterous stories reported so far. I recently saw somewhere—maybe it was YouTube, I don’t remember. But, somebody videotaped a UFO as it streaked like lightning across the Mojave sky at midnight. Have you ever noticed that none of these pictures are ever clear or in focus? The tale of temporary alien abduction that accompanied these fuzzy video images was equally unclear and unbelievable.

As for the existence of God, my own suspicion is that the real reason why people write books that try to prove God exists is because they are secretly afraid he doesn’t.