All hail the Age of Aquarius?

Question

I need some ideas for the New Church for the next 2000 years

Answer 1

I am thinking about this too. My theory is a Ministry that highlights the similarities in all of the earth religions. Not a new, stand alone faith, perhaps, but something seperate that can be a spiritual guide when needed and not a ball and chain when it is not so much needed. An organization that can mobilize a community on line, thereby alleviating the need for an organized religion to have a financial focus (since a web site can be maintained inexpensively with volunteers and low hosting charges).

I have even started it, but I am stuck. Email me if you are interested in talking about this more. Peace!

Answer 2

God is not elsewhere. If you would penetrate and see through the things that you put in front of yourself, through our own tendencies, you would see directly what is present, which pervades all space and every atom. If you could penetrate what is before you, if you could break through the obstructions of your own self-contraction, you would see this profundity in the present.

All of space contains all of the Truth. Every fraction of matter and every part of light, if penetrated, reveals the Absolute. That which is to be Realized is absolutely and eternally Present, and Omnipresent, All-Pervading. It need not be sought elsewhere. It need not be sought in a particular place inside ourselves or in the world. Wherever you would look inside, outside, if you penetrated the limiting conditions that your attention confronts,you would realize the Revelation.

The dogma that God is to be sought within is an expression of a philosophical point of view. God is no more within than in the room. If you did samyama on anything you put your attention on and if you transcended the limitations that you brought to that moment of attention you would see the revelation of the Truth completely. It is not a matter of where you direct attention in the body-mind and or in the world. It is a matter of what you do with attention when it confronts anything whatsoever. In other words, wherever attention passes in the conventional sense, inside or out, we must enter into God Communion. We must let attention be in God. Whatever the circumstance, whatever the phenomenon that seems to be arising in the moment, nothing is to be seen but this one Reality. And it is not just to be believed to be there. It can be most perfectly and directly Realized as the obvious.



This is why it is possible, you see, to be in the highest state of samadhi, or God Union, free of self, and at the same time bodily present, talking, thinking, acting, doing everything in the ordinary fashion. In that highest state of samadhi, no matter what is arising to attention is penetrated, is seen through, so that only the Divine is obvious. Thus, it is not necessary that attention be turned away from the world, or turned away from certain parts of the self. It is not necessary ultimately that attention be concentrated at all, or be limited, turned away from one thing and turned toward another. Attention need not be controlled at all in the ultimate fullness of this Realization because there is only God, and only God is obvious.

Therefore, attention is finally set completely free, and no matter what is arising there is still only God. The ultimate or highest samadhi is not lost. In that free state of attention, everything is transfigured. Wherever there is free attention there is free energy. The world is seen to be free energy, not energy in bondage. The world is seen through. Its absolute aliveness or blissfulness is realized. Therefore, one knows the Condition even of these ordinary conditions, these conditions have no necessity. They arise for now and they pass. There is no self-contraction, no self holding on to anything or demanding it. There is simply the recognition of the ultimate Condition of every appearance.

This specific realization is possible only when attention and energy are liberated from the self contraction, from all of the karmic structures of the body-mind. Thus, in Truth, there is only absolutely free energy and no forms. There is only infinite Being, no mind, no self, no fixed attention That Being is available even in the moment of forms and states of attention. It is a matter of recognizing the forms of energy and the states of attention tacitly. If we are Realized to that point of recognition, then the world of forms and states of mind becomes transparent.

The process of God Realization is a matter of the transcendence of the contraction of energy and the illusion of attention. This body-mind is nothing but energy and attention, but energy and attention are fixed in various states and thus they are not free, they do not realize their actual Condition. I say "they," but "they" are actually one. They are only Radiant Being. Thus, the fundamental conditions of our present existence are actually Absolute in nature. Attention or awareness now is fixed, moving toward various objects, but in Truth, if it could transcend itself, transcend those limits, it would realize that it is Infinite Being, Infinite Consciousness.

Energy seems to be locked into physical forms and low levels of potency, but if such energy could become ecstatic, transcend its fixation, its contraction, its formality, it would realize that it is Infinite Radiance. It is the awakening of energy and attention to their Real Condition that is Enlightenment and that transfigures the body-mind. If energy realizes it is Infinite Radiance, and if attention realizes it is Unqualified Being, even in this instant when the body-mind is existing, obviously the body-mind will be transformed, and your future will be determined by your response to this understanding, just as what has been experienced and known by you up until the point of heating has been determined by your own tendencies of attention and energy.

If you will exercise attention and energy freely in their true domain in the environment of Radiant Being, then all the limits on attention and energy will be transcended and undone. The only reason we are seeming to be born in this form is because of tendencies of energy and attention. There is no need to wonder why we are experiencing what we are experiencing. It is not as if somebody else has created it. We are experiencing what we are experiencing, knowing what we are knowing, because that is what we tend to do. We are disposed toward it. We are inclined toward it. We are the seed of this experiencing, this knowing, this limitation. Some God is not determining it, you see. Such a God would be demoniac. God cannot be blamed for it. We are playing upon God.

And we are given an understanding, a revelation of how all of our tendencies toward knowing and experiencing can be transformed. If we do not respond to the Revelation, that is our own choice. Only the suffering that comes from persisting in our illusion will ultimately serve us to the point of transformation, of awakening us, of moving us to respond to the Truth. So, if you want to view your life in that way, think of your difficulties as a Grace then, because it is only by life's continuing to be difficult that you will be moved to understand. Even so, it is not the case that God is choosing that you be in bondage so that you will awaken. You simply are in bondage to yourself. It is your own tendency, your own inclination.

Our ordinary lives are nothing but the contraction of good feeling, a limit on good feeling. Good feeling is pervasive, inherent, and absolute, but we are contracted upon it. This contraction is recognized by us as disease, disharmony, discomfort. Stop limiting the force of good feeling, and all Revelation comes. Yet, it is not a matter of merely stopping the suppressing of good feeling at some ordinary emotional or thinking level. You must stop suppressing it at every single level, at absolutely every level.

Therefore, physically, emotionally, psychically, mentally, you must observe and understand every dimension in yourself in which you contract upon the force of good feeling or bliss. When you have understood and practiced to the point that you can be responsible for those contractions, then this good feeling is native and pervasive.

Then, uncontracted, you suddenly see what is before you, what is the case, what is obvious. Whatever you recognize in that infinite good feeling will vanish. It vanishes in that moment of recognition. When all conditions are thus recognized as nothing buy modifications of the One Divine, everything is vanished. There isn't anything except the infinity of Radiant Bliss, perfect Being and Energy.

So, what lies between you and the obvious is this contraction. Therefore, you do not see the obvious. You see the evidence of this contraction. Understand this. Become responsible for it. Then what is obvious reveals itself spontaneously. If the being is transfigured by the Infinite, even though the conventions of appearance persist, there is no dilemma. Thus, if you sit here in an essentially open state, you can feel at various levels in your own body-mind the evidence of contraction. Wherever you can observe such contraction, that is a dimension in your life that you must transform or convert into a form of prayer, or God-Communion.