The Way
- This page is part of an ERW course, Meeting God. By John Eagles, February 29, 2008.
The search for being entirely free is first of all an internal search. Real joy in life comes from being entirely at one within oneself and from the ability to feel liberated and internally gratified in whatever situation we come in.
The search for inner joy and peace is one of going deeper and deeper into the self. This is why meditation and prayer are practiced in most forms of spirituality and religion.
Going deeper into the self means to come closer to the Source, the Creator. Each person who deeply enough enters the profundity inside will certainly find God. This is true regardless to which religion you adhere or also when you don’t belong to any.
When we are on this road of deepening, we are confronted with everything there that doesn’t align with the source. At a most superficial level this concerns our actions. When we know it is time for meditation or prayer we may find excuses to do something else, or we still do it but escape in another way, for example by having very external and ritualistic prayers.
Superficial meditation or prayer will never fulfill the task of nearing God in us. Once we learned to eschew divertive actions, we come on the level of the mind. In our meditation, contemplation or prayer we are confronted with all kind of feelings, memories, thoughts that tend to divert us from the right direction. These kind of distractions of the mind received all kind of names in different traditions. For example, some call them sin, others call them attachments. However we name them, they are a real obstacle in our journey to the core of our being. Here we first of all need help from the Truth. By reading truth, by continuing to pray and meditate over longer time and asking the right questions we gradually can receive the truth in us and learn to make distinction between thoughts and feelings we should keep and those we should overcome. The truth helps us with that. When we know that a thought or feeling is wrong we can determine to not longer nourish them.
Eventually we will still enter a deeper level in us, which is the domain of deepest desires and of love. Also here a battle needs to be fought because we will discover that we carry deep in us many desires that are centered on first satisfying the self and not thinking for the larger whole. This is as if in the organism of the body some cells would decide to start for themselves. They will damage the entire body and eventually will also kill themselves in that way. The entire universe is one great organism and when some individuals pursue their own goals, they damage the world around them and eventually will also kill themselves.
From self-centered desires also come many forms of love which are not pure, which are not centred on the whole and the higher benefit of others. It is most difficult to purify our own love.
Purifying the deepest desire and love in the heart is not possible only by meditation or prayer. Love wants to be acted. When you love someone but your kind of love hurts and damages the other person, then you have to reflect on the nature of your love and consider that something may be wrong with it. You purify your desires and your love by acting from your deepest intuition which tells you what you need to do in life. Eventually all what you are, your love, your thoughts and feelings and your acting become united in yourself and also with the Source. This is how the Creator can come in us and work through us more and more.
Only when you have begun to find God in yourself you can also see God working in others.
Wishing you a whiter than white travel inwards, JE.
