| The Institute for Living |
From an ego driven life to living in spirit |
| We all grew up with the story of John the Revelator saying, “ I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day…” and what follows is the glorious story of a beautiful heaven. Well I am going to suggest that we can realize a heavenly state of mind by learning how to be ‘in-spirit’ rather than ‘in-ego.’ There’s a lot more about soul-to-soul transactions, etc. but I won’t go into all of that right now. |
| The story of the light rolls When I was a child my mother used to bake light rolls from scratch (today we buy them from the store called “brown ‘n serve” rolls). In the morning she would start making her batter by mixing ingredients such as yeast, sugar, eggs and butter with flour in a big roasting pan. She would let it rise for several hours. After going through several other steps, she would put the pans with individual rolls into the oven for baking. I can still remember our anticipation for the first pan of fresh baked light rolls that would come out of the oven. We would gather around in the kitchen and spread butter and jelly inside the fresh rolls while we chatted about the happenings of the week. You see, she always cooked these rolls on Saturday. But imagine, if you will, a conversation between the rolls. After they have come out of the oven – before we have begun to eat any of them. The fifth roll on the sixth row looks at the third roll on the ninth row and says, “I’m better than you because I’m a little bigger; and besides, I’m lighter than you; furthermore, I’m in a higher row than you are.” While this conversation is going on, similar conversations are going on between other rolls in other rows and columns. All the while, mother is standing over them looking and saying, “don’t they all realize that they all came from the same dough; I made all of them; they really are all the same – their differences in status are only illusions, not reality. |
| Well, aren’t we just like the light rolls? We spend so much time and energy trying to prove that we are different (better) than each other. Our whole competitive system is completely ego driven. It is based on a belief of separateness, i.e., that we are separate from each other and separate from God. Therefore we spend all of our energy trying to prove our worthiness to each other, to ourselves and to God. We do it by our material possessions, our education, and even by our moral virtue. What I will suggest is that 1. We are not human beings having occasional spiritual experiences. Instead, we are spiritual beings having a human experience. 2. As we learn to “walk in” our true identity we will move along the continuum towards “In-spirit” Living. |
| Living “In-spirit” The word “inspiration” derives from “In- spirit.” People are afraid to be “In- spirit” because: (1) of what their family/friends might think of them; (2) they will have to give up treasured patterns of behavior [low-energy living]; (3) they might have to lose their job; (4) they might have to walk away from a number of material objects that are comfortable and that the ego has come to believe are vital for existence. Materialism always needs, wants, reaches and tries to impress; while Spirit just “is.” Connections are made; supplies are delivered; and peace is the prevailing condition when one lives in spirit. While living in the ego state gives us the feeling of being caught up in the rat race, living “In-spirit” results in our being “on-purpose,” and therefore leaves us with a sense of peace. An in-pouring and an outpouring are abundant with spirit living; but ego living leaves a constant feeling of depletion and striving Another major result from moving to “In- spirit” living is that we find ourselves moving from low energy to high energy. In other words, long-standing emotions like anger, jealousy, bitterness, etc, melt away and are replaced with feelings like peacefulness, serenity and the love of God (see Galatians 5:19-23). We can define sin as operating in ego rather than operating in Spirit. When we try to get rid of bad habits or addictions “We fall down,” because we can’t do it on our own. The void is still there; the desire is still there. Only Spirit can fill the void only Spirit can lift us up to a new place where the need is no longer there because we have redefined our purpose and our space. Romans 3:23 says, “…for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” This means that, like a runner who is running and stops just short of the finish line where the reward is, our ego stops us from experiencing the glory of God. By living in ego (sin), we come short of – we do not dwell in the room where the Glory of God is present. See Psalms 91:1 for further reference. It says, “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.” |
| Making it in on Broken Pieces Through all of our messiness God cultivates our spiritual growth. Our brokenness is required to get to “In-spirit” living. As we move from ego living to “In-spirit” living we must be broken. We will experience continual periods of brokenness as we transgress. Those broken pieces are carried to wholeness by the Lamb of Isaiah 53. God stands in the gap. If we live in Spirit, when a person comes into our life (romantic or friendship) it’s for spiritual purpose. When they exit our life, it’s also for spiritual purpose. To the extent we can understand this, we will not suffer pain and suffering when relationships break up. It’s so hard to get out of ego. Every time we meet someone we are so prone to measure our self against them and compare our self to them: based on education, wealth, appearance, etc. This gets in the way of being open to Spirit. Our heart must be broken. It must be broken open to receive what spirit has to bring – from anyone, at anytime, any where. Psalms 51:17 says, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.” What Spirit brings is not dependant upon the person’s qualifications by the world’s standards. I Corinthians 1:25 says, “Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” Spirit qualifications come from a completely different set of criteria, of which we know nothing. Verses 26-29 go on to say, “For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: that no flesh should glory in his presence.” Often, those of us who have achieved highly by the world’s standards have a difficult time hearing Spirit, because our secular training and orientation get in the way of our openness. Even in the material world we know that intellectual pursuits can never take the place of experiential learning, and yet we don’t try to experience God; we try to intellectualize God. We need to “be in flow.” That means we need to metaphorically be like the ocean. It just flows and constantly takes new form and new space and new character. In order to do this, we must say like John, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” (St. John 3:30) |
| From David Hett, First News, 1st Community Church The purpose of religion is to “bind back”—to bind us back to our lost connection with God. Of course, the disconnect is from our ego-perspective only. If we could see from God’s vantage point, we’d see clearly that we, and everything in creation, arises directly from Being, so there is no possible disconnection. As the apostle Paul said, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God.” After recently hearing a dramatic reading from Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, I believe the blues singer “Shug” says it best: “Here’s the thing”, say Shug. “The thing I believe. God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don’t know what you looking for.” Like Shug says, from the human side of life, we search for it. “In the course of working on ourselves,” writes Sandra Maitri, “we learn in time that when we stay on the surface of ourselves, which is to say when we are identified with and operating from our outer shell—our personality—we suffer.. .for we have lost our connection with Holy Love. Our suffering is not the result of being alone or of being in the wrong relationship, is not because we don’t have enough money or because we have too much of it, or because of anything of the sort. Nor is it because our outer surface doesn’t look as pretty as we think it should or because our personality isn’t as pleasant as we think it might be. We suffer because we are living at a distance from our depths—it’s as simple as that. The more our souls are infused with Being, the better we feel and the better life seems to us, no matter what our outer circumstances happen to be.” “I believe God is everything,” say Shug. “Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to feel that, you’ve found It.” |
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