Divine Presence

All of us came from the same source of souls – that Divine Presence which is all-that-is. We are the invisible energy that permeates every atom of existence. In my struggles to reconcile the violent nature of our existence, I am seeking to connect with the divine in everything: people, animals, plants, insects, air, earth, water, and objects.

There is a divine presence in a tornado, in an earthquake, in a flood. Each of these can steal away our living essence forcing our souls to move into the next iteration of our existence. The earth holds its own divinity. What appear to be weapons to us are tools the earth uses to sweep its air clean, keep its core stable, and refresh the soils that blanket its surface.

There is a divine presence in the grizzly bear who takes down a hiker. To that grizzly bear that person is a threat to cubs as well as nourishment. There is a divine presence in a wasp’s sting and the bite of a spider. There is divine presence in the fresh water springs and salty ocean depths. Without either of these, humans cannot survive.

Objects are created from atoms – the same atoms that are in living beings. A book, for example, is made from a tree and is imprinted with the life force of that tree. This plastic computer I am typing on is connected to the divine by way of its electric energy – energy that comes from wind, from coal, from oil, from natural gas. Even its battery stores the energy of those sources.

I’ll not be having conversations with books, tables, or televisions, though. My point is to recognize that all that exists has a connection to the Divine Presence that is the universe of existence. Nothing is created that comes from outside this universe. Everything that is destroyed continues to exist in another form within this universe. This is a fundamental law of physics.

Any one of us can die as the earth goes about its business. Any of us can die as humans go about their business. All the while, we are part of and within the Divine Presence. My difficulty is remaining consciously connected with my divine presence as I go about my human business. It is even harder to remember to connect with the divine in another person. There is only an infinitesimal margin of ability when I try to connect with a person who has been violent.

The violence I am discussing here is that which makes the Web headlines and front page news — the atrocious violence that harms other living creatures: our wars, our crimes, our retributions. There are subtler forms of violence such as the emotional warfare that a parent plays with a child to coerce the child into behaving and being in a prescribed manner. I don’t even WANT to find the divine presence in another when that person has harmed me or someone I love. All I can look at is their human failings and fret about how they did not meet my expectations, my prescribed way of being in the world.

I suspect that this kind of violence must come from a complete disconnect from divine presence. How can I connect with people who cannot even connect with themselves? I have to trust that the divine presence in me will recognize and connect with the divine presence in others.

It’s a place to start.

©2011 by Barbara L. Kass

Advertisement

the presence of forgiveness

What is the color of forgiveness? How big is it? What scent does it carry? If forgiveness walked up to me and smacked me in the head, would I even recognize it?

In all my explorations of personal growth and desire to connect with divine grace and eternity, forgiveness has been an elusive concept defined for me through the perceptions of others.

This word and its watery definition has caused me all sorts of problems and been the root of justified abuse. The religion in which I was raised insisted that we forgive others for their transgression, but often people used it as a rationalization to cause further hurt; in their minds, they could do whatever they wanted because “God would forgive them.” I came to believe that forgiveness is nothing more than a cheap way out for people who don’t want to change or be held accountable for their behavior.

I don’t see any need to “forgive” someone of their human nature. I have hurt others out of my ignorance and stupidity, and have said I was sorry, made amends, and worked to not harm another. However, I know I continue to say or do things that, when viewed by another’s perception, are harmful to them or others. (Anytime I see a cheap, useless trinket that has a tag that reads “Made in Japan” or “Made in China” or “Made in Taiwan” I feel a twinge of remorse that someone has to make such things to be able to exist and I am actually torn between buying it so that person would continue to have a job or not buying it because it serves no purpose and simply perpetuates the problem.)

I would prefer to accept us for all our humanness. But I don’t forgive anyone who purposefully harms another with knowledge and intent — that, for me, is enabling them to continue that behavior. My forgiveness in those cases consists of removing my presence from theirs. I do not have to let those people back into my life. I love me too much.

Forgiveness means to let myself off the hook of being responsible for anybody else’s behavior. My eternal presence nudges me to “let it go, let the incident go, let go your feelings to blame yourself or to seek revenge. We’ve other things to move on to.”

But I come to find that I do not have an honest, working mechanism of forgiveness for myself. I don’t know what forgiveness sounds like, looks like, or feels like. I know what it does not feel like. I still walk through life with ancient strings tied to my emotions over incidents long past and feel the same sorrow, emptiness, hurt, and pain as if the incident had only occurred yesterday. I continue to hurt myself through my memories.

My eternal presence does not urge me to pray for anyone to change their energy to what I think it should be. People are entitled to have the energy they have chosen. What I am hearing from my presence is that I need to view life from another person’s perspective and know that I can never really, truly perceive their experience accurately. I can only glimpse a fragment of how I might be and act given that person’s circumstances and beliefs. That is full of guesswork and projection. From my limited human point of view, I must find the God struggling to become within them.

And then I will be able to see the God struggling to become in me.

©2010 by Barbara L. Kass

The presence of evolution

I know now that I am . . . like . . . totally connected. Here’s the scoop (and it is kind of a long one so you may want to bring along a snack):

While reading the part of about our 4 billion year evolution on Ted’s blog a few weeks ago, I started wondering: where was I all that time? Was a I rock? Solar energy? I am eternal so I must have been somewhere. We all were/are.

The Universal Consciousness must have heard me because this past week, it guided my attention to an article about evolution in an old issue of EnlightenNext and now I know where I have been: I was a predecessor. Me and a whole bunch of you got together as some kind of precursor to our current human existence and, by agreement, we united and made it happen.

The article is an interview with Dr. Beatrice Bruteau. It was done back in 2002 (so you can see that even while I am connected, sometimes it takes a while for the connection to catch up to me). Here is an excerpt from that article:

“ . . . in order to appreciate and feel the force of what the present human vocation is, we need to zero in on how the elements of any particular level of cosmic organization actually perform the uniting by which they come to constitute a new kind of wholeness in the world. There is not some outside force that causes this to occur. The capacity for it is inherent in the uniting elements, and they themselves do it by their own characteristic power. Every level of cosmic being has its own power of communication, the power to unite with others of its level to make something yet grander. This is the pattern that repeats in the course of evolution.”

In other words, all that exists has the ability to come together and create something new. We evolve. We become more than we were before.

Dr. Bruteau goes on further saying, “So a molecule is a kind of community. A cell is a kind of community. Molecules are communities of atoms, cells are communities of molecules, and so on. Now, we’re following this same pattern that evolution seems to have followed, which is unite in order to create. The new human community will be some kind of an entity, some kind of a Being. Just as the organism is a collective of molecules and the molecule is a collective of atoms. So if you can get human beings to share their characteristic human energy—which is agape, knowledge, concern, creativity, inventiveness, and all the other kinds of strictly human energies that we have—all that interchange of energies binds us together into a community. And when the whole community experiences and practices this kind of love, the crisscrossing energies form a net, and the net is the New Being that can do what the individuals that it is composed of could not do.”

Oh, my . . . a New Being. I am not sure if Dr. Bruteau means a new human being or a new way of being, and it really does not matter. I imagine that children conceived and born into such a community would be much like the children being born into our computer age society: they come hard wired and using a computer is as natural as breathing. Children born into a community based on certain qualities would find those ways of being inherent to their existence. They would be the New Being.

Key to this ability, however, is the part where Dr. Bruteau says “. . . if you can get human beings to share their characteristic human energy . . ..” How many people does it take to form a community? To create this New Being?

According to Eckhart Tolle in A New Earth, we don’t need everyone. We just need critical mass – just enough to give energy to that way of being. Given our capacity to understand and change, I also don’t know that being a New Being would be reserved only to the newly conceived. I am so very different now than I was even five years ago. In making changes to myself, growing, and evolving, I often ask my atoms, molecules, and neurons to come together in a new agreement, a new way of thinking, and a new way of behaving. I could not have accomplished what I have in my life had I relied on my old community of cell wiring.

A large part of my own evolution was by conscious agreement. We all do this. When learning a new skill, we all require that some part of us gets rewired and creates a new set of connections that can do what we are learning. This new unified collection creates each one of us as a New Being who can do what could not be done before had those atoms and molecules not come together.

Each of us has a “characteristic power” – it is our individuality that can unite with other individualities and create a New Being. What is even better is that, just like molecules and atoms, we remain our individuality. We are not absorbed into some collective (shades of the Borg!), but by our own agreement we belong and support a way of living that some of us are only beginning to imagine.

Keep imagining. Each of us was at one time a precursor set of molecules that eventually got together to make us the humans we are today. Today, we are still a precursor set of molecules to the next iteration of our existence.

I wonder what we will make.

©2010 by Barbara L. Kass

Forgiveness

This word and its watery concept has caused me all sorts of problems and been the root of justified abuse in my life. The religion in which I was raised insisted that I forgive others for hurting me and those who hurt me used it as a justification to hurt me further; in their minds, they could do whatever they wanted because “God would forgive them.” I still find this “forgiveness” thing as a cheap way out for people who don’t want to change or be held accountable for their behavior. I don’t see any need to “forgive” someone of their human nature. I have hurt others out of my ignorance and stupidity, and have said I was sorry, made amends, and worked to not harm another. However, I know I continue to say or do things that, when viewed by another’s perception, are harmful to them or others. (Anytime I see a cheap, useless trinket that has a tag that reads “Made in Japan” or “Made in China” or “Made in Taiwan” I feel a twinge of remorse that someone has to make such things to be able to exist and I am actually torn between buying it so that person would continue to have a job or not buying it because it serves no purpose.) I would prefer to accept us for all our humanness. But I don’t forgive anyone who purposefully harms another with knowledge and intent — that, for me, is enabling them to continue that behavior. My forgiveness in those cases consists of removing my presence from theirs. I do not have to let those people back into my life. I love me too much.

Forgiveness means to let myself off the hook of being responsible for anybody else’s behavior. My eternal presence nudges me to “let it go, let the incident go, let go your feelings to blame yourself or to seek revenge. We’ve other things to move on to.”  

It seems easier to forgive those who are truly sorry, stops what they are is doing, understands the harm they have caused, and feels remorse. I know have been guilty of behavior that has harmed others, and I need forgiveness, too. But if someone won’t or can’t acknowledge it and make amends for the harm done there is no need to offer forgiveness. In my heart, though, I will forgive because letting it go keeps me from being full of bitterness and resentment and further poisoning my life.

My eternal presence does not urge me to pray for anyone to change their energy to what I think it should be though. People are entitled to have the energy they have chosen. My preference is that they honor my boundaries and keep to themselves unless I have invited them into my life.

©2010 by Barbara L. Kass

Earth consciousness

If you want to help the earth, you need to develop an earth consciousness.

The Gaia hypothesis holds the belief that the earth is a living, breathing creature. Designed to support a diverse population of other living creatures, including humans, the earth can cleanse itself, feed itself, nurture itself, and protect itself. It also provides those same life-giving attributes to all that live here. To develop an earth consciousness, you need only adopt the role of nurturer and understand that if you fail to provide, those who are dependent upon you will fail to survive.

And there is no back-up earth to help out.

You have to construct flawless systems that are self-regulating.

You have to adjust and recalibrate those systems based upon the demands of an ever-growing population of creatures.

You don’t get to sleep. Only parts of you get to go dormant for 3 to 4 months out of the year.

You depend upon the creatures to willingly give back what they no longer need so you can recycle and use those resources again.

You have to be ready for them to give you back materials that have been so distorted you barely recognize what they were in their original form.

And, when those who depend upon you take so much that you have an insufficient supply to use for your needs, there is not much you can do about it.

Except, perhaps, pop an earthquake or two.

Send around a few hurricanes, cyclones, and tornadoes.

Rain endlessly so that rivers burst from their boundaries.

Just to let the creatures know that you will eventually reclaim it all, including them.

That is the way of things.

I believe we (the universal consciousness that we all are) designed the earth to be just as it is to help us learn, become more, and transcend our fear of being so temporarily human. Nothing we do here lasts forever except that which we learn and become.

©2010 by Barbara L. Kass