From the Public Page of my Private Journal 

The thought simply slipped from within the shadows of my mind . . .

 I think it is time to leave.

     Death.  We try as hard as we can to not think about it as though not thinking about it keeps it from knocking at our door.

    Of course, the specter from those shadows comes to the door of each of us at some point like it or not.

    Perhaps it is natural that at my age of 83 (now 90) I should find myself considering the shape of things to come.  Change comes at the blinking of an eye—whether it is ten minutes from now or ten years.  I am ready.

    There are things left undone.  How few of us truly wrap up loose ends in our lives before we change, before we move on to whatever awaits us at the turning of the page.  I have pledged to do as my mother had done, return as many things as she could to the people who had blessed her with them as gifts.  At her passing she was truly free of the burdens of things.  My pledge is so far unfulfilled, but I pledge to keep at it.

    I long ago developed my philosophy of afterlife reality.  I am satisfied that the beliefs I have come to are completely workable for me.  Those beliefs are shaped mainly by eastern religious philosophy.  For many years I have felt that so-called Christians had so diluted and polluted the teachings of Jesus as to make what is left bare threads of what his life truly represented.  Enough said about that.

    If I have regrets, and I do, they come from decisions made that were not so well thought out as I had believed.  Some of those decisions have caused harm to others.  Some, naturally, have benefited others as well as my own life.  I will stand judged not by some far off God, but by my own conscience, which I am certain may be harsher than a loving god would pronounce upon me.

    Not a day goes by that I do not give thanks for the life I have been blessed to live.  I consider myself most fortunate to have survived despite everything I have done to distract me from a course that might have been.  I may leave little trace of my presence this time around.  I will know, and I do, what I have accomplished.  I feel satisfied that I have contributed to the world in which I live, though few may ever know what that has been.

    Finally, I thank all of you who have walked, at least for a time, with me on the path.  You have given me more than you know, probably because I have failed to tell you so.  I tell you now with love and a grateful heart: Thank you!

    Comes also from the shadows of my mind the thought . . .

 Love never fails.

(Reposted from May 20, 2018)

Something To Think About

For many years I have believed in the theory that the outer universe was a macrocosm similar to the microcosm that is our human body.  I saw the structure of our body—the cells, atoms and molecules—like a universe of stars and galaxies.  Science has informed us that the space between the atoms that comprise our bodies have the same relative space as exists between the stars in the Cosmos.  We are more “space” than “substance.”

Over 40 years ago, in a newsletter I published at the time, I wrote about an experience I had one Sunday morning.  I arose early, retrieved the Sunday paper from the porch and sat down in my study to read it.  At some point I looked up from the paper and out the window I saw Colfax Avenue, a main east/west street in Denver.  Traffic was light due to the early time of day and the fact it was Sunday.  As I saw a car heading east on Colfax I suddenly had the vision of the city as a nervous system in the body.  The car became the “carrier” of signals to parts of the body from the brain.  Then I imagined the various other systems of the body expanding on the concept of how the body was like a small universe.  The cells and tissues were like a solar system.  All of the elements of the body connected one part of that micro universe to other parts.  The whole process of imagining this took just seconds, but it profoundly affected my sense of connection with all that is.

Since man first contemplated the make up of the universe and how it all began, there have been competing discussions about the “Big Bang” theory and others.  Einstein, in his theory of relativity, posited that gravity bends light, which would result in the creation of ripples in the fabric of space and time.  Such an activity of waves of light would support the “Big Bang” theory of how the universe began.  These “waves” have never been able to be seen before.  This morning, however, USA Today reported that scientists at the South Pole, using special telescopes in the clear, dry atmosphere there, believe they have discovered those actual waves of light rippling out from the center of the creation of the universe in an ever-expanding flow.

As I envisioned those ripples moving outward in an infinite flow like ripples in a pond after a tossed stone breaks the calm surface, I could not help but imagine a What if scenario.  Since the dawning of conscious awareness in humankind we have wondered if we are alone in this vast universe.  To many of us it seems impossible that in the vastness that comprises our “home” we have no neighbors.  What if by looking out into the universe for those neighbors, we are actually looking back in time.  Again, science informs us that everything we see in our skies happened millennia ago and is just now registering in our sight. 

What if in the ripples of that pond humanity is placed at some point within the concentric circles that move outward into infinity?  If we see ourselves as a kind of midpoint in the evolution of life, then in the ripples beyond where we are there might just be other probable points on the evolutionary scale representing further evolved forms of life.  What if we are looking back at life forms less developed than we are? What if looking forward there are other civilizations more advanced than we are?  What if there is an evolutionary continuity of life from the simplest beginning wave outward, infinitely, to more complex forms in waves advancing before us?

Life seems to constantly move from the simplest forms into ever-increasing complex forms.  What if this really is how life unfolds?  What if this is the “heaven” we have before us?  What if there is an ability to recognize both the history and the future of life and to communicate with those aspects of “Reality?”  Our consciousness has only scratched the surface of its full potential.  Much more lies beyond our current view. Scripture tells us, Faith is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things unseen. (Hebrews 11:1 KJV)  I am also reminded of the words of Browning:  Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? 

Something to think about.

A Wonderful Life!

I just returned from my morning walk through Greenway Park in brilliant sunshine and crystal clear blue skies.  Walking every day that I can gives my body a wonderful sense of renewal.  It is also a great time to let my mind be renewed as well.  It is one of those times, when I allow myself to experience it, that I open up to a wonderful barrage of thoughts and feelings that add yet another dimension to my day.

This morning I was aware of how grateful I am for my life.  Through the ups and downs I have been so fortunate to have more of the ups than the downs.  I have learned something from every friend I have met along the way.  Sometimes I feel them walking with me and we engage in conversations that are known only between us.  These are not memories of past conversations.  They are current, they are meaningful and sometimes they are simply for a good laugh over something we are sharing. 

I have also learned things from my family members.  These are, perhaps, the most meaningful memories, even though they occasionally are about the tough lessons we inevitably encounter as we build our relationships.  I had an uncle who used to tell my mother that if he had to live his life over again, he would do it exactly the same way!  My mother would counter that she certainly would not!  There I was exposed to two different ways of looking at my experiences and handling memories.  I used to feel strongly that my life events were exactly as they should be.  They were, after all, what brought me to this moment and if I was happy where I was, why would I want to do anything differently?

For whatever reasons and at some undefined point in my life I found that I wasn’t so sure that I needed to have all the experiences that I did.  There were times along the way that I definitely did not like where I was.  And yet, my thoughts, feelings and events had brought me there.  In reflection I needed to ask myself if I were simply being selective in my memories, accepting as real only those that I enjoyed.  Perhaps, but in looking at this apparent contradiction of mind I rest in the conviction that my life has been and is a wonderful adventure.  Whether I would do things differently given the opportunity, I would have to say I would.  But more importantly, I know that the effect of past events is good or bad only according to how I view and remember them. 

This morning, life is more than wonderful!  This morning I enjoyed walking with my friends and my thoughts.  I walked with my family and felt love for them and the wonderful way in which they are growing through life.  To have been, and be, a part of their lives is a blessing beyond description.  So no matter what other ways I might choose to examine my life, today life is wonderful in every respect!  I believe that knowing this is the best preparation for more days just like this one!

Damn! It Has Happened Again

In the years I have been writing I probably have had one hundred first lines pop into my head.  Maybe two lines.  On rare occasions a whole concept emerges.

It happens like this.  I am sitting watching the news or a favorite TV show or reading a book.  Something triggers a thought and I know I have to write that down.  But first, I have to finish whatever it is I am doing.  Then it happens.  The first line is either gone or the story that was supposed to follow it doesn’t materialize as I hoped it would.

Well, here I am again with a first line.  No, I’m sorry.  That first line disappeared and I am stuck with the one you see at the head of this article. Damn!  It has happened again.  This time, however, I decided to go ahead and see if starting to write would reproduce the “creative” urge that first struck my consciousness just a short while ago.

What follows may turn out to be the ramblings of an aging person who cannot string even a few words together into a meaningful sentence, or if I am lucky, I may actually tell you what is on my mind.  Let’s see what happens next.

Every story has a beginning, a middle and an ending.  Without those three elements it is unlikely that what is written or told will make much sense.

Here is a beginning.

What I am generally feeling when the urge to write strikes is a connection or a lack of connection where I feel one should exist.  It may be about a person, an idea or an experience.  It surges up within me as strong emotions that are difficult describe, but clearly understood within my being.  I think one of the articles I have written in the past that most closely approximates those feelings was after I had watched the annual Kennedy Honors Program in 2006.  I wrote about the experience in my book, Moments.  After hearing the story of each of the honorees, I had almost indescribable feelings of love flood my whole being.  I felt a closeness, not only to the characterization of those being honored, but to my family members and friends whom I have loved through the years and the experiences we shared.  The connection was beyond my ability to put into words as clearly as I felt it.

For some, love is easy to understand.  It is something that is just there.  No explanations are needed and no qualifications are required.  Love is!  For others love may represent the toughest of times.  It may surround a loss of some kind.  It may seem unrequited, unfulfilled.  And for yet others there may be the tragedy of being so bound to another person that unbelievable abuse is tolerated until one somehow breaks free.  I know that not everyone will see these as examples of love, but for the person so involved at that particular time with their particular state of being, that may be all they know.

Here is the middle.

I have experienced many levels of love and loss.  I know I am not the only one who has. They have produced impressions on the slate of my soul that are like the certificates of accomplishment of a job well done or the scars of some abuse.  In all honesty I have to admit to recognizing the scars of some form of abuse, mostly those I have been responsible for inflicting, more than any supposed certificates of merit.  There are heavy emotions associated with those events.  I am sure the depth of the emotions has much to do with the fact that the experiences behind them are unresolved, unfinished.  What else could be the reason that they surface so emphatically that they sometimes bring tears to my eyes when they happen? 

I can hear someone out there saying, “For heaven’s sake, man, get a life!  Get over it.”  I hear you.  I know some of the many ways in which one could bind together these unraveled ends of life events and “get over it.”  After all, I have spent most of my life dealing with, exploring, using and enjoying a philosophy of life that seemed to bring results that satisfied.  Then the story line was interrupted and I have not yet been able to reconstruct the point at which the fabric of my life began to unravel.  So the healing has not come forth.  Worse than that, there are times I really don’t care.

This is where the ending should occur.

This is where I should be telling you how I worked everything out and remembered what was so important in the first place.  At the beginning of this article I said,  “I decided to go ahead and see if starting to write would reproduce the ‘creative’ urge that first struck my consciousness just a short while ago.”  Well, I never quite got back to where I thought I wanted to go.  The emotional content seemed to evaporate like a wisp of smoke.   Sometimes life is like that.  You think you are heading toward point A and somewhere along the path you change directions and are heading for point B without knowing if that is really where you intended or wanted to go.  There is a point C in the offing.  If I choose to head there, will it be where I hoped to go? 

As you may note, I have not succeeded in explaining, at least to my satisfaction, the emergence of the “connecting/disconnecting” emotions.  Such events will continue to come, I am certain, and I will continue to experience and attempt to understand them.  When the opening sentence, or paragraph, presents itself I will offer it an opportunity to take fuller form.  In the meantime . . .

What If I Die Without Ever Knowing Who I Am?

The source of many of my essays on LifeCentering come from email exchanges with friends who often ask questions or offer answers to my own.  Such is again the case with this item.

My friend and I have exchanged many emails searching for answers to questions I think many of us wonder about from time to time.  She sent me a course on healing techniques that had been helpful to her.  As I responded after getting started with the program we exchanged our skepticism about such highly hyped courses that seemed to promise “too good to be true” results if you would just give it a try.  In one of her emails she posed the following thought-provoking questions.

What if a person dies without ever knowing who he really is, once all the lifetime "labels" no longer apply, and not knowing absolutely that there is a supreme being and some form of continuing life?  Karma, reincarnation, God etc. are nothing more than words to me that may or may not be real. I want to think there is more to come in my life, but right now I'm clueless. Just a little light food for thought...or not.

A most intriguing series of life questions I thought.  I would like to think that whether or not we come to some understanding of the answers to those questions, Life will continue as "intended" and that essential part of us--call it spirit or soul--that somehow is imprinted with the reality of our purpose will continue to seek its fullest expression.  Admittedly this is a "statement of faith" more than an "understood" Truth, but it works for me.  I guess I remain impressed with the philosophy of Kierkegaard and his "leap of faith" proposition.  Ultimately, life requires that we take that leap if we are to proceed in understanding.  Here are a few of his thoughts on this subject gleaned from Web sources (and my memory of a college paper I wrote about his work).

What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find a purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die. [1]

Most people are subjective toward themselves and objective toward others, frightfully objective sometimes—but the task is precisely to be objective toward oneself and subjective toward all others.[2]

For Kierkegaard, his belief in the ultimate need for the “leap of faith” has to do with his commitment to the reorientation of the self and acceptance of personal demands that go beyond what he generally knows.  While the phrase is often seen as taking a risk, for him it is meant in a specific way.

An objective uncertainty, held fast through appropriation with the most passionate inwardness, is the truth, the highest truth there is for an existing person.[3]

There comes a point in time, it seems to me, that after gathering all the knowledge and insight that appears to be available to us, we must decide, “What now?”  We ask that question because our searching outwardly has not provided a satisfying answer.  It is now we must take our own leap of faith as it were, believing absolutely that we will land on solid ground.  My personal vision of this process was one of a person literally stepping off the edge of a cliff with no sight of a landing to be seen anywhere.  Through the years this vision encouraged me to trust that while I may not know how things were going to work out, I knew they would.  It was not necessary for me to be able to “see” the landing, only to take the step forward.  There were times, though, that I could not take the step.  That meant a kind of inertia immobilized me until I regained my commitment to the leap of faith.  You might liken the process to recharging your battery.  I looked upon the healing course given to me as one of those opportunities to recharge my batteries.

For those who hold no truck with the notion of faith, particularly in the religious sense, there may be no urge to care about wanting answers to questions they are not asking.  But for those of us for whom our belief has led us this far, we recognize our need to keep on keeping on with our search.  Continuing to seek inevitably leads to finding our greater truths. 

And because others have said similar things in ways, perhaps better than I, I share these two quotes from the same friend who started this whole notion of questioning “What if. . .?”

Sometimes it's hard to believe there's a God--to have faith in an unseen power--
To know there's a force you can call on for help in your darkest, most desperate hour.
I know it's not easy--I've been there myself, though our problems are not just the same.
I know how it feels when no one is there--when "God" is no more than a name.
But I'll tell you a secret: I pray anyway to something I can't hear or see.
I pray to the darkness. I pray to the night, or to what may be holy in me.
And sometimes--not always--there comes a deep change.
I feel peaceful, set free, and made whole. Is it God? Is it me?
Has some power of the universe helped me to heal my own soul?
I don't have the answers. I can't say for sure that what I believe in is true.
BUT IF GOD WERE A FACT, WE WOULDN'T NEED FAITH,
So I say: I believe...and I do.

--Author unknown

And from a novel, Out of the Shadows  by Kay Hooper. A character (scientist) with "no belief in a deity" offers this on something of us that survives death:

To me, that's not a religious thing--not a question of faith or belief, or any notion that surviving death is some kind of reward for a life well lived. It's a certainty. It's like knowing a tree sheds its leaves year after year, cultivating a new set each spring of its cycle. The tree grows and sinks its roots deeper and deeper, and wears a new set of leaves each spring, until it finally grows as large as it can, reaches the end of its life, and dies.

Our bodies are the...leaves of our soul?

Why not?...We tend to think what's real and lasting is only what we can see, but that doesn't mean we're right. Maybe our skin and bones and the faces we see in the mirror are really the most transitory things about us. Maybe we just wear our bodies the way that a tree wears its leaves, our physical selves being born and maturing and dying over and over while inside our spirits grow and learn.

Perhaps the greater truth will be discovered in wondering if we ever will know the full extent of our reality.  Is there a “culmination” to life?  If there is such a point, what must it be like?  If there is no end, then . . .?

Some things each of us must discover for ourselves.  There may be as many “answers” as there are people asking the questions!

---

[1]   Journal entry, Gilleleie (1 August 1835) Journals 1A

[2]   Works of love

[3]   Concluding Unscientific Postscript

What Goes Around . . .

In the Hindu society emphasis is placed on the cycles of life, death and reincarnation.  Simply stated this is the process of working through the varieties of conditions one faces as growth opportunities are presented to us.  The goal is to “get off the wheel” of life and death and experience the purity of a life lived without stain of discord, hatred or injury to others.  This is karma, or to put it another way, “What goes around, comes around!”

I could not help but think about karma in this somewhat humorous manner as I was exchanging emails with a long-time friend.  We were each sharing particulars of some life events and I automatically tried to see links in what I had experienced with something I had done to cause the event.  I first encountered the concept of karma while in seminary at Unity School in the middle 1950s.  James Dillet Freeman, then director of Unity’s ministerial school, was tutoring me in philosophy and religion.  We had extended discussions of the concept of reincarnation and I readily accepted the idea of having as many opportunities as one might need to come to a full expression of his/her true spiritual nature.  At that point one would be free of the cycle.

Through the years I have continued to develop my beliefs about the subject and of how karma works in my life.  As I was thinking about it today, it seemed almost humorous in how the concept is used to both accept and explain away a sense of current responsibility.  We can blithely comment “oh, it’s just karma,” when something happens in our life or in the life of a friend.  By that statement we are commenting, perhaps too casually, that a person is just getting paid back for something they did, usually in a previous life.  Thus, the notion, “What goes around, comes around.” 

Actually, there is much more to understand about how it works.  In the physical world, including our human experience, there seem to be “causes” and “effects” in everything.  When good things come about in our lives, we like to think we earned them through good karma.  However, it is often more difficult to think we deserve things that are less likeable in our experience.

It is about at this point in the discussion that I always realize I may have bitten off more than I can chew!  The subject does not lend itself to easy explanation, nor are the “unbelievers” likely to be convinced of my arguments!  So, I think to myself, why in the world did I start this essay?  I can only say that because I accept the principle of cause and effect in the world in which I live, I am always eager to understand how I can set into motion better causes and reap better results.  In the worst of times I just want to “get off the wheel!”  In the best of times I hope that perhaps this is the last time around.  Who really knows?

Lacking a more thorough consideration of the subject I accept that what goes around comes around!  (And I enjoy a good laugh at life’s foibles!)