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Permalink Reply by James C Schultz on 2nd mo. 18, 2016 at 1:21pm

How do we know we are in God's presence and not some other spirit's presence?  Jesus said by their fruits you shall know them.  That implies being in God's presence results in fruit.  Good fruit would seem to indicate there's a good chance we have been in God's presence and bad fruit, most of us would think, indicates we have been in someone less beneficent's presence.

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 2nd mo. 18, 2016 at 4:58pm

James C Schultz said:

How do we know we are in God's presence and not some other spirit's presence?

We can't literally get away from God's presence, so I think a better description of what we're talking about is more like "What channel are we tuned in to?"

Someone might conceivably think he's receiving a really strong signal, when he's really tuned in to some process in his own head.

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'Presence of God', however, comes down to more than receiving Messages, sender unknown.

With this, we're talking about awareness of the Life that underlies ourselves and everything we experience, inside or out.

You can doubt the content of what you're receiving through that... but the recognition of one unified presence that holds the world together and renders it perceptible, that makes your very be-ing a palpable fact to you --

To doubt that recognition would be to doubt even the experience of doubting; it would run you right through a mental cul-de-sac...

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So I guess this boils down to, when a person turns his attention to God, what kind of reception can he count on?

From what we see of the long history of human interaction with God (as described in the Bible among other places) there's a certain amount of distortion & projection involved. A warrior sees a warrior God; Jesus sees a loving Father. (I have to concur with Jesus on that, myself.)

Given that we're talking about a loving Father, we still can't conclude that we're entirely understanding what we receive -- merely that God will give us as much truth as we want, so far as we've got room to hold it.

[I'm having to close down this computer lab here; more later!]

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 2nd mo. 18, 2016 at 8:10pm

More on that issue of 'fruits' -- The Spirit I know gave me the experience I mentioned to Keith... and led me through rather an odd series of external events in which my old apartment-mate (who from the time he'd moved in, working full time, paid nothing towards the rent except poetry) came back into town needing a place to stay. He wanted to do a reading at a local bookstore here; and we gave him the storage room behind our bookstore for a month or so to make that possible. And then, some time after the reading, I told him, "Hey, didn't we say something about a month?" ... "Well, it's been two months and I need to use my storage room for storage." He determined to hitch hike out of town, was picked up at the on-ramp by the police and came out in a local food line, where a couple of guys were huffing & puffing at each other. So he'd started talking about needing to not fight each other, to stick together and press for better treatment from the authorities. Pretty soon he was back in my storage room, leading an activist campaign for more humane policies towards homeless people. (Not at all a new concern for him; he'd seen a lot of mistreatment of them back when he'd been working at a downtown gas station, had written about it & helped a few people at the time.) Now some of my involvement was due to friendship, and some to reasoning about the sheer senseless brutality of public policies, and some to the fact that, hey, Anne & I did know more about this than most people and God had popped us right into the middle of an effort to do something about it.

We kept looking at the sheer tenacious magnitude of the opposition, the undependability of our colleague (Every homeless-activist leader this town has ever produced has been a lone, crazed egomanic) and periodically just plain giving up. And God kept setting us up to get back into it, in various ways.)

When, years later, we went off to Pendle Hill with the proceeds of selling our house -- a big part of this was in hopes of carrying on that struggle on a new level -- because the political stuff just plain wasn't working; there's a severe spiritual problem behind the situation.

Have to take this up some more later...

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 2nd mo. 20, 2016 at 8:13am

Keith Saylor says he's been enjoying this discussion; and I've been enjoying our private conversation.

But so far as he hasn't taken a direct hand here, I'm thinking it's about time to try to summarize what I think his position is:

He is led to invite people to center their minds and hearts and souls and all outward experience in the awareness of [what I call] God living them.

And to (safely be enabled to) guide their conduct by what they're given through continual reference to that living presence of God inside.

(This is, by the way, pretty close to what I understand yoga to be about, ie to yoke people securely to the inner presence of God.)

This isn't, then, simply a sterile contemplation for him -- in that it leads him to take external actions to invite other people into it.

But is it an ideal condition for human beings? We are, after all, (incomplete) manifestations of God continually creating the world [which is, by the way, a respectable interpretation of the Hebrew verb used in Genesis: that God began to create the world, rather than finished in an instant.]

But if we were to become like Enoch (who 'walked with God, and was not, for God took him') was said to have done -- Is that the life that is meant to suit human beings, or us in particular?

Should we even take a position on this, or simply wait and see? Clearly we might better see how this question comes into view as we (hopefully) come to know God better; but how does it look now, and why?

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Permalink Reply by James C Schultz on 2nd mo. 21, 2016 at 3:25pm

I went down that rabbit hole with Keith a while back.  I think everyone is different.  What works for one doesn't necessarily work for another.  I find I am more useful to God when I am not aware of His presence than when I am.  Sometimes His presence falls on me when I'm in the middle of something and I have to remind myself to ignore it because experience has shown that as soon as I breathe it in, it's gone and the work I was in the middle of is the worse for it.

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 2nd mo. 21, 2016 at 4:44pm

James C Schultz said:

... I find I am more useful to God when I am not aware of His presence than when I am.  Sometimes His presence falls on me when I'm in the middle of something and I have to remind myself to ignore it because experience has shown that as soon as I breathe it in, it's gone and the work I was in the middle of is the worse for it.

I think it was St Theresa who complained about God blissing her out when she was trying to take care of business. So I guess you aren't alone in that feeling.

But what does that say about 'the work you were in the middle of'?

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Permalink Reply by Keith Saylor on 2nd mo. 21, 2016 at 5:18pm

Hi James,

My walk in inherent self-existence (Presence itself) is sustained and guided by the very experience of the relative dimming, increase, or stasis in all things throughout my daily life. The shifting and moving of the Light itself anchoring my conscious and informing my conscience guides my actions. If the Light dims in an activity, I often refrain from the activity or, at least, enter into quiet worship  so as to not outrun the Guide itself. 

As the conscious and conscience becomes more and more aligned with and directly guided inherent self-existence (Presence itself) the more the Light itself carries and sustain through all activities in daily life.

This is not to suggest you should change your relationship with "God" in any way. Just to affirm that many of us do not find it helpful to push active experience of the presence of God into the background in order to fulfill a particular activity, 

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Permalink Reply by James C Schultz on 2nd mo. 23, 2016 at 8:14pm

I don't push the experience of the presence of God into the background, I allow it to wash over me without changing my focus on what I was doing when I first noticed the change in my sense of His presence.  His presence always surrounds me but sometimes it heats up and can be pleasantly distracting.  I believe this change is not meant for my pleasure but to empower me to continue the work I am doing.  It's like a jolt of extra energy that's needed to get an engine started.  Once it starts it requires less energy until occasionally it needs an extra burst to get over a hill.

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