God, much is changing, and much has changed.

I am concerned about my friends, about those who you have placed in my path. I cannot help but include myself in their trials -- isn't this love? And yet, I do not understand what you make some lives to be. I do not understand the design. It is like staring at a picture, with large spaces and gaps between the paint, attempting to recognize an alien landscape. The spiritual eye is, at times, color blind. I cannot see all of your colors, God -- how can I possibly understand the trials you lay on the ones I love?

And yet my heart, too, is in the mix. Why do you bring me to them, if I cannot help them? I cannot fix the situations they have brought upon themselves, and yet I pray and pray, and lose sleep, and worry until my heart strains and I cannot bear it anymore. Give their trials to me, Lord, and let them walk free. Give me their burdens, because I can suffer for you and retain your love, and they do not have your strength. Please, God, give them mercy. They do not know you... but perhaps, through my love of you, they can see a little of what you are.

Change

The game of life is to change. To change and move and learn to see yourself through a thousand different lenses. By constantly changing, life shows us permanence. It shows us the few things that stay the same.

Perfection is not simple. God is not simple. Love craves to suffer, that it may ever prove itself; death creates beauty; we feel the world through chemicals. Everything we think we know about God is wrong.

In all of my life, this is the only thing that God has proven true: that He is composed of thriving, unconditional love... and that He is always by my side.

Perfection

"9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. ... 12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known."
1 Corinthians 13:9

Imperfect

a poor reflection [of God], as in a mirror
the self known in part


Perfect

seeing [God] face to face (not as a dim reflection)
the self fully known


We are imperfect until we reach a sublime union with God. What are the signs of imperfection? Anger. Greed. Selfish motivation.

And then, a moment. What the Buddhists describe as the “blowing out” of the ego, or for Christians, a baptism in the Holy Spirit. That which is greedy inside of us, that which is selfish and judging and spiteful, is destroyed by God's perfect love, and we are made anew. We become “Awakened” to God's presence in the world.

Is this moment known beforehand by God? Yes. Is it planned? No. Because God is everything. God is your past, your present, and your future. God knows the moment you both will meet. You cannot fight what you are, or the mistakes you will make upon your path. God knows them, and God watches, and God listens to every whisper of your heart, and God leads you up winding mountain paths and into valleys of snow, just to bring you to the door. It is here that there is the only true choice. You must open the door on your own. And then you are awakened. You experience the connection in everything, the One, the meaning of Life and the truth of Love.

When one reaches a point where he or she comes upon God, it is like a leap, a jump, a flash of light. It is not anything visible or describable, but an “explosion” inside of the heart, a “breaking” of our deepest walls and a complete release of inhibition. In that moment, when we meet and know God, all that is angry and foul within us is destroyed and we become new. We are defined by God's love. We become vessels of perfection.

When we speak of perfection, we should not mistake it for something cold and hard, like a diamond. Perfection is fluid, like water, or air. Like Love. Perfection is Love; pure, fluid Love that changes and adapts to all things. God's love is beyond right or wrong. It is beyond organization, beyond definition, and beyond explanation. God's love is the very seed of creation.

Part of this union is also realizing that we can never be as great as God; we are simply pieces of the whole, not the whole in and of itself, and we exist in an imperfect, impermanent world. However, although no man can be as huge as God, a man may discover God within himself, and know God, and see God, and speak with God, and act with the will of God. This is why those who know God's love are humble; because they inherently know that God is everything, and that all of humanity is a grain of sand in comparison. That is why all who know God speak in riddles; because the reality of God is that it is a state of consciousness, a heightened awareness, and it cannot be described in words.

All of the structures of man,
founded on nothing.

We live in denial of God's purpose, even as we undeniably live it.

We are strangers to ourselves, orphans of existence, defined by what we are lacking, blind to what we have, confused and lost in a changing world where our equilibrium must be founded on willpower alone.

Man is confused because we lie to ourselves. We look away from the only truth in life, the only experience that is real, the only thing we cannot confront. We seek truth and yet run from it, because to find truth, to find the real meaning of existence, we must confront our own mortality.

Once we force ourselves to become aware of death... once we make ourselves stare at it, look it in the face, meditate on it, and see it in ourselves... once we make a commitment to dying, everything becomes much more clear. The illusions we create for ourselves, the structures, the ideas, the debates, the ups and downs of history and current events, all fall to nothing. None of this matters. Nothing but the state of our hearts.

Because we never know when it is our time. Only the lucky ones die slowly. We must be prepared, because whatever comes after death will be as real as what we see around us now, more real, more vivid, and by the time we reach that point, it will be too late to change anything.

This life is very real. The consequences of this life are very real. Stop living in the illusion of tomorrow. Wake up. Now is the only time we have to change.