Time – It's All In Me

We Are Born In the Moments

September 3, 2017September 3, 2017 Higher Up IDEAL8 Comments

quotes324 Below is a poem written by my 9 year old daughter, Calista, a sensitive soul and one of my best friends ever. I say that because I can relate to her more than I can relate to most people. I guess it is similar to my relationship with my own mother. Our relationship transcends familial bonds. In a lot of ways I think if we were to relate to one another simply in that way, it would actually place a limitation on our ability to learn and grow together. Of course I respect my mother according to certain societal prescriptions and I ask the same of my daughter for me.

However, from a spiritual perspective, I understand that I cannot limit our ability to teach one another simply because my mother was born before me and I was born before my daughter. After all, we are more than simply these corporeal expressions traveling through time. The greater part of us is eternal–beyond time and therefore each of us has at our disposal access to the infinite wisdom of our Source, our Creator with whom we eternally. From this perspective, as one whose ideal is to live a life that expresses the “On Earth as it is in Heaven” design, I’d be a fool not to see every being as a potential gateway to greater awareness of God’s grace and revelation.

C.S. Lewis said:

“For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which [God] has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them. He would therefore have them continually concerned either with eternity or with the Present–either meditating on their eternal union with, or separation from, Himself, or else obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure.”

I believe that this is the essence of what Calista’s poem conveys and it is to this awareness that I am convicted. Children are very present centered beings. If what Brother Lewis is saying is accurate–and I believe it is–then this aspect of how they encounter the world is precisely why Jesus said that the entrance to the kingdom must be approached as a child.

When seduced by the illusion of temporality, we place a premium on chronological order–the first is the first and the last is the last. In realm of the eternal the first can be the last and the last can be the first, what once was may never be and what has never been can be, and the beginning and the end are One. I say this to say that the Divine Order is not limited to linearity. Thus is the way of the eternal. And so in this moment out of which I am being reborn, I am hoping to follow my daughter in remembering that I too am from the moments where I am most present.

Where I’m From

by Calista Monterra FitzSilva

I am from my little sister’s sweet little giggles
when I tickle her and her big smiles,
Her brown eyes as brown as a grizzly bear’s fur.
I am from my little sister pulling my hair
And trying to talk and crying over her pacifier

I’m from my mom’s sweet banana bread
Warm out of the oven, the steam rising
The chocolate chips melt into chocolate sauce.
I’m from my grandmother’s magnificent apple pie on Thanksgiving eve.
And the fluffy pancakes she makes when I visit her and my grandpa

I am from the sweet apple cider we sipped
before we skied down the mountain in Boston, Massachusetts
I would fly down the mountain, woosh!
The wind blowing in my face.

I am from the salty air of Aruba
as the ocean splashes up on me and soaks me
I am from early Christmas mornings
when the outside world is cold and damp
I’m from climbing the huge rock in my cousin’s backyard
and finding shiny rocks

I am from these moments.

The Way of All Flesh

January 30, 2017 Higher Up IDEAL1 Comment

There is a path that all flesh must take
We’ve always known this from the start
It’s the very awareness of this fact
That reveals the nature of our heart

For the spirit of immortality
Wrestles with the ways of form
Tempting us with corporeality
As if it were the norm

There are hearts that surrender to this way
As long as we are here
While other hearts struggle with time itself
Certain that eternity is near

The struggling heart will not surrender
It crams eternity into space
Living life with all it has
And in its wake leaves waves of grace

It knows the way that flesh must go
But it and flesh are not the same
And on that day when the two must part
It receives that which is its to gain

The poem above was written by request for the Rev. Bruce MacKenzie Pastor Emeritus of the church I serve in Boulder, CO. “The way of all flesh” was a saying Bruce loved to say when referring to anything that is temporary in this world. At one visit I had with him before his passing he said to me, “Soon I will be going the way of all flesh, but you and I know that is nothing to be concerned with. So no tears.” I said to him, “Well we teach that Jesus wept when Lazarus died and he was just about to resurrect him, so I cry when you leave.” He laughed at that and changed the subject. Bruce’s body might have gone the way of all flesh. But though the outer man is beyond our seeing, the inner man remains eternally abiding.

There’s A World

December 17, 2016December 18, 2016 Higher Up IDEAL8 Comments

There’s a world we all are living in
But not everyone can see
A World of eternal spaciousness
Where everyone is free

Inside that world is another world
Where people choose to live a lie
“Special people”claim to know the Truth
And teach the “forgetting” we can die

Some of those people know the Truth
And twist it tight for so called gain
Telling us that we can’t get along
And that the Other causes pain

Their clarion call is “SAVE YOURSELF”
So that’s what many of us try to do
We can’t see it’s just a cattle call
And all they want to hear is “MOOOO”

They have no purpose if we’re not scared
“Can’t you see that there’s a threat?”
They know that we will sell our souls
Only as long as we’re fearing death

They tell you they’re here to protect us
That’s the job for which they’re paid
In exchange you can focus on other things
But you lose consciousness in the trade

The world of lies that we think is real
Does not objectively exist
Like a picture of a sumptuous meal
On which no one can subsist

Meanwhile in the eternal world
One is the Truth that always reigns
~~“divided houses”~~ do not exist
And there is no loss or gain

No one’s seeking for the joy in life
For Joy is the Cause of Life itself
And value isn’t used as we use it here
Since everything springs from eternal wealth

There also is never a use for Welcome
Because there’s never a time that we aren’t here
We can tell ourselves that we’ve gone away
But to Truth we’ve never disappeared

Like children with their hands on eyes
Who think they’re unseen when they can’t see
Here we can choose to chain ourselves
But that doesn’t make us less than free

We’re only bound by the limits that we project
Our own judgments become our jail
But our sentence is never for our entire life
Because the Truth always prevails

Nothing Is What It Seems

May 29, 2015 Higher Up IDEAL1 Comment

Nothing is what it seems

There’s always something underneath

Hidden worlds in every event

Taking action to be released

All you might see is what’s in front of you

Meanwhile a mystery unfolds

While you’re focusing on the “important things”

Secret stories are being told

Like the alarm that you just slept through

That will you make late to that early meeting

You will experience as an inconvenience

When in truth it’s an Angel’s greeting

Or that relationship that ended

That you thought would be forever

May be causing you a lot of pain right now

But it would be worse if you stayed together

Or what about that job of yours

That leaves you daily stressing

You think it’s about how much you’re paid

When it’s about how much you’re blessing

Your child who will not listen

That one who never stops debating

May be getting on your very last nerve

But you don’t know what they’re cultivating

This is what I remind myself

When things don’t seem to go my way

That God is shaping something in my soul

That is not always on display

And this isn’t true for only me

But for everyone around me

Even the people I consider not so nice

May have souls that would astound me

That’s why Abba tells me not to judge

My sisters and my brothers

Because we might see what our bodies do

But most times we can’t see each other

Of course you may not like this line of thought

I’m not suggesting that you should

All I want to do is encourage you

Because there is underlying good

It may be difficult to fathom

Especially when looking at the past

But even if everything went your way

It still was never meant to last

This world is like an incubator

That’s meant to help us build our strength

Not a place for us to make a home

Or seek to stay beyond its length

And everything that happens here

Is always more than it appears

Because we’re learning how to better choose

Between what’s from joy and what’s from fears

We’re being prepared for our true nature

That was not meant to stay in time

We are practicing being human

So we can handle what is Divine

Pain and Loss

May 20, 2015May 20, 2015 Higher Up IDEALLeave a comment

There is a place where what we think we’ve lost

Is right here with us all along

Never not within our reach

Out of view but never gone

It’s a place that’s called Reality

It isn’t hard to find

All you need to do is reimagine you

And accept that time is not a line

It’s not even a circle

More precisely it’s like a sphere

Expanding all around you

So that any now is always here

With your focus on a center

Life moves in and out like breath

On the inhale you touch eternal life

While the exhale feels like death

But of course that is illusion

The in and out are wholly one

Try to divide them into two

And what you wind up with is none

But that is just a moment

In an infinitude of more

As soon as one ends another begins

That’s why no one’s keeping score

Now some would see this as their freedom

“I will do what I want to do.”

“No loss must mean no consequence.”

But actually it isn’t true

Despite the fact that all is here

And that time lasts longer than forever

There is a flow to how it goes

Which keeps it all together

There’s a pushing and a pulling

That manifests in waves

That creates alignments with likes and likes

Creating masters bound to slaves

Some people call it karma

I call it reaping what we sow

God probably calls it “It is what it is.”

But it’s a mystery we cannot know

It maintains itself through veiling

As we approach the truth we feel it shifting

Causing us to look again

Because now it feels like something’s missing

It’s not trying to be evasive

Even though that’s how it seems

Truth’s just trying to keep us moving

So it can pull us from the dream

There is really nothing to lose

This is the one thing we can gain

To wake us up from the fear of loss

Out of which we make up pain

No Such Things As Endings

May 16, 2015May 21, 2015 Higher Up IDEAL5 Comments

There are no such things as endings

There are only transformations

Ascending or descending out of view

As we enter new vibrations

If one’s in peak and one’s in trough

We may experience disappearing

But Presence remains for the One in joy

Absence only to the one who’s fearing

From the Highest Heights eternity is…

Encompassing all dimensions

From the lowest low all one can see

Is line of sight from their descension

From this point of view we see a world

Where we define things by their borders

But from what I’ve heard from other worlds

We are living out of order

For a man once told me after death

That he was still alive

And that he could see what I could see

Without the use of carnal eyes

He pointed out that I could dream

Seeing things while eyes are closed

So it shouldn’t be too hard to see

That eyes are not where sight arose

Breathing without nostrils

While walking without legs

He taught form is never who we are

Despite what attachment to it begs

We enter into being

Through a door always ajar

Expressing the lesser part of us

The greater projected from afar

The comings and the goings

Emerge from a place that’s always still

Including the death that many fear

But the truly living never will

This revelation did not amaze me

I got the sense I always knew it

That I was playing as if I didn’t know

Till body and soul became congruent

Now that the hour is upon me

I cannot maintain the lie

There are no such things as endings

I cannot treat you like you die

And it’s not just who we call the living

All things that are will ever be

Conceived in eternal consciousness

That extends beyond what eyes can see

But it is not beyond the knowing

If we surrender to human limits

Receiving the Life that has always been

With eternity embedded in it

This is the truest Destiny

Living life as it unfolds

And folds and then unfolds again

The entire story never told

Unlimited Power

April 4, 2015April 4, 2015 Higher Up IDEAL1 Comment

Look at the tip of your finger

What is it that you see?

That which appears to be absent

Is exactly what holds the key

All that is in the visible

Has the unseen as its Source

The finest formless substance

Passing through into the coarse

Even though you cannot see it

The world is at your finger tips

Every possible frequency in a single point

All that ever will exist

Every movement bound in stillness

Until someone calls into the temporal

Instantly the command starts taking shape

It really is that simple

It all is living within us

What we hope for and what we fear.

We’re just chasing what we’re projecting

And that’s what brought us to the so called “here”

We were given unlimited power

To create anything in an instance

But for reasons that I’ll now explain,

All we chose to make was distance

Like a child who wants attention

We rebelled for our own space

While hoping that before we got too far

The Creator would give us chase

But the Creator just kept creating

Busy keeping everything in tune

So we decided to run as far as we could go

But to the Creator we’re in the room

You see, Omnipresence is inconvenient

If one wants to get away

Because as soon as you arrive at “somewhere else”

You realize you are where you always stayed

Some of us have accepted this

We no longer try to run

And we no longer chase our siblings

Instead we shine with the Present Son

That doesn’t mean that we’re not struggling

Perhaps we’re struggling even more

Because now we are completely powerless

That’s what we know we need Him for

We had exhausted every possibility

To create ourselves in our own image

Until we had nothing left in us to fight

And we thought that we were finished

Like a branch cut off from the Vine

We eventually began to wither

We could not be a Source unto ourselves

So to live we called the Giver

Instantly the Giver gave

But we took our time in our receiving

We had put so much into making our own space

That we were out of practice with believing

We needed an example

To remind us what to do

To humble ourselves accordingly

So the Power can come through

So the Son who lives eternally

Entered the dream of days and hours

So we can see Him though He’s invisible

That’s how He connects us to our Power

The more that we surrender

The clearer it is to see

That the Spirit has never left us

No matter how much we’ve tried to flee

That’s the Way of this Wondrous Power

It can be rejected but not denied

Capable of bringing back to Life

Even those of us who died

The Inauthentic self

April 2, 2015April 2, 2015 Higher Up IDEAL2 Comments

The Authentic One has no self

There never is an “I”

Knowing there’s no such thing as Death

One never owns this lie

All One ever knows is Being

In fact One is the only Beer

The Source of every vision born of Truth

One can be the only Seer

The “I” that isn’t blind

Sees not what is before it

Dividing what’s One into separate selves

And then trying to restore it

It’s the oldest trick in the book of ego

Designed to make the “I” the savior

By creating dangers that do not exist

In an effort to control behavior

In an effort to be special

In an effort to be the best

In an effort to succeed no matter what the costs

And to rise above the rest

But take away the effort

And here is what you’ll find

All the doings that we thought were done

Do not exist outside the mind

I don’t know a way to tell you this

Without it sounding like a threat

To all that we’ve accomplished

Or the things we haven’t finished yet

But on the other side of what we think we do

There are worlds coming into being

Some of which are binding us

Others forever freeing

It’s a paradox of paradox

Quite impossible to prove it

Founded on the Yeshua principle

Those who gain their lives will lose it

I know that this sounds crazy

But here is something crazier still

Everything that’s keeping you from You

Isn’t even real

I know that you can feel this

You can sense that it’s the Truth

Because within you is the Godhead

So that there is no excuse

But this is something we’re denying

And there’s just a single reason why

If we accept the Truth of who we are

We can no longer be the “I”

And suddenly there’s no “them”

We’s the only life that’s True

Making all of “them” as innocent

As you are for what you do

Holy freakin’ moly

This kind of thinking will blow your mind

Until you no longer have one

That can operate in time

Then that’s when you will see It

From the eternal point of view

That the Mind of Christ that lives in Yesh

Is the only Mind of the Authentic You

Yes Today

February 21, 2015February 9, 2023 Higher Up IDEALLeave a comment

When our minds are not on the day we’re in
We can’t be fully participating
What serves us best is living Now
And on the Present concentrating
But this is easier said than done
When we’re obsessed with our statistics
More than half the time we’re somewhere else
Our minds making past and future visits
Using the past as a frame of reference
It’s not strange to hear people say,
“Based on what happened in the past,
I think tomorrow will be like today.”
It’s called pattern recognition
And it truly can serve us well
But if we don’t like what it is we’re seeing
It can also keep us in our hell
Just imagine if you are someone
Who’s had your fair share of rejection
Eventually just to avoid hearing “no”
You might go into self protection
You’ll start relying on the past
Just to find some kind of order
Forfeiting the possibility
That there’s a higher “yes” just around the corner
And that “yes” could come today
But we would never know
If based on what happened yesterday
We let this other option go
I know that I have done it
Despite my best intentions
So I can tell you from my experience
About this pattern that I’ve mentioned
But what’s worse than this is the pseudo “yes”
That we got because it was forced
The good appearance that isn’t Good
That actually throws us off our course
Some call it being successful
But it’s a “yes” that’s not matured
A bitter fruit that’s not quite ripe
Creating a sickness that must be cured
If you’ve ever had that feeling
You know the “yes” I’m talking about
Where on the outside we are celebrating
But on the inside we have our doubts
This becomes a different type of pattern
From which it is even harder to get away
It’s the one where everything we do
Is shaped by what other people say
They say, “You should be happy.”
“Getting the ‘yes’ is all that matters.”
“If I were you, I’d dot dot dot.”
All the while our mind just chatters
“Maybe I shoulda coulda…”
“Maybe that way was the thing.”
Until the little joy we had is gone
And all we’re left with is the sting
“Forget about tomorrow.”
“I’m going to lose my mind today.”
“I know that what I’m doing’s wrong,
But I can’t see another way.”
That’s when we start justifying
After that here comes the blame
And when both of those start failing us
We finally resort to shame
“That’s not the way it was supposed to go.”
Have you ever said that before?
Well if this pattern keeps going the way it is
Believe me, we’re going to be saying it more
You see, the only way to break it
Is by first admitting that we do it
Then start backing off from all assumptions
Until we see we’re getting through it
We’ll know we’re on our way
When can say that we don’t get it
And when things don’t go according to plan
We can step back and just let it
This does not mean becoming a pushover
In the face of defined opponents
It simply means to be in today
So we’ll have power for the moment
For the “Yes” today that is fully formed
Is the one we know that God completed
While the yeses that we have made up ourselves
Are those waiting to be defeated

Winners Cannot Lose

February 20, 2015 Higher Up IDEALLeave a comment

The feeling that we label loss

Is a lie with no foundation

Despite what we continue to tell ourselves,

It’s never part of God’s Creation

Being wholly Present

In God absence can never be

So all that was always is

No matter what we think we see

It’s really quite amazing

Our sophisticated lies

Without time we cannot be special

So we’d rather believe we die

It’s all a big equation

Calculated in our favor

If others can lose then we can win

Giving us a chance to play the savior

It’s an attractive proposition

To be better than them all

But if you take away the judgment

You instantly take away the fall

Yeshua is a genius

See how he takes away our sins

By showing us a reality

Where everybody wins

There are no such thing as losers

We can win or we can learn

Or we can suffer in resistance

Until we start to feel the burn

But we can’t hold out forever

Eventually we will crumble

Realizing that the power we are looking for

Can only come from being humble

That’s when thinking of others losing

Becomes a complete misuse of mind

And our obsessive thoughts of winning

Soon transform to the healing kind

What we once called our misfortunes

Now are blessings undisguised

Because we’re no longer seeing dimly

Once the Truth is realized

It’s what Yeshua was trying to say

“Those who don’t have will have less”

But those who have will have much more

For through them the world is blessed

Not of their own doing

But because they were undone

No longer fearing losing

The entire world has won