{"id":16080,"date":"2017-10-13T09:54:28","date_gmt":"2017-10-13T13:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=16080"},"modified":"2017-10-13T09:57:41","modified_gmt":"2017-10-13T13:57:41","slug":"only-love-is-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=16080","title":{"rendered":"Only Love Is Real"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Only Love Is Real<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Guest writer and CAC faculty member James Finley continues sharing insights from John of the Cross. Take a few moments in the midst of your busy day to slow down, to enter into the quiet, and to read these words from your heart center, without judgment or needing to fully understand with your logical brain.<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8pIqE-Mxx1g\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe>Just as with Teresa of \u00c1vila\u2019s The Interior Castle, by the very first paragraph of John of the Cross\u2019 Prologue to The Ascent of Mount Carmel you get the sense that the words are coming from some very deep place from inside of him\u2014or really through him\u2014that intimately accesses a deep place in us:<\/p>\n<p>A deeper enlightenment and wider experience than mine is necessary to explain the dark night through which a soul journeys toward that divine light of perfect union with God that is achieved, insofar as possible in this life, through love. The darknesses and trials, spiritual and temporal, that fortunate souls ordinarily undergo on their way to the high state of perfection are so numerous and profound that human science cannot understand them adequately. Nor does experience of them equip one to explain them. [1]<\/p>\n<p>One of the operative principles of love is that love does not rest as long as there is an inequality in love. In seeing the beloved down, the lover is moved to lift the beloved up. John says the infinite love of God will not rest until you are equal to God in love. Even though you would be absolutely nothing without God, God will not rest until you are as much God as God is God. God will not settle for a trace of inequality. In the \u201cdark night of the soul,\u201d we are weaned away from the ego\u2019s finite ideas and feelings about God. We come to know that no idea about God is God. We are also weaned from our ideas about our self as being a finite, separate self apart from God.<\/p>\n<p>Not everyone experiences this kind of union in this life. But in some lives God does not wait until death to begin the consummation through a dark night of the soul. In this nondual state, although I am not God, I am not other than God either. Although I am not you, I am not other than you either. Although I am not the earth, I am not other than the earth either. All things are unexplainably, invincibly one in endless diversity forever.<\/p>\n<p>The awakening of this state on this earth does not mean you are holier than others. Rather, you awaken to how unexplainably holy everybody is. The mystic\u2014that is, the person who is ripe with this love consciousness that\u2019s born in the night\u2014is not more holy but is granted a greater realization of the infinite holiness of the simplest of things.<\/p>\n<p>Then, in some strange way, when you die, nothing will happen, because you\u2019ve already died to the illusion that anything less than love is real; and you are aware that Infinite Love is loving you endlessly and giving itself away as your life.<\/p>\n<p>Gateway to Silence:<br \/>\nFall deeper into love.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8211;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Individual Discouragement and Personal Growth<\/strong><br \/>\nBy Oswald Chambers<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>\u2026when Moses was grown\u2026he went out to his brethren and looked at their burdens. \u2014Exodus 2:11<\/strong><\/em><br \/>\nMoses saw the oppression of his people and felt certain that he was the one to deliver them, and in the righteous indignation of his own spirit he started to right their wrongs. After he launched his first strike for God and for what was right, God allowed Moses to be driven into empty discouragement, sending him into the desert to feed sheep for forty years. At the end of that time, God appeared to Moses and said to him, \u201c \u2018\u2026bring My people\u2026out of Egypt.\u2019 But Moses said to God, \u2018Who am I that I should go\u2026?\u2019 \u201d (Exodus 3:10-11). In the beginning Moses had realized that he was the one to deliver the people, but he had to be trained and disciplined by God first. He was right in his individual perspective, but he was not the person for the work until he had learned true fellowship and oneness with God.<br \/>\nWe may have the vision of God and a very clear understanding of what God wants, and yet when we start to do it, there comes to us something equivalent to Moses\u2019 forty years in the wilderness. It\u2019s as if God had ignored the entire thing, and when we are thoroughly discouraged, God comes back and revives His call to us. And then we begin to tremble and say, \u201cWho am I that I should go\u2026?\u201d We must learn that God\u2019s great stride is summed up in these words\u2014 \u201cI AM WHO I AM\u2026has sent me to you\u201d (Exodus 3:14). We must also learn that our individual effort for God shows nothing but disrespect for Him\u2014 our individuality is to be rendered radiant through a personal relationship with God, so that He may be \u201cwell pleased\u201d (Matthew 3:17). We are focused on the right individual perspective of things; we have the vision and can say, \u201cI know this is what God wants me to do.\u201d But we have not yet learned to get into God\u2019s stride. If you are going through a time of discouragement, there is a time of great personal growth ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Only Love Is Real Guest writer and CAC faculty member James Finley continues sharing insights from John of the Cross. Take a few moments in the midst of your busy day to slow down, to enter into the quiet, and to read these words from your heart center, without judgment or needing to fully understand [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16080"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16080"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16082,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16080\/revisions\/16082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}