{"id":19014,"date":"2020-06-29T09:12:09","date_gmt":"2020-06-29T13:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19014"},"modified":"2020-06-29T09:12:09","modified_gmt":"2020-06-29T13:12:09","slug":"radical-simplicity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19014","title":{"rendered":"Radical Simplicity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Radical\nSimplicity<\/strong><br>\nMonday, \u202fJune 29, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Vd9VpmHjU4k\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p><em>When\nthe Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together,\nand one of them [a scholar of the law] tested him by asking, \u201cTeacher, which\ncommandment in the law is the greatest?\u201d He said to him, \u201cYou shall love the\nLord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your\nmind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it:\nYou shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend\non these two commandments.\u201d<\/em>&nbsp;\u2014Matthew 22:34-40<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The greatest\ncommandment is to love God and the best way I know to love God is to love what\nGod loves\u2014which is everything! Surely this is the way that Jesus loves. To love\nas Jesus loves, we too must be connected to the Source of love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My spiritual father\nFrancis of Assisi (1194\u20131253) was definitely connected to the Source. He truly\nexperienced radical participation in God\u2019s very life. Such practical knowing of\nhis value and true identity allowed Francis to let go of status, privilege, and\nwealth. Francis knew he was part of God\u2019s plan, connected to creation and other\nbeings, inherently in communion and in love. Francis taught his followers to\nown nothing so they would not be owned by their possessions. Francis said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My brothers! My brothers! God has called me by\nthe way of [humility] and showed me the way of simplicity. . . . And the Lord\ntold me what He wanted: He wanted me to be a new fool in the world. God did not\nwish to lead us by any way other than this knowledge. . . .&nbsp; [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you don\u2019t\nlive from within your own center of connection and communion with God, you\u2019ll\ngo spinning around many other things. The true goal of all religion is to lead\nyou back to the place where everything is one, to the experience of radical\nunity with all of humanity and all of creation, and hence to the experience of\nunity with God, who is the Great Includer of all else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When you live in\npure consciousness, letting the naked being of all reality touch your own naked\nbeing, you experience foundational participation. Out of that plentitude\u2014a\nsense of satisfaction and inner enoughness, a worldview of abundance\u2014you find\nit much easier to live simply. You realize you don\u2019t \u201cneed\u201d as much. You\u2019ve\nfound your satisfaction at an inner place, at a deeper level inside you. You\u2019re\nable to draw from this abundance and share it freely with others. And you stop\ntrying to decide who is worthy of it, because you now know that you are not\n\u201cworthy\u201d either. It is one hundred percent pure gift!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Simplicity<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Purity\nof Heart, Singleness of Focus<\/strong><br>\nSunday, \u202fJune 28, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>My\nfood is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work.<\/em>&nbsp;\u2014John 4:34<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>I cannot do\nanything on my own; I judge as I hear, and my judgment is just, because I do\nnot seek my own will but the will of the one who sent me.<\/em>&nbsp;\u2014John 5:30<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>My Father, if it\nis possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will.<\/em>&nbsp;\u2014Matthew 26:39<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When\nyou read the above statements, it is quite clear that Jesus was entirely\nsingle-hearted. His life was all about doing the will of the One who sent him,\nthe One he loved above all. To Jesus, it was that simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As\nS\u00f8ren Kierkegaard (1813\u20131855) so beautifully put it, \u201cpurity of heart is to\nwill one thing.\u201d [1] No wonder Jesus said that the pure of heart would see God\n(Matthew 5:8). They alone keep their eyes in one constant and consistent\ndirection, and thus overcome the divisions created by the divided hearts and\nloyalties which plague the rest of us. As we grow spiritually, our lives become\nmore and more centered and simple. There are only a few things that matter, and\neventually really only one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Howard\nThurman (1899-1981), the esteemed theologian and spiritual teacher to Martin\nLuther King, Jr., reached this point of single-hearted focus. The following\nexcerpt from his book <em>Meditations of\nthe Heart<\/em>&nbsp;reveals how Thurman prayed that God\u2019s will\nmight be done in and through him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The central\nelement in communion with God is the act of self-surrender. The symbol of my\nprayer this day is the open heart. It is most natural for me to think of prayer\nin terms of the open hand. My needs are so great and often so desperate that\nthere seems to be naught besides my own urgency. I must open my heart to God.\nThis will include my own deep urgencies and all the warp and woof of my\ndesiring. These things, deep within, I must trust with the full awareness that\nmore important even than self-realization is the true glorifying of God.\nSomehow I must make God central to me and in me, over and above the use to\nwhich I wish or need to put His energy and His power.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I surrender\nmyself to God without any conditions or reservations. I shall not bargain with\n[God]. I shall not make my surrender piecemeal but I shall lay bare the very\ncenter of me, that all of my very being shall be charged with the creative\nenergy of God. Little by little, or vast area by vast area, my life must be\ntransmuted in the life of God. As this happens, I come into the meaning of true\nfreedom and the burdens that I seemed unable to bear are floated in the current\nof the life and love of God. [2]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Radical Simplicity Monday, \u202fJune 29, 2020 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them [a scholar of the law] tested him by asking, \u201cTeacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?\u201d He said to him, \u201cYou shall love the Lord, your God, with all your [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"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\/19014"}],"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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19014"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19015,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19014\/revisions\/19015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}