The voice of God and the truth barometer

We always have access to the voice of God through our thoughts. The difficulty is to separate it from all of the other noise. 

What I’m about to talk about here, should not be regarded as an infallible method for getting in touch with the voice of God. There are other factors here, such as expectations and purely physical emotions.

Many people, including myself, feel pleasant shivers along their spine when something rings true to them. I have also felt the same shivers, but much stronger, when I’ve felt the presence of God. So, may I suggest that maybe we feel these shivers whenever God communicates something to us? Because really, if God communicates with us all the time, which he does, how could it be otherwise?

As I said, there are other factors to consider though. I would say that this falls under the realm of intuition. The main issues, I would say, are expectations and wishes. Do I expect the shivers to come? Do I wish for them to do so? If so, then, as always when it comes to intuition, I may have interference.

I don’t know exactly why things work this way. But something that I am beginning to notice, is that in order for things to work smoothly on the spiritual level, I have to not as much do things, as get out of the way. I have to stop interfering and let God work through me. But it’s easier said than done, when I have cultivated the habit of letting my mind struggle with everything for almost forty years.

EVERYTHING is a dialogue with God

This IS the final step on the journey. And it's a huge leap that takes time. 

If God is everything that has ever been and ever will be, how could it be otherwise? God is speaking to you in every single moment. In every single NOW that you experience. We can misunderstand the communication, but this is the truth. Our destination is to know that we always walk with God, the way Adam (metaphorically) did in the Garden of Eden. The fruit of knowledge of good and evil, I believe, is a metaphor for how we allow our own distorted intellect come between us and God. We can live with God in the Garden of Eden here and now, if we recognize that we are already walking with God and adjust our inner state accordingly. Ultimately, every thought should be part of an ongoing, inner prayer, or the voice of God, that comes to us through discernment and our openness to hearing it in the midst of our minds’ constant chattering and the noise of the world, with its demands and twisted ideas about what’s important and what is going to make us happy. The more we cultivate present moment awareness and keep God in our minds, the stronger this discernment grows.

Learning to listen to ourselves part 2

The confusion between the job of our different faculties mentioned in the previous post, is one of the major reasons why we constantly seem to do things that are not in our best interests, but seem right at the time. What would happen if we started asking ourselves what we truly want and need? What would happen if we stopped caring so much whether what we eat will add a few extra millimeters to our waist or whether it will contribute to an overall caloric deficit?

I’ve noticed that when I am in contact with my body and my emotions instead of using my intellect, I will soon get a message about what I need. It all seems to come down to this over and over again. Paying attention to what is going in inside and around us. When I don’t, I hand my power over to a combination of unconscious forces within me and constant bombardment of messages from the world, about what is important and what I should pay attention to.

I touched upon this in tha last post, but I think it is part of something bigger that I’m beginning to realize. Namely that we have gotten used to function in a very limited way, by using our thoughts to determine almost everything and thereby failing to pay attention to what the rest of us is trying to tell us. I’m suspecting that the more I break free from the invisible prison created by my thoughts, the more I will know things that I’m today only making qualified guesses about, often based on the often conflicting information from various authorities. Or even worse - I might simply be doing things out of habit because I’m in too much of a rush to stop and bring awareness to the present moment.

I want to conclude this post by repeating this: Pay attention to what is going on, within and without. As yourself: What is your experience trying to tell you? Make it a habit of asking this question as often as possible. When someone else is directing your attention, you are by definition not free. 

This is about being in touch with ourselves and our own values, instead of being lost in thoughts that are often not even our own, while trying to do what those same thoughts tell us that we ought to. 

Learning to listen to ourselves part 1

I realized this when I woke up in the weekend the other day: I’ve not cultivated the habit of listening to myself properly. Of listening to what I need. To what my body needs. What my soul needs. In many instances I’ve just considered what my mind thinks about something.

What happened was that I couldn’t sleep, but I felt that I needed to stay in bed. But a part of me wanted to rush up. This time I listened to the part that wanted to stay in bed. When I laid there, tensions started to dissolve and eventually I fell asleep, waking up a little less than an hour later, feeling well rested.

Had I gotten up the first time, chances are that I would have been tired, in a bad moon and more or less spoiled my day. This is something that has happened before. My thoughts usually go something like this: I can’t lay here wasting time when it’s impossible to fall asleep again anyway.

Recently I’ve noticed that there is something magical about asking ourselves questions. It’s almost as if it’s programmed into us to know what we really want and need. We’ve just learned to only ask our thoughts. And our thoughts will come up with all kinds of rational arguments for why one thing is better than the other. Even though they are totally unreliable when it comes to so many things, since they take such a limited amount of factors into consideration. 

In this case, my mind only saw some practical factors, such as that I will get more hours out of my day, while not thinking about how my body felt about it, that I by not listening to I will be less effective and less happy during the day and that I might fall asleep in front of the movie in the evening, thereby wasting a movie experience.

Food is another good example. I might think about what will be nice to eat in the evening and thereby buying some snacks or something. Or the opposite: I might think that I should choose some healthy but boring alternative, when I really want some snacks. 

In the first case, I may end up with some empty enjoyment that wouldn’t be better than a healthy alternative. And in the second case, I might end up unsatisfied, going to the store again or buying something even “worse” the next time.

The way I see it, the problem runs deep. We have not properly learned to discern the different parts of ourselves. We often confuse the job of our thoughts, our body or our emotions. We just allow the first faculty that makes its presence known to guide us.

God speaks in the inner silence

When you can honestly say that you receive your thoughts, rather than produce them with your ego? There is a very clear distinction here. But it’s difficult to recognize it, even efter you’ve done it once.

What I’ve found, is that the mind first has to be stilled to the point where there is a break in the thought activity for at least a few seconds. This, again, is difficult to recognize, because it is unawareness that makes us start thinking again, so we are generally not aware of having started thinking, until a few thoughts have passed through the mind. But even when thought activity seizes for just a few seconds, I notice that everything seems to fade away and I move closer to a state of just being if my eyes are closed. And if they are open, everything seems to flow effortlessly, to the same degree as I manage to be present in the here and now and still my mind. 

I believe that this state might put us in direct connection with God. Maybe OUR thoughts are what separates us from God? It would actually fit pretty neatly into the myth of the fall. Since our thoughts give us knowledge and we got separated from God and paradise through eating from the Tree of Knowledge. 

But that’s sort of a little sidenote that I thought was fitting.

Continuing: I’ve noticed that if I remain still and present for a while, my mind still starts talking again. And if I lose focus then, I’m back to the usual pointless chatter. But if I remain still and present, what comes through is completely different. It rings true and gives me insights that are either practical or will lead to more happiness and less suffering, for both me and others. As for the latter, it also often tells me things that I don’t want to hear. 

Another thing that I wonder, is whether our connection with God in the now has to be limited to words. Probably not. I wonder this because I’ve also found that when I am in a flow state, I feel closer to God in other ways as well. It’s as if God slowly takes over my life, the more I manage to be present. It’s as if it’s still me doing the thinking and moving, but yet it is not me. It’s strange, wonderful and difficult to explain.