Prayer as an act of giving

In religious life, all that we do has the meaning of an offering to the Creator. Prayer is one of the most important offerings we can make. What is the significance of offerings and how should offerings to God be made in the right way?

The word ‘offering’ is an official word for giving. Offering is nothing else than giving. It is through giving to a person that we build up a good relationship. It is no different in our relationship to God. God gives to us and when we give back to God, we can build up a good relationship.

Prayer needs to be a giving act, not a taking one. Just like people sometimes try to build relations with other people by asking or taking, so we could also mistakenly try to get from God rather than to give. In a normal and fruitful relationship, both individuals will try to give to each other. It is not different in our relationship to God. When someone prays and all the time only wants to get something, for example by only asking for blessings, then a normal relationship cannot develop.

There are certain rules for giving between people. Usually these rules are not made so conscious, but they nevertheless are commonly applied. Similar rules or principles exist for giving to God.

One principle of giving is that you want to give something good and clean. When you receive a present but there is something bad attached to it, you won’t like it very much. For example, if someone offers you a meal and there is something in it that makes you sick, then you won’t appreciate it very much and this has consequences for your relationship with the one who gave it.

Sometimes people give something in order to get. For example, the world of advertisement on the internet often works like that. You can receive many programs online ‘for free’ but the free gift is not really free. Many smart methods are applied so you eventually will spend money on a product you sometimes did not really need or want.

When we pray, we do not only offer our prayer to God. Through the offering we offer ourselves to God. What you really want to reach through prayer is that you build up a relationship with God. The offering, in this case a prayer, always is something intermediate. The offering stands between God and you. In reality what you offer is yourself.

This means that when you offer a prayer to God, you yourself need to be clean. Clean in this case means that you firstly are clean in mind and spirit. When your thoughts would be full of hatred, you can hardly expect that God could like your prayer. Even if the words of your prayer sound sweet, through the words you also offer what is in your spirit and with hatred or egoism you will not deepen the relationship with God.

It also implies that our prayers are not independent from how we live. When someone does what he or she likes during the day and then tries to pray in the evening, the prayer at best can become one of repentance. Repentance has only value when it is really meant. When someone lives each day like this, doing what he or she knows is not so good, then prayer becomes very hypocrite and as a result your entire personally might become like that.

We can offer promises or pledges to God, to change our life, or to do something what we know is right to do. Also such a promise or pledge needs to be pure and sincere. Another way of expressing this is to say that the offering needs to be split. Whatever you offer, you need to only offer what is good and not what is stained. When you give a promise and your mind is not entirely serious about it, it means that something unclean entered your mind and therefore also your offering of prayer. Then it is better to first work on yourself, to question yourself whether you really mean what you say, and only offer the prayer and pledge after you did this. To help you cleanse your mind, you can pray and ask the Creator to show you how.

When you bring an offering, what you offer in deepest essence is your love. Also in prayer, your love for God is more essential than anything else. Prayers that are superficial or only ritual have little meaning. When you pray and you can feel deep love for God, that is when your prayers gain the highest value.

It is like when you speak to another person, or you write someone a letter, you can do it as an empty habit, not putting much of your heart into it, or you can make effort to really feel and express personal love. This makes a world of difference to the receiver. When you pray to God, God is the recipient of your prayer and there are no prayers so wonderful as those in which you manage to move God’s heart.

And when you get answer from God…

Prayer to God is to open yourself to God and for all that comes from God.

Prayer is to put yourself in connection to the Creator and to put yourself in the right position in relation to God. The position we take is that of the created one, the one loved by God, the one who is willing to do God’s will.

When you pray, you should forget all your knowledge, all that you ever learned. When God speaks to you, what is the value of what you know in relation to God who knows all?

To pray is to want to give up all preconceived ideas, because God will renew your mind, clear it up and bring light in the darkest corners of your being.

Imagine this: God is the greatest being of the universe. Compared to God, the mightiest kings and the most noble saints and the smartest scientists are all little children. You can meet God! How wonderful and great this is. When we realize the meaning of prayer, the significance of meeting God, it can make us filled with marvel and awe, with deepest desire of love, with stillness and gratitude.

God created this universe and knows all the principles. God knows every single person and knows all that you ever experienced. God knows your destination and future and will tell you what to do in life. God will also help you with what may seem for you the smallest questions and problems, simple things like what you should eat today and how you should fill your day or where and if you should go on vacation, whom you should meet or not meet. God will tell it all if you only bother to ask and are prepared to listen.

God wants to be very close to you because God loves you more than you could ever love yourself and God wants to be with you and experience life through you, feel your joy and your sadness, share in your excitement and hope.

When you have been still and waiting for God’s answer and then you receive answer, in some way or another, in the form of a conviction coming up in you, a strong feeling for what you have to do, or you hear God’s voice in yourself, not outside from yourself, but always in you, then there is only one thing to do…

Then you received Truth, you got sure guidance. It compares to nothing else what you may have thought. All what you knew may at best be truth, but what God tells you is TRUTH. This is the absolute and clear guidance you need. This will set your life on the right course, whatever it means.

God will never ask you something that you cannot handle. So when you receive God’s direction and you feel difficult about it, know for certain that God never asks you more than you could manage. Sometimes what God tells us feels like impossible to do or to understand, but know that God will be there with you on your way, if only you keep your connection to God. God will help you through all difficulties and this is how you will grow, more quickly than you could imagine.

Do not add God’s answers to the knowledge or thoughts you already had. This is not the right place for God’s guidance. God’s answers hover over everything else in you. Don’t think about what God told you, but pray about it, that is: try to understand what God means, don’t try to give it your own interpretation.

Many people are afraid, usually unconsciously, for what God may tell them. Then they pray but at the same time they close their heart and mind. They pray for hours and days and even years in that way. They will never get answer because they are afraid for what they are going to hear. This means that they don’t trust God enough. They have feelings that God will punish them or will misuse them. God is not like that. God always wants what is the best for you and everyone around you. What God asks you is the best, even though with your human concepts you may not understand so deeply.

What God tells us is not just for the moment. It is for your best future. God’s directions may seem difficult in your present situation, but when you follow them you will see that it all will work out best. God wants you to grow in love and for this we need many life experiences. We need to go our path with God always. People around you usually will not understand. They may think you have gotten crazy to go the course you do.

When you receive God’s guidance, write it down or at least keep it alive in your mind. Do not forget it and don’t mix it with your own thoughts. Do not give it your own interpretation but pray to understand more deeply what God told you. You can ask God again and again what it meant what God told you as long as you did not cover God’s answers with your own concepts. What God tells you is LOVE. What God tells you is TRUTH.

Sacred place of prayer

One of the most important factors influencing your prayer is the place where you pray. The influence of the place, the room or space where you pray is very large but this can only be understood well from a spiritual perspective.

Of course, also the external or physical aspects of the place where you pray are important. You would rather pray in a quiet room that you decorated beautifully and in which you placed objects that bring you in the right mood than for example in a noisy hall of a train station.

Prayer is very much influenced by the location where you pray. This has most of all a spiritual reason. One place is not the other. The energies of one place are not those of another place.

I believe that many cultures of the past had much more understanding of this and therefore created sacred sites. Central on such a site could be a tree or a stone construction or a temple, or a combination of these. The meaning of a sacred site is first of all that the spiritual environment is controlled. What is more or less controlled are the energies and the spirits who have access to such a place. When you want to pray well, you best learn to make such a place for yourself.

When you pray, you direct yourself to God, but you automatically also open yourself for the spiritual reality around you. When you pray on a place that is not spiritually controlled in a good way, you can be very much disturbed by spirits who don’t like you to connect to God.

The other factor is the energies on a place or in a room. When you make effort to pray on always the same place or in the same room, and you guard that this place is being used for activities other than or too different in nature from prayer, then you will see that the feeling of concentration on that location builds up over time. Each time that you pray there, it will get easier to concentrate.

To claim a place outside or a room or part of a room for prayer may be a spiritual battle by itself. You need to change the energy of that spot and you need to guard it against invasion of spirits who might want to disturb your prayers.

Sacred places can also be related to one another, for example in some cultures many sacred trees in a country or on a continent were spiritually connected. When such trees are connected to one another, the good spiritual merit of one sacred tree location can reinforce that of other, related trees.

When you don’t yet have a good place in your own house and don’t know a sacred location outside, I would advise to pray on a quiet and beautiful place in nature. It pays off to often pray on the same spot, as the investment of your earlier prayers get energetically and spiritually stored on that place. Another possibility is to make a prayer walk, also preferably in a good and natural environment. When you make a prayer walk you don’t have the advantage of being on a prepared spiritual spot, but by walking you also cannot get so strongly influenced by what could be difficult influences on a fixed location. You just take your path where it feels good and you centre your heart and mind on God and increase your concentration during the walk.

When I make special effort to pray I usually do it in a room that I prepared for this as much as possible. I don’t let other people come in this room apart from for prayer (when it is a part of a room you can ask other people not to enter it), I place an altar (beautiful table) with flowers and natural stones or other natural objects such as shells, I paint and decorate the room with nice pictures and in pleasing colors. I keep that room clean from dust or newspapers or any kind of objects that don’t feel like enhancing the atmosphere needed for prayer. I do nothing else in that room than sacred activities.

It is possible to share such a place or room with others, provided that you know that these other people also want to pray in a deeper way.

Be aware of the fact that the sacredness of each location depends very much on what happened on that site. For example, if someone else prayed on your favourite place and he or she had a bad mood, then after this the holy atmosphere of that location needs restoration. You will have to get rid of the difficult energies that came there and sometimes the place may even have become invaded by spirits that want to harm your prayers. In that case the first prayer or prayers you have there may turn into spiritual fights in order to claim back the location.

When you have learned to pray in a stronger and deeper way and you have managed to set up or keep a prayer place sacred, you will get deep experiences in prayer. Good angels or spirits can come to you to give you revelations or inspiration and each time that you pray there for longer time, you can have deep experiences with God.

Praying in faith and concentration

When you pray, concentrate. Concentrate on God the Creator.

You can only concentrate on God when you believe that God exists. Believe that God can hear your prayer and can answer in one way or another.

When you pray in faith, your prayer will be answered.

When you pray without faith, for example when you do it out of habit or don’t really believe in God’s reality, then your prayers will be futile.

God lives in each of us, but we don’t address ourselves to God in ourselves. God lives in us, this means that God’s love and energy can be in us. It doesn’t mean that the postal address of God is within us.

In each of us is a gate to God and through that gate we can speak to God. We can do this in a very natural way, like a child would speak to the parent, or maybe, when you feel more like that, like a servant speaks to the lord.

There is a kind of prayer that doesn’t lead you to God. That kind of prayer is based on the assumption that God is only some kind of consciousness that is everywhere in the cosmos. It is true that God’s spirit dwells in the cosmos and that this is a kind of consciousness, but I perceive this aspect of God as an expression of God in the cosmos. God also is a personality with a certain character, a character of giving love. I cannot prove this because God’s existence cannot be proven. I speak from my own experience.

When you just open yourself for ‘God’ in the cosmos, then you may also open yourself for what is not God. You may get all kind of ideas that don’t come from God.

To pray to God means a concentrated effort to focus on God as a being with heart and also as a being who can answer your prayers. The movement is one of focusing, of narrowing down your attention to God. Once you feel to have more contact to God, your mind will become wide and encompassing.

When you open yourself for what you think is God just anywhere around in the cosmos, you are not focusing but making an effort in an opposite direction. After this your mind will narrow down, it will be influenced by whatever you picked up and this will then control your views on life.

It is by faith alone that we can pray and receive answers. The more faith you have in God’s existence, the more answers you will get.

All truth comes from God and we have only access to truth when we first received it from God. How would we be able to judge what is true and what is not true if there were not a standard of truth in us? The standard of truth in us comes from our direct relationship to God. When we pray much to God, we get more and more sensitive to what is true and what is not true. We can better sense the intentions behind what people say or write.

We cannot simply trust what anybody tells or teaches us. The standard for knowing is in us and it is in our close relationship with God. There is no other standard for truth.

Everyone who searches deeply within the self will find there the reality of God. We are souls created by God and whatever we may have done or believed in life, our souls still belong to God. Through the deepest of our being we are connected to God. God is in other beings too, but we cannot speak directly to God in that way.

The gate to God is in the deepest of us. This is why we need to get to know our own self, as deeply as possible. When you really know your own self, you cannot but also come to know God, because you will find the proof of the Creator’s existence within you.

Real prayers and problematic prayers

We pray to the Creator. The Creator is the Creator and there is only one Creator. There is only one God.

Even though God has received different names, there is only one God the Creator.

Created beings are not God the Creator.

When we pray, we need to pray to the real God. As obvious this seems, this is for many people the most difficult to do.

I will mention a few possibilities, of people who pray or think to pray but their prayers are superficial or altogether wrong.

It is possible and often occurring that when you pray you direct yourself to what I would call a reflection or an image of God. The problem is that you don’t really believe that God exists. Your belief in God is like a scientific hypothesis, an assumption really. You may have taken God’s existence for granted because your parents taught you this. Or you may have found God but your faith never deepened enough. In such a case you pray to God but you cannot get deeper answers to your prayer because your faith in God is weak and shallow.

The only solution to this is to make yourself aware of your lack of faith in God. God can answer your prayer when you believe in God and when you live in such a way that your faith grows.

Some people pray to themselves. They have split their own mind in two parts, a part that prays and a part that receives the prayer. It usually is a difficulty of those who think too much and who do not wish to submit themselves to a higher God. It is a problem of arrogance, of putting yourself above God and making yourself to a kind of god. For some people this disease of the mind has progressed so far that they really believe that the ‘god’ in their own mind is real. They answer their own prayers. Some of such people eventually get crazy. They may come to suffer of severe megalomania and revel in being praised and honoured by others.

Quite many people pray to spirits. Spirits are not the Creator. All spirits are created beings. We can talk to spirits and there needs to be nothing wrong with that, but don’t call such conversations prayer, because they are not. People can get revelations and inspirations from the spiritual world. These revelations can be helpful or misleading, but in any case they don’t come directly from God. There is someone in-between God and you. When you receive such revelations or inspirations, it is at best comparable to what you hear from a respected teacher. In the worst case people may have come under the influence of certain deceptive spirits, some of them who pose as if they were gods.

Ceremonial and ritualistic prayers often tend to become superficial. Though this type of prayers can have a function, in many cases the practitioners get used to praying only like this. Their prayers are mere formulas, which they learned by heart and repeat again and again. Sometimes such a prayer still has value as a form of meditation, but you cannot expect that only by praying like this you could reach God.

When prayers are written down they can serve to teach you how to pray, but they can also lure you into a too easy prayer life.

When you pray to God, your attitude is most important. You cannot tell God what to do. Sometimes people pray like this and tell God to do this and do that. How many times did I not hear someone praying to support a certain leader in the world. How can you be sure that God wants to support such a person? Maybe that person got power in a wrong way and it would be better that he lost it.

Another doubtful way of prayer is when you just keep asking God to give you what you want. Some of what you wish may be good for you, but it could also be that you pray for what God would not desire for you. When you pray such kind of prayers you cannot expect much from it. We cannot expect God to listen to or approve self-centred prayers.

Prayer is difficult to learn and hard to practice. God is present in the entire cosmos, but we need to learn to recognize God and not confuse the many beings posing as gods or people falsely claiming that God is in them with the real God.

God can come to you in prayer when you have found access to the deepest core of goodness in yourself, when you address yourself to God from your desire to be good and do good.

Prayer as breathing

Much of what applies to prayer also does to meditation. Prayer in my view is always centred on God, meditation can also be centring on something else than God.

Prayer is as necessary as breathing. This statement may need some explanation for those who seldom pray or who believe prayer is only done by religious fanatics.

Prayer is to connect ourselves to the Creator. The Creator is present in all creations, in the entire universe, but this doesn’t mean that we automatically are very well connected to God. Many people don’t believe in God. We ourselves may have done things in our lives which were egoistic and not loved by God. Everything in ourselves and around us that is more separated from God brings energy that makes it difficult to feel God’s love. In order to feel God’s love and to receive God’s guidance, we must make effort to overcome the energies, the feelings and thoughts that separate us from God.

The main effort to do this is by prayer.

Plants have a built-in programming that makes them grow, blossom, give fruit. For example, some seeds of trees will only begin to germinate when it warms up after a period of frost. This guarantees that the seeds sprout at the time that gives them the maximum chance of survival.

Animals have their instinct guiding them to do what is right. Animals don’t think about that, at least that is what I believe. They just follow their instinct and this serves them well.

People are different from animals and plants. I believe that we too have some kind of instinct in us that leads us in our daily life. We could call this instinct ‘intuition.’ Our intuition is the part of our being that is directly connected to God.

The instinct of some animals that grew up in human civilization does not work so well anymore. In a similar way, our intuition to do what is right in each situation very often does not function very well.

Why is this? I believe answering this question would rather much be the same as knowing the cause of what is called ‘evil.’ I don’t want to go into that here, but when we look around in today’s world with so much crime we can understand that not everything that people do is good and original.

I believe that our original state of being is one in which we are constantly connected to the Creator and we would know intuitively what to do in each situation. But in a world where so many people including ourselves are often misguided, we need to make extra effort to strengthen the connection to God.

The main effort to do this is in prayer. Prayer should be like breathing, because when we get so used to prayer that we do it all the time, in whatever situation we are, then we will always have a good feeling for what is right for us to do.

When you attempt to pray you will quickly notice that prayer is not so easy at all. As soon as you try to centre your mind on God, you get distracted by all kind of other thoughts. To solve this and to learn to pray we need to practice concentration. Concentration however is not the only thing we need to learn.

When our mind is full with what is not so connected to God, maybe because we have done activities which were not so close to God, then our mind also is more away from God. This means that, guided by prayer, we need to do those things that bring us nearer to God instead of doing what separates us.

When our prayer becomes as regular as breathing, we come in a constant state of heart and mind of feeling the presence of God. Then our original intuition will begin to work more and more and will properly guide us through life.

But before prayer becomes like breathing, we need to make very much effort. Prayer is something that some people do intuitively, but still it is also something that we need to learn. When we begin to pray, prayer can be very difficult to do. Because it is so difficult, many people shy away from it and pray in a superficial or ritualistic way, without really coming to deeper levels.

How will the oppressed people of this world be liberated?

How will the oppressed people of this world be liberated? It is a question that has kept me concerned for many years. To be more precise, this matter was not only in my mind but has determined most of my adult life.

I believe strongly the following about love: Love is not just a feeling. Love is not what many people so easily talk about as if it just shines from heaven. Love is to put yourself in the same situation as those whom you love. Love is to identify yourself with others and this should not only be done in thoughts and feelings but be expressed in the entire life.

How can the oppressed people of this world be liberated?

It will be done by love and not by hatred. That is very easily said and not so simply done. We speak about the brother- and sisterhood of man. But what should this really mean?

When we really are brothers and sisters, then we should also be willing to give our lives for each other. When our brother or sister is in need, and we really love, we should be willing to go into his or her situation if necessary. You cannot hold another person’s hand in comfort or support when you don’t go to that person and feel like him or her. That is not the kind of love spoken about so easily, it is the kind of love that will test you to your bones and will make each day of your life a struggle to survive.

It is too easy to love like a Santa Claus throwing around your presents from your abundance and wealth.

How can the oppressed people of this world be liberated?

It can only be done by those who love them and to love them means to put yourself in their situation. This means it can only be done by those who are oppressed too. When the suppressors wish to do something, for example those political figures who represent the states that are suppressing, then they have to become oppressed ones themselves. I don’t mean to say that they have to go living externally in the same situation, although doing this for a certain time may certainly teach them valuable lessons. What I mean is that in their love they should spiritually put themselves in the same situation. It means that when oppressed people get persecuted, they too will feel this persecution. And when they want to go in front of leading liberation, they will have to face more opposition than anybody else.

For natives to be united and oppressed peoples to be liberated, wars must be won. These wars are first of all spiritual in nature. They are wars against hatred and bigotry, against evil pride and egoism, against racism and the desire to kill. When we put ourselves in the situation of the oppressed ones of this earth, we will first of all have to overcome all the feelings and thoughts that are harbored against them by the ones who are suppressing. These forces are spiritual, but extremely strong, because apparently they have been the prevailing powers of the past into the present.

How can the oppressed people of this earth be liberated?

The mind comes before actions and the heart comes before the mind. This means that we can only act in the right way when we have the right principles and thoughts for acting. And we can only have the right principles based on a heart of love and compassion. Love and compassion mean that when one of our oppressed sisters or brothers is under threat to be killed or lose freedom, we must be willing to put ourselves in the same situation. This cannot just be a way of speaking. I also don’t mean that we all should get ourselves killed, but we should put our entire life in service of the oppressed ones. We cannot speak about love when we don’t live with our brothers and sisters and we cannot live with our oppressed brothers and sisters when we don’t put ourselves in the same situation as they are in.

It is easy to live a life of luxury and convenience and speak about principles that we should not judge or be angry. But what when you would just have lost one of your beloved ones and you cannot feed your children? How would you feel in that situation? Would you not have the right to be angry against those who threaten your children if that anger elicits the energy to protect your children? This anger does not need to be in hatred. This anger can be in love for your children and it gives you the strength to ward off the suppressors without hating them. Are we supposed to love the evil deed with the evildoer? I would say, love the evildoer but hate the evil actions. How can we love harmony if we don’t hate murder? How can we like love if we don’t dislike hatred?

How can the oppressed people of this cosmos be liberated?

They will not be liberated unless we feel ourselves to be oppressed. Who are the oppressors? They show different faces depending on the situation. When the continent of the Americas was discovered by Europeans, most of the suppressors showed the face of greedy seekers for gold, they showed the face of arrogance and ignorance in relation to the richness of the cultures they had discovered, they showed the face of murderers and they have enslaved many. Of course, we should not forget that there have been others among the Europeans as well, whose hearts were bleeding in love for the new peoples they met.

In the present time, the face of the suppressor is that of the ones who already are in control. No need anymore for large-scale killing. Their culture has prevailed and sitting in their easy chairs they can smile and feel great because it seems all under their control.

In reality, the suppressors are as much victims as the oppressed ones. The suppressing ones are those who have closed access to their heart of love. They are the ones who don’t know how to live life in a pure and natural way. They are the ones who have sown hatred and what they gave out comes back to them.

The only solution I see is that we find the way to practice love in all its forms. The deepest love is when the ones who want a world of love will unite, and this unity needs to mean much more than love giving from a distance. We need to find our personal way to put on the shoes of those who are in need of help. For each of us there is a way to do this. Someone else cannot tell you what you are supposed to do.

Nobody can tell me what course I have to go. We each have to find this for ourselves, in prayer to God and in deep meditation to know how to act in each situation.
 
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Time to walk your talk

Speaking to myself and I hope also to you…

The world is arranged in such a way

That the good ones are not to stay

And countless hungry children are to die

Each day as their parents watch and cry

For each disease there is a cause

So do contemplate and take a pause

Sister hates sister, brother hates brother

As if not born from the same mother

The siblings each built their own clan

Got into war and one of them ran

They filled the earth and in these days

No place to hide, no escape ways

The children play, the elders talk

The grass is green, the horses walk

The sky turned dark and the water red

Many live in plenty, for others no bread

The races of the rainbow merged

Each one of us to harmony is urged

We are called to love and peace

Have to fix each broken piece

The wars began by hating one to one

In reverse way they will be overcome

The masses will be moved by few

Who learned to love, with hearts new

Warriors we need be to stand straight

That nobody runs over us in hate

Our hearts softened in compassion

Not to be tempted into discussion

You know your path then go your path

No need for doubt or complex math

The direction is clear, it is to go in front

Move forwards and be fearless to confront

I buy you flowers every other day

Image via Wikipedia

I buy you flowers every other day

For you whether here or away

My love for you to stay

In light or disarray

...

I see the butterflies around your head

They form a silver-lining thread

To see you is my daily bread

In vibrant life or death

...

Your words do sometimes give me pain

As they come in repetitive refrain

More than hurt they make plain

My love is to remain

...

I share my meal with you not here

A ceremonial act just to cohere

Life without you is austere

My love is so sincere

...

I am with you in your daily confusion

Which sometimes grows to delusion

I only make one conclusion

To end it in our fusion

...

I am the cosmic eagle flying high

See things with piercing eye

My vision makes you sigh

Not easy to be nigh

...

Who knows what’s hidden in the cloud

Whisper-sounds do now sound loud

Desire in me to enshroud

You, make me proud

Becoming a body of truth

The universe is built according to logical laws and principles. This is the reason why scientists can discover and describe such laws and why many physical events are predictable. Also all our technology is based on understanding cosmic principles.

Also we ourselves are created according to laws and principles. Many of these are working on a more internal and spiritual level. When we make a complex creation in the physical world, we need to have some concept or design before we can create. Sometimes such a concept or design is more internal and unconscious, sometimes detailed designs are made before the actual building process can begin. For example, architects make designs from which houses are built.

In such a design many principles are incorporated. I imagine that also the Creator had such a design in mind before everything including human beings were created.
We can imagine ourselves to be created from the Word or Logos. We are expressions of the Word or the Truth. We can see ourselves as bodies of truth, body meaning a substantial expression and also referring here to our spiritual and internal aspects such as the mind.

When we strive for self-perfection, we need to find back to the truth. When we know the truth for our internal and spiritual and physical life, we can act and live in the right way. All truth from God is grounded in God’s love.

To change ourselves in a good way, we need to know how to do it and this we know by learning truth. Truth is something that we all have in us. We can find and know truth by connecting to our deepest essence, in prayer and meditation and through our intuition.

Another way of finding truth is by reading books that people have written who discovered truth.

How can we bring such truth into us? It is not enough to have intellectual knowledge of truth. It is even very doubtable if any intellectual knowledge which is not grounded in our deepest essence has value of truth.

Truth concerning our selves is only truth when this truth is expressed in our life and is incorporated in our entire being. This can only happen when we don’t just speak or write truth but also practice truth in our entire life.

To really become new beings and expressions of truth, we need to live in truth all the time. Each thought we have, each word we say, each action we make should become an expression of truth that comes from the Creator.

This process is not something to be done just at some daily or weekly hours. It is a process that can and should go on continually, by always searching to find truth in all that we do, be it reading or praying and meditating or performing actions of love and creativity. Only in that way we can make truth to perfuse our entire being.


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The magnificent human body

The human body is the most valuable and most beautiful creation in the physical world. There is nothing comparable in the universe. From an external viewpoint, it is a magnificent instrument, capable of highest intellectual, emotional, sensitive, motorial, energetic and artistic achievement.

More than that, the physical body is the vehicle for the spirit to have experiences and grow. The physical body is near endless in its potential to learn.

Many people keep their bodies in good shape and in good health. They beautify their bodies and do everything externally to look good.

Our body is also the dwelling place for the spirit. Every action we make in our physical life, every thought and feeling we have is imprinted into the spirit. By the end of our lives, our spirit leaves the body and takes with it all the good and bad that the body has done and thought during its life. When we lived a good life centred on higher spiritual purposes, our spirit will leave the body bright and full of energy and with many possibilities to enjoy life in the spiritual world.

There are also many people who never used their body for spiritual aims and it can be that the spirit in such a body is entirely unable to live a conscious life in the spiritual world. Such spirits look like grey clouds and you can hardly recognize that they are human beings.

The highest purpose for our bodies is that we make them dwelling places for the Creator to live in and to express through. The Creator has no body. We could see the Creator as Spirit or Source. Meant here is Spirit or Source of all what is created and of all love.

The Creator can dwell in our bodies, when we make our bodies available and fit for this.

Such bodies need to be entirely pure. Pure means that there is no dirt in such a body, that the person living in and using the body does not desire for wrong things, does not think selfish and untrue thoughts and does not act in a way that harms others.

When we understand the Creator as the Source of love and energy, it is most important that we keep our bodies pure and clean all the time. This is mostly a demand on the level of love and energy, but of course also external cleanliness and good health are important.

How can we keep our bodies pure on the levels of love and energy? We can only do this when we first have become conscious of what is pure love and good energy. We also need some understanding of the processes of how impure love and bad energies could enter us.

In principle each touch, each communication, each engaging in relationships exchanges love and energies. This is especially true for human relationships, but also relations to animals and things influence the energies inside of us.

The most powerful exchange of love and energies takes place when people love each other and especially when there is a sexual relationship of any kind.

Suppose that you have a sexual relationship with your partner who the day before was unfaithful to you and had a sexual relationship to a person with a very low moral and spiritual standard. Then without you realizing it the energies of this third person might come into you through your partner and defile your own body and give you mental and spiritual problems for a long time after that. Your body will get impure and you may find it very difficult to centre on higher values for a longer period.

When lower energies enter a human body, they can cause illnesses and make it look ugly and sometimes deformed. The beauty of a body is really in the pure love and bright energy that expresses through it. Energies pass from generation to generation. This is in addition to inheritance through DNA. But also DNA is influenced by energies.

When you keep your body pure it also becomes more and more a perfect instrument for the spirit to work through. Your spiritual senses will work better and you will get more and more sensitive for love and energies of people and the world around you and also of the spiritual realms.

Inside a harmonious galaxy of love

Love is the strongest force of the universe. Love is the source and core of all other energies and forces.

Compare this to stars and planets. From the outside they beam out many different energies but their real force comes from their heart in the center where all its force is generated in nuclear reactions.

Celestial bodies like the sun and all stars and even the planets do also have a pulling force and they pull into a certain direction. When some kind of mass comes too close to a huge body in space, it is pulled into that body.

Exactly the same is true for our meeting other people. Superficially we are influenced by what they do and say and think and feel, but the real pulling force comes from the love that is inside such a person. Just like any celestial body moves into a certain direction in space, so each individual does and the love inside the heart of each person determines that direction. Some people move temporarily away from the Source, others move toward the Source.

Just like it is true for how bodies in space react to each other, the bigger force and mass pulls the most. There is a critical point somewhere in the distance between two such bodies. Once the smaller body has moved beyond that critical mark, it will be forever caught by the larger body.

Sometimes such a relationship moves into a stable and harmonious pattern. We see this in space in the circular or elliptic orbits that planets make around stars and moons around planets.

In human relationships people may be moved back and forth being pulled by the force of love of different people. When this happens there always is trouble. The trajectory of such a person becomes irregular and unpredictable. This is not the case when the relationships established are clear. For example a man loves his wife in a husband-wife relationship and loves his children too. Such a relationship is like that between twin stars and planets, the children orbiting around the twin stars. The relations are harmonious and to each ones benefit.

The problem comes when two stars have opposing directions and a third body comes into the pulling force of both of these stars. In human relationships this very often happens and always the person being pulled back and forth will feel confused and without clear direction.

Love always has a pulling force and a direction. Once we accept the love of someone, we also are influenced by that pulling force and we are pulled into another direction.

What is the solution for this? The only way to solve it is to make yourself clear about the direction you want to go in life and depending on this choice make consequences for your life and your relations to other people.

Does this mean to give up loving some people? No, it doesn’t mean that. The first choice anyone needs to make is for the Creator and for the Creator’s love. Once we have done that, we become a pulling force ourselves and we can give love to others without having to lose our good direction. Instead of being pulled ourselves, we become pulling centers of love. When we have made this choice to be or become united with the Source of all that is, our human relationships will be like those in a harmonious system of stars, planets and moons and other celestial bodies inside a galaxy.
 
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The sleeper must awaken...

There is no reason to lose your faith. Things may look dark and gloomy but you always have the possibility to do something positive today. Do something good, develop yourself, and tomorrow you will be better than the person you were today.

When you live like that, also your outlook tomorrow will be better than today. This kind of growth is exponential. With added faith and foundation built each new day, you create better chances all the time. What doesn’t seem possible now is possible tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow. It’s a bit like building interest over interest. The beautiful thing is that in spiritual life you determine your own interest rate.

There is one thing you should never do: to give up. You can learn from making mistakes, but not from giving up. When you gave up, there rests only one thing to do and that is to get on your feet and restart where you succumbed. The only lesson you can learn from giving up is that you shouldn’t have done that.

However difficult life may get, don’t give up your good goals. Better to die while on course than living while off-track.

What do we know about the endless cosmos? What do we know about the infinite possibilities in store for us? How small may be our own vision compared to the Creator’s spectrum!

Now is the time to stand up, pack your bag and walk and make reality of your dreams.
The sleeper must awaken.

We sleepers must awaken and make good what was wrong, make beautiful what was ugly.
The Sun, the Earth, the Moon, the stars, our ancestors are telling us: we sleepers must awaken.

Love reborn

Waves of desire

Sometimes frozen sometimes free

Inaccessible a heart can be

Locked in shackles

Bound in ripples

In drifts of passion

For what cannot be

To the core

Evermore

Through the pains

Blurring rains

From dusty clouds

Ages old

Heirs of ancient cold

My love reborn

In delivery of sting

Will prevail

The ice will melt

The coldness smelt

The waves be free

The price be paid

Hearts in melting

Preparing

For a climax synthesis

A new creation

Looming from the dark

Hope is there

Triumph waiting