All of us want to become happy and there is nothing wrong about that. What we need to understand is that nobody can be happy by being alone, by just taking care of yourself. You cannot make yourself happy. You are happy when you are being loved. Other people also feel happy when they are being loved. Therefore, my happiness depends on whether others are loving me.
To understand how we can become happy, we must take the viewpoint of God who created us. God created us to have objects to whom God could give His love. God wants us to become happy. That is also the reason that all of us carry this desire in us to want to become happy.
We are creations in the likeness of God and because God’s only desire is to make us happy, we should also only have the desire to make God happy and to make others happy. You cannot force someone else to love you. The more you try to do this, the more that this other person will dislike you.
All what we can do in life is to begin giving love. Even then, we cannot be sure that our love is returned to us right away. But if we continue to give out love, then bit by bit there will come people who will return this love to us.
Surely, when we give love to God and make God happy by doing God’s will, we will receive God’s love in return.
When you want to make someone else happy, then you have to be able to give something. A little baby can give its smile but it cannot yet make something. Children want to learn to make something so they can make the parents happy.
Suppose that a friend of mine is a cabinet maker who wants to give something to me and he gives me a chair for my birthday. He can only do this because he has learned to make chairs. Suppose i get a chair from him on my birthday, and because he did not develop himself in the year after it, i get another chair on my next birthday. At the end of my life i have a house full with chairs because he never developed himself any further and he can only give chairs.
The example shows us clearly that when the purpose of life is to become happy by giving joy to others, we have to develop ourselves. By developing ourselves we also develop our ability to give love. And in order to develop ourselves we need to receive training.
The purpose of life is that we give out love and make others happy. Our own joy comes from that. To learn to give out more love, we need daily training and development. In that way, there comes about the build-up of a good world.
We should be careful that we are not going to wait for love to come to us. Love does never come in that way. Each of us has to start giving out love. It is only then that love will come back to us.
Don’t become like a machine that just does what it is being asked. When people do that, they begin to count how much food and energy and money were required to get enough profit. This is not the way to live. In that way we never will get happy.
When we go out selling a product, like for example in fundraising, the purpose is that we learn to give love in each of those short relations that we have with people. Some people are used to get love only by asking for it. Now we must learn to give out love, first only in a rather simple way by giving love to the people while selling a product on the street or from door to door. That is the central meaning of the training of going out to sell a product.
There is a widespread belief among many who call themselves faithful that the wealth they gathered is proof of God's love for them. I don't recall the exact quotations from which they derive such belief, but it goes more or less in the line that God blesses the ones who are faithful, or blesses those who follow God's laws.
There seems to be a quite big problem with this thinking. I do also believe that God will bless a person who does right. But if we take this in a simple way we are forced to the conclusion that all poor and miserable people would be in their condition because they or their ancestors did once sin. All rich people would be rich because they did right. It surely cannot be that simple. It is actually rather outrageous to make such simple, i would say fundamentalist statements.
So let's assume that God blesses those who are faithful. But what does blessing mean? What would God mean with blessing a person? A person who wants to get rich considers wealth to be a blessing. A person who wants to get powerful considers power to be a blessing. A person who wants to get knowledgeable considers knowledge to be the blessing. Again someone else would find it a great blessing to get many children. People have all kind of opinions about 'blessings' but what matters is what God would consider to be a blessing for us.
Let's do some thought experiments. Suppose a person is addicted to the desire for money. That person goes to church and follows all the rites of his or her religion. The person really likes money and works hard and cheats a little, all within the law of course, and gathers great wealth. The person considers all the riches the result of doing right, of having the right faith. I imagine that God could desire that such person would lose all the money and becomes homeless; after many years the person comes to his or her self and finds out that the greed for money did destroy his or her inner life. I imagine that God would consider it to be a blessing that this person would lose all money and come to a deeper understanding of life.
So in this case God could consider it to be a blessing that a person loses all money, but the person thinks that blessing means getting more money. Rather complicated! Did i say now that all poor and hungry people are in such condition because they once did sin? No, i am not saying that at all. I believe people have a responsibility to care for each other. Some people may get wretched because they were lazy, others may loose their wealth and well-being because others did them wrong -- there could be so many reasons for that.
It's a common way of thinking of certain believers that God gave them wealth to use it in a responsible way. Yes, if you get something from God, you should be responsible for it, but what if you didn't get it from God but you stole it? What would then be your responsibility? It seems rather clear that in that case you should return to the owner what you stole.
There are so many ways of stealing. Many governments steal and have stolen by causing inflation of currencies in some way. They just steal a little bit from each person. Many banks and large corporations do the same. They just take a tiny something from many. Almost nobody notices it. The banks' owners use their money to influence politics. They get a good name, are respected, but some or more of them may actually be thieves. Instead of discontinuing to steal they make large donations to some kind of charity. Now they are not only thieves but also falsely hailed as famous saints.
Human life well understood is life in relationship to God. All that we do should be connected to God. All that we are should be under God. This is no different for the the activity of selling a product.
Let us assume that you are selling a good product or service and asking a good price. A good product is one that will fulfill a good need that people are having. The product should be good externally and internally. An internal good product is one that carries good energies, energies that are elevating for man. Your product should not be too expensive and not be too cheap. You can sometimes give away things but normally you don't want to sell products for a price under its value, because in that case you would take away the chance for people to offer something to God through their buying the product or service.
There are two moments in the process of selling. The first moment is your selling the product to a customer. The second moment is that of you offering to God the money that you acquired. The first moment is one in that you are functioning as a priest accepting an offering from people. The second moment is that of you as a priest offering your accomplishments to God. Let us study these two moments in more detail.
Your function as a priest accepting the offerings people make through buying things
There are a number of rules to keep in mind for this stage of the selling process.
Your selling a product only becomes an offering to God for the people who buy when you really represent God. This rule puts strict demands on you as the intermediary person between the buyer and God. Your heart and mind should be centered on God during the entire process of your selling. This is only possible when you don't deceive the people or try to tempt them with false arguments. You should be honest and fair and friendly to the people. You should really try to love people in a way that God likes. You are selling a product, but that is only an external aspect of your meeting people. Most important is that you engage in a relationship with someone. In this relationship you should try to represent God and you should try to look at the person in the way that God does. In that way, you can overcome when you would have false feelings such as pride, arrogance, jealousy etc. Your main task in the selling process is that you give God's love to the person and that you try to give to the person what the person needs.
The buyer of the product should buy in complete freedom. When you understand the money you acquire as an offering to God, you also understand that the buyer should have complete freedom. God can never accept offerings from people who did not really want to bring that offering. An offering is a gift to God. This should be a gift of love. No love can be given if it is forced in some way, through deception, temptation or external pressure. You may attempt to convince the person that your product is good and you may move the person to buy through your love and goodness, but that is not the same as when you try to apply smart sales techniques. After a person bought the product, he or she should have a good feeling about it. The person should really be happy to have given money to you. The person doesn't need to know that you represent God. By your sacred being and pure actions you can make clear to the buyer that you are a good and trustworthy person.
Keep the goals that God gave you for a day. At the beginning of the day, before you go out to sell things or deliver services, you can ask God what goals you should fulfill for that day. When you ask for it, usually God gives you an internal goal and an external goal. You should also ask God what to sell and where to sell. The internal goal can be something connected to yourself, something that God wants you to learn for that day, for example. It could also be something connected to the town or people where you are going to sell things. The external goal usually is a certain amount of products to be sold during a specified time period. During the entire day you should try to remain focused on your goals. For example, if you get distracted by having nice conversations with people, it might be that you won't make your goals. When you did not reach the goal at the end of the day, pray to find out what caused it. Sometimes it may have been caused by your own mistakes and then you can learn from that. Sometimes outside factors may have contributed to failing to reach the goals. Also in that case, pray about it to learn more.
Consider that offerings from some people cannot be accepted. Some people may offer to buy things or a product of service from you with bad motivation. They may want to hire you as their slave, making profit from you for egoistic purposes. In that case it is better to either put certain conditions for what you want to sell or serve, or you may refrain from selling altogether. God cannot accept offerings that are made by selfish people having evil intentions. For example, God could not accept Cain's offering because Cain had selfish motivation and wanted to get things from God. When you understand yourself to be a priest who must decide whether offerings are acceptable to God, you also know that you need to find out whether people's motivation for buying your product or service is either lofty or clouded by evil intentions.
Your function as a priest to offer to God the results of your sales
All offerings need to be split. You can never just throw all your offerings on God's altar. Always there is the need to split the offering. For example, if you got money from someone who wants something back for it in evil motivation, there is a claim on the money. As soon as you use that money, the person who gave you the money will want to check if you do with the money something pleasing to him or her. If you offer that money to God, you also pass on the evil claims to God and this is not how it should be. Therefore, in prayer, you must ask God how to split the offering. You cannot pass on debts to God. If for example you still need part of the money to pay off debts to the world, you cannot offer that money to God because it is claimed by your debtors. Ask God how to split the offering. How much money is acceptable as an offering to God, how much money should get another purpose. Sometimes offerings need to be split in two, sometimes in three or more parts. In that case, only the most sacred portion of the money can be offered to God. In seldom cases, none of the money you acquired will be acceptable as offering to God.
Consider to whom to offer. You are the priest who is responsible to bring the offerings of the people, the buyers, to God. You also need to acknowledge the ones who made your product. You need to pay them off before you can offer to God. Appreciate the value of the product made by the producer. If you got a lot of spiritual trouble in selling a product, it might have been caused by bad conditions made by the producer. Sometimes you may feel that you paid too little to the producer as he or she sold you products with higher value than you realized. In that case, consider to offer back to the producer more than you initially paid. He or she can then use that money as offerings to God. Sometimes God wants you to bring offerings to a higher-ranked priest, for example the highpriest of God's nation, or your parents or restoration parents. Be serious in prayer to find out to whom to offer what.
In which manner to offer. Each offering is a gift, a present to God and sometimes a gift to a person. In any case, always present your offering in a dignified manner and 'wrapped' in an acceptable way. Sometimes it is enough to just put money in a clean envelope. Never just 'throw' the money on the offering altar, by manner of speaking. Don't let the person who receives your offering do the work of counting. Present money in the form of clean and neat bills and coins. Do not offer money bills that are literally dirty or stained or torn.
Finally, don't forget about the essential nature of offerings to God. Already all things belong to God. You are not really giving anything to God, you are just giving back what belongs to God. In a sense, not even that is true, because all things belong to God, whether they were stolen or not. What you are really offering is yourself. The offering stands in the place of yourself. What you are offering to God is your own work, your money and your heart. Through offering to God you are restoring yourself and gaining the highest value possible out of what most people consider to be something rather low and dirty, the aspect of life commonly called 'business.'
The original situation for each person is that he or she creates something while standing in a direct object relationship to God, unhindered by any person who might want to stand in-between. In this situation, you can express God's love fully and you can entirely explore and develop your own talents. You can make something in love for somebody else and in this way you spread love and joy around you.
As ideal as this sounds, in our practical life things are a bit more complicated. We cannot just isolate us from the world around us. We need materials to make something from. We need tools that we may have to buy in a shop. We need a room that we either bought or rented from the outside world. There are countless obligations that the world puts upon us.
And still, from a spiritual viewpoint it is much better when you can make or create things, possibly as products for sale, on your own and independent from any boss or employer.
When you make things yourself, particularly when you want to sell these as products, you need to consider the following points.
Only make that what God is asking you. Pray to God what product you should make. Find out the meaning of the product, find out how to make it and make it with the materials that God is telling you.
You are making things in a certain room or production house. Make sure that this house is one that is offered to God. Your room should not be under claim of evil spirits. In your production room you should make good order and separate what is higher from what is lower. Make your production room one of prayer and meditation. Always work in prayer and meditation.
Always check your motivation for making things. Even when you had a good start of your production in prayer, it is easy to lose your initial good intentions. Check your motivation again and again and especially do not fall in the trap that you start making things in order to get a lot of money. You need money for your offerings to God and you need money for your own life, but money has only as much value as it can gain from your pure love and good motivation.
Make sure that you make good results. This is meant both internally and externally. Internal good results come when during the entire production process nothing bad intervened, neither in your own mind, nor in the space or people around you. External good results you produce when you make good-quality products. A bad-quality product will never function as a good offering, neither for the recipients or buyers nor for God.
Make sure that all that you make is offered to God. Some things you can offer to God by giving it to people, in case God wants you to do this. Other things you can sell and in that case you must offer all the money to God. You need to ask God how and to whom to offer this money. Often it is necessary that you split the offering. Part of the offering can be used for higher purposes, part of the offering is only useful for lower applications.
Have joy from what you are doing. Creative activities can be giving you a lot of happiness when you do it in the right way. Whenever you feel that you do not enjoy your work, spend time in prayer to find out what is wrong and correct it.
Do not fall for the trap to begin mass-producing things. It is not wrong to make more items of the same, but you should not devalue your own existence by beginning to work like a mechanical robot. Make sure that you are able to put your good love and desire into each of the things you are making.
Make sure that there is a surging line of positive development in all that you do. Learn to make things better. Improve your spiritual understanding of what you are doing. Make your productive work part of your Formula-Course of Restoration. You do this by offering all that you do to God. Your offerings will please God when you are growing in your process of producing things.
Your relationship to God and how to offer that what you do to God
The employer for whom you are working and his relationship to God
The things that you make and the resources from which they were made
You are the maker of things. Even when you make things together with others, there is a part of the product that you made.
When you make things, you are in a creative process. Normally, we don't ever make something just like that. Birds build a nest for their young. We build a house for ourselves and our children to live in. But when you work for a larger corporation, it might be that you are producing things without really knowing for whom you are making them. While in a normal situation you want to put your love into things so it will be felt by the recipients, now you feel that it has little use to put any love and good feelings into what you are producing as you anyway never might come to see the one who eventually buys the product.
You are a creator but in case you work for an employer, especially when this is a larger corporation, your creativity might be subdued. Most people just work for money and if they make a good product, it commonly is so they won't lose their job or because they want to get higher up the career ladder.
Of course, i am not saying that it is wrong to work for an employer, but in order for you to fully develop yourself in your work, you need to find out who your employer is, what is his relationship to God, for which goal are the products made that he is selling. In many cases the employer is out for financial profit. When you are working for such an employer, you are selling that what is higher, your creativity and love, for something that is lower, money. That, in business terms, is not at all a good deal.
You have your relationship to God. When you do something, when you make something, you want to connect that what you do to God. We call this aspect of life 'offering.' Can you offer yourself and what you make and do to God in case that you work for an employer?
This depends very much on who the employer is and also on your own motivation. It could be that you are forced to work for an employer, for example in the case that you are put in a labor camp. In that case it wasn't your own choice to work for this employer. You may choose to do your work well and in your creativity and love for God you bring good love and energy into the things you are making. By doing your work in this manner, you can elevate yourself and God will be able to accept your offerings and use them to improve the situation of the world.
But what when you made your own choice to work for a selfish employer? In that case it is very difficult to offer that what you make to God. You could still try to pray while you work, but if you had prayed before you chose to work for the selfish employer, you might have realized that you should not serve him. You could try to offer to God the money that you earn. Yet this money has very little value. It is money that you earned by selling yourself and you sacrificed your internal and spiritual development for doing this kind of work. The money you earn comes out of the hands of someone who doesn't care about God. That means that he actually stands in the position of having stolen God's creation. You receive from him a part of that what he stole. You can try to offer this money to God, but because your employer is living against God, he won't like it when you do this. He did not give you money so you bring it to God; he gave you money so he will continue to make profit from you.
He actually wants more for himself and less for God. Therefore, when you offer money to God that you earned from an employer who is not centered on God, you also need to make conditions to separate from that employer. This could be the case when you decided to give up working for that employer. This is the situation that the Israelites left Egypt. They had worked long for the pharaoh and when they left Egypt they took with them riches they had gained in Egypt. Because these Israelites had won a battle against the pharaoh, because they had decided to not longer work under his evil dominion, therefore their offerings became acceptable to God.
But also these offerings could not be used for higher purposes. The pharaoh had not given them these riches so they would offer it to the God he hated. Because these things came out of the hands of the pharaoh and his people, they were filled with bad energies of hatred against God and of arrogance of those who build their own reign centered on idol gods. It is therefore necessary that when you make such an offering of what you gained from working for a pharaoh that you fulfill two conditions:
That you are in a process of leaving behind to be controlled by the pharaoh or employer who enslaved you.
That you do enough to separate the offering from the evil claim of the pharaoh or employer. You must make sure that when God's world uses this offering, no tragedies happen because evil spirits claim that offering.
You are supposed to offer all that you do and that you make and that you earn to God. You got your life from God, you got all things from God. God gave it to you in love so you will do well with it. In case you are more or less separated from God, it is your task to come back to God. You must bring back to God your heart, your mind, your body and all that belongs to you. We are speaking here about you making things of creation. You do this with your body and you are thinking and loving or hating while you do your work. So in fact, your making things is a process that involves your entire being. Your making or producing things can be an activity through which you can offer yourself to God entirely, but God cannot accept that what is against God.
Therefore it is essential that you judge what kind of person your employer is. Is he somebody truly wanting to find God, is he an example to you for your course of restoration, or is he somebody who is unaware of God and of spiritual life? You cannot see your work for an employer as unrelated to who and what your employer is. In most cases, employers in the world want to gather money and power for themselves. They are not setting up a company as a religious condition of offering themselves to God. They take from the earth what God has given to us, but for egoistic use separated from God. God gave us the things in order to enjoy God's love and to spread God's love. We are creative beings and when we do this in God's love, united with God, then we can learn to be like God, giving and loving and always wanting to develop in order to be able to give more to others.
When your employer doesn't know God, he or she got the things he possesses not from God, but from a lineage of ancestors or predecessors who once went against God or left God and who then took dominion over all things in the cosmos.
In some very rare cases your employer might be somebody who is open for change. He might want to find God and in that case you should try to help him come closer to God. For example, Jacob worked for his father-in-law Laban for 20 years. Laban wasn't someone centered on God. He prayed to evil idol gods. Jacob worked a long time for Laban and finally decided to leave Laban. In that situation, it would have been preferable if Laban had followed Jacob and had come to love the God of Jacob.
Still, don't think that you should go working for an employer just in order to bring him to God. In most cases that is not easily possible and why would you work for somebody who doesn't know God and who doesn't desire for God when you could also meet other people who are open to hear about God?
When you make things, there is a lot to be considered. For example, from where did the resources come that are being used? You may work in a factory or an office. To whom belong these things? Long ago, angels and people and other spiritual beings went against God. They built their own world and took all the things that God had given them for themselves. They used these things for themselves and against God-loving people. They tried to control the world, they built empires, they dominate you through states that have nothing to do with God but that spiritually are controlled by evil angels.
How about your relationship to the things that you are using, transforming or making? Are these things being used to bring about a world under God's love or are these things stolen from God and misused to build a world of power and might against God? You need to ask yourself such questions and make the right decision for your own life.
All things need to come back to God. It means that all things must be filled again with God's love and wholesome energies. It is our task to bring back to God ourselves and all things. In case you acquire things, for example money as a salary by working for an employer who doesn't love God, your task is to bring these things back under God's dominion. Realize that in God's eyes that money is stolen property. Even you worked for it, but you actually worked for a thief. A thief paid you with stolen property and you cooperated and even helped that thief to become still richer. It means that in God's eyes you have no rightful claim on that money. In the eyes of the world, that money may belong to you. In God's eyes, it is something that needs to be given back to the rightful owner, that is God. Only after this, when God gives it again to you, you can come to be the legitimate owner of that property.
When we speak about economy, we speak about things. Things are available in the form of natural resources and in man-produced products.
We cannot speak about economy without considering the meaning of things in relation to God and man. When we look up in the sky we see the stars and the sun and the moon. We walk over the surface of the earth underneath trees. Animals provide us with food and services. All around us are the things that God has created for us. To do as if we could exchange goods without considering the relationship between God and us and the things would be the same as to deny God. To deny God would mean to ignore our deepest essence as people created in the image of God, as children of God.
Imagine that someone builds large ship and all things on it. On that ship, people are born as children of the builder. The children never get to see who built the ship. When they get older, the children begin a fight over ownership of portions of the ship and even over the entire boat. They make rules for who owns what but never consider that there is someone who built the ship and that he had thoughts about the correct use of the ship by his children. This situation more or less pictures that of the present-day economic dealings of people on this earth.
Essentially all things belong to God. We can own things because God gave them to us, but then it is logical that we ask God how we are supposed to deal with the things.
Some people say that God gave us stewardship over the earth and all animals and things on it. The term 'stewardship' implies that we would only be held responsible as caretakers. But because we are God's children, our responsibility and blessing goes further than mere stewardship. As God's children we can fully inherit the right of ownership, yet this will only come to pass when also live and behave as God's children.
We cannot speak about economy therefore without first having to consider our relationship with God. It is only when we have managed to learn to live as full and good and adult children of God that we will be able to have complete ownership over the things that God has given us.
To the degree that people live away from God or even against God, they are not entitled to any ownership. From God's viewpoint, when people have no relationship to their Creator, they are not legitimate owners of anything. What does this tell about ownership by people who don't recognize God as their Creator, or who haven't learned yet to live under God's control completely? It actually means that all those who have not yet restored their relationship to God must be seen as thieves of all what they claim to own. They may be 'innocent' thieves in the sense that they never learned about God and about how to rightly relate to God, but in that case they are like children of thieves who own property that their father had stolen. For thieves and children of thieves alike, the adagio is that they must return the things to the rightful owner.
The aspect of ownership and exchange of goods in relationship to God as Creator is what in religious terms is called 'offering to God.' Whenever we own or use something, whenever we produce or sell or buy something, there is this element of offering to God that needs to be considered.
Think of the following: God created the universe, the stars and the sun and the moon and the earth. God also created all animals and plants. Our bodies are made of atoms that are provided by all that God created. When we don't recognize God as Creator, we do not even have rightful ownership over our own bodies.
God created the universe as a synthesis of spiritual and physical elements. We have a physical body that is home to our spiritual body. After we die, we enter the spiritual world with our spiritual selves. From there, we shall continue to influence life on earth. We are going to visit our descendants from the spiritual world. When we build a house in the physical world, it depends on how we do this in a spiritual sense whether this house also will stand as a firm and noble construction in the spiritual world. Whenever we make something, we are instilling more or less spiritual content into it.
When we make things, we can do this with love for those for whom the things are made. We can also make things in a mechanical manner. In that case there is little difference between what we make and what is manufactured by a robot. In many cases, people make things while feeling bad and even hateful. The world in which we live is made out of energy. Energies are never just neutral. The most beautiful energies are created in love. When we are aware of this aspect of economy, we can build a world of light and happiness because the things we make will create an atmosphere of joy and light for all those making use of the things.
Above i have mentioned the following three aspects of economy:
The matter of rightful ownership of things, which can only be determined by our relationship to God. We are speaking about the offering aspects of economy, which makes out the essence of religion.
The matter of spiritual aspect of things that we own or use or produce. No economy can be set up in the right way without living a life of spirituality.
The matter of energy aspects of things. All things are made out of energy and it is through our love or sometimes hatred that we fill the things we use, own or produce or trade with. In order to learn how to make a good economy, we need to become aware of this energetic factor. The energies of all things are positive and negative, male and female. It is the harmony between positivity and negativity, masculinity and femininity that brings about good creations and good dominion over all the things that God gave us.
How much time does it take to build a foundation in the world? What stages are there when you want to build a foundation?
Suppose you want to build up a business. How is this done in accordance with original principles and how much time does this take? Or you want to found a university. How should this be done and how much time does it take?
First, there have to be ideas and principles for how your foundation must be built up. These ideas and principles are centered on the purpose for which your foundation is built up. In the original world, those ideas and principles come from God Himself. Your foundation will be an expression of a certain desire which emerged in God and which you inherited from God. Therefore, the purpose of your foundation should lie in God. When your foundation serves a goal liked by God, then your foundation must be built entirely according to God’s principles and ideas. If your foundation is not serving a goal liked by God, you still need principles and ideas, but they won’t come from God directly.
The bigger that your foundation has to be, and the larger the purpose which must be fulfilled by it, the more time you will need for finding out principles and ideas for how to build the foundation.
Second, after your foundation has been thought out, your foundation must become realized in spiritual and physical form. Before you can build a physical foundation, you will have to make a spiritual foundation.
Again, if you didn’t center your foundation on God’s wishes, then you will probably be quickly finished with the spiritual part and you will right away try to make the physical foundation for it. But there does not exist a foundation in the world, an organization or a business or a structure, which doesn’t have a spiritual foundation.
For example, if your purpose is to quickly build a business so that you, as individual, can get rich, you still need some kind of spiritual foundation. A few spirits who unite with your self-centered goal are enough for your spiritual foundation, and such spirits can be found quickly. Usually, people are not aware that they need and actually did build a spiritual foundation for their business or organization.
Third, your foundation can only blossom over time when there is harmony between positive and negative aspects, or between masculinity and femininity. In most cases, such a harmony is a matter of course resulting from a relationship between a husband and a wife who together build up a foundation.
Whoever wants to build a foundation must follow a certain path of growth. That growth starts with love or desire which is centered on a certain purpose, for which that foundation is being made. Ideally, such love is centered on God and on God’s ideals. The desire of love makes the foundation to be wished and such desires or ideals need to be worked out in the form of ideas and principles.
When there are ideas and principles there comes the stage of transforming such ideas and principles in expressions of energy. Such expressions first must be realized spiritually and then physically.
In order to guarantee expansion of the foundation, there has to be harmony between positive and negative or between masculine and feminine aspects of the foundation. That harmony makes out the forms of the foundation and expressed over time, this constitutes growth of the foundation.
Let me try to make all this clearer with examples. Suppose someone, Mr. C wants to build a business with the purpose of making much money for himself. First that person must get the ideas and principles for how to make that company. The ideal is a self-centered ideal. Suppose the person gets the idea to trade a certain product of the people living in his village. Let’s say the people of his village are fishermen and they catch fish at sea.
Mr. C wants to earn a lot of money and he gets the idea to buy the fish of his fellow villagers and to sell that fish in a nearby city. Mr. C has a self-centered motivation, so he wants to buy the fish very cheap and sell it expensive. The idea for his business has been born and the principle for it is simple: make sure that no one else buys fish in the village. Some more principles Mr. C must think out, for instance he must know how to transport the fish from the village to the city and how to keep it fresh.
The second stage of the business of Mr. C is that Mr. C has a big enough spiritual foundation for his trade. Mr. C has a self-centered motivation, and because there are mainly self-centered people in spirit world, Mr. C quickly can find enough spirits to support his business. Actually, Mr. C is unaware of the fact that he needs a spiritual foundation, but in this case that doesn’t matter, because the spiritual foundation is easily realized.
Then Mr. C must make a physical foundation. For example, he needs a car to transport the fish from village to city. He needs a place to sell the fish in the city.
When Mr. C wants to expand his foundation into the future, Mr. C needs children who inherit the business. For this purpose, Mr. C gets married. Mr. C is a man, and in order that his business attracts a diversity of customers, Mr. C employs girls to sell the fish on the market in the city.
This was, shortly described, the course someone must go in order to build up a self-centered business foundation.
Now, suppose that your task is given to you by God. God wants you to build up an individual-level business. How are you going to do that and what kind of difficulties will you encounter?
First, you must unite with God’s ideal and purpose for your business. If you cannot overcome your feelings against God, you will not ever find out what God wants you to do. In that case, you will not be able to build up your business under God. You will not be able to find principles and ideas how to do it.
Suppose that you did center yourself enough on God and you could sense God’s desires for your business and you even could find out from God principles and ideas how to build it. In that case, your next task is that you make a spiritual foundation for your business. As your business only needs to be on the individual level, you only need three good spirits to support your ideals and to work together with you. But how are you going to find such spirits? You must convince people in spirit world that they can trust you before they are going to work together with you for long time. And even when those spirits would like to help you, you probably often need to correct those spirits because they diverged from the ideals which God revealed for your business.
On the basis of having spirits supporting you in a God-centered way you can now start to make the actual physical foundation. For this you have to work day and night, and because many people in the world are against God you must win many battles against enemies in the physical world.
Finally, you must make that your business gets a good and harmonious form and that its existence is also guaranteed in the future. For this purpose you, if you are man, must harmonize your relation to female individuals, centering that relation on God. Then you will be able to bring such female elements into your business, and only that will secure a good future for your business.
Suppose that God didn’t ask you to make an individual or family foundation but that God asked you to make a cosmic foundation. That cosmic foundation does not only involve matters of economics but it includes all aspects of human life, such as politics, justice, science, agriculture, music, art, science, etc., etc.
In that case you also must first find God’s principles and ideas for how God’s cosmos must look like. This is only possible if you as individual became able to really deeply feel God’s desires for God’s ideal. And that is only possible if you went a very difficult and long course of restoring the failures which central figures of restoration history have made. Once you are united with God’s desires, God can begin to reveal you the great variety of ideas and principles for how God has purposed God’s ideal world.
After God revealed such ideas and principles to you, you will have to make a cosmic-level foundation in spirit world. You need the guaranty that once you started to build God’s ideal cosmic foundation, no evil spirit will invade or destroy it. For that purpose you must fight against and win over the spirits who have controlled spirit world ever since the fall of man. To win that fight you must go into a cosmic spiritual battle and be victorious.
Only after you managed that, you can begin to make a foundation for God’s cosmos in the physical world.
Meanwhile, you also must have worked to secure the inheritance of God’s foundation into the future and also for the harmonious constitution of the cosmic foundation in the present. For this you, Adam, must have brought a woman under God and you must build a family under God.
2. BUILDING UP BUSINESS IS RESTORATION. RESTORATION IS RE-CREATION. THEREFORE, BUILDING UP BUSINESS IS A CREATIVE PROCESS
3. ALL RESTORATION TAKES PLACE THROUGH CORRECTION. CORRECTION IS DONE BY SACRIFICING YOURSELF FOR OTHERS, DURING A CERTAIN TIME PERIOD, AND BY FULFILLING A NUMBER
4. BUSINESS IS CREATING CREATION. MAN IS THE CENTER OF CREATION. GOD IS THE CENTER OF MAN.
5. NOTHING CAN BE ACCOMPLISHED WITHOUT TRUST
6. YOUR BUSINESS IS FIRST FOR GOD, SECOND FOR MANKIND. YOU AUTOMATICALLY BECOME PART OF THAT.
7. BUSINESS HAS A VISIBLE, PHYSICAL ASPECT AND AN INVISIBLE, SPIRITUAL ASPECT. THE SPIRITUAL ASPECT IS SUBJECT.
8. YOU PRODUCE AND SELL A PRODUCT IN ORDER TO SERVE, NOT FOR YOU TO MAKE PROFIT. THAT IS: YOU FOCUS ON GIVING, NOT ON TAKING.
Man is the unity of mind and body, which must be centered on God.
Through the fall of man, man lost his direction centered on God and became centered on Satan instead. Because of that, fallen man has no clear purpose in life.
Satan influences fallen man to give up to live for God and for others. The physical comes to dominate the spiritual, and the mind is unable to be subject to the body. The body dominates the mind, and mind-body unity is disturbed.
Fallen man has lost awareness of the living God, and is unable to unite mind and body centered on God even if he wanted to do so.
Unity of mind and body must be centered on God. It therefore starts with the desire and commitment to live for God. Then, centered on this desire to live for God, man must think, feel and plan for God and finally act for God. Unity of mind and body means that Satan cannot interfere in this process.
Fallen man who wants to return to God has the problem of not knowing God and God’s wishes.
When God asks someone to do business, it becomes easier for man to understand God’s will for him or her. Simply speaking: God’s Will for that person is to be successful in business centering on God.
Based on man’s commitment to live for God, which means the heartistic unity of man with God, man can now also center his mind and body on God by fulfilling God’s Will. God’s Will is that the person brings an offering of creation. There is a time period, and there is the exact goal being set for a certain amount of money, that is creation.
By giving everything to fulfill that goal within the time period set for it, man is learning to unite mind and body centered on God.
Satan will attempt to stop man in reaching the goal. Satan can do that by influencing man to give up his commitment for God or giving up to reach the goal. Satan works by accusing man that he or she is not God’s child and by tempting man to become centered on something physical.
To make sure he or she will fulfill the purpose centered on God, man can work to strengthen his or her mind by prayer and studying God’s Word. Man also can make effort to protect himself against Satan’s temptations by training to subjugate his body through fasting, cold shower conditions, restricted sleep, refraining from sex.
In the English language, business originally would mean: to be busy. Because fallen people are all the time busy with doing only one thing, to make money, business came to mean: to acquire money.
Money represents God’s creation. Therefore, business concerns man’s relationship to creation.
Originally, all creation belongs to God. God is invisible and doesn’t have a body to directly deal with creation. Yet, in a sense, this is not true, because God does have a body. That body is man. Man is God’s body, and deals with creation directly. In the original ideal, business means the relationship of man with creation, whereby man is in the position of God’s body.
Because of the fall of man, man lost the position of being God’s body and became Satan’s body instead. Therefore, through the fall, God lost His dominion over creation and Satan falsely stole that dominion.
In the course of restoration, business has many aspects. One of these aspects is that through business, man can restore his position of being God’s body having dominion over creation.
How did man lose his position of having direct dominion over all of creation? It happened because of the fall of man, the spiritual fall between Lucifer and Eve and the physical fall between Eve and Adam.
For man, to restore his dominion over creation, he or she must therefore first of all indemnify the fall. Man, working to get dominion for God over creation, simultaneously must restore his or her fallen relationship into original relationships. Then Satan will lose the right to use man as his body, and Satan must give up his false dominion over creation.
By restoring creation, bringing creation from under Satan’s dominion back under God’s dominion, man is restoring himself. Satan will only give up his dominion when man proves that his love is not Satan’s love, but God’s love.
Because of self-centeredness, man gave up his original relationship to God and his true dominion over creation. Now man must restore the relation to God by being God-centered, laboring hard to restore, that is to re-create creation, and by having true relations with other man instead of self-centered, false relations. Then Satan must give up his false claim over man and over creation.
All the articles published here were written by John Eagles. The inspiration for these came from my desire to live a life under God. I have been inspired by many models from past and present, but always Creator has given me my greatest spur. Many articles are based on my spiritual experiences.
Temporarily i am not adding new articles to this blog. Go to Eagle-Rock.org to find overviews with many of my older and newer essays.
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