Hypocrisy is Everywhere

Only 20% of the people in the world actually have a spiritual life or real spiritual strivings. There are hoards of people who claim to be religious, but they are mostly hypocrites who do not do what they tell people to do. Most people hate lots of people or groups of people and that is not spiritual. Jesus said to love your enemies and not to be angry with anyone. Multitudes of people are lazy and selfish and out for themselves. Only a few people are truly focused on spiritual things and have a goal to improve themselves in order to be loving to everyone. There are millions who say they support these things, but they don't act that way. Hypocrisy is everywhere. The ones in power, as public servants and leaders, are out for their own wealth and power at the expense of everyone else. The bankers who were supposed to have our backs, turned against the people in order to save their own skins. The warmongers run the world. If each household spent 37% of the income on surveillance and defense of their home, they would all be impoverished and destitute. Our country spends that on war, hatred, fear and defense each year. We are told by the accountants not to spend more than 28% on our mortgages or rents in order to be above poverty. So our country is impoverished and is in great decline because the military budget has taken over our lives. When will people wake up to how wrong this is? What about spending most of that budget on educating people well? We have everything backwards and a malaise is in the air as the vultures come to feed on the carrion of our people and our country. Pray, because it is the only solution.

This is Your Wake Up Call

The storms are getting more outrageous and wild. They seem to be shocking in their power and suddenness. Are you waking up? Do you get it that our own animosity, violence, hatred and intolerance is pushing Nature into a response to human beings? Our angry insensitivity to the rights of others and our resistance to loving our neighbor and respecting God is causing a great reaction. If you think these natural events are unconnected and random, if you think these storms are just cyclic, then you have a real wake up coming.

How long can you go along indulging yourself in your thoughts and desires without some comeuppance and karma? The Law of Cause and Effect is the only organized pattern in creation for those people who do not listen to truth, wisdom or good advice. If you are going to remain oblivious to the signs of the times, then you will experience some stiff wake up call in the form of justice and hard times. You have to wake up and get some meaning in your life. You have to get a relationship with God while you still have time. Don't wait because you will regret not listening and paying attention to the warnings.

Do you think you have plenty of time to keep screwing around and being irresponsible and childish, doing whatever you please? Every word, thought and action has a result (an effect) that will come back on you. Can afford to be so cavalier and casual about your future? Will you close your eyes to all the signs and the prophesies that say things are coming to a head and there is hell to pay for our crimes against love? If you prepare yourself now by changing your ways, the hard times will not be so bad for you. If you learn to love, you will have already moved in the direction of growth and spiritual consciousness that God is calling every soul to grow into.

Above you and your ego - there is God. God is watching and God is in charge of the ultimate lessons of human beings. If you believe there is no God - oh my, are you going to be surprised by the fact of you being a created being much smaller than the Creator. Remorse and sadness will be your experience when you find out for real.

Prepare yourself as you will be tested and, at present, you are not ready and have done almost no preparation. Have you forgiven all those you are angry at, or hurt by or resentful of? Do that now while you have time to clear the air and clean your slate. Have the humility to ask God for help with your condition and you will be in better shape for the changes that are coming.

Father Peter

Be the Change, Now!

Is there something dreadfully wrong with people? Teens can kill people in the street and not feel any pangs of conscience about it. People can yell at other people without feeling that that is hatred and thus wrong. Hating anything or anybody is wrong. Stop it. Cut it out. What kind of hell are you trying to make for yourself? What kind of lie are you an example of? If you are putting out angry, hateful thoughts and words, you are contributing to the pollution of the planet and the disturbance of the peace of the world. I admit that there is little peace in this world since most people do not do any work on themselves to become peaceful and to heal their wounds. Where is the courage of the people who were willing to fight for their rights in making this new country? Where are the heroic attributes of those who would lay down their lives for other people or at least for a noble cause? We are becoming so jaded that we don’t care what happens to other people and have no feeling for the suffering of others. What is wrong with human beings now that life is hard, economics are tough, health care is uncertain, and love is so sparse? Where is the faith of billions of people who used to trust in God? Remember when, “In God we Trust” used to be a saying that meant something? Now we have to tiptoe around those who don’t want God mentioned and have no conscience when it comes to taking sides in an angry hateful manner. People yell and scream and hate and attack each other's reputation without any reflection on their behavior. If we put out that kind of negative and destructive energy, it is going to coming back to you. There is so much prideful bad-mouthing of the leaders we elected as we attack everything they say or do with such short-sighted antagonism and malice. Is it any wonder that no one respects good intentions or even hard work anymore? The country is divided over the silliest concerns – health care, gay rights, and whether to keep sending troops into Afghanistan. We have to keep supporting our wars, you know. It is imperative that you have to have military operations if you want to keep your troops in practice and what better way than to have an actual, real conflict in order to get our young people the practice they need in defense and conflict situations. I am not disparaging our troops. I am questioning the rational for war.

Everyone is so volatile emotionally that they attack anyone and everything just because they are angry inside and have not looked to what can heal their hearts and minds. Why don’t you go to what can heal you and fix you and cease all this invective and slandering of other people. It is not to your credit that you can prideful attack someone and rip their reputation into shreds as you miss all the good that person is and tries to accomplish in their life. You know that you would fall just as easily as they if that scrutiny was placed on you. Your door step is not so clean, so you should be very cautious about attacking anyone. You could be as lacking in good judgment as others sometimes are. So be more compassionate on the foibles of others who have good intentions and sincerely are trying to do the right thing. I have hope in the goodness of human beings. It is just that so many are losing their inner peace in the fits and reactivity to the situations around them.

Are you going to be on the side of the angry, hateful scoffers of goodness and those who resent the idea of a Divine Being? Or are you going to be one of the courageous ones who refuse to contribute to the anger, retaliation, and prideful hatred of others and the escalation of fear that is so prevalent in our world? Are you going to take responsibility for making the world better in terms of the atmosphere around you and the emotional energy you are putting out into the world? Peace starts with you. Others may or may not help you, but you can make a difference in the relationships you have in your communities. I see this country going down unless a few strong people get it together and stand for peace, compassion and caring for other people. We are going down the tubes morally and socially if some people don’t start being a positive force for change and consideration of others. I see less and less respect for law and order, for authority, for integrity, for doing things for others, for selfless acts of caring. I see everyone thinking only of themselves and being selfish, prideful, back-stabbing and mean. You will pay for those things and it won’t be pretty when the karma hits you. It will come back on you. You better change or we are in for a really bad time, much worse than anything any of you have any idea of. We are almost at the point where we have written our future by the devastating things we have done and the hardness of our hearts is going to seal our fate. It is not too late, but you have to get busy and do something about yourself now.

Meditation is not for the Undisciplined

The purpose of meditation is to get your consciousness in a place where you can listen to something higher than what your frontal lobe can generate. It takes courage to stop the cackling thoughts from meandering around in the head trying to distract you. It might be interesting to watch a rapid file of scenes displayed in your cortex like so many commercials on television. You might experience time moving along as you are lulled to sleep by the drone of images that inundate you every second. Meditation is something entirely different. In meditation you stop all of that insane activity of the mind and you cease being attached to what is outside you. In fact, in the ideal state of meditation, you should not be feeling your body at all. You should not be aware of your flesh body or what it is going through. You can’t allow your body to itch you to try to disturb your peace or pull you away from the subject of your meditation. If you are meditation on peace, then only thoughts of peace or experiences of peace should be accepted in your experience. Other things that are not related to peace should be left outside and discarded. You need to focus and not be passive. You must be vigilant and not stressed out or worried.

Meditation requires stilling your mind to focus on something other than mundane worries and situations. You slow your breathing and you get very simple in your mind until you slow down enough to wake up from being outer- focused. You relax and observe what your inner being brings up to your awareness from a much wiser place inside of you. We say that is God within. God inside you is going to give you an experience or the knowledge or words about some subject that you hold in your mind. The reason this is possible is that God has been waiting to speak to you for so long and finally has your complete attention and can inspire and guide you in ways that are good for you. This can only happen when you turn you gaze to something higher than what your body, mind and emotions can generate. You are not your body. You are not your mind. You are not your emotions. You are something entirely different and you will find out when you get proficient at meditation. Many people meditate just to relax and so do not go to the deeper levels off humility and purity where they experience a divine Source within them that teaches, guides and directs things. They only go to the superficial levels of relaxing a little and never dive deeper into the sacred streams of blissful connection to the God that made them. All of the mystics had this experience of ecstatic embrace with God at the center of their being. God actually has been waiting to get your attention for years and finally in a successful mediation, you might actually be able to ear God speak to you in your meditations. This is for the advanced meditators however.

Meditation is for the spiritual adults and not for those too scared to let go of their own ideas and anxieties. Meditation will reconnect you with God and thus with real love at the source of all. God is within you and that’s why you meditate.

PURITY – WHY IT FEELS BETTER

As long as we are not jostled or disturbed in any way, we can maintain a reasonable balance and equanimity. Most of the times we function fairly well and can handle circumstances and relations with others without a tremendous amount of controversy and agitation. Most people are like a glass of water with some sediment in the bottom of the glass. As long as they are not stirred up, the sediment is not a problem and not noticeable. If you shake them a little or disturb their tranquility even a smudge, all that sediment rises into the solution and clouds the water of their experience. It is when life’s circumstances are difficult that we see the true colors come out in a person. If we haven’t done very much soul searching or introspective work on ourselves, there is years of unexamined feelings, resentments, fears and anger waiting to rise up when the storms come to disturb our waters. The storms are a blessing in disguise because they show up the things that need our attention and we get a chance to examine and sort through the things we were trying to avoid.

Purity is one of those words that immediately attracts or repels us. We have associations with words that bring up prejudices and fears inspired by memories in our past. Purity might have a negative connotation if you think of it as inexperienced or shut down. Purity might be positive if you think of it as saintly or holy. Purity means unadorned, uncontaminated – innocent. To be pure means to have no contaminating or competing elements in your solution. Purity means to have one goal, one ideal, one desire without conflicting complications. Pure is clear. Jesus said in the Beatitudes, “Blessed are the pure, for they shall see God.” In God there is only light. In God there is no darkness at all. God is pure and those who are pure will become like God. In the heart are so many positive feelings and negative desires. As you sort through them and decide which to keep and which to let go of, you clear your solution, your psyche and soul of any elements that you really don’t want. That is a purification of your soul and your whole nature. This takes time. As you let go of things that are absolutely no good for you, you become more and more purely yourself and as a result you feel a whole lot better. Your real soul nature is like God, so that core of your being is pure. If you purify the outer nature and clear yourself of conflicting desires and ideas, you will start to become more and more like God and thus pure. In a much deeper way, if you really do the inner work of getting rid of the sediment and impurities in your being, you will actually be preparing yourself to come into real relationship with God at the center of your being. You will see God.

Spring Has Sprung

The powerful energies that come into the Earth at this Spring time quicken the planet with vitality and life. Everything is moving and life infuses leaves and flowers unfolding a magnificent pageantry of nature budding and blossoming. People are motivated to start cleaning and organizing, removing clutter and making room for the new. If you respond to this incredible force unleashed in the Earth at this time by the powers of the Sun, you will feel the lift and elevation of spiritual energies as well as physical. The spiritual energies are Resurrection energies. Renewal. rebirth, transformation and change accompany this natural cycle. The frozen waters of winter melt and moisten the ground, waking up the seed embryos and trigger an awakening impulse to reach up to the Sun. Animals get busy. Humans are fired up to to renovate or fix things. The quiet waiting in winter is over because it is time to get moving and do. Action is the hallmark of this season of Spring - renewal and exposure of the light after the darkness of winter. You can use this time to motivate yourself to make those changes you always wanted to make. You should get rid of those things that you have not used in over a year - circulate them or sell them. Paint a room or change a fixture; move things around and try something new. What are you waiting for?
Inside your soul, the urgency to come close to God is also calling you to be more inner connected and responsive to the urgencies of God speaking to you. God has been trying to reach you through dreams and whispers for so long. Are you going to listen now? God is always available and longing to help you become like you were created - in spiritual image and likeness of God. Don't be dense - that doesn't mean physical likeness. It means spiritual likeness and image. The more like God you become, the more you will be happy and fulfilled. There is no real happiness or fulfillment outside of God. Doing your own thing will not make you happy. That will make you more angry and sad. Learning to still that noisy mind will help you hear what God has to give you.
Blessings
Father Peter

Religion Today

Fifteen percent of the people in the U.S. don’t believe in anything. There has been an 11% drop in religious belief and fervor in the past ten years. Judaism, Protestantism, Catholicism all show drops in the numbers of the faithful. Only 47% of the people think they are going to Heaven. Much of this trend has to do with people changing their faith and moving on to shop at other churches. But the fact remains that people are less entrenched in the religion of their ancestors. As the population ages and the elders die off, there is a drop in traditional patterns among the young. Most people find discussions and topics of religion worthy of mockery and disdain just as politics is often disparaged as a topic for lunch conversations. Religion and politics are so subjective that people don’t want to get fired up about a discussion that can’t go anywhere because it is all a matter of opinion, or so they say. Times are changing and the old ways are not working. In fact, religion has become the shopping mall mentality with the mega churches and the parking lots with the shuttles moving large masses of people into a world of disneyland like mall-of-America type experience. It is exciting because of the sheer massiveness of the venue and the incredible number of offerings, support groups and classes available. The family neighborhood church is fading away. Wiccan is on the rise because they believe in nature and goddesses as a reaction to mainstream religious thought. What is clear is that people are disillusioned by traditional theology and religious training and are looking for anything that might free them from the wretchedness of fallen human beings that was taught for centuries in the churches. We are good at the core, but don’t frighten people with that revelation because then they might have to start living and acting like their true nature. That would be a spiritual revolution.