by E. Alan Meece
Nov.2001 (soon to be revised)

I am one with God. I am God, I and the Father are One. God is Omnipresent, God is everywhere. God is the Spirit, which is creative. Spirit is in all things, and all things are Spirit. There is an aspect of me which is perfect and unchanging. This is the divine aspect, which partakes of the Perfection and Goodness of God.

Life is growth and change; it is an adventure, it is a game. As such, the perfect seeks the imperfect, the absolute seeks the relative. Thus, "the world of appearance." God is the whole; everything else is a part of the whole. We view things from the viewpoint of the part, much of the time. We need to focus our attention on a partial view. We can also see the whole simultaneously, and we need to see this. All things are of one suchness, one essence. Thus, we see oneness and differences, wholes and parts, simultaneously.

This is God’s will and desire, apparently; to lose Himself in the parts, and find Himself again continually. So, the world of appearance, which is the partial view, is not evil. The world of differences, of diversity, is not evil. To see differences is not wrong. To fully know and Be the whole, the Whole must have Parts. A whole without parts is an empty nothing. God is not nothing, he is everything. Thus, there are Individuals, who are free. The whole and the parts, the One and the Many, are interdependent. God is Many, and One, simultaneously. The Whole Spirit is One and Many at once. The One needs the Many, and the Many needs the One.

This is how the Trinity manifests, as three in one. There is always an inside and an outside, and these aspects of the Whole are One and Interrelated. The inside always implies the outside, and the outside implies the inside, and there is interaction. The inner and the outer are One and Many simultaneously. Giving and Receiving, are one, different, and interdependent. Self, and Other, are One, Different and Interdependent. This is the Trinity, which is simultaneously One. The One, the Other, and Interdependence. Subject, Object, and Relationship. Mind, Idea and Consciousness.

Eternity and Change are also interdependent, each necessary to the other, and One. Eternity must realize itself in Time; it does not merely stay eternal. The eternal is always unfolding into the temporal; the Changless Idea into the Manifest Form, the Eternal Truth into the demonstrated Reality. Thus, appearance is not illusion. It is the impermanent. So, while not illusion, it is not all of reality. It can change, it can be changed. Its form will change, not stay the same. Illusion, is the mistaking of one thing for another. So the world of appearance becomes illusion, when we don’t see it in its true nature. It is an illusion to see the world of changing appearance as permanent. It is not permanent; the only permanent and unchanging thing is what is Eternal, the One Spirit of the Divine. But all things in time, and all differences, are true aspects of the One True Being, and are true. A piece of bread, is no less Bread, because it is cut from the loaf. Impermance is not untruth, and it is not illusion. It is simply impermanence. This is a distinction that is not always made in spiritual writings.

Our perception of the impermanent is not a mistake and is not false. We are not deceived by perceptions of impermanent things. We are deceived by our thought, or our interpretation, if we mistake the impermanent for the permanent, without seeing that both are always present. Just as with the One and the Many. There is no Many without the One, and vice-versa. There are no impermanent things without the One Unchanging Thing. So the illusion is to see the impermanent without also seeing the permanent which is implied in it. To see the outside without seeing the inside, and vice-versa. To see Self without the Other, and to see ourselves without seeing the One Self which we also are at all times.

The past and future are real. Memory and Imagination are put down and reduced by many spiritual teachings to mere figments of our thinking. Actually, memory and imagination are perceptions. Experience shows this through the fact that people with poor memory and imagination are also people with poor vision and hearing. Memory is the perception of the past, not a thought or image of an experience held onto and retained by an insecure mind seeking permanence. Memory does not need to seek permanence; we remember automatically. Every experience within every Soul is remembered, by the Soul and by God. Thus, in that sense, it is permanent.

But the past and future are part of Time, and thus of change. Since the past exists, it exists in the present, in the NOW. In that sense, there is no past or future, because everything is now. The past and future which exist, are not our thoughts of them, but the real experiences which we had or will have, and which exist now, and are known now; not as parts of a memory bank created and stored by thoughts, but within our souls. The memory of appearances, of passing experiences which change, are part of our experience now and of appearances now. The past and future are extensions of now. In that sense then, past experiences and appearances are changeable, just as present appearances are. So also, the future is changeable, by being subject to our imagination, to our will, and above all, to the unfolding of Divine Intelligence as it comes to us. Perhaps also, the past is changeable; at least in how it relates to us today.

Whatever lives, as Bergson said, has a place in which time is being inscribed. Those spiritual Teachers who speak of the Eternal Now as the only reality, always end up speaking in terms of Time, because this is unavoidable. The Eternal must unfold through time; life requires Time. Nothing can be created, nothing new can exist, unless the old is remembered; otherwise the new will simply be the repeat of the old. In any higher spiritual dimension in which souls dwell, this is true. The Perfect Changeless Mind continues the same forever. Nothing new need be added. But this Mind is also eternally unfolding and expressing. This is not a delusion, a misperception, of the Eternal. This is a necessity to the Eternal. God needs Time and Change to manifest as living beings, to unfold itself. The two sides co-exist together, forever, and within each other always.

Time thus exists in the spiritual world as well as in the so-called physical world. It is just as true in the manifest world of appearance, as in the spiritual, that the only reality is NOW. We can experience that fact in THIS life. So there is no distinction in the experience of this fact from our experience of it in the next life; no reason to assume that a radical difference in our perception of NOW will occur once we go there. We already know this. So contrariwise, in the next life, we also experience the past and future. But we experience more clearly that they are contained in the Now, and that Change and Now are interdependent. We have fewer barriers. On the other hand, it may be harder in some ways to unfold in the spirit world. It is less of a challenge; thus our bliss may be more intense when it has been infused with all the density, and all the trials and tribulations of this world.

In order for Music, Art and Beauty to be expressed, there must be time, and the past. The next note has no significance without memory of the past note; the future flow of sound without the remembered flow, does not flow. The Phenomenologists have reported this, through their careful description of human experience. Why ignore them, and believe Eastern pundits instead? Why are they exclusively qualified to tell us what human experience is? The past enables the full Eternal to express itself; as everything, rather than as nothing. Furthermore, nothing is worthwhile without memory and time. If you are in bliss now, but nothing of this experience lasts within you, or within God, it might as well have never existed, because tomorrow it will be gone. Bliss must continue to unfold and grow, in order to be bliss. It must contain relationship to past and future, before it has any beauty. The relation of experience through time is what makes it blissful. And this is all experienced as Now as well. The meaning of life, its value and worthiness, is the permanence of the impermanent. The more the impermanent can be made permanent, the more value it has. Thus also, the fallacy of "eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die." This is the path of the consumer society, which does not care for future generations, but consumes and destroys everything now in exchange for transitory pleasure.

Some spiritual teachers say that everything is Good, and evil is an illusion. Well, yes and no. It can be rather difficult to affirm everything as Good. But at bottom we know it’s true. As I see it, this doesn’t mean that there is no evil. Individual acts can be evil, and mistakes can be made. However, it is necessary for God’s growth and unfoldment that He have challenges. What good is it for God, not to express? How can God express strength, without obstacles and challenges? Does God have to do this? No, God does not have to do anything. There are no have-tos in God, or life. Nothing has to be done. But for a fun game, God wants a challenge and a good story. There are few good stories that don’t have a villain, or a problem. This is "evil," it is the challenges through which God, and God’s Sons, grow and develop. This means freedom too. We have the freedom to screw up. Only if our love is freely given, is our love real.

One cannot get physically stronger, for example, without exercise. This means overcoming obstacles. The weights must be heavy. Gravity must pull on your body. The heavier the weight you can lift, the stronger you are. Greater good comes from greater evil. So too in relationships with our fellow God-expressions as individuals. We grow in love through dealing with the challenges of relating to other Beings who are just as free and powerful as ourselves.

Socrates said that evil is ignorance. This is our greatest challenge, to grow in consciousness and awareness. The more we become aware, the less ignorant we are. Thus we are less likely to commit evil. The challenge of the good story, which has a good villain or problem, is also frequently a mystery. We don’t know how things will come out. We are ignorant. Through the story, we become aware, and the mystery is solved if the story has a happy ending-- which most stories do. This does not mean there is no evil, or that "everything is permitted." It means that, through the possibility of evil, we grow in our awareness of good. Knowing this, we may not actually look upon every situation in our lives as good; though we might do this more often. But we will know that, in the whole picture, it is good. Without evil, there is no story, no game, no growth, and no expression. Without evil, in short, there is no good. We don’t know good, without evil. They are relational. That does not mean, however, that we seek evil. We don’t have to give ourselves evil in order to experience good. We seek the good, we seek challenges, we seek a good adventure, and the evil presents itself to us as the challenges and lessons we face on the journey. The road through hell to heaven is paved with good intentions. Thus, we may hate a turn in the road, but we love the journey. Knowing this, we don’t have to force on ourselves the difficult, dishonest, hypocritical and wearing task of believing that everything is good, because we can still believe that the play itself, the journey itself, is good. It is what we want. We want the journey, because if everything is just handed to us, we have no sense of our godliness. Nothing is asked of us in that case, or of our fellows. We just live in luxury, grow complacent and weak. Everything is obvious and there is no mystery, nothing to discover. No, we want a more interesting game. So, even when we finally achieve heaven on earth, some of us will go off in search of the next hell. That may be why utopias fail. They don’t satisfy our restless urge for life-- for growth, adventure and mystery.

Good and Evil also play into the great controversy of absolutism versus relativity. Today this is often linked to post-modernism which says everything is relative and arbitrary. I dissent from this view. Good is absolute, and so are Beauty and Truth, just as Plato said. It is our perception of them which is relative. It is their manifestation in temporal form which is limited, for no one object can be separated from the whole and singled out as "Good." The same thing may be good or bad depending on the context, or how we look at it. But there is always the Absolute Good inherent in any partial or apparent good. The Eternal is manifest in the Changing, the Many in the One. Unless there is a Good, saying that something in particular is "good" has no meaning or reference. If everything is always the same, and there are no differences, the words Good and Evil, Beauty and Ugliness, Truth and Falsehood, refer to nothing at all, and our experiences of them are denied. No, in the manifest world, there are differences. Only in the Absolute is everything the same. But this Absolute is always expressed through the Relative, and the two are interdependent. So when someone says "this painting is beautiful," this is not just something in the eye of the beholder. The beautiful is in the object, as well as in the beholder. So, the beholder has a real experience of a beautiful object, and his/her experience is the truth, as far as (s)he knows. On the other hand, seeing a beautiful object is not to see the whole of Beauty. So we see the object, each from our own point of view. Thus, differences of opinion. But partial views are not false, but merely partial. We each see a part of the "elephant." We can be tolerant of difference of opinion, because we know that our own perceptions are limited. We can admit our limitations, without being reduced to saying that there are no beautiful things, or that beauty is arbitrary. Otherwise, we devalue anyone’s experience of Beauty. Each of us may learn and grow in our appreciation of Beauty from others. No one object or experience can be the standard for all beauty, and no authority can require us to accept any standard of beauty. Thus, to be open-minded is correct. We may be right, or we may be wrong. But our perception of a beautiful object, IS our perception of it, to the best of our ability. We know it through our sensitive perception. Its beauty, or lack thereof, is not an illusion, or just an arbitrary thought or label of "beautiful" we have put on it.

Thus also with good and evil objects. We may have differing apprehensions of what is good. No one statement in words can encompass the good. But what we DO know of the Good is correct. Good is not an arbitrary standard, merely the result of one society’s changing beliefs and customs. Killing is wrong, and if another society in another time and place claims otherwise, it is incorrect. If this statement is inadequate, it is because of faulty or inadequate perceptions of the Good on our part, and not due to any lack of an Absolute Good, available to our potential perception and expression at any time and place. So also with Beauty, and with Truth. Just as God is everywhere, so the Good is everywhere, because God is the essence of Goodness and Perfection. Truth, is true everywhere, and is not determined by passing fashions or different localities. If something is true on Earth, it is true on Jupiter, or in Andromeda; in Heaven as well as on Earth. So also with Beauty. What changes and grows are our realizations and expressions of these Eternal aspects or inherencies of God. No one single object can fully express the Absolute; all are approximations. None can be divided from the One. So, the goodness of God is everywhere, and so is Its beauty and truth. But without the Absolute existing, neither does the relative or the single beautiful, good or true object exist. Reduction to lowest common denominator means destruction.

I think, in fact, that post-modern relativism is a cop out. It is an easy escape from the fact that we have a responsibility and a challenge: to create the true, good and beautiful in all aspects of our lives. To say they are arbitrary, absolves us of that challenge, and we can just accept "things as they are" without accepting that the way things are depends on what we perceive and do about them. We can create objects of great beauty, or we can create junk. We can do right, and we can do wrong. We can know the truth, or we can be mistaken. And we have the responsibility to seek and create beauty, goodness and truth to the best of our ability.

To find God, and all its beauties, we need to meditate. There is a demon within us, or perhaps demons. It is the parts of ourselves, not subject to the Whole. It is social and family authority. Or perhaps, we have become literally possessed by other spirits. In any case, we must reclaim our own Being. We need to recover our freedom, if we are to be free. It is said by Divine Science that all evil and error, all sin, is separation from God. This is true. Through meditation, we may become more aware. Then we see that there is no separation. We know our identity with all that is. We know our divinity.

If you try to seek your separate self, you find it has no location in space. It can’t be pinned down anywhere. Thus, your separate self is not an object. But then, how can it be separate? Only objects are separate. Only objects have borders, within which the object is the object, and outside of which the object is not the object. Through awareness, we see that everything interpenetrates, in cyclic movements in and out. This is apparent even in the most obvious experiences we have. We cannot exist unless we breathe. When we do so, we are connected to the air around us, the same air everyone breathes and has breathed since the Earth’s beginnings. We take in air from outside, and we exhale air from within us. Our skins divide us, but are porous too. We sweat; we absorb. We also must eat to live. We take in food and excrete its remains, which fertilize the soil, from which more food grows. Our very perception and consciousness, which is what we are, depends on objects to perceive. Without objects to be conscious of, we are not conscious. Conversely, without consciousness, noone has ever perceived an object. In this most basic way we are connected. When you seek yourself, you find that you are the environment. When you seek the environment, denying its relationship to yourself, you find that it depends on you.

At the same time, it is also true that the cause of sin is denial of yourself. It is allowing yourself to be sucked up and taken in, perhaps even by what we may believe to be God. But God wants a real Self to unite to. Union with God is found in the Self. Thus we must reclaim ourselves, and not be the puppet on the string of our demons. These demons control us through our appetites, our desires, our emotions, and most immediately and ruthlessly, through our thoughts.

There is nothing wrong with thought. The place of reason in our lives is a whole topic in itself. There is nothing wrong with our appetites, or our emotions (even negative ones, in the right context). There is nothing wrong with desire. "The source of suffering is desire," the Buddha is supposed to have said. This is a mis-translation. What is wrong, is what is called attachment. So, Buddha was correct, but this is what he meant. Compulsion, unconscious habit, automatic reactions and indulgent cravings; this is what he meant. The part, taking over our whole being, and dominating it and dictating our actions. Possession, instead of self-possession. This is the source of suffering, and of evil. Our demons. The devil made us do it. So, we need to tell Satan, get thee behind me. This is the temptation of Christ, which we face every day. Do we succumb to our temptations, or do we take our lives in our own hands?

This is the work of meditation. We learn to focus on one thought. When our eye is single, our whole Being is filled with Light. I like to focus on the one thought, of focusing on one thought. Any other thought or chant repeated in my mind, which I might use to focus with, is two thoughts (the chant, and the intention to focus), and thus is less powerful. If we wander from the one thought, then we are being led astray from our intention. To be free, we must be able to hold to our intention, not be taken in and controlled like puppets by every passing compulsion or unconscious reaction.

Thus, the next step, is to say "I am here; I am not carried away." And then to know what that means. Our goal in meditating, is to be here, rather than be carried away by, or caught up in, our compulsions. To possess ourselves again. To be present, to be mindful, to be awake. To be "with it," not lost in meandering fantasy, in compulsive discussions-- rehearsing what we are going to say in our next argument, planning what to do for our next project, or even discussing metaphysical philosophy, or God, with ourselves, or how my meditation is going, or what I’m going to do afterward, etc. To be here rather than not here is not a literal thing; we are always here. There is nothing wrong with going somewhere else, even in fantasy. Provided you are there as you go. But to "be here" means, to be truly present, conscious and possessed within ourselves; not carried off by our compulsions, which are not ourselves. By knowing when we are carried away, we become aware of being here. Then we can stay here. Our automatic self, our habitual self, is not our real self. It is not who we are. It is being dominated by others, or by only a part of ourselves. It is all these others we are arguing with, proving ourselves to, answering to. We need to tell all these others, go away! I’m going to be myself now. I don’t have to answer to you. I don’t have to do anything.

All our fears reduce to this compulsion; that I have to do something. I must survive. Have to and must is compulsion. It is not me. So also, any clutching, any grabbing, any holding on, any pretension, any use of force, any so-called control which is forced (and not true control or will) is this same compulsion. Dissolve this, and you dissolve all of our problems. This is my working assumption. And that, by meditating more, I can learn to be here more often, even while I’m not meditating. That is not easy. It takes practice. This is essential Buddhism.

So, when freed in greater measure from compulsion, we can go ahead and have thoughts. The problem is, not being there while thinking; not the thinking itself. This is normally difficult though. We usually get caught up in our thoughts easily, and they run away with us. It is important to be able to switch thinking off entirely; otherwise you don’t have the freedom to think, or not to think. We are not thinking correctly, if we are thinking unconsciously and compulsively. As the Zen Buddhists said, don’t wobble. Thinking just to think is not the problem; it is the wobble. The wobble is being carried away, instead of coming back to oneself and being here; thus being afraid, anxious, reactive, escapist, dishonest, indolent, clutching; all these are just different words for the same thing. Attachment, as the Hindus called it. Freedom, vs. compulsion. Not being here. Being out to lunch. Use whatever phrase works for you.

We are not our thoughts, or our desires, emotions or sensations. We need not be dominated by them. Knowing this, and not being carried away by them, we can have all of these without concern. We are the Whole; we are Individual Selves, expressing the One Self. Often, acting from the Whole is called acting from the Heart. Our Heart Center, by being aware of it, can help us act from our Whole Self, without denying any parts of ourselves, including our thoughts. When functioning freely, our thoughts give us truth. When we have greater presence, our thoughts have more power, and we have more power to think the thoughts we want. Thus, and only thus, is "positive thinking" or mental visualization possible. The power of thought can help us, though I don’t believe it is all powerful. There’s another whole topic.

I don’t have to believe, or not believe, in anything to free myself of compulsions. All that is extraneous. I don’t have to believe that I am an Individual. I don’t have to believe that I am NOT an individual. I don’t have to believe or disbelieve anything. I don’t have to dissolve my individual identity. Here I disagree with many Zen Buddhists. Whether the I exists or not, is irrelevant. If it doesn’t exist, there is nothing to hang onto. If it does exist, there is no need to hang on to it. The point is, the hanging on. This is the only thing that creates separation from God, or the illusion of separate identity, as it’s called. If I am being myself, I don’t have to hang on to myself. I’m just here. The clutching, the anxiety, the compulsion; these are legs on a snake. They are not necessary to my success. It may be understandable; that I fall into their domination. It may be understandable that I feel the need to hang on. I may have compassion for myself and others who fall under their spell. Emotions may come, and I feel them. But this is the critical part of our unfolding, to ever more be ourselves, to be with ourselves, and to be here wherever we are. I don’t have to survive, I don’t have to have my desires fulfilled; I don’t have to live forever. I’m just here; that’s enough. I don’t have to believe that I am nothing, thus making it easier, perhaps, to let go. I don’t have to "surrender" or give up anything. Nothing disappears, when I let go of it. I just need to let go. Let go of everything. Any philosophy on top of that, however illuminating in other contexts, is superfluous and not necessary to this task. Just, let go. Be here.