We have now come full circle in our series on spiritual wholeness, reviewing and re- newing our sense of connectedness to our own indwelling Lord and all of creation. We are not alone in the universe. We are the universe. And by grace we fulfill our destiny as the sons and daughters of God.
"Thy Grace is sufficient Unto Me" is a truly comforting affirmation and easy to say. But as we've learned, speaking the words and living the words seem miles apart. Many have come from traditions which taught that we must struggle to attain the kingdom of God, knowing all the while that we would fall short of the goal. Not! Joel Goldsmith writes in Leave Your Nets:
Rest from the mental and physical struggle to achieve and to attain, and let the kingdom of God flow forth from you.
Spiritual discipline is the one sure path to feeling and believing that we are one with God. In Matthew, Jesus said that we should "love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind..." But how can we function in the world with all our attention upon God? Can we wander through the world with our feet upon the pavement and our heads in the clouds without tripping over our own feet? Or do we withdraw completely from the world to fulfill this commandment?
Jesus also said that we "you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect." Come on now, doesn't this sound a bit like 'pie in the sky' talk? Deepak Chopra says otherwise in The Third Jesus when he explains that Jesus wasn't talking about committing all our time and thought to God, but about wholeness.
If your whole mind is given to loving God, a change occurs. The mind is no longer fragmented and distracted. It has found its source in God and loving God becomes completely natural.
There is no longer a struggle to find God or experience God or love God. There is only God. There is no separation between spirit, soul and body. In this consciousness of oneness, we love God with our whole being and our neighbor as our self.
Howard Clinebell writes in Spiritually Empowered Wholeness that we must come to that place of being totally alive and aware of our place in God's creation.
To live at only a fraction of our potential aliveness and creativity is to waste much of our most valuable asset—life itself. Health is the presence of positive, developing wholeness, the ongoing process of fulfilling one’s potentialities.
Spiritual discipline is the key to fulfilling our potential. We build our consciousness upon one thought, one word, one action at a time like a brick layer building the foundation of a cathedral.
Rev. Claudia Naylor
