At fifty-nine, I know I’m blessed to have the gift of time and the means necessary to allow me to pursue my heart’s passions as opposed to my past profession. This allows me to think a lot about whatever this is. This being life or awareness of this reality; whatever that means.
This or that seem like such simple words when trying to understand the world or the world we perceive while exhaling and inhaling the breath of God that sustains all creatures great and small. Contemplations that have inspired philosophers and prophets and poets; scientists and scholars and sages. Considerations that actuate my consciousness and ache at my heart.
Life and death intertwined by this ultimate question of what is this earthly existence all about. Why and what joined together. A tapestry that quickly unravels when we begin to pull apart and separate this life and this death from one another.
These perceived paradox’s define what the other is and is not without answering neither the why nor the what. We are taught to believe that life and death are in opposition to one another as opposed to symbiotic. You cannot know death until you have known life, and you cannot know life until you have known death.
The definitive spiritual lesson every seeker will eventually learn on their life journey. Every follower of Jesus understanding that those who seek their life will lose it. Every person of faith recognizing that death is illusory, and this life is an outpouring of love. God is love.
The Spirit of God bringing light into the darkness while hovering over a formless and empty earth. Light created through the spoken word of God. Light that we don’t always recognize because we’re born into a world of shadows. An infantile darkness that deceives humanity because evil is always at work to manipulate the Light.
This terrestrial tension reveals the ongoing spiritual battle between light and darkness. Good and what is not good in competition for control of the human heart, including your heart and my heart. Humans are both petulant children and children of God, another paradox that Love binds together.
We perceive these dichotomies of life and death as polar opposites because our senses and our intellect have limitations. Limitations that become abundantly clear when pondering this enduring question of life’s why and what. Even while fully knowing my written words in this realm will remain after I pass. The only certainty in all our lives is the certainty that at some future date we all will join the departed in their world
This paradoxical reality of opposites held in tension, challenges our binary way of knowing the world as either on or off, right or left, light or dark and alive or dead. Not understanding that our earthly existence is not in contradiction to life and death but in compliment to one another.
We see dimly because we all have loved the darkness. The Light of pure Love can make us feel anxious, ashamed, arrogant and afraid because it reflects what we truly desire and treasure. Illuminating our heart while honestly revealing who we really are and what we really value.
There is no paradoxical reality to resolve because everything and every creature resides within the Light. Darkness cannot exist without the Light because it’s only known by what the Light reveals. Light can exist without darkness because its not dependent on the darkness to be revealed
The Light of the World holds both life and death, surrender and victory, earth and heaven. The Light of the World is reflected in every human. The Light of the World request to reside within every human heart. The Light of the World is never coercive but always chosen. The Light of the World is what binds our reality to the Divine, the one and only true path to eternal life and everlasting love.
Peace. God loves you.
If you want to learn more about how my spiritual awakening came to be, you can read about it in Finding God in Vegas: A Gen X Spiritual Awakening; available on Amazon and across all platforms in print or electronic or audio.