This doesn't ring true to me
I read somewhere recently something that didn't ring true to me. Of course, I could be talking about a thousand things that do ring true to me, yet here I pick out the one thing that doesn't. This is the statement:
"No sacrifice is too great, nor effort too much, in order to realize God.”
Perhaps, out of context, the quotation is missing something, or I do not fully understand what is being said.
How can sacrifice even exist to realize the presence of God? What sacrifice? Giving up the past? I would gladly. Oh, please, take away the past, and give me God any day.
And by what effort? Can effort bring this realization to us? If effort were the way to God-realization, it seems to me that many of us would already be there.
Can giving up the past, giving up ego, giving up ignorance possibly be a sacrifice? Seems to me that all of that would be a gift from God.
It has not been easy for most of us to give up the past, ego, ignorance, and, yet, it seems to me that when it happens, when we recognize the full Presence of God, it will be easy. It will occur so easily, naturally, and seamlessly. Is this not how the Grace of God works?
Comments
UNDOING IS HERCULEAN WORK!
Can we realize, ONCE AND FOR ALL, that the essential work on this planet is not TO DO but to UNDO. We call that RELAXATION.
You'rr so right Gloria. We were taught at a relatively early age the very high value of sacrifice. Enormous effort was expended in the attempt to make holy what was hated and despised. We could almost say that a lifetime of contemplation and long periods of meditation aiming at detachment from the body are no longer necessary. Of course, all such attempts will ultimately succed because of their purpose. Yet the means are tedious and very time consuming, for all of them look to the future for release from a state of present unworthiness and inadequacy.
What you suggest, and what we read through God's Heavenletters is that the way now will be (and is) different from the past, not in purpose but in means. A direct relationship and dialog with God (through Godwriting or whichever way to talk with God) is a means of saving time. One instant spent together with our brothers and sisters restores the universe to both of us all. We are prepared. Now we need only to remember we need DO NOTHING. It would be far more profitable now, as you suggest, merely to concentrate on this than to consider what we should do. When peace comes at last to those who wrestle with temptation and fight against the giving in to sin; when the light comes at last into the mind given to contemplation; or when the goal is finally achieved by anyone, it always comes with just one happy realisation: 'I need do nothing'.
Now we really have to believe that we need do nothing. That is the herculean UNDOING TASK.
Beloved Normand, you always make me think of so many things I want to say! It is beautiful how you give your whole heart to understanding what God tells us.
I must say there is something "in the air" about the virtue of sacrifice.
I learned the "nobility" of sacrifice from my mother who was into heroines like Stella Dallas, who acted as her daughter's maid and hid the fact that she was the mother in order to further her daughter in society! Aughh.
God in Heavenletters(tm) is opposed to the concept of sacrifice. If we sacrifice, we tend to have the idea that we are owed something. God made the point that a mother isn't sacrificing when she gets up in the middle of the night to nurse her baby.
As for sin, God does not believe in it! He said, as I remember, that if there be a sin, it is doubt.
And, yes, of course, you are just right, we need do nothing but, well, be open to God and love.
A thousand blessings, beloved Normand.
No sacrafice, Just LOVE. And ego ,past,and Negativity goes away and you become GOD. Love you All Jack
Nothing to add dear Jack.
oceans of love
Berit
Opening the tap to drink water is the effort. Thirst is sacrificed.
In this world, there must always be action!