That WHO is GOD?
Be Still and Know that I am God is a WHOLE idea that can easily be manipulated to mean things other than what it really is when it is broken apart and weakened. Just what does this mean?
As a direction please notice that Knowing and Stillness are being combined into one idea. In this tiny simple instruction, ‘stillness’ and ‘knowing’ are not separated. Maybe they are separable but we are being directed to keep the unified idea of knowing and being still unbroken. That is because there is no true objectivity when each idea is practiced on its own. If we separate them we spoil the sacred formula. To be still only while rejecting knowing is sleep – ignorance. To ‘know’ only without stillness is to be immersed in the brain matter of knowledge – also asleep – comatose and unaware.
Be still then know then be still again then know again – repeat over and over becoming more and more accustomed to how it happens and stronger and stronger through use. Then when cruelties and injustices come our way we cane easily recall, with familiarity, how these are to be neutralized. It is a meditative cycle that exercises our ability to do the same, later, in our real-time lives. You may in some ways consider it as a kind of dress rehearsal for real life. Not entirely since though - life takes place all the time but hopefully that helps make the point of why meditation helps.
It is the combination of quite awareness that holds the power. Detaching from the thought once presented – NOT preventing the though – that practice is all that is needed – over and over again until the end of life. Eventually with practice the state of objective existence is almost constant. Maybe it is entirely constant – I do no know – I have not yet come to a living in that way.
Being still so that we know puts will and selfish purpose into what would otherwise be a sweet and spiritual endeavor. The seeking of knowledge through mediation is the antitheses of its purpose and ends in failure.
Trying to simply “still the mind” creates a void. Worse, it is a forced and unnatural void that we were never meant to live inside. Inside that blank space we can be reprogrammed which is the rue objective of doctrines that teach and preach while we are put into that state of suggestibility.
Knowing without stillness is just as dangerous because it rote knowledge just puffs our egos up to status it does not deserve. It is simple and common seen in hypocritical preachers of religious practitioners who. Usually be still and know leaves out the compete directive. In its complete form it properly read, “Be still and know that I am God” by omitted God we automatically are being still to know that we are god and it is the imagined superiority we feel for being filled with knowing that allows it. Knowing what Jesus said, what Emmett Fox wrote, what words are used in the Step, can trap the bad intended to allowing the truth to become god is common practice. Quoting scripture, Big Book text, mystic philosophies to advertise our knowing to others is basic and simple ego stroking and is tantamount to spiritual masturbation – a sacred orgasm coming in the moment that someone expresses appreciation for our ‘wisdom’. Eventually our followers see our hypocrisy and hate us and we resent them back for their failure to provide the worship to which we have no becomes enslaved to our own slaves. We may even relish the idea that they will “go to hell” for their transgressions or we will imagine some karmic punishment for them down the road.
In the old 70s sitcom “Maude” the main character used to say, “God will get you for that Walter.”, to her husband over whom in that moment she realized she was powerless . In reality it was a last ditched effort to regain her power lost. With this statement Maude could instill fear into Walter and upset him enough so that he would seek relief through conversion back into the comfort of her flock. From Walter’s perspective, Maude would then love him again since the friction caused by her disapproval would now be removed. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it did not. Walter would be a good candidate for alcoholism under this same relationship with his own mother as a youngster.
Meditations that seek a blanking out or elimination of thought is not a desirable objective because life does not resemble the hollow event-less void into which we are being asked to place ourselves. When we practice existing in a void – a place without thought – then we are merely conditioning ourselves into a numberless and obstinate refusal to participate in the very game of stress that would otherwise strengthen us. God’ world is meant to be lived not retreated from .He places us here the least we can do is play on it - under his rules. Not resist His rules of play. To refuse to ‘play’ guarantees the atrophy of our spirits – not its growth and development. Soon we cannot handle the lager stresses and become depressed and unhealthy sometimes the very symptoms that we selfishness picked up meditation in hopes of removing. We regress when we ‘clear the mind’ of thought just as we regress when we clear the gym of its dumbbells and exercise equipment. Learning to cope with inequities of life and injustices thrown out way by unaware, thoughtless people is what will strengthen us and save us from them. Practicing this exercise of spiritual muscle is what the mediation is and that is ALL that it is.
It is only by practicing the entering and abandoning of thought immersion – over and over – that we gain the strength to meet life of God’s terms. Doing curls and dips to strengthen biceps and triceps will guarantee that we can lift the heavy box when it becomes necessary. It is exactly that way with meditation. Life on Life’s terms would have us get caught up in it and have us allow our awareness to wane when we get carried away by our own thought stream – always resigned to a life of appeasing those we perceive as the enemy and become weak victims in the eyes of abusive stressors - bully types and anyone who would seek to employ their power over us. It could be the violent mate or the seductive one it matters little. Either will use our weakness to stand up to it to control us as we weaken even further. Life on Gods terms instead has us living and growing life flowers in sunlight using and sunlight to grow in spite of it and with it. That is true harmony.
