Q: Upon waking with negative thoughts, how does one establish
a relationship with God?
A: I think this is what we've been talking about all along.
Praying without ceasing. I find no difference in a prayer and a serious
thought. They're the same thing. As we've said since we've been in here, fear
or worry is a prayer for something you don't want to happen. To live in the
conscious awareness of the living presence of God. I don't even much like the
'Our Father' prayer (even though I talk about it a lot). 'Our Father'. God. I
talk about our Father a lot, but this relationship that we've been talking
about this weekend is much, much closer than a father–son relationship. As I
said, I've got two sons someplace in Southern California; I don't know whether
either one of them is. That is impossible with my relationship with my own God,
because God is that which I am. God is that which I am. I couldn't breathe, I
couldn't be, there we be nothing, I would be extinct, but for God. Because God
is life, and there's no way to be separated from God in reality.
The only separation there is, is conscious. The feeling of
conscious separation from; 'left field'. Very real as an experience, but not
reality. So I don't think that we ought to wake up feeling any different than
when we went to sleep, or feel any different than ten minutes after we get up.
Now is the deal. How is it with me, right now? If I had to get up and start
praying right quick to feel good, I don't think I'd feel good when I got
through praying. I think you ought to feel good before you start to pray.
Again, I don't know when my prayers start and stop. I feel like Brother
Lawrence a little, in that deal. Because I like to live in the conscious
awareness of the Living Presence, God, in a relationship with everything around
me. Everything around me. So I think that's the thing to get through your head:
that now is the time. You see, this is so very vital to me, because tomorrow
was always the day I was going to straighten up and fly right. But tomorrow
never got here. Every time I came to it was now, and I was thirsty! So I took a
drink. Tomorrow never got here. Again, I don't think I have to be in any
particular position to retain this feeling of the Living Presence of God. I
don't think that it happens in a church or in the mountain or in the temple or
in Jerusalem. It's in my own mouth, that I might know it and do it. So that's
the only answer I have for that.
(Chuck C.)
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