The song, “Awake My Soul” by Mumford and Sons is powerful. Its message, “you were made to meet your maker” is the essence of all great religions but is somehow much more immediate and accessible in this refrain! It touches a universal experience, “fickle my heart and woozy my eyes; my heart stumbles on things I don’t know.” Additionally, all faith traditions encompass the idea that before salvation can ever be visited upon us; there is that quintessential moment, “my weakness I must finally show.” And then a prayer is carried on the wing, “Lend me your eyes….in these bodies we live, in these bodies we die….where you invest your love, you invest your life.” It is the story of our journey toward the place where our soul can be totally free.

Link to Awake My Soul by Mumford & Sons on YouTube

In these bodies we live, in these bodies we die.

Life is not haphazard even though at first glance it may appear to be so. The physical world is very orderly with natural things developing in stages and living in a balanced and harmonized relationship with everything around them. Since the globalization of the economy we can see just how fragile each eco-system is. The interjection of a new species through international economic exchange breaks a natural cycle of give and take with dire consequences.

Divine ecology

What is our natural ecology as human beings if it hadn’t been interfered with or diverted? How were we meant to live in relationship with God and each other?

We can think about the word ecology:

[C19: from German Ökologie,  from Greek oikos  house (hence, environment)][1]

Human ecology is the branch of sociology concerned with the spacing and interdependence of people and institutions, but what about our divine ecology? Who thinks about our relationship with God and the cosmos? In the future this will be a branch of study that is fully explored in Universities and Educational Institutions around the world.

I would like to begin that study by looking at our relationship with God and the cosmos. We are more than just our relationship with this physical world – human ecology studied by sociologists is useful but incomplete because it doesn’t encompass the depth and expanse of the human experience.  We not only have a relationship with others and the world but a relationship with the Cosmos which includes the Invisible (to the human eye) but very substantial Spiritual World.

“Beware that this world is not made for you to live forever, you will have to change it for hereafter. God, glory be to Him, has not created you without a purpose and has not left you without duties, obligations and responsibilities… you must remember to gather from this life such harvest as will be of use and help to you hereafter.” – Hahjul Balagha, Khutba 67 (Shiite Islam)

3 Stages to Life

Whether we are aware of it or not, our lives consist of three distinct phases. There is the time in the womb that lasts roughly 40 weeks or 9 months, and our time on earth that while getting longer is capped at 100 or so years. The oldest, recorded living person lived to be 122 years and 164 days! She was from France and remembered meeting Vincent Van Gogh when she was 12 or 13 years of age. I was surprised at how many people lived to be 110 years or more. Nevertheless, in the face of eternity, even 122 years is a blink of the eye.

God is genius

Each stage of life: in the womb, on earth and in the spiritual world carries its own purpose and meaning. We don’t remember being in the womb, nonetheless, it was a critical stage in our development. As research expands we are learning more and more about fetal development and how the maternal environment affects both positively or negatively the unborn baby. The developing child if exposed to too much stress develops a neurological system set on “high” which can result in anxiety. Conversely, healthy in-utero nutrition can set the foundation for life-long health.

We are becoming incredibly competent at saving the lives of preterm infants at younger and younger gestational ages. We can save pre-term infants, although their chances of survival and health vary. The youngest surviving preemie was born at 21 weeks and weighed just half a pound. What determines an infant’s viability is the development of their lungs. Without lung development they cannot breathe or oxygenate their body. Although in the womb they inhale liquid, to survive on earth they must have the capacity to breathe in air.

God is a genius! The time in the womb has a clear purpose. It is to create a home for the soul. God’s spirit is breathed into every human being but the spirit cannot develop without a physical body. Life on earth is precious because it is the environment in which we perfect our love. We have experiences whereby we learn to give and receive love. Some of our experiences are painful and difficult but it is all in the pursuit of inheriting the true love of God. Every experience when viewed through this lens can be a redeeming experience; remember the line in “Awake My Soul” …”How fickle my heart, how woozy my eyes.” We stumble through some experiences in life that require us to pray, “Lend me your eyes.” It is in finding our way through love and life that we “meet our maker.”

Training to breathe freely

We are breathing the air of this world, but we are training our spiritual lungs to breathe the air of the spiritual world, which is love. If we don’t have the opportunity on earth to fully love and be loved then we will arrive in the spiritual world unable to breathe comfortably. There is no more urgent task in this life than to learn to love. It’s why we exist. You will not take your property with you into the next world. Your physical possessions cannot cross the boundary with you. They only exist in the physical world. Only your love and spirit crosses the veil that separates this world from the next. We need to know this so we can focus on what matters most.

“When you die, you leave everything behind, except your love for God and your love for your yourself, that is, your effort to cultivate good character, to develop love for your spouse, and to extend the love for your family to the world/ Your record of loving God and loving people remains to the end and becomes the measure to decide your property rights in the next world.” – Sun Myung Moon

reposted from www.extremetech.com

Don’t get me wrong. I value the physical world. It’s where we develop our creativity so we can become co-creators with God. Human creativity is beautiful and endless. Just this week I learned of an initiative to autonomously mold working robots from flat sheets of material; the advantage being you could slip a flat sheet into a crevice and on the other side miraculously create a 3D Robot. Human genius is exciting and limitless! Our interaction with the physical world is precious and formative.

On the day of our death we lose our physical body but our spirit continues to exist in the spiritual dimension.

In a sermon Rev. Moon shared:

“I teach you (to live for others) so you can become compatible with the Kingdom of Heaven, the eternal country. I teach you lest you have difficulty breathing when you go the country of eternity.”

Knowing this we have to ask ourselves how do we develop our love? We all come from different backgrounds and experiences; some good and some not so good. We have destructive habits and closed hearts and the ideal may seem far away. We don’t want to enter the spirit world like an undeveloped preemie.

We have to use our life wisely and call on the power of the Principle of Re-Creation. We all need the saving grace that is poured out from Heaven in that moment when we cry out, “my weakness I must finally show” referred to in the song “Awake My Soul.” We need forgiveness and we are indebted to the Messiah for that. But, forgiveness is only the beginning. It’s the moment that sets us free to begin our journey to inherit the true love of God.

To understand that journey we have to educate ourselves about the Principle of Re-creation which is rooted in the Principle of Creation, as a means of allowing us to live and grow properly, so that we can breathe in the spiritual world. That world isn’t just a future world either. It exists all around today. If we have been incredibly hurt by love, we already feel like we can’t breathe. We are afraid to open up and trust again. This is why learning to love is fundamental to life itself.

The Principle of Re-Creation

The Principle of Re-Creation is a two-step process. You can see this pattern emerging in the Bible and other Sacred Texts, as well as history, and even in your own life. Because it is a “principle” it is universal and not confined to a particular religious doctrine. The Principle emerges in the story of the very first human ancestors and continues on down until today.

Foundation of Faith

The first step in developing love is to build a personal Foundation of Faith. This simply means you have to keep faith or trust in God’s word or promise for a period of time. Faith is not faith if it is here one minute and gone the next. That is how you can evaluate your faith. Does it come and go? Can you maintain it consistently? Do you have confidence in it? These are all questions you can ask yourself.

We have been given this time on earth to create an unshakeable foundation. Don’t worry if your foundation feels unstable. The first step to health is to acknowledge your internal reality. You have to be honest about what you are struggling with. What you do need to worry about is whether or not you are taking concrete action and doing something to strengthen your Foundation of Faith. What are you having give-and-take with? Are you reading God’s word and living in a way that affirms faith or are you living in a way that is destroying your faith? That is a very serious question. The great thing about our Heavenly Parent is he is less worried about where you have come from than he is about where you are going.

Saved by grace is de-valued when we are not also seriously committed to building a personal Foundation of Faith. History is replete with the stories of men and women who invested in building a Foundation of Faith. God wants to see how your story develops. Don’t worry about meeting difficulty as it is just more fodder in the dramatic story of your personal life of faith, to inherit the true love of God. Decide to surprise God!

The Foundation of Substance

This second foundation is arguably harder to achieve because it is one thing to build a relationship of faith with a conveniently invisible God and entirely another to love a fellow human being unconditionally, regardless of how they treat you. Foundation of Substance simply means you have to substantialize or make real in your relationships the love you receive from God.

This pattern is seen all around you and was recognized by Jesus when he said, “Love God with all your heart and mind and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Other sacred texts

It’s relatively easy to meditate or pray and find inner peace or a feeling of universal love from God. But the rubber hits the road when you try and practice that love in an imperfect world.  Rev. Moon called on this principle when he stated, “We must create one world under God through true love that embraces and even serves the enemy.”

Every person on the planet has equal opportunity to challenge this quest. God wants each and every person to have a personal victory. The movie, “the Hundred Foot Walk” was a beautiful example of this Principle. French and Indian cuisine vied for recognition in this powerful story, which brought out the worst in people’s prejudice and their inability to cross cultural divides and simply love. However, an act of violence on a French chef’s part towards the Indian Restaurant awakened Madam’s original heart and mind. She was confronted by her own limitations, poor example and prejudices; her inability to love. She took the courageous step of firing the French chef who instigated the violence and reached out to her Indian neighbors.

This story, hints at the Principle of the Foundation of Substance which we can find everywhere (in history and our lives today.) Perhaps if we understand how it works we can become better at utilizing it ourselves.

The Foundation of Substance involves four distinct steps to winning a victory of love. As the song “Awake My Soul” urges, the first step is “Let me see with your eyes.” Our problem is we don’t see each other from God’s point of view. It’s why we hate, or simply don’t care. The Foundation of Substance requires that we “Substantialize” love. That means we have to love others with the same heart that God loves them. We have to see through our Heavenly Parent’s eyes.

The second step involves keeping our position. We were born as the sons and daughters of God but we lose our birthright when we leave God and even become an enemy of sorts by the way we treat others. We have to live as God’s sons and daughters. That involves a certain level of heart toward God and all people. The third step is to live with the proper order in our lives. We are dominated by the thinking and values of the world around us instead of God’s ideas for us. We conform to this world and don’t even understand the value of what we have or our faith tradition. We are embarrassed or shy to live our values. The fourth and final step is to multiply goodness. Everywhere around, from the beginning of time people have tried to push others down either physically or spiritually. We experience this every day in gossip, lies or the push to do something contrary to what we know is right. We were created to multiply goodness and substantializing love in our lives means doing just that.

What’s your 100 foot walk?

Each of us has the opportunity in our lifetime, whether it is for just a few years or 122, to develop our love so that we can breathe freely in the next world. It’s up to us to build our own Foundation of Faith and Foundation of Substance so that we can inherit and express the true love of God.

We all have a 100 foot journey in front of us. Don’t be afraid of that journey. Rather, welcome it and think about how you can love differently. Be the example. Take it as an exciting challenge. When Rev. Moon wrote his autobiography he encouraged others to do the same. He told us that our lives should become a “textbook of love.” We should create stories that are beautiful because they make the true love of God substantial and real. You don’t need to rely on a blind faith in God anymore; you can live it substantially.

Like the 100 foot walk in the film, it is a round trip we all need to take. You leave home and have all kinds of experiences but ultimately your journey brings you back home, a much deeper, more grounded person who values faith and family love.

The 100 foot journey starts with a small gesture such as praying for someone you hate or who has hurt you. It involves taking the high road when everyone else around you is acting in a base way. It means living to a certain standard and constantly seeking God. It means inheriting your rightful position as a son or daughter of God and living like character counts.

Even the smallest action can elevate us spiritually and allow us to experience God’s love substantially. I hope that this week you can take your next step in your own 100 foot walk and create love as God intended.

From Earthly Life and the Spirit World Book I

 “The person who achieves the greatest personality in the realm of love can exercise the same ability as God.” P 118

“When you enter the spirit world you have to able to open the gift-wrap and say, “This is the gift I prepared throughout my life, so please accept it.” You cannot go to the Kingdom of Heaven without any gift can you?” p.107

[1] Dictionary.com