"Forget Me Not"

“Happy Birthday to you... Happy Birthday Dear Jesus... Happy Birthday to you!”

In this sacred season so full of His Presence, I often find myself wondering what gift I might offer Him that would truly touch His generous heart and honor the challenging mandate of His Teachings.

Over the years, that inquiry has yielded a rich treasure of insight, comfort and redemption. Embracing the spiritual discipline of endeavoring to “see” my world through the penetrating clarity of His wisdom is a grace-filled, eye-opening process. When my practice remains committed and diligent, it never fails to reveal another layer of cherished opinions expressing their chagrin, turning my cognitive garden into a rock and a hard place and my feeling nature into an apprehensive, petulant, pissed-off Pity Party.

Ever been there?

In that revelation lies the gift that each of us might consider wrapping in the fierce resolve of sacred intention and placing under His Christmas tree... a deep, personal commitment to loving Him a little more dearly by hearing HIm a little more clearly and being Him a little more sincerely.

Therein lies the challenge of embracing, authentically, the Path of the Master, Jesus. He calls us on our stuff. He doesn’t let us get away with the dubious liberation of conceptual gamesmanship. He exposes our intellectual pretense and nails us to the cross of sacred action. “Pick it up and follow me!” He demands. “Document the sincerity of your love for me by keeping my Teachings with impeccable integrity!” He was very clear on that. He left no room to waltz.

Consider John 14:21 . . . “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me.”

Consider John 14:24 . . . “He that loveth me not keepeth not my commandments.”

Any questions? Sure it is, and there we have it. Am I “keeping” or “keeping not?” An honest answer to that inquiry may well reveal the next step in freeing our feeling natures from the mischief of spiritually uninformed thinking.

If our answer comes back something like “I’m not sure,” it’s time to acknowledge that our relationship with His teachings is superficial, and choose in that moment of scrupulous insight to commit to an earnest study of His liberating Wisdom. That’s a “Happy Birthday, Jesus!” choice.

Of course, the toughest game in town is scraping up enough spiritual insight and integrity to answer the question with sincerity and accuracy. I don’t know about you, but when it comes to rating the maturity of my spiritual insight and the depth of my indoctrination into the Jesus lineage, it’s a lead-pipe cinch I err on the side of exaggeration. “Keeping?”... “Not keeping?”... how do I tell?

I’m not even close to seeing all of it, but there is a piece of the puzzle of awakening I seem to be hearing a little more clearly and being a little more sincerely. It’s the part about “bearing not false witness.”

Let me tell you, folks, that bit of spiritual law cuts so deep into the fabric of our feelings it’s scary to begin acknowledging how routinely I ignore its redemptive invitation and, instead, bury myself in another bit of cognitive fiction starring “me” and my “enemies.”

“Bear not false witness” is an invitation to clarity and compassion. Ignoring it is one of the “top ten ways” to screw up a perfectly delightful earth life and turn it into gut-wrenching episodes of irrational hostility, groundless fear and intractable demagoguery.

It works this way. “Bear not false witness” is a spiritual reminder to be impeccably clear and accurate in the choice of the THOUGHTS we use to describe that ever changing scenario of form and circumstance we call our Earth life. To ignore the law is kind of like taking a full swing at a golf ball in a small, tiled room. It’s going to get you.

Most of us sally forth day after day to encounter our earth world with a brain-mind, a “thinker,” loaded with a program of beliefs, values and memories, capable of analyzing, interpreting, speculating, remembering, deducing, inducing, ad infinitum. Every tiny bit of stimulus brought to the attention of our brain-minds through our physical and intuitive receptors is instantly subjected to a process of cognitive identification and evaluation.

Every sound we hear, every sight we see, every flavor we taste, every scent we smell, every surface we touch or sense touching us initiates that cognitive process of identifying and evaluating the nature of the phenomenon we have encountered. As long as this identifying and evaluating activity is carried out with thoughts that accurately capture the true, factual nature of the phenomenon being processed, we satisfy the criteria of “true witness” and life moves on efficiently, lighthearted and harmonious.

But if just one of those minuscule electro-chemical patterns of energy we call thoughts labels the event you are experiencing with a definition or evaluation that is not factually true and accurate, “false witness” has occurred and retribution’s on the way.

For example . . . It’s a pre-dawn, mid-winter morning. You stick your head out the door to check the weather and encounter freezing rain, gusty winds and a wind chill below zero.

Those are the facts. True witness. So far, so good. You shut the door, proceed to the bedroom to wake up the spouse and kids. Someone asks, “What’s the weather like this morning?” You reply, “Wet and nasty! It’s a stinking, miserable, rotten day not fit for man or beast!”

There you go. False witnessing clear and simple. Remember, rain is only wet, the "nasty" is in your mind. That’s why Jesus encouraged us in Matthew 5:37 to “Let your words be yes, yes, and no, no; for anything which adds to these is a deception.” Every time we use our mind to create a cruel, demeaning characterization of someone, spread baseless allegations, give voice to spurious interpretations and bone-headed speculations, or mentally label another human being “wrong” because they haven’t accommodated some rigid notion we have for what they “should or shouldn’t” be doing, saying, or believing, we are engaging in the deception of “bearing false witness.” In the process, we deny ourselves the grace of drinking the sweet nectar of God’s cup of Peace and Lovingkindness.

Watch the mind. Watch it like you’d watch a rattlesnake. When you catch it defining you or another being with a pejorative label, choose not to agree with the deception. Acknowledge the thought as “false witness” and let it go. We are all children of God, going to the School of Life doing our best to wake up. Let that be your all-purpose description for every being you encounter.

When you catch it telling you that you can’t be content unless you have a certain this or a special that, choose not to agree with the deception. Acknowledge “false witness” and let the thought go.

When you catch it fabricating catastrophic scenarios set in the future, choose not to agree with the deception. Let it go. Let it all go. Do everything with a mind that doesn’t cling to its precious notions, its cherished opinions, and you shall know Truth and Freedom.

As an old song by Summer Raven says, “Beware what you tell yourselves, children of Light, demanding and judging will alter your sight and forcing your way only leads to a fight, ‘cause nothing is wrong more than anything’s right.”

And if you get real still and listen carefully you’ll hear the Master’s delighted voice saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant, it’s a precious gift you’ve given me.”

Merry Christmas, Beautiful Ones...
Enjoy the Grace.
--Chad

© 2001 Rev. Chad O'Shea

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