In Yoke

The wine of life is oozing drop by drop, The leaves of life are falling one by one.   – Omar Khayyam Easwaran muses: Like leaves, we come into this life, are here for a few days, and then are gone. Nobody remembers us, and nobody misses us. As long as we believe that we are separate, we inevitably have to die. Our immortality is in the whole, which never dies. In living just for personal profit and pleasure, no matter under what philosophical name we may call it, our real personality withers away. It cannot be otherwise. When you become aware that you are not a leaf but the tree , something amazing happens in your life: you are able to act spontaneously, almost effortlessly, for the good of all. This is the proof of your awareness that you are the tree: everywhere it will motivate you, everywhere you will see what contribution you can make. You won’t have to deliberate the pros and cons. You won’t need a computer to provide you with a plan of action. You will kn...

I let go my desire for security and survival. I let go my desire for esteem and affection. I let go my desire for power and control. I let go my desire to change the situation. As I walk this journey, in Christ, and seek to yield more and more of my will to His will, I find this unvarying litany returns to my consciousness on a regular basis. This is one of the ways he is teaching me to apply his life to my life, to envelop my life with the qualities of His Life. The “paradox of letting go” is a sacred alchemy. It seems that all the sinfulness and impurity in my life comes from my striving for power/control, esteem/affection, security/survival. I must decrease, while he must increase. This is true wisdom-the journey’s joy, the journey’s energies, are to come from His abundance, not from my own will’s striving. “Not my will but Thine be done”, and “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” These are Yeshua’s prayers, and indeed, I pray, are...

“There is an underlying attitude that cripples and blinds each of us. It can be so pervasive that we do not often question it. This attitude is a perversion of the natural order created by our loneliness and insecurity, by the illusion of separateness, by ignorance. The problem, in a way, is quite simple: we think of ourselves too often and in the wrong way . The result is self importance (or its’ opposite, self hatred), and greed.” As I share the long and sometimes sordid story of my own autobiography, I do so from a “Spiritual lessons” point of view, keeping this aforementioned premise in mind. I can really relate to this…because for a great portion of my life- I have thought of myself too often and in the wrong way . I have been studying the enneagram as a way of self revelation and understanding for the purposes of transformation by the Spirit of Yahweh, through Jesus Christ(YESHUA-His Aramaic name). As an Enneagram three, who is seeking redemption from my natural b...

4/2007: C. Sam Smith, personal testimony transcript—shared at Calvary Baptist Church, Waco. I shared this testimony from the pulpit of the church April, two years ago. I found the transcript today when I was clearing out some files from an old external drive. Being born again implies that what one’s life has been in the past is not alive anymore. In my experience--being born again has required a process of repeated transformation, from the old to the new. This is perhaps a lifelong process, of continuous falling and getting back up again. It is embarrassing to recount all the things I have done, and the things I’ve put my wife and family through, due to my own egocentric ungratefulness, myopia, self absorption and impulsiveness. Over the years it seems that the Spirit has systematically peeled layer after layer of falsehood off my essential true self, enabling me to cease living a lie and to face the honest truth about my own weaknesses. For many years I sought to compensate fo...

As iron put into the fire loseth its rust and becometh clearly red-hot, so one who wholly turneth unto God puts off all slothfulness, and is transformed. -Thomas a Kempis We are made in the image of God. The image is there, but we need to put in the work to reveal it. Whenever I hear someone say, "This is just the way I am; I've got to learn to live with it," I want to plead, "Don't ever say that!" The miracle of human existence is that we can change . Simply by virtue of being human, we have the capacity to change ourselves completely. All of us carry a cleansing fire hidden inside. It may be banked with ashes, cold to the touch, but a spark of the divine is there nonetheless, ready to leap into life. It is nothing less than love of God. Latent in every one of us, it wants only encouragement before it flares to vibrant life, burning up everything selfish and impure. Once ignited and coaxed with the fuel of love for others, it sheds light and warmth all arou...