Reconciled by the Light: the after-death letters from a teen suicide.

Mother Teresa's Wisdom

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 17:25:00 +0000

“I can understand the greatness of God but I cannot understand his humility. It becomes so clear in him being in love with each one of us separately and completely. It is as if there is no one but me in the world. He loves me so much. Each one of us can say this with great conviction.” — Mother Teresa, from Mother Teresa: Her Essential Wisdom, p. 12.

I found this quote from Mother Teresa recently while reading a short book of sayings from her, and it really grabbed me, because I had a similar experience with God years ago while praying in the woods near Accord, New York.

I had been struggling with my faith, and a dear colleague counseled me to go deep into the woods until I knew I had total privacy, and then “lay all your cards on the table” to God. In other words, she wanted me to tell God exactly how I was feeling. She especially wanted me to make sure I expressed any bad feelings, bitterness, or anger I was holding on to regarding God. That was a scary proposition, because the God of my Catholic upbringing was a scary guy. I figured she must have some special weight with God, so if I said anything that got him mad, she could stop him from zapping me with a bolt of lightning.

So I began by talking about my miserably lonely childhood, and accused him of being a heartless uncaring God, who was ultimately responsible for all human suffering.

Then something amazing happened; he showed up. I could feel his presence so strongly that I burst into tears. He stunned me by saying:

“You are right. I am responsible, and I accept total responsibility for the situation.”

Like Mother Teresa, I was shocked by the absolute humility of God’s heart. He was apologetic to me personally, saying he was sorry for the suffering I had experienced in life. These words were accompanied by the most powerful atmosphere of absolute unconditional love, so strong that I couldn’t stop crying. I felt totally accepted, understood, and embraced. What a feeling!

Even though I had thought of myself as a spiritual person for years, it wasn’t until that day that I truly “fell in love” with God.

He ended by inviting me to talk to him like this regularly; he said he could really help me in my life if I did so. To this day, my minimum goal in life is to carry on this conversation with God as the anchor of my life.

I’m pretty sure that anyone can have an experience like the one I had. To do this, we must go to the place where God is. If we have misconceptions about God, these misconceptions can actually block God from touching our hearts.

For example, some of us are convinced that we are such miserable sinners that we don’t deserve God’s love, so if God tries to hug us, we can’t receive the hug because we think we’re not worthy. So we have to be open to letting go of our concepts about God in order to give him a chance to make contact with us.

Finally, I believe the only reason God was able to break through to me on that occasion was because I was really desperate and ardent for answers. Secondly, I was honest, both with myself and with him. I discovered that he is not offended by any sincerely held feelings we have towards him, good or bad. What’s important is that we express them. By doing that, it allows him the opportunity to tell “his side of the story.”

I’m so grateful for that day. It was a true “rebirth” for me. I discovered I had a truly loving Heavenly Father, who has been my most trusted friend ever since.

Morris Pratt Institute adds Reconciled by the Light to its curriculum

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 17:50:00 +0000

I’m very excited to report that the Morris Pratt Institute, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin has added Reconciled by the Light to its curriculum. It is now required reading for those studying to become ordained ministers in Spiritualist churches. The Morris Pratt Institute is part of the Bureau of Education for the National Spiritualist Association, the “mother” organization for the National Spiritualist Association of Churches (NSAC).

Reconciled by the Light has been assigned as a textbook for studying in the Pastoral Skills training program.

As a graduate myself of Morris Pratt’s Educational Course on Modern Spiritualism, I am humbled and honored that my “alma mater” has seen fit to add my book. I hope that countless more people will be blessed and edified by the contents found in its pages.

www.reconciledbythelight.com

Who were the Three Kings in the Christmas story?

Fri, 24 Dec 2010 21:50:00 +0000

While it’s difficult to say exactly who the “Three Kings” are, it is possible to shed some light on the matter. We can begin by discussing who they were not. First of all, it is almost certain that the “Three Kings” weren’t kings at all.

The Bible has no reference to any kings visiting Jesus. We are familiar with the “Three Kings” reference because of artistic interpretations of the Nativity and because a favorite American Christmas carol begins with the words “We three Kings of Orient are…” This song is not very old in light of the long history of Christianity. It was written in the 19th century by the Reverend John Henry Hopkins, Jr., an Episcopal priest who served as rector of the Christ Episcopal Church in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

What the Bible does mention is found in the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. It speaks about gift-bearing “wise men from the east” coming to visit Jesus. That’s it. There are no other clues as to their identity. The Bible doesn’t even mention how many there were. Historical records vary widely from as few as two to as many as twelve.

The strongest clue comes from early Christian writers who referred to these “wise men” as “Magi.” We know a lot about Magi. Magi is plural for magus, the root from which the word magician developed.

Specifically, Magi are practitioners of an ancient religion called Zoroastrianism. They were purported to be knowledgeable and wise regarding spiritual matters. It was said that they could give prophetic messages and sometimes foretell the future, and that they could use the stars as signs to help them do this.

Some scholars believe they were astronomers, some believe they were astrologers. In my view, they were probably both. The Bible gives a strong clue that the wise men were Magi when it records them saying:

“Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.”

This sounds very much like something a magus would say, for they believed it was possible to discern the mysteries of God by studying the stars.

When we study the facts surrounding Zoroastrianism, the idea of Magi visiting Jesus sounds plausible.

Although there are perhaps less than 200,000 Zoroastrians today, they were in ancient times a great Middle Eastern religion, and the major faith of the Persian Empire until the advance of Islam uprooted them about 1200 years ago. Some scholars believe Zoroastrianism was the first monotheistic religion, while others believe that Judaism holds that title.

In comparing Zoroastrianism to Judaism and Christianity, we find that Zoroastrianism contains ideas that became important tenets of the later theologies. For example, Zoroastrianism teaches that although the world is full of fighting between the forces of good and evil, the struggle is not a futile one; someday, with the help of a God who is all good, the good side will ultimately win, and evil will be vanquished. Also, the Zoroastrian religion contains the concept of a leader called the Saoshyant. The Saoshyant is one who will "make existence brilliant". Literally, the term means "one who brings benefit." In common usage, this term refers to a future savior or Messiah-figure, who will spread divine truth and lead humanity in the final battle against the forces of evil.

Taking all these things into account, it makes all the sense in the world that

Magi from the Zoroastrian faith would visit a baby that they believed might have Messianic characteristics. If Jesus was the awaited Saoshyant, they had every reason to be excited.

Every Day God by David Hose now available

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 19:34:00 +0000

In previous Blog postings, I have written about my conviction that God continues trying to communicate with the human race, even though many who embrace the Jewish or Christian tradition are convinced that God only spoke through the prophets of the Bible. From this viewpoint, since nothing has been added to the Bible since the Book of Revelation, it means God hasn’t spoken since the first century.

In reality, the history of the last 2,000 years is sprinkled with Divine encounters – from those of Christian mystics such as Francis of Assisi and Catherine of Siena -- to the more recent phenomena of Near Death Experiences (NDEs) and Induced After-Death Communications (IADCs).

A recent record of an encounter with the Divine can be found in David Hose’s book Every Day God. (For those of you who have read my book, Reconciled by the Light: the After-Death Letters from a Teen Suicide, you will recognize Rev. David Hose as the minister who made early contact with my son after his suicide.)

Every Day God reveals a God similar to the loving parent that Jesus spoke about, and not at all like the Old Testament monarch that was so quick to become angry and dole out punishment. I cannot overstate the fact that, in my view, this book is the most significant revelation since the Book of Revelation was written almost 2,000 years ago.

The messages in Every Day God are clear, easy to read, and are relevant to our modern day circumstances. They have a way of explaining profound spiritual truths – which are often difficult to express in everyday language – in a way that anyone can relate to.

Importantly, they explain the fact that the dwelling place of God is not in some mysterious location on a mountaintop or a far off Heaven; the place to find God is not outside, but inside, in the deep center of our heart and mind. The book reveals common sense and practical guidance on how to achieve our own personal encounter with the Divine.

Although Every Day God is currently unavailable in bookstores, I’ve managed to locate a few copies from the publisher, and they will be available on my website, on a first-come, first-served basis at my website bookstore.

If you are interested in obtaining your own copy of Every Day God, just click on the "Book Store" icon on my website, or copy and paste the URL below into your web browser:

http://www.reconciledbythelight.com/apps/webstore/products/show/1977559

Near Death Experiences

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 15:56:00 +0000

Thanks to Brett Dungan for sharing this link with me; please take the time to view this You Tube video of interviews with people who have had Near Death Experiences, or NDEs. The descriptions of what they saw after leaving their bodies and entering the Spirit World are accurate and exceptional– they might even change your life.

NDE is the term for someone who becomes clinically dead but then revives, sometimes through CPR or some other medical procedure. While the patient is “dead,” he or she often has the experience of feeling the soul rising up out of the body. It is then able to look down and observe what is going on in the hospital room; doctors and nurses are often astounded when the patient, after being revived, is able to tell them what they were doing and saying in the room while the patient was supposedly “dead.”

Next, the patients will usually experience rapidly moving through a dark tunnel with a bright light at the end. Coming out into this light, they describe a world that is so beautiful it is hard to put into words. They experience a feeling of total peace. They describe direct encounters with “beings of light” such as departed loved ones, angels, and even God. They sense that they have arrived at their true home and are surrounded by a Divine embrace of unconditional love.

Please make time to invest twenty-six minutes to watch this.You will be inspired, thrilled, and deeply moved. It might be the most profound video you’ve ever seen.

Spirit Communication with a Grain of Salt

Sat, 11 Sep 2010 18:26:00 +0000

Some people are prone to place too much emphasis on receiving messages from mediums. Sometimes this is evidence that the person is inappropriately seeking others to do all the work in providing solutions to life’s challenges, and shying away from taking personal responsibility to face these challenges him or herself.

This can be problematic if one blindly makes life decisions based on what the person hears(or thinks one hears) at a reading. Instead of thinking for oneself, one is allowing either another physical human being, or some spirit entity, to do his or her thinking.

The best thing to do in this situation is to simply, and in private, inform the person of the nature of mediumship – both its strengths and its weaknesses. Explain that even the greatest of mediums cannot get every spirit communication perfectly accurate. Because of the nature of spirit communication, messages have to be translated or filtered through the brain and particular personality of the medium, and it’s easy for things to get lost in translation. It’s important to use common sense when considering spirit messages. Explain that spirit entities are just people like ourselves, and have their own beliefs and biases like we do; they are not to be over relied upon as their opinions and beliefs may be just that – opinions and beliefs – and unless they resonate withour own common sense, intuition, and reason, they should not be accepted blindly without careful consideration.

Encourage the person to ponder their own ideas about what was received in the message,and how they would handle the situation in the absence of the message. Invite them to carefully reflect on the implications of the message before making any hasty conclusions.

Albert Einstein and Spiritualism

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 15:42:00 +0000

It seems to me that the highest form of mediumship is what Modern Spiritualism refers to as “direct prophecy.”

While the typical mediumistic prophecy might contain messages given from a spirit intelligence to the medium, the medium is simply serving as a transmitter of the message; in “direct prophecy,” the medium enters into what Andrew Jackson Davis called the "superior condition." It is a state where he or she achieves direct communion with Infinite Intelligence -- communion with God. It is this possibility of experiencing such a wonderful state that acts like a magnet pulling me to further develop my own psychic faculties.

Albert Einstein rejected survivability and therefore didn’t take Spiritualism seriously. It’s a pity he didn’t invest a little time to study its philosophy, because most of his religious views were very much in line with the Spiritualist view. Like Spiritualism, Einstein rejected the traditional concept of an anthropomorphic God who rewarded and punished according to his whims, but he nevertheless believed in some Transcendent power:

“A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty - it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.”

The Einstein quote that moves me the most is this one:

“I want to know how God created this world. … I want to know his thoughts. The rest are details.”

In my view, if Einstein had been able to develop mediumistic abilities, and had advanced to the point ofexercising “direct prophecy,” he would have been able to discover God’s thoughts.

In the few powerful experiences I have had where I felt that I made contact with God, one characteristic stands out above all others. In all of these experiences, the Divine Presence was accompanied by an overwhelming feeling of Divine Love. It was a love that was infinitely powerful, all-embracing, empathic, non-judgmental, totally accepting, healing, and parental. It contained with it a sense of being “home.”

Because of these experiences, I strongly suspect that the answer to Einstein’s question about “how God created this world” and “his thoughts” center around the issue of love. The exciting thing about mediumship is that when we enter into a direct communion with God, we can graduate from the stage of belief, and begin to say, as Carl Jung did in1959 when asked if he believed in God:

“I know. I don’t need to believe. I know.”

Again, that is the strength and attraction of Spiritualism. Anyone who makes effort can grow and develop his or her inherent faculties for spirit communication. In my view, anyone who makes an honest and sincere effort can do this. If we persevere along this path we can begin to have direct spiritual experiences of our own. Once this is accomplished, we can move beyond the realm of “blind faith” into the realm of real experience. By doing this, we will also be able to confidently say, along with Dr. Jung:

“I know. I don’t need to believe. I know.”

God speaks to you, through you.

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:45:00 +0000

“Now at one point the Pharisees asked Jesus when the kingdom of God was coming, so he answered, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, nor will people say, “Here it is,” or “There it is,” because the kingdom of God is within you.’” Luke 17:20-21

Some Biblical scholars will say that what Jesus meant was that because He, Jesus, was among them, the Kingdom of God was “in the midst”of them, which is an alternate translation of the Greek word “entos.”

But I’m going to talk about “the Kingdom of God is within you” from the viewpoint of the Kingdom of God being actually inside of you. So how exactly can the Kingdom of God be inside of you?

I like to say that the Kingdom of God is the place where God is King. Jesus was part of the Kingdom of God because God was the King, or center, of his life. God was the reference point from which Jesus defined who he was, what his purpose in life was, and the direction he decided to go in, in his life.

So, in my opinion, the Kingdom of God was within Jesus, because God was the King of Jesus’ life. We can do this as well. We can instantly become a part of the Kingdom of God by making God the center of our lives.

In explaining this I want to call attention to the actual meaning of the word Islam -- it means “submission.” A person who submits is a Muslim. Submits to what? -- to the will of God in his or her life.

I prefer the word “invitation” to the word “submission. ”From a Christian point of view, we are a part of the Kingdom of God when we invite God to become the guiding light of our life. God does not impose himself into our life, so to me the word submit has too strong a connotation, but we can invite God into our life.

Jesus said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.” Revelation 3:20.

In the same way, God knocks on the door of our heart, and it’s our decision whether or not to invite him in.

The Kingdom of Heaven is built one soul at a time, spreading like the mustard seed or the leaven.

Inviting God to be the center of our life is not complicated at all. We can start by just using our imagination and talk to God; just imagine God can hear the words we say, spoken or unspoken, and ask him for guidance.

Then be still, and listen for God’s voice. He wants to speak to us through the agency of our own heart and mind.

Ask God to help us see with His eyes. Look at each person you come into contact the way you think God looks at him. “This is God’s son, God’s daughter.” Look with the eyes of love – of a parent towards a child.

Doing this little exercise can be a very profound, inspiring, and exciting experience. Imagine if every human being consciously tries to view everyone through God’s eyes. How can we hurt anyone if we view them this way?There’d be no more wars. Why, we might call a world like that the Kingdom of God on Earth.

Losing Faith in Churches; Finding Faith in God

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 15:33:00 +0000

I lost my faith in the Catholic Church when I was sixteen for two reasons – first, even though I was a devout member, there was an empty hole inside my soul that Catholicism had not filled; second, I came to the conclusion that if God was omnipotent and still allowed the tremendous suffering and evil in the world to continue, he either did not exist at all, or if he did, he was a mean uncaring Being that I wanted nothing to do with.

My attention turned towards the East, towards Taoism, Buddhism, and meditation, spiritual paths that did not include a personal God. I considered myself agnostic regarding the existence of a personal God.

One day I decided to camp out on Mt. San Antonio near my Southern California home. As I gazed into the night sky at an elevation over ten thousand feet, the stars were out in force. Suddenly, a bright meteor gently shot across the heavens from left to right high in the sky. Forgetting I was alone, I cried out in excitement “Wow! Did you see that?”

Nobody heard. I was alone.

I felt that the fact that I had no one to share such a magnificent display with made the experience basically meaningless. Dispirited, I rolled up my sleeping bag, put my things in the car, and drove home.

This experience drove home to me the importance of relationship; I felt that if I had no one with whom to have a deep sharing of the heart with, life itself was meaningless.

When I was twenty, a missionary taught me that I was wrong to have judged God so harshly. He said that God does have tremendous power to affect change in the world, but he can manifest the way he would like to on the earth plane only if humans make the necessary conditions. Like the electrical wall socket that only transmits power when something plugs into it, God only manifests when humans find the way to “plug in” to him.

This sounded plausible, so I decided to give God a second chance. I began to pray again, something I hadn’t done in years, but in a different manner. Instead of the rote prayers like the “Our Father” or the“Hail Mary,” I was taught I could say whatever was on my heart.

Since that time, I have had several direct encounters with God. My faith in God is not based on reason, or blind faith; it is based on direct personal experience.

I cannot deny that God is personal. I’m not talking about the anthropomorphic God of some faiths; I don’t believe in a God that looks like a man and has a white beard sitting on a throne in heaven. The God of my experience is formless Spirit; the only form I have ever seen him manifest with is a huge sphere of very bright white light. Sometimes he will appear in my dreams as a man, but I think his “body” is a creation of my mind to make it easy to relate to him.

Nevertheless, God is a person. Philosophy defines the word “person” as “a self-conscious or rational being.” It is according to this definition that we can say God is a person.

In my view, the most significant thing about this personal God is that this God loves, and in that inclination is found the ultimate meaning and purpose of life.

God has an irrepressible propensity to love, but the realization and fulfillment of love requires two partners, not one. God is one, but love takes two. As a result, God longs for a partner to love; therefore, God was compelled to create, in hopes of finding someone to love. Genesis states that during the six days of creation God would create something and find that “it was good,” but on the sixth day, after God created humans, he said that it was “very good!”

In my experience, God is attracted to humans because, more than any other creature we know of, humans reflect the “image and likeness” of God. God is not physical, so it is not anything physical that is so attractive. God is Spirit, and it is the spiritual aspect of humans that God finds attractive. Specifically, because humans have the potential to develop spiritual self-awareness, they have the potential to have a personal relationship with God.

In humans, God has found the one who can recognize, receive, and ultimately respond to his love. Whenever God has “spoken” to me, the communication from him always begins with “I love you.” The meaning I have found for life centers around the conviction that God is my loving Father, and I am his loving son. The rest is just details.

The Greatness of America is the Goodness of America

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 14:17:00 +0000

The following are excerpts from a talk I shared in a church on the Fourth of July:

From the Declaration of Independence…

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

If we search for the central point of the Declaration of Independence, we will find the Creator God there. Likewise, if we search for the reason for the greatness of America, we will find faith in God there.

Alexis de Tocqueville was a French statesman, historian and social philosopher who traveled to America in the 1830s to search for the reasons for the unprecedented success of our new nation:

“I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers-and it was not there . . . in her fertile fields and boundless forests-and it was not there . . . in her rich mines and her vast world commerce-and it was not there . . . in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution-and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

On the other hand, if we examine what happens to nations when they forget about God, we find blood and horror. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a Nobel Prize winning Russian writer who searched for the reasons for the horrors and bloodshed that resulted from the Bolshevik Revolution said:

“More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.

If I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.

The failings of human consciousness, deprived of its divine dimension, have been a determining factor in all the major crimes of this century. The first of these was World War I…It was a war when Europe, bursting with health and abundance, fell into a rage of self-mutilation. The only possible explanation for this war is a mental eclipse among the leaders of Europe due to their lost awareness of a Supreme Power above them.

Only a godless embitterment could have moved ostensibly Christian states to employ poison gas, a weapon so obviously beyond the limits of humanity.”

Alexis de Toqueville said the following about the French Revolution. It took place just after our Revolution, but produced horrible consequences:

“In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom marching in opposite directions. But in America I found they were intimately united and that they reigned in common over the same country.”

Most of the leaders of the French Revolution were Deists or atheists, and their quest for freedom without centering on God produced instead a “Reign of Terror,” where thousands died under the guillotine, and the end result was not freedom but a disastrous dictatorship under Napoleon that plunged the entire continent of Europe into years of bloody war -fare.

In America today, many people are struggling, having lost their jobs, their houses, their livelihoods. Many of those who are still working are putting in more hours for less pay, and many families are stressed. The economy has been struggling for almost two years now, a horrible oil spill is ruining our beaches on the Gulf coast, we’re fighting two wars, and the efforts of government alone to solve theses problems have not been successful.

It is important during difficult times like these to Hold on to God. It is important to resist the temptation to become bitter and blame others. If enough people in any nation become bitter and angry it eventually creates a whirlwind of negative energy that can be incredibly destructive; as Solzhenitsyn pointed out, the atheistic Revolution that took place in his country cost the lives of 60 million people.

On the other hand, when a nation Holds on to God, it creates a positive vibration that heals and uplifts and helps create solutions to national problems. How do we Hold on to God? In my humble opinion, the best way to hold on to God is to Pray and meditate. Another good way is to Study words of the Spirit, another way is to serve others with God in mind.

We’ve got to Hold on to God no matter what is going on in our lives. If things are going well, let us give thanks to God, and pray for those who are less fortunate. If things are not well, let us tell God. Even if we feel bitter and angry, we must tell God, and guidance will come to us from Spirit on how to deal with our anger and bitterness.

Many of us think that we cannot talk to God unless we say nice things — that God will get angry if we mention the things we are struggling with, that this makes us somehow unworthy of God’s attention. I would argue that these are precisely the times when it is most important for us to pray. As Jesus taught us, God is more concerned with the one lamb that has lost its way, than with 99 others that are safe.

We can cry out to God anytime, we can even yell and scream for God to help us. I promise you that the Heavenly Father/Mother won’t mind at all. It is a parent/child relationship, and parents hope that children will cry out to them in times of need.

As a parent myself, I can tell you how painful it was when I saw my own child struggling alone, trying to deal with difficult problems by himself, all the while ignoring the loving parents who were ready to assist him in any way they were called upon.

I think God must experience this frustration, too. It is a spiritual reality that God will not interfere in our lives unless we ask. Again, as Jesus said, “Knock. And the door will be opened to you.” Ask, and you will receive. A favorite church hymn has the words “God will take care of me.” This is so true. But it is also true that we may have to ask before the help comes.

As we celebrate the 234th birthday party for America, with all the food and the fireworks, let us not forget about God. Let us offer a prayer of gratitude. No matter how difficult things may be, we can always find something to be grateful for. As the old story goes – “I was just about to complain about the fact that I was barefoot because I had no shoes, until I met an old soldier who had no feet.”