Crucifying our ego-centric self. 

“Sin is what fills the spiritual vacuum created by the loss of right relationship to God” (Tracy 33)

“Inward sin is not something we do, as A.W. Tozer taught, it is something you are. You grieve, for the at the deepest level you want to be like Christ. But there is a part of you that treasures lust, or harbors a lurking self-idolatry, or nourishes the ‘the drum major instinct’, or thirsts for praise, or protects a touchy ego, or affirms a cultural prejudice, or shelters unworthy motives, or rebels against continual obedience to God. Tozer called these ‘the hyphenated sins of the human soul.” He named some self-righteousness, self-pity, …. self-sufficiency, self-admiration, self-love.
The Spirit of the Lord is so gentle, yet so firm. Faithfully He confronts you with these un-Christlike affections. At first you may dismiss His gentle revelations or try to ignore, mislabel, or sidestep them. But He keeps bringing you back to the mirror of the Divine Light, where you can admit that you need to have your very inmost heart cleansed of sin. You are ready to join Charles Wesley in:

Show me as my heart can bear,
The depth of inbred sin;
All the unbelief declare,
The pride that lurks within.
Take me, whom Thyself hast bought,
Bring into captivity,
ev’ry high, aspiring thought,
That would not stoop to Thee. (Tracy 79)

“But between you the believer on the way to sanctification, and that blessed stat of ‘all loves excelling’ looms the cross, the hurdle of self-surrender. Along the road of growth in grace the Holy Spirit keeps inviting you to surrender the one thing you can’t give up. The one thing - or the things - to which you have given ’god value’.” “Such consecration is not easy. The bible calls it being crucified with Christ.” (Tracy 81)  ”But if you make your consecration complete, self-surrender can become the prelude to sanctification.” (Tracy 82) Do not think that loving submission to God in consecration does away with your personhood. Far from it, loving submission is the way to find your true personhood, your true self.” (Tracy 89)

Steps: “There is a sinful self to be crucified with Christ.”, “There is a human [or natural self] to be disciplined in Christ.” and “There is a true self to be actualised in Christ.” “The end God has in mind is the actualisation of the divine self. The goal of the New Age movement and of consumer psychology is self-actualisation, The goal of the gospel is Christ-actualisation - Christ lives in me.” (Tracy 89)

The reconciliation of our right relationship with God, to allow him to fill that spiritual vacuum, the place that is rightfully His.

Romans 8, 10 And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. 13 For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.

Sources quoted:

Tracy, Wes. et al. Reflecting God. Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, 2000.

“To pray is to descend with the mind into the heart,
and there to stand before the face of the Lord,
ever-present, all seeing, within you.”
- Theophan the Recluse

Quoted in Foster, Richard J. Meditative Prayer. Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 1983.

On Living Without God by Thomas C. Oden
Eph. 2:1 2: “Without God in the world.”

The Parable of the Toad
Wesley developed a curious, almost comic, metaphor of a creature receiving renewed capacity to see and hear the world: The plight of the person “without God in the world” is compared to the condition of a very large toad discovered inside the core of an ancient oak tree. When the tree was split open, the frog inside was found sightless, having never had any sensory experience whatever of the visible world.
The sensory deprivation of the ungodly life is set forth by analogy with such a creature who indeed possesses eyes, but has no sight, and no exercised practice of seeing; who has senses such as hearing, but has remained totally destitute of any actual sensations. 

Lacking sensation, there is no reflection, memory or imagination. The parallel is between this sequestered creature and the person who is living “without God in the world,” having no sense of God. Like the toad who was “shut up from the sun, moon, and stars, and from the beautiful face of nature; indeed from the whole visible world, as much as if it had no being, ” such a person has no experience whatever of the invisible world upon which to reflect, no memory or imagination concerning any spiritual reality. Such is the deprived condition of the sensory apparatus in which the spiritual senses have remained entirely undeveloped, as in the practical atheists, who have “not the least sight of God, the intellectual Sun, nor any the least attraction toward him, “261 who have never once had “God in all their thoughts. ” Like the toad, the atheist-without God in the world-lives as though the spiritual world had no being. “He has not the least perception of it; not the most distant idea.’ ‘

The Receiving of Spiritual Senses in the New Birth
New life in the Spirit is like receiving a new sensory capacity, so that one can see with newly opened eyes that he has “an Advocate with the Father, ” can hear the voice of one who is the Resurrection, feel the love of God “shed abroad in his heart. ”
The moment the Spirit strikes his heart, God breaks the hardness of the heart, like the splitting of the oak tree. All things become new. The sun of righteousness appears, revealing “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). Like being born, his eyes now see, his ears now hear. He is able to taste how gracious the Lord is, how “Jesus’ love is far better than wine. ” He is consumed with the ecstatic joy of enjoying and using his entire sensory apparatus to soak up knowledge and love of God through all available means: reason, nature, and above all the history of revelation.
“This change from spiritual death to spiritual life is properly the new birth, ” which empowers such a fundamental change of heart (not merely a conceptual shift of ideas) that the entire sensory apparatus is awakened to a new way of living and sensing the reality at hand. The new birth and the filling of the Spirit are like the splitting open of the ancient tree, while the old closed down self is seen by analogy to the ensconced condition of the sinner, withdrawn from the exercise of all capacities of the spiritual senses. To respond in faith to grace is to become a new creature in Christ. One moves from the spheres of natural appetite and tedious morality to new life in the Spirit.

Oden, Thomas C. John Wesley’s Scriptural Christianity, a plain exposition of his teachings on Christian doctrine. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1994.

We awaken not only to a realization of the immensity and majesty of God “out there” as King and Ruler of the universe (which He is) but also a more intimate and more wonderful perception of Him as directly and personally present n our own being. Yet this is not a pantheistic merger or confusion of our being with His. On the contrary, there is a distinct conflict in the realization that though in some sense He is more truly ourselves then we are, yet we are not identical with Him, and though He loves us better than we can love ourselves we are opposed to Him, and in opposing Him we oppose our own deepest selves. If we are involved only in our surface existence, in externals, and in the trivial concerns of our ego, we are untrue to Him and to ourselves. To reach a true awareness of Him as well as ourselves, we have to renounce our selfish and limited self and enter into a whole new kind of existence, discovering an inner center of motivation and love which makes us see ourselves and everything else in an entirely new light.

Thomas Merton. Contemplation in a World of Action. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971, pp. 160-61.

“Teacher”, the pupil said, “when I venture on the path of the spiritual journey what will happen to my life’s house?”

The teachter paused to scoop water from the brook and after a pause looked at the pupil and said “Our house will be shaken to its very foundations upon what it is build, it will come tumbling down around us. When we move on the contours of our old house are fading and instead we experience the promise of a house and a whole city without walls. The struggle is that our eye cannot perceive the air that separates the inside for the outside, but that is just the illusion we cling on to.

To unearth the vision that lies beyond our grasp and reunite the light of the eye to its true source that shines brighter as a thousand suns and still is kinder than the sun in the sky.”

From a work in progress based on Psalm 119, 54
- working title “Songs from the wilderness””, H. Blum

Num 27:16 Let LORD/YHWH, the God/Elohim of the Spirit/Ruach of all/every/whole flesh/basar, set a man over the congregation, 17 Which may go out before them, and which may go in before them, and which may lead them out, and which may bring them in; that the congregation of the LORD be not as sheep which have no shepherd. And the LORD said unto Moses, Take thee Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom [is] the spirit/Ruach, and lay thine hand upon him; 

“What is the temple you are going to build me? Child of man! Do not I fill heaven and earth? And did not I establish its foundations? Did not Salomon inform you that his temple build of stones, cut out by human hands, could not contain me!”

“Is not Life an expression of itself and do not I form the the gift of Life within you? So what could you possibly give me, that is not mine?”

The student fell to his knees.

Thundering ”What is the desire of your heart? To have more of what belongs to me? ……. Or to be found worthy of the gift?”

The student ran to his teacher and cried out “I am unworthy!”

The teacher answered “Are we not all beggars and thieves? Still we can be found Kings and Priests. Remember that God through his Prophets predicted that Mount Sion would be plowed over and the temple made of stone destroyed. Plowing might be descructive to the old roots still it prepares the ground to receive the seed for the harvest.”

From a work in progress based on Psalm 119, 54
- working title “Songs from the wilderness””, H. Blum

Indubitaly no man is born fatherless;
Only one Jesus exists in the world.
- Shabestari

The Sufis believe that Jesus was born of Mary through the breath of the Holy Spirit, and had no physical father.
The Qoran describes the Divine animation of man as a breathing of God’s Spirit unto the human frame, using the the same expression for the generation of Jesus as for the creation of Adam, that is, by a blowing of the Divine Breath, respectively, into the womb of Mary and into the clay of Adam’s body - a breath which is none other than the Grace of the Holy Spirit.

What the Sufis understand by a reference to the concept of ‘Father’ with respect to Jesus, such as when the Gospel quotes Jesus as saying, “I go to the Father” (John 16:16), is that the saints are the spiritual children of the Divine, so that Jesus as a saint, can be regarded as just such a ’spiritual offspring’.

As Rumi puts it,

My boy,
All the saints are sons of God:
Whether here or there, present or absent,
Always aware, vigilant and awake.

Shaikh Shabestari provides a lyrical rendering of this concept in his Golshan-e raz:

First the suckling infant,
Bound to a cradle, is sustained on milk,
Then, when mature, becomes a wayfarer;
If a man, he travels with his father.

The elements of nature for you
Resemble an earthborn mother,
You, a son whose father
Is a patriarch from on high.

So Jesus proclaimed upon ascension:
“I go to my Father (Abba) above.”
You too, favorite of your father,
Set forth for your Father!

Your fellow-travelers went on;
you too pass on!
If you wish to be a bird in flight,
Leave the world’s carcass to vultures.

In his commentary on the Golshan-e ráz, Shaikh Làhiji explains the concepts of the Holy Spirit (ruh al-qodos) and the ‘Spirit of God’ (ruho’lláh), which appear in another part of Shabestari’s work, verse by verse in the following manner:

Within the inner court of holy Oneness
Lies the soul’s monastery.
Perch of the Simorgh of Subsistence.

(The commentator, Làhiji): That is to say, the inner court of sanctum of holy Oneness (wahdat) of the Divine Essence, which transcends and is hallowed from all blemish of multiplicity (katharat), is the soul’s monastery (dair-e jan), and the temple (ma’bad) of the Christians, that is to say, the community of the prophet Jesus. Hence, the holy monastery of Divine Unity is the house of worship for the soul, the human spirit (ruh-e ensani), the origin of which is the World of Supra-Formal Entities (‘alam-e tajarrod). This sanctum of Divine Oneness is the soul’s temple and the roost of the Simorgh of true Subsistence (baqa) because the wellspring and reality of Subsistence is Divine Oneness, unblemished and consecrated from all contrariness and disparity generated through mortal annihilation (fana).
By realisation of this station (maqam), Jesus was graced with life and immortality. Since pure freedom from the bondage of custom, convention, blind imitation, and habit, which Christianity (tarsa’i) exemplifies, was manifested by Jesus, the poet further comments: From the Spirit of God sprang this attainment,
Brought forth by the Holy Spirit.

The ‘attainment’ here implied is that of dispassion, detachment and emancipation from the bondage of multiplicity and habit, all of which Christianity represents, and consequent at-one-ment with the spiritual level and monastery of the Divine Essence in its sacred Oneness. Such labour was manifested by Jesus (as the ‘Spirit of God’). No previous prophet, however graced with the virtues of perfection, ever quite attained his degree.

Nurbakhsh, Dr. Javad. Jesus in the Eyes of the Sufis.Terry Graham, et al. Trans.
London: Khaniqahi-Nimatullahi Publications, 1983.

Hymn XVI: Happy the Souls That First Believed

Happy the souls that first believed,
To Jesus and each other cleaved,
Joined by the unction from above
In mystic fellowship of love.

Meek, simple followers of the Lamb,
They lived, and spake, and thought the same;
They joyfully conspired to raise
Their ceaseless sacrifice of praise.

With grace abundantly endued,
A pure, believing multitude,
They all were of one heart and soul,
And only love inspired the whole.

O what an age of golden days!
O what a choice, peculiar race!
Washed in the Lamb’s all-cleansing blood,
Anointed kings and priests to God!

Ye different sects, who all declare,
“Lo, here is Christ!” or, “Christ is here!”
Your stronger proofs divinely give,
And show me where the Christians live.

The gates of hell cannot prevail;
The church on earth can never fail;
Ah, join me to thy secret ones!
Ah, gather alt thy living stones!

Scattered o’er all the earth they lie,
Tilt thou collect them with thine eye,
Draw by the music of thy name,
And charm into a beauteous frame.

For this the pleading Spirit groans,
And cries in alt thy banished ones;
Greatest of gifts, thy love impart,
And make us of one mind and heart.

Join every soul that looks to thee
In bonds of perfect charity;
Now, Lord, the glorious fullness give,
And All in All for ever live!

Wesley, John Rev. M.A. “A Collection of Hymns, for the Use of the People called Methodists.”
London: Wesleyan-Methodist Book-Room, 1889.

“I believe that all human beings, whatever their backgrounds, whatever generation they belong to, are all created in the image and likeness of God. Therefore, in each of us there is a spark of the divine.”

Larry Parsons - youth work and the spark of the divine.

Larry talks of ‘fanning the flame’ and then protecting it. He talks about “inspiring leadership within the peer group as essential to rejuvenating the community”. He talks about “helping young people who are perhaps unemployed, apathetic and drifting, to dream dreams, to discover that spark within them and to rise up from the ground, and in their turn inspire others, and to show them that they have the power to make life worth living”.  

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