Spiritual Vision: I Can See Clearly Now

In 1972,

Johnny Nash wrote a modern day hymn entitled,

I Can See Clearly Now.

I can see clearly now,

The rain is gone.

I can see all obstacles in my way.

What is spiritual vision?

Is it to add a new lens to your life in which you can perceive the world through rose-colored glasses?

Perhaps spiritual vision means to do the best you can to release any lenses that you've invented in which to see reality,

To do your best to see it as it is.

Spiritual vision is doing our best to see reality as it is.

To step out of our own versions of what the universe is,

To see it perhaps as God has made it,

In its beauty,

In its overwhelming majesty,

In its awe,

In its magnificence.

Spiritual vision perhaps is to even see as God sees,

If only for a moment,

And it can transform our lives forever.

Spiritual vision means to see knowing you are a child of God.

Jesus is special,

He's born of a virgin,

But all of us are children of God.

Just before my daughter was born,

Her mom said to me,

Josh,

There will come a day when you won't be able to remember a time when Nancy didn't exist.

And my first thought is,

This is what nine months pregnant sounds like.

But it was true,

It was true.

The mystics tell us that our time on earth is but a parentheses in eternity.

And yet,

Being children of God,

Even in this mortal existence,

There is something about us that sings the eternal,

That connects us with eternal life.

Spiritual vision is also knowing where you want to go and staying committed to going there.

Shuangzi,

An ancient Chinese philosopher,

Says that if you're crossing the river with the goal of getting to the other side,

And someone in another boat runs into you,

You probably yell at that person.

But if an empty boat runs into you on your way across the river,

You don't worry about it.

You keep getting focused on arriving to the other side.

We lose spiritual vision when our goal becomes to yell at that person that hit us with their boat.

When we go into that place of blame and victimhood and build around our lives,

Around the bad thing that someone did to us,

We lose our heart,

We lose our truth.

Spiritual vision is staying focused on getting to that other side of the river.

We let it go.

We let it go.

The cold never bothered me anyway.

All of the bad feelings have disappeared.

Jesus says to enter the kingdom of heaven,

We must experience spiritual rebirth.

We must be reborn of the spirit.

Jesus is baptized by John,

And when he arises from the water,

Immediately the presence of God descends and announces,

This is my beloved.

This is my beloved son,

In whom I am well pleased.

Henry Nouwen,

An accomplished Catholic priest,

Wrote a book once called You Are the Beloved.

And he wrote it to a man who was a secular man,

A non-religious man,

Trying to express now in his heart about what the message of Christ and Christianity is.

The first great point that he makes is our biggest challenge in life is self-rejection.

The biggest challenge we face in our lives is self-rejection.

God doesn't cast anyone into hell.

We put ourselves there.

We isolate ourselves.

We think we're not good enough.

We withhold ourselves from that rebirth of spirit that takes place when we accept the awesome and precious and magnificent truth that we are beloved.

And this is his main point,

That if we get anything from the teachings of Jesus,

It is that not only were those words,

This is my beloved child,

In whom I am well pleased,

Meant for Jesus,

They're meant for all of us.

You are the beloved when you embrace that truth of who you are,

Why you're here,

And your purpose,

Your meaning,

Your depth of understanding.

For me,

The Christ story becomes most significant when I can,

In a very humble way,

See the life of Christ in my own life.

I think when you can see reflections of the Christ life in your own life,

Your own baptisms,

Temptations,

Crucifixions,

And resurrections,

We begin to realize that the Christ life never left us,

That it's always present for us to experience if we're willing to listen.

I invite you to reflect on that idea for a moment,

That there are so many aspects of the Christ life that show up through our life experience.

Their initiations,

Their rituals,

And as we move through,

We are born not just once,

But again and again and again.

Buechner continues,

We have it in us to be Christ to each other and maybe in some imaginable way to God too.

That's what we have to tell finally.

We have it in us to work miracles of love and healing as well as to have them worked upon us.

We have it in us to bless with him and forgive with him and heal with him.

And once in a while,

Maybe even to grieve with some measure of his grief at another's joy,

Almost as if it were our own.

And who knows,

But that in the end,

By God's mercy,

The two stories will converge for good and all.

And though we would never have had the courage or the faith or the wit to die for him any more than we have ever managed to live for him very well either,

His story will come true in us at last.

Immediately after his baptism,

Jesus goes into the desert and the box tells us that the desert represents spiritual honing in.

It's a time of preparation.

And there in the desert,

Jesus encounters Satan who tempts him,

Who tries to give him and let him know that his needs can be met by the exterior world,

Power,

Control,

Fame,

Richness.

Jesus has to overcome that outer world.

This is why for me,

Jesus never in his ministry points to his human self and say,

I'm the best,

Follow me.

At Mile High Church,

We have a little saying,

It's different here.

It's our nice way of saying we're a little weird.

Most of us probably have some tarot cards at home.

Most of us have gone through some guided visualization where we've discovered our inner guide and advisor.

Mine's Gumby,

By the way.

We believe wholeheartedly in every day connecting with divine presence,

Knowing that as we do in the light of that presence,

We can visualize our health and well-being,

The health and well-being of the people we love.

We can nurture the good that is in the heart of this world and in this cosmos,

And we can help bring it about through our conscious clarity.

And then we do our best to seek to live it all around us.

We think Marianne Williamson is super cool.

We're open at the top,

Which means we love exploring spirituality through all sources.

But here's the thing.

Here's the one rule to remember.

If anyone,

And I mean anyone,

Tells you that they have a power that you don't have within yourself and you need them to give it to you,

Run.

Go away.

That's what the coldishness is in spirituality,

In politics,

In communities,

Sometimes even in families.

I have a power you don't have.

No.

The greatest spiritual truth there is,

Is that each of us has that ability to unlock our relationship with the divine within us,

And then we can find it anywhere.

But it always should be pointing you right back to yourself.

Thich Nhat Hanh,

The great Buddhist monk,

Shares a story about Buddha,

His chief disciple,

Ananda,

And Mara,

Which in Buddhism is kind of the Satan figure.

He's this god of illusion that Buddha had to overcome when sitting under the Bodhi tree in order to achieve enlightenment.

And Mara,

One day,

Is walking down the path towards Buddha's home,

And Ananda sees him.

Mara,

I see you.

You get out of here.

The Buddha defeated you once,

And he will defeat you again.

You are not wanted here.

And Mara looks at Ananda and says,

Are you saying your master has enemies?

Just then,

Buddha comes out of the door.

Mara,

Mara,

My old friend,

It's so good to see you.

But he embraces Mara,

And he says,

Come in,

Come in.

Please sit down,

Ananda.

Make us some tea.

And Ananda is not happy.

Come on,

Freaking Mara,

I'm going to make him tea.

I tried to hurt the Buddha.

And he sets the tea down,

And Ananda can hear the conversation.

And Mara's saying,

Buddha,

I am so tired of being Mara.

I'm so sick of illusion.

I feel like a fake.

I think I'm ready to be more like you now,

Buddha.

And the Buddha responds to him,

You think it's easy being a Buddha,

Having all these people putting all of your so-called words in their mouth,

Using you as a being of commerce,

Building,

Perhaps,

Teachings around you that aren't what I taught at all?

It ain't easy being Buddha.

In some aspects of Christianity,

There's the teaching of Armageddon,

This great battle that comes at the end times between Jesus and Satan.

I don't think it would work that way.

I think the presence of Christ doesn't need to lift a sword,

But simply embodies the truth.

Hello,

Satan,

My old friend.

Come on in.

Let's sit down,

Have a cup of tea.

Have a cup of tea.

When it comes to your own consciousness,

What do you see when you see those past betrayals making their way on your path towards you,

Those old haunts and hurts,

The traumas,

The drama,

The pain,

The shame,

The dignity that perhaps was taken away from us at one point,

The wounds,

The scars?

When you see them coming down the road,

Do you have the courage,

Perhaps,

To even befriend them?

Hello,

Pain.

Come sit down.

Let's have a cup of tea.

All the bad feelings have disappeared.

Here is the rainbow I've been praying for.

Jesus and his incredible ministry,

A ministry that was very short,

Indeed,

And yet is still the most impactful ministry of all time.

Jesus taught a revolutionary forgiveness.

The teaching was simple,

But profound and seemingly impossible to practice.

Love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.

Josh's addendum,

Good luck.

Love God with all your heart,

Which means you've got to let God love you back.

And love your neighbor as yourself.

When your neighbor makes a mistake,

They'll be punished by their mistake.

But the forgiveness that Jesus taught means that we do not wish God's love to be absent for anyone.

Jesus taught a revolutionary faith.

He taught that God is not a far-off being to fear or that seeks to hurt or damage you in any way.

God is a living presence,

And it is done unto you as you believe in this presence and its possibility to perform and work through you in this thing called life.

Because your very consciousness is the vehicle in which heaven becomes on this earth.

Jesus teaches a revolutionary universality.

Jesus didn't call his teaching Christianity.

He called it the way.

The Buddha also called his teaching the way.

Laoza and Taoism also called his teaching the way.

All of their teachings,

Not necessarily the religions built around them,

But all of their teachings,

This is for everybody.

Doesn't matter your religion,

Doesn't matter your gender,

Doesn't matter your relationship orientation,

Doesn't matter your political affiliation,

It's for everybody.

Jesus encounters a woman by a well and offers her some water.

You can't give water to me,

She says.

I am a Samaritan,

A lower class.

The water that I offer you is different,

He says.

It is the water of eternal life.

I don't think he's trying to convert her.

I think he's pointing out the divine truth that the teaching and the way and the love of God is for everyone.

There's a very similar story about the Buddha,

That he encounters a woman by the well and asks her for a drink of water.

I cannot give you water,

She says,

For I am an untouchable.

I didn't ask you what your caste was,

The Buddha said.

I asked you for a glass of water.

The water,

The teaching,

Is for everyone.

Here is the rainbow I've been praying for.

Jesus and some of his disciples go up to a mountaintop.

And there,

They are greeted by a grand vision of Moses and Elijah.

And the disciples see that something is happening to Jesus.

It's a divine initiation somehow.

His face becomes bright and filled with light.

This is something that has been come to be known or called the transfiguration.

He's filled with light.

And again,

We hear the words,

The descending of spirit and the saying,

This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.

In baptism,

Spiritual birth,

The realization of heaven on earth and in the body,

And in this amazing transfiguration,

It is as if Jesus enters heaven right at that time,

Or heaven enters him.

Maybe that's a better way to say it.

We don't enter heaven.

It enters us by right of consciousness,

By right of love.

And it is of no coincidence for me that this is what comes just before the physical life of Jesus is put to an end,

Before he is brutally murdered and experiences great suffering.

And yet,

And I think this can be true for so many of us in so many different ways,

There's already this part of him on the other side that knows,

That holds to that truth.

It's that reminder for us that we live in this world,

But we live in a heavenly consciousness as well.

And through our own work,

Through our own striving and journeys,

We can begin to bring those lights together.

That even in our darkest moments,

We know that there is a son.

Joseph Campbell said that there's no resurrection without crucifixion.

And I know it would be unwise to say that any of us of here had suffered like Jesus had suffered,

But we still suffer.

We still go through those experiences of crucifixion.

Those experiences that cause us pain and leave us in a tomb of seeming isolation.

The hurts,

The judgments about us,

The time someone pushed us down unconsciously to lift themselves up.

The times where our dignity wasn't honored or seen or cherished.

They put us in a dark place,

And yet there is no resurrection without crucifixion.

The Christ cannot remove our suffering,

But the Christ can be right there in it with us.

And in the furnace of the darkness,

We can begin to feel the transformation of the sun coming back out in our lives.

My daughter has a little saying,

Daddy,

The sun always wakes up.

And yet we have to move through the darkness to get to the dawn.

I don't know why.

I wish I could tell you.

But that has been my experience,

And I'm guessing it may be yours too.

In ancient Japanese Shintoism,

There is a myth about the goddess of the sun,

Amuratsu.

And her brother comes into the village,

And he embarrasses her.

He does some awful things.

And she's so embarrassed that she hides in a cave,

In a tomb.

And you see,

She's the sun,

So there's a problem here.

And so the leaders of the village gather around the cave,

And they keep trying to draw her out.

And they put on these elaborate dances and shows,

Do everything they can to try to trick her to get out of the cave.

Until finally,

They get a mirror.

They get a mirror,

And they shine it at Amuratsu,

And she begins to see the light,

And she's so fascinated with it that she comes out of the cave so they can shut the rock back over the tomb,

And there is the sun,

Forevermore.

The image of this myth still exists as the national flag of Japan,

The rising sun.

For those of us here who feel that we are in a darkness,

Perhaps all that you need is to begin to see the light of your own reflection.

Feel that light of your own reflection,

For it is the sun.

And when you bring forth what is best within you,

What is within you will save you,

It will renew you,

It will resurrect you into a greater way of being.

The sun always wakes up,

And yet it never sets where it rises.

What is that new light that is being called to be illuminated in your experience,

So you can live as a renewed,

Profound,

Emphatic,

Inspired you?