Into The Mystery Podcast Ep. 13: The Word

The Bible opens with, “In the beginning was the Word.” The Word, the Logos, the Tao ... all are terms that describe the natural order of Reality, a vibrational pattern that underlies and informs the world we perceive and how we experience ourselves in it. All Truth, beauty and even perfection can be found in its proper expression. In this episode, we explore the nature of the Word, and our choice either to harmonize with it as the flow of pure Being or to oppose it by operating from the ego. 

Transcript

There's a reason the Bible opens with,

In the beginning was the Word.

The Word,

The Logos,

The Tao,

These terms all describe a fundamental pattern of natural law underlying reality that we can align with as part of our divine essence or oppose through the ego,

Often causing suffering to ourselves and the world around us.

We'll explain more in this episode of Into the Mystery.

The Word,

That would be actually an interesting thing for us to talk about.

The Word.

What is the Word?

What is the Word?

In Greek they called it the Logos,

Which points to the underlying patterning of reality that yesterday in this conversation I was characterizing it as a pattern that exists under water and slowly it rises to the surface and we begin to see it right there at the surface of the water.

We start to discern the pattern and then as it's more and more discerned it rises up above and we start to see the patterning of reality and all of its great detail.

All the different aspects of our inner being,

All the different levels of awareness and God all the way up to the Godhead.

The Word is,

I think of the Word as it's that which breathes life and energy into anything.

That's why it's so closely associated with logic and language because logic and language breathe things into existence.

They birth something.

I hear you talking maybe about the underlying vibrational architecture of reality.

Oh,

I like that.

Underlying vibrational architecture,

Yeah,

With all of its contours and ingredients.

Yeah,

I like that.

And that originally,

The word that is spoken of in the beginning of the Bible is this impulse from the Godhead.

This is how I think of it anyway.

This awareness manifested itself as the Word,

As OM,

As the vibration and from that all other vibrational realities unfolded.

I like that.

It's the primordial.

The primordial,

It's like not necessarily the architecture itself but the potential that makes that architecture possible.

Yeah,

Yeah.

I just had this vision of harmonic resonance where a vibration is set up and then depending on what it encounters,

It is either reinforced or it's diminished or there's confusion and chaos or something very subtle and elegant flows forth and it perpetrates itself into infinity.

And then if you think about being in a pool of water and maybe a vibration starts on one side with a pebble and then there's one on the other side and then those waves echo across and then begin to encounter each other,

It's kind of the same way that I think physical reality unfolds.

How the universe rifts on itself is the infinite number of interactions that those waves can have with each other.

I like what you're saying about harmonic resonance there.

It reminds me of,

Well,

Like in the Course in Miracles,

There's a clear distinction between what is created,

What is of God,

If you will,

And what is made,

What our ego makes.

And whenever that resonance or harmony exists between what is created and what we embody,

What we speak,

What we behave into existence,

There is a sense of being lined up.

There's a sense of being in contact with what's real.

And whenever we deviate that,

Whenever we begin to make things according to a pattern that is not consistent with that underlying structure of reality,

It's as though we deviate and we don't know that usually until we know it through our suffering.

In some way,

We've created something unreal that has brought us fear or pain.

So in a sense,

It would be like going against the flow of a river or just a dissonant clash of energies like you can hear in music that creates a sense of discomfort and unease and perhaps chaos and trouble.

It's funny,

Bill Bailey does this.

The comedian Bill Bailey does a whole riff on,

It's called God's Doorbell,

I think.

But he talks about how in the Middle Ages,

I think it was,

There was something called the Devil's Interval.

And I forget in musical terms what the distance is between the tones,

But it's a particular chord that is dissonant in a way that it sounds kind of evil and threatening.

And it was actually outlawed because it was this upsetting sound.

Well,

Gosh,

I don't know.

I'm going to have to – Bill Bailey,

You said?

Bill Bailey,

Yeah.

He's a Brit.

That's a brilliant idea because on some level,

That underlying patterning of reality makes us – I mean,

Anybody can – you don't have to be a music connoisseur to understand where music works and where it doesn't.

It's all discernible.

It's intuitively discernible.

You totally feel it in your body.

And still is the pattern of reality,

Yeah,

That we can know when we're lined up and we can know when we're not.

Exactly.

Yeah.

That knowing is part of the logos,

Right?

Just as logos informs the word logic and logic pertains in some sense to reason,

It pertains to that knowing,

That indeed there's a knowing quality written into the structure.

And this is what we encounter,

For example,

In meditation,

When we can quiet the vibrations of the mind,

Of the thoughts,

And they cease to interfere with what is coming from logos or what is available from logos.

And that's where we can tap into the universal wisdom that,

You know,

We talk about all the time but nobody ever really tells you how you do that.

And it is eliminating the interference in the brain in order to have access.

Right.

Right.

It's like,

You know,

It's not enough of a motivation when people approach meditation thinking,

I'm just going to quiet your mind.

Because it's like,

There's no real reward in just quieting your mind.

But when you understand that when you quiet your mind,

The word pours into your mind,

That your mind is filled by the word.

It's filled by the logic of spirit and the knowledge of being.

Then it's a whole different reason for emptying your mind.

Every attribute of our inner being will flood in where there's,

You know,

Sort of expanding on our last subject of emptiness.

Every true quality of being will flow forth into an empty mind.

I mean,

There's a reason why when our mind goes quiet,

Our thoughts temporarily cease.

There's a reason why it's peaceful rather than chaotic.

Because that piece is written into the fabric of existence.

It's part of the logos.

It's part of that structure.

Maybe we can talk about the way the ego interferes with the word.

Any time that it thinks it knows better.

You know,

Like the Course of Miracles as we've been working lately talks about,

Anytime you think that you want to decide for yourself,

Then you're automatically taking yourself out of alignment with that,

With the word.

Yep.

It's like being in the middle of the river and saying,

I want the river to go this direction.

Yeah,

Exactly.

You are being carried by the river rather than you shaping the course of the river.

So when we are the one trying to shape the course of the river,

We fall out of our natural relationship with life.

We start trying to control things.

Yeah,

And then surround ourselves with everybody else on the planet who thinks the same thing.

And you can see why we live in such a chaotic place.

It's such a place full of conflict.

We're all swimming upstream.

Yeah,

Or we're all trying to change the course of the river and to water our own field over here instead of letting it drain naturally.

Right,

Right.

And in that way,

That's the basic principle behind the Tao.

And the Tao,

Called the way,

Is really no different than the Logos.

And one of the things that's very clearly articulated in the Tao is when you go against the natural way of things,

You create disharmony.

There is a natural way to things and we have to learn to cooperate with it.

If we don't cooperate with it,

I love the metaphor you brought here.

If you keep redirecting the water to your fields,

The people downstream don't have any water anymore.

And everything goes into chaos then.

In our modern society,

This really plays a lot because in modernity,

Let's say,

There is a fetish for thinking that we can improve upon things.

And as we discover more and more of the problems that we've created as human beings,

We keep thinking we'll come up with better and better solutions.

But the more and more we go in that direction,

The further and further we deviate from the natural way.

Right,

Right.

We just overcomplicate and overcomplicate when the solution is to simplify.

We improve our technology and we go nowhere in our consciousness.

Yeah.

And it's funny because technology is always sort of predicated on this idea that we're going to make our lives easier so that we can expend less effort.

But the Tao makes the point over and over again that to be effortless is to already have succeeded.

And I haven't read it in a while,

But it drives home that idea in a lot of different ways that it's simply surrender,

That all will be accomplished without struggle.

You know,

I'm not entirely against technology,

But I am entirely against the way it's being used in ignorance and confusion because it's part of that paradigm.

It's like the technology is being used,

It's being sold under the guise of simplification and inevitability.

And if we are not careful about discerning the natural structure of things as we go through developing our technology,

We are going to end up in a very,

Very bad place.

Yeah,

Yeah,

I totally agree.

I've seen some of the artificial intelligence and robotic creations they've been coming up with lately that do not give me a lot of confidence that we'll be able to control our creations.

Yeah.

Well,

The good thing is that that pattern of reality is always the superstructure that underlies so ultimately whatever we create will have a destructive element that will come to an end.

That's true.

If it's not consistent with the way,

The doubt.

Yeah,

It's like an unbalanced tire on a car.

Eventually it's going to spin right off the axle.

But as far as we're concerned here with humanity and survival and the preservation of the things that make humanness sacred and real and true,

We better be careful.

Because I mean,

Look,

All we need to do is go stand out in – I was in downtown Hood River the other day and I just watched every single face in the scenery in front of me,

Which was probably about 30 people,

Was glued to a screen.

And it's become so commonplace that it's like,

Yeah,

Yeah,

Whatever.

But to say so,

But if we can't see how deeply unnatural we are becoming,

We're in trouble.

In some sense,

We would be wise to listen to the conservatives at this point in our human development.

In which sense?

Well,

The conservatives who are interested in the preservation of the values of antiquity.

I don't know that conservatives and liberals actually differ on those values.

They just differ on their expression in a lot of ways.

Well,

I don't mean conservatives as opposed to liberals.

I mean conservatives as those who want to conserve the way.

Those who want to conserve the attunement to the natural order of things.

I don't mean it in terms of political,

Conservative or liberal.

Well,

I think that just specifically speaking to the attachment we have to our screens and devices,

I think it speaks to,

Harkening back to our talk on emptiness last time,

Our discomfort with simply being,

Like waiting in line.

Waiting in line at the grocery store,

What do you usually wait about three to five minutes maybe to check out?

And yet we'll be on our phones trying to fill that little space in time where there's nothing to do but stand there and wait.

And so in service of alleviating our boredom,

We fill ourselves with who knows what kind of toxicity we're reading or what kind of damaging messaging or just general mental chaos because the internet is not speaking the word,

I guess.

It's not a place of alignment.

Right,

Right.

It's largely not.

Not that it's divorced from it entirely but that you're right,

It's not founded on that.

Not only do we fill the space.

Just yesterday I was in the grocery store and I was in line.

I thought,

Oh,

I have a quick email to send and harmless.

But even in that space,

This draw,

This cultural draw toward constant productivity,

We almost have entirely forgotten the value of rest.

There's a reason why on the seventh day God rested.

And we don't permit that anymore.

We're a culture who's always online,

Always open,

Always available.

One of the things that bothered me a lot when I first went to India is like every other day was a holiday and everything would be closed.

And it bothered me at first and then it was like,

Oh,

Right,

This is actually the natural way.

Yeah.

I have a friend who runs workshops based on resting.

I mean,

It's for people who are,

I think she targets mostly entrepreneurs but people who are multitasking all the time and trying to juggle all sorts of things.

And I thought,

Well,

Okay,

But aren't you just getting people to pay you to go on vacation because it's something they would have done anyway?

But she gets people to come and sit around.

And I think she confiscates all their devices at the beginning of their retreat.

So you've got to spend like four or five days just dealing with yourself.

So it's got that vipass aspect to it.

We'll just start a sleep retreat where it's like all you do is sleep.

Nobody would sleep though.

People would just be awake all night because they wouldn't know what to do.

Yeah,

Well,

It's very interesting to talk about the Tao,

The way,

To understand a little bit about that natural patterning.

And it's so difficult for us to connect with it because in so many ways we've become unnatural that we confuse what's normal as being natural in some sense.

And this is far reaching,

I mean,

Into many,

Many arenas of life.

We're not taught to sense and name and appreciate the subtlety of the sort of structures we're speaking of here.

Right.

You know,

I don't know how many people could even define what logos means because it's not something that we're instructed,

That it even exists,

That it's something to be aware of.

Well,

And this is the danger of the postmodernist movement which has basically taken hold all over the planet.

You see,

Our mind is capable of interpreting things in an infinite number of ways.

But what we lose when we lose the Tao,

The way,

Is we lose the understanding that not all perspectives are of equal value.

And so when we start to treat all of our different perspectives as if they're of equal value,

You can't determine reality anymore.

Because then your truth is just as true as my truth,

Even if one of us is more naturally right.

And this is huge.

I mean,

This is so deeply written into our education system and our society that everybody's opinion matters.

Everybody's viewpoint counts.

And I understand that from the level of we are all intrinsically equal and we all do have the right to interpret reality freely as we wish,

But that doesn't make all of our interpretations equal.

Yeah.

So in a sense,

We're kind of talking about the word being an expression of natural law.

Exactly.

Dharma.

Yeah.

Yes.

Which is something nobody talks about.

And I don't know if … I mean,

I agree with what you're saying.

I don't know if I see in the same way what you're talking about as far as every perspective being of equal value.

I think we value free speech and you have a right to be an idiot and say whatever you want,

But that doesn't mean that you … Not so much anymore.

What do you mean,

Not so much anymore?

Are you talking about like cancel culture or … Cancel culture,

Censorship.

Well censorship has always been a thing.

Well I … yeah,

Always been a thing from the level of what's unnatural.

In other words … okay,

So in order to censor something,

I have to decide what's valuable and what's not.

Correct.

If I'm somebody who's out of touch with the natural order of things,

The way,

Then my decision about what's valuable and what's not can't be correct.

So a culture that begins to censor or eliminate freedom of speech is a culture that has begun to take upon itself the role of God.

Yes.

Okay.

I agree with that.

But I'm just saying that there are some things,

You know,

Hate speech for example.

Since we live in the United States and we have a First Amendment,

There are a couple of exceptions such as inciting rebellion or panicking people in a theater,

That kind of a thing.

But pretty much everything else is still available.

Legally.

Legally.

But we have to consider that also sociologically.

Okay.

So you're talking about people shouting down other people because they don't agree with … Not just that.

I read a story a couple of months ago about a man who was fired from his job based on something his wife said at her job.

Yeah,

That's wrong.

Well yeah,

Right.

But when these sorts of principles become … when they become acceptable within the society,

That patterning is being ignored.

And the law,

Which is of course intended to uphold the natural order of things,

It actually begins to bend and change also.

I guess I just don't see that as a new thing.

I mean,

Maybe you're perceiving a cultural shift that to me has always been the way things were.

Tell me what you mean by that.

Well people,

I mean there's certain sorts of speech have always been frowned upon.

It changes over time.

Like for example,

During the Cold War there were certain political opinions you couldn't hold or you would be persecuted,

That kind of thing.

Definitely.

The difference that I suppose I'm speaking of is the relationship it has to the global interconnectedness and especially the internet and media.

Let's look at it this way.

If the word is what informs existence and that that is closely related to what is spoken into existence.

What are our thoughts made of?

They're made of words.

And where do those words come from?

They come from what we're exposed to.

So when you're across platforms of media or partaking in the internet or listening to your peers,

I mean what we get from looking at the internet or media is vastly different than what we get when we actually look at our neighborhood.

It's very,

Very different.

But we're taking on the logos that is being given through the technological medium and that is influencing how we perceive and think and feel as if it's reality.

Right,

Right.

It's a sort of a hive mind thing that's going on.

I'm always fascinated with memes and internet slang and these ideas that will come out of nowhere and seem to take over all the platforms at one time.

I can't decide whether it's simply the nature of the medium or if it's a collective consciousness thing.

Well,

We're craving a logos.

We're craving it so much that we'll accept just about anything into our consciousness.

Oh,

Interesting.

I had someone send me,

I don't want to get into the controversy about COVID,

But there was an interesting thing that someone sent me and it was the head of a health department in a local community who had posted a video.

In this video,

He kept repeating the phrase,

It's everywhere around you.

It's all over the place.

You don't see it.

It's everywhere.

Now,

If you accept that thing that you just watched into your consciousness,

That informs how you view the world around you.

But what I did immediately after watching that is I just stopped and I looked around.

There are a couple of people around me and it wasn't everywhere.

But we are so deeply impressed upon by false logic.

This is not specific about coronavirus,

But in the sense that we are impressed upon by so many different logi that aren't real,

That aren't true.

People who purvey propaganda take advantage of this fact because all you have to do is drop a video like that into the stream,

As it were,

Into the internet arena.

One person of note picks it up and all of a sudden this is a thing.

This is something that's been created in the collective consciousness,

Which is probably out of alignment with the Tao,

With the word.

Yeah.

I mean,

If we weren't already out of alignment,

These impressions that are created for propaganda,

For let's say fake news,

Dramatization of things,

We wouldn't accept them into our consciousness the same way.

Right.

I think we do the same thing kind of with narratives because the mind is always trying to assemble everything that's perceiving into a timeline,

A story,

An understanding of reality that makes sense to it.

We're hungry for that.

As you said,

We're hungry for that sense of security that a narrative gives us because even if you feel really unsafe,

If you can point to something and say,

Well,

At least I know why.

It's that guy over there or it's what this company is doing over there or that government or that political party.

The ego finds some certitude in that and feels comforted.

That's right.

It's the source there of all ideology.

If we look at the different movements that arise,

It's like the movements become the new logos.

They become the new religion.

I'm now a part of this.

Now I know where I belong.

Now I know where I fit.

This is my movement.

This is my belief system.

Yeah.

It doesn't have to be a religion or a church or something like that.

It can be a political party.

It can be a … It becomes one.

It becomes a religion.

Conspiracy theory.

Everybody wants to think they're in the know and has the secret key to what reality actually is but nobody does.

Only those who comprehend the logos truly as it really is understand the underlying nature of reality.

What Lao Tzu puts forward is very different than what your average person who's chosen to take up a new movement will say.

Now I want to go read that again.

Yeah,

Read it over and over.

The Tao Te Ching is what we're referring to for those who may not know it.

Yeah,

Listeners if they haven't read it,

Should be encouraged to do so.

It's not a terribly long read and just one … What do you call them?

Chapters?

Yeah,

81 short verses.

One per day would change your life.

When I first read the Tao Te Ching,

I thought,

We need to buy this book and give it to every person in leadership across the whole country because if you understand the Tao and the natural pattern that it lays out … I mean it's there in all the major traditions but it's very concise in the Tao Te Ching.

You understand the natural order and if you understand the natural order,

That's the proper position for leadership,

Someone who understands the natural order of things,

The natural way.

Yeah.

Someone who understands that the flow of the river is not theirs to control.

Yes.

The Tao Te Ching says,

He says,

The master leads by following.

Yeah.

Just like that.

Yeah.

I want to say one more thing about the Tao which is that it's one of those … kind of like Rumi in a way.

It's one of those works that's written such a way that it brews in you.

Like you'll read the words and interpret them in whatever way your mind wants to but that vibration,

That logos will continue to develop.

Your understanding of it and your experience of it will continue to strengthen over time.

It will resonate with the truth I think is what happens and it reinforces itself as you embody it,

As you begin to move in accordance with it.

Absolutely.

Because it is the way.

It is an articulation of the underlying structure of reality that if you actually let it imprint itself on your consciousness and begin to embody it,

You will experience the harmony that we were speaking of earlier,

The harmony of being in concert with the way,

The truth.

That's a really important point just about practice in general which is that you can read spiritual texts until your eyes give out.

You can practice chanting and meditating and all the other things but there's a whole other level of learning that goes on that's taking place kind of below our conscious awareness most of the time.

Where things are changing and being shaped by Kundalini or spiritual energy in general.

And to be aware that those things are happening even when you feel that at the superficial level of your awareness,

Maybe nothing's happening at all.

It points to that truth that most spiritual development and transformation actually happens under your radar.

You don't even know it's happening.

Right.

Exactly.

It does evidence itself through your behavior,

Through your words,

Through your embodiment of it.

It's like that's where the real proof is in the pudding.

I was also thinking when we use the phrase the word,

We're not talking only about language.

We're talking about all vibration whether it's contained in a spoken form or whether it's musical or whether it's even behavioral that all of those things constitute some aspect of the word.

So when we talk about being in or out of alignment with it,

It's a holistic thing.

It's not simply,

Is my speech true and godly?

It's are my thoughts.

I mean even thoughts have vibrations.

So are my thoughts true?

Are my thoughts in alignment with what God would have me be or what God would have me think and say and do?

And I think that's an integral part of our practice is bringing ourselves back into alignment over and over and over again.

Because obviously thoughts wander.

We say things we don't mean occasionally.

We behave in ways that are out of integrity with what we would embody.

And so yoga,

And yoga of course meaning yoke meaning union,

Yoga is the practice or a collection of practices that keep bringing us back,

Correcting our alignment over and over to keep us on the narrow path.

Before we started recording you were talking about that alignment and how does a person recognize that alignment.

I think we have a lot of ways to identify that.

First and foremost I would say is the presence of virtue.

That when we are aligned with the true pattern of reality,

Our life whether we're speaking about our speech,

Our thoughts,

Our actions,

They align with the universal principles,

The universal virtues that inform that pattern.

And what's really difficult is that,

Or what seems to be difficult for a lot of people is we seem to live within a sphere where we decide our virtues for ourselves.

And when we do that,

When we decide our virtues for ourselves,

We remove ourselves from that underlying pattern.

Let's look at the Ten Commandments for a moment which you and I have entertained talking about.

If you look at the Ten Commandments as a description of the underlying pattern of reality which if adhered to aligns you with God and if not adhered to removes you from God's presence.

Yes.

The corollary to that in my mind is not only does practicing the virtues that are described in the commandments a way of aligning yourself with the word,

Your behavior as it is expressed in alignment with the commandments is evidence of your adherence to the word.

In other words you'll know that you're in alignment or you'll know that someone you meet is in alignment if he or she practices the things that are described in the commandments.

So someone who's in alignment with the word is not going to kill,

Is not going to steal,

Is not going to covet,

Is not going to take the Lord's name in vain,

Etc.

,

Etc.

And this is something that I've kind of,

A way that I've found to make peace with my Catholic upbringing is seeing the commandments not as these demands that God places on you that if you don't meet them you're going to be punished but rather as evidence,

As a behavioral cue,

As prompts and then confirmation that the way you're living is in effect in alignment with universal law,

With natural law,

With what God would have you do.

Yeah.

Right.

The following of the Dharma.

The Dharma is the law which governs reality and in some sense that's what the angels are,

Is that they are the guardians of the law in the sense that we can't violate the laws which govern reality and experience reality at the same time.

There's some way in which we are estranged from reality by not following its law.

And there is a punishment in that but it's not a punishment doled out by a parental God.

It's the punishment of deviating from our real inner nature.

When you were talking,

It got me thinking about brahmacharya and most often when people speak about brahmacharya they're speaking about the practice of celibacy or abstinence but the word actually means to be an example of Brahma,

To be godlike.

So in the yoga,

In the yogic discipline there's this code written into it here with brahmacharya,

This idea that it's possible to operate in a godlike manner.

And so if we understand that and that there are actual,

As you said so wonderfully,

That there are actually laws which govern that and that those laws can be followed and when they're followed we actually experience a godlike existence.

And isn't it curious how the different traditions have kind of overlapping instructions,

So to speak.

So the Ten Commandments in Catholicism or in Christianity and the niyamas and niyamas in yoga practice,

Etc.

Every religion has a code,

As you mentioned,

That's meant as a guide to both point you in the right direction but also to reinforce and to refine your experience of life over time as you practice it.

And I wonder if I could go back a little bit and have you explain what you meant about,

How did you say it,

Without behaving in alignment with reality you can't experience it?

Yeah,

Well you know the basic principle of Dharma or the law of spirit,

If you will,

Which is what the Logos is,

It's what the word is,

Is that it has a design that when we deviate from it we suffer.

In other words we can't experience all the true facets and qualities and attributes of reality without maintaining the structure that supports it.

So for example the question could be at a certain point,

Is it possible to experience heaven,

Let's say,

And kill?

No it's not possible.

You cannot experience heaven and be murderous.

It's not possible because you move outside the pattern of a loving reality when you do so.

Yes,

Yes,

Exactly.

I think we're also invoking karma here because we're talking about the natural suffering that one will experience as a result of actions that the ego chooses.

And the notion of sin?

Yeah,

I was just going to say the notion of sin.

You know we have to kind of almost redefine all of the traditional Christian definitions of what these things mean.

So you know the commandments,

Oh I think it was Neil Donald Walsh,

Conversations with God,

He talked about the Ten Commandments as being,

As God explained to him,

The ten suggestions.

And as I said I kind of think of them more as guidelines and evidence of one's alignment with God.

And then we talk about sin as being not like this crime against the divine,

Which the church tends to explain it as,

But rather a mistake.

You know it's a mistake that we make in choosing our ego's decisions or our ego's approach to some,

Well to anything in life as opposed to following the stream,

You know following God's guidance,

Following that logos,

That knowing within us that would effortlessly point us in the right direction if we can learn to hear it.

And maybe that's something we can explore more is how do we do that.

Yeah,

We should explore that.

And I love what you're saying,

I love the way that you articulated let's say the Yamas and the Niyamas or the Ten Commandments as evidence,

As evidence.

I love that.

It's that the following of these commandments is not to necessarily fulfill some structure of rules that you've been handed,

But instead they become the evidence that you are in touch with that.

I love that.

I think that they're not the things to be followed as much as they're the things that are the natural display of our true nature.

This is kind of what I mean about that when you're operating,

Speaking,

Living,

Practicing in alignment with the word,

That it is a self-reinforcing process.

So your behavior and the resulting alignment that you develop as a result of that put you in harmony with the universe and the world in a way that you begin to,

For example,

Experience abundance or perhaps more people of quality are appearing in your life or opportunities are coming that are clearly showing you that there's guidance,

That there is a knowing that you are connecting to that's kind of guiding your movements now.

I'm cautious about that one,

But there's obviously truth in what you're saying,

But it's a careful truth because one can be aligned with divinity and the logos and their life goes not so well.

That's true.

That's true.

Christ is the ultimate example of that,

Right?

Is someone who was the logos.

He actually was the logos,

Not just embodied it or practiced it.

He was it and his life is not an example of,

Let's say,

Success in any of the ways we might ordinarily define it.

Yeah,

We kind of touched on this the other night in Course in Miracles when we were talking about how it's one thing to see yourself as having your alignment reinforced through the very subtle feeling of rightness that you get that in your very being versus thinking that you're in alignment because the world is rewarding you with money or fame or something like that.

It's not the same thing.

Well,

Then forget what I said because I just … Well,

There's obviously truth to what you're saying because when we are in accord,

When we are lined up,

Things do work better.

Things do work out well.

The only caution we have here is against the idea that if I line up with the truth of my being and if I'm truthful about the laws of existence and I adhere to them,

Then I'll get what I want.

But at the same time,

If everyone was in alignment with the Word in the world,

Then theoretically everything would be provided for,

Everyone would have enough.

Nature would … Heaven on earth.

Heaven on earth.

Nature would do its thing.

Here's another definition we should maybe question because heaven is not some place in the sky that we go after we die.

It's actually the experience of reality while we're here depending on how we conduct ourselves and how we orient our thinking and our framework around the world.

That's a whole other episode.

It is,

Yeah.

Yeah,

We'll do heaven next time,

Maybe.

But Jesus said,

You've quoted this to me many times,

Seek first the kingdom of God and all else will be rendered unto you.

I think in that statement,

He is speaking exactly of that,

That nature will provide everything necessary.

It's not going to give you too much.

I mean,

You're not going to be a billionaire necessarily.

You'll have just enough.

You'll have exactly what you need in the moment,

In every moment.

Yeah.

And that's a powerful point because what that means then,

Going back to your question about how we align ourselves with the Word,

That means then that you understand the Word as it is,

Not as you want it to be.

Because to be aligned with the Word and have your life work out doesn't mean it's going to fulfill your requirements.

Like I will only experience harmony in my life if I make a million dollars this year.

Well,

That's not exactly lawful,

Right?

So that's how we sin in a sense is that we turn ourselves away from that lawful abidance into our own terms.

It's like we want reality to shape itself around our own terms and our own conditions.

Right.

Right.

And we're trying to apply the standards of man,

Of man's ego to our reality rather than understanding that those things are not what we think they are.

For example,

I'm about to quote the entire Course in Miracles here.

I don't want to do that.

But that's so much about what that Course is about is understanding that wealth is nothing.

Having material things is nothing.

Relationships are conditional and fleeting and they don't provide or create the heaven that we're actually looking for.

And so we have to train ourselves and retrain the mind to see those things completely differently,

Almost as encumbrances to heaven as opposed to the things that are going to deliver it to us.

Right.

That's a nice way of putting it.

And that's where virtue arises.

Virtue arises when we see that those things which drive our ego are in the way.

They're not the vehicle to heaven.

They're in the way of heaven.

And when we start to understand that clearly,

That's where the patterning of the logos becomes so clear to us because we start to see,

Oh,

When I'm under the influence of these egoic passions and drives,

I'm misled.

I'm led away from what I really want.

And so just in that comprehension,

We start to have that sense of what it means to follow a truly spirited life.

Yeah.

And that is our sin.

Sin is not an evil act necessarily.

It is simply aligning ourselves,

Placing our loyalty and our trust not in the word but instead in material things or what we've been told is going to make us happy or our narratives or fill in the blank.

Right.

And if you don't know and are listening to this,

The word sin goes back to an old archery term simply meaning to miss the mark.

Oh,

Is that right?

And if we understand … You didn't know that?

I don't think so,

No.

Yeah.

So it simply implies that there's a target,

Let's call that heaven,

And you're off.

You're missing it.

It's why things aren't working for you.

You're off.

You're off.

You've missed the point.

You've missed the target.

And to seek first the kingdom of God is in a sense to know what the proper target is,

To know what the proper aim is.

Oh yes,

I love that.

And that's what the Logos informs.

The Logos informs the pattern that not only describes the proper aim and target of our life but also shows the way to it.

That's why we can say that Christ is the Logos because He came to reveal the way to heaven.

By living His life in absolute alignment with it.

By never deviating from that pattern there is essentially the presence of heaven on earth.

I suppose the idea of right speech,

Right thought,

Right action in Buddhism is a similar expression of the same thing we're talking about?

Very much so,

Yeah.

Yeah,

I'm not particularly conversant in Buddhism but you are.

The key is in the word right and we have to in order to really unpack this we have to understand the difference between the right we normally think of which is the right versus the wrong and to think of right as proper,

As aligned,

As real.

The Buddha's first of those eight components on the Eightfold Path is right view which is to say get your vision straight.

When you see things clearly and truly then you know what to do.

The next thing he says is right action.

He's like from that position where you see things clearly and truly then you know how to act.

Yeah,

Pretty much the whole underpinnings of the Course in Miracles too,

Right view.

That's why all religions have the commonality because they're all informed by the Logos.

Obviously religions differ but they're each in their core saying many of the same things because they're all informed by that underlying pattern of reality.

That is a really excellent point.

It is as we mentioned earlier that vibrational architecture that sustains the universe as a whole and so of course every religion would ultimately derive its true expressions as opposed to the way some religions get manipulated or distorted into things that are not in alignment with the word.

The truth that underlies everything properly expressed,

Rightly articulated,

Properly articulated,

All religions then are pointing to the same truth.

Yes,

And I would say that with some religious traditions doing so more effectively.

Yeah,

You kind of have to reverse engineer to get back to what we're talking about,

The kernel of truth,

The kernel of Logos that underpins them.

Right.

And then what's important here which is the orientation toward truth,

Toward really seeking truth and truth not facts and not informational truth but real spirit truth.

Can we talk a little bit about how that feels in the body,

How it feels physically and maybe even on an emotional or mental level as well.

When we are behaving in alignment with Logos,

When we are embodying truth,

What that feels like,

I experience it as almost pure joy in the moments when I feel like I'm in a flow.

There's a joy,

There's a simplicity,

There's a feeling that I'm moving at exactly the right speed and there is an absence,

It feels like an absence of kind of that chronic sense I've had all my life of being late for an appointment.

I don't know what else to call it but just sort of like there's something undone,

There's somewhere I was supposed to be,

There's something missing or some obligation I haven't met.

That is gone.

When I'm moving in alignment,

Even when I'm speaking in alignment,

There's no energy wasted and that just feels pure and relaxed.

Life becomes a dance.

I mean,

How many of the mystical poets have described life in alignment with God as being just the dance of life itself,

The dance of reality itself?

Or like drunkenness.

Or drunkenness,

Yeah.

You asked a question then you went about answering it by describing many of the attributes or qualities.

I mean,

One of the ways that we know the underlying pattern of reality is through its true components.

You mentioned several,

Joy,

A sense of flow,

A sense of rightness.

We could go further,

We could say the profound sense of love,

The profound sense of power,

A profound sense of transparency,

A profound peace.

There's many different facets and angles through which we can experience that sense of alignment and they're so clear when they're present because they're exactly what we want.

They're exactly what we want.

But you can also go about describing answering this question by saying what it's not.

It's not the sense of hurry,

That it's not the sense of anxiety that we live with.

There's many ways in which we can say this is what it is and this is what it's not.

Yeah,

Yeah.

The sense of lack or the sense of animosity or jealousy.

Yeah.

Right.

In doing so,

We really clarify the difference between what governs the ego,

The logic of ego and the logic of spirit.

It becomes very evident what that difference is.

I wonder how many of people's first profound spiritual experience happens in a moment when they're unguarded and suddenly find themselves in alignment with logos.

Probably have no way of articulating that or knowing what it is,

But there's an awareness that breaks through or there's some kind of an understanding that comes forth and the logos actually is expressed in the body.

Grace,

Yeah.

Well,

I would say darn near a hundred percent.

Darn near a hundred percent.

Because we are not,

As much as we like to think of ourselves as spiritual practitioners who are reaching to heaven or bringing heaven about,

From one point of view,

It's all grace.

There's nothing but grace.

I was thinking of an experience I had before I was practicing yoga intensively.

This had to have been 25 years ago maybe.

I was driving on the freeway,

Home from work I think.

Typical day,

I was exhausted and there was just this like window opened up in my experience and there was utter bliss and joy in the sense of being in absolutely the right place,

Body,

Frame of mind,

Moment in time.

I don't know what else to describe it as except that my boundaries dropped and I was simply everything and it was perfect.

I'm in traffic,

But it lasted maybe five or ten seconds and it was so extraordinary that decades later I still remember that five or ten second window of time as being a peak moment of my life.

At the time,

I didn't label it a spiritual experience,

But I think that's exactly what it was.

Right.

So there again,

You mentioned this state of perfection.

For those who listen and are familiar with the Enneagram,

The Enneagram holy ideas all describe the true qualities and aspects of divinity.

I had a similar moment.

I must have been 16 years old and it was at the movie theater.

I remember sitting there in the movie theater watching the movie and I just remember looking around – I think I had a box of Raisinets – and thinking,

This is absolutely perfect.

A moment of absolute and total fulfillment.

Nothing wanted,

Nothing needed,

Just this sense of everything being right and perfect.

Yeah,

That's exactly what it is.

I guess if we recognize those for what they are,

Then they can serve as sort of a reference point or a way to anchor ourselves back into the Word when we've lost it or we've lost our perception of awareness of alignment with it.

Yes.

Well,

And immersing ourselves within the living Word,

The living presence of God.

Eventually we will be wholly taken over by that.

So what may start in us as a glimpse here or a glimpse there or a few glimpses is on the way of becoming the totality of our life.

There will be a point,

Let's say,

If I could speak sort of idealistically for a moment,

Where we are become the Word entirely.

That is our destination,

To become the Word entirely.

We are each intended for that perfection in this lifetime.

As we were talking about the Logos and the Tao,

We were speaking about the harmony that we experience when we are in accord with that underlying structure of reality.

This verse,

Verse 39 from the Tao Te Ching,

Does a pretty good job of describing the way in which that takes place.

It gives us a beautiful description of the underlying harmony and what happens when we deviate from it.

In harmony with the Tao,

The sky is clear and spacious.

The earth is solid and full.

All creatures flourish together,

Content with the way they are,

Endlessly repeating themselves,

Endlessly renewed.

When man interferes with the Tao,

The sky becomes filthy,

The earth becomes depleted,

The equilibrium crumbles,

Creatures become extinct.

The Master views the parts with compassion because he understands the whole.

His constant practice is humility.

He doesn't glitter like a jewel,

But lets himself be shaped by the Tao,

As rugged and common as a stone.

God Bless!