While I've been expunging negativity from my life and sifting through my self and the accumulation of negative personal habits, attitudes, and relationships, I also have been praying and reading and viewing that of truth and positivity. It is not just for us to expunge the negatives, but to replace with truth and positives fills in what has been vacated.
I consider the Scripture in which Jesus speaks of the casting out of devils--by Whose power Jesus Himself casts out evil. From Luke 11: 21-26 we gain truth from Jesus' teaching:
"When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are undisturbed. But when someone stronger than he attacks him and overpowers him, he takes away from him all his armor on which he had relied and distributes his plunder. 'He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me, scatters.'
"'When the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and not finding any, it says, "I will return to my house from which I came." 'And when it comes, it finds it swept and put in order. Then it goes and takes along seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.'"
We see Jesus' point in the importance of guarding against evil or negative influences and spirits, but also of filling in and keeping within us, that which is to fill up in holiness and truth rather than leave empty space for evil to enter back in, and then some. Fill ourselves with Christ, with His truth, beauty, peace, and goodness. Abide in Christ and remain in His love; allow Jesus to fill our bodies, minds, hearts, and souls, fully!
In order for Christ to full indwell us and for us to remain fully in His love, we must recognize in ourselves the negatives, the diseased and wrongful or unnecessary presences that we must sweep away. This requires us to be quite honest with ourselves and to also discern that which we have kept in our lives or allowed to influence and take up residence in our thoughts and emotions--in our spirits and souls.
In faith in Christ, and through prayer, discernment, and perhaps some wise advice and input from a spiritual director, confessor, and/or the insights given us by the Holy Spirit and Scripture, we face the negatives and receive the strength and courage to rid out or let go of what hinders--even if there has been good in the past. Sometimes it is a matter of outgrowing or a season having passed, and time to plow and reseed, or in essence, rotate crops--or let a field lay fallow (but not empty; still substantive soil being restored).
I've been praying about not only expunging negativity, but then the wisdom and truth in the replacing and filling with holy, Godly, positivity. I mean, to seek God's will and allow Him to guide the filling in with holiness, with virtues, with spiritual truth, and with His love. As Jesus points out in Luke 11:27-28:
"While Jesus was saying these things, one of the women in the crowd raised her voice and said to Him, 'Blessed is the womb that bore You and the breasts at which You nursed.' But He said, 'On the contrary, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.'"
Jesus tells us to not only hear and know what we are to do that is blessed and holy, but to take action (corporeal, active, and/or spiritual) to put God's will and His Word into practice.
Thus this morning I've been resting, trying to manage the pain, pondering, and praying. I watched two documentaries last night of which one posited research on how our attitudes and spirits affect our temporal bodies in health and energy, but also how negativity and positivity affect the spiritual energy and health of our minds, hearts, and souls. God is Creator of the seen and unseen, the sensible and the non-sensible of all creation and creatures.
I also happened to read an article about a man who memorizes Scripture--now up to 20 books of the Bible, and speaks the Scriptures as they were proclaimed in early centuries--expressed with energy and "heart", with lived spirit and impactful meaning.
I considered the documentaries and of the value of meditation and contemplation, of positive imagery and of positive visualization, and the roles and impact of these efforts and practice play in our temporal and spiritual lives. I considered the benefit to the man who absorbs Scripture, and literally fills his body, mind, heart, and soul with the Living Word of God. Yes, these efforts take time and desire of focus. But the results are calculable and measurable scientifically, if one even needs to know numeric, statistical results.
In the Psalm for today, I noticed and experienced the positivity of the hymn, the liturgical "song" with centuries of repetition in the human consciousness of mankind in the timelessness of corporate spirit. I then considered Jesus' words of truth, and those of John the Baptist, pointing the way always with humility and holy deference to Christ our Savior and Redeemer of the world. My thoughts went to pinnacle lines of a commentary by St. Augustine; and I pondered in the silence of solitude here, within, in present moment, of the incomprehensible depth of God's love for us, and that we may participate in His love flowing out to all people, all souls, all His creation.
Thus, I thought of those people most often referred to as family and friends, and especially the word "friends." I considered how abrupt or harsh it can seem when I perceive that having "friends" per se may make us seem secure, or that we tend to find our purpose and worth based upon having friends or thinking of others as "friends". But that in the full spectrum of our lives on earth, and of our progression as not simply human beings but as souls created by God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit--the Trinity--we begin to see not "friends", but rather we see all persons, their outer bodies and presence but more so their inner beings--their souls and all the intrinsic aspects that make up our souls. And we begin to recognize the truth that "friends" or "family members" are far more than what we ascribe to them or they to us. And they are also far less, in many regards, than what we attach to them or they to us.
So rather than "friends," of which we of course would like to possess or expect "friendship" in family members as well as people we've known in our lives, we really come to the truth and reality and holy freedom of deeply understanding that it is love that we desire and God desires in us--love of God in Himself, and thus God's love of others as He loves, and as we then love others. We love in Christ's love, in the Father's love, in the love of the Holy Spirit all persons.
Thus in reality, and perhaps in better descriptive accuracy, I can express the matter of "friends" and "family" as "loves." And of "loves", I have uncountable and infinite "loves". I have love and many "loves", I desire and appreciate love; and the love that I need and is pivotal and requisite for my soul's existence, is of course God's love. The other loves--such as if other persons or more importantly, other souls, love me, that is lovely. But the only love that is requisite for our soul's existence is to accept and know God's love.
I'm not sure I have expressed this effectively, and there are facets that could be further described, but this seems to give the point and the truth of a more precise and accurate reality of the myriad loves of all souls, including those whose externals and attitudes can display negatives or negativity in some aspect or other. And the reality of God's love being the only love that is requisite for souls' existence and sustenance, as replacing my previous notions and even thinking in terms of identity of, for, and being based upon "friends" or family as "friends", rather than of all souls being "loves," and of our loves being possible through our love of God in Himself, and of accepting His eternal, all-encompassing, perfect love.
From St. Augustine's Sermons on St. John's gospel, no. 7, Augustine uses the word familiar to us: "friend", as describing John being "a friend of the Bridegroom." Yes, we can use the word "friend" as God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit is our "friend"--and actually the only friend we truly need for existence. However, I am going to substitute "love" for "friend", as I'm comprehending the reality of God and all that He created of souls and creatures and all creation as more accurately, truthfully: Love and loves.
"'John was there and two of his disciples with him.' John was such 'a friend [love] of the Bridegroom' that he did not seek his own glory; he simply bore witness to the truth (Jn 3:29, 26). Did he dream of keeping back his disciples and preventing them from following the Lord? Not in the least. He himself showed them the one they were to follow.... He declared: 'Why cling to me? I am not the Lamb of God. Behold the Lamb of God.... Behold him who takes away the sins of the world.'
"At these words the two disciples who were with John followed Jesus. 'Jesus turned and saw that they were following him and said to them: 'What are you looking for?' They said to him: 'Rabbi, where are you staying?' As yet they were not following him definitively; as we know, they joined themselves to him when he called them to leave their boat.., when he said to them: 'Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men' (Mt 4:19). that was the moment they joined him definitively, no longer to leave him.
But for now they wanted to see where Jesus was living and put into practice the words of Scripture: 'If you see an intelligent man, seek him out at daybreak; let your feet wear away his doorstep! Learn from him the precepts of the Lord' (cf. Sir 6:36f). So Jesus showed them where he was living; they went and stayed with him.
What a happy day they spent! What a blessed night! Who can say what it was they heard from the Lord's mouth? Let us, too, build a dwelling in our hearts, construct a house where Christ can come to teach and converse with us."
For myself, this day, answers from the Holy Spirit and the Word of the Living God are helping me, guiding me. I need no friends; if I have no friends, it is that I have loves. And all souls are my loves, and His Real Presence is my only needed Love, my only requisite Love for my soul's existence eternally. Yet, as I love God above all things, and I love God in Himself, I then in Him love all He loves; I love all His Loves.
As I am allowing the Lord to help me recognize and embrace this greater reality of His Love, I also am more understanding and at peace with allowing the negatives which are comprised of my misunderstanding of what is love and what is not love, what is of God and what is not of God, and to allow the not-good, not-God, to pass away. I can image the negativity and negatives as simply what is not best, what is not love, what is not necessary, and allow these to float up onto a cloud that gently drifts away.
And then delight, my mind, heart, and soul, and even the emptied-of-not-needed of my body--in the Lord's providing the filling in of His Love, increasingly as I grasp even more so, the existential, ontological beingness of God Is Love. It is His Love that a soul needs for existence; it is God's love that allows us to love as He loves, to have infinite loves through His Love of all souls, all creatures, all creation.
I can love all souls, I am empowered to love all souls; yet I need not all or any temporal people, nor need all or any souls to love me in return. (But we know the holy ones who have passed from this earth do love us, for they are in God and filled with love of God and filled with His Love.) Yet I can love all, and it is love that is in my being--God's Love that indwells. Where and when His Love fills all emptied-of-unnecessary-negatives, love sustains and assures that nothing not-love will enter in, take root, usurp space intended, created by God for God's Love.
This reality is a constant prayer and grace; this is a spiritual truth that frees me and provides the purpose and confidence in God I so need in this juncture of yet another passing over. This morning's contemplation: an Epiphany grace. Grateful, Lord!
God bless His Real Presence in us!
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