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Guiding Thought
Your Self wills only to extend itself. Extending, sharing, creating as Divine Love, through Divine Mind, is your sole purpose. Your Self knows its fullness in Divine Love and wills only to liberate you to fulfill your purpose and release your Joy.
Sharing
Please take a look at yesterday’s post, as the precursor to today.
Here is the idea I am working with today: How do we find the form of fulfillment that is the perfect expression of Divine Love? How do we live in such a way that is the perfect expression of Divine Love? And how do we know that we live in just such a way?
This is where I get hung up, sometimes…Am I doing what best expresses Divine Love, and how do I know?
This, to me, represents the classic age-old question of spiritual versus material dichotomy, which basically says you can be either spiritual and deny the material, or you can be material, which inherently denies the spiritual. (I am not saying this is actually the case; I am saying this is a long-standing formulation of it.)
In other words, If I am spiritual, doing the work of Divine Love, living through Divine Will, how do I incorporate the need/want for material goods? Aren’t material goals counter to spirituality? And if I put aside material goals, in order to live a spiritual life, does that mean I will be poor and destitute?
Sometimes I think I’ve had way too many lives as a monk in the woods, or in a cave to be able to understand it being OK to have, need, and use material things to live.
If I were a monk in a cave, it would be easy: deny the material things. Be spiritual. No conflict. No problem. Rely on God. Be fulfilled.
But I live in 21st century American Society. I have to figure out what it means to be fulfilled in Love while being surrounded by materialism, how to use money and material goods but not be “consumed” by them, to be in the world, yet not of it, to contribute to the world fully in a way that really matters. You know what I mean?
I feel conflict with this. How do I want anything (material goods, money, etc.) without betraying my essence? What is the balance between material achievement and spiritual work? How can I create my life so that it can still be devoted to God, while living in a material society? How do I balance the time that I need to work to make money with the time I want to devote to God for spiritual practices?
I am working this out. It feels big. It feels like I have been working on this one thing for a long time. Thanks for being my sounding board. I look forward, already, to What is Fulfillment, Part III.
SusanWithPearls 
mama mia ! how you use those words !! long ago as a young divorcee i searched for a definition of love that i could use on a daily basis with everyone that i loved or had decided to love..i found one in scott peck’s book “road less traveled”. it is this: “to extend oneself for one’s own or another’s spiritual growth”. i liked it and i still do..this definition takes me outside of my self and into other’s lives,needs. but now ,with your words susan,i am back into myself as i should be,with god alone. i am in a position where i will soon be able to actually live on my pension which means that i won’t even have to think about working..as an old woman,i will be able to just Be.when i think of myself that way i feel a gentle peace with myself and my god and my little world..i feel joyful and happy..i feel like i am a lover and not a fighter…would all of us could have that peace and tranquillity before death. oh i still love my definition of “to love”, and still use it throughout my life…but the extrovert that I have been for so long was from a time passed..i know deeply that i have always been introverted..
so now as i am “becoming” again,there will be changes and transformations within, accentuating the woman of god within me…i cannot immediately change myself but i see in my mind , whom i will become….with god as my daily partner ,i will paint,oils and watercolours and beautiful works of god’s glory; i will garden,and enjoy the walk and enjoy the talk every day with my Lord. i will pray and i will meditate daily-all day long and i will have my everlasting friend by my side. i will perhaps begin work on a masters degree in theology-theodocy and open new pathways in my brain… i will keep writing my children’s books and do the drawings for them to leave a legacy for the innocent babies. and material things will fly away from me and i will not be encumbered by them….my poems will become encased in a book cover,so my family might better understand me and who i am with god. oh,i am such an egotist,such an idealist !!…a dreamer one might say..
and yet there is so much more that i need opened to me,realized in my soul…extended from you to me,that i may fulfill it.
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Amen! You go! All the way. You’re doing it. I’m happy for you.
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