gate way

"Lift up your heads, O ye gates!" (Psalm 24:7)

Stop just plowing along on the horizontal. Open to the vertical.
Lift up your spiritual head. Aspire to the Above!

You are a gate between two worlds, two fields. You are a gateway to the Divine.

Be a gateless gate. Come unhinged.
Drop the snug little identity you have created for yourself,
your little cocoon of self satisfaction.

Open to Full Awareness! Allow the visible and the invisible,
the physical and the spiritual, the exoteric and the esoteric to be as one!

Lift up your heads, O ye gates!

consigned

"For God has consigned all men to disobedience so that He may show mercy to all." (Romans 11:32)

I know this verse is conventionally interpreted with the focus on the latter part of the verse: God's mercy.  I understand that and greatly appreciate the mercy of the Cosmos, of the Tao, of the Source, of God.

Yet, when one reads these words without the supporting frame of conventional Christian doctrine, they portray a quite different scenario. We humans are CONSIGNED to disobedience. Why? So God may have the quality of mercy. Without us, God could not be merciful. Our disobedience (to which we have been consigned) is essential for the bringing into existence of a distinct quality of God. In other words, we are co-creators of God and with God.

Much has been made in literature and plays and movies and sermons and poetry of "The Fall" of humankind as an explanation for our situation.   This is not just a Christian motif, but can be found worldwide across cultures.

But if we rely on this verse as stating a truth, whether we call it a fall or disobedience, we are serving an important role in the Cosmos. Through our very nature, consigned or no, we call mercy into existence.