ON MOVING UP DEEPER

I say unto you, that ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. -- Matthew 5:39

Matthew 5 in the Bible is the Sermon on the Mount. In it entirety it goes contrary to the reasoning mind, to rational thought. It is paradox start to finish. Look at resist not evil -- in what world does that make sense? And the answer is: In the fourth dimensional world.

I have been given to going to the outside of enough, to the extreme, to prove wrong something I don't agree with...the subject might have been the dangers of sugar, and I'd bring up Hitler and Nazis to prove my point. That being true, just imagine on my first reading my resistance to the entire Sermon, but most especially to "resist not evil."

I was at the time in a world of trouble trying to let go of a particular obsession of mine. One day I was pondering the Sermon...how it could not be right...and I received a blinding flash of the obvious: "The more you resist your obsession, the more obsessed you get."

It was as if God had spoken in my right ear, and I knew it to be true.

I became a believer in the Sermon, and I have tried since then to at least keep it in mind at some point during my day. (Which in actuality is just my going contrary to what I want to do or think in the moment.) I probably have failed as often as I've succeeded, but wanting to counts...toward willing, toward ready.

I became more willing when it became clear to me that I can lie (and have), I can deny (and have), but all that I accomplished was I kept binding myself tighter and tighter to that which I was resisting.

It is our refusal to resist not our perceived evil, to simply hug it and kiss it and let it go, that makes it, in effect, the god of our understanding. Our entire being is super-glued to that which we want to release.

Why is it such a hard lesson learning that we can't hug it and let it go at the same time? The reason, of course, is that we are living in our reasoning mind...believing victory will be ours for the thinking.

Just like acceptance, we can't resist not evil through our thinking. We've got to move us up a notch deeper...and for that, we must go to God.

Thank you.