To “Reach for a Rose
And be pierced by a Thorn”
Is Being Human.
Intellectual
Honesty with Respect to
Truth is Essential.
The One Thing that is
Never subject to doubt is
The Knowledge I Am.
WHY I BELIEVE
Background/Resume: Retired US Air Force Major (1987) and Airline Pilot (Pan American/1991 and United/2004) with a BS in Marketing (1967) and an MBA (1976) from Penn State.
1. As a youth I was a rather angry young man who kept it bottled up inside. A loner in those days, I was painfully introverted, reclusive, over-weight and bordered on anti-social. In retrospect, I was, quite literally, at war with life as I had been taught to know, live and understand it. “Life sucked, so dying wasn’t such a bad deal?” was a recurring thought that often came to mind in those days. “Rebel Without a Cause,” the title of a 1950’s movie, was a perfect characterization of my frame of mind as a teenager.
2. In this regard, Dad, probably quite accurately, said that it was either the military or my wife Sandy that had saved me from myself. For he really did believe I was only one step removed from heading to San Francisco and becoming, horror of horrors, a hippy; a concern I took great pleasure in not discouraging. It was really a crazy time with Vietnam, the counter-culture, free love (which I somehow managed to miss), etc., but I was too much a child of the 50’s to do anything but be a “straight arrow.” Although I had been brought up as a Christian, God had been placed on the “back burner” as not particularly relevant unless my struggles with life reached crisis proportions. I did, however, manage to take God to Vietnam with me in the form of Psalms 91:7 (re: “A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.”)— a verse that became a prayer God answered more times than I care to remember .
3. Also worth mentioning is that prior to Vietnam service in 1970, I was rather proud of having survived four near-death experiences (NDE). Some kind of an unconscious death wish, I suppose. But laying down a motorcycle front of a car, attempting to roll clear and then looking up to see the car’s bumper over my head and its right front wheel six inches away was the most “moving” of those early experiences. In retrospect, I have little doubt that those mini- NDEs were actually divine wake-up calls; wake-up calls I was a little slow “getting the message” on. Today, I see those experiences as progressively harder “love taps” in which God was saying, “Awake thou that sleepeth, arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light” (Eph. 5:14). Anyway, I got the “mother of all wake-up calls” (I’d like to say final, but I’ve had several lesser ones since) during an emergency bailout from an AC-119K Gunship in Vietnam in June of 1970. A wide-awake NDE I have often refer to as a “divine wake-up call” or, perhaps more aptly, getting hit smack between the eyes with a cosmic two by four (something God sometimes is forced to use to get His more stubborn human mule’s full and undivided attention). Take my word for it, based on personal experience, if God can’t get your attention with a “carrot,” He will use a “stick” (or a “super-sized” club).
4. The bailout itself involved four rather classic manifestations of an NDE, although I was completely conscious—super conscious/rational actually—during the whole process. I won’t go into specific details here, but the altered states of awareness and/or perception that I experienced were: (1) time standing still; (2) me watching me (an in body out-of-body); (3) total life recall; and (4) a conscious choice to live or die. All of which involved states of mind and consciousness that were (by a quantum degree) more vital, real and alive than anything I had ever experienced in more worldly frames of reference.
5. I should have died five times that night. From that, genius that I am, I concluded I had used up at least nine lives already and better use my remaining days to figure out who I was and why I was here. “What on earth am I here for?”, the subtitle of “The Purpose Driven Life,” catches the spirit of my subsequent inquiry very well. The premise I started my search with was rather simple: life either had some ultimate meaning beyond my understanding or, as Shakespeare so eloquently put it, “life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” I readily concluded the former, for concluding the latter would itself be part of the nonsense so concluded. Besides, I had pretty much been liv- ing according to the second assumption and only had an in- creasing number of near death experiences to show for it.
6. The result of all this was a very long search which, to a certain extent, still goes on today; not as a search for Truth Itself, but a fuller understanding of the Truth I had been blessed to find. In this regard, I proceeded under the hypothesis that the Truth I sought must be the “Common Thread” expressed, to a greater or lesser degree, depending on their racial, psychological, cultural or social perspective, in world philosophies, psychologies, theologies and ideologies that had stood the test of time. More poetically, I sought the Truth as the Light of Wisdom and Understanding embedded in any and all such conceptual expressions and, therefore, reflected, with varying degrees of fidelity (some dimmer and some brighter) in, as and through all created existence. Seen in retrospect, and put Biblically, I was actually seeking the Truth of Christ as “ . . . all, and in all.” (Col. 3:11).
7. Well, 10 years or so into my long search for Truth, I was reading the Bible one day and inspired to ask God (Mt. 7:8) to show me the Truth that I had sought for so long, that I might share it with others. Almost immediately, I had what may be described as an “epiphany.” Others have called it a mystical experience, a change of heart, or a sense of at-one-ment with all. In any event, it was a state of conscious union in which I was lifted high (or stepped back far) enough to see the full length and breadth of my own Being. Quite literally, the intellectual light I had been seeking dawned, the mental veil of carnal mind was momentarily rent asunder, and I saw the Truth directly; not in part, as in a glass darkly or self-reflectively, but face to face, even as I am known (2 Co. 13:12). I, quite literally, saw the Truth of God I had prayed for; the Truth that exists beyond the mental screen of words and thoughts that normally veil our eyes to its all-glorious Light. Since that day, more than twenty-seven (now 47) years ago, I have been in the process of “growing up” (Eph. 4:15) into that Truth, that Light; the Truth that I asked God for and was graced and blessed to receive that day. For that revelation was not the end, but rather the beginning of a very intellectual walk home. For, as I soon discovered, seeing the Truth and being true are not the same thing—that seeing is one thing and being another.
8. Put in it’s most precise Christian form, the Truth I experienced as a direct revelation in 1978 was “ . . . the mystery which hath been hid from ages . . . which is Christ in You, the Hope of Glory” (Co. 1:26,27). More specifically, the Truth is Christ, as the Son of God, as the Anointed One, as the Light of the World, as the One I AM that spoke to Moses from the Burning Bush, as the Word or Logos of God made flesh; as a “Pilot Light” (Jn. 1:4) in the heart of man, which can burst into full flame, become a Light unto the world and a Lamp unto the feet of all those around him (Ps. 119:105); a Light that can come fully to life in, as and through man and, ultimately, become his primary sense of being, and identity (or self), if and when he will simply “Let It Be!”
9. More theologically speaking, all this means is that all men, by virtue of the Spirit God breathed into them through Adam in the Garden (Gen. 2:7), have a “Divine Seed, Spark or Pilot Light” that gives them the potential to “grow up into Him in all things, which is the head, even Christ” (Eph. 4:15), if they will simply realize this in their heads, know it in their hearts, and do the things that Jesus advised would set us free. That is, if they will love God with all their hearts, minds and souls, and their neighbors as themselves (Mt. 22: 37–40); if they will deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow Him. (Mt.16:24); if they will die daily (1 Co. 15:31) to themselves as they presently think they are—as a thought and sense of being separate and apart from God and others—as Paul did; if they will die to self-thought and follow the Light of God in their own hearts, follow Christ, they will some day be able to declare with overwhelming joy, as Paul did, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).
10. As for me, I am, always have been, and probably always will be a lover of Truth with a capital “T.” Ultimately, this Truth, which I so love and that I still seek to know (more than 3000 books and counting in the last 40 years) more perfectly, is nothing more than an intellectual’s name for God. And it is that Ultimate Truth of Being that fully Manifest, Personified, or Incarnated—you pick the word—more than 2000 years ago, in, of, as and through the Man known today as Jesus Christ. The same Truth of God that is now directly accessible to all men as a “face to face” experience; as a direct, heartfelt apprehension of Christ as Holy One I AM, the Truth of All Being, the Lord God of All who declared in the Old Testament,” . . . I am God, and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee . . .”(Hos. 11:9) and in the New Testament, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (Jn. 14:6). Amen!
Yours I Am/We Are All One In Christ.
Postscript: “Thy words were found and I did eat them and Thy Word was unto me the joy and the rejoicing of mine heart, for I Am called by Thy Name O Lord God of Hosts” (Jer. 15:16). 2005 (2018)
[Rich Note: Appendix A, “A Preface of Grace” (which is both a mini-autobiography and declaration of what and why I believe) in a “section by section” sampling of “Out of My Mind and Back to My Senses.” For those whose interest might be piqued or experience a heartfelt resonance with what is shared, I would highly recommend downloading the Amazon Kindle sample of OOMM, as it effectively constitutes both a synoptic and seminal, 59 page “mini-book .”]
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