November 8, 2022
It is not even Thanksgiving yet, and a part of me is thinking about Christmas.
And not any old part of Christmas! I’ve been thinking about Santa Claus and that old song:
He sees you when your sleeping
He knows when you’re awake.
He knows if you’ve been bad or good,
So be good, for goodness sake.
(And, of course, I’ve been thinking about Gene Autry’s great rendition of Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town. To hear the singing cowboy croon this tune, click here.)
If that is the case for Santa Claus, just think of the abilities that great “One presence and One power” has! Wait a minute, I’m going to look at my user preferences. There has to be some electronic page where I can click if I don’t want God to see all of my thoughts and behaviors … Where is that electronic page?
WHAT DO YOU MEAN THAT ELECTRONIC PREFERENCE PAGE DOESN’T EXIST?? YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! GOD GETS TO SEE EVERYTHING? SINCE WHEN? SINCE ALWAYS? THAT’S NOT FAIR! WHERE IS THE CUSTOMER SERVICE DEPARTMENT?
I remember being at a wonderful workshop given by Ram Dass (a.k.a Richard Alpert, the Harvard psychology professor who, along with Timothy Leary, was fired for LSD experiments in Cambridge, Massachusetts)
Ram Dass said the problem with LSD and other drugs was that they would take him up but then bring him down. He felt there had to be a spiritual way to experience the spiritual uplifts without the crash landings.
So in the 1960s, he made a pilgrimage to India. Once there, he was led to a guru named Neem Karoli Baba in northern India. This Hindu teacher was seen by many as being an enlightened spiritual master. While deeply steeped in Vedic wisdom and the Upanishads, he was also a lover of Jesus.
Before leaving for India, Ram Dass’ mother had died, and he felt real grief over the loss. He had said nothing about his mother’s passing to anyone in India. But one night, Ram Dass went out to look at the stars. By chance – or was it synchronicity – Neem Karoli Baba was also out looking at the stars.
When Neem Karoli Baba saw Ram Dass, he started talking about Ram Dass’ mother and other family-related matters that Ram Dass had not mentioned to anybody except his psychiatrist back in America. Ram Dass was floored that his guru knew all this about him.
But then, as the days passed, Ram Dass thought, “If the master knows this about my mother and the other things about my family, then he must also know about when I did X and how I failed to do Y. He must also know about P, D, and Q … Gulp!”
However, another thought and feeling overcame Ram Dass. “My guru knows all this about me and still loves me. He loves me just the way I am,” he realized with gratitude.
There was another thing that Ram Dass told us that had started to develop in him. He got a strong desire to clean up his act, but not because of fear of punishment. He wanted to do this out of love for himself and his guru, and to be more in line with what he believed to be spiritually true. He said it was all done on a positive basis, not out of negative reasons.
It’s great that you don’t have to go to India to realize the same spiritual truths. I have been reading and enjoying the blog posts of Gwen Faulkenberry, who lives in the Ozarks in Arkansas. She writes that recently she was wrestling with a tough issue. “I felt embarrassed for not being stronger, for not handling it (this situation) well,” she admitted. However, for some reason, she didn’t want to pray over this issue or take it to Spirit.
Gwen said that a Bible verse struck her. Matthew 9:4 says, “But Jesus knew their thoughts.” She said that she felt like God knew her thoughts throughout the situation, even though she had not sought God’s help.
“I remembered I was not alone in my head even though I hadn’t prayed, and I realized that just because I don’t engage the Lord, it doesn’t mean that he hasn’t engaged with me. He knows my thoughts, so I might as well not try to hide them or edit them,” she said.
She said she felt Spirit saying to her, “I am with you, even here. You are not alone.” The great Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung, had carved in stone over the doorpost of his Zürich house: “Called or not, God is there.”
Gwen suggests the following “Faith step” for us: “Is there something you need to get out of your head?“ Write a letter to Spirit about it. “Then listen for His still, small voice,” she adds.
This all boils down to a few key points. Many of us have known these points since we were very young. The hard part is to follow up on these points when the “rubber meets the road.”
~ God/Spirit/our Higher Power knows all our thoughts and actions, so it is foolish to try to hide them.
~ God/Spirit/our Higher Power/Jesus/Neem Karoli Baba not only knows our thoughts and actions but He/She/It truly loves us with everlasting love just the way we are.
~ Called or not, God is there.
~ When we are in this state of consciousness, we can clean up our act not out of fear and negativity but through positivity, hope, and faith.
So maybe it really is good that “he sees you when you’re sleeping/he knows when you’re awake.”
Many blessings,
Rev. Rick
