The Master's Ladder, Step Six

The Master's Ladder, Step by Step 

Step Six 

Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God. 

Hermes, a righteous pagan, prayed very sincerely about his children who had become bound in pleasures and dulled of mind, easily the victim of those who would use them and abuse them. (We are enslaved literally by our passions.) He reported that the Shepherd of Mankind, appeared to him from the throne of the father and said that God had been listening to his prayers and had sent him to answer any question Hermes had.  Hermes discovered he did not have a question while standing in the glory of the Good Shepherd, but only one request, he said, “I want to know God and things as they are.”  I've shared this beautiful picture with many Protestants and some of them would correct me and say, “He needed to stop at, 'I want to know God”' their creation rejecting taint of Gnosticism exposed. 

Saint Basil the Great said, “Brethren, think of the kingdom of heaven and just this, a genuine contemplation of realities." 

It is very common to paint a false picture, as if what we see now in shadow and what we will see in the heavenly realm, as something removed from this plane of living here and now.  It is not so removed and cannot be. 

I ask your forgiveness for the first person story used in this Step.  You see, when we speak of "seeing God" it is not an abstraction or a promise of time to come. It is lived bodily, in Christ incarnationally, so that my experience, even through all the twists and turns of my life, is living theology, not abstract theory. Oh for sure, I at times lost my way; not holding a map of God's Kingdom, but just a clear and real childhood experience of it, which set me on my journey that crisscrossed "The Way" ever with true LIFE in sight even walking in the valley of the shadows; in every instance, taking that chance that I might lose my way, it was REAL for me. 

Like the first Christians having heard bits and pieces of the writings we have collected and called "The Bible" which none of them possessed, took hold of the reality of God's Incarnational Presence in Jesus Christ, in the comfort and instruction of the Holy Spirit and lived their theology totally, bodily, in their shared experience that became to Evangelistarion and the Praxapostolos called the New Testament and the Holy Fathers. Many walked, some stumbled, many erred, many gained correction, many crisscrossed "The Way" few ended in ruin, all lived in hope.

IF I did not have lived experience to share, what would be the purpose of writing at all? Should I simply quote scriptures, make a recitation of the Holy Fathers, which is so much the custom? Theology is NOT letters on a page.  We cannot create theology by writing our ideas on a page. The raw material I have to use to conceptualize, to intellectualize, to truncate into human language and reduce to mere words on paper has to be experienced, and has to be my experience of it or I am, theorizing and not theologizing.

"This is what the inspired Scriptures call blessedness: for 'the kingdom of heaven is within you.'" 

In a previous step I shared how following tragedies experienced at a very early age, in a certain sense childhood was over. And that what had "saved me" what gave me strength and will to live, was a vision of the Beauty of God's creation.  I want to expand on that here.

As a boy, in the Autumn of the year when the dried Johnson Grass was a beautiful golden color, I would flatten a few square feet of it, like a nesting bird does and sit for hours watching the symphony of light and color that was the beautiful place we call Georgia. The wild rabbits leaned not to be fearful, and would come just out of arms reach and watch me. Quail nested thickly in that grass and they too would sometimes walk by me as if I were a stump. The golden grass was so high I could sit hidden in it, on the hillside of my father's farm and look across the way to the pine thicket swaying against the cobalt-blue shy.  (Sadly a sky this generation has never seen because of chemical dumping.) The clouds would drift by. I didn't need T.V. or games.

We didn't have a T.V., I know this was a great blessing of formative years. I witnessed early the blinding effect, the artificial personalities of classmates, each parroting the same wit or mythology, proudly role playing thinking it their own personality. I would learn the origin of the common thought processes being picked to play a character whose origin was from T.V.  This wasn't an analysis of a young boy too nascent to think such thoughts, but an organic conclusion by merely being a boy trying to make sense of the society that was school and play. It was in my fifth decade before I owned a small color T.V. Previously, most of the time, I kept a tiny black and white T.V. for news.

I cannot imagine the fog of images, the screaming noise, that floods the mind of a young person today, were that child to try to simply still the mind, to hold complete focus on God. Today the mind from the first cognition is locked in an artificial paradigm stimulated by a Luciferian mechanism, cranking out human capital.  It is a great slavery to masters of technology and it is only going to get worse and the Luciferians are bragging about it. How, in a mere decade all human consciousness will be completely controlled, completely artificial.  here in this insanity is the Reign of Satan.  It is pressing the Vision of God into deeper and darker jungles of obscurity. Yet, it is still possible to step out of the chaos, right here and right now. 

Here is the Kingdom of God. Not some far away shore. Here is the Kingdom of God not a foretaste "of glory divine," not a foretaste of something that will come to be, but actual participation in what IS now, to the degree possible while in the body of corruptible flesh; flesh that strains to absorbed into incorruption, immortality forming, growing, taking dominion over mortality even now.
1Co 15:53ff  For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible should put on incorruption, and this mortal should put on immortality, then will come to pass the word which was written: "Death was swallowed up in victory." "O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?"

Note, "put on" in this scripture is the Greek word "ENDOE" which means, absorbed into - not merely like putting on an outward suit.  The word comes to us in the English word ENDUE, to endow with some quality or characteristic. The quality and characteristic is REAL LIFE, and with it TRUE vision where God is not hidden, where his Glory permeates the meanest of things, the lowest of things.  

As a child I consciously touched that Kingdom in extremely simple faith. He was real, I loved him, I knew he loved me and loved everything and everyone I saw.  I knew what it was I was seeing, that Kingdom of God in the chilly air with the sun shining as I would still the mind, and be at peace, totally at peace. Like a Yogi, I would sit for hours being totally aware of the Presence of the Holy Spirit of All Life in everything I saw. It was four decades before I heard that prayer, "O Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, Thou art everywhere present and fillest all things, Treasury of blessings and Giver of LIFE: come and abide in us, and cleanse us from every impurity, and save our souls, O Good One!
Holy God! Holy Mighty! Holy Immortal! have mercy on us."

In my nascence, I did not realize the depth of this spiritual sight. At the time, in my young innocence I assumed that it was what everyone saw or at least what they could see if they stopped, if they listened, if they opened to the beauty that was so very, very obvious. So then, like a watchful Pagan of old, in my ignorance, I found God.

Romans 1:19ff "For what can be known of God is clearly visible in the things that are created" 
In church I found the beginning of "conceptualizing theology," but in the field of God's beauty I found communion with Him. I could not understand the abstract arguments about religion, arguments for the existence of God, for me it was self-evident, obvious except to the obtuse.  Nothing I saw, nothing I experienced of him, matched the angry picture of God I heard often related. I could not reconcile the creator Being, who created such great beauty and variety of beauty, such animation and life with the earth rejecting God of my birth tradition. I could not understand why my Mother would become so thrilled when suddenly she realized the Spirit of God was near. The idea was foreign to my psyche, because I had seem him 'in the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead." I saw God, in the air, in the light, in the colors, in the music of the wind and the song of the birds, in the warmth of the sun and the shade of the clouds, in the golden grass, in the bright red bushes and in the song that vibrated in my heart/mind. In my young innocence, struggling with the passions wasn't so much. I would sit for hours so my soul could commune with the All Mighty. It was not fantasy, it was communion.

It wasn't until years later that I learned that Paul had said,"For all that may be known of God by men lies plain before their eyes; indeed God himself has disclosed it to them. His invisible attributes, that is to say his everlasting power and deity, have been visible, ever since the world began, to the eye of reason, in the things he has made." Buddha came to the same understanding, he said,"it can be seen as something invisible, the permanence in the samsara." Lao Tsu said, "It is what makes the ground firm, the air subtle, the water liquid." David said, by many different word that worlds form by his power.

And someone very early did a very good job of teaching me who Jesus was. When I shared with a neighbor who was a Bible College teacher, that I could see God everywhere, she did not argue, she told me I was seeing his glory and asked me to learn this verse from Hebrews, which besides the Lord's Prayer, John 3:16, and the 23rd Psalm, is the only scripture I have committed to memory to this date.
"Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;  - Heb_1:3
And thousands of time in my life, to center my mind, I have turned to Hebrews and read:
Heb 1:1ff  God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,  Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;  Being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. 

David, Buddha, Lao Tsu and Paul's statements hold differing degrees of identical meaning. Well, a young boy, came to know this wisdom, years before he learned the words.

"The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: 
Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you." So no. Look all you want, you are not going to see the Kingdom of God in a tree or bush, unless his spirit if firing your vision, enlightening your mind.  

Those experiences as a child, in that field with vision of God's Kingdom, became a golden thread, thin and sometimes barely visible to me that held reality, when all else was shaken, including me, and I could hear the gates of hell rattling. Later after much struggle and grief, having had the Holy Spirit pull the religious idols and religious crutches from my life, I sat in much physical pain recovering from a railroad head-on collision. For years the thought of the clutter of plants in the house was unacceptable. I had painted myself into a very sterile corner. Simplicity was the rule. I slept on a bed role, I could not stand a normal bed. I owned few clothes, only what I absolutely needed. I ate a simple diet, etc., etc., and to a great extent I was dead. At the time, my children were the sole, living, breathing thing to me. I can't imagine those days without them.  But, all the beauty I had witnessed and enjoyed in my youth was far removed from me, the world had become brutal, vulgar and sterile.  Behind my many, many smiles I grieved knowing that the innocence of my children were threatened by it. There was no way to protect them from it. They must be made strong to face it. The brutality of those days was oppressive, home an oasis. I had endure four teenagers killed by the train I was driving, totally their fault, but still, blood and gore, the shock, waste, and insanity of it. At the coroner's inquest, I discovered from their friends, four car loads of them, they had been playing chicken with the train. I could write a book about these years, three as a nursing home administrator and seven as a railroad engineer. Suffice it to say, the experience had made me brittle and I had become almost, that is an important almost, a philosophical humanist. 

But in physical pain recovering from that collision, I looked around at the white walls (they had to be white because I could not stand the complexity of colors) and realized that minimalist ascetic was death. It was something I had adopted that was life rejecting. Somehow in psycho-pathos I had taken on the lie that I was not supposed to enjoy life.  I was supposed to spiritually conquer it.  In those days recovering, I rebelled against the nihilism I had accepted, though I did not realize it was nihilism wounding me. I instructed my wife to go buy many plants. "How many" she asked. "As many as we can afford."  Huge tropical plants were on sale in front of Kmart, most were ten gallon pots; she bought twenty of them!  Next I sent her for birds . . . I sat surrounded in the beauty of God's goodness again totally aware of its force, the permanence in the Samsara. And I healed, refused partial disability and recovered through much struggle.

Again, in that struggle I discovered anew and with more force, God in everything. What the theologians call God's Immanence.  I discovered anew the meaning and significance of those hours, days and years, on my Father's hillside, sitting on my Father's golden grass, breathing my Father's air, enjoying my Father's beauty, being bathed in my Father's sunshine, listening to my Father's music in the songs of the birds and the wind. But, this time, it took a long time and a lot of struggle before I began to see God also in EVERYONE. 

Listen again, "Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God." How can a pure heart help but see God, since purification creates vision and here we sit, completely surrounded by God? The ancient Asvesta, the sacred text of the Zoroasterans has Zoroaster saying, "He who sees God in himself, sees God in everything."  Sadly a great many Christians get stuck in spiritual adolescence, or come to some system of legal abstractions that are memorized, rehearsed and recited but rarely lived, or come to the Church and find only the Institution. These things are NOT the Kingdom of God!

Our Heavenly Father: Let us not be caught in the fear of servile religion; keep Tradition out of ignorance and offering our correctness as a sign of righteous enlightenment. 
Let us not be caught in the tyranny of our rational minds, which creates innovations upon the faith, which leads us to hold prideful theologies that diminish God to the level of our understanding, or worse, which deny Him altogether.
Let us not be caught by the tyranny of our emotions, mistaking our soul's phantasy producing powers for the working of the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of LIFE. 
Let us not be caught in the mere form of the visible church, but in the LIFE of it, who is Jesus Christ, the Living Word of God, present to all that truly seek Him.
Let our keeping of Tradition spring from our living experience of it, not because it was handed down to us, but because we experience LIFE in it. Fill us with the warmth of your LOVE, so our keeping of Tradition for the sake of generations next, springs from that Love, from hearts that seek continual repentance, from broken (poor) spirits, and broken and contrite hearts, you will not despise. Amen. 

The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: 
Luk 17:21  Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within 

But IF one sees God's mercy and grace at work in himself, he has to witness the same spirit at work IN the world, coursing LIFE into animation, and BEING into existence nano-second by nano-second.  

There is no vision of God, as in the New Age movement and certain mind sciences, where one sees ones own self AS God, sees matter as evil, even sees matter as an attack on God, something into which God would never enter, something we must escape.

There is no vision of God in Christianism, which tainted by Gnosticism is life rejecting and merely marks time as an obstacle to God. 

When we realize that Jesus Christ is God revealed to Humankind, and that Truth is a "person and God," then coming to see God is coming likewise to see Truth. And the "view" of God in time and space is so much more than the appreciation of the reality of God's creative energy in the creation, but it is the key to seeing God in the new creation being formed by Jesus Christ, in us and in those around us. In other words it is the vision of the Kingdom Saint Basil spoke of, it is also His Body -  "the Church." 

Such a view of God creates true "learning" i.e. Wisdom. Such a view is the opposite of spiritual blindness. Purification and vision having a direct correlation, without purification we are blind. In our impure state, the Holy Spirit has to work around our blindness, draw us to the Father, through the jungle of our psychopathology. Just to remind us, this blindness is received in our "education," our "philosophy," our "personal mythology," our "culture," our "lusts," our "passions," etc., etc. The Holy Spirit has to work around the obstacles in this jungle to draw us to the "truth." I'm not saying it does not happen, but what a pitiful, weak and irrational path!The Holy Spirit does, amazingly, what would seem intellectually an impossible task. All of our so-called "epiphanies" or "theophanies" are the work of purification/illumination, little strings of truth that have a habit of turning into unbreakable lifelines when the sea churns and the vision of hell roars . . if we are experiencing these enlightenments and not just "conceptualizing them." As we are purified we gain sight. 

Coming out of the legalism of Western though into the organic reality of the True Catholic Church was not easy. It happened slowly as in the degrees that I could heal. And by no means do I claim any sort of compete healing, but the witness of enough of it that my sight, my perceptions are now, more like that of my boyhood days, having come full circle to the simplicity of God and things as they are. "Unless you become as a little child you cannot enter the Kingdom of God"  But in that process when I was stuck, my spiritual father and confessor said to me, “Do you realize that perception of Truth is primarily a product of character.”
“What?”  He was talking about “spiritual things” and now he was talking about “character.”  Isn't that the great divide, the fact that people exercise spiritual gifts, while being terrible people?  How many "ministries" have to implode in vulgarity, depravity and financial scandal before those great "faith" ministries are recognized for what they are.  When they say, "But I cast out demons and healed the sick and even raised the dead in your name" . . . Jesus doesn't say, "You are lying." No he said, "You worker of iniquity, depart from me I NEVER KNEW YOU."

The exercise of Spiritual Gifts, just like the exercise of the "appearance" of Mercy, have not meaning outside the reality of His Kingdom that is bonded together by HIS blood in, in HIS love.  Love and Character are IDENTICAL.
My confessor said, “Character is the reality of who you really are, of what you would do were there absolutely no restraint on you and you could do anything your heart desired. If you had absolute power, you would become corrupted absolutely."  I had been struggling with a particular temptation and I knew, that if I truly thought I could get away with it I would do it.  

It was a particular large sum of money a widow with only one living relative, whom she hated, was trying to give the prison ministry, what it did not need. I met her through an inmate.  I knew her hatred blocked her proper action. With her grand son in prison for life without parole, that was her grand daughter's inheritance. I knew that I had no right to it, but my state of heart, my character was that if I could have taken the money without her daughter's knowledge I may have. Well, no, I would have.  I realized in that moment, that just like my friend who saved the man from the burning car, simply out of his own stubborn pride, "he wasn't going to have a man burn to death in HIS presence, even if the guy was a worthless drunk." The ONLY reason that I did not take that money was out of pride. I didn't want to give the grand daughter an opportunity to accuse me of any impropriety. WHEN I should have been repulsed by the evil idea, out of love for the grand daughter, who I knew through her brother, the inmate.  

Could you take someone's inheritance who you loved and cared about? Could you rob from anyone, IF you understood you were not only robbing them but GOD. "What you do to the least of these, you do also to me."  David having murdered a man, said, "Against you, and you only Lord, have I sinned and done this evil in your sight."  All our sins, no matter the what carnage we leave in our wake, are against HIM.  I told my confessor about it.  He said, “There is your character. Stop pretending! You are a thief!” Yes, but I was a very religious one; that should make all the difference, right?  Some people seem to think so, but they are very WRONG. 

A most difficult idea to accept by the "ordinary good person" is the reality of their spiritual blindness. They do not realize that their own goodness is just another illusion and blindness. Jesus even called such goodness, "filthy rags." (And I believe the reference was to menstrual waste -pretty graphic talk). 

We see demonstrated before us every day in the economy of philosophy and politics the fact that most people sincerely believe truth to be "relative." The most hellish things can be "justified in context" and "explained away." The assault on the foundations of truth is the history of the last two centuries.  It is interesting that "rational philosophy" has in these deconstructionist times "disproved itself." In this they are correct and have only proved the groundlessness of rational philosophy. Truth and rationality do not walk in lock step. So we see sets of circumstances presented and the talking-head commentators all "spinning" the facts according to the truth their puppet masters require.  It is not different in "so-called" objective sciences, the same "spinning" to preconceived notions and political agenda is clearly present, clearly documented.  When we speak of things, REALLY as they are, we are speaking of sight on a clearly different plane of vision than is “common to this world.”  

Can a person blinded by passions comprehend what he/she reads, sees, hears? No! Absolutely NOT! They can be draw to something better, but their vision is defused through the Idols of their passions, like light through a prism, it may create in their mind a beautiful colleague of colors and pattern, a wealth of perception but you can't find a usable and true image in it.   

Objectivity (the contemplation of realities) is not foun
d within the compass of reason alone. Reason is influenced by our corrupted wills and passions. (impurity) While it may be impossible to individually be completely objective, and only the greatest of saints can apprehend meaning in its fullest and proper context (the rest of us will always project nuances of distorted meaning), getting at the basic ontological realm of reality is possible for those who are open and desire it --not an elite group (like the gnostics), but anyone who is willing to endure in humility the humiliation of purification – contrition and reform growth and healing in the Life, IN Christ's body, the Church. 

Objectivity and reason used rigorously and most fully lies within character, not merely the intellect. Therefore, the discovery of truth (synonymous with uncorrupted meaning, i.e. a contemplation of realities) to a great and maybe the greatest extent depends upon the condition of the mind/heart of the discoverer. AND there are two roles to be played in the act of communication, speaking in truth and being able to hear and comprehend truth. Those unwilling to hear will not hear, when they speak it will have no basis. 

Ever seeking, but never finding - think of the library of books about Jesus, the Fathers, Church History, types of theology etc., etc., One has to ask, where is TRUTH?  Does every spiritually shriveled person dragging a razor's edge agenda across the life-pulse of sacred/theology and church history receive the truth of it? Hardly. Whether truth (which does not change and is not subjective) is received is not completely contingent upon the author or his cultural/political situation in history. Rather, it also depends upon the purity of the speaker and hearer's character. This is always the case. 

Sometimes the distortions of vision, skewed by character are so blatantly obvious they become a caricature of the person offering the “truth.”  Since Jesus the Person is Truth, let us use some graphic examples about "Him." 

Let us set up the idea by:"Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God."
Good enough and True. Those pure in heart see God - the fullness of the Godhead Bodily - when they see Jesus.

Cursed are the Psychopathic sinners who are the impure of heart, for they see only their own distortion, but they do not realize it."

To Wit:
For the sodomite, Jesus was a sodomite and had a boy lover, named John. The sodomite sees sodomy. 

For the womanizer, Mary Magdalene was Jesus' lover. The womanizer see womanizing.

For the bi-sexual, both of the above. The bi-sexual see bi-sexuality. 

For the person fearful of the moral demands and responsibilities of Christ's REAL PRESENCE in the Apostolic Church – they are blinded by spiritual anarchy, they see spiritual anarchy. You know the meme, the Church has never really existed except in the chaos of spiritual anarchy. 
  
For the pacifist, Jesus was a pacifist. The pacifist sees pacifism. 

For the Marxist, Jesus was a "liberation theologian." The New Testament Church was the original Communist Community. The Marxist sees Marxism.  

For the revolutionary, Jesus was a radical revolutionary. The revolutionary sees revolution.

For the feminist, Jesus was a feminist. In the woman at the well, the woman taken in adultery, and the fact that women played a very important part of Jesus' Ministry - the feminist sees feminism. 

For the religious fundamentalist, Jesus was a fire breathing, bible thump preacher. The fundamentalist sees fundamentalist culturalism. 

For the moralist, he was a moralist.
  
For the Rosicrusian, Mason and Kaballist, New Ager, Buddhist, Hindu, Theosophist, and pure Luciferian, Jesus was a mystic -even though they have to gut the Gospels like Thomas Jefferson did in the Jeffersonian Bible to make him such. (The mystic sees a mystic)

The bending of truth to fit the agenda is too obvious to be easily ignored even by those blinded by their own agenda. They ought to at least see the distortions in the agendas of others and they often do. Remember from the last lesson how clearly the anti-Solipsists was able to see the distortions of Solipsism?  AND, how the Solipsists looked at the anti-solipsist and sees he is just a baseless reactionary. (Mote in your brother's eye, etc) 

Okay here comes the hard part: 
Listen carefully,
"Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God"
in the Moslem, 
in the sex offender
in the dictator
in the storm trooper
in the Savage 
in the saint, 
in the whore, 
in the healer, 
in the killer, 
in the Catholic, 
in the Buddhist, 
in the Baptist
in the drug addict, 
in the unfaithful wife, 
in the drunken husband, 
in the A.I.D.S. baby, 
in the homosexual, 
in the left wing politician, 
in the right wing politician, 
in the immoral president, 
in a cheating wife,
in a philandering husband,  
in the lesbian, 
in the snake, 
in black skin, 
in white skin, 
in yellow skin, 
in red skin, 
in the nose of a Jew,
in the drum beat of the savage, in the symphony of Bartok . . . " etc, etc, etc.  

To whatever degree you cannot see God in the Samsara, you are impure of heart.  We are not suggesting "indifferentism" here, as in "it's all good man!" quite the opposite, but the view WITH Judgement RESTORED, able to separate the sin and sinful damage from the creature of God.  

A saint who sees only evil and the work of Satan in this world, is no saint, at all. 

Clear vision reveals the work of Satan, it most certainly does and in levels and degrees of complexity, that such vision in one unprepared would create brittle cynicism and increase their chance of suicide or heart failure.  We live in the era where because of the increased pain in the society, a lot of people are looking deeply into the chaos, and unprepared they are destroying themselves in the process. 

An Orthodox Father speaking of the "idea of theology" said, "Being a theologian is first and foremost to be a specialist in the ways of the Devil. Illumination and especially glorification convey the charisma of the discernment of spirits for outwitting the Devil, especially when he resorts to teaching theology and spirituality to those slipping from his grip."

The FIRST STEP on The Way is Purification, and Purification and Illumination work in tandem and only the pure in heart see God. The humiliation and pain of taking these steps cannot be avoided, any more than a festering wound can be healed without lancing, flushing, irrigating with healing medicine and guarding it so it does not become contaminated and fester again.

When we lance, flush and heal our own wounds, that experience can make us a healer, if we let it.

An Example:I met a very beautiful woman who just discovered her husband's gay secret life. He was very wealthy and gave her five million dollars to just shut up and entertain herself while she reconciled herself to her new reality as his "cover."  She was shattered. She contacted me about helping her set up a new Arts Alliance in a suburb, which would have visual arts and a concert performance hall. I was surprised to find myself not enjoying the role, although I was paid as a consultant. I did not know her story and only knew she was wealthy and tossing around a lot of money.
She naturally assumed that I would be enthused about the project, since several years earlier we had talked about the need for just this thing.

Noting that I was phoning it in, so to speak she said to me, "I though you of all people would really enjoy this. Yet you seem distracted maybe even sad."
I was distracted, I was sad, so I just told here the truth. "It is getting to where I dread answering the phone. You see, about thirty percent of my client base are Gay men, and they are dying like flies. The total waste of it is hard to watch. I would like to run and hide, but instead I end up spend all the time I can spare talking with them, praying when they ask. It is a great suffering sight that haunts me right now. It has certainly washed the luster off this project for me."
I saw here turn steely cold, she said through clinched teeth, "Do you know my husband is gay?"  I assured her I didn't but I don't think she trusted my answer. I silently cursed myself for letting my guard down.  I did not hear from her for quite a while, a few years, and when I saw next she had greatly aged. 

She took her sizable divorce settlement, bought a huge old Victorian house, and set about taking in AIDS babies. Some of them died in the early days, some of them are grown, HIV positive and no sign of AIDS. She saw the doctors were killing them with treatment, hounded her ex-husband for information, studied nutrition and natural anti-virals, and raised a second family, some nine or ten, who call her mother.  In the early days, I would, when I could, drop in and just hold whichever one who seemed to suffer the most. I saw her go from being a dull-eyed blond-haired, beautiful trophy wife, living an empty and fake marriage with a drag queen, to the gray-haired very tired looking woman, with eyes that can shine through you.  In the dark early days I said to her, “I don't know how you do it.” She said much to my surprise, words that thrilled me to my core, because I did not know she found faith. “Don't you see God when you look at them?”  I could not speak without looking the blubbering idiot. She saw my smile but white hot tears running down my face and she said, “What you do to the least of these, you do also to me.” 

The vision of God in suffering humanity is not mean thing, because without this vision people perish. (Proverbs 29:18)

The least of these are not just the babies and the naturally innocent, but every creature of God, deformed by sins. (Reference incomplete list above).  “But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
“ Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.” 

God's enlightenment (the primary Grace of Being, our existence in this realm) rests in the power of cognition of every human being walking this planet. Those eyes have been blinded by sin, and although they can see material being, they can no longer see God. WE have to show them GOD in a form they can relate, IN US.  

Luk 1:78ff  Through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us, 
To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. 

This is the next lesson, the way of peace, what it is? where is it? how does it work?
Now speaking of Jesus:
Joh 1:9ff  That was the true Light which enlightens every man coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came to be through Him, and the world did not know Him.  He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.  But as many as received Him, He gave them the authority to become children of God, to those who believe in His name; who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. 

If you have to any degree, taken the time to do the work of repentance/purification, (which never ends in this life time and must be continual) then you know that without this work faith becomes DEAD, religion becomes SICKNESS. Such a one cannot look at this world with self-righteous disdain, but rather must see through the eyes with which God loved the world so very, very much that he sent his only begotten son . . .

Blessed are the pure in Heart, for they shall see God.  

The Master's Ladder, Step Five

The Master's Ladder Step by Step 

Step Five 

Blessed are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy. 

When I was a state prison chaplain, I met a man who was a former law enforcement officer, a deputy sheriff in a populous Georgia county.  He was convicted of child rape among other crimes, abusing children during Satanic ritual to gain dark powers, making sacrifice of the children's innocence in preparation to darker things.  He had a congenital heart defect that he hid from the police doctors. It wasn't that serious then but had been aggravated by the strain of drug abuse and an untreated sexual disease, was worsened still by beatings he received on the inside in his first years of imprisonment. He had to take a drug to stimulate his heart to make it beat faster than normal to keep from getting fluid on his lungs.  He came to me one day and explained his physical trouble. I had always observed he was pasty white, and looked  strained. He was beginning to have serious side effects from the medicine, a strain on his kidneys that had already sent him to dialysis once, and was facing open heart surgery, if he was lucky.  

We were standing in the open in the prison yard. He said as if asking to borrow a pencil, “I know if you pray for me, you can heal my heart.”  Of course I deferred to the Lord, who is the healer but he pressed, “You know what I mean. I've seen you act in authority.”  I said, “J ___ if you really believe in Satan, why don't you get him to heal your heart.”  He said, “trust me I've tried. He told me who to sacrifice to get the job done. He didn't talk to me like that on the outside."  I said, "If only he were a tit or tat selfish bastard and not the malevolent destroyer he surely is." He was silent for a moment then he told me that he had ask the Wiccan priestess, and still he suffered. He said "that sent me to dialysis."  My back was up, I hated this conversation my personal resentment rising in me, that a Satanist would ask me for a physical healing, without any submission to repentance and conversion. It wasn't a small thing. A friend of my children had been sacrificed by a sister “coven,” murdered in satanic ritual at the age of 17, and buried in a shallow grave.  I would have dug a deeper grave for my dog.  I really did not want to do it. But I learned like Phillip, mentioned in the last step, that when prompted by the Holy Spirit to go talk to the Ethiopian Eunuch who was sitting on his chariot, reading, Phillip didn't question, or dally, he RAN to the chariot.  

The truth is, on a personal level I liked this Satanist.  We had had several conversations so his approaching me to talk was not odd; we were friendly.  So it wasn't any personal hostility, just the self-righteous attitude grating on me that such a cultist would ask a mercy of God's healing without any thought of renouncing Satan! It seemed outrageous to me.  But obeying without hesitation I placed my hand on his chest, never said a word and then backed away.  He asked, “That's it? That's all?”   I could see he did not believe me.  So I warned him, “If I were you I would stop taking the heart medication because it might kill you. Check with the doctor now, don't wait.”  He said, “We can't just walk in there. I have an appointment next week, by then we will know.” I said, "You will know sooner than that."  

Three days later he was life-flighted to a metropolitan hospital in coronary arrest.  The prison doctor rode the life flight with him.  He was revived twice.  They managed to get him stable and run some tests.  The cardiologist was snarky to the prison doctor wondering why he would have a man with a perfectly healthy heart on a powerful heart stimulant.  The prison doctor was pissed.  J____ shared with them that I had touched him, told him he was healed and told him to check with the doctor and stop taking the medicine.  He was fearful to stop and almost killed himself.  

Outside of my wisdom and understand, as it turned out, his healing was a powerful witness to his prideful occultic knowledge, an assault on his superstition and spiritual pride. It happen outside of his wheelhouse, you see. He was expecting the need for pomp and ritual, maybe anointing and prayer, maybe some sacrifice of fast or some other privation, maybe gathering some people in a prayer circle, maybe having to “work up the spirit” but a quick and silent touch did not compute.  I was able to say to him later seriously in a private moment, “J___, it was Jesus standing in my shoes, his hand in my hand that fed your heart, LIFE. And the same hand that healed your heart will stop it one day. You need to reconcile yourself with that fact.  I could see genuine fear in his eyes for the first time since I had met him. Somehow, even though he was in prison and sentenced to 25 years, having served about 8 of it. I still think the satanism was for him in a very silly and foolish way, a game.  It fact previously that is how he had explained it, an experiment that just sort of got out of hand. After that, the air of superiority he held was gone.
“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom”

“ . . .they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD” 
I remember walking out of the yard that day of the healing encounter thinking to myself, how much wiser that Satanist was than more agnostics I had met, and wiser than EVERY atheist I have met.  “At least” I thought “he does not suffer the idiocy that says, “There is no God.” 

The prison doctor who had a very checkered past, was shaken to his core.  He called me in and showed me EKGs going back years clearly showing J___'s condition and the fact that for almost a year he had been on maximum dose of the stimulant, awaiting a slot for open heart surgery.  From that act of mercy, laying aside all religious pretensions, one human being to another human being sharing a second or two of inspired and Holy Mercy, many people were caught in concentric healing circles produced that day, which would take a book to share. 

I knew a man, who held two people in particular disdain. During the course of his work the Holy Spirit impressed on him to take them money, which was repeated over a period of a few months amounting to hundreds of dollars.  Each time he left a check in an envelope, like kids used to leave Valentines, leave it and run, the last thing he wanted was contact with them.  Finally the Holy Spirit said to him, “if you don't have the heart to knock on the door, like you are dealing with humans, at least let them see you and approach you.  After all you would give a stray dog that.”  Only to discover that they were in a very trying spot and the money had arrived in the amounts they needed, when they needed to keep subsistence living together.  They had to say, “We don't understand how this could be, (you see they held him with more disdain than he held them) but every time we prayed here you showed up.”  And on the prompting of the Holy Spirit some old bitter wounds were healed. 

I know an elderly man, who lived next door to a sex offender, a man shunned by everyone, hated simply because he was on the offender's registry and dare live in their neighborhood.  You know it is alright to hate sex offenders, right?  That's the class of people it is officially permitted to HATE.  Hardly.  Aside from me, the sex offender had no other friend on earth. Then the elderly neighbor began to use him to do all kinds of odd jobs.  I said, “W___, how is it when everyone else shuns him, you spend so much time with him?”  W___  stammered with more than a little sudden energy, shocked and I think a little offended at my question and said, “Well, hell, he's a human being ain't he?”  Out of prison twelve years and counting, no re-offending. 

Until you do something healing for someone who you “know” does not deserve it, you have no concept of mercy.  In fact you haven't even “touched” mercy.  Until one shows mercy to someone one hates, I doubt one can understand much depth in the meaning of mercy.  Saint John Chrysostom said to the effect, that if you show outward mercy (an action) toward someone you resent, and resent the action, you've gained nothing. But until you show mercy to those who by human standards do not deserve it, you have not effected the mercy which is better.  It is a difference as great as good and evil, the difference in the mercy we show, and the mercy God shows us. In archaic language our mercy is a “mean” thing, ordinary, and HIS mercy is imbued with Holy Wisdom. That is the reason the Orthodox Christian prays for God's mercy so often. 

It is not until we breakdown our false sense of “just desserts” and overcome our rational resistance, that we may if we are so gifted by God, share in our physical being, in his shoes, mercy that is also imbued with Holy Wisdom.  Our sense of “Justice” is ego driven, straight from our human pride.  “Well, I told him.” “Well, I showed her.” 

Driving down the road a friend dodged a drunk driver and there was little he hated worse than a drunk on the road.  Just after the drunk passed him, his car left the rode and went airborne down a steep hill wedging between a house and a giant oak tree and caught fire.  The friend, rushed to the scene and others quickly arrived as they tried to figure a way to extricate the drunk. The right side next to the house was impossible. The left side, the door was clear of the tree but caved from hitting the tree, crumpled inward, wedged in place. After a couple of attempts, my friend literally grabbed the door with his bare hands and ripped it open, a door that could not be pried open with a tire tool.  The tire tool having bent like rubber against the force of his effort with his adrenalin pumping. Seven hours later he was in horrible pain when the endorphin wore off and his hands were suddenly swollen and in fiery hot, sharp pain. He was still cursing the drunk as he looked at his swollen hands that night.  Only to discover days later, the man was in diabetic shock and not drunk. My friend was cursing him as he saved him, cursing him hours later.  He acted from his own moral pride, no one was going to burn up in his sight, not from any care for the man in trouble.  Pissed that his day was interrupted.  That act of mercy was an act of pride, and like God can use an ass, he used my friend. In that case his physical act of mercy became a needed attitude adjustment.  “We must learn not to judge. We are not as good at it as we like to believe.” 

We act in mercy, not according to our judgment of who deserves it and why, but BECAUSE WE CAN. We should never need any greater reason. If mercy is deserved, it is not mercy but reward. 

You may have realize by now, that Steps One, Two, Three, Four, Five, do not in real life happen in neat little stages and step.  That differing layer of each may coincide and overlap. This is because these steps are organic and not mechanical. So suffice it to say, that the quality of mercy is dependent on the state of purification.  As Jesus explained to the pharisee, about the woman who anointed his feet with perfume and dried them with her hair, showing mercy and hospitality the pharisee had not offered,  “Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.”  

Love and mercy are twins.  As we have demonstrated apparent acts of mercy can be from wrong motivation, making them something other than acts of mercy and all though greatly benefiting the person receiving the action, even to the point of saving life, still NOT benefit the actor. “1Co 13:3  And though I give away all my possessions to feed the poor, and though I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.” 

Common sense and mercy are not disconnect and the Holy Father made out a cursory list of the chief spiritual works of mercy and the chief physical works of mercy. 

The Chief Spiritual Works of Mercy
To admonish sinners.
To teach the nascent. 
To instruct the ignorant.
To counsel the doubtful.
To comfort the sorrowful.
To forgive injuries.
To pray for the living and the dead.

The Chief Corporal Works of Mercy
To feed the hungry.
To give drink to the thirsty.
To clothe the naked.
To ransom captives.
To shelter the homeless.
To visit the sick.
To visit the prisoner.
To bury the dead.

Please make note that visiting the sick and the prisoner does not mean a sugarcoated pop-in, or a sentimental drop-by but engaging in what is needed for healing, even if it is a sugarcoated pop-in, or a sentimental drop-by, sometimes that is healing and all we can rightly do. 

When we get to the level of “showing mercy” that is, acting in mercy, we have come to the lesson of Pure Religion.  Christian healing/salvation is NOT religion, even though its most powerful weapon for healing the person from psycho-pathos are the liturgies, hymn, scripture lessons; the worship of the Church, this is “therapeutic” and not religious. Religion in the sense the culture understands, and in the sense history teaches is sickness.  I strive to worship with a clear head, open heart and thoughtfully, but I'm one of the least religious people you have ever met. Except when it comes to REAL religion:  Jas_1:27  Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. - these are acts of love and mercy. 

Steps One, Two, Three and Four require Prayer, Fasting, performance of the spiritual and corporal works of mercy.  You see what I mean by overlapping. And in time “works of mercy” include the lesson of Isaiah recorded in the 58th chapter. 

Let us examine those lessons so we don't end up merely “acting” works of mercy and turning them into mere “religion.” 

Isa 58:1  Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and declare unto my people their transgression, and to the house of Jacob their sins. 

Here the Lord is exposing how religious sickness has damaged true works of spiritual and physical mercy. 

Isa 58:2  Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that doeth righteousness, and hath not forsaken the ordinance of their God; they ask of me the ordinances of righteousness, they take delight in approaching to God:

Here he describes them as very religious, seriously religious, enjoying the beauty of the ceremonial religion.  Nothing wrong with enjoying it, until it becomes unstuck from life. He is not saying these things are bad, but he is about to explain how their religion had come unstuck from reality, had become a game, a fantasy, a sickness.  

Isa 58:3  --Wherefore have we fasted, and thou seest not; have afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge? 

Here they complain that their “religious work” has been in vain.  And it is true, God agrees with them.  He says in answer, “Behold, in the day of your fast ye find what pleaseth you, and exact all your labours.” that means they put on a show, letting everyone know how hard they were working, and even that they chose the particular work that was their favorite. 

The Lord digs a little deeper past the outward show and exposes the motivations for their “religionism” their religious sickness. “Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness: (that is fasting for merit, fasting for religious self-righteous one-ups-man-ship) ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice to be heard on high. (fasting from lack of faith.)
Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the LORD?”
Those are very strong words because this was very customary. It had become part of the spirit of the culture and had become “ceremonial” and not truly “liturgical” that is dead custom and not living healing tradition. After all, King David a man after God's own heart, according to Jesus, fasted exactly as this describes. 

Next Isaiah describes Spiritual works of Mercy: “Is not this the fast which I have chosen: to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the thongs of the yoke, and to send forth free the crushed, and that ye break every yoke?” These things relate to the bondage of the suffering soul – the psycho-pathos. 

“Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring to thy house the needy wanderers; when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?” These are physical works of mercy and the last has a double meaning, not to hide from your own humanity, and also not from your kinsmen, your own family. 

Isa 58:8  "Then shall thy light (read shining Divine Love) will break forth as the morning, and thine healing shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the LORD shall be thy rear guard."  
Do you see in this the steps, one, two, three and four.  Breaking the bands of wickedness, first undoing the thongs of the yoke, untying oneself from them, then freeing the virtue that has been crushed under the weight, and finally not just “unloosening” the yokes, but the stomping on them, breaking them to pieces, doing all in your power to keep Satan from simply reattaching the same bondage.  
At this stage, that relationship of patience/physician is clearly established, and experience has created certainty where:
Isa 58:9  Then shalt thou call, and Jehovah will answer; thou shalt cry, and he will say, Here I am.

Now look, we first untie the yoke, then he break the yoke, finally to cast the yoke from our midsts . . . in our language we haul the garbage to the dump and watch it burn. 

But to do this something more is requires.  “If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger and the unjust speech, and thou offer thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul:
Now we are talking about properly showing mercy, abandoning our judgment, and showing mercy BECAUSE WE CAN and now WANT TO. 

More healing comes.  “Then shall thy light (read glowing divinely inspired LOVE) will rise in the darkness, and thine obscurity be as midday;
Remember in the previous steps talking about the degree of darkness, which “covered over everything.”  Darkness that covers over our entire civilization, and we do not escape it, or shun it, but allow our light to rise IN it.  

And while we allow that to happen, “And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.”

Now in case you wrongly believe the above was a rejection of “Tradition” he continues.  
“If thou turn back thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and call the sabbath a delight, the holy day of Jehovah, honourable; and thou honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking idle words; then shalt thou delight thyself in Jehovah, and I will cause thee to ride on the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken.”

To put this in the Christian context, this for us is speaking of the Rational Liturgizing on the “Lord's Day” participation in Divine Liturgy and the other worship of the Church. 

When you start these Spiritual and Physical ACTS of mercy and do so prayerfully, there is a prayer that is very useful:

O Jesus, meek and humble of hear, hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed – Deliver me Jesus.
From the desire of being loved – Deliver me Jesus.
From the desire of being extolled – Deliver me Jesus.
From the desire of being honored – Deliver me Jesus.
From the desire of being praised – Deliver me Jesus.
From the desire of being preferred to others – Deliver me Jesus.
From the desire of being consulted – Deliver me Jesus. 
From the desire of being approved – Deliver me Jesus.
From the fear of being humiliated – Deliver me Jesus.
From the fear of being despised – Deliver me Jesus. 
From the fear of suffering rebukes – Deliver me Jesus. 
From the fear of being falsely accused – Deliver me Jesus.
From the fear of being forgotten – Deliver me Jesus.
From the fear of being ridiculed – Deliver me Jesus.
From the fear of being wronged – Deliver me Jesus. 
From the fear of being suspected – Deliver me Jesus.
That others may be love more than I – Jesus grant me the grace to desire it.
That others my be esteemed more than I – Jesus grant me the grace to desire it.
That in the opinion of the world, others may increase, and I may decrease – Jesus grant me the grace to desire it.
That other may be chosen and I set aside – Jesus grant me the grace to desire it.
That other my be preferred to me in everything – Jesus grant me the grace to desire it.
That other may become more whole, more healed than I, provided that I become whole as I should  – Jesus grant me the grace to desire it.  AMEN. 

Without the heart that can pray this as often as needed and mean it, one is left to the temptation to turn our efforts back into “religion” and remove it from the everyday experience of the greatest and most powerful psychotherapy, guided by the Holy Spirit, guarded by angels.

You do realize that we are talking about LIFE here and not about "religious activities."  The dictum to Mercy colors every single relationship, with none excluded.

Now let us dig a little deeper into the concept of Mercy.  Do you realize that by mercy we do not mean, sweetness.  And even if we conflated mercy with Kindness, which is a virtue and tool in the tool box of human interaction we still would not mean, sweetness.  Though to be "sweet" with someone has its moments times and places.  Sweetness is what you experience with a kitten or puppy dog, and sometimes with your children. But even with your children you know that constant sweetness in your relationship would not be kind and certainly not merciful. Even with a puppy you have to use intelligent training to teach the puppy what is can chew and what he cannot chew and where he is to relieve himself.  Not to do so, would be an unkindness to the puppy, limiting the being he had potential to be and turning him into something much less. Sad that so many parents in this dark culture have lost the knowledge of even this level of child rearing!

Having been place in situations where physical force was necessary to prevent further damage and injury, using that force is not violence, but mercy and even kindness.  When we cross those whose psych-pathos has turned violent and abusive, and they become a danger to others and we have to stop them to prevent further damage and injury, such action is merciful to all and especially to them, and is an act of kindness.  When a TRUE criminal acts he damages many people, including himself. To stop him is a kindness in that it stops him from further damaging his own soul and laying up mountains of pain he WILL have to endure.  If he is violent, then whatever injury he endures, up to and including death is a worthy price to pay.

When Saint Paul instructed a congregation under his Canon to remove a member from their ranks, to turn him out, and turn his body to Satan to suffer destruction that his soul might be saved for eternity, he was being Merciful and it was a kind action.  When Jesus said, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy" he was not talking pink teddy bears and roses.

We are not talking some sugar coated reality, some cultic bliss, but engagement in LIFE, inside the culture of almost total darkness, where man has gone blind and stumbling in his blindness he has grown insane. We are IN the world, not OF the world for purpose. That purpose is not realize in the pablum of "The Purpose Driven Life." That purpose cannot begin to be realized until we gain Strength of Character called Meekness, able then to exercise POWER that is Righteousness, having our Judgment restored by suffering the indignities of deep Psycho-therapy at the hand of our Holy Spirit filled Confessor and Mentor, conquering our Psycho-pathos, enduring our poverty of spirit, weeping bitter tear as we have awaken to the damage the darkness has wrought in us, able to know by the Holy Spirit's Wisdom now resting in our Heart/Mind, when to act, and how to act, Mercifully.  And to the point that we realize the "spiritual mercies" of Isaiah 58, the unloosing the yoke, breaking the bonds, smashing the yoke, removing the yoke, and casting the yoke away, also has a Physical reality as well as Spiritual reality. It is the REAL social justice that operates not on a collectivist model, but instead upon the wisdom of individual actions, like the mysterious and complex functions of a single cell, each molecule faithfully executing its proper function to produce LIFE in the whole.

Understanding that our exercise of Mercy might have even what may appear aspects or events that seem harsh, as forms of force are required to keep other's safe from damage, or to try to rescue some from further damage, in actions that are both spiritual and physical, that same Mercy comes back to us empowered by the Wisdom of the Holy Spirit.

When I lectured officers on the dangers of their work, having talked about the moral use of potentially deadly force, I would caution them using these words;  You must realize that every action you take, must be based in mercy, even if you kill the person in the process. Step outside of mercy, which in every instance is acting for the good no matter what force it may take, and you become a thug, a psychopath, a storm trooper, a jackboot, and damage your own psyche, which will limit and/or destroy every relationship you hold dear. Abuse someone in your custody and KNOW you will take that abuse home to your wife, because it has taken residence in you.  Lie about someone in your custody and watch it destroy the trust between you and those you love. So when you ask me to pray for you, you realize my prayer will always be that you act justly in mercy, and when you do not that God would in his mercy will let you immediately pay the price so that it is not stored up against you, destroying the rest of your life.   Lao Tsu said, "When chopping wood for the Master, we have to be careful not to destroy our own hands."  Prideful and arrogant action, outside the realm of mercy, has the power to not only destroy your hands, but to destroy your soul.

"Gal_6:7  Be not deceived: God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
Sow in mercy, Reap in mercy.
Sow malevolence, Reap malevolence.
There is nothing mechanical in this in a rational way some would compare it to the law of Karma, but it does function in great Wisdom via the synergistic work of the Holy Spirit, and though our sins be forgiven, our lessons concerning those we have damaged is not paid. It is a debt we own, not to that person, but to God and he will in mercy walk us through all the very deep healing which cannot be written, cannot be spoken, has to be lived, a wonder, a wisdom, a blessing beyond words.  Blessed are the Merciful, for they shall obtain Mercy. 

The Master's Ladder, Step Four

The Master's Ladder Step by Step


Step Four 

Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled. 

In our time, in our day, what is the backdrop of Jesus' proposal?  We have reduced our faith to religious moralism so that these words read in our mind as:

“Blessed is he who wants to be moral, God will help him be moral.”  This proposition is not a lie, however it does not mean what the first proposition means. 

Sometimes we have to learn by negation.  What is the circumstance of the absence of “righteousness”? 

Isa 59:14ff And judgment is turned away backward, and righteousness standeth afar off; for truth stumbleth in the street, and uprightness cannot enter. And truth faileth; and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey. And Jehovah saw it, and it was evil in his sight that there was no judgment.

Those brainwashed by the Religion of the Culture cannot read this proposition Jesus offered with any comprehension whatsoever.  In their mind, even if by some miracle they have pressed through the fog to have some sentimental attachment to Jesus Christ, it means to them, “If I seek to be good, God will help me, and fill me with goodness.”  Again a true statement but devoid of the meaning of “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled.” 

The absence of righteousness, is also the absence of judgment, which is also the absence of justice, which is also the absence of ethical society and ethical governance, AS WELL AS, the absence of ethical behavior on the personal level; which is also the suppression of truth, which turns THE LIE into the common consciousness of the culture, and TRUTH the enemy of the culture; and he who dares to say anything true, who dares make a righteous judgment or acts in a righteous action, has departed from the common culture and is branded a suspect and dangerous to the common good and becomes prey.

“There is coming a time, when men will go mad. They will take hold of you and say, 'You are mad! You are not like us!” - Saint Anthony the Great. 

Now, maybe, it may not seem such a non sequitur when just a few lines later Jesus says, “Blessed are ye when they reproach and persecute you, and say every wicked-lying thing against you, for my sake.
For whose sake?
For He who IS Truth the Person.
Rejoice and exult, for your reward is great in the heavens; for thus have they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

(Please note: "is great in the heavens" - not in heaven - more on this later.)
The absence of Righteousness is the absence of REALITY.  “When righteousness stands afar off, judgment is turned away backward” everything is upside-down.
Those wrapped in fantasy, baptized in mind numbing idols of pleasures, which  they love more than LIFE, outlined in “Step Three”, which we could call a manufactured and totally artificial consciousness, will react violently when you challenge their idols, when you make a judgment based upon truth. 

What was the meaning of Steps One, Two and Three? These were different levels of purging mult-layers and multi-levels of delusion and so creating the conditions where one can truly seek TRUTH.  In other words it was Emptying the NOUS (The Heart-Mind) of all hypnotic illusions, delusion, prejudices, favorite mythologies, aberrant theologies, and behaviors, and not just expelling the common sins, but exposing and expelling the damage done by them.

Why?  THINK!
So your judgment would no longer be “taken away.” 

I always enjoyed the beautiful poetic and prophetic words of Isaiah about Jesus, but the interpretation Saint Luke gave them always puzzled me, until I learned something about the Luciferian Mind War, which has continually raged from the very beginning, and now has massively been empower by hypnotics of drugs and the psychotronics of technology. Here is Isaiah speaking:

Isa 53:4ff  Surely *he* hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; and we, we did regard him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.  But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, but he opened not his mouth; he was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and was as a sheep dumb before her shearers, and he opened not his mouth.
He was taken from oppression and from judgment; and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living; for the transgression of my people was he stricken. And men appointed his grave with the wicked, but he was with the rich in his death, because he had done no violence, neither was there guile in his mouth.

Here is how Saint Luke used that scripture, talking about Phillip teaching the Ethiopian:

Act 8:27ff  . . . an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a man in power under Candace queen of the Ethiopians, who was over all her treasure, who had come to worship at Jerusalem,  was returning and sitting in his chariot: and he was reading the prophet Esaias. And the Spirit said to Philip, Approach and join this chariot.  And Philip, running up, heard him reading the prophet Esaias, and said, Dost thou then know what thou art reading of? And he said, How should I then be able unless some one guide me? And he begged Philip to come up and sit with him.  And the passage of the scripture which he read was this: He was led as a sheep to slaughter, and as a lamb is dumb in presence of him that shears him, thus he opens not his mouth.  In his humiliation his judgment has been taken away, and who shall declare his generation? for his life is taken from the earth. And the eunuch answering Philip said, I pray thee, concerning whom does the prophet say this? of himself or of some other? 

That phrase haunted me, “In his humiliation his judgment has been taken away, and who shall declare his generation?”   You see, unless Jesus experienced also the insanity of sin, that is the damage, darkness and blindness of sin, then it would be a lie to say that he was “tempted in like manner” as us. It is only in the state of absolute black darkness that those horror stricken words from the Cross ring true, "My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me."The absence of Righteousness is the absence of Judgment! It is the absence of sight.  It is the absence of natural and normal perceptions. It is the darkness that is darkness indeed.

The War has been from the start, but the battle against evil takes on different aspects in different eras. It is a common adage, or should be, "Before the truth can set you free, you need to know the lies that are holding you hostage."  We in modern times, to our detriment, take Lucifer for a fool.  That's a loser's game. So let us take a look at the present battlefield. Picture with me; As a Christian "warrior" you are at the battle table, assessing the state of the battlefield, here is what you should see: 

Two-hundred years ago the Luciferian Society began constructing a Scientistic Dictatorship, where the elite would be the “experts” of science and technology, molding the culture along “rational” and “pragmatic” lines, creating a Utopia any sane person should want.  They took a multi-pronged approach:

(1) Deconstructing the very idea of HUMAN Perception. Through new “philosophies” they deconstructing the idea of Objective Reality, eliminating the possibility that anyone who is not an expert may know anything with certainty.  A frontal assault on common sense, human perception and thinking. 

(2) Deconstructing the nature of the material universe, via cosmology, evolutionary physics, removing the earth from its very special place in the Universe, (which recent science has accidentally proved is “center mass.”) Creating in the place of God's creative energy in matter, any Scientistic fantasy they could imagine, hawking their fantasies as “scientific fact” via evolutionary sociology, biology, sociology, anthropology, cosmology etc., etc.

(3) Deconstructing the foundations of Christianity, not just with the challenge of bogus scientific data, but making a frontal assault on Divine Revelation itself, by deconstructing scripture via modern Secular Criticism (a list of disciplines fall into this broad category).
  
(4) Deconstructing the very composition of the Human Being, via the Luciferian Pseudo Sciences of Psychology and Psychiatry, removing psychotherapy from the historic confines of the “science of the soul” as practiced by the Holy Fathers, a science where the Fathers understood the true anatomy of the Human Being in the image of God, and substituting a totally deformed “image of man” as a beast to be conditioned and controlled.  

Two centuries later they have met with remarkable success. They have accomplished creating the modern “citizen” of the industrialized civilization a conditioned “beast” called a Solipsist, incapable of actually knowing or judging anything, except what he is conditioned by the “experts” to accept as true. The conditioning has been so successful that it has caused massive mental, emotional and psychological arrested development, creating generations of adolescents, who are 20, 30, 40, 50 and even 60 years old.  They exist in this extended adolescence, in the “play world” of the Cultural Society of their choosing, (outlined in Step Three) while massive genocide is waged around the world, using their labors to empower it, while they remained continually entertained, and not daring to ask a pointed question or make a judgment. "After all, who are WE to judge." 

Solipsism; from Latin solus, meaning "alone", and ipse, meaning "self") is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind. As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist.

With physical reality deconstructed, and human perceptions deconstructed, objective observation and objective truth a physical and mathematical impossibility, what else can you produce but two deformed modern creatures you meet every day, who are "normal" and accepted as mature adults and sometimes, intellectual, holding varying degrees of accomplishment and complexity, varying ideas of morality and ethics, and often academic degrees.  

Actually these two modern "creatures" are two sides of the same Solipsist coin:
(1) The fellow who cannot brook the idea of anyone daring to judge anything, since nothing can truly be known, since what is true for you may not be true for me, after all YOUR truth and MY truth are not the same truth, and cannot be the same truth. My truth might just be the experience of cognition I cannot prove I have, some wisp in the ether having no meaning whatsoever.  So do not dare try to lay your judgment on me, because your reality is as nebulous and meaningless as mine. 

(2) The fellow who without factual basis or any understanding, never resorting to any reference more than his emotions, knows all about everything to which he merely points his attention.  If he has deigned to think it, it is therefore true and self-evident, absolute and complete certainty. The need for objective reference is absurd!  What difference could it make?  Any proof you offered contrary to the already set "knowledge" would of necessity have to be a clever trick, or de facto factually flawed. This is the insane diametric opposite incarnation of Solipsism.

Absolute Doubt, based on no objective data vs Absolute Certainty, based on no objective data. Do you see the commonality? 

The first, is absolutely politically correct. The greater solipsist you are, the better you fit the Politically Correct Culture. Even though such a one could never admit to the idea of a “moral absolute,”  in fact they are morally and absolutely certain that no one but the experts have the right to judge anything. And of course THEIR experts are politically correct.  This insane philosophy permeates every part of their existence from the kind of food they eat, to the way they spend their money, to the causes they support. 

The second, is absolutely politically in-correct. He has no grasp of anything real, except the gut rebellion he holds, knowing that politically correct Solipsist are insane. Anything he reasons from that base of knowledge has to be true. The vast majority of  anarchists, libertarians and ordinary conservatives are simply this, anti-Solipsists. 

In case you think that I have slipped into “political language” and could not possibly any longer be explicating what Jesus said, which has to have  "spiritual significance" and not political significance, suspend your disbelief long enough to try to grasp my point. Remember we are standing over the battle table which depicts the battle of THIS era, the delusions of THIS age. 

Lucifer is guiding all of Western Civilization, using mighty hypnotic drugs and hypnotic psychotronics, having turned education into “feed-lot beast-herd conditioning” producing for the slave culture, the herds of adolescences, in form ONLY as Solipsists and anti-Solipsists.  Most become passive, assuming all of life and the nature of society and government is just out of their influence.  The ones who dare to try to think, to use force of personality and not be passive,  via massive and intense psycho-cybernetic conditioning via the media, he sets at loggerheads, using events, False Flags, Crises, personalities, insults, race, fear, religion, terror, . . . Then using the Hegelian Dialectic, Thesis (Solipsism) anti-thesis (anti-solipsism – that is conditioned-irrational reactionary opposition) he produces the Synthesis he wants, whatever that may be, which both the Solipsists and anti-Solipsists will BEGRUGINGLY accept, as necessary evil, which always decreases Liberty and increases the Luciferian Powers. 

We are dealing with an entire Civilization whose “judgment has been taken away.” That can only happen where Truth, “stumbles” - that is has become imperceptible to the human person, because righteousness “stands afar off.”  

What is righteousness?  It is what is according to the "Law of Nature" i.e. God's law, that which produces certain and true “discrimination” so that one may know God's Will, which is LIFE generating; it is the ability to distinguish God's Will from Satan's deceptions, which generate death, the destruction of Humankind.  It is what produces equity, justice, ethics and morality.  With Judgment REMOVE none of these things are possible. We are left seeing:

Education produce Retardation – emotional, mental, psychological, permanent adolescence. 

To paraphrase Christopher Hedges: 
Doctors destroy Health
Mental Health workers destroy mental health
Lawyers destroy Justice
Education destroys Knowledge
Government destroy Liberty
Religion destroys Wisdom and Morality
Banks and Corporations destroy Economy
News and other sources of “information” destroy objective reality.

The absence of Righteousness is nothing short of the absence of TRUTH from the Heart-Mind of men. The absence of TRUTH from individual and collective “consciousness.” Eyes open seeing nothing, totally blinded by the culture. "EYES WIDE SHUT."  It is the substitution of a totally false and artificially produced "alternative consciousness." 

Isa 59:14ff And judgment is turned away backward, and righteousness standeth afar off; for truth stumbleth in the street, and uprightness cannot enter. And truth faileth; and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey. And Jehovah saw it , and it was evil in his sight that there was no judgment.

These verses perfectly picture the present state of the MIND WAR in our culture.  The blindness is not an accident but a carefully and with much cunning energy, planned accomplishment of Lucifer, Himself.  And the only way to come to view and understand the blanket of darkness that covers the minds of men, and by extension was that form of evil that was our former state before we came to conversion, and IS our present state to the degree WE have been casual about our healing/salvation, turning our healing into mere religion . . .  Our vision - arrives through the very painful process of purging from us every “shadow of darkness”, every illusion and delusion as explained in Steps One, Two and Three, every sin and scar of sin.  Then knowing what is NOT real, we gain a huge hunger to see what IS real.  And not just to SEE it, but to BECOME it, to become what is REAL.  

The Reason Jesus Christ is Truth the Person, is that he is the SINGLE REALITY of the New Creation. All that is, all that has been, all that will be, exists, if indeed is existed in the first place, IN HIM. HE is the ALPHA and the OMEGA.  An IN HIM ALL THINGS SHALL BE RENEWED. It is IN HIM where we become LIKE HIM, and experience RENEWAL ourselves, here on this plane partly and soon completely, like him.


Rev 16:5ff And I heard the angel of the waters say, Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art, and wast, and shalt be, because thou hast judged thus. For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink; for they are worthy. And I heard another out of the altar say, Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are thy judgments.

WE do not come to Christ to enter a paradise; we do not come to Christ to get to heaven, but rather, to take our part in the ranks of the Church Militant, as warriors, whose actions upon THIS earth have immediate reality in the heavens. Where the prince of the powers of the air is CHALLENGED and set back by OUR presence.  We becoming an incarnational presence of Jesus Christ himself, HERE and NOW.  He Himself is the RIGHTEOUSNESS we seek. Not some image of idealized moral behavior, but the very presence of what is in every instance, LIFE ENGENDERING. So then, that our every action is "created in the good" and is beneficial not just for the narrow confines of our "individual salvation" but rather for the renewal of ALL THINGS.  The Psalms gives the image of the righteous walking leaving behind them streams of water in the desert, making alive the waste places, reanimating what seemed DEAD.  Saint Paul echoed this saying that the prayer of a righteous man availed much, that is makes much available.
Buddha said,  "BLESSED are those who have sought truth, righteousness ensouls the purpose of your actions." 

Truth is God Himself, and being imbued with him, creates righteousness in us, the living power of Good; it is indestructible and invincible. Work the truth out in your mind/heart, become imbued with righteousness and spread it among mankind, for truth alone is the savior from evil and misery. 

Jesus stated this concept many times. He promised green pastures for the sheep who would be venturesome enough to leave the safety of the fold for those pastures.  In other words who would DARE to take the truth that is ETERNAL and REAL, into the streets, the communities, the businesses and the houses of government.  He asked, how can you take such a wonder, such a treasure and hide it? Does a man light a light and cover it?

This Luciferian Culture of Death has increased in power, NOT merely because of the cunning of Evil, but because of the failure of God's Children to become HEALED. To give up "the world" the blindness of the culture and take on what is REAL, that is Righteousness, the FORCE of power that never violates but engenders life, upon life, upon life.

Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled. 

At this point, I have some really, really good news for you. Keep reading 

Continued in Step Five: