Sermon on the Mount, Part 4, Beatitudes 7 and 8

This morning we will continue our study of the Beatitudes from “The Sermon on the Mount” with a discussion of the 7th and 8th Beatitudes. I will not repeat the previous six today; however, in the library, you will find copies of all the previous lessons. In this talk I shall rely heavily once again on Emmet Fox's book "The Sermon on the Mount” as well as this time from Carolyn Myss's book "Spiritual Madness".

The 7th Beatitude is "Blessed are the Peacemakers, for they shall be called the Children of God". First, remember what it meant to the people back then to be referred to as "a child of God" and remember the crowd to whom Jesus was speaking. To them, to be a child of God meant they would inherit everything... they could walk into the throne room and instead of bowing as others might have to, they could say simply… "Hi, Dad what's up?" Now let's concentrate on the word "Peacemaker".... on first reading the term "peacemaker" I immediately conjured up visions of mediators, counselors, good listeners, basically the King Solomons of the world.... those folks with great powers of wisdom and discernment... those who knew how to judge totally with an open heart. I could not have been more wrong. Jesus is not talking here about that at all. This beatitude is an invaluable lesson in the value of prayer and meditation. "For," Says Emmet Fox, "prayer and meditation are the tools we use to transfer our attention from the demanding world of the physical senses to the quiet world of inner guidance and peace. In short, it is our way to commune with spirit.” On the days that I don't take time out for meditation, I become encased in a world of fear and worry, thrown by the sometimes critical, though meant to be helpful, words of friends and family. On the days that I do find the time to meditate, I stay centered and am once again reminded who is really in charge regardless of the storm that I might be in at any moment during that day.

Now there is a cost to frequent meditation that we rarely discuss. And most likely everyone has suffered this cost at one time or another. And we will again, states Carolyn Myss as we go through our many attempts to grow closer to Spirit. She called it, as many others have before her, "The Dark Night of the Soul". If you have ever asked questions such as: "For what purpose was I born?...what did I come here to do?...to learn?....help me God, I want to see you more clearly....or similar words then you know what I mean. This is an open invitation for Spirit to be up front and Center in your life. And that as we all know does not keep things peaceful as we might have at first been thinking. It doesn't slow down change. In fact, it puts everything in high gear. Chaos reigns. Years ago when people asked those questions they went into a monastery now we get up and go to work. We can't exactly say to our boss "oh by the way I need a few days off, you see I'm going through 'the dark night' and I'm confused and can't think today."

Jesus stated: Heaven is a Paradox... what looks big is small... what looks weak is powerful (just think of the Babe in the Manger if you want a perfect example). A job that looks like it has all the secure benefits etc. doesn't and vice versa... the reason ...we are to have faith in the unseen, the divine, not the things of the world. Now Carolyn is part stand-up comic so she puts it like this: "When you ask these deeper richer types of questions, it gets your Guardian Angel up off the couch. Your angel says: 'You really want this? O.K. Now that you’re asking these kinds of mature questions, you're in the wrong job for you. Do you want to quit or should I get you fired? ...And the plan goes something like this....we have a few weeks grace to execute the first path and leave or chaos takes over big time.' Your angel may even say... 'Now that you're ready to do this, you're in the wrong town', and slowly you find yourself itching to move.” She says, "God plays tough but it is always for our highest learning and highest spiritual growth." Charles Fillmore would probably explain the process this way: "Now that you are asking these more mature questions, putting them out into the Universe, You... not Spirit... are altering the path of your life. And even though I laugh and enjoy Carolyn's stories, I tend to think more along the lines of Charles Fillmore... we, that is, our thoughts and not a band of angels pulling strings, are affecting our life and the life around us. Either way the outcome is the same.

Here is a story from my own life to illustrate what I'm talking about: Once I was working in a setting where I was daily losing personal power. Now I was not conscious that I was losing personal power... I just knew that I wasn't happy. I began to pray for guidance and help. I was going in each day but not excitedly as I had been before and yet I didn't know why. Later at Unity School of Christianity I learned from Rev. Jim Rosemergy that we are always in the right spot for us at any given moment if 1) we're following holy principles 2) no one is getting hurt 3) all the doors are opening for us and 4), and most telling, our enthusiasm for what we are doing there keeps growing daily. I didn't heed the 4th warning sign. Thus, I didn't leave until I had a fairly major disagreement with a colleague and it was obvious to both of us that we needed to go our separate ways. I could have left more peacefully and happily had I only tuned in to my inner guidance, realizing that my waning enthusiasm was a message to me from Spirit. It was there loud and clear, I simply wasn't listening.

You may feel as I did at that time after the blowup with my colleague, bruised and beaten. You may even feel ill and alone. But Carolyn says "Be both a metaphysicist as well as a mystic. Hold your center through prayer and meditation, breathe, wait for guidance, don't judge, live and act with integrity, do all the metaphysical things you can do, i.e affirmations, denials, watching your words, get the training that you may need but have no expectations, give up the need to feel like a victim, give up the need to know why things happen as they do, and most importantly see these periods of chaos as times of growth and change.” This is the time in your life when you are closest to Spirit, most open to potentially hearing guidance clearly. But fasten your seat belt and hold on for the ride. It may be days, weeks, months, or years. Again I repeat, today we are living like monks without monasteries. Mysticism has gone main stream and we are writing the rulebook as we go along. We will, I know, come out the other end happier and healthier than we ever were before. In the case of my former employment, I know I did, though I got there the hard way. The key to making it easier on yourself is looking inward, listening to your inner guidance, knowing that in any chaos there is always a lesson and a gift. It's your job to stop, get quiet, get centered listen and find them. Then you are a true peacemaker, for you are walking in peace, demonstrating peace, and in time, feeling peace. Thus the 7th Beatitude could read: "Blessed are those who make themselves vessels of peace through prayer and meditation, for they shall be serene, at peace; and thus, shall be called the Children of God."

The last Beatitude is longer in words than all the rest. It states: "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven: for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

This has the potential for great confusion. It at first appears as though Jesus is letting us think that we must be persecuted in order to enter the kingdom of Heaven. Yet Jesus has always taught harmony, peace, and joy. In all these Beatitudes we have been emphasizing that by cultivating "right thinking", we can be in the "Kingdom of Heaven" and hence at peace at any moment. Now how does that statement fit with this persecution stuff? The answer comes most clearly to me from "A Course in Miracles", for the persecutor, the reviler, is none other than you, yourself. You see our ego self always looks at the problem that we are in, whatever it is, as an attack coming from outside of us. And, of course, at that moment you are encased in fear whether you are conscious of it or not. And fear interprets chaos as attack. Thus, when you find yourself in an argument with someone and you’re finding it extremely hard to forgive and love your adversary, even though in your heart you may really want to, you are in actuality being persecuted by yourself. You are, in short, keeping the bad feeling alive by your own thoughts, not someone else’s.

A true miracle is not the parting of the Red Sea or walking on water....a true miracle is changing your mind. "Here in the midst of an argument is the real time," says Emmet Fox, "when we can really advance spiritually." Our human selves fear change, fear loss of face, and we struggle. Emmet Fox says, "if we choose to change our thinking at that opportune moment and see the" Christ Consciousness" and the fear in our brother or sister instead of our own anger, our righteous indignation, we change our habitual reactions. If we choose rather to just see the anger, we will get opportunity after opportunity to get it right." Many of you may relate to the old AA saying "different face, different day, same story." You are blessed with as many opportunities as you may need to free yourself from your delusions and pain.

Once more we are told be glad for the times of chaos in our lives, for these are the moments ripe for change and growth to occur. Jesus said, "Turn the other cheek" meaning look at it this way, see it differently...maybe from this perspective and so on. In Unity we say. "by our thinking it is so"...we make the choice to be happy or sad minute by minute day by day. Thus, to sum up this last Beatitude: "When we feel persecuted, remember the prophets, Jesus himself, and all enlightened beings experienced the same thing. As they did, we must do also, in order to be peace, change our thinking. ...they did it, so will you, and so will I."

Namaste,

Barbara