What would a spiritual renaissance ask of us?

If you've received any real wisdom from God, you know that the Divine always speaks very simply. If you pray on it, meditate on it, see where its implications lead and unfold, the wisdom balloons... from one short, simple statement from the Creator.

One of the things the Great Mystery told me was: 'Bring back simple life.'

If you need verification, pray on it, and be open to what comes to you. It was not a statement to my personal circumstance but part of more that He was revealing to me that had never dawned on me up to that point. It was a universal statement.

If the Creator wants to bring back simple life, then what does that mean?

A spiritual renaissance would involve fundamental truths being faced. As everyone knows, the truth can really hurt. The reaction can be violent within us. We resist, not realizing that the truth has shone light on the lie, the illusion, that we previously operated on. It can knock us off our foundations, and threaten the security of who we believe we are. The wisdom of this journey into truth is not a skill that is widely promoted. We prefer 'love' and pain-free universal concepts over realizing how rotten to the core everything is based on. That's negative. Modern society is positive to a fault.

How many of us would voluntarily go into personal deprivation to unlock the secrets that are within it? We think of pain as something to be eliminated, not a journey of transformation through trust in God that the suffering will, in the end, open us to the Gifts God really has waiting for us.

How many of us know how to shut off our minds, and let the wisdom come through our hearts? And then follow that wisdom, however irrational and nonsensical it seems? We are dominated by our minds. Almost everyone wouldn't even understand such a distinction, and would defend their automatic mode of thinking with brilliant acumen.

Sacrificing one's security and survival is the last thing on anyone's agenda when they search for a spiritual renaissance. Yet without enough people with this core understanding of spiritual reality, our society can go nowhere.

How does a civilization as complex-to-the-extreme as ours unravel the artificial reality that it has created and needs now to sustain itself?

How can human organization convert its organizers from being intelligent, to being wise? How much would we have to give up in our lives? Would we argue with those organizers and not follow what they know to be true ? How can we follow wise leaders when we confuse knowledge with wisdom. Do we even know the difference?

How many of you are analyzing what I've just written?

How many of you are questioning whether 'God' really said that? It's a question of authority. How many of you are rushing to your Bibles to counter it, your psychology to question it, your biases about what is spiritual to dismiss it?

It's tough to trust God, especially when it is not filtered through our conditioning that makes us feel secure in our present beliefs. But spiritual reality is more than re-programming myths. It is a fear-inducing experience that reveals a reality that is not based on our visible knowledge society, operating from an invisible mind culture.

We control the 'theology.' It doesn't control us. Authority abuses. Authority is painful.

Jesus told us to eliminate pain. That is how truly simple we are. Is that what God meant? Or is it something more personal that we must choose within ourselves, and support those around us who choose the journey as well? Was Jesus saying something about mind culture that we have not fully understood? How could He go into such extreme pain, and how could He expect others to as well? Suffering turned into a fetish for the Church. We are in reaction to that abuse of power.

Non-civilized societies preserve teaching their young about the wisdom found in trial. But civilization, especially ours, is based on reaction to the abusive dominance of authority that has plagued the organization of our civilization since the beginning. Until we recognize our own condition, the 'subconsciousness' of our assumptions will always make us fail. That is why Christianity could not create heaven-on-earth despite 2000 years of trying. And still pines for love to be more attractive, despite our painless lifestyle that delivers so much of Jesus' social agenda.

Until contemporary Christianity faces the limits of its own spirituality within civilized reality, it cannot break out of its hamster wheel, create a broader spiritual reality, and lead others who are searching for 'experience' over concept.

Bring back simple life by learning how to let the heart speak, and its wisdom dominate us instead of placating what makes our minds insecure. Bring back simple life by sacrificing what our comfort is truly based on both intellectually and physically, and exploring where the desert takes us, despite the hardship. Bring back simple life by trusting God with our choice of His invisible reality over the invisible reality created from our minds' thoughts.

It cannot be described. It would then be snatched by the mind and conceptualized so it feels in control. It has to be experienced.

When enough people have re-discovered the truth that lies within, a core will develop with a language of mutual understanding. Then the strength will grow to counter the superficial that is promoted through our painless concept culture.

Anyone got the courage to do that? Who among us recognizes this, and been through it from the trials that normally come in life? How many among us have voluntarily sought out this experience, and what have you found?