Saturday is Prose & Poetry Day here on the blog, a time to take a moment once a week to relax the mind, open the heart, and access the soul through the gift of prose from one of the many books of The New Spirituality, and through the poetry of m. Claire, author of the forthcoming volume, Come As You Are.
This week’s prose…an excerpt from Friendship with God…
When I step back far enough to see the design, to see the beauty of the intricate and delicate weavings in the fabric of my life, I am filled with gratitude.

That is the final step, the Seventh Step, in creating a friendship with God: Thank God.
All your life you have not known God as God really is. Now you can.
All your life you have not trusted God as you wished you could. Now you can.
All your life you have not loved God as you’ve wanted to. Now you can.
All your life you have not embraced God with a closeness that made God a very real part of your experience. Now you can.
All your life you have not used God as you would use your best friend. Yet now, being as close as you are, you know that you can.
All your life you have not helped God in a conscious way, because you did not know that God wanted any help, and even if you did, you did not know how to give it. Now you do.
It is not your fault that you did not know God. How can you know one thing when everyone is telling you another?
It is not your fault that you did not trust God. How can you trust that which you do not know?
It is not your fault that you did not love God. How can you love that which you do not trust?
It is not your fault that you did not embrace God. How can you embrace that which you do not love?
It is not your fault that you did not use God. How can you use that which you do not hold?
It is not your fault that you did not help God. How can you be helpful with that for which you have no use?
And it is not your fault that you did not thank God. How can you be thankful for that which cannot be helped?
Yet today is a new day. Now is a new time. And yours is a new choice. It is a choice to create anew your personal relationship with Me. It is a choice to experience, at last, a friendship with God.

Everybody in the world wants that. Everybody who believes in God, anyway. We’ve tried our whole lives to have a friendship with You. We’ve tried to please You, to not offend You, to find the Real You, to have You find us – we’ve tried everything. But we haven’t followed these Seven Steps. At least, I certainly haven’t. Not the way You’ve got them laid them out here. So, thank You. But may I ask You a pointed question?

Certainly.

Why is gratitude necessary? Why is it so important that we thank You? Why is it one of the Seven Steps? Are You a God with such ego needs that if we do not show You our gratitude, You will take away all good things?

On the contrary, I am a God of such love that by showing your gratitude, you will receive all good things.

That sounds like a backward way of saying the same thing. I have to show my gratitude in order to receive good things.

You do not have to, it is not a requirement. Many people who seem not the least bit grateful enjoy goodness.

Okay, then I am totally confused.

Gratitude is not something I require. It is not an ego salve, a greaser of the skids, an oiler of the wheels. It does not make God more likely to be good to you “next time.” Life sends you good things whether you are grateful or not. But with gratitude, Life sends them to you faster. That is because gratitude is a State of Being.
Remember when I said, “Thinking is the slowest method of creation?”

Yes. I was very surprised by that.

You shouldn’t be. You perform all of your body’s most important functions without thinking about it. You don’t think about blinking an eye, or taking a breath, or beating your heart. You don’t think about perspiring, or saying “ouch.” These things just happen, because you are a human being. That is, a human, comma, being.

Yes, I remember. You said earlier that some life functions and experiences are created automatically, without any effort, at the level of experience called Subconscious. Is this where we create most effectively?

No. You create most effectively, most efficiently, and most rapidly when you create not from the Subconscious, but from the Supra¬conscious.
The Supraconscious is the name given to that level of experience reached when the Superconscious, Conscious, and Subconscious, are all rolled into One—and then transcended. This is a place above thought. It is your True State of Being, and this True State is Who You Really Are. It is unperturbed, unmoved, unaffected by your thoughts. Thought is not First Cause. True Being is.
We are exploring now, very deeply, the most complex esoteric understandings. The differences here, the nuances, become very delicate.

That’s okay, I think I’m ready for it. Go.

All right. But remember, here is where we get into some languaging problems. What I’m going to have to do here is cross over into a Larger Context, and speak from a standpoint of Ultimate Reality, and then cross back over into The Illusion, which is the Reality in which you are now living, and hope you can make the translation.

I understand. Let’s give it a whirl.

Are you sure? This is going to be rough going here. This is going to be tough sledding; the toughest part of our dialogue so far. You may want to skip over this, just take My word for all this, and go right on.

I want to understand it. At least, I want to try.

Okay. Here we go.
Try on this statement:
Beingness is, thought does.
What does that say to you?

It says that “beingness” is not an action, it is not an undertaking, it is not something that “occurs.” Rather, it is an “is-ness.” It is “what is.” It is a “so-ness” – it is “what is so.”

Good. And what about thought?

It says that thought is a process, a “doingness,” something that happens.

That’s very good. So what are the implications of that?

Anything that “happens” takes “time.” It may happen very “fast,” like thought, but it still takes what we call “time.” Something that “is,” however, simply is. It is right now. It’s not “going to be” is-ing. It IS “is-ing,” right here, right now.
In short, “is-ing” is faster than “doing,” and “being” is therefore faster than “thinking.”

You know what? I should have hired you as My interpreter.

I thought You did.

Ah, good one. Okay, now try this statement:
Being is First Cause.
What does that say to you?

It says that Being causes everything. What you are “being,” you experience.

Excellent. Yet does Being cause Thought?

Yes. If the proposition is correct, then yes, Being would cause Thought.

So, what you are being affects how you think.

Yes, you could say that.

Yet I have said that “thought is creative.” Is this true?

It is if You say that it is.

Good. I’m glad you have come to trust Me. Now, if “thought is creative,” can thought create a State of Being?

You mean, which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

Exactly.

I don’t know. I suppose if I am “being” sad, I can change my mind about that, decide to think happy thoughts, to dwell on positive things, and suddenly, I can “be” happy. You have told me that I can do this. You have said that my thought creates my reality.

So I have.

Is it true?

Yes, it is. Yet, let Me ask you this. Do your thoughts create your True Being?

I don’t know. I’ve never heard You use that phrase before. I don’t know what my True Being is.

Your True Being is All Of It. It is Everything. It is The All-in-All. The Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the Oneness.

In other words, God.

That’s one other word, yes.

So You’re asking me if my thought creates God?

Yes.

I don’t know.

Then let Me pick it up from here, and unravel it for you.

Please.

We’re limited here by language and context, as I have explained now several times.

I understand that.

Okay. Your thought about God does not create God. It merely creates your experience of God.
God IS.
God is the All-in-All. The Everything. All that ever was, is now, and ever will be.
So far, so good?

So far, so good.

When you “think,” you do not create THE ALL. You reach INTO The All to create whatever experience OF The All that you choose.
All Of It is already there. You are not placing it there by thinking about it. Yet by thinking about it, you are placing in your experience that Part Of The All about which you are thinking.
Did you follow that?

I think I did. Go slowly. Go very slowly. I’m trying to keep up.

Your True Being, which is Who You Really Are, precedes everything. When you think about who you wish to now BE, you are reaching into your True Being, into your Total Self, and focusing on a part of your Total Self that you now wish to experience.
Your TOTAL Self is ALL OF IT. It is the happiness AND the sadness.

Yes, yes! You have said this before! You have said of me, “You are the up and the down of it, the left and the right of it, there here and the there of it, the before and the after of it. You are the ‘fast’ and the ‘slow’ of it, ‘big’ and the ‘small’ of it, the ‘male’ and the ‘female,’ and what you call the ‘good’ and the ‘bad.’ You are all of it, and there is none of it that you are not.”
I have heard You say that to me before!

You are right. I have. Many times have I said this to you. And now you understand it better than you ever have before.
And so, does “thinking” affect “being?” No. Not in the largest sense. You are What You Are, no matter what you think about it.
Yet can “thinking” create an immediately different experience of your “being”? Yes. What you think about, what you focus on, will be made manifest in your individual present reality. Thus, if you are “being” sad, and you think positive, joyful thoughts, you will very easily “think your way” to “being” happy.

You are simply moving from one part of your Self to another!

Yet there is a “shortcut” – and this is what we have been trying to get at here. This is what we’ve been talking about.
You can move to any State of Being you wish – that is, you can call forth any part of your True Being – at any moment, instantly, by simply knowing it to be so, and declaring it to be so.

You once said to me, “What you Know is what is So.”

Yes, I did. And this is exactly what I meant by that. What you know of your True Being is what will be so of your State of Being right now. When you declare what you know, you make it so.
Declarations are made most powerfully with “I Am” statements. One of the most famous of these was a statement made by Jesus, “I Am the way and the life.” The most sweeping such statement ever made was one made by Me: I Am That I Am.
You can make “I Am” Declarations, too. In fact, you do so every day. “I am sick and tired,” “I am up to my ears,” and so forth. These are Statements of Being. When you make these Statements of Being consciously, rather than unconsciously, you live from Intention; you live Deliberately. Remember, I have suggested that you live…
• Deliberately
• Harmoniously
• Beneficially
Your whole life is a message, did you know that? Every act is an act of Self-definition. Every thought is a silent film on the movie screen of your mind. Every word is voice-mail for God.
Everything you think, say and do sends a message about you.
Think of your I Am Declarations, therefore, as a sort of State of the Union Message. This is your “State of the Being Message.” You are making a statement of how it is with you. You are saying “what is so.”

Hey, wait a minute! I just thought of something! We’re all One anyway, so it really IS a “State of the Union” message!

That’s good. That’s very good.
Now, when you make a declaration, that is the short route to your State of Being. Declarations are a calling forth of Who You Really Are – or, more accurately, of that portion of Who You Really Are that you wish to experience right now.
This is Beingness being creative, rather than Thought being creative. Beingness is the fastest method of creation. That is because what IS, is right now.
A true Declaration of Being is made without thinking about it. If you think about it, you will, at best, delay it, and, at worst, deny it.
Delay will occur simply because thinking takes times, and being takes no time at all.
Denial could occur because thinking about what you choose to be, often convinces you that you aren’t that – and can’t ever become that.

If that’s true, then the worst thing I can do is to think!

In a sense, that is correct. All spiritual masters are out of their minds. That is, they do not consciously think about what they are being. They simply ARE it. The moment you think about it, you can’t be it. You can only delay being it, or deny being it.

To use a very “down home” illustration, you can only “be” in love when you are in love. You cannot be in love if you are thinking about it. If someone who loves you asks, “Are you in love with me?”, and you say, “I’m thinking about it,” that will probably not go over very well.

Excellent! You are understanding very well.
Now, if time is not critical, if it’s not a matter of inches and seconds (and few things are), if it isn’t important how long it takes before you are experiencing what you choose (such as “being in love”), then you can take all the time you want to “think about it.”
And thinking is a very powerful tool. It is one of the Three Tools of Creation.

Thought, word, and deed.

Precisely. Yet today I have given you another method by which you can experience life. This is not a tool of creation, this is a new understanding of creation: that it is not a process by which things occur, but by which you become aware of what already has occurred – an awareness of what is, always was, and always will be, world without end.
Do you understand?

I am beginning to, yes. I am beginning to see the whole cosmology, the whole construction.

Good. I know this has not been simple. Or rather, it has been simple, but it has not been easy.
Just remember this: Being is instant. Compared to that, your thought is very slow. As fast as thought is, it is very slow compared to “being.”