Nick Hilton – Reflections

Prayer is simply following the path of enlightenment. When we pray we move our minds, our bodies, and our worlds toward unity with the Creative Principle that surrounds and suffuses our human world. There is usually no evidence that we have prayed: sickness and want do not immediately vanish; sadness and fear are not banished once and for all, except in rare, inexplicable cases. But frequent, fervent prayer moves us closer to our ideal potential, removes the barriers that prevent our achieving perfection, and reveals to us the practical, everyday things we can do to walk the world as children of God.

If you have decided to forgive your enemy, your persecutor, your nemesis, then in the act of that decision it is done. The hatred may arise again later, once the decision has been made and the injury forgotten, but it is only a ghost, a chimera. It is the kind of trick our minds play to justify our negative emotions, nothing more. You have forgiven once you have decided to forgive. There is no going back. Love may be hidden, as the sun is blocked by a cloud, but once you know it is there, it never ceases to shine.

The age of reason has gone too far, robbing mankind of the freedom of fantasy, the rich instruction of dreams, the beauty of symbols. Go to church! Don’t be concerned if it doesn’t “make sense” to your newspaper-textbook-fact-addicted mental bias. Allow yourself to be transported to a state where the Truth can flower within you, where there is magic, where your soul is nourished by unseen provender, where the richness of the human experience of God is shared in ways we cannot measure, codify, or prove.

In some ways our ancestors had an easier time of it in understanding God, His creation and human relationships – to God, to the universe and to each other. Myths, traditions, and the sacred writings of previous ages were easily understood, and we could follow them in order to organize and guide our lives. Today what we call “science” has intruded, insisting it is more “real,” and we are left trying to sort out the rational from the irrational, the mythological from the real; thus each of us is the originator of our own religion. This may yield more satisfying and more personally relevant results, but it is a time-consuming daily task which is only successful if we work at it. Each adherent of this kind religion is his or her own prophet and priest.

It is impossible to imagine a human activity that is not a response to selfish motivation. Everything we do we do to achieve some personal satisfaction. Paradoxically, though, we do our daily spiritual work in order to become less egocentric, less selfish, more compassionate in our outlook and our activities. This is how God’s will sustains Itself, by rewarding us with joy and satisfaction in our practice. Our daily prayers are the action of God being in love with God; our kindness is God smiling.

If you are reading these short meditations, please let me know. It would be comforting to know that there is an audience out there for my thoughts. I am considering changing the format, venue, etc. and wondering if it is worth the effort. nickhiltonstyle@gmail.com. Thank you.

I believe in God; not as a means to an end, but because my belief is the end; the end of insecurity, the end of fear, the end of uselessness. I do not attempt to achieve salvation by following a spiritual path through meditation, prayer and devotion. The path is salvation.

The world wants us to adhere to fixed notions and permanent, unchanging beliefs because the world has a desire for stability, a need to control us which we allow it to have; and we are most easily controlled by ideas and attitudes, “positions” taken without argument or debate, owing to our underlying personal insecurity. The stability of institutions depends upon the people’s willingness to avoid changing our minds. An allergy to novelty, to change, to the effort of learning, of adapting.  But this desire for the comfort of old ideas is what prevents us from creating a personal reality. We settle for an institutional notion of God and of the purpose and meaning of our lives because we are afraid of the consequences and afraid of the work that will be required to attain our own individual salvation.

I am in and of the world, born from the universal material in the world, destined to return eventually to elemental stuff, to become dispersed in the cosmos. While I live I am the living embodiment, spirit and force of the universal life energy, or God. My true function on this plane of existence is to personify the elemental force that created and directs the universal development. That is my true calling.

My life in this world is my school. I come here to learn to live physically, mentally and emotionally. The lessons are never-ending while I exist, and they are not easy; if they were they would not be necessary, or permanent. No. I learn “the hard way” or else the new knowledge gained from my experience does not displace the faulty, partial knowledge I gained earlier, or brought with me in the material I was born with. Because, yes, I am the product of innumerable generations of imperfect life preceding me, and my task, more, my responsibility, is to change the material, the ideas, the spirit and the world, in the way that I am able to, by experiencing the transformation that is God’s will.