The Hebrew Prophets

Behold!

I am creating a new heaven and a new earth.
Rejoice and be happy forever in what I am creating.
For I shall create Jerusalem as joy, and her people as delight …….

Even before you pray, I will answer;
even as you ask, I will respond.

——- Isaiah 65:17-24

The new heaven and new earth are simply the old heaven and the old earth seen with new eyes. Do not imagine that the world is other than it was. Rather, be aware that you are seeing it as it is for the first time.

Joy and delight rather than fear and shame are the hallmarks of the awakened soul. This is how you know that you are on the right path. If each step brings joy to you and others; if each step is a delight to self and stranger; if your every step is peaceful, gentle, just, and kind, then you are on the Path. If not, then not. Return once more.

When you awaken to God as the One Who Is all that is, you no longer imagine yourself on a spiritual quest or search. You have and are all you need. Your prayer and the answer to your prayer are one: connection to God. Your request and the answer to your request are one: alignment with God. Each step is the first step. Each step is the last step. There is nowhere to go. You have arrived without going anywhere.

The One Who Is will see to your needs, though you will need little.
You will see beyond the material, the Teacher will no longer be obscured from view, and you will see your Teacher clearly.

And if you wander from the Path, either to the right or to the left, your ears will hear and you will heed the councel:
“This is the path, walk it.”

——- Isaiah 30:20-21

Your hunger for material goods was driven by your urge to fill a void you imagined within you. When you awaken to God, the void is seen as illusory. You lack nothing and need little. You live simply, not by choice, but by design. It is not that you choose to rein in your desires, but that without the false hunger driving you, you discover that you no longer have those desires at all.

God is all, and everything will teach you.

Your deviation will spark the hearing, just as smoke sets off a smoke alarm. It is immediate and strong. The way of God is straight and is walked without wobbling. Tipping right or left suggests a drunkenness of the self on selfishness, and is quietly corrected so that the despair and destruction of the past need never be repeated. This does not mean that you will not stumble on the path, but only that you will pick yourself up quickly and return to the way.

The wolf will live with the lamb;
the leopard lie down with the kid;
the calf, the lion cub, and the fatling will walk together and a little child will lead them.

The cow and the bear shall graze the same pasture, and their young shall lie down together;
and the lion, like the ox, shall eat straw.
A baby will play over a viper’s hole, and an infant pass his hand over an adder’s den.

In all of My sacred mount there shall be no evil or injury;
for the earth shall be as filled with devotion to Me as the ocean is covered with the water of the sea.

——- Isaiah 11:6-9

The little child is you at your simplest and most spiritual. In a similar vein, Jesus taught that until you become like little children you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The idea is to be like a child and not a child once more. That is, you are to regain the open-hearted curiosity of the child, and it is this childlike wonder and amazement at life that will reveal to you the divine nature of living.

Violence and fear are at the root of the deluded and delusional world imagined by the small self. These are totally absent when you awaken to God as the One Who Is.