Jim May | living at His place

YIELDING TO THE LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE

So what are these principles?

1. THE LAW OF ETERNAL UNITY.

  • “In all things there lives and reigns an eternal Law... based on an all-pervading, energetic, living, self-conscious, and hence eternal unity… This unity is God.” (Froebel)
  • “Universe” means uni = “one” verse = “song.” The desire of every heart is to live in the “one song.” The holy grail of science is “the unified theory of the universe.” Paul called it “the restoration of all things.” (Eph. 1:10) New Age philosophy seeks “oneness with nature and the universe.” When Jesus said on the cross, “It is finished,” he announced that the eternal law of unification was complete.
  • Modern man cannot live in disunity. He is suffering from alienation from the law of unity because he has “lifted up his soul to what is false.” (Psa. 24:4) He is alienated sociologically from others, psychologically from himself, ecologically from nature, and spiritually from God. It is truly frightening to hear the lies people believe fed by false propaganda.
  • To reverse this process we must “lift up our souls to truth.” Restoration of unity comes when we replace lies with truth and illusions with reality. The bias filters through which we see things must be opened to the truth so it can penetrate into our hearts. The means we must listen to the voice of God who is the truth.

2. THE LAW OF CONNECTEDNESS.

  • Since everything is from one source, everything is connected. Everything is connected by truth and love. Everything is disconnected by lies and hate.
  • Our decisions and actions affect everything in the universe. It is said that when a leaf falls to the ground, it is felt around the world. We can affect the world with truth or lies, love or hate.
  • Further, everything is connected by truth. I am connected to every place a human being has touched truth. I am closely linked with all honest seekers of truth past and present. Men like Pascal, Malcolm Muggeridge, C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton and Dostoyevsky are my soul mates in truth even though I have never met them.
  • Every one of us is significant in the choices we make, the attitudes we have, and the actions we perform. We do not live in a vacuum, but in community with all people. Our love or hate affects everyone around us.

3. THE LAW OF MULTIPLICATION.

  • In nature everything multiplies, and doesn’t just add. There are enough seeds in one apple to feed the world with proper sowing and harvesting. The beauty of this law is the power of one. Everything starts with one thought and one act that can then multiply. Negative multiplication will destroy itself as it is not in line with the way the universe works. Positive multiplication of love will reverberate throughout the universe for eternity.

4. THE LAW OF CONTINUITY.

  • All of human history can be viewed as a single life. “All the generations of men following each other in the course of so many centuries must be considered as one man who continues always to subsist and is constantly learning.” (Pascal) All history is moving toward the creation of “one new man.” Every person belongs and is needed.
  • Paul puts it elegantly in I Cor. 12:14-21 “We see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where he wanted it… What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place.” So we all belong. We all are needed. We all need each other.
  • Human social engineers have tried to produce the Body of God, but have only enslaved man in collectivism. History has been a struggle between individualism verses collectivism. Only God can put a body together without destroying human dignity. When the state replaces God, the erosion of individual rights begins a slow march into slavery in the name of “the common good.”
  • epression by collectivism is a counterfeit to the true body. The most destructive war today is between collectivism (system) and the individual (person). Writers like Orwell, Rand, and Huxley have warned us of the devastation of collectivism against the individual.
  • “What is divine in Man is elusive and impalpable, and he is easily tempted to embody it in a concrete form - a church, a country, a social system, a leader - so that he may realize it with less effort and serve it with more profit. Yet, as even Lincoln proved, the attempt to externalize the kingdom of heaven in a temporal shape must end in disaster. It cannot be created by charters and constitutions nor established by arms. Those who set out for it alone will reach it together and those who seek it in company will perish by themselves.” (Kingsmill)

5. THE LAW OF RECIPROCITY.

  • Nature gives back what we give out. We are judged by our own judgments. We are measured by our own standards. This powerful law is motivation for accountability to treat others as we want to be treated. Cruelty gets back cruelty. Kindness gets back kindness. Hate gets back hate. Love gets back love.
  • "Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." {Luke 6:37-38 NIV} I know of no place where this law is more clearly stated, and it is spoken by the One who is called the truth.
  • “You shall be treated as you have treated others, and your deeds will recoil on your own head.” (Obadiah 1:15)
  • “The man who makes no allowances for others will find none made for him. It is still true that mercy smiles in the face of judgment.” (James 2:13 Phillips)
  • He who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.” (Prov. 11:25)

6. THE LAW OF COMPENSATION.

  • Sometimes this is called the Law of Balance in Nature.
  • Every experience comes with polarity - action and reaction.
  • “Nature has written duality into everything: light and dark, heat and cold, ebb and flow of the waves, in male and female… If we empty here, we must fill there. For everything we missed, we gain elsewhere, and where we gain, we lose.”
  • “This law writes the laws of cities and nations. It is in vain to build or plot or combine against it. Things refuse to be mismanaged long. Though no checks to a new evil appear, the checks exist, and will appear. If the government is cruel, the governor’s life is not safe. If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing. If you make the criminal code sanguinary, juries will not convict. If the law is too mild, private vengeance comes in.”
  • “There is always a leveling experience that puts down the overbearing, the elite, the strong, the rich, the fortunate, substantially on the same ground with all others.” (Emerson)

7. THE LAW OF LIVING FROM SOURCE.

  • e cannot make it on our own. We must tie into the Source (God) to achieve and succeed. Pascal writes, "It is in vain oh men that you seek within yourselves the cure for your miseries. All your insight only leads you to the knowledge that it is not in yourselves that you will discover the true and the good. The philosophers promised them to you, but they have not been able to keep their promise. They do not know what your true good is or what your true state is. How shall they have provided you with a cure for ills which they have not even understood? Your principal maladies are pride, which cuts you off from God, and sensuality, which binds you to the earth. And they have done nothing but foster at least one of these maladies… There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man that cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God the creator.”
  • Self-effort is a formula for failure. “. . . Anyone who tries to live by his own effort, independent from God, is doomed to failure.” {Gal. 3 “The Message”}

8. THE LAW OF AUTHENTICITY.

  • Our outside expression must match our True Self for mental health. Every discrepancy between our outward behavior and our inner feelings is both a moral fault and a psychological injury to our personality.” (Tournier)

The four laws of being are:

  • Be who you be. Be an original, not a copy.
  • Be where you be. Live in the present.
  • Be where you fit. Unite the outside with the inside.
  • Be with who you are with. Listen and pay attention to who is in front of you. “If they had both known what was remarkable in one another at that moment, they would have been surprised at the chance which had so strangely brought them opposite one another in the third class carriage of the Warsaw train.” {Dostoevsky, “The Idiot”}

9. THE LAW OF SURRENDER.

  • When we give ourselves away, we find ourselves. When we try to save ourselves, we ruin our lives. Those who give themselves to a higher purpose find fulfillment and happiness. Those who live for their own gratification, live in self-imposed misery no matter how many things they have.
  • “If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose (destroy) it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.” (Matt 16:25-26 NLT)

10. THE LAW OF HUMILITY.

  • The way up is down. Humility comes before honor.
  • “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” {Prov 16:18 NIV}
  • The essence of pride is comparison. It is OK to say, “I am proud of my daughter’s achievements.” But it is not OK to say, “My daughter is better than your daughter.”
  • "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.” {1 Peter 5:5-7 NIV}

11. THE LAW OF LOVE.

  • Love is the glue of the universe. Without love everything flies apart.
  • “The whole trouble lies in that people think that there are conditions excluding the necessity of love in their intercourse with man, but such conditions do not exist. Things may be treated without love; one may chop wood, make bricks, forge iron without love, but one can no more deal with people without love than one can handle bees without care. The nature of bees is such that if you handle them carelessly you will harm them as well as yourself. It is the same with people. And it cannot be different, because mutual love is the basic law of human life… If you feel no love for people, then keep away from them. Occupy yourself with things, yourself--anything; only keep away from people. As it is harmful to eat except when one is hungry, so is it harmful to have intercourse with people when one does not love them. If one permits himself to deal with people without having any love for them, as I did yesterday with my brother-in-law, there is no limit to the cruelty and brutality one is liable to display toward others, as I have seen to-day, and there is no limit to one's own suffering, as I have learned from all the experiences of my own life.” {Tolstoy, “The Awakening”}

12. THE LAW OF STRENGTH FROM WEAKNESS.

  • When we are weak, we are strong.
  • “As no man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him, so no man had ever a defect that was not somewhere made useful to him. The stag in the fable admired his horns and blamed his feet, but when the hunter came, his feet saved him, and afterwards, caught in the thicket, his horns destroyed him. Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults. As no man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it, so no man has a thorough acquaintance with the hindrances or talents of men until he has suffered from the one and seen the triumph of the other over his own want of the same.” (Emerson)
  • “I believe that there is a great illusion underlying both the despair of the weak and the unease of the strong – and the misfortune of both. This great illusion is the very notion that there are two kinds of human beings, the strong and the weak. The truth is that human beings are much more alike than they think. What is different is the external mask, sparkling or disagreeable, their own reaction, strong or weak. These appearances, however, hide an identical inner personality. The external mask, the outward reaction, deceives everybody, the strong as well as the weak. All men are, in fact, weak. (Dr. Paul Tournier)
  • Because of the extravagance of those revelations, and so I wouldn't get a big head, I was given the gift of a handicap to keep me in constant touch with my limitations. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” {2 Cor. 12:7-10}

13. THE LAW OF VIBRATION.

  • Everything that exists in the entire cosmos, both the seen as well as the unseen, exists in its purest and most basic form as a vibrating mass of energy. Quantum Physics has taught us that what we see is not really what is. What we see as solid matter is made up of tiny particles of electromagnetic energy. What looks solid is actually made up of energy fields.
  • We are all putting out vibes of energy that speak much louder than our words. We project love, hate, depression, joy, peace, agitation and fear, to those around us. The vibes with which we communicate are more important than the words we say.
  • The same words can be spoken in a spirit of love or hate, sadness or joy, lies or truth. It is estimated that 93% of all communication is nonverbal.
  • ll our communication has a certain resonance that attracts energies of similar frequencies. Hate attracts hate. Love attracts love. Rebellion attracts other rebels.
  • his inserts accountability into our lives to be real and transparent in our relationships. We cannot say, “I love you,” unless we really mean it, because our vibes will contradict and override our words.

14. THE LAW OF THE LEAVEN IN THE LOAF.

  • The kingdom of God is filling the entire world like leaven in a loaf. It supports what is in line with it and allows all others to destroy themselves. The kingdom will come by the process of elimination of everything in the individual, society, culture, nation, world, history and universe that is contrary to its order. The world is in the process of eliminating every way that is not “The Way.” The world is finding out how not to live…Our bodies were not made for hate, resentments, self-centeredness, fear, guilt, and bitterness. We are allergic to evil and our bodies break down under its influence.

15. THE LAW OF THE TRUE SELF.

  • Every person that comes into the world is given the light of God at birth. He is “the true light that gives light to every man.” (Jn.1:9) Our spirit is connected with the laws of the universe, but can be silenced by lies from the world, our culture, and traditions. As we listen to the truth from our spirit and God we are brought into harmony with the laws of the universe and find our true place and purpose for our existence.