The second part of the Teaching we are discussing is, “… if you keep not the Sabbath as Sabbath, you will not see the Father.” You know the Sabbath as a day of rest. The reason for this is in keeping with another Universal Teaching that is examined in the next few paragraphs.

Here is the Teaching that was explained to the disciples when one of them asked, “Lord, we are going to go out and do the work. You have told us what to do; you have taught us the methods and some techniques, we understand the Teachings. But if people say to us, What is the sign of the Father in us? What do we tell them? How do we say that we know that we are a part God?” And Jesus answered: “The sign of the Father is a movement and a rest.” (Thomas Gospel #50) That is the understanding of a cycle.

The rest is your pause part; the movement is your action part. That is what the Sabbath represents – the rest, the pause part of the cycle. So, what Jesus was saying is, “if you keep not the Sabbath as Sabbath,” if you do not take the time to pause, to reflect in your fasting mode – because that is what the Sabbath is for, you are not to partake of anything. It is disconnecting from material concerns.

So, if you fast and keep the Sabbath, you are really utilizing that pause part of the cycle for the action that begins with the following week. If you keep the Sabbath then you will see the Father. It says that if you do not keep the Sabbath, you will not see the Father – the Father being a movement and a rest and the flow of cycles in the way that life flows in the material plane. Your patterns of behavior use cycles to validate the concepts that created the pattern.

Be clear about the distractions in your life. This coming week try to see what distracts you in your efforts to move forward. They will be there. What entices you? What whets your appetite? What hooks you? What distracts you to indulge in the material? It may be interesting to discover and understand.

You may find that there are certain things that appeal to you more than others, or certain things that you think you need to do in order to get to where you think you need to go. But where you really need to go is within. Therefore, none of the things you see without, in the material plane, the world, really have any value. They are just in keeping with your own misconceptions of what is important or the standards you have been taught to think you need. Also, look into the aspects of cycles. See whether or not – and this is easy enough – if you are utilizing cycles in your life as preparatory times. If you are not, maybe now is the time to start.

This time of pausing and questioning will help you get a handle on things. You may want to sit in the morning writing down and working on interpreting your dreams. If you are not remembering your dreams then begin to train your mind to recall them. I would venture to say that most of you get up at the same time every day, almost to the point where your body clock wakes you. Based on that, begin to train your mind – that with your first sip of tea, water, coffee, whatever your morning ritual – to recall your dreams.