The Spirit That Moves Mountains

Jeshua - Chapter 26

My father, Joseph, was a stonemason who took great pleasure in showing me his trade. He understood that my spiritual studies were important and that I had a special role as a rabbi and teacher, but I always appreciated the importance he placed on helping me learn his craft while also keeping my mind on God. It felt very similar to some of the Buddhist teachings I learned in India as a child and teenager.

The Buddhists taught me to practice meditation while performing the simplest tasks. I kept my mind solely on God while sweeping, preparing food, or washing. During these preparations, I thought of my brothers and sisters as spirit.

I used the same techniques once I became proficient at stonemasonry. Whenever I exerted any effort into carving stone, with every shaping pass, I was focused on God. I let my body perform the task, but my mind would be focused on Father. Occasionally I needed to spend a few moments concentrating more on the stone or on the technique if it was a critical task or required focused attention, but I found I could spend hours of the day focused on my Father by helping my paternal father.

While my childhood friends complained about helping out, I looked forward to it. By training my mind to focus on God, I allowed my body to perform work longer, when most people would experience fatigue. My father boasted that his son was as strong as an ox, but I knew that my mind was strong and one with God.

When we went down to quarries to gather large samples of rocks for projects, I enjoyed gathering them because it was a very simple and mundane task. I could allow my body to go into rock-gathering mode while my mind stayed focused on God. Or I would remind myself and say things like, "I am not really gathering rocks. I am in Heaven with my Father."

If I was at a job site, it was a perfect opportunity to practice forgiveness if other people were around. I would remind myself that the other bodies I saw around me were not really there, that I had made them up in my split mind, that they were really spirit. I wanted to release these images to the Holy Spirit so they could be healed, and my mind could be healed.

My father had no idea this was going on in my head. He thought I was a busy little stonemason, focused on my tasks. If only he'd known that my entire world was not built of stones but of the world of spirit and the Kingdom of Heaven.