It's All Inside All of Us

When I was 10, 11, or 12, I read a book titled Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. It's a book about a seagull who is dissatisfied with his ordinary seagull life, and sets out to learn to fly - to really fly, not just commute to get his daily food. It's a quick read, and I recommend it. There is also a version on YouTube, narrated by Richard Harris. I started listening to it, but the style of narration and the music put me off. You might enjoy it, however.

I believe this book started, or at least validated, my quest for something more. As I've mentioned once or twice before in this blog, I've never been one to be satisfied very long with life as it appears on the surface. I've always searched deeper. I am blessed in that I grew up in a home with parents of different faith traditions. I don't have as much dogma as some people have, and I had permission to explore what was out there as far as religion goes, and explore I did. I also never had any indoctrination that one way of believing was any better or worse than another way. I am grateful for that. I have plenty of stuff to unlearn in this lifetime, but I don't have any sense of guilt that some might experience from staying home on a Sunday morning, or that I currently do not hold membership in any organized religious body. And I may become a member of a spiritual fellowship in the future, if Spirit moves me to do so.

Even with all this freedom, spirituality has been slow to develop with me. I read and hear spiritual information that rings true to me, but have had difficulty over the years internalizing what I hear and read. It's as though part of me really grasps onto it, and part of me rejects it. The path from my head to my heart is often a lot longer than the physical 18 inches. 

But what I wanted to write about today is the concept that God, or Spirit, or Source, or Creator, or whatever term fits best for you, is inside each and every one of us. Not just because we've been baptized, or confirmed, or had our willies snipped - the Spirit of the Universe is within us since birth. Our connection to Source is our birthright. I understand that many faiths say one must go through some sort of ceremony to get God, but even in the Christian tradition, Jesus did not indicate that. "And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, 'The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:  Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you'." (Luke 17:20-21, KJV) (I think the red lettering is a nice touch). Jesus' statement comes with no qualifiers. Jesus' mission on Earth was to show others how to connect with God, and if there had been qualifiers, surely He would have mentioned them? Many of the commonly accepted qualifiers for becoming a child of God expressed in the Christian faiths originated from theologians after Jesus' death. 

The concept of a Higher Power being already factory-installed within us is important in recovery. I do believe for myself that a Higher Power is necessary to recover from addiction and mental illness, and understanding that it is already present is often essential. Both addiction and mental health conditions come with a lot of shame - we believe we're bad, defective people. Certainly God, who is all good, would have nothing to do with us because we're deficient, defective, and just plain bad. That's not just theory; millions, perhaps billions, of people feel cut off from Source because of what they've done or who their society says they are. The problem is that we are unable to live up to God's standards. 

But, lo and behold, mainstream religion has given us an out - if we repent, we can experience redemption and be saved. That means, if we we renounce our former lives, and behave ourselves and start doing certain things, God will love us unconditionally, and everything will be great.

There are a couple of problems with this: for people with mental health issues or addiction issues, it's really difficult, if not impossible, to shed the shame of being a sinful, defective human being, so we bring our sense of shame into this perfect relationship with God, and that automatically sullies the relationship. Self-forgiveness is not an easy task! Second, to anybody who thinks too much, and usually people who live with mental health conditions think way too much for their own good, this concept of receiving conditional unconditional love doesn't really make sense. 

What If

Try this on for size: The Hebrew Bible in Genesis 1:27 (KJV) tells us that, "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." It's fairly obvious that we didn't create ourselves, and if God created us, He probably created us as He is, seeing as He had nothing else to go on. So, if we're direct descendants of Source, we must have everything It has. Everything. Meaning, perhaps, (heretic alert) we have as much power, energy, and love within us as God has. Meaning, also, that it would also be very hard for Source to hate and reject Its own creation.  

God, in order to be God, is Omniscient (all knowing), Omnipotent (all powerful), and Omnipresent (everywhere).  The omniscient part means that nothing gets by God. Nothing. Even if you have the covers on. So is it possible, seeing that God is Omniscient, Omnipotent, and Omnipresent, for His creation, created in His image, to do anything that goes against His grain? If God is all good, and He created everything (including us) how can anything be bad?

Now try this on for size: What if we're eternal beings - our consciousnesses are points or particles (or maybe waves) of Source, and we've always been and always will be. We already know Source is creative - look up into the night sky, and you can see it! What if we're eternal beings, and this particular life is a physical incarnation that we chose, and we come to Earth as little bundles of Source, with all the attributes of Source, but completely dependent upon others for our physical survival? What if, in the struggle to maintain this physical existence, we forget where we came from and who we really are? 

What if the point of all of this is that Source wants to experience all the infinite possibilities of physical life, and that's why we're here? What if part of the joy of living is the journey back to remembering who we really are? What if all of the discomfort and pain and hurt we experience in this lifetime comes from our forgetfulness of who we really are?

And what if it is possible to live as Jesus (and a few others) have - in complete knowing of our Oneness with the Creator while we're here in this physical plane? What if part of our purpose is to discover our own Divinity and to share our experience with others searching for theirs? What would that look like?

So that's the whole deal for me - my life, right now, is about understanding that I am learning to release my little higher powers (addictions, shame, dysfunctional thinking, beliefs in disconnect) in order to remember that I Am connected to Source, and that my life is very important because while I am experiencing it, so is Source, and Source has never experienced life like this before. What if Source loves me even when I don't? What if Source is always available to me, I just have to learn how to tune into the right frequency?

This is actually working in my life. I come from a hopeless state of mind and body to a person living successfully among his peers. Much of my path has been and is unlearning the things I've learned that don't match my vision of Source. I do that in many ways - therapy, recovery programs, fellowship with others on the same path, reading and learning new ways of looking at life, prayer and meditation.

I still want to learn to fly.

Namasté

Ken