WISDOM 13

p. 145-146

“Finding yourself is not really how it works. You aren't the $10 bill in last winter’s coat pocket. You are also not lost. Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people's opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that became your beliefs about who you are. Finding yourself is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning, an excavation, a re-membering who you were before the world got its hands on you.” Emily McDowell.

“To the as-yet-unborn, to all innocent wisps of undifferentiated nothingness: Watch out for life.

I have caught life. I have come down with life. I was a wisp of undifferentiated nothingness, and then a little peephole opened quite suddenly. Light and sound poured in. Voices began to describe me and my surroundings. Nothing they said could be appealed. They said I was a boy named Rudolph Waltz, and that was that. They said the year was 1932, and that was that. They said I was in Midland City, Ohio, and that was that.

They never shut up. Year after year they piled detail upon detail. They do it still.”

from Deadeye Dick by Kurt Vonnegut

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I am a Divine Child of God but…

My past gets in my way. T

he baggage I am carrying, sometimes a small U-Haul cart other times a semi, gets in the way.

When I begin to realize that my perception of my baggage changes practically everyday, I also begin to realize the illusory nature of what it is that I am holding onto. That does not mean “my stuff” disappears. What it does mean, however, is that I begin to give my stuff less and less attention. It becomes rather irrelevant in this defining of who and what I am. In fact, I begin to learn that defining who I am is part of my baggage. I don't need a definition. Who I am is beyond definition. Sit with that one for a moment.

When someone completed that statement “I am a Divine Child of God…” by saying “I am a Divine child of God and so are you,” for a moment, it all became clear to me. If I embrace that last statement as the truth then there can be no “buts,” no arguments, no exceptions. There is only one reality, “I am a divine child of God and so are you.” Those are words, but the expression of those words, and the vibration aligned with it is that of Unity consciousness. Essentially there is no difference between you and me; there is no you and me, there just IS.

Now while we are on this Earthly plane each one of us is the unique expression of the Divine; that is both our teaching and our learning. It does not reinforce the idea of separateness, but carries with it that we are all colors of the same rainbow. In fact that is a metaphor or image that is used quite often-- a shining white light through a prism and seeing it break down into its significant primary colors. Each color is a unique expression of that white light.

“Now you perceive everything.” That includes yourself and everyone and everything around you. it is beginning to dawn on me that my perception is not the truth. What I see or feel or taste or touch might be a limited aspect of the truth, but it is certainly not the whole thing. And that especially is true when I apply that to my “perception” of myself. 

“I am a Divine Child of God but I don't always perceive myself that way.”

I'm reminded of the Zen fable of The Five Blind Men encountering an elephant and attempting to describe or define what they are experiencing. One holes the trunk and says, “This is an animal like a snake;” another holds the ear and says, “This is an animal like a gigantic fan; another is embracing the leg and says “This is an animal that is like a tree trunk; another has its hands on the sides of the of the elephant and says, “This is an animal like a wall; and finally there is one holding the tail saying, “This is this is an animal like a rope.” Each one of them is convinced that she/he are correct and in a very limited way they are but none of are close to the truth.

So I look in the mirror, how do I perceive myself. I see a body; I see a body that is aging; I see a body that is not quite as strong or as flexible as it might have been even a day ago. If I look deeper than the physical, I see a person who is concerned about this or that; upset about this upset about that; grateful for this grateful for that. And if I were to look in the mirror and just look at my eyes, I would begin to know beyond my seeing that there is more to me than all of that. I might not be able to define it or describe it and yet I know it is the truth. Whatever I perceive, I am more than that.

So what we are saying here is “Do not be limited by your perception. Your perception can only embrace that which it has already known. In words we have heard before, the only way I can define the present is from the past.

Now what we are being asked to do here is through our willingness and our intention to go beyond the limits of perception, to embrace possibility, even though we might not be able to define that.

Is it possible for me to know my true self? Is it possible for me to live out of the truth of my divine nature? Is it possible for me to see you beyond your disturbing personality?

Now my perception today would say something like, “I desire that possibility I desire to be in alignment with that possibility,” but if I were to follow that thought, I am also saying that “Even though I desire that possibility, I am not there yet.” Do you see how that perception or my of myself can be a limiting belief that keeps me in a box?

A suggested prayer:

“I am willing to open myself up to the possibility of knowing beyond my perception. I am willing to be willing. I step back as far as I need to step back and allow my willingness to be open to the possibility to be in my Truth.” And then as we have spoken many times before, I surrender; I allow my Divine self to take over. I allow my vision to be expanded to the highest level of possibility I can hold at this moment. Knowing that as I stretch, I can continue to stretch even more. In fact, there are no limits to what I can embrace and encompass in my eternal sense of Being.

“When you have a new ideal, a new thought, a new possibility that has not yet been claimed or made manifest in form, you idealize the possibility—“There may be great things in the ethers that I do not know yet”—but you do not align to them as a reality because you do not have the tools and the ability to claim them.”

I hope I am not being presumptuous about this one but I really sense that the above paragraph from the book is not quite complete. I believe that each one of us has, in one way or another, “tasted” or felt or experienced alignment with our Divine Nature. We might not have been able to stay in that space, but we knew and we know the truth of that. So even though I continue to seek that knowing or those “great things in the ether” that I don't seem to remember all the time, I do know them. I would not be here unless I carried within me, a sense of that deepest truth. I do know the truth of who I am, and as we mentioned earlier, when I recognize that truth within Myself then I recognize it in you as well. There are no limits to my understanding. None.

I might still have a difficult time getting past your personality self and getting past my personality self as well. At the same time I can know that neither one of those is a definition of who you are or who I am. 

“If you held the level of perception that would help you understand this, to call this into your being, to know it as so, we promise you this: You would have done it already. So what we are responsible for now, as your teachers, are lifting you to a new vantage point where this new understanding is possible, where the limitations you have used to keep yourself at bay no longer serve you and you move beyond them to a new acceptance of what is there always. And we say this with emphasis, what is there always.”

Here is simply another form of surrender. I recognize the limits of my perception. I recognize there is more to me there is more to you there is more to Creation then I am able to grass from my limited point of view. I allow all beings who are leading and walking this path with me, some with bodies, and some not to help raise me up. I do not condemn; I do not judge. I simply let go of my grasp on my perception as being the truth. I recognize the old beliefs, the old attitudes, the old definitions of life that no longer serve me. I bless them; I thank them for being here. I thank them for serving me, for being my teachers, even though some of the lessons might have been painful. I release my perception, open myself up to the realm of possibility, through my willingness in my intention that I can see beyond all illusion, see beyond  all created barriers, all that might get in a way from my recognition of the truth of who you are and the truth of who I am. 

Lovingly grateful for the higher energies and vibrations we create together.

If you want--explore the next couple of pages and it will make what we have talked about here much more clear.