Awake, those who slumber. Awake!
The journey of life, and perhaps its truest purpose and reason, is also its greatest opportunity and invitiation - to increase in embodied consciousness 'till you realize, without doubt, shade, or shadow that you and God are one!
For almost the past two decades, my spiritual walk has afforded me many insights into the Divine and my relationship with it. Concepts I once believed so concretely, I would later deem as merely childsplay. And concepts and ideas I would never have considered as truth, I would discover were closer to truth than what I previously believed. However, in all of this, I have, in varying degrees, wrestled with my fundamental dualistic conditioning.
Dualism is the concept that our entire existence (word, thought, and deed), is delegated into two camps - what is good and what is evil. Having come from a Conservative Christian background, this was ingrained into the very fabric of how I believed one should live, move, and ultimately worship God. As you can probably surmise, dualism is the bedrock of almost every single institution, law, and society. But it is also the cornerstone of all war and its ensuing calamities.
What I have discovered over the past several years is that dualism is often the enemy of attaining higher and higher states of consciousness and awareness. I guess this is one of the reasons why Jesus's admonition to "judge not" is so profound. He is asking us to ascend in our understanding of what is real and what it is not - to literally transcend (go beyond in breadth, depth, and perspective) our current understanding of any situation. He is calling us into a third way - a path forged between and beyond a dualistic (right and wrong) framework. Or, to contextualize it within another seminal story, beyond the knowledge of what is good and what is evil.
The Process - The Lesson of the Stove (or how the Divine revealed the progressive stages of consciousness to me)
So how does one go from here to there? What does the journey look like in moving from the concrete playground (emphasis on the childish imagery this evokes) of right and wrong tenets to the luscious jungle of nuance and paradoxical realities?
In 2004 I graduated undergrad and in the midst of my incessant struggle with how to reconcile my homosexuality with my professed Christian faith, I received from the Divine an amazing illustration of how consciousness grows (or is supposed to grow) within human beings. The Divine used a story about a mother, a son, and a stove to illustrate the process.
Stage 1 - There was a mother who had a baby boy. One day, to keep her son safe, she told him, under NO circumstances was he ever to touch the stove. This was an absolute rule and something to be followed without question. The child, not knowing any better or understanding the mechanics of the stove, followed the mother's dictate blindly and without question. The mother didn't want her son getting burnt, and since he didn't currently know or understand how the stove worked, it was best to have him avoid it altogether.
Stage 2 - As the child grew, he began to learn more about the stove. He understood that food was cooked on and in it and that the stove had the potential of getting very, very hot. He also realized that when the stove got hot, a little red light would come on indicating such. So he surmised (and rightfully so) that he could touch the stove so long as the red light was not on.
Stage 3 - The child grew even more and his understanding of the stove, heat, fire, and its properties expanded. He learned that even with the red heat indicator on, he could take his hand and hover it over the hot eye. And so long as his hand never made physical contact with the eye, or got too close to the radiating heat, he would not get burned.
Stage 4 - One day the child got bold and wanted to test his tolerance to pain and sensation. And through a series of experiments realized that he could touch the stove even if the light was on, the eye was red hot, and if he very quickly tapped the eye and quickly removed his hand again, he would not get burned.
Stage 5 - Many years passed, and the child grew into a young man, and later an adult. He studied many things pertaining to consciousness and his life experiences led him on a journey of understanding more and more of his role in the cosmos and his unitive relationship to all things. Through various evolving spiritual practices born out of his hunger for communing with the Divine, he gained much knowledge and power. And one day, he approached the stove, turned it on high, put his hand square on the eye and, although the stove was the hottest it could get, the child (not a full adult) was not phased nor burned by the searing heat. He had learned how to bend even the laws of nature to his will and for his purposes. And he realized that no thing that he was truly one with could ultimately hurt him. For he was one with all things.
The only things that can truly hurt us are those things we believe we are separate from!
This progressive revelation (as many religions call it) is not wholly about how we continue to understand the Divine but, just as importantly, how we continue to understand ourselves. Jesus was very clear that "the law was made for man, not man for the law." In other words, the law was to be a tool to help guide mankind and eventually, in time, be set aside for a higher way. That way is Love! The law was never meant to be an endless prison. Words attributed to the Apostle Paul would later put this consciousness journey in a different way -
“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned liked a child; now that I have become a man, I am done with childish ways and have put them aside.”
Unfortunately, too many of our major religion's adherents are endlessly stuck in Stage 1 of the aforementioned stove story - fighting over the tenets of what's legally right and wrong. The are looking to archaic Divine laws that were written in whatever religious text they deem infallible, and regardless of the obvious world and social changes around them, dig their heels deeper in, defending tenets that the Divine is eagerly trying to get them to move beyond. Stage 1 is a life stuck in blind dualistic thinking and belief. It is often characterized by egoic and tribal mentalities of Us versus Them, white versus black, up versus down, right versus left, right versus wrong, blue versus red, conservative versus liberal, republican versus democrat, the rich versus the poor, etc. In this dual framework the ONLY inevitable outcome is war and death. That is why so many spiritual teachers taught us to love our enemies, do unto others as we would have them do unto us, fight hate with love and darkness with light, etc.
And if we believe that the Divine is infinite then it stands to reason that it can NOT be solely relegated to a Stage 1 understanding. It's far too limiting and far too low yield. In Eastern religions that use chakras as a means of explaining and exploring stages of consciousness, the Root chakra (base of spine, anal area) is described as the lowest stage of consciousness. It is likened to the animal mind and preoccupied with basic survival. It is tribal and narrow-minded. The questions it wrestles with is simply this, " Will I make it, will I survive?"
We Must Grow Up!
The world is changing, rapidly. Constructs and systems, ideas and beliefs long thought firm, are crumbling. Our reference points are disappearing and we as a species are teetering on the edge of critical shift, and critical opportunity. Moving forward is going to require taking brave new steps beyond our individualized cultural dualities. We must stop bickering about what is right and wrong and start asking the question, "What is most loving and the most beneficial for the most people?" We must seek the third paths that lead us into greater horizons of opportunity, health, freedom, and goodwill! We must be creative, and we must take bold risks and steps beyond our original mandates and protocols.
All of this requires moving past Stage 1. I do not believe that humankind will extinct itself. However, if courses aren't changed, many will pay a high price for our collective ignorance, our collective negligence, and our collective inaction. And even this pain and hardship will be used towards our ultimate conscious awakening. The ultimate goal of life is to wake up to the reality that what separates us is a lie. (Actually, separation itself is a lie, a dream, a figment.) All the great religions and spiritual traditions ultimately point to this - That all is one and one day we will all fully remember that this oneness is our original state and our truest home.
Blessings,
GJ