" Got Your Attention, Ready To Go A Little Deeper"

Got Your Attention”   “Ready To Go A Little Deeper”

I am assuming that you are hungry to know more?  You wouldn't be reading this series if you weren't seeking.  Taking a critical look at self with the sword of truth so you can see who has and is driving your bus, is probably the most difficult process you will have to endure to leave the darkness as you reach for the light.  Allowing the truth about yourself to be exposed to you and accepting the responsibility for the part you play in the darkness that surrounds your life is no easy task.  You know the old saying “It takes two to tango” and therefore you have to accept that you have played a part in your dance with darkness.  Here we need to examine the blame, shame, and guilt game. 

You must be willing and able to go beyond your ego to reach out to something more, to experience the parts of yourself that have nothing to do with the agendas of your personality.  At the same time, you must also be willing to experience the limitation and pain that your ego centered habits are causing you.  "Self-transcendence is difficult and fearful because it entails exposing unconscious territory, feelings, thinking, and acting in ways foreign to your personality, contrary to your past habits, at odds with your old attitudes and identity.  Exposing this will help free you of the old wounds and defences of your childhood. In a sense, self- transcendence is a rebirth, a true transformation from the darkness of your ego centered human nature into the light of your true selfless spiritual nature that will allowing you to be open to experience unconditional love.  I must caution you here as we only get a glimpse of unconditional love because we are partly blinded by our human nature but it is this love only that has the power to save us from ourselves.  Until you learn to truly love the real you within, with all your beauty and blemishes you cannot learn to freely love others so they too can get a glimpse.   Remember, you cannot give to others something you do no possess for yourself first.  Without self-love and proper self-care there can be no hope of lasting happiness, peace or contentment.  It is because you do not love yourself properly that you lose yourself so easily in the many illusions EGO sets before you.

If it becomes too difficult for you to face and expose the truth about yourself, then you probably will not finish this series.  My hope is, that you will discovered that the key to new beginnings lay in the act of letting go of something in the past.  If you can you will find the place to start all over again.  

Now that you are out of the womb, your two natures require nurturing.  Again remembering that whichever nature that gets feed the most that is the one that will become the dominant in your life.  If you did not get good spiritual nurturing from those who were responsible for your early growth, you need to start now.  For those who follow the Christian tradition the Apostle Paul writes in Galatians 5: 16-26.    16. What I say is this: let the Spirit direct your lives, and you will not satisfy the desires of the human nature. 17. For what our human nature wants is opposed to what the Spirit wants, and what the Spirit wants is opposed to what our human nature wants. These two are enemies, and this means that you cannot do what you want to do. 18. If the Spirit leads you, then you are not subject to the Law. {Meaning the law of religion}  Some religious teaching are not of the Spirit but were designed by man in both the early church and in the church today and are actually contrary to ways of the Spirit.  Trust the Spirits leading it will not fail you here.  

19. What human nature does is quite plain. It shows itself in immoral, filthy, and indecent actions; 20. in worship of idols and witchcraft. People become enemies and they fight; they become jealous, angry, and ambitious. They separate into parties and groups; 21. they are envious, get drunk, have orgies, and do other things like these. I warn you now as I have before: those who do these things will not possess the Kingdom of God.

22. But the Spirit produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness. 23. Humility  and self-control. There is no law against such things as these.  24. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have put to death their human nature with all its passions and desires.  25. The Spirit has given us life; he must also control our lives.  26. We must not be proud or irritate one another or be jealous of one another.

Those who are dominated by their human nature lean towards the prince of darkness, and are ruled by chaos and mayhem.  Those who live according to their spiritual nature will lean towards the Christ who is the light of the world, and are ruled by faith and truth.     

Here I must caution you not to lay blame on your earthly parents, your guardians or you friends for your circumstances.  In reality we are all truly not aware of how others are effected by the choices we make.   In the New Testament of the Christian scriptures we find in Luke 23:34, Jesus can and shows you a way to dealt with blame.  He doesn't blame his circumstances on those who rejected him, those who beat him, on those who abandoned him, even on those who nailed Him to a cross and cursed Him.    What does he do?  He asks His heavenly Father to forgive them, because He understands that they are not completely unaware of the consequences they are creating with their decision making.   Truly I tell you, we never really know the side effects that our choice has on our neighbour.  The consequences can be devastating for some.    An innocent bystander can be hurt of even killed if you choose poorly.   A man get into his car down the street and is distracted by his cell phone for just a minute and an innocent child is lost.  An airplane pilot makes a decision to take his own life and hundreds die with him.  

A parent or guardian cannot give you something they do not possess nor can they teach you something they do not know or understand.  You may have heard it said that  “we are often the blind leading the blind”.   People say things but if they do not practice what they preach, then in reality they do not understand what they are saying.   We are all guilty of this to some degree.   Because we are human, we can never get it completely right, but our spiritual nature is nurtured on our striving to achieve it.   Just as we can only imagine a love and forgiveness without conditions, our Spiritual nature looks and longs for it.   The love our Spiritual nature seeks to offer us doesn’t end because of bad choices, broken promises, unfaithfulness, pain, hurt, persecution, spiritual blindness or ignorance as does our human natures with its conditional love.  This love is of the Spirit and it will never fails us.  This love contains forgiveness not only for self but for our enemies and for those who reject us, abandoned us, or do us harm.  It seems an impossible love to achieve so why do we seek this love and forgiveness?   Because it is our Spiritual nature that longs for us to find it.     

One of the keys to surrendering that which nurtures our human nature is learning to let go.  If we are unable to openly surrender blame, shame and guilt, these things can hold us in darkness for a lifetime.  Stay there long enough and it can lead to self-destructive behaviour even death.   Our cleaver and deceptive human nature can justify our poor choices because it too needs to be nurtured and it knows it will soon die with our physical body.  If all else fails this nature will end up blaming the one who created us and meant us for good, when things get tough or go wrong.   

Therefore you must ask for and seek forgiveness of self, yes self-first.   Why me first you might ask, isn’t that feeding EGO?  No, remember that you cannot offers to others something you do not possess yourself.  If you do not take care of you physical health how can you be there for someone else?  How can you forgive others if you haven’t forgiven yourself for violations you have committed either conscious or unconsciously against your own personhood or have caused the innocent to suffer.  No one escapes bad choices folks.  This is critical if you are to begin the journey from darkness to light.  Forgiveness of self then frees you from the bondage of unforgiveness, then you can offer forgiveness to those who have trespassed against you.  You will find this instruction in the prayer Jesus taught to his followers known to most Christians as the Lord’s Prayer.   It starts with “Our Father who art in heaven -----{Now here is a bit of a history lesson for those who memorized this prayer and use the word trespasses rather than debts.  Trespasses, comes from one of the earliest translations of the bible, the Tyndale Bible which was put to print in 1526, 85 years before the King James Version was published in 1611.   The King James Bible translated the word trespasses to debts and then most other translation in the years later use the word debts but trespasses is the original word.}   Either way Christians are instructed to forgive their own trespasses first, then to forgive their neighbour.     

Both natures need to be fed in order to stay healthy.   Whichever nature you feed the most during your life time, as I have said before, that is the one that will dominate your life.  This is the one that will guide your life and drive your passions. Understanding this concept is very important to your coming out of the darkness so you can live and experience life in the light.    

Next Time:      “ The Roller Coaster Ride of Emotions”