My dear friends...
I have said in this space over the past several weeks that I've been wondering...
1. What, if anything, could cause the world to expand its ideas about God?
2. What, if anything, could cause human beings to change their understandings about Life?
3. What, if anything, could cause you and I to alter our thoughts about ourselves and about who we are in relationship to each other?
IN SHORT: What, if anything, could cause our species to modify the drivers of our behavior?
Let us look now at the role that each human being plays in the above.
I said last week, let us first agree that each human being is playing a role. This is not a small step in the playing of that role. You can't take a real and vibrant and active part in something if you don't know that you are taking an active part in it already. That is, if you think that you are on the outside looking in, you will think that everything is an "inside job" and that there is no real role for you to play.
This would not be true.
There is one sure way to get around this, and that is to change your perspective.
So the first step in learning what you can do to help the world change its perspective is for you to change your perspective about what you can and cannot do.
I like John F. Kennedy on this: "Divided, there is little we can do. Together, there is little we cannot do."
So, the first leg of my work in the world is to convince people that they CAN do something, RIGHT NOW, about changing the perspective of large numbers of people on our planet with regard to God, Life, and Each Other.
The good news is that we don't have to try to do this alone. There already exists a slew of people-hundreds and thousands in every country-who are ready, right now, to join in the undertaking. It is simply a question of whether and how we can all locate each other-and then find a way to work together, harnessing our collective energy and focusing it with High Purpose and Intent.
This is not an impossible, or even an overwhelming, thing to do.
What it takes is commitment. You must be committed to (1) accepting and embracing, expressing and experiencing, your true identity, and then, (2) bringing everyone whose life you personally touch a sense of their own magnificence; of the wonder and the glory of who they really are, and then, (3) doing whatever you can, in your own individual way, to share with all the world the enormity of this truth about humanity as a species, and to invite the world to step into this identity at last.
The first step in no less important than the last-and may be, in fact, the most challenging of all. For my experience and observation has been that most of us are living a Case of Mistaken Identity. It is our opportunity now to step beyond the borders of our prior understandings and our limited beliefs, and to Move Fully into the Miracle.
I am speaking of the Miracle of Who We Are.
For the longest time we have had a false notion of our identity, imagining ourselves to be the offspring, or creations, of a Divine Creator who has separated ourselves from Him (or Her, or It) and set up conditions upon which we may return. We have told ourselves and our children and our children's children that unless we meet these specific conditions, we cannot return to our Creator, but must forever be separated from Him (or Her, or It).
This has been our identity. Separated Children of God. Yearning to return home, hoping to have earned re-entry, striving to be worthy, after all is said and done, of God's Embrace.
Unless we don't believe in God at all (and because many cannot accept a God the likes of which I have just described, they have chosen not to believe in God). In that case, none of the above applies, and we move through the earth, plowing through our lives day by day, hour by hour, with no journey longer than the reaching of the end, hopefully with some degree of personal happiness and accomplishment along the way.
Yet now comes a story of a New Kind of God -- Tomorrow's God - and with it, a new way of being human. Living our lives not as entities separated from God (or having no God at all), but as beings expressing God (by having God has our experience in every moment). Is such a thing possible? Is such a transition within our abilities? I believe the answer is yes.
And so this is the first part of the challenge. I want to discuss the second and third parts in the weeks ahead. But let's look at this first part.
What does it mean to experience a "new way of being human?" What does it mean to "live and experience ourselves" within our true identity?
To me it means, first, understanding that there is no separation, none at all, between That Which Is Divine and That Which Is Human. In other words, between God and Me. God lives in me, as me, through me. And although I do not experience this except in very rare moments, I can experience it at any moment I wish-and for as long as I choose.
The choice is always mine. Always.
So why am I constantly making the smaller choice? Why am I constantly choosing the smaller me? I believe it is because I do not really believe that God lives in me, as me, but only want to believe that. I want to think it's true, but I am not sure that it is true-and I am in some ways afraid to find out.
What would it be like if I acted like "God" - or, to put it in a way a bit more easily accepted, if I acted as if I was "Divine"?
Well, if I ever "gave in to that", it would not doubt change my entire personality. I would experience myself needing nothing, wanting nothing, demanding nothing, missing nothing, hurting over nothing, angry other nothing, resentful over nothing, disappointed with nothing, and damaged by nothing at all. This would change my reactions to life and virtually every interaction with the people around me.
I would be softer, sweeter, gentler, never correcting or controlling or requiring or in any way negative or critical. I would be accepting and non-judging and embracing of everything that is going on with everyone in every moment. I would allow, allow, allow... and yearn for not a single thing other than What Is Happening Right Now, just as it is happening.
Just is exactly like making love with one's beloved. Nothing is required, nothing is expected, nothing is necessary, nothing is missing, and there is not even a tiny yearning for a single thing other than What Is Happening Right Now, just as it is happening.
Life, it seems to me, is God's love-making. We, as individuations of the Divine, get to make love to life by loving every moment, just as it is appearing in front of us; by loving ourselves just as we are, and then extending that unconditional love to all those whose lives we touch.
We can do this. We can. More on how... next week.
