The journey into awareness (or coming into the Light, as the Bible would describe it) is a fascinating, exciting, sometimes confusing, often difficult, frequently discouraging, and many times frightening, journey. Joseph Campbell termed it "The Hero's Journey" because it takes great courage to face ourselves and our inner demons or shadows. I recently read Putting on the Mind of Christ - The Inner Work of Christian Spirituality by Jim Marion, which been a tremendous help to me in understanding my own path along this road to awakening. Of course, the journey has many "dark nights," meaning periods of obscurity where we just don't know what's happening. Marion says "One can never see with exactness where one is going; one can only see afterwards where one has been" (p. 93). I'd like to share a portion of this book that was especially enlightening for me. The author is detailing the new understanding gained when experiencing resurrection from the Dark Night of the Soul. He says:
"We see that our own selves and all humans are made of 'God-stuff'...begotten of God and made of the same substance ad essence as God. We see that this has always been so, but up until now, we have been too blind to see it...I'd been picturing the inner God as a sort of invisible extra appendix, a God within but definitely separate. Now I saw that the opposite was a fuller and better expression of the truth: God isn't so much within us as we are within God. We are actually cells in God's body, God's Incarnate, or Created, or Only-Begotten Body, the Christ (1 Cor. 12:12-27). I saw that what St. Paul said to the Athenians is true, that we live and move and have our beings in God (Acts 17:28).
"I realized that what some Christians call the 'Mystical Body of Christ' wasn't an exercise in fanciful poetry but was a cosmological description of the actual physical (and non-physical) universe. It is the way things really are, the way they operate. As Jesus had promised, I saw a whole new world, and I saw that this world, all of Creation visible and invisible, is nothing less than the Christ, God's 'Only-Begotton Son,' God's Word Made Manifest or Flesh (Gen. 1:1, John 1:1-3)...All the great Christian mystics speak the essential truth that is realized upon coming into Christ Consciousness...we realize that 'only God is and we are not' as in 'I live, now not I, but the Christ (God Manifest) lives in and through me' (Gal. 2:20).
"Many things follow automatically from this new understanding, this new vision of reality. In all one's dealings with others, from now on, one is always aware that one is dealing with God's Son, and that whatever one does to others, one does to God's Son (Matt. 25:35-40); in fact, not only to God's Son but to oneself (since we too are one substance with that Son). One sees that in this world there are not 'others,' there is only Christ. One sees that this has always been the case but up until now, we had been blind to this truth.
"Second, we see that, since humans are made of eternal 'God-stuff,' there is no death (1Cor. 15:54). Our mortal self is now clothed with immortality exactly as St. Paul says (1 Cor. 15:54). We no longer have to believe in life after death. We see not only that we will never die but that we have never been born...we are now totally identified with our eternal soul, our true Christ self. Living in the Christ Consciousness we know we will never die (John 11:26). All fear of death is therefore lost. As St. Paul said, 'Death has lost its sting" (1 Cor. 15:55).
"Third, as St. Paul says, sin is conquered. Since we now see that humans are made of 'God-stuff,' and have always been divine, we see that sin does not exist. God after all, cannot commit sin. Nor can God's only-begotten Son, the Christ we all are...From this point on, when face with our own or others' negativity, the Christed person sees not sin but ignorance, that is, lack of awareness. We see that all the negativity people bring onto themselves and others results from a lack of awareness. Whenever we encounter negativity, with respect to both self and others, we join with Jesus on the cross in saying, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do' (Luke 23:34)" (p. 166-169).
"Does the non-existence of sin mean we can do anything we please? Two answers: Yes, we can do anything we please. And we have been doing just that since Adam and Eve, including murder, rape, war, cannibalism, and all manner of other horrors. Free will means precisely that: we can indeed do anything we please...There is a second answer: Since God is all in all (1 Cor. 15:28) and everyone is divine and has God for their being (Acts (17:28), whatever we do to anyone else we do to God, to Christ, and to ourselves (Mat. 25:40). There is no other. Whatever we do to the supposed other, therefore, necessarily comes back to the self. As Jesus said, 'He that lives by the sword shall die by the sword' (Matt. 26:52). That is why Jesus also warned that we should 'Do unto others what you wish to have done unto you' (Matt. 7:12). St. Paul admonishes that 'A man will reap what he sows' (Gal. 6:7-8)" (p. 243).
These things I have seen. Dimly, and from afar. But I have seen, and wrote about here...
“…seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him: Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all” (Col 3:9-11).
Previously, I looked at these verses as meaning that when “they” all come into Christ, there will be no more divisions. Now I have seen that it is when “I” shed the old man (a.k.a. carnal mind, ego) and come into renewed knowledge, this is a place where “I” see there ARE no divisions – only unity in diversity. Where I can look with renewed perspective and see there is no Barbarian, Scythian, Buddhist, Hindu, etc. but that Christ IS all and is IN ALL.
I have seen...and I have hope that I'll come into ever greater understanding of this Reality and be able to live more and more in the beauty of this vision. The journey continues....
