"The soul does not grow by addition but by subtraction." – Meister Eckhart, 13th-century theologian
“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” the rich man asked Jesus. Jesus said sell everything you own. Not to be taken literally, as with so much of the deeper metaphysical and metaphorical intention of Jesus’ words. In other words, let go of your attachment and identification with temporary possessions, sensations, and everything that comes and goes, Including images of yourself, feelings, and thoughts.
To know our eternal nature is not a journey of addition but of subtraction. You don’t need to add anything to the real you to awaken spiritually, rather you need to uncover the real you, beneath the layers of self that have been superimposed upon the only true and lasting Self that you in fact are.
You are already what you are hoping to become. You already are what you are seeking. Seeking presupposes something missing or lacking that you must obtain, attain or become. In the story of the Prodigal son, Jesus conveys this message not only for the son who goes away in search of something he believes he will find but also for the eldest son who remained at home and feels something is missing. He says to the eldest son, “everything that is mine, is yours.” What you and I are looking for is here now. It cannot be lost.
What underlies this pervasive feeling of discontent and dissatisfaction is not a verifiable lack of anything substantial nor evidence of some essential incompleteness, requiring self-improvement or enhancement. This is actually the memory of our essential wholeness tapping at the door of our heart striving for remembrance and revelation. You see it’s a veritable case of identity theft that causes our suffering. We came by it honestly. From birth we have been conditioned to see ourselves not as we truly are but as we have come to believe we are.
When we first arrived in this world, we experienced no separation, neither seeing a world of opposites nor feeling ourselves apart from our environment. Over time through the conditioning of our parents and all those who were training us for earth school, our feeling of connection to the whole of life gave way to the need to distinguish our sense of self through objective means, distinct and apart from our environment and other people. Our sense of self became associated with a body, a mind, a personality, our relations, and all those situational identities. We were labeled with a name, a gender, and a culture, and we built up an image of a limited, and separate self. The consequence of this developmental self-image over time was that our true nature became clouded over and our primordial knowing of our true self gave way to an imagined self. Thus, when we seek to answer the proverbial existential question, “Who am I,” our default reference has us looking to the mind for an answer rather than the plainly evident experience of being. The mind has made up a host of conceptualizations of who and what we are and will offer a story of the “me” that it has come to believe itself to be. That gives us thoughts about what we are but misses the experience of what we truly are. The effects of not experiencing our true nature is the whole litany of human suffering, including a sense of lack, not being or having enough, and unhappiness in all its manifestations.
The good news is that we can return to the direct experience of ourselves at will. In spiritual terms, this is self-inquiry and consists of a simple self-directed question “Who am I” or “What am I.” The challenge of this inquiry is to assiduously avoid the mind’s answer. We do not want thoughts and concepts; we want direct experience. Sit with this question, seeking only the direct experience of your existence. Pure and simple, what is the experience of your existence? Feel the aliveness of simply being. This is you taking the journey to your true home to the Self, the reality of God’s infinite being. Your mind will want to chime in with thoughts saying that this is too simple, that you have to get better or purer or have some transcendent mystical experience. Thank it for its well-intentioned sharing and remain resolute and present to your direct experience, rejecting thought and conceptual images of self. This aligns with Jesus’ admonition to “sell all your possessions” (thoughts and concepts). Here you find yourself at last, like the Prodigal’s return to home. When you realize that you already have everything you’ve longed for, that all that God is, I am. This is the “pearl of great price.” It costs nothing but giving up what you are not. It is the way to inherit eternal life.
Take this distanceless journey to your true self and be at peace.
Namaste,
Rev. Larry
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