Some basic truths:
All paths lead to the divine. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. There have been belief systems that claimed to be the one and only way to the divine. I'm not really sure what that was all about, but it's simply not true. Maybe it was a misinterpretation of the Messenger. Maybe the message was written down much after the fact, after it was misconstrued through oral history. Maybe it was translated incorrectly. Maybe religious leaders wanted to create a Great Wall to the divine and own a gate where they could charge a toll. I won't speculate, even though I just did. They know who I'm talking about, and I just ticked them off.
There is only one way to the divine, that I know of anyway, and that is to shed the ego. This is because the ego is like the ball and chain that ties us to the material plane, keeping us from rising to the spiritual plane. Sometimes when Messengers try to explain that this is the way, some people might misunderstand that to mean that the Messenger is the way instead. Oops! Hope that doesn't cause any issues later on down the road!
The truth will set you free. We are all guilty, every single one of us. I do not judge or condemn the gatekeepers to the divine mentioned above. I will call it out as wrong so that the wrong can be undone, but I do not judge them for I am not them. I cannot live another person's life and truly know what it's like to have all the causes and effects, and effects that cause causes that cause effects, and so on from the moment of conception (this is not an anti-abortion endorsement, lol). You could take cause and effect all the way back to the Big Bang! That is why fault and blame is never one-sided. It is not only wide, with much fault to go around, but also deep, extending backwards in time. Therefore, avoiding judgment is much, much more than just "walk a mile in my shoes".
The film Being John Malkovich shows what it would be like if strangers could have some uninvited insight into the mind of John Malkovich, and they share this with others. What a complete violation! How ridiculously absurd!
How much more could you walk in other person's shoes than that? Actually, it would be very easy to misjudge based on the little snippets of information and not Malkovich's entire life, both external circumstances and internal world, not to mention the audience member's own biases and filters.
I like hypotheticals for the sake of philosophical pondering. If this most improbable scenario were to happen to any of us--let's say you or I were John Malkovich and discovered people burglarizing our mind--how would we react? Would we go insane? Suddenly clean up our rooms to hide who we really were? Or boldly keep exposing all our dirty little secrets, for none of us are perfect? I, for one, would be in the latter camp. OK, I'd probably go a little insane, too.
Tangent quickly on the concept of perfect. I'm not entirely sure there is such a thing as perfect. Maybe. If so, maybe this is the Endless River, the Source from which all spiritual life derives, to which we all return to, eventually, in Nirvana. I'm not quite sure yet. But spiritually approaching perfect does seem exactly like the mathematical concept limits to infinity:
End tangent.
Where were we? Oh yes, let's see... "Suddenly clean up our rooms to hide who we really were? Or boldly keep exposing all our dirty little secrets, for none of us are perfect? I, for one, would be in the latter camp. OK, I'd probably go a little insane, too."
And that is why the truth shall set you free.
And that is also why thou shallest not everest judgeth 'nother. (That's deinde ludens). But we do. We all judge. We are all hypocrites. Could you imagine being an audience inside John Malkovich's head? Would you eat popcorn and laugh and mock and scorn, feeling holier than thou? Sure would feel nice to sit your ego high on a pedestal above someone else's while you ridicule and humiliate them a while, wouldn't it?
But let's flip this. Let's go even deeper. Should even an audience member who would do that to the poor sap John Malkovich--who had no choice, who in the grand scheme was no more or less guilty than any one else (all are less than perfect)--should even that audience member be judged and condemned? I say no. The same standard should be applied to all. No double standards. They are who they are because of their experiences.
Thou shall not judge. Judgment isn't the answer. It's... more complicated than that. It's about helping each other improve, but out of love, and from their perspective, not our own; meeting them on their grounds and helping them along their trajectory and pace, not the one we, thinking (or actually) being more learned or enlightened, think they should. I'll have to do a post on leadership and parenting. I've seen good leadership and parenting and I've seen bad leadership and parenting. And I've done both myself.
All I have to say is that the Golden Rule, and I've seen some variations and updates to it, is a pretty good best practice and standard baseline model for all human behavior. Do unto to others as you would like done unto you, or some variation. How would you feel if you were John Malkovich?
Ok, enough of that.
There is divine light in all. This is a spiritual light. It can grow bright with love for yourself and others, glimmering and shining and dancing and singing and enraging like a fire that doesn't harm. Ever meet someone that just "glows"? Pregnant women are often said to "glow". We depict holy people with a glowing halo above them. This is the divine light within that extends outward and also back towards the Source. We share it with others freely and help them grow their own, an altruistic investment of love. Sometimes that investment pays dividends; the person grows as a person and "pays it forward". I love those stories about the poor child who was given help to attend college, and then they become a successful business person who gives back to the community a hundredfold. This type of spiritual gift economy is unfolding constantly all around us, but not always so extreme or tangible.
Yes, sometimes the seeds of our spiritual gifts are not received. That's ok. Keep trying, but not to the point of wasting your energy or getting discouraged yourself.
Sometimes the seeds of our spiritual gifts are received but wasted. That's ok. Keep trying, but not to the point of wasting your energy or getting discouraged yourself.
Sometimes the seeds of our spiritual gifts are received but you do not see them sprout or bear fruit. Have patience and faith.
None of these things are new. They have all been said before.
We can also diminish the light in others. Snuff it out. Steal their flame. These are the emotional vampires, who leach off your energy. Or they peck and scratch like mistreated chickens. Or they trick you into giving away your lunch money, or they sucker punch you in the hallway. The powerful who think they own the town will sometimes chase you down in their big trucks and try to run you off the road for failing to yield.
Some do it because they are in pain. Some, because they know no better. Others, because they are lazy and don't want to work for their energy. And then there are the bullies who simply get off on the power trip. The last ones are the most harmful to individuals and society as a whole. My heart pours out for those who are addicted to the drug of power. They are the hardest to reach.
So let your light shine. Fear is the darkness that will try to close in around the light, but of course darkness cannot overcome the light. It can only trick you into turning it off. Do not fall for the trick. Burn brightly in your own unique way. Do not let anyone tell you how you must burn.
We will all one day be spiritual beings of great power. Jesus said we will do greater things than he was doing (John 14:12-14). Genesis 3:22 says we will be like the gods (plural) that created us because we have eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The Latter Day Saints have it right when they preach of the deification of the human spirit. It is the destiny of each of us to one day become like gods. We are not to usurp our Creator or anything like that, but rather grow up and escape the binds of the material world. In so doing, we will have greater control of this world, be able to explore the spiritual world (heaven as it is called in western monotheism), and, I am nearly certain, partake in other worlds much different than this one. This universe is just a school, a simulated reality for our consciousness to learn in. Once we graduate, we will have opportunities to learn in more difficult and exciting environments, different simulated realities, different universes in the multiverse.
Yes, there are many gods of various power. A god of this world is Jehovah or Yahweh, and he has many children. Christ is the archetype composite of many spirits that can inhabit a person, a type of spiritual blueprint, if you will.
There are many children of Jehovah, but many others as well. These are bloodlines of other gods, of other, if you can go there with me, essentially spiritual aristocrats, spiritual merchants, spiritual peasants, and even spiritual bandits. They need to earn their keep to stay here, helping to run this power plant, this egg factory, and they pay a rent in energy for the privilege to do so. Our mission is to make Earth a beacon of light, to grow bright and hot, pay our dues, and be happy. And I want to help those who wish to rise, who wish to break free of the Matrix, do so. More on this some other time.
All religions are true, though only from a certain perspective in time and place and culture, and it usually becomes warped over time.
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