January 2012
My heart is singing. I can hear, though not with the physical ear, the Divine Symphony. The Child I am is in The Meadow and The Meadow is Me. The Meadow has always been here, I just didn’t know it. This is how it is for those of us who make it around the bases and are heading for home plate. The Meadow is the “happy dream” of the Course in Miracles, the place where the Child lives in Freedom and Joy. It is the place where illusion’s reign has ended and one recognizes the Child In and As Everyone. It is the place where we recognize our creations and see the innocence of all that appears in The Meadow’s field of infinite possibilities. It is where the Child’s vision is wedded with the tangible world and a new interpretation given and the Purpose of why we are bodily here; to find the Sacred Child of Self-Remembrance.
The Meadow cannot be seen with the physical eye, it is beyond reason and logic and certainly beyond the great effort of trying to understand it intellectually. The Meadow is the place of simplicity, whereas the world of mortal men is the place of complexity. As Jesus said, dudes and dudettes, I paraphrase of course, “If you want to find the Kingdom of God
We can, yes we can find The Place that we each are seeking. This place of peace and contentment is right here closer than breathing and nearer than hands and feet. It is right here as the very Heart We Are, the Divine Child that we are, in actual fact prior to this experience of tangibility and simultaneously here bodily in time and space. We were the closest to this One when we were children unspoiled by the ego’s belief system encroaching upon us. But the divine plan is more than just being the child, it is to know that we Are The Child, and in the play of experience which has always been our decision from the very beginning of time, we are to move up the mountain of understanding and become the Child in actual fact.
The Child of seven days, unfettered and unconditioned by the accumulation of the ego's belief system is a wonder of freedom and joy. It does what it does without judgment and fear. This child/Child and its original Freedom is what we re-discover, but this time with the discovery comes the conscious recognition of Subjectivism and The Equation.
Prior to this, let’s call it an awakening, we seem to leave the tender days of childhood and grow into the time of adult forgetfulness and discontent. We, like Peter Pan in the movie “Hook”, have forgotten our original Condition and Identity and have grown long in the world of earning a living and have continued to position ourselves for survival and material ongoingness. But somewhere along the way for the fortunate of us, we hear of our Original Child Identity from another who has found that One and we begin our “return” home to a place that is always Here and to a time that is always Now. For some of us, the very few, the “elect”, have been given a gift of Self-remembrance. We are the ones that “hear” and choose to Find our original nature. We are the elect because we have been willing to accept the gift offered to Everyone. I want to make it clear, no mistake here. I use the word elect in the sense that we have elected ourselves to be what we Always were (ARE) and go about the business of climbing the mountain of self-understanding to "arrive" at the Peak where we Find Ourselves the Balanced Child, The Child of God living in the world of appearances.
This is the miracle of Awakening to the Open-eyed position, the 360 degree view where there is no self left that can awaken. There is only the experience of Awakening with no subject to awaken and no object to seek or try to grasp. We are That which we are seeking for. This is the miracle of keeping a journal and writing from the position that we are the Divine Awareness of God and we write from that position. We write our glimpses, we write of the good and loving things we see in our everyday experience. We write about them as if they are a part of us because they are within this awareness that is writing and reading these words. More than that, the Glimpse is The Child breaking through the veil of mis-perception.
The consciousness that perceives is not separate or apart from that which is perceived. It seems that way but it is my experience, yes, it is, that all that is perceived is but the out-picturing, the reflection of what we have chosen with our wishes, beliefs and thoughts. I am speaking of this at the level of mind, not the human mind but the mind that is prior to the psycho-physical experience. I am speaking at the level of consciousness prior to time and space. We must get back to the beginning, the "time" before time; a time prior to fear and guilt, a time prior to judgment and separation. We can do this because I have done it. And if this one here, this one called bruce david, can rise above, so to speak, the historical story and Find the Truth and Life I am, then I know that anyone can do it. I know this is so.
Dear God, it is so simple, so plain, and yet how long, how recalcitrant I remained. How arrogant I lived believing I was somewhere that I hadn’t yet found. But this is the way for all of us. It is part of the journey back to Original Nature, free of all self-image, free of the need to defend, attack and seek for the thing that will give us something we think we do not have, something that we think we need, always searching for happiness outside ourselves. We walk around in time and space, mis-identified as this particular person, carrying around a self-image that is continually swinging like a pendulum between not enough and too much. Swinging, always seeking to find the Balance of Peace and Freedom and never finding that which we think will make us happy; or it is found only temporarily and then the discomfort returns, the nagging unhappiness and the search continues for the next relationship, the next book, the next drink, the next religion, the next life. Always the search and the seeking and never looking within to the simplicity of the Child One we Each are.
We have grown so accustomed to the ego’s strategies that speak to survival of an identity that is personal and separate from all others. This is the self-image that has developed over time like a garden overgrown with weeds, strangling and choking off any remembrance of the simple days of Childhood. I am not speaking to the days of childishness but to the days of the Child simplicity when one was without the ego structure that has been built by fear, guilt and judgment. I bring forth the days when we weren’t afraid to dance naked, nor worried about playing in the mud, jumping into a pile of leaves, and running through the sprinkler in the back yard. Those were the days of much joy and freedom; those were the days of The Child’s Innocence. Those days can be this day.
Yes, we can get back to those days because we have never left the Child/child of those days. The Child we are is simply covered over with layer upon layer of opaque ego goo. Layers of self-image based on a false sense of who and what we are. A self-image that is always searching for happiness instead of recognizing the Happiness We Are.
The Divine Plan of Self remembrance is here and now. It has been here all the while with the great lights sharing their message, Jesus perhaps the first and clearest to Identify as the Child Light, bringing forth their own Self-discoveries and revelations. Lao Tzu spoke of the Primal Simplicity. How simple it is were it not for the ego’s vainglorious desire to play at being god, to be in control and be the authority on the scene.
What obfuscates simplicity's presence is the ego’s unwillingness to surrender its positions of right and wrong. We have grown invested and attached to beliefs and have become obdurate when it comes to surrendering all of our cherished notions of who we are. Why? Because of fear, the fear to look into the ego’s belief system that is based on separation, guilt, fear and judgment. The ego tells us not to trust others for they will take advantage and we will lose something valuable. For some, real injustice has taken place, at least that is how it seems and we grow deeply in mistrust.
As stated above, we must go back to the beginning and stay there to the best we can, back to the beginning prior to the Child’s descent into this hypothetical holographic time/space experience of duality. We learn to live this Divine Discipline "precept upon precept, a little here and a little there." Why does it seem to be this way for most? Because we believe that time is real, so we believe it takes time to find the happiness we are searching for, a Happiness that is timeless and Always and Already present. Only as we allow the Child of Our Heart to take us back to the beginning do we surrender more and more to The Way of the Child.
The Child’s way is to live the equation of giving and receiving and coming upon the wisdom that these two are a single one. The Child’s way is to live the Reality that the outside and the inside is a single one. The Child lives this subjective illumination right here in the seeming objective world. Jesus said, “I am in the world but I am not of it”. And so it is for the Child of Us all.
Ask a psychologist about the first 18 months or so for the human child and he will tell you that the human child is all subjective living. This is the Child of seven days that Jesus spoke about in the “Gospel According to Thomas”. This child touches his or her mother’s face and there is no concept of separation from itself. The whole world is Itself. This is so.
I have found for myself that this human experience is the perfect metaphor and illustration of what happens at the level of mind prior to time, prior to the projection that takes place at the beginning when the mind first splits into the mind of duality. Ah, all dream stuff. Lao Tzu spoke of it like this: In the beginning there is the one, and the one becomes two, and the two becomes the ten thousand. Yin and Yang and the field of infinite possibilities is born as the big bang at the beginning of time. We go back prior to form to Consciousness and then unto Divine Awareness and Godhead. It is enough to start with Consciousness, the perceiving mind of all that appears. It is here where we will learn to let go of fear and guilt as we stop projecting our inner turmoil and beliefs unto our “others”. Our others are the Selfsame Awareness We Are and we project our limiting belief system onto the screen of our mind and behold the selfhood images we perceive, believing they are separate and outside our mind. As the Course in Miracles says, "Ideas leave not their Source".
There are so many words that try to point to the simplicity of letting go the old man, the ego, and taking on the new man, the authentic and original identity made in the Image of God. It would seem that the words must come from many different directions speaking to many different levels at the same time. There is the psychological level, the religious level, the scientific level and the metaphysical level. All these are appearing on the screen of mind eventually delineating, for the vigilant and willing, the One Awareness and Mind of Identity that is without levels and hierarchies.
We find the Child’s balance which transcends and includes all polarities; above/below, inside/outside, male/female, first/last, subjective/objective, essence/image and beginnings/endings. The Child’s Way recognizes the field of opposites as the hypothetical self-description of a mind desiring to experience individuality and materiality and therefore limiting and contracting itself, spiraling and descending into ever denser and denser layers of form. The Child also recognizes the Divine plan that form is the delineation of the Ineffable formlessness.
Such is the way of the story of mankind. It is now time for the Eternal Story to be told again and this time finally received. What will it take? What “great necessity” still needs to befall us for the necessary surrender of our personal self-image to be made? Suffering is unnecessary, but it seems to me, up to this point, there are very few who are willing to make the divine inversion, the turning within to the Ineffable Source and Its Self-Awareness We Are. Until the surrender is made, suffering due to ego resistance and recalcitrance seems to be the catalyst that is necessary for the final surrender. In the words from The Course in Miracles, I equate this to quantum forgiveness; the undoing of the entire ego structure.
As we gaze into the world of our own making, we can look around and see the unwillingness for most to let go of their investment and attachments which are all ego based on separation and otherness. To the degree that this unwillingness remains, we can see for ourselves how the pot is beginning to boil and very soon it will boil over as we witness the evidence of this in our personal and worldly events.
Only good is going on and the Child lives in The Meadow, all the while the world and its authorities remain reluctant to give up its cherished positions, notions and dogmas. The Child remains a passerby as the world's tumult comes as the opportunity to change one’s mind. Recognizing life lessons as an opportunity instead of judging them as better or worse, right or wrong is the beginning of a turnaround; the opportunity for Self-remembrance as we let go the misperceptions we use as defense mechanisms to support and maintain our wounded and spurious self-image.
In this willingness to stop judging others and defending our positions one finds the Freedom and Joy that has been long sought and seemingly never found. As Jesus said, "become like the little children and there you will find the kingdom of God
These are the words that try to paint a picture of a Sight that is truly Wonderful and Miraculous. Imagine you are an artist and you are walking in a meadow and there not far from you, a deer appears, a mighty buck, majestic beyond description as the morning mist shimmers all around. You have your brushes and paint and all that is necessary to take this vision and express it on the canvas. You are inspired and want to capture all the majesty that you are feeling within, feelings beyond what the eye is seeing. And so you hasten to capture this feeling. Where is the artist that can capture these feelings, this experience, and have the image on the canvas bring the viewer to the same magical moment? It has been nearly done by some of the great artists of this world. Nearly, because the painting is never the absolute original inspired moment. Such it is with the poets and authors of the world who try to tell of their visions and the revelations given to them.
So too, here am I trying to picture with words a sight that is beyond belief, beyond the intellectual understanding; it is a wonder of wonders just as that magnificent deer is also such. And so I paint with my fingers and keyboard, trying with all my heart to come up with the analogies, stories and metaphors that can point to and inspire the seminal sight that is The Child, Its Meadow and the Equation (the Way the Child lives in the world). The Three that are One.
The final discipline involves the correct apprehension of Identity and passing that clear perception along to our world as quickly as we can. (William Samuel)
To be continued.......
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