Here was a man who could look beyond separation and see the oneness of all people and all things, here was a man who could look beyond chaos and see the truth of the cosmos within everything. This was the man we know as Jesus.
 
We also have the potential within us to see as he saw
 
In everything there is an outer and an inner, in everything; in religions, in people, in the world, there is an outer and an inner.
 
We see horizontally, we see the appearance of things, we see the facts, we see what’s happening in our world, we see material forces at work.
 
We may also see vertically, we may see through a spiritual consciousness, we may see non-material forces at work, we may see with extra-sensory perception.
 
Unless we are able to open ourselves to this vertical seeing, we cannot really begin to function as a whole person. We must learn to see not only horizontally, as we all do, but vertically.

 We often see in our churches the symbol of a cross, and people have asked me why that symbol is often used even in Unity churches. The symbol represents the very thing we are talking about here, that we see and relate to each other horizontally, but we can also learn to see vertically. That is our spiritual consciousness. And unless we have both we cannot behold, we cannot see, the truth of ourselves or of others or of our world, or what is happening in our world.

So we need to open our hearts and minds to see vertically.

How do you see vertically?

Just as an example, perhaps as you drive through the city where you live you may see great open spaces where buildings are being torn down and you think, “What’s going on here? It looks like chaos, it looks like devastation.”

But then if you’re looking vertically you are seeing something more than that. Perhaps you see some people working in there removing earth, yes, but also measuring. And perhaps someone is standing back from there, the architect, looking at all of it and he has in his mind a vision of how it is all going to be; that it is not chaos, but it is cosmos. It is so much more than the devastation you are seeing, there is so much more to see.

Perhaps you’re going to visit someone in the hospital, and when you go in the hospital you see the nurse there. How is the nurse looking at the patients, row upon row, and bed upon bed of patients? Is the nurse just thinking of it as a duty, that she’s going to stay there and she’s going to work and then get a paycheck and go home and enjoy her home? Or is she seeing herself as an agent of the healing process of the person who is a patient there? That’s the difference.
 
What about the doctor, the physician who attends the patients? Is he seeing himself as just looking at the hopelessness of the cases that are before him, some that he doesn’t feel confident he’ll be able to pull through? Or is he perhaps looking beyond that, to realize he is an instrument of God’s presence in the life of these people, bringing them into a new sense of their wholeness? This is vertical thinking.
 
We need to rise to that level; we need to bring up our thoughts into a vertical level of thinking.

Recognize the Divine Within You

We are both human and divine, there are both within us. The human you might think of as being represented by the horizontal level, and the divine as the vertical level. We need to recognize the divine within us; we need to know that we are more than we appear to be. Sometimes it is startling when that realization comes to you.

I recall someone sharing in a class that she was driving across a bridge between Tampa and St. Petersburg, Florida, and suddenly that awareness came. It was an awareness of oneness with everyone, a totally different picture of how she was viewing the world and how she was viewing other people and her own life.
 
I remember when it came to me in that way many years ago. I was in the midst of an examination for my black belt in the martial art of Kung Fu, and I was defending myself against six attackers at the same time. I was simply there and I was really centered; I was just defending myself without really thinking about it when suddenly this awareness came that I had to be more than I thought I was, because my ordinary self couldn’t do this. And that started me on the path of searching for the spiritual self which I recognized must be there.
 
We start on that path consciously from many directions, many awakenings that come to us. But to find the divine in us, the potential that is there within each one of us, we need to probe and search and be willing to release that divine potential into our life experience and not keep pushing it down; to recognize it and to release it in the way that it will express individually through each one of us.

Learn to live from this place within

There was a mystic from generations ago who said, “God is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” That kind of a statement doesn’t leave us feeling very settled. Because of our concepts of God it somehow misplaces God, and we wonder, “What does that mean?”
 
It challenges us to begin to look at God, not as a person but as a principle; not as an object of worship, but as a frame of reference. The infinite is at every point of space and time, the wholeness of God is everywhere present.
 
When we think of God as a person, we cannot recognize or feel or get any sense of that. But God is principle, and we must come from that frame of reference of God’s presence with us wherever we are.
 
So we begin then to live from that center, that center of the circle where God is. And God is at the center of the circle within us. We begin to live from that consciousness and as we do our lives begin to change, and we’re able to find and feel and express the deep inner peace which comes from the security of knowing God’s presence with us at all times. We live and express in a totally different way.
 
We often call the center within us the Christ, the Christ of God. That means the divine potential within us; each one of us has a divine potential within us. And this is a key to the understanding of life; it is the key to understanding that we are here to grow. It is the key to the evolution of nature.

 

You see, the seed can grow into a tree because the tree is already in the seed. It doesn’t matter where the seed is in the process of growth, whether it’s at seed level or at tree level, that same potential of wholeness is there. The whole is in the part; as it is within us. The wholeness of God is within us; the divine potential is within the human, and the human is able to express the divine potential because it’s already there.

The Wholeness is Already Within Us

The apostle Paul said something like this, “When the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away; for now I see in a mirror dimly, but then I will see face to face.” And it simply means that before I could only see from the horizontal level, but now I’m looking from the vertical. Now I see clearly, now the perfect is already there, the wholeness is already there. And I can live from that wholeness, I can live from that perfection, because the very presence of God is within me and I am one with it. And I begin to live according to the “way.” We talk about the “way” of the Christ, don’t we, which means living according to the way of the Christ, or living the way of God.

Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth and the life.” You can also say that about yourself. You can say, “I AM the way, and the truth and the life,” because you can affirm your true nature as Jesus did. Just as Jesus recognized his true nature, you can say about your own self, “I AM the Christ of God.” Our purpose is to discover and express the truth, the real of us. “I AM the Christ of God.” Can you say that to yourself quietly? No, lightning won’t strike; it’s OK.
 
“I AM the Christ of God.” Feel that. You may say, “Well, I don’t feel worthy to be on the same level as Jesus.” Maybe you’re not at the same place that he was, but you still have that same divine potential within you and the ability to express that wholeness, the fullness of oneness with God, and it is our privilege to give birth to it. The divine self, the “imprisoned splendor” as the poet called it, is there waiting to be expressed in and through your consciousness.

 Are you living your life according to the “way” of the Christ, or the “way” of God? Or are you living your life in the way of God? When we get caught up in our fears and our tensions and our distress and our upsets or just a negative way of looking at things, then we are in the way of God. We are blocking that pure expression of God through us. We become, you might say, uncoupled from the presence of God. God’s presence is there but in our awareness we are uncoupled from it, we’re not linked to it, we’re not in union with it. And our whole purpose is to return to that union.

Live From the Center Within

The step from chaos to cosmos, from looking at chaos and then moving through it to a cosmic realization is laid out for us in the parable of the Prodigal Son when he says “I will arise and go to my Father.” That’s the step we need to take. We arise from horizontal thinking and we go to the realization of our oneness with God in our spiritual thought; we begin to think vertically.
 
When we begin to think vertically, we become peacemakers, we begin to live from a place of inner peace and we begin to express the truth of our own nature.
 
We know that if we try to find solutions to chaotic conditions from our state of chaotic thinking, we only create further chaos. But if we move to a different level, if we move to a different perspective, if we move to a perspective of being centered in God then we move through the chaos to the solution. We come to a different level of understanding, and through that understanding then we’re able to bring a sense of love and compassion to others as well.
 
So our step is to move to live from that center within us; and as we do we bring peace not only to ourselves, but into our world. We can never resolve conflict between two opposite viewpoints if we still stay in a chaotic condition of mind. We have to come to the point where we realize we are both seeking the same end - that our purpose is to live from the way of God and to express that fullness in our lives – and when we both have that same purpose there is no separation. We see beyond the separation, we see our unity with all of life.  We see our oneness with one another and our oneness with everyone.
 
When we live from that center we begin to rise to new heights of attainment and achievement, we experience a shift in the way we view our world; living within and from a consciousness of oneness in God we feel a deep inner peace – the peace that passes all understanding. You might say that we experience a cosmic consciousness, and a complete transformation in our way of being.
Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Facebook
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Google
  • YahooMyWeb
  • Furl
  • Reddit
  • Propeller

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post