Spiritual Solutions

On the spiritual journey, it seems to me that we travel through three overarching phases.

The first is that of the seeker. There is a nudging from within, and a nagging feeling that there is something more to be discovered, so we start on the journey. We perhaps find confirmation and motivation in the words of Jesus, when he said, “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” (Matt. 7:7-8)

Ravi Ravindra, author of Pilgrim Without Boundaries, wrote, “The struggle to know who I am, in truth and in spirit, is the spiritual quest. The movement in myself from the mask to the face, from the personality to the person, from the performing actor to the ruler of the inner chamber, is the spiritual journey. . . . To keep the flame of spiritual yearning alive is to be radically open to the present and to refuse to settle for comforting religious dogmas, philosophic certainties, and social sanctions.”

And, in the words of Thomas Merton:

“In one sense we are always traveling,
And traveling as if we did not know where
we were going.
    In another sense we have already
arrived. . . .
    But oh! How far have I to go to find
You in Whom I have already arrived!

“In another sense we have already arrived.” And the Spirit of God is knocking on the door of our mind, as it says in Revelation 3:20: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; . . .” It is we who have to open the door of our mind and heart, and “if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.”

Thus we move into the second phase of our spiritual journey, that of awakening.

Lorraine Kisly, editor-in-chief of Parabola magazine, says  “. . . when a moment of awakening comes, it is clear that we are awakened. But to what? And for what? Pir Zia Inayat Khan makes a useful distinction for us. There are two types of awakening, one a sudden glimpse of hidden things which is pure gift and the other ‘a sustained inner capacity,’ an earned state.”

We are awakened to the Truth of God’s presence, the first type of awakening, the “sudden glimpse of hidden things which is pure gift.” Lorraine Kisly says that the gift comes to all without exception. It comes, as Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz tells us, as an “awareness of reality, awareness of something that is calling me, ‘Come closer, come closer.’”

The second type of awakening, “a sustained inner capacity,” an earned state, is more difficult, challenging.

Jesus describes the coming together of people into an understanding of God’s presence as a dinner party, a marriage feast. (Matt. 22:1-6) As you will recall, many were invited to the celebration, but not everyone chose to come. And that is true in our lives today, that not all of us choose to come to the celebration, and not all of us come to experience a heightened consciousness of the presence of God. We live in a mundane world and a mundane experience, so we do not come with open, receptive, and responsive minds.

Jesus said, in effect, that one of the hardest things to accept in our lives is a new idea. And he came to bring a new idea, a new idea of the kingdom of God that is available and accessible to us at all times. In fact, in the Gospel of Matthew, he reminded us of the words of Isaiah (6:9,10) when he said, “You shall indeed hear but never understand. You shall indeed see but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull and their ears are heavy of hearing. And their eyes have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts, and turn for me to heal them.” (Matt. 13:14-15)

In order to heal, we have to see with new eyes, we have to hear with new ears, and we have to feel with a new heart, a new openness of heart. That means changing, and this is one of the hardest things for us to do, to change. But in all the parables Jesus turns us around, and says that in order for something new to happen in your life you must change the way you look at your world, you must change the way you look at yourself. You must open your ears and your eyes and your heart to a new possibility that is already available to you, that is here now, and not sometime else but right here and right now.

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When I was in ministerial school at Unity Village many years ago, a Unity minister from Germany, Peter Wenzel, told me a story of when he was a member of the West Berlin police force. That was way back, before the Berlin Wall, when there was a demilitarized zone between East and West Berlin.

One of Peter’s responsibilities was to patrol the demilitarized zone; and it was common knowledge that if someone got too far into the East Berlin side of the demilitarized zone they were subject to being shot. One day Peter found himself in that area by himself and, all of a sudden, he was confronted by a Russian soldier with a rifle pointed right at him.

Peter, remembering that moment said, “All of a sudden I felt the presence of God with me; I looked at the other soldier and I saw that he was about my own age, a very young man. I looked in his eyes and without realizing what I was saying I said, ‘You cannot shoot me; I am your brother.’ And the man put down his gun, turned and walked away.”

How wonderful to recognize that core of oneness and know that we are, indeed, all brothers and sisters. It’s when we focus on our differences that we sometimes get into conflict and into wars.

Myrtle Fillmore, co-founder of Unity, said, “Nations will forget to fight as long as we continue to remember that we’re all expressing the one life.” We’ll forget to fight one another. So we must come to that realization of oneness and connectedness.

We most often see ourselves as separate. We are separate in expression, but we are all connected at a level we call the “Christ” level. When we come to the level of the presence of God in us it is the same God, it is the same presence, and it is the same power – the one presence and one power active in and through our lives, God, the good.

That is our level of connectedness, the Christ within us.

To give you an illustration, if you think of the Hawaiian Islands you see that there are many islands and they are not connected on the surface. But if you were able to go below the surface, you would see that under the surface all of the islands are connected. They are all joined together.

Author Paul Tillich called that connectedness in us “the ground of our being.” From his book, The Shaking of the Foundations, we read, “The name of the infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being is God. That depth is what the word means and, if that word has meaning for you, translate it and speak of the depths of your life, of the source of your being, of your ultimate concern, of what you take seriously without reservation. For if you know that God means depth, then you know much about Him. He or she who knows about depth, knows about God.”

So depth is what we are seeking, a deeper understanding of ourselves. As we move deeper within ourselves, we also understand God in a greater way.

It was the poet Tennyson who said, “God is closer than breathing, closer than hands and feet.” God is as close to you as that. And that’s what we have to know, that there is no separation; we are one in God.

The apostle Paul talked about that also. We read I Corinthians 12: “For just as the body is one and has many members and all the members of the body though many are one body, so it is with Christ. For by one spirit we were all baptized into one body: Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and all were made to drink of one Spirit. Now you are the body of Christ and, individually, members of it.”

Sometimes we forget that we were made in the image and likeness of God; sometimes we forget that we are spiritual beings having a human experience.  We forget our connectedness. But the more we can remember our connectedness with God and with one another, the more individually and uniquely we can express the truth of our own being.

When we come from that deeper level of our life we will truly be ourselves. Charles Fillmore said, “The journey of life for each of us should be a journey of jubilance.” We should be enjoying life; it should be an expression of the highest and best of us.

We have to begin to be friendly toward ourselves because there is more to us than we have understood. It was Walt Whitman who said, “I have found that I am not only that which is between my hat and my boots.”

There is so much more to us. You are a living expression of the Most High God. You are like one of those islands that have popped up in the universe, just as the islands of Hawaii popped up in the Pacific Ocean. The universe needs you; the universe would not be complete without you. Literally, the universe is not complete without you.

We need to treat ourselves kindly. In fact, we need to celebrate ourselves; we need to validate ourselves as someone worthwhile.

As we begin to celebrate ourselves we are then able to celebrate others too, we’re able to recognize the truth of them, and we’re able to recognize the Christ within them. If we see the Christ in them, we will treat them as a Christlike being; we will treat them as a worthy person.

In the play, Pygmalion, Eliza Doolittle is talking about Professor Higgins. She says, “Anybody can do the simple things like learning how to dress properly and learning how to speak properly, but the way a person behaves is not what determines whether she is a lady or a flower-girl. It’s how she’s treated that determines whether she’s a lady or a flower-girl. Professor Higgins always thinks of me as a flower-girl, and to him I’ll always be a flower-girl. But you, you treat me like a lady and for you I can always be a lady.”

How we see a person is how we treat a person. If we see a person as stupid, then we’ll treat them as being stupid. If we see a person as being a loser, then we treat that person as being a loser. So we need to begin to look at people in a kindly way, as we would also hope to look at ourselves.

In the fairy stories, we find there’s very often a kindly act where the princess kisses a frog and the frog becomes a prince. Well, all of us feel like a frog sometimes and we all need a person to come along and affirm us as a worthy being. You are that other person; you can affirm the truth about other people.

So I invite you today and this week to do some frog-kissing. When you notice that someone is feeling low and unsure of themselves, give them a hug, give them a blessing, and give them a kiss. Do some frog-kissing; recognize the truth of them. And the truth is that they are one with you.

It was Walt Whitman who said, “In all men I see myself, not one barleycorn more and not one barleycorn less, and the good or bad I say of them I say of myself.” So when we celebrate with someone else, we are celebrating ourselves also.

Remember these words of Jesus: “If you did it to the least of these, my brethren, you also do it unto me.” In other words, he was saying we are connected; we are one with one another. Let us recognize the truth of that and celebrate the Christ within, celebrate our God-connectedness, and celebrate our oneness.

Remember, God is Blessing You, Right Now!

Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham

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 Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham, a Unity minister for over thirty-eight years, invites you to subscribe to his free inspirational newsletter, Spiritual Solutions.

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