Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Unbinding the Strong Man


                            Giotto di Bondone: fresco, circa 1425, Magdalene Chapel, 
                            lower church of San Francesco, Assisi, Italy.



What if you had a huge water jug full of copper pennies? 

And, say, you had a huge mortgage payment and didn't know how you were going to pay it because you were out of work?  

You might see that water jug and think that it was full of only pennies and you didn't have enough money to pay your mortgage, so you would go find a low-paying job just to pay your mortgage and day-after-day you would struggle to pay it and day-after-day you would feel more and more like a slave to your mortgage.  

Then, one day, a wise woman comes along and tells you that each penny in that jug is worth $1 million.  

"WHOA!"  you say.  

"Why am I working my ass off to pay for a mortgage when only one penny would have paid it off, and still have more money than I could ever spend if I went shopping every day for the rest of my life?" 

It is like that.  We have within us something so valuable, so awesome, so perfect, so incredible, so powerful we can't even imagine it.  But, we walk around looking outside ourselves at the world around us at an outer decaying world and think that our value is out there somewhere, somehow. I guess we've been taught - brainwashed really - to think our value and meaning is defined by all those others out there who are also duped into believing their value and power comes from that outer world. 

Meanwhile we are all denying our own beautiful natural humanity.

One of the ways the thief taught all of us (and in fact controlled - and continues to control - all of us) is by teaching us to dismiss the value of our own innate selves by convincing us that we are all "sinner," innately bad, not really loveable by god unless we follow the ancient hebrew laws. This thought is so deeply embedded in our western civilization, in our thought,s in our art, in everything - even our capitalistic corporate system.  It's in everything, including Congress, and talk show hosts, the media.  It's a virus of the mind that has made us all spiritually sick. it is a spiritual flu.

In fact, the thief told us it was a sin to think we are valuable and powerful, and hid from us the truth, which is the very flame of the Great Creator of Life is in each of us. That inner light, a passion for a creative and powerful life, contains more power than we can imagine. So, the thief figured out how to control us by brainwashing us with fear and punishment NOT to tap into our own inner power.  It literally tied us up and put us in a spiritual coffin, a cave of the mind - as in Plato's cvae and Lazarus in the Gospel of John. 

Perhaps Jesus heals Lazarus - who is symbolically dead to his own self (as a law-abiding Jew of his time might have been) - by showing him his real power is inside his own soul and to look there to find it, along with the flame of life, the Holy Spirit.  That might have been what really happened and that might have been what brought Lazarus back to life.  The metaphor of the cave and the dead being chained inside it is a perfect image for the way most of us are living today, enslaved by our jobs, our economic system, unaffordable housing (if you're on the west coast).  Our minds have become caves in which our beautiful, brilliant souls are trapped, lying dormant and dark as in a coma from disuse. We have become slaves to the system just to have a roof over our heads and a little bit of food on the table

The most wonderful, best intentioned people in the world have been made impotent spiritually by their very intention to follow God, but made the mistake of turning to the thief rather than the true Master. That very thought seeded in our collective consciousness so long ago was able to tie up our (inner) strong man and steal away our life power, vision and soulfulness.  

Remember, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.  We are here to live and move and breathe with a power beyond your wildest imagination. Now, this new understanding and vision can set us free.  The hard part is allowing it to light our inner consciousness with the power of its truth. We can allow this truth to penetrate all those decades of wrong teaching that have tied us up, made us a slave to our mortgages, kept us all locked in very shallow graves in which we thought was life.  

We can soar spiritually. We are powerful and lovable and loving and perfect in our original design. If the Perfect One lives within us and we are made in His image, then our real self  (rather than our impotent, fearful ego) our beautiful divinity, which is in union with our creator, is within us. 

This means, theologically, our REAL self is perfect. We are perfect, but that truth has been hidden from us.  Once we are free of the brainwashing of our judgemental, condemning cultural mindset we will feel that sense of freedom, of innate beauty and value, and that is nothing less than euphoric. 

Actually, we are one with God within ourselves.  There is no distinction really in the big picture.  The illusion - or great lie - is that we have to give our power to an externall control-master, a judgmental king like being.  That is God made in our image, not the Father Christ taught us about.  The Father does not judge, rather only loves.  That's indisputable.  The deal here is you can choose to believe whatever you want, but the real scriptures when read without the old mindset, teach us a radical view of God - or Father of humankind.  The Father wants us to be free and to listen to the power within us, not give it away to a sytem that would control us.

It can't be said enough to penetrate the layers of thought that we are anything less than the greatly beloved, powerful, awesome, light-filled, radiant creation of the all-powerful, all-loving, all-knowing  creator of the universe, made in His image and are His beloved children.  

If we spend one ounce of energy even contemplating that thought, rather than living unconsciously in an impotent self-flaggelating life of diminishment, of daily self-disempowerment, we would see that tose pennies in the copper water jug are light beams of power, capable of miracles beyond anything we could hope, pray or wish for today.

So, please remember we are all so powerful, it would blow our minds.   We are all more powerful, more loving and loved and of a caliber we barely know.  

Remember, please, you are a beautiful child of the all loving God who created you, and therefore you are powerful, loved and  capable of so much more than this.  Please step into that power today, right now, and claim your much awaited and rightful place in our true lives. 

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