Diamonds in the rough

Part 1
Heaven's light is hidden from sight

Imagine that you have within you a beautiful diamond, and its not just an ordinary diamond.  It's like one of Superman's powerful crystals which are imbued with a universal potency that super charges anything that's next to it or holding it.  It generates a higher life force energy than ordinary biological energy.  This diamond that is in the center of your psyche, at the core of your inner mind, even beyond your imagination, has the power to transcend all the layers of your subconscious and even shine out a little into your life, giving you what you have often called "spiritual or motivational" power.  It also increases your ability to love and be creative.

That beautiful inner diamond is your own Self or for simplicity sake, it is your soul.  It is pure and it is made completely and totally of God-stuff.  In fact, it is a chip of God around which your body is formed as a temple or home for it.  

This glorious radiant diamond has the power to open your inner mind to see heaven, to encounter the saints, Jesus, Buddha, Krishna.  Through this diamond you are able to open the door, or swing open the narrow gate, and enter the universal presence of the One and in that inner space, that universal space, you do encounter the great presence and there's only one word to describe this encounter, this greatest of all loves and it is BLISS.  Rumi talks constantly about it.  He spins and whirls in sheer delight, bursting and bubbling over with more love than his humble little physical body can contain.

Part 2
Abuse Blocks the Light

While that is a beautiful idea, you may wonder why is it that too few of us actually are able to get even close enough to our own inner soul enough to feel its power and catalytic heavenly effects?  We live such hum drum lives, slaving along, doing the same old thing every day of our lives until we finally die, never having ever met God or our own soul because we were too BUSY.

Well, let's just say for the fun of it that maybe you would want to embrace your own inner diamond and somehow connect to God and enter into that state of perfect bliss which the awesome yogis call enlightenment. It is that state that Jesus came to show us how to enter into and be able to join him in heaven - here and now as well as later.

There is a way to access it. We need to dig through all the subconscious stuff that we've repressed and buried that is hiding it from sight.  Since our soul is alive, vibrational and magnetic, it will meet you half way.  You do the hard work of lifting off your soul all that repressed negative self talk and your soul will sing to you, sending you its love for you each step of the way.

Anyone, and that's probably everyone, who has ever experienced abuse, judgment, condemnation, control, manipulation, materialism, greed or powerlessness has responded by shutting down a part of themselves to conform to the other's demands, commands or expectations. That cruel abuse (and volumes have been written on the very definition of abuse, but it includes neglect, rejection, prejudice, partiality among the more obvious cruelty of words and actions) is the source of our own self rejection because it causes a blind response in us to repress pieces of ourselves out of fear. We do this unknowingly.  Once we know this about ourselves, we literally stop doing it.  That requires mindfulness and really paying attention to what is being said to us at all times. Furthermore, in order to satisfy whoever that abuser was ( I tend to think the entire system is abusive) we may become slavish servants to another louder, threatening, demanding, judgmental boss, spouse, institution or corporation.
  
Incidentally, we will internalize the voice of the real once-upon-a-time abuser in our life so that an archetypal internalized abuser will show up in various other people and jobs throughout your life until you release him or her from your inner being. We often become people pleasers, we say what people want to hear, we give endlessly of ourselves, we become martyrs for any good cause and we think that Jesus wants us to deny ourselves and follow Him.

We punish ourselves endlessly subconsciously, not even aware that we're doing it.  We deprive ourselves of the sunlight of life, the joy that we don't feel we deserve, we deny ourselves the life we were born to live which is living by diamond-light.

In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says not to do what you hate. So it would seem that the first step to digging through the layers of subconscious repressed stuff is to start doing what you want, saying what you truly feel and mean, and resisting the temptation to ever lie about how you feel.  You start doing it little by little by really listening, very intentionally to what you're doing and why you're doing it and most of all how you are feeling as you are doing it.  Then - and if you have a journal this would be a great place to reflect on it - write about it.  Write down your feelings. 

That diamond's magnetism is also like a transistor.  Through it we hear God, we hear the angels, we have visions, we access divine wisdom and most of all we access the greatest source of love and personal power to love and create a new and beautiful world.  We have to cut through all those layers of self sabotage and self loathing that were seeded in us as children and later just getting through school and all the bullies and over demanding teachers, and then college - and then looking for a job.  You know the whole song and dance because you've done it.  You've had to do it or otherwise you'd be homeless. This is why our world is in danger.  

We thought we were good to deny ourselves, thinking that's what Jesus wanted us to do, but we got it wrong.  The "self" he wanted us to deny was our false self, that mask we wear around that we think is us, while all the time, our real self is virtually unknown to us because we've kept it in the closet, buried below all that stuff about ourselves that we buried, repressed. We thought we were bad and so we put on learned behavior, even copied other kids, and pushed our true self, shamed and condemned our real self, until we just became societal puppets. But you weren't bad.  You were good, beautiful, loved, even cherished.  And, you have a gift to give to the world, but you need to lift your real self out and up and let YOUR light shine. Now, we have to do some spiritual housekeeping.

Part 3

Meditation is Spiritual Medicine

One of the best ways to do that spiritual housekeeping, to release all that buried stress, frustration, resentment, anger, is through meditation.  Meditation relaxes the frontal lobes and as we do it more and more we actually detox our souls. We can breathe in love that's all around us, in the air, in the Holy Spirit that's right next to you right now, and then exhale all the pain, the fear, the worry, the self criticism, whatever it is that's buried, but you don't even have to know what it is. You can just exhale and imagine the toxins being released from your soul.  Your soul is smarter than you are and it knows what's covering it up. It will help you as you invite it to release the toxins through an exhale. 

You can begin a daily practice of meditating, breathing deeply from your belly, through your nose, holding it for about 8 seconds and then release it.  That's all you do for starters.  You just breathe like that, softly, not hard and just do it rhythmically, with your eyes closed.  At first you will feel your shoulders relax, and gradually allow your entire body to relax.  Get in the habit of doing this for about 10 minutes two or three times a day.  Pick the time, grab some prayer beads or a stone or nothing, close your eyes, and just breathe.  Nothing more at first.  You may see some lights or whatever behind your closed eyes, but what's important is to get your mind conditioned to releasing toxins - perhaps they will show you what they are in random memories from your past that are emotionally stirring.  Those may come up later in the day.  That's good.  It's ok.  Remember, allow the emotions to come, tears even, and then release it.  We all have some real feelings about having had to bury our real self.  So, those feelings may surface as either deep sadness or anger.

The hope is that if we meditate regularly and often, we will soon move considerably beyond the releasing of inner spiritual toxins and will begin to feel real spiritual energy coming from our inner diamond because we are getting closer to it.  We may actually look forward to our little meditation times, and those times may grow longer.  We may feel happier.  And, that's the way that Jesus came to show us.  Oh, one more thing, when we are running on diamond power, full of love and bliss, free from all the stuff that was weighing us down, all the false stuff, we will begin to shine and we will be able to love and give back to our world with a much better quality of love.

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