Companions on the Journey
13. The Journey Back to God
So, what does the “Journey Back to God” look like? The first thing to realize is the philosophical fallacy of “The Myth of The Given”. This is the belief that our sensorium provides us with a radically accurate map of what exists. And it’s a myth. It can’t do that. All we can say is that we’ve got five senses with very narrow ranges. It’s like we’ve got a tiny laptop between our ears. And when we apply our narrow group of senses and this little laptop, we have a limited model of reality. If we had a bigger laptop and an extended sensorium, we would have a totally different model of what’s out there.
Even if you take the electromagnetic spectrum discovered by science, that’s only a tiny portion. Obviously, there’s a lot more to the electromagnetic spectrum than even modern science can comprehend. But just take what we can detect now – counting x-rays, gamma rays, heat rays, radio waves, TV waves and the visible spectrum – and stretch that out. Imagine it’s a line connecting New York to Los Angeles. And then pick the visible part of that spectrum — the part that we can actually see. Do you want to guess how big it would be? It’s the diameter of a dime! Of the entire electromagnetic spectrum, spanning three thousand miles, the visible portion is the diameter of a dime!
And we insist on making our maps of reality from that tiny slice. It’s ludicrous. So, what do we need to do? We need to shift the wavelength. We need to shift the frequencies constantly and move into different kinds of experiences. We need to begin thinking and experiencing outside the box so that we can make our maps of reality less inaccurate. They will never be accurate. But they can be less inaccurate.
So, imagine that you’re an explorer 200 years ago and you went to Africa. You heard of this continent called Africa. And you want to find out what kind of wildlife lives in the jungles in Africa. And you go to Africa with a hundred mousetraps. And you set them out in the forest. And then you come back a few days later and look and there’s a mouse caught in each of these. And you think, “Wow, so Africa’s jungles contain only mice!” If you put out mouse traps, you’re only going to trap mice. What did you expect? Is an elephant going to be caught in a mouse trap?
And that’s what we’re doing with our little models of reality. We’re setting mouse traps in the Cosmos and we’re capturing just a little slice of reality. And we’re claiming that’s all that exists. That’s ludicrous. If you put out mouse traps in Africa, you’re only going to catch mice. If you put out this tiny mindset, you’re only going to catch material science. So, we need the courage to change the channels, to experiment constantly with altering our states of consciousness.
And when we do that, we’ll have real–time experiences with different energies and entities. And then we can bring them back and cross–fertilize what we’ve learned with our current models and extend what we believe.
14. The Equation of Enlightenment
Recently, I was making a pilgrimage near my home where I have the 23 stations of my “Eucharistic Prayer of the Cosmos.” At each station, I ring a bell and say the prayer for that station. As I walked, I had a realization, “I need to create a simple equation of enlightenment”. Here’s what I came up with.
“E” stands for Enlightenment. E = AX1 + BX2 + CX3 + DX4. X1 stands for Self-Understanding, or Self-Identification. X2 stands for Intelligence. X3 stands for Wisdom. And X4 stands for Compassion. So, if you add these four variables and weight them appropriately (A, B, C, D), you have an Equation of Enlightenment.
X1 is Self-Awareness — to the extent that we misidentify with our physical bodies and the physical world —we cannot become enlightened. We have yet to realize that we are “Spirits in Spacesuits”, “Souls on Safari” on Planet Earth — and that we are bite-size pieces of God. Until we come to that Self-Identification, there’s no chance of becoming enlightened beings.
X2 is Intelligence, the ability to understand, manipulate and control our physical environment, our physical bodies, and the communities in which we live – and maybe even our planet.
X3 is Wisdom, the ability and faculty of understanding and aligning with the Metaphysical Universe — not just the Physical Universe. It’s the ability to understand and align fully with Kosmic principles.
And X4, Compassion, is the ability and practice of treating all sentient beings as my neighbor.
As I played with this equation, I began to wonder, “What if each variable were measured on a scale of zero to 100?” Zero being total absence and 100 being perfection. What would it look like to score 95 on Self-Awareness? It would be to really understand that I have a body, but I’m not my body. I have emotions, but I’m not my emotions. I have an intellect, but I’m not my intellect. I have a personality, but I’m not my personality. I’m a bite-size piece of God.
Intelligence would represent my ability to understand how the physical Cosmos works. How people operate. What creates cultures. What makes me happy or sad. Wisdom would be my realization of how the Metaphysical Universe works.
When I came to Compassion, I realized that all the others go from zero to 100. But Compassion goes from minus 100 to plus 100. On the others, you can’t score below zero. On Compassion you can. Not only can you lack Compassion completely. If you were a psychopath, you would take pleasure in either watching or inflicting torture on somebody else. So, you can score way below zero on Compassion.
Next, I created a six-column matrix. In the first column, I put the names of famous people: Jesus, The Buddha, Muhammad, Mahatma Gandhi, Einstein, and Hitler. The second column was Self-Awareness. The third column was Intelligence. The fourth column was Wisdom. The fifth column was Compassion. And the sixth column was the total.
Then I plugged in a whole bunch of numbers. Where did I think Jesus was with Self-Awareness? How intelligent did I think he was? How much Wisdom and Compassion did he have? I did the same with The Buddha, Muhammad, Mahatma Gandhi, Einstein, and Hitler.
I’m not going to tell you the results. But I invite you to create a simple matrix of those four pieces: Self-Awareness, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Compassion. And plug in any character you want and give them grades. Add them up. And find out. Also, place yourself into the equation to see where you fit in.
In 2013, I co-authored and published a book with two other psychologists, Matt McKay, and Ralph Metzner. The name of the book is: “Why? What Your Life is Telling You about Who You Are and Why You’re Here”. In the book we try to dismantle old, dysfunctional cosmologies that say that the secret to happiness is to avoid pain, seek pleasure and pursue power. That hasn’t worked for 100,000 years!
We tried to write different cosmologies that put together the mission of the Universe, the mission of the Planet and help people identify what their mission might be. And there is a series of exercises so that you come into alignment with that mission.
15. Life is like a Jigsaw Puzzle
My final point is that “Life is like a Jigsaw Puzzle”. If you were to scatter all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle on a table, the first thing you would do is identify the four corner pieces and put those in place. Next you would identify the straight lines and put those in place. Then you have three clues for the rest of the pieces: contours, colors, and the picture on the box.
So, what are the four pillars of your understanding of life? What are the lines that hold you together and round out your life? And what are the colors and contours of the experiences you had as you put the pieces together? And, most importantly, do you have any idea of what picture is on the box? If you don’t have any idea of what the picture is, there’s no way you can create the puzzle.
The picture on the box is “You”. The picture on the box is your divine face. And the greatest part of it all is that when you throw the contents of the box on the table, you must realize immediately that everything that’s there is necessary, and everything that’s necessary to complete your life’s mission is there. You’re not going to wind up with 15 pieces left over.
And so, the greatest tragedy of all is the person who comes to their elder years with big gaps in the jigsaw puzzle of their life — and a whole bunch of pieces that have never been used. You know that you’re living life to the fullest if there are no holes in your jigsaw puzzle and there are no pieces left aside.
Conclusion
⦁ The Soul is a Dream that God is Having
⦁ And when the Soul Dreams, It Dreams a Body
⦁ And when the Body Dreams, It Dreams an Ego
⦁ And when the Ego Dreams, It Dreams a Lifetime.
⦁ We are Players in God’s Dream
⦁ And so, Our Ultimate Identity is Source
Image by Karin Henseler from Pixabay
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