Today is my
birthday, so I thought I’d talk a little about, well, me. ;-)
When I look
back on the many things I’ve done in my life I can see a trend that I would
describe as searching and exploring.
Others in my family may have seen it
as “That kid just can’t hold down a job.” A cousin once asked, “So what are you
doing now?” That question kind of stung and it was a fair question considering I
was almost always discontent with what I was doing, and looking for something
else.
When I would
analyze, which I don’t do anymore, I would wonder if I came into the world as a searcher and explorer. I am told that when
I was a toddler I had the propensity to wander away from home when outside. Some
people won’t let their dog off the leash outside because they’re afraid they’ll
run away. I don’t know if I really did toddle away or if this was my sisters’
plan to have to not watch me. ;-) Regardless, my parent’s solution to this was
to purchase a harness for me and connect me to the fence with a length of
clothesline. I don’t know just why, but I apparently graduated from that setup
to being hooked to my Aunt Marie’s clothesline – we lived in a tiny, tiny,
house in the backyard of my mother’s sister Marie, and her husband Harry. I guess
this clothesline setup gave me more access to the yard.
Was I a
natural born wanderer or did they not want to deal with keeping their eye on
me?
If I didn’t come into the world
predisposed to adventure, maybe I learned it from my family life. From the time
I was born until I left home for good at age 18, we lived in seven different
houses. That’s a new address on the average of every 2.5 years. I also attended
10 different schools between kindergarten and 12th grade. Change was
a way of life.
I even wanted to change my name.
I started collecting stamps when I
was in, maybe, sixth grade. I would send away for stamps under a different
name, Luke, instead of Brad because I didn’t like my first name. I chose Luke
because my Aunt Lillian and Uncle Ray had given me a Bible based board game and
all I can remember at this point is if you landed on a square with a particular
quote from Luke you basically won the game. I guess I wanted to be associated
with a winner!
So, I wandered as a toddler, we moved
a lot, and I was constantly at a new school, I wanted to change my name;
change, change, change.
After I joined the workforce change continued.
I had job after job after job. (I quit counting them up when I hit 30).
One of my sisters told me her husband
said to her, “Your brother is never going to amount to anything.”
I guess I could say, in retrospect,
through all that change that I was seeking peace and happiness. I just didn’t
know then that peace and happiness wasn’t found in anything outside myself… at
least not lasting peace and happiness… until this question was posed to me, “Do
you have your own direct connection with God?” I started to work toward
establishing a connection with God until I came to understand that I am connected,
and always have had my own direct connection with God. At this point I realize
the question should be, “Are you aware of your direct connection with God?”
A movie I saw a week or so ago began
with this Mark Twain quote: “The two most important days of your life are the
day you’re born and the day you find out why.”
My job in life is to be aware of my
oneness with the spirit of truth that is available to each of us and joins all
of us… and to let that be what informs my thoughts and actions.
To be consciously aware takes
conscious work.
“Our most important study is our own mind,
not only the intellectual mind but the spiritual mind. "Know thyself"
was inscribed on the temple of Apollo at Delphi; and it must be inscribed on
our own temple, "over" the door of our mind. "Know
thyself." We must become acquainted with our own mind.” (Fillmore,
Keep A True Lent p/38)
"Know thyself"; know who and what you
are, where you came from, what you are doing here, and where you are going. If
you want to know all this, meditate upon the I AM.” (Fillmore, Talks on
Truth p/76)
What is the I AM?
The
I AM is your Spiritual identity; the real you, the Christ Mind of each individual.
God is I AM, and we, God’s offspring, are also I AM. I AM is the indwelling
life, love, wisdom, and all the ideas eternally in Divine Mind.
The I AM is your true nature, the
name of the spiritual self, as distinguished from the name of the human self.
One is governed by Spirit, the other by personal will. Jesus called it the
Father. I AM is eternal, without beginning or ending: the true spiritual being
whom God made in His image and likeness.
Lead the “small you” – your
personality – out of its narrowness and into the expansive everywhere-consciousness
of the great and only I AM. We identify ourselves with that to which we attach our
awareness, and whatever we identify our self with we manifest.
Mr. Fillmore would say, “Hitch your I AM to the star of Christ, and infinite joy
will follow as surely as the day follows the night.”
Be observant, watch your thoughts and
ask yourself, “Do these typical thoughts lead me to peace and happiness or am I
pulled back into the same old experience, like a leaf in an eddy in a stream?”
One vital requirement of
self-observation is self-acceptance rather than self-condemnation.
Self-condemnation mires us deeper and deeper into the very thing from which
we’re trying to move on.
Meditation, contemplation,
acceptance, renewal, expression.
When I was much younger I was riding a friends motorcycle through town. I was
stopped by a policeman and issued a traffic ticket for failing to make a full
stop, failure to signal my turn and speeding – 38 in a 35. I figured the ticket
was bogus because I was being targeted for the way I looked (longhair, long
beard, jeans, denim shirt, denim jacket, black helmet, dark round sunglasses) so I never showed up to court.
A few years later when I thought my
apartment had been broken into, even though I couldn’t find anything missing
(which was easy because I didn’t own anything other than my clothes, a TV, and
a mattress on the floor, and a few enough dishes), I thought “the right thing
to do is to call the police, just in case.” Imagine my surprise when, after
they checked my apartment and then arrested me for failure to appear in court,
hand-cuffed me, and led me away!
I hope you’ll really let this idea of
contemplating your true nature and living from its direction… I hope you’ll
really let it get inside of you so you can step out into the stream of life
that will take you to lasting peace and happiness instead of the jail you find
yourself in because of the eddy of your thinking.
No comments:
Post a Comment