Be Your God? Be the Christ?
Pat and I had a rich coffee conversation this morning. The subject was trust and authority. Did we grow up with benign (well-wishing) nurturing trustworthy authority figures or demanding, punishing untrustworthy authority figures? Pat had a mix of both, as I did. But I seem to have a trusting of authority at times.
But let me examine this more. For years I trusted the Bible. Not necessarily those who taught the Bible, but the Bible per se. What was that trust all about and why did it disappear? I’m not entirely sure, but I do know I would push the edges of dogma in the Bible classes I taught. I was big on Bible, not big on church dogma about the Bible. But eventually, after studying and teaching Bible for decades, it just no longer inspired me. In reading it I would have more fear come up than life.
Then ten years ago along came the Pathwork Lectures. I could not get enough of them. Sentence after sentence these truths resonated with my soul’s sense of truth. My soul was awakened by the words of the Lectures.
And by other works (Almaas, Maitri, and a few others). And not by many more works (Tolle, Adyashanti, A Course In Miracles, The Shack, etc. etc.). What I realize is that it is my own inner truth that is being awakened by these readings. It is important that I do not get overly dependent even on the Pathwork. Rather the Pathwork teases out of me my own truth. And it is my own truth, that inner vibrant, flowing, growing truth, that is what is important here.
In this sense I am manifesting God from within, manifesting my Divine Spark, the Life Force within. It is in this sense that the last words of the Pathwork Christmas Lecture, Lecture 239, quoted in my previous post, makes sense. At first the closing words of this lecture, “Be Your God. Be the Christ,” sound blasphemous. But what other God could I be other than that God which is birthing in me and through me. All other gods are images.
So this lecture is about birthing Christ from within. Beautiful. I am not worshipping a God outside but valuing and cherishing, and manifesting an all pervasive God that lives within and without. I feel alive, relieved, actually, in putting these words out. This is what Christmas has come to mean to me: being Christ from within, an expression of God to my environment.
Of course I have many distortions and Lower Self aspects that block and occlude this Christ within, but that is my work: to find these distortions, accept them, and allow them to heal, motivated by the pain I realize they cause in my world. Yes, Joy to the World, the Lord has come — in and through each of us. Amen. Blessed Christmas. With a special Christmas love to you, from Gary.