Thursday, December 24, 2020
In the World but Not of it | Steve Beckow
By Steve Beckow, December 24, 2020
(Golden Age of Gaia)
‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house….
Well, we’re certainly used to waiting!
I’m in a philosophical mood today. I’m guided to look at duality, to show that it isn’t inherently bad or wrong.
The very first act in the drama of our lives was one of imaginary separation, individuation.
No, not our birth in this lifetime, though that too, but our “birth” from the One.
It isn’t as if individuation was not part of the Divine Plan.
Individuation was mandated in order to set up a puzzle, a game of hide and seek. We’re not that individuated spark from the Divine Fire. We ARE the Divine Fire. Hooray! We got it. We solved the puzzle.
It all works out in the final reel!
God met God in a moment of our enlightenment. Mission accomplished! Welcome home, my Daughter/Son. You and I are, as we always have been, One.
Imagine this as a circle, from God into the Mother’s world of matter (mater, Mother) and back to God again. As Jesus said:
“I came forth from the Father, and am come out into the world: again, I leave the world and go to the Father.” (1)
As do we all. That’s exactly it – the entire life journey of an individual soul from God to God. He came forth by a little more direct route perhaps, being an avatar, (2) but we all set out from the same Origin and are going back to the same place, as he was at great pains to make clear.
Jesus has described a circle, going out from God into the world in ignorance until the built-in longing for liberation brings us to a point of self-consciousness and knowledge. After that our lives become about discovering who we are – Self-consciousness – which leads us back to the One God we’ve always been.
So it isn’t as if individuation is something inherently bad. We sometimes say, “Oh, duality. That’s the problem.” No, duality is neutral. It’s God’s mechanism for bringing us to Self-Knowledge and for experiencing Itself.
The problems that we create out of duality – fear, anxiety, greed, etc. – are something separate and strictly optional.
***
This world has been designed not to last. Nothing about it is permanent, not even the soul/self/Christ that attends it like a high-school student attending class.
Every attraction is designed not to satisfy forever but to wane after a time so that, in the end, nothing material holds our attention forever. Thus are we brought to the Spirit underlying the material, whose love (in all its forms) is the only thing that permanently satisfies.
The dual world has its uses. I want to use it for what it’s good for, to present a counterfoil to God, in the study of which I discover my true identity.
Footnotes
(1) John 16:28.
(2) As he confirms here: “Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world.” (Jesus in John 8:23.)