A Cross-Cultural View of Spirituality

Posted by Steve Beckow On 12-23-14

Life has been designed

Yesterday we looked at beliefs and philosophies that held us captive to lower densities. (1)

Today I’d like to look at another philosophy of life and reality that doesn’t arise from the same premises or lead to the same conclusions, bind us to lower densities or contain within it the seeds of conflict.

And I write this, at this time of year (Christmas), because it may have the best chance now of being read and comprehended.

There’s another view of life and reality that doesn’t lead to death and destruction, but to life and creation. It’s a cross-cultural view. It’s a perennial and eternal view. And it’s a basic and essential view of spirituality.

It sees God as the first and the last, the origin and the destination.

It’s see God as One and as many. As every thing and everything beyond every thing. As everything and nothing.

It holds that the one God can do anything and so has, in its imagination, split itself in two and then many. Itself still, it dreamt the existence of a side of itself that was active and could create, preserve and transform. This was the second.

Sages came to call the first the “Father,” although it isn’t male. They came to call the second the “Mother,” although it isn’t female. However God as the Mother is all that can be known. The Father is silent and still. Only the Mother moves and speaks.

It took many “fragments” (all descriptions are metaphorical) of Itself and hid them in vessels designed by the Mother. Those are us and the vessels are our bodies.

We call this fragment the immortal Self. But others have called it the Atman, the Buddha nature, and our original face.

Other traditions have called it the prince of peace, the Pearl of great price, the treasure buried in a field, the lamp always burning on the altar and the firebrand plucked from the burning. It’s the Child of the Mother and Father, the same Self or essence in all.

This Self is said to be buried in the heart. In reality it is the heart. The heart and the soul are the same.

Once the Father had birthed the Self and encased it in matter, mater, Mother, it set the Self a task.

Know thyself, It said. For you are a fragment of Me. I have set you this task so that, in a moment of your enlightenment, I can have an experience of myself as you meet yourself.

For that meeting were you created. For you and I are One and, when we meet, God meets God.

It’s an immeasurable experience of joy for both of us. We find there never was two, but what a journey we’ve had with each other in the process of that discovery!

There is no separation between me and thee, but I have created it in my imagination for our pleasure.

And off he sent the fragments of himself.

Focus now on modern day, city street, rain falling outside my window. Here we are at work.

And always a part of us is unsatisfied. Always we hunger. Always we thirst. We fill it with the latest drink, or a new dress or a bomber jacket. Or a trip to Madras or the pyramids.

Yet still we hunger. Still we want. Our physical hunger is just a reflection of our spiritual hunger. No sports car, no exotic trip can fill this void for long. The hunger and thirst for God returns and so we continue journeying on a voyage about which we know nothing, and suspect little, not even the fact that we’re journeying.

God planted this longing for Him that cannot be denied inside every one of us. It asserts itself quietly, gradually, below awareness in every lifetime and nothing will stop it making itself felt. It’s only the reactions that we have to it that differ.

It’ll keep drawing us on until we merge again with God, at which point we’ve fulfilled the purpose for which we were and agreed to be created (because we too are God).

We surrender any trace of individuality and dissolve again into the transcendent sea of love. … Or we return for another tour of duty, as Archangel Michael has described on occasion.

It isn’t the case that only Christians reach the finish line. Or only Muslims or Jews or Hindus. Everyone will reach the finish line. Some sooner than others because of the sanctity of free will. That is also part of the original plan or design.

Every blade of grass plays a part in that plan. It covers every action everywhere and at any time. Or in no time.

Therefore there’s no basis for the followers of one religion harming the followers of another because the second group will not conform to the views of the first.

Anyone who takes up the sword against another to harm them in such a cause is not following any spiritual path that I’m aware of.

It cannot be argued that one is following a spiritual path and yet interfering with the free will of another or harming another. The universe is governed by law and that’s not behavior that conforms with any laws of the universe that I know of.

None of that course of conduct has anything to do with the spirituality I just described, which is the spirituality of most of the Earth’s sages.

In this view, every being is a brother or a sister to all others. All are on the same journey from God to God.

Our sources here have been consistently telling us that, on this journey, the way of journeying is indistinguishable from the end.

To journey manifesting the divine qualities is what has us reach the end in the divine. The more we journey, the more we become the divine until that which is illusory progressively falls away, revealing the divine “underneath,” which was always there.

As far as I can see, this is the journey that was intended. I think Jesus would agree with me. (Much of it comes from his teachings.)

This perennial philosophy, apparent in the works of dozens of terrestrial sages and scholars including Jesus, promises peace more surely than a spirituality that draws on separation and exclusion. It deprives the fire of religious animosity of oxygen and restores the world to the balance and harmony that was always intended.

We’re one family. We’re all traveling together towards one destination, following one set of laws and requirements. It’s in our interests to lay down our weapons, which have only ever been an impediment to security and happiness, and build a community based on loving-kindness and support. Take one moment to just acknowledge this in your heart (“Yes”) and the work has been done.

Footnotes

(1) “What is the Matrix that Held us in 3D?” at http://goldenageofgaia.com/building-nova-earth-toward-a-world-that-works-for-everyone/nova-earth-society/what-is-the-matrix-that-held-us-in-3d/.