We're our own hired help in service to lasting consciousness.
Over and over, day-by-night-by-day, it returns to deceptively simple things.
Your breath. Your purpose. Your food and nourishment of being, chewed and ruminated upon every moment of your life, until death escorts the sculpture of your simple self through the revolving doors. Adios, baby! Better karma next time.
Habits can be like an escalator whose speed only decelerates the more you become accustomed to staying in three or four basic modes – or gears – of being. Of walking. Of just breathing. Of just eating. Of just thinking. Of just having an attitude.
The "vocabulary of being" requires a deep understanding that you stand upon the atomic building blocks of every metaphysical morning and evening.
The simplest things are the hardest things, as simple or as hard as your basic habits, how you walk through your daily understanding. Is it that hard to be aware of your feet? Apparently.
(Are your feet smiling?) What is hard can be made simple. And should you be able to break through repeated patterns of your predictable, observable behaviors, you will never die, because of one unassailable fact:
Laughter and the moving, fluid breath of your being will refrain from being frozen within the matrix of deadly seriousness, that "fatal adult comfort zone" wherein you're reasonably convinced that you "know enough" have "seen enough," or "been there and done that."
To stay youthful, become supple and ever more flexible. The simplest things can remain simple things. Expanding knowledge can't set you free as much as an awareness brimful with exploratory enthusiasm: that sense of gleeful, radiant awe.
Lavishly reward the being who pushes the buttons that takes your elevated vehicle to unexpected and momentary stops, the hallways and rooms in your "Hotel Inertia" as yet not visited in your customary rounds. In the mansion of eternity, thank goodness there continue to be many destinations to which your mind has not yet traveled. Think of God as an ultimate travel agent, and your life is the complete trip you get to schedule, with "frequent flyer miles" for making the connections, understanding the lessons, and integrating the experiences.
Fear is truly the ultimate terrorist in any airport of consciousness.
We don't truly become old — we lose only our sense of appreciation and wonder. We are simultaneously both the structural building which holds awareness, *as well* as the fluid being of our own awareness, and we are able to travel and stop between the floors and the "destination points" of complete understanding. We're our own hired help in service to lasting consciousness. Remember to simply ask for assistance from the highest parts of you which know.
And how can we identify our most "highly-knowing" parts? The answer is deceptively simple. It consists of learning to recognize the internal voice of wisdom.
In the back of Harriet's mind, taking a back seat to her heart, was a feeling that she'd never developed her own gifts. Her unique expression as a Child Of God, what she had to say, was never allowed to speak. It wasn't as if others kept her from developing her special gifts and talents, though they were quite happy to have her on call as a permanent baby-sitter. It was an issue that she never quite honored her own sacred voice, waiting to be heard, to be born.
She died .... We all die. There at the Soul Processing Center was the usual bunch, the Judgment Committee for More Fully Realized Souls, as well as Christ Jesus, Gautama Buddha, and some wizened souls who were so old and had witnessed so many cycles of Creation that their faces looked like boiled potato heads or old "crinkled-grandma" apple dolls.
As usual, there was little chitchat. The backlog of souls to be processed was serious and formal. "Welcome, Beloved Soul," Christ began. It was His standard opening. "You will have to reincarnate. Your work is not yet complete."
Harriet couldn't believe what she was hearing. "I demand to see your Superior. Where's God the Father, gosh darn it!"
Archangel Michael, normally austere, cracked a solemn smile.
"Didn't I live a good life?" demanded Harriet Hornsby. "Wasn't it enough?"
"As a matter of fact, no," replied Christ Jesus.
"I want a second opinion." Harriet scowled and pouted, but to no avail. The decision of the Judgment Team was final. "I demand a second opinion!" screeched Harriet, yet it was too late, for with a flash of golden light and a ZAP!— she was back in the body, as the bawling baby girl of a successful family who sold AmWay in Clear Creek, Oklahoma.
The Gods were not without a sense of humor.
This story illustrates one of the issues we all have being in the body. We're all accustomed to hearing questions such as, "Why was I born?" Lately, that question has been modified to, "Why was I born to these parents?" Yet the fact remains that the old question, "What am I going to do when I grow up?" has also been modified, to perhaps a far deeper question. That question is —
"What am I actually going to do with the gifts I have been given, while I am here?"
It's a question which applies to everyone online. We are here at this time in our planet's history not only to make a living -- not only to learn to love our family and extended families -- but also to apply healing. And nowhere does healing become more self-evident than in its personal interaction with awareness.
As practitioners of daily living, we become aware of the consciousness and postures which helped lead to a certain dis-ease, a certain dis-harmony, until it becomes increasingly evident of the Mind-Body connection. We realize that some people resolve illness ("get healed") and others do not. Everyone has wounds.
Part of our job as "Healer Assistants" is to help simplify and categorize the working wisdom within our personal lives before we attempt to help heal others. We might think of ourselves as cosmic band aids, helping to hold the situation together, hoping to bring greater order to chaos. We can all remember moments of crisis in our lives, times when we ourselves may have ourselves been deeply wounded. The question is,
"Did we access our internal wisdom, and did we keep it simple?"
Most of us are experts on muddying the waters and making it more complex.
Countless are the times when illness serves as a wake-up call for every person to evaluate their impactful presence on this planet. How can they simplify and make their lives more of an instrument for peace, less a tool of conflict? What gifts have they not yet received?
What gifts can they offer? How do they uplift others? How do they uplift themselves?
Within these questions we can begin to observe a Spirit-Mind connection.
That famous Holy Spirit, which has existed since we first began making applesauce and wreaking havoc in the garden of Eden, is available to us if we simply decide to name our sacred vocabulary, which is key to accessing primary wisdom.
That Holy Spirit is known by many names. Holy Ghost. Great Spirit. Divine Spirit. Grand Poohbah. Voice of God. Higher Self. Angelic presence. Uncommon sense. The Bible calls it the still, small voice. It can speak as an inner voice which does not insist, does not bully, does not demand, and, in fact, can seem too simple upon first hearing it. It is the intuitive voice which does not require a denomination. This is the inner tuition .... the sacred voice which has been guiding you all along. It is known as the voice of the Soul.
That's right .... a voice so cool, so cooling, so wise, so knowing, that you are required to request it, in order to be in alignment with it. Knock, and ye shall be answered. Seek, and ye shall find. The voice of your Soul speaks to you through your own wiring .... through your own equipment, as it were. Some people believe that it is necessary to hear this voice from an outside channeler, such as a priest, rabbi, motivational speaker, or even their mother (on most days). In fact, one of the timeless and revered names to access abiding wisdom is Blessed Mother *or* Holy Mother.
Except, unlike some of the voices you may hear, the Soul's voice does NOT sound like this: "Hey, asshole! You sure blew that flippin' promotion." This would not be the voice of the Soul. Throughout the tradition of listening and receiving wisdom, the inner spiritual voice has to be gently accessed to be welcomed and received.
The work of many inspired artists is to assist people in better identifying the sacred voice they have already, within. Most of us are already aware of the profane voices, the demanding voices, the voices of judgment and criticism.
Consider the tranquil voice of wisdom. By making an attentive request to access your higher self, you bring into alignment that part of you which calmly –– without pushiness –– contains the wisdom that is already there. Whether you believe in a Creator or not! Think of it as accessing that part of yourself which is all-knowing and calmly interested in your ultimate welfare. The still, inner voice.
It's a voice of cool, collected, loving serenity. By asking to receive the light and wisdom from Divinity, you empower yourself to sit with the knowingness already contained within your understanding. You may not employ these exact words, but you can allow alignment with the best aspects of your consciousness to work together.
With a little practice you can hear the all-present wisdom, the gift of your Soul to your (sometimes frantic) self. It's contained within every present moment, and you may wish to think of your alignment of attention as the decisive unwrapping factor.
The field of channeling is enormous. In a sense, we all channel and field thousands of pieces of information each and every day. What is telling, however, is not a particular fact, or even a particular tome of knowledge. What is unusually telling is our process for receiving wisdom. Knowledge without application is useless. Knowledge ill-applied can actually be a hindrance.
Knowledge without content, without wisdom, lacks immediacy, lacks timing, and is rarely effective or durable. Without the wisdom to be shown how to apply the given knowledge, it's a little bit like having a recipe for consciousness without any of the mixing bowls, cutting board, or oven, in order to blend the ingredients together into a palatable dish.
Facts, figures, charts and statistics are just like that: raw ingredients waiting for a talented cook. The recipe for wisdom requires a voice of non-manipulative reason.
Whether it be God/Goddess; Higher Self/All-knowing Presence; it's a process by which you have named that aspect of wisdom which speaks to you. Or rather, an ongoing process with which you're capable of hearing / feeling / or innately KNOWING that which is in your deepest truth and least-deceptive integrity.
You could compare it to that aspect of yourself always concerned with your highest good, seeking to lift you out from your ruts, but never overly insisting. There's a sacred line between manipulating and forcing, and being uplifting. And *that* fine line can best be defined as the subtleties between being insistent and being consistent. The Eternal is consistent. The voice of the Soul.
That which is usually impatient and sometimes has an emotionally-charged added agenda can, indeed, be very insistent. And while there's nothing inherently wrong with being insistent, it isn't always a force for lasting and consistent change. Again, the difference between "insistent" and "consistent."
Forcing insistence can bring about resentment and inevitable backsliding.
How much more subtle, and powerful, to bring about change through gentleness and through elixir, charm, encouragement, or nectar. Sweetness isn't merely gentle: Honey is also an incredible antioxidant and an astounding food for bees to pollinate and bring to fruition the beauty AND the nourishment of flowers and of the harvest. There is the harvest of food as well as the harvest of self-fulfillment and the completion of a life's gifts: The bounty of achievement.
Since your Soul knows (even if you don't believe it) that you have eternity, it is a gentle voice. It is kind but not saccharine. When your inner tuition speaks to you, you may be in the shower or just waking up. You'll learn to identify that wise inner Soul voice by its pure beauty, its complete lack of emotional garbage, and its utterly perfect and disarming simplicity.
The voice of the Soul may speak in an uncomplicated fashion, but the clarity of its message reverberates through many levels. Inevitably, Spirit does not to be convoluted to reach our Souls and make peace with our quarrelsome brains.
Sometimes our Soul is attempting to reach us as we flail and thrash around.
At other times, Great Spirit (or Divine Spirit) is working through others to capture our attention.
The goal of Spirit is not to imprison us but to help set us free. And if our attention is ever captured, it is to sit down and breathe with understanding, not to be in bondage of any kind.
A serious argument could well be made that God does not want our worship as much as our awe; does not want or need any of our possessions as much as our awareness; and does not want us to impress others with the breadth of our knowledge as much as the depth of our wisdom.
Everyone has names for what really matters most to them, but surprisingly, not everyone has named the sacred, nor has everyone developed a vocabulary for approaching the miraculous and the infinite. This "spiritual vocabulary for wisdom" is essential for approaching God or the light of your higher self.
For if you cannot name it, how can you call upon it? These are the names which need to resonate with your being. Just don't be silly and use terms like "Great Giant Hot Dog," or "All-knowing Purple-Spotted Cabbage Head." Stick with sacred (meaningful) vocabulary which personally represents to you that which is of the most detached, yet also most compassionate aspects of your coolest, least hotheaded self.
It isn't a spiritual counselor's job to insist that you use certain holy words or names. In fact, so often a religious war is waged over vocabulary, when God knows we insult Him with many names, not to mention the names which we call each other. (Oh my God!)
The challenge is to be able to assist you in sounding the names for the miraculous which are already contained within your awareness banks. If that doesn't sound quite right, perhaps another way to say it would be to help teach one another how to write a check for awareness. You might say it is the simple but astonishing process of refining your spiritual vocabulary. A vocabulary for the sacred which resonates within your physical body!
Whenever you name exactly what it is you want to know, the Universe will respond.
These answers are already contained within you, like the "FIND" feature on your computer. The answers require only the resonant naming and a "correct spiritual file heading" (within your consciousness).
You can — with the guidance of perfect questions — receive exactly what you need at a given time. Not too little. Not too much. But just enough to satisfy your Soul's thirst and your wish to better serve and be a more-focused inspiration at this precise moment in time.
To quote the famous Chinese poet, Ling Yin-Chan, ?550 B.C. --
My mind shuttersThis is a difficult translation of an ancient Chinese dialect, but you get the idea:
My mind shudders
My mind opens to light
Open the blinds and see the drawstrings
Adjusting the shades of the darkness and bright
The sacred vocabulary must be your own, and its consistency of use is the key to draw open the blinds of the mind and let in the wisdom which comes from beyond the dimensions of words (the archaic word for 'shudders' employed by Yin-Chan in this poem is also an ancient Chinese symbol for vibration and the same sign that apparently also denoted the quivering of an ancient lute).
This is the quivering -- or shuddering -- or vibration -- which is like a divine chill from beyond this world -- akin to the power of musical vibration which is mentioned centuries later in the Bible, "And the WORD was made flesh."
Next month, in the final installment of "The Secret of Eternity," I will suggest some delicious words to activate the inner recipes for higher wisdom to be served, heard, ingested, and absorbed into your consciousness. Yum!
Or rather, Yummmm——Ommmmm!
Letter to the Author at SoulGnosis@aol.com