Everyday Enlightenment

One of the reasons, I think, that the world of Disney is so compelling, is the promise of the very hopeful Jiminy Cricket character in the animated film Pinocchio:

When you wish upon a star
Makes no difference who you are
Anything your heart desires
Will come to you

At some deep inner place, I think we all feel like we deserve everything, that we are the center of the universe (in its most holistic sense), that we are the forgotten princess or prince in an estranged land, that we have been given the keys to a great kingdom, but we have forgotten where we left them.

To escape sentimentality and emotionalism (while trying not to run away from them), we can follow a reasoning akin to Ockham’s Razor, that the simplest thing must be true. What if, simply, you are the star?

This you would be your true self. Your true self is simply you in your true nature. It is everything you need. It is whole. It is complete. It is fulfilled. It is perfect, not as a static object of perfectionism, but as an emanation or beingness complete in its own nature.

You are an emanation of Source. Would Source create you, or create space for your beingness, and then leave you stranded in a dark alley of the universe without giving you the tools you need for your journey? This would presume that you had somehow been separated from life. This would seem to require some effort on the part of Source itself. A simpler answer would be that you are always within the field of life. So, what, then, creates the experience of separation, of needing to struggle for your existence, or to fight for what is yours?

Source, in its infinite expression, gives you the freedom to choose your own identity. You can maintain your identification with Source (stay in the Garden of Eden), or you can choose anything else to identify with, like your body or your mind, and you can even choose to deny your existence as an emanation of Source, or even to deny the existence of Source itself.

So, you are free to journey without Source, to see what you can accomplish, or create, on your own. You are free to delve into selfishness. To the extent that you disidentify with, or separate from, Source, is the extent to which you become your false self. Being a separate self provides for some gratifications and pleasures in selfishness. You get to think you did it all on your own. It can also be very lonely. Inevitably, you discover that the best moments of your existence were the ones in which you forgot about yourself, that is, forgot about your false self, and operated, consciously or unconsciously, in the backdrop of Source.

If you are the star, then you serve as your own compass. You need only follow yourself to your destination, to your “fate”, to your destiny. Certainly, this is too simple, too easy. Don’t I need to discover something, uncover something, find something lost, find some buried treasure, search some deserted ruins, use an ancient incantation employed with the right tone to find myself or my answer?

Go ahead. But what if what’s simple is true? What if following your true self as your own North star is challenging enough, is fulfilling enough? Do you really need to add drama on top of it?

By the way, a journey into selfishness is a journey into drama. False journeys cannot add to your true self, to your “treasures in heaven”. False journeys can only add to the stories that surround your false self. Your true journey may well appear boring from the outside, and it won’t be satisfying to your false self, but it will fill your true self completely.

When you are separate from everything, you are able to have everything. It’s strange to say, but when you are separate, you aren’t separate. Jesus opens the door for this with his words about “being in the world, but not of the world.” Real beauty, real joy, indeed, a real life, can actually begin when you walk through this door.

When I can stay myself around my family, I am able to enjoy them. I experience love for them. I can see the positive aspects of them. If I don’t stand up for what I want now, or fall into an old family role, my enjoyment vanishes. I become resentful. I begin to see mostly the negative aspects of my family members. I have lost my separation.

When those in intimate relationships lose their separation, the spark goes away. Like spark plugs in a car, if there’s no gap, the engine doesn’t fire. It requires separation for the spark to fire and the vapors to ignite. As soon as I become you, or you become me, the battery goes dead. The polarity goes away. The potential is gone. I stop being able to see you. I begin to see you through a concept. I begin to act out a predetermined role. Expectation fills in where surprise used to be. You may say that it’s normal to fall out of love at some point. Maybe, though, our desires for stability and control put out the flames of love.

Spiritual people know that not giving in to your worldly pleasures opens you up to experience true pleasures, treasures greater than you’ve ever imagined. This is true because you begin to put your energy, your faith, in the right place. When the pleasures of the world become too great, when all that glitters becomes gold, you put outer things before inner things. You put temporary things before eternal things. Your relationship with the temporal becomes stronger than your relationship with your Source. The farther a seeker moves into the outer world, the farther away the flame in their heart appears to be. The less fulfilled the seeker feels on the inside, the more they grasp for the outside. Outer pleasures become a vicious cycle. Indeed, you can’t ever be satisfied by things that aren’t truly satisfying.

When you know that there is nothing greater than your Source, when you know that your Source is everything that you’ll ever need, you become completely full and filled. Everything, and everyone, in the world then becomes beautiful. You don’t need anything, or anyone, in the world to determine your state of being, so you become free to be able to enjoy anything, or anyone, in the world. Your separation gives you an appreciation and a gratitude for everything that exists. Certain Buddhist monks practice predominantly the art of seeing beauty in everything. When you put your Source first, this is a natural outcome.

I’m still blown away by the miraculousness of this. Why isn’t somebody skywriting this in the sky every day over our cities and towns? You gain everything simply by putting first things first. I knew but I didn’t know.

Like most things in the realm of powerful truth, it’s a slippery paradox. “Subtle is the Lord”, said Einstein. God doesn’t sell God. It’s a shame, for those of us not always sure what to do with our attention, or those of us who haven’t yet committed fully to relinquishing control of our lives to a greater power, the only power that really matters, our true self, the Source of life.