Coming Home to God
On facing our fears of unworthiness . . .
What is it like to hear the Holy Spirit? To know it is the Voice for God and realize you need give attention only to it?
For me, I began to sense a sweetness in our living, a tenderness that was stronger than any possible opposition, a faint song heard over the miles, unbelievably beautiful. It was impossible to catch it perfectly, yet once distinguished from the world's chaotic raucous cries, there was nothing else to hear.
It was familiar but long-lost. Lifetimes passed in it. Worlds passed. Oddly I did not feel as if "I" were welcoming it but rather that it was welcoming me, as if into a family or community from which I had long wandered, prodigal and confused.
This sweetness asked nothing of me. Being present to it was natural and easy. There were no tricks, no painful rituals. You didn't have to bend the knee. There were no special prayers or lessons. Every problem I brought to it was solved as easily ice melting on a cast iron stove. Every question was answered.
I did not hear this song until I gave attention to - and accepted - the fact that I was undeserving and worthless. Sleeping in the pig sty and eating roots. This matters! Rather than resist worthlessness, I leaned all the way into it. Nothing else was working so why not?
In our age and world, we celebrate the self. We improve the self. We take it shopping. Photograph it and put the photographs online. Compare it to other selves, decide it's better than this but not as good as that. Take it to therapy and yoga. Buy it a dog.
It is okay that we do this! It's not a crime against God or Nature (because it's not real), but it doesn't make us truly happy. It doesn't liberate us from suffering. Leaning into self-denigration was simply a nondramatic recognition that my will was inadequate unto the healing action of Love, the effects of which are natural and sustainable happiness and inner peace. There had to be - à la Bill Thetford - another way.
This declaration of worthlessness was negative with respect to Sean's will, but it was positive with respect to God's. When we let ego go - when we surrender the imperative of our will, our way, our life - then what remains is God's Will. And God is Good. God is Love without subject or object.
In other words, our worth is established by God in Creation. It is not established by a fictional self in an unreal world.
In A Course in Miracles we ask whose Kingdom is the world for us today (T-30.I.16:8). It’s a good question. It focuses our mind on what matters. Shall we suffer alone with ego or shall we sing together with the Holy Spirit a song of redemption and grace?
When we penetrate the egoic self - blow it up and leave the ruins behind - we enter a vast stillness in which all appearances point to the One Life beyond all appearances. All that appears points to God. And in its sameness - for it is but one sign - it disappears, leaving nothing but God. Our brother Paul knew: "He is before all things, and in him all things hold together" (Colossians 1:17). ACIM, too: "God is everywhere, and His Son is in Him with everything" (T-14.II.8:7).
These are just words, yes, but to what do they point? To what understanding do they lead us?
When nothing remains but God, we know peace. When we become willing to let go of everything but God, then we remember joy because we are traveling together on the path laid down for us by Christ. We have no goals for there is only one end and it is Love and in it we all begin, over and over, infinite and eternal.
This is the sweetness from which all our living arises and into which it returns, until God takes the final step and dissolves even the memory of separation. Let us rejoice indeed.
~ Sean
Good morning Sean, thank you for thisI I found it thought-provoking. For the last few years I’ve rejected this “unworthiness” paradigm. I did not find it helpful. I grew up in a home, and a religion, that pounded that idea home and it seems it did nothing more than make me feel guilty and like I didn’t belong. Traditional Christianity puts a lot of emphasis on the unworthiness of man, and it just doesn’t seem healthy, affirming, loving.
That said (and here’s the thought-provoking part for me), if I think of it in terms of my ego (false self) being unworthy, rather than who I am in truth being unworthy, that’s a belief I can hang with. My ego is unworthy because it isn’t real. Who I am in truth is worthy by definition because I am one with God’s will.
I listened to a beautiful Ram Dass lecture yesterday available on youtube. Someone in the audience posed the question, “how can I love myself more?” Ram Dass suggested she think about the question in terms of acceptance rather than love - accepting who we are, and accepting what is, instead of wishing things were different. He talked about how all of us, no matter how loving our parents might have been, grow up with this unworthy, not measuring up label, because we are taught that if we do this thing we are good, and if we do that thing we are bad. The unraveling of that thinking comes through acceptance of who we are, as we are - good, bad and ugly.
I’d be curious to hear your thoughts. Here is the link to his talk. It’s about 10 minutes long. Have a beautiful day!
https://youtu.be/OC3pSt70_Jw
Mark
Ah Sean. How beautiful.
I missed the title and went right to "What is it like to hear the Holy Spirit? To know it is the Voice for God and realize you need give attention only to it?" Then "The Sounds of Silence" + God is the silence from which all sound comes + The Song of Prayer flashed across my mind.
So I looked up the Song: "Prayer is the greatest gift with which God blessed His Son at his creation. ²It was then what it is to become; the single voice Creator and creation share; the song the Son sings to the Father, Who returns the thanks it offers Him unto the Son. ³Endless the harmony, and endless, too, the joyous concord of the Love They give forever to Each Other. ⁴And in this, creation is extended. ⁵God gives thanks to His extension in His Son. ⁶His Son gives thanks for his creation, in the song of his creating in his Father’s Name. ⁷The Love They share is what all prayer will be throughout eternity, when time is done. ⁸For such it was before time seemed to be. (https://acim.org/acim/en/s/922#1:1-8 | S-1.in.1:1-8)"
To- Just be still. Listen. And join in harmony with all our brothers who are free to be.
Thank you.
I