Читать книгу It's All God, The Flowers and the Fertilizer - Walter JD Starcke - Страница 7

Jesus knew what he was doing when he camouflaged his wisdom via parables. Parables are built around identifiable human traits that experientially trick spiritual implications out of words. The Christian teaching would not have withstood time if Jesus had not hid his abstract truths in personalized allegories to which human beings could relate, stories which masked underlying truths so that only those who had the eyes to see or the ears to hear could mine the mystery.

In the past, most authors have resisted sharing their personal parables, fearing that if they revealed their imperfections, failures, and even successes, what they had to say would be considered superficial. Today, however, in order to be authentic, authors, both psychological and spiritual, must have the willingness and capacity to be totally honest. That means they must share their humanity, their human parable, as well as their knowledge and divinity. Today we are beginning to sense that we are all actually extensions of one being. That is why it is necessary for us to love each other enough to refuse the withholding of any nuance from each other, our shadows, as well as our brilliance. As such, both the concepts I include in this writing and the personal experiences I profile make up my individual parable.

If I had to choose a label that would summarize my lifetime parable, it would be the title of my first and foundation book, The Double Thread. I borrowed that phrase from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s prayer, “Lay hold on me fully both by the within and the without of myself. Grant that I may never break this double thread” (Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu, Harper & Row, 1960).

I won’t take time now to fully detail the breakthrough I experienced at the age of thirty-one in a meditation atop Haleakala, the giant extinct crater on Maui, which led to this double thread concept, because I have elaborated on it at length in my book, Homesick For Heaven. However, that experience opened the Bible to me for the first time and dangled a spiritual carrot before my eyes, which I have constantly pursued until this very day. At that time, I was astounded to discover that if there is one paramount secret in the Christian Scripture. It is hidden in a divine paradox, the significance of which has remained unrecognized and unappreciated until now. By offering us two commandments instead of just one, Jesus was telling us that at this third-dimensional level of time and space, it is necessary to accept, work with, and even love an “apparent” duality in order for us to achieve a transcendent non-duality. In doing so, he reduced the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament to two, which were like unto each other when understood and lived. By reconciling this seeming dualism, he said, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:40). This reconciliation is the key to the solution of all of life’s problems and the modus operandi by which we come to realize that it is all God.

In modern language Jesus’ two commandments, the commandment to love God and the commandment to love one’s neighbor as one’s self, translate into our need to love both “cause” and “effect,” to love the creator and the creation. Cause is subjective and invisible. Effects are objective and visible expressions, the results of cause. Jesus added that when the two commandments, the subjective first commandment and the objective second commandment, are both perfectly loved, they are like unto each other, one and the same.

To oversimplify, what we feel and experience is subjective. The qualities of love, patience, and compassion are subjective. When expressed, they become objectified. One’s perception is subjective, but when it turns into a concept, it is an object. As a guideline, the subjective is something that is experienced rather than thought. The objective is something that is externalized rather than felt.

When I had my breakthrough in Hawaii, I saw that if I subjectively felt “It’s all God” without expressing that love objectively by my acts, I would end up creating the very duality I claimed did not exist. In reverse, if I took action that was not based on the Spirit of Love I would be doing the same thing. I realized that if I could love God, the subjective nature of life, and neighbor and self, the objective world, all in the same way and to the same degree I could honestly say, “It’s all God.” In other words, the turning point came for me when I realized that I was not a man of God or a man of earth, but both. Though those two “me’s” did not seem to be the same, my lifelong quest has been to find out how to make the two “me’s” communicate and work as one.

Until I found out how to reconcile the two strands of my nature—the subjective spiritual, and the objective physical—I had always felt that I was out of place and that something was wrong with me. When I listened to the spiritual concepts that came from the mouths of masters, something in me hungrily responded in agreement. In the background there was that personal side of me that doubted I could ever fully live up to what I heard, and, frankly, I hadn’t seen any two-legged breathing creatures who lived it absolutely either. On one hand, I was more comfortable in a fundamentally hedonistic society that did not place me under a microscope of a spiritually judgmental morality. On the other hand, at those times when spiritual content was lacking, I felt the magic of life was missing because the divine center within me or others was not being revealed and experienced. Everywhere I went, I felt something was lacking in me until I had my vision of the double thread.

The term, “double thread,” is my shorthand for saying that nothing is either/or, nothing is either subjective or objective, nothing only visible or only invisible, nothing just occidental or just oriental, nothing just masculine or just feminine, nothing just spiritual or just material. When I saw how cause becomes visible as effect, I realized that my life was one thread made up of two strands. The opening line of Joel Goldsmith’s Infinite Way puts it most succinctly:

There is not a spiritual universe and a material world, but rather that what appears as our world is the word made flesh, Spirit made visible, or Consciousness expressed as idea. (Joel Goldsmith, The Infinite Way, De Vorss & Co.,1947)

Unfortunately, language limits me to saying only one thing at a time; so I ask that each statement I make be held in suspension until its complement is added. If I seem to be loading the gun in favor of one conclusion over another, it is unintentional. I have most likely done so because less commonly accepted viewpoints often need a greater amount of in-depth explanation than traditional opinions. To create balance, subtleties need greater emphasis than the obvious. Above all, look into the spaces between the ideas and listen for the Spirit.

Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise

From outward things, whate’er you may believe.

There is an inmost centre in us all,

Where truth abides in fulness; and around,

Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,

This perfect, clear perception-which is truth.

A baffling and perverting carnal mesh

Binds it, and makes all error: and, to KNOW.

Rather consists in opening out away

Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape,

Than in effecting entry for a light

Supposed to be without.

Robert Browning, Paracelsus