"The simple and the obvious are NOT apparent to those who would make palaces and royal robes of nothing, believing they are kings with golden crowns BECAUSE of them."
Last night what came to awareness is the nature of the ego. It was shown to me as a picture of a selfish king.
The king was riding on a golden jewel-laden platform, lounging casually while being attended to by guards and servants. Eating luxuriously, wearing elaborate robes made of the finest materials, complete with jewels and gold and a crown.
He thought highly of himself, of his own self importance. He saw himself as above everyone, and because of this he really did not care to even mingle with those lesser than himself. He was distanced and cut off from the larger population, and didn't really care for anyone at all besides himself.
He wanted to live an opulent, wealthy, care-free life, waited-on and pampered and adored and worshipped as a lord. Skimming along the surface of society barely involved in anything or helping anyone, wanting nothing to do with the unclean peasants nor to barely give a single thing to anyone.
He wanted to live in his big castle with his special toys and his expensive furnishings. To be told how great he is, to sit on his portable throne and be escorted according to his shallow wishes. It seemed he had everything he wanted, having gained the whole world, sitting at the apex of the pyramid on top of a mountain of riches, and yet bereft of any real relationships with anyone.
Living out his days in the illusion of perfection and the fantasy of having everything there is worth having. Of owning and ruling over the whole kingdom, a kingdom that he had no real interest in other than to be ruler of it and exalted by it. And for all this selfishness and seeming success and wealth and grandiosity, he lived as if on a tiny island all alone and had nothing of any real value.
His life was empty and narrow and shallow and greedy. He got everything he wanted and no-one could oppose his tyranny. And so he thought himself to be of the utmost specialness, important above all others, and the greatest of all rulers. Caring not for anything he ruled over nor for the lives of others. He was fat from the feasting and lazy in his lifestyle. And he wanted nothing but to keep the lesser-kind away from himself.
He lived like a king, but he had no soul. He thought everyone wanted what he had, and that therefore everyone envied him, and therefore that he was entitled and better than all of them. And not once did he think of anyone besides himself. His castle was a prison, to keep him and his riches protected from thieves and beggars and the hungry, to keep them out and to keep him in. For he wanted only to have everything for himself.
"Would you remain WITHIN your tiny kingdom, a sorry king, a bitter ruler of all he surveys, who looks on nothing, but who would still die to DEFEND it?" "In your tiny kingdom you have so little!"
"The ego is trying to teach you how to gain the whole world, and lose your own Soul."
"What profiteth a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?"
When you believe something is true which is not of God, you give an open invitation for others to compound your belief and thereby to abuse you.
Whenever you believe something of the ego, it gives permission to the entire ego thought system to come in and USE that belief against you. In essence, you've disowned your authority OVER the ego and instead have given authority TO the ego.
So lets say you have a 'weakness' in a certain area, where you believe that you don't deserve love. In that belief, you are agreeing with the ego. This means the ego now has free reign to act upon you 'through' that belief, having been given permission to do so BY your belief in it.
The same applies to 'sins', and this does have some parallels to Christianity... where when you believe you have sinned in some way, this opens the door you agreeing that you deserve punishment. It's not that other people believe this for you. YOU believe it against yourself. And you will HIRE other people and actively invite them to demonstrate how punishable you seem to be.
You want to suffer.
So if you don't want to suffer, there needs to be a 'repair' made in your mind, which corrects and undoes the ego belief, un-aligns you from giving permission to the ego, and aligns you with GOD.
When you are aligned with God, you have now given God permission to do whatever God does 'to you', i.e. heal you, love you, save you.
Recently I was in the car driving home from getting food, and felt this kind of tension or frustration with people. I was in a certain mood and decided to suddenly start telling everyone that I love them. Of course.. from inside the car, traveling at speed, with the windows shut ;-)
I felt like there had been just years and years of people passing by without being loving, people turning their faces away, people avoiding each other in guilt, a lack of connection, a lack of expression. That it had boiled up to a certain point where it just seemed like I wanted to grab ahold of everyone and shake them and tell them I loved them.
So I someone broke the mold and started shouting at everyone I saw, passers by on the street, people driving cars, people in store windows, that I loved them. Of course, inside the car, with the windows shut ;-)
It felt like a relief, to at last have a normal, love-based expression come out toward people in spite of their refusal to be loved or their own lack of love expression. It was like, someone has to say something. I couldn't tolerate any more the cold shoulder and the spiritual poverty. So I forced some love out. And it felt really good.
In fact it felt so good, such a relief, it was like taking years of rejection off my shoulders. And it made me laugh so much for a long time. It seemed so funny and freeing.
I think in a way this was one of the recent steps I've been going through in "breaking through" the barriers of conditional love, and ego hierarchy, and moving towards unconditional love. Loving when it doesn't seem called for, or even wanted. And loving just because... it's natural and healthy and everyone is supposed to be doing it all the time.
This world is really constipated. It's needs love but rejects love. We can't keep ourselves bound by these chains. We have to break free.
An exercise in receiving...
1) Just be where you are (sit, stand, lay, levitate)
2) Close eyes
3) Be aware of any effort whatsoever to make anything happen, and stop it. This is not your time to DO anything. Its time to receive a freebie.
4) Picture God or Jesus right in front of you, radiating powerful love toward you, given to you FOR FREE with no catches.
5) Just RECEIVE. Do not make effort. Do not try. Just yield, surrender, receive, let yourself be LOVED ... that's love with a D on the end!
Just receive love.
"God bathing". Just like sunbathing but soaking up God's love.
As usual, the ego has a version of whatever the Holy Spirit has, seeking to replace it and obscure it.
It has its own version of healing, its own version of forgiveness, its own version of helpfulness, its own version of service, its own version of happiness, its own version of love, its own version of life.
If you are involved with the ego's version of any of these things, then you have lessons to learn and a clarity to attain.
The ego has a version of being helpful which involves destroying others through service.
The ego has a version of love which involves trying to take away from others what you want them to do for you.
The ego has a version of happiness which entails complete dependency on the random whim of chaos.
The ego has a version of healing based on attack and sacrifice and making sickness more real.
The ego has a version of service based on self-sacrifice and disownership of true responsibility.
In every way the ago has formed a new version of everything, even with its own version of God.
The ego's version of God is a parent who dictates and condemns and wills that you be dead. Fun.
Choosing not to control anything, to me, feels just like a surrender.
I used to say several times, "I surrender". Particularly saying them in quick-succession so that my ego doesn't jump in with its distractions and objections.
But now I find, if I just intend not to control anything at all, and just to be 'aware of any attempts to control, this works just as well and even perhaps runs deeper.
With surrendering, I can surrender the surface layers of what my ego has been doing to try to control situations, and relax back into openness and willingness to admit the truth. But maybe this isn't a 'total surrender'.
By focusing on 'not controlling anything', this instead strikes right to the core of the ego, which is entirely founded on an attempt to control reality and God. If I am not controlling anything at all, then I am not going outside of myself, I am not engaging in non-acceptance, I am not caught up in ego dramas, and I'm not even creating the thoughts that come as the ways in which I think reality should be different.
Give it a try. I'm enjoying experimenting with this. Just let go of controlling anything whatsoever. Don't even try to control thoughts or to control your mind or ego. Just stop controlling.
I once thought that unconditional love meant that I would unconditionally love one person. That is, that I would love them a lot. I thought that this 'big love' was an unconditional love, until I found out that I sometimes failed to love when certain conditions occurred. So I wasn't really being unconditional.
At the same time, this really wasn't unconditional love anyway, because it was applying mainly to only one person. Unconditional love does not just apply to one person. To be unconditional, it has to be impartial and it must apply the same to everyone, all the time.
In God, we are asked to unconditionally love everyone the SAME all of the time with no exceptions. That seems like a really tall order.
Can you unconditionally love, fully love, equally love, every single person including all the people that you had beliefs of blame or anger or annoyance or a grudge about? And not just the people in your close circles, but even complete strangers? That's what unconditional love means.
It takes a lot to admit that you are not unconditionally loving, and that you probably have practiced conditional love all your life. It takes some honesty to admit you do not love other people, maybe you don't love your neighbors or someone at work or certain groups in society. At least admitting that you don't can start to give way to you being open to learning why you don't, and correcting that.
Ultimately, YOU won't be fully and completely and unconditionally loved, or experience unconditional love, if you are not willing to both receive it AND give it.
When you love unconditionally, you represent God.
God DOES love you unconditionally, and that's pretty special ;-)
Picture yourself in the spiritual realm (non physical world) standing at a console where you are planning your next lifetime.
You look at possible life events in a brochure which precicely and specifically tells you exactly what will happen and what the results of this will be.
You find one you don't like the look of, some tragedy or a sickness or a guilt trip, and you almost want to skip past it. But then you take a look at the list of benefits that arise from the experience.
These include an increased ability to love yourself, an enhanced sense of compassion for others, a greater awareness of who you really are, the opportunity to help others to learn how to care more, and perhaps an increased sense of joy once you finally learn to let go of the experience.
You weigh up your options. You say, well, the experience sounds like it SUCKS, but the payoff is huge. So then you say, well, what's there to lose, since I'm immortal spirit and can't really be hurt.
From that vantage point, you decide that the benefits are worth the hassle, so you say yep, sign me up. I'll go on that trip.
Then you incarnate, and so it unfolds. And you forget you chose it. And then it happens and you think it sucks, which it does. But then you start to learn the benefits of the experience and move past it, and you gain great spiritual rewards from it.
Later, looking back, you acknowledge yes, I got exactly what I wanted, I came away with a gift and I am much richer for it. I'm more aware now and I am closer to God. I am grateful.
Then you pick up the brochure again and go on another trip, and another, and another, until you pretty much run out of benefits that you can gain from it. You pick your last trip, knowing that it's the final one and that you just need to clean up some loose ends.
Off you go. It all happens. You wake up and receive the gift of reunion with God. And it's all been worth it.