Living
True to Your Soul
In
one of my recent lectures, I was explaining the interconnectedness
of spiritual thought with biology and physics, and how it all
comes together into a unified whole. I explained that, in order
to understand what it means to be human, one needs to understand
how human beings are expressions of a deeper mechanic, a mechanic
of physics, a mechanic of the structure of the universe. And the
universe is an expression of one, self-interacting dynamic of
the unified field itself. However, to understand that unified
field, it has to be experienced directly. To have that direct
experience is to begin to understand the connection of the unified
field with the human heart, spirit, and flesh, and how it relates
to one’s communion with divinity. It was a fairly long talk
and I went into some detail. Everyone in the group seemed enthralled.
In
that moment, I saw an opportunity to take another tack. I invited
anyone to repeat conceptually the essence of what I had just said.
No one volunteered. I told the group I found it intriguing that
not a single person volunteered to summarize, when I could see
they followed what I had said. Then I called upon a very intelligent
student who had been involved in my classes for a long time. This
man had traveled coast to coast countless times, taking numerous
courses with me. What I had just said was certainly not new to
him. I asked why he hadn’t put up his hand. His response
brought out my point far more beautifully than I had hoped. He
uttered, “I can’t completely believe it.”
To
get some insight, we could say people function on two levels.
The more superficial level is the level of indoctrination. From
childhood, we are spoon fed attitudes, beliefs, philosophies,
and convictions. That indoctrination determines the tone of our
psyche, the nature of our comfort and trust. For most of us, it
is the determining component of how we think, what we feel, and
how we live our lives. Yet it is not really who or what we are.
The
other level lies much deeper. It is the fiber of our being that
is one with the unified field and the mechanics of nature itself.
It is the source of truth, but not truth as a set of facts. It
is truth on an abstract, sensing, feeling, and intuitive level,
a level more closely connected with common sense and wisdom. It
cannot be acquired through the more superficial forms of conditioning
that tend to run people’s lives.
Though
the more superficial level is the one we tend to align with, the
deeper level is that of our spirit, our soul, our passion, and
our longings. As people evolve, those two things come together.
Shakespeare’s quote, “To thy own self be true,”
takes on a deeper meaning—allegiance to the deeper aspect
of our being and freedom from more superficial conditioning.
So
the man’s response was significant. He would not have been
studying this for so long and with such great dedication if he
didn’t sense the truth of it deep within his soul. Yet it
was so foreign to his conditioning, he couldn’t quite bring
himself to speak it out. On the superficial level, he couldn’t
fully accept it.
Most
people live their lives torn apart by this sort of inner conflict.
They feel, they long for, they aspire to the truth within the
depth of their soul, but have difficulty following through on
the surface of their life. This is because living from that place
is not something you can just decide to do. It is really a physiological
culturing process. There is a double bind here. You can’t
really live it until it is awake in your physiology. But it doesn’t
awaken in your physiology until you start living it. As you work
with it over time, the sense of deeper knowing becomes clearer
and stronger, while the grip of childhood and social conditionings
soften. Emanuel Lasker, mathematician, colleague of Albert Einstein,
and world champion grandfather of chess, described it. “I
spent the last half of my life trying to forget what I learned
in the first half.” A great saint I knew from the Himalayas
challenged a group with it in an intriguing way. “If any
of you had a bit of courage, you would certainly be enlightened
by now.”
What
is courage? Some equate it with foolhardy risk taking, but it
is far more. Courage is stepping forward to live your life in
service to that deeper level of your being. Most people do it
here and there to varying degrees and then fall back upon their
superficial relationship with life. It’s like a sticky throttle.
You
would do well to explore your life in this context. In what ways
do you live in service to your conditioning? How, when, and where
do you stand up and live in accord with your soul? What is the
dance you do between those two things? This is so thematic to
human existence. We love to hear about Joan of Ark, Gandhi, Martin
Luther King — people standing up and living true to their
inner being. In Hollywood, the opposition is played out as the
bad guy. In life, the opposition is the conditioning that dwells
within you. It prevents you from being the great being you truly
are, all in the name of being safe, smart, successful… (Fill
in your own adjectives here.) This is an appeal to rise up beyond
the confines of the narrow world of conditioning and live in accord
with the great being you truly are.
Who
you are is an embodiment of the totality of all existence, the
unified field, the oneness that is not only your soul, but the
soul of the universe. To live in accord with that is the only
thing that brings fulfillment, support of nature, and a life that
you will regard as great.
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