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Sunday, September 30, 2001
"However,
once we stop thinking objectively in terms of “me” and start
realizing that we are what we “give” and what we give is our
consciousness, we begin to fly, or should I say “ascend.”
- Walter Starcke
This week's message is from the
September monthly article written by the great and mystical, Walter
Starcke. It is reprinted with his permission and blessings.
For more about Walter Starcke, go to: www.walterstarcke.com
Imprisoned Splendor by Walter Starcke
Browning wrote,
“Truth is within ourselves. We must open out a way for the imprisoned
splendor to escape.” What
truth was he talking about? The truth he was talking about is the truth
of our identity, who we really are – the consciousness of God.
We are imprisoned in lesser concepts of who we are. Because we
are afraid to take responsibility for being God’s presence, we set up
laws of limitation for ourselves and by operating within those laws, we
imprison our splendor.
Without
understanding why, there has always been something about Jesus’
Godliness that we have been drawn to. Deep inside we sense that hidden
in his words was something that we have not quite grasped.
We have been blinded by the miracles he performed for his
followers and missed the miracle that took place in his own life, the
miracle that can give us life eternal as it did for him.
Because of that miracle we have said, rightly, that he was God.
Jesus’ miracle, the one we must now experience for ourselves, was his
escape from the prison of a personal sense concept of his identity.
He, like all of us, was born with a given name, a body, and a
physical sense of self, but somewhere along the line, possibly at his
baptism when the dove descended upon him, he emerged from the prison of
a physical concept of self and understood that he was a spiritual being
with a physical body. From that moment on, he lived as a state of
consciousness. He realized that he had a body, but he no longer thought
he was the body or personality. In
fact, he was so aware of himself as Spirit that he said that if we
destroyed his physical body he could raise “it” up in three days.
That means he was fully aware of his true identity, and so aware
of it that when we think of him we think of the God that he and all of
us are when we escape from the prison of self.
In attempting to help us wake up to who we are, Edgar Cayce
suggested, “Let us not measure by earthly standards (objectively) if
we would know ourselves. Rather
measure by that which we have found within ourselves to be our ideal
(our subjective values), know in what we believe, and act that way.
Let
us, therefore, be willing to be measured, not by what we have, but by
what we give.”
We are so conditioned to think we are what we “have” - the
body we see in the mirror, the house we live in, the friends we have,
the credits we have achieved, etc. etc. etc.
We plan on how to use what we have, where to go, what to do.
All of that perpetuates a sense of material or human identity.
Even our prayers keep us imprisoned in a sense of self.
We look out at the world from within our limitations and fears.
However, once we stop thinking objectively
in terms of “me” and start realizing that we are what we “give”
and what we give is our consciousness, we begin to fly, or should I say
“ascend.”
Our ideals are not what we
wish to achieve. They are
actually who we really are. Our
ideals are our consciousness. We wouldn’t have even entertained
these ideals if they were not our present being.
It isn’t that we are limited human beings
who at times feel the presence of God, who at times break through to a
spiritual sense of self at which time our higher consciousness takes
over and we speak the words of God. It
is the reverse. We are spiritual beings who at times have been drawn
back into the prison of separation from the truth of our being until we
once more wake up to who we really are.
We are spiritual beings living in human bodies, and when we stop
desiring to “do” anything or “be” anything other than who we
already “are,” heaven will be our home.
The time has come now when we have to meet temptation head on.
By that I mean that whenever we feel limited, depressed,
inadequate, or unable to live up to what we know, we must stop the lie
right in its tracks. We
must stop and realize
we are what we give. We give love, we give friendship, we
give compassion, we give truth, and we give to all we can. That is who
we are. We are not made in
the image of God. We are the God which projects its image out into the
world.
Jesus’ one miracle
was that he woke up to who he was. His other miracles were the natural
occurrences of his knowing who he was. All of his teachings are for one
purpose -- to tell us that we, too, can wake up to who we are and take
responsibility for our true identity, that we ,too, can open out a way
out for our imprisoned splendor to escape from our personal sense of
self and reveal that it is all God.
And
So It Is!
Letting Love use me
in Its own Good Way,
Henry Lee
Bates
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