AUTHENTICITY FREEDOM 12

P, 102-108

Major theme here is the distinction between wisdom and information. It is such a powerful theme and one which we keep coming back to because the personality and the intellect keep falling back into the syndrome of “inquiring minds want to know,” that it might overshadow another teaching contained in our work today, and that is having a body, a physical manifestation, and all that entails.

So I’m going to explore that one first even though it is a little out of synch.

“Your authenticity also includes the true being you are that is expressed by you on this plane, your innate abilities, your true concerns. The ability to love and caress and to hold another in a body is a deep gift, and one you must be grateful for. To look upon the stars and to bathe in the sea, to feel the air upon you as the wind blows is a wonderful gift, and the sensual self, the skin and bone self, the one who feels and sees, can agree to the pleasures that may be claimed while in a body on this manifestation or plane of being.”

I find that passage absolutely beautiful. There have been so many forms of spiritual teaching that have either denied, ignored or even demonized the body and the physical world. Here what we are being asked to do is to realize the sanctity, the sacredness of all creation. I guess in some ways this directive leads us to revel in our sensuality, but not become lost in it. It is who you are but it is not all that you are.

I am reminded of a marvelous quote from the Jesuit Mystic Teihard de Chardin when he said “It is our right and our duty to throw ourselves into the things of the Earth.”

“The teaching you receive today is going to serve you in two ways, we suspect. It’s going to claim you as the one who may know the potential that may now be claimed, and in acceptance of the aspects of the self that have come in form and are often ignored by you. To be a priest does not mean to be celibate. To be a nun does not mean you marry the invisible only. The realization of the Divine in material form in fact renders the world as your lover in a higher way. But you may still know yourself in form, and express the form, and know it in its humanity, the Divine as you in form. The form itself is holy, and humanity, we would suggest, must then be holy as well.”

I could probably meditate on that last passage forever. 

And now onward and upward exploring information or intellectual knowledge and it's spiritual counterpart Inner Knowing and Wisdom.

“As we teach you today about authenticity, which is the title of this chapter, we teach you what authenticity truly means: To be as you are in truth, without the requirements that you have inherited for one purpose—to sing the song of truth, which claims you in freedom. If you understand this, the passage we have taken you on sequentially in our texts has been to liberation and embodiment because you cannot have one without the other.”

How fascinating that the guides would equate liberation with embodiment. Also going beyond the normally accepted norms of spirituality to suggest that the world and the lessons created by Spirit and manifested in the material world, including our own physical bodies, are all part of the journey.

I recall even Saint Francis referred to his body as “poor brother ass.”

It is important to note here as well that even though wisdom is being called a higher knowing, we are not denying the power of the intellect or even the necessity for information gathering or intellectual knowing.

It has been my personal experience as one who approached life quite often as a scientist, in very rational terms, that when I entered into the realm of the spiritual, the metaphysical, that it was very helpful for me to have some sort of intellectual framework to begin with. In recent years I have found myself becoming more and more comfortable with mystery; more and more comfortable with the stuff that the thinking mind cannot grasp and yet which somehow I still know.

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed. The insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.” Einstein

So, for example, when an artist creates she/he might have an idea, a concept or a set of actions in mind as to where or how to begin and then in this Act of Creation, which is beyond thought, he or she Embraces that Realm of the energy of creation and allows it to flow to and through him or her. Depending upon the discipline that most involves their consciousness decides in a way what will be produced--  a poem, a song, a painting, sculpture, a concerto, a photograph or an action as simple as looking at a leaf, smelling a flower, holding a child. We all have to most gorgeous of images already in our minds. We all have symphonies playing which we hardly ever listen to. The openness, the spaciousness, the Wonder is beyond description although no less true then that which can be explained in words.

We had sort of a “mini movie night” reflecting on the movie Cocoon where these extraterrestrial beings recognize themselves as beings of light and that the bodies were simply sort of some external clothing that they could unzip and shine like they really are. I was also reminded of another science fiction oldie called Starman with Jeff Bridges who plays an alien who comes to Earth who is also a being of light but in order to be able to interact with Earthlings has to manifest a physical body and the awkwardness he has to go through in trying on these “new clothes.” There is one beautiful scene where he tastes ice cream and Dutch apple pie for the first time and the look of drooling ecstasy on his face is priceless.

A movie called the Age of Adeline was also mentioned about a woman who, through a freak accident, stops aging. So always feel free to dig through that old collection of DVD’s. Who knows what Spiritual Treasures you might find. 

“Each of you here, each of you encountering these words, is in some ways requesting access to information. You assume that information will be the key to wisdom. Information is not the key to wisdom. Knowing is.(not intellectual knowing or factual/provable information) And the claim we have offered you many times—“I am in my knowing”—will support you in this request being answered, but it rarely comes through information.”

Claiming “I know who I am etc.” is not a wish or desire to manifest the truth, it is claiming your alignment to the truth that already exists. We cannot emphasize this often enough. Within your ability to choose you are aligning yourself to the truth of Who You Are, no matter what you might be feeling, no matter what might be going on in the outside world, no matter what your history might be telling you. We do not deny the importance of any of those, and yet we remind you again that is not who you are.

“Anything can be experienced. If you want to go ride on the back of a whale, you may find a way to do so. Anything may be known. You may find a way to claim this knowing. But what is experienced and known, we would suggest, that is in requirement for growth, for your growth and for your availability to be expressed in a high way, are those things that will be met in agreement in your field, and then in manifestation.”

That sounded very cryptic to me at first, but what it seems to be saying to me is something we have heard many times in different ways: that the soul has created an agenda for you, a series of lessons that you have chosen to learn in your stay in Planet Earth. The more or the closely we are aligned to the truth of Who We Are, the easier it is for those lessons to manifest in the physical world and the easier it will be to recognize and work with them as they come along. The higher vibration that we embrace, the more smoothly it becomes to work with whatever shows up in life because none of that is by chance. It is all in what we call “Divine Order” because the soul has already chosen the lessons we need to learn.

“Please do not mistake wisdom for information. Wisdom comes through experience and alignment, and, really, in no other way. Now, you may meet a wise man who has never gone to school. You may meet a fool with many degrees upon her wall. It really matters not what level of education you have had. It matters greatly your availability to learn, and your availability to learn, we would suggest, will come from your willingness to not know, to be available to ignorance so that you may learn.”

I am reminded when I first got sober when my first sponsor in AA said to me, “Gerry, I want you to take all those degrees off your wall and put them in a closet somewhere. I will let you know when you can put them back up.”

I did not realize the depth of what he was saying but I did it anyway. The Wisdom he gave me reminds me that he could have written that last paragraph. He could have written it just for me.

Peace