Two metaphorical lightning bolts hit me this morning during the weekly Sunday morning class on A Course of Love. (A channeled teaching of Jesus, who clearly states it is his follow-up to A Course in Miracles.)
The question came up, “How do I incorporate what I’m learning here in business? How can I sit in a boardroom, working with other people, and come from the heart? We’re all ‘spiritual.’ But we all have different backgrounds, opinions and expertise that inevitably figure into the conversation and create conflict while bringing a new product online. How can we reach unity and consensus?”
Isn’t that just the $64,000 question?
So far, the best I’ve come up with is, “We do the best we can to stay in our hearts and stay open to receive information/guidance from the Self rather than the ego.” Sometimes we do pretty well. Sometimes we don’t.
That’s it.
Even though there is no time and no path, enlightenment is a journey. Even though we are all already enlightened because, in truth, we never left the place of unity to begin with … it’s hit or miss until we have elevated our consciousness and arrived back home permanently. Until we embody love full-on—not as something we feel and show but as who we really are … doing the best we can is the task at hand.
So, here’s the first lightning bolt.
As a “spiritual person,” much of my focus has been about uplifting humanity, trying to find ways to make this world a better (or at least more sane) place. My chosen path to accomplish this has been through communication—books, articles, blogs, vlogs, newsletters and talks. Other people do other things … they create new TV networks, create environmental programs, consciousness raising groups, new products that are healthier. They become healers and spiritual teachers. etc etc.
But what if we’re all missing the point?
What if my friend in the boardroom’s job isn’t product development? What if none of those “spiritual people” in that boardroom’s real job is product development? What if their real job is simply practicing being in their hearts and staying there, no matter what?
Now, lightning bolt #2.
What if none of the stuff we’re all so frantically invested in matters? What if we’re all barking up the wrong tree? What if all we’re doing is putting vinyl patches on tiny holes in the Titanic as it upends and sinks beneath the waves?
Personally, I’ve been so busy trying to fix the Old World—the creation of the lost and fearful ego … the reality created by the false perceptions of separation and vulnerability the physical senses give me—that huge amounts of my time, energy and focus kept going to the Old World.
Much of my emotional/psychic distress over the years came from thinking, “This is it. This is all we got. If we fuck it up, it’s over.” In light of this kind of unconscious human thinking, I have been desperate to change and desperate to make change happen in this world. I have been desperate to get my books out there. I have been desperate to be heard, never once realizing I’m trying to create something NEW out of something old, rotten and ill. A false reality based in the illusion of duality that can’t help but be exactly what it is: A mirror of the ego.
Why on God’s Earth am I trying to fix an illusion?
Wouldn’t my time, efforts and imagination be much better invested into opening to and creating the unknown? A New Heaven and a New Earth? A white ship with sails like wings soaring through the stratosphere instead of the Titanic?
Please understand—I’m not saying down tools and screw the world.
I’m not saying we should give up trying to save the whales and the environment and humanity. I’m not saying we shouldn’t create new healthy products and be healers and write blogs. (hello?) I’m just saying we shouldn’t think this is our only alternative.
It’s not.
There is a New Heaven and a New Earth and it’s already in us. I don’t presume to know whether the New Earth is a revitalized Titanic or a literal New World … or both … or neither. But I do know it’s not what we think it is because most of our thoughts and ideas—including our “spiritual” thoughts and ideas—come from the past and our humanity.
There is a New Heaven and a New Earth. And it comes from our hearts. It arises out of love. It is a mirror of unity and an expression of Who We Really Are.
And it is more than time for us to turn our attention to its creation.