The Awareness Choice

John 14: 15-26 (Excerpts from the Alternative Gospel)

‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.

‘Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.’ 

Jesus often spoke to the people using parables and images because it made it easier for people to envision what he was talking about. So now I am going to invite you to use your imagination to visualize an inner landscape.

Imagine that within you is a high Tower. This Tower is not a heavily guarded and fortified Tower but rather a Tower of beauty and light. At the top of this Tower is a dwelling place, open and spacious. From this place it is easy to view the surrounding countryside where there is a flowing river, grass, trees and plants in lush abundance and off in the distance, the ocean and mountains. This vista, when viewed from the Tower, offers a sense of peace and life. One can breathe in the Tower.

In this Tower dwell four Beings in loving community. Three of them are the Holy Trinity. The fourth is True Self. The Tower radiates the joy of the relationship that the four of them delight in. True Self is smaller than the other three but it is obviously an offspring of the Trinity. The resemblance of True Self to the other three is remarkable and the Trinity interacts with True Self as a welcome and beloved member of the family.

Looking out of the Tower, one can see an area in the not too far distance that mars the landscape. From the Tower it looks like a battlefield. The earth is pockmarked, scorched and dry. Plants have been trampled and trees uprooted. Around the perimeter of the area are rolls of barbed wire and in the middle of the compound one can see a weary and lonely figure surrounded by implements of war and struggle.  It is the Wounded Warrior.

In all of this there is another entity that I will call Awareness. The Wounded Warrior never visits the Tower but Awareness does. It doesn’t get there often as it would like but whenever it does it is amazed at the quality of the Light and revels in the peace it discovers. However, very soon it sees and hears the Warrior rising up to do battle with another challenger and it immediately heads back to the compound. The life it found within the Tower becomes a hazy memory and it forgets how to get there. The Warrior convinces Awareness that the Warrior is the True Self, that the battles it engages in are crucial and that the battles are the only way to make itself worthy enough to gain access to the Tower. So Awareness stays with the Warrior, longing for the day when it will be free and good enough to once again access the peace of the Tower.

I have set the scene of a landscape that we all share. We all long to dwell in the Tower but the battles of the Warrior consume us and pull us away and as a people we have lost the understanding that the Warrior can never win the war. The Warrior can never open the way to the Tower; it will simply continue to fight and struggle as well as be a provocateur. If there is no battle it will often create one.

How can Awareness become free of the Warrior?

It is simple. But it isn’t easy. It’s through choosing to believe that the Tower is its rightful dwelling place, that access to the Tower is free and open and through finding the courage to believe that the True Self is fully alive and fully formed within that Tower. It is through choosing True Self over the Wounded Warrior.

No, it’s not easy. The Warrior is one strong being – a bit of a giant in its own right and walking away from it is not effortless because, for some reason, we would all rather fight battles than dwell in peace. We are more comfortable living with negativity than freedom. Awareness needs to get to that Tower and make continual choices to stay there even when there are battles and skirmishes on the front lines. It needs to stay there long enough to experience the power that the Tower dwellers can have in diminishing the Warrior’s false sense of its own importance as well as experience the Trinitarian power to heal the sources of the Warrior’s battles. If Awareness does not experience these things, it won’t be able to withstand the Warrior’s frequent and strident calls to battle. Awareness needs to stay in the Tower under the protection of True Self and the Trinity in order for them to deal with the Warrior.

So, imagine yourself in the Tower as your True Self. You are there in all your priestly authority and compassion. You are a Being fully in love with the Trinity, fully loved by them and you are there as one who has found everything you have ever wanted. You bask in Trinitarian love and wisdom and your Awareness knows True Self is deeply connected to all that the Trinity is and does.  

Suddenly a battle cry goes up from the compound of the Warrior. There is a threat or a challenge to the Warrior and your Awareness wants to rush to the battle. But this time you resist. It’s very difficult but you withstand the pressure to go out and fight. Instead you stay with your True Self in the Tower with the Holy Spirit by its side and you all watch the Warrior. All you do is observe it closely. The Tower is, in fact, an Observation Post. As you observe, True Self might speak to the Spirit about what is seen and perceived.

“The Warrior is angry because it feels threatened and is anxious that it will be overcome and diminished. It is scared it will lose again. It is scared that its needs will be pushed aside for what someone else wants. It is scared that if it lets go of the battle something worse will happen or it will be blamed or it will not have enough. It fears censure and ridicule. It fears God’s disapproval. It fears further loss. It fears that if it stands down someone or something else will gain control.”

True Self and the Awareness of True Self do not condone the Warrior’s battles but neither do they judge or condemn them. Neither does the Holy Spirit. Together they simply observe the Warrior with compassion. They recognize the futility of the battle but there is no derision for they also recognize that the Warrior thinks it is defending the Tower – a Tower that needs no defense because it is home of all the power, light and life that the Spirit brings.

As they all observe the Warrior with love and compassion, something amazing begins to happen. It’s as if the love and compassion become a ray of light and that ray of light shines directly on the Warrior. The Warrior feels the light more than sees it and it hesitates. It goes to continue the battle but something doesn’t feel right anymore. The more the light shines on it, the more the Warrior begins to feel that the battle isn’t quite as important as it thought it was.

In the Tower, the more Awareness stays with True Self and the Spirit, observing and having compassion on the Warrior, the more Awareness and True Self merge into one and Awareness begins to be acutely conscious of the presence of the Spirit and the Father and Son in the Tower. The Warrior’s battle becomes less and less of an issue and the joy and peace of the Trinity starts to flood through the Awareness of True Self.

Sounds too easy, doesn’t it? Well, again I need to emphasize that the difficulty comes in the choice to go to the Tower and stay there. It’s a choice that will have to be made time after time, moment by moment, day after day. After all, Awareness has lived for a long time with the Wounded Warrior and is used to living on the battleground. The battleground feels normal and often it feels absolutely right. New habits have to be developed through belief and choice: believing that the True Self exists and choosing to go to the Tower and stay there, choosing to observe with the light rather than fight with the Warrior.

At first it will be very difficult to keep choosing to go back to the Tower, especially if a battle flares up before one is even aware a battle was coming.  It’s not an easy task to leave the Warrior when it’s in full rage. Don’t be discouraged. Leave and go to the Tower whenever you can. The more you practice observation and experience the power within the Tower, the easier it will become to make the choice to go. You will also become aware that the power that dwells in the Tower is an extensive power. Many have experienced changes in their circumstances just by dwelling in the Tower as True Self and observing the Warrior. But those kinds of changes are up to the Wisdom of God and True Self is content to trust in whatever the Trinity wants to do.

Please be aware that if, while you’re in the Tower, you find yourself kicking yourself or condemning yourself for the antics of the Warrior or feel as though you should wrestle Warrior to the ground to get it under control, you have actually left True Self and gone back to the Warrior. The Warrior is back in control. With the Warrior it’s always about control and making things right no matter what. With the True Self, it’s always about staying with the Lord, fully trusting in him in the present moment.

There is more to say but it will have to wait for next week’s post. Meanwhile, let’s see what a couple of Saints and the scriptures say about all this:

 We are all in mourning for the experience of our essence we knew and now miss. Light is the cure, all else a placebo. (St. Francis)

“A single sunbeam is enough to drive away many shadows.” (St. Francis)

“Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.” (St. Catherine of Siena)

"Love transforms one into what one loves." (Catherine of Siena)

“Live as children of light— for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly; but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light. 

 (Ephesians 5: 9-14)

I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. (Eph. 3: 16,17)

You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. (Eph.4: 20-24)

For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7: 22-24)

But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. (Romans 8:10)

But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works (battles?), otherwise grace would no longer be grace. (Romans 11:6)

Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15: 4,5)

Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law - or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? Having started with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? Did you experience so much for nothing?—if it really was for nothing. Well then, does God supply you with the Spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard? (Galatians 3:2-5)