Life as a separate self is a shadow’s thread of reality, and yet we cling to it, desperate to continue what we believe to be life. It seems we fear death but we do not. We fear the truth, our true nature, what we sense as nothing, not understanding that nothing is actually no thing. No-thing-ness is hard to grasp so it is patently misunderstood. Illusion is more enticing, definitely seems more rewarding, than waking up to the truth that we create this experience and no one but This We Are was ever in charge.    

The idea that we are God terrifies us. That’s easy to understand. The separate self has some pretty skewed ideas about God. Because we couldn’t find God we created God in our image: violent, vengeful, demanding, greedy – a bit of a narcissist 😉 self-involved and without a second thought, willing to throw us, His creation, into the pit of damnation when we don’t bow down and conform to His desires.   

That’s the idea of God I threw in the trash when I was sixteen.

Of course we couldn’t find God. It is impossible to find God looking outside of ourselves. Take one step away from our very impersonal, ordinarily personal I Am, that which is aware of our experience, that which is conscious of our feelings, thoughts and perceptions, and we are lost in separation. We immediately are a subject in a land of objects – a person looking for God, looking but unable to find. Stay home, abide as awareness, and there is no here or there, no need or desire, no thing to find.  

So we settle for little gods: the elixir of being right or pretending we are; all the addictive substances to hide that fact that we fear we aren’t right – food, drugs, money, buying stuff, religion, spirituality, politics, thoughts; and self soothing fixes like relationships, family, and sex. Life here on planet Earth is nothing but little gods, distractions from what’s behind the curtain, from the One who’s really pulling the strings.

And yet … we are such resilient beings … we crave the Real. We aren’t quite satisfied with the little gods – ever, and that is our saving’s grace, the rainbow reminding us that the flood ends, that ‘the more’ we can’t quite find, while not findable is livable. Moments of awe, flashes of insight, the bottomless depths of the love we are capable of feeling, all remind us, all trigger something deep within, a homing beacon lighting the way.

Isn’t life delightful! The design is simply beyond words.

Here, here in the land of apparent separation, it’s about the journey not the destination. We travel the paths – multifaceted paths – lifetime after lifetime. Some of us have been here many times before, too many to count. Some are newer to this holy hologram of separation and remembering. No one is better than another. We are simply different, a profusion of variety, a kaleidoscope of possibilities. We are all perfectly imperfect, finite expressions of the Infinite. We cling to life, scrambling to delay departure, because life is exquisite. Every experience is an opening, is succulent, is sacred. God looks through our eyes, feels our hurt and joy, is alive in every thought.  What’s not to love about that!