The Inner Path To Christ 9

You are the divine – expressed or repressed

With this in mind, God, Christ, the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary become definable forces with which we can consciously relate, in and through discipleship.  For instance, when Christ says, ‘Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I” – He is describing the force of collective human love and caring. In other words, Christ is saying, “I am the force generated by people when they unite in goodwill.” It is this transcendental force (it transcends individual human action) that creates human souls by naming them, treating babies as loveable valid beings, and accepting them as welcome parts of our community.  Without that action of love and care, human identity does not properly mature, or take its place in society. In fact without it a person may never develop an awareness of the living process in nature and other people as it extends beyond the narrow boundaries of their own personality and sense impressions. They never develop a spiritual life. So here the word spiritual refers to that which exists as a reality beyond the limitations of one’s own personal awareness and body.  Priestley’s dream of the birds was a spiritual experience because he was helped to look beyond the individual life and death of the birds.

But returning to the action of family and society on the growing mind and soul of the child, we can see clearly enough when we look around, that children reared in violent or abusive environments have been twisted or injured. It is therefore evident that the opposite is true. In a loving and supportive environment, a child can grow as a soul until the eternal in it shines through.

So when, as a group we approach the mystery of our own existence, we are the God who creates or destroys human souls. In this light, Christ is the personification of collective human self-giving and supportive love, the shepherd of individual souls. But of course, Christ is both immanent and transcendent.

This is the very foundation of discipleship; that we recognise our responsibility as a group and as individuals, for the creation of the massive amount of ill formed identities we find in modern society; that we attempt to move toward a more caring and humanitarian world; that as parents or adults, we recognise the part we play in transforming tiny human animals into human souls, under the guidance of Christ, which is collective human love, suffering and experience.  And out of this collective human love and suffering, we create the means of healing the deficiencies we find in ourselves, and in the care and humanity we give to each other.

Therefore, christening as a ritual is an enactment of a baby being given a name and taken into collective human care, that it may be nurtured into a healthy identity.  Christening as a psychological fact rather than a ritual, is our own recognition of that baby as a loveable being, who we agree to treat as a valid individual.  It is recognition of each person’s own unique ideas and experiences. It is an introduction to oneself as a being with a personal will. It is the respect we give to the children and people we relate to. Perhaps even more than that is a recognition that within the little baby is the potential lying behind all creation. Our work is to recognise that and nurture it.

The path of discipleship is both a path of helping others move toward transformation and personal growth, it is also a path that is one of facing our own fears, hurts and lack of love as we move toward our own transformation.

Considering what was said above about ‘the action of family and society on the growing mind and soul of the child, we can see clearly enough when we look around, that children reared in violent or abusive environments have been twisted or injured.’

It is evident that many of us have been raised creating trauma in ourselves and those we meet. An obvious one is that enormous numbers of us have a tremendous need to be loved by others, because they themselves feel they are not loved. So, a start for our work as disciples is not so much to give others love, though that is important, but to help them see the importance of loving themselves.

For we do own love, we can never possess it, for love is not ours, it is a power, a wonder, that flows through us if we let it. But we block it with undealt with childhood pains, by misunderstanding it, thinking it is just sexual pleasure, for it flows into and through us from the Highest.

“As I experienced this, I realised that everything that exists is a part of that wondrous being. There is nothing that is not of its love. So that whatever arises in the universe arises out of, and as, THAT. The human sense of God is a realisation of the very substance of our own existence. The awe we might feel is from an intuition of what has been given us as our own being.

Its very last impulse was for those new beings that might arise from the seeds we all are. The impulse that flashed out we call love. It flashed through the universe permeating its every particle, in a way that we cannot yet perceive, but which is like a touch upon the pulsating chaotic movements of particles and lives.”

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