There are two ways of living. One is to be guided by the Spirit, our Inner Light. The other is to be ruled by the ego, our small individual self. One path leads to joy, peace and compassion. The other leads to anxiety, conflict and hurt.
A piece of advice well-known in Quaker circles is to “let your life speak”. The advice is not to ‘make your life speak’. The word ‘let’ implies allowing. We let our life speak by allowing Spirit to act through us. Spirit guides us always, but we have to be present to discern Its leadings. When we are caught up in our own thought-processes – judging people and situations, analysing the past, or planning the future – we do not hear the Spirit’s voice, just as a blackbird might be singing outside the window and we do not hear it.
My state of mind (awareness) is central, because I can only choose a loving response in a situation if I am present enough to be able to choose my response. When I am not present, my response will be automatic, based on judgements and pre-conceptions. A woman stops me in the street and asks me if I can give her money for her bus fare home. ‘Sorry,’ I say mechanically, ‘I don’t have any change’. And I walk on by without even looking at her properly. It is an unloving response based on a pre-conceived judgment that she isn’t genuinely in need of a bus fare; that it’s merely a confidence-trick, and if I give her my change I’ll have been duped. But what would Love do in this situation? Stop and look at her? Try to see that of God? Is her need genuine? Possibly. If it is a confidence-trick, does it matter? What have I lost but one pound? If her need was genuine, I’d have helped another human being. But in order to react in this loving way, I need to be present in the moment. How can I sense whether she is genuine when I don’t even pause to look her in her eyes?
~~~
When we open ourselves to Guidance, we may find that our calling is not necessarily to do ‘great’ things, but simply to let the Light shine through us. How? We have only to let go and let God. To let go of our pre-conceived notions about ourselves and the world, our prejudices based on form, our requirements that things be a certain way. How can we be guided when we think we already know?
Two of the hardest things to let go of are guilt and fear. These are perhaps the greatest barriers to love. At a conscious level, we may not be aware of feeling guilt. However, deep down, we sense that we have turned our back on the One to whom we owe our very being. Like Adam and Eve in the mythical Garden of Eden, or the prodigal son in Jesus’ parable (Luke 15:11-21), we went our own way and cut ourselves off from Love. [8] Feeling guilty brings with it a fear of punishment. Our fear can manifest in many forms: fear of what people will think of us; fear of not being good enough; fear of loss; fear of suffering; fear, ultimately, of death.
Knowing Who we are can help us to release our guilt and our fear. If God created us of, from and like Himself, He created us whole and nothing we could do could exclude us from His Love. Paul, who wrote many of the letters that make up a large part of the New Testament, used to persecute the followers of Jesus. He may have been complicit in the deaths of many people. Yet he became a saint. Whatever our human failings and faults, God will work through us, if we but let Her. If this is so, what place could guilt have? There is no external god who condemns us, so why should we condemn ourselves? Similarly, if we are Spirit, what harm can befall us? What have we to fear?
~~~
Our function here is to embody Who we are; to join with others in living as One. In a word, our function is ‘Love’. But Love which we do not yet comprehend: a love which does not see difference; a love which does not fear; a love without limits and which transcends form. We express it through compassion, through kindness, through relieving suffering… each of us as we are guided. There are as many ways of extending love as there are stars in the universe. Each shines its light.
We are not the first to have walked this path. Jesus recognised the Divine Essence within himself. But he did more than recognise it. He embodied it. He identified with It so completely that he was able to surrender his earthly body and know he was giving up nothing but a garment. He became at one with his Christ Self, his eternal reality: “I and the Father are one.” (John 10:30.)
I used to struggle with the divinity of Jesus. Now, I see him as revealing “the Way, the Truth and the Life” (John 14:6). Having faith in his divinity (we might use the expression ‘Eternal Nature’) helps me to appreciate the Divine in everyone – the Eternal Spirit that is not only within us but which is Who we are. If we deny the divinity of Jesus, how can we accept our own?
For me, God is not a being to be believed in or not. God is Being itself, eternal Reality, that which always Is. If Being is not; if there is no Spirit, then what am I?
To believe in eternal Reality is to affirm that, ultimately, all will be well. It is to put my faith in Life, and not in death. In Love, and not in fear. In Joy, and not in pain. How do I know my faith is not mere wishful thinking? Intellectually, I cannot prove (or disprove) that there is more to Reality than what we see with our eyes. But I can catch glimpses of this ‘Something More’ by stilling myself and being open, allowing space for It to make Itself known to me. And make Itself known It does, not (in my own experience) dramatically, but gently, revealing only as much as I am ready for. When I warm to people, it warms my heart. When I offer love, I expand; I feel more fully alive. When I give of my Self, I do receive. This I know experientially.
We are called to know one another beyond surface appearances: to see one another as God sees us, to love one another as God loves us. Then will all forms dissolve as we recognise God in everyone.
Imagine a world where we all recognised the holy in one another.
Imagine a world where we saw all ‘others’ as our Self.
What might a Spirit-led life look like? How can you let your life speak?