"Seeing the Soul"

"One of the greatest gifts we can bring to every person we meet today is to look at them beyond the personality level. We don't just see them as their history or what they look like at a physical level.  But, let's bring the practice--and perhaps it might be the highest practice of our day--to practice seeing essence.  Practice seeing the real being, the real person.  Practice seeing the great soul in the amazing disguise of the human flesh that we see with each and every person we meet this day." --Mary Morrissey

This is what real forgiveness is about.  Forgiveness happens when we look beyond the "human flesh" of this 3D earthly world (and the occasional misguided and confused behavior that accompanies it), to the soaring soul essence beyond.  Learn to cast your gaze to a higher place, the place where Spirit is the only truth.  It is in that place that we can find forgiveness for what happens on this lower plane where many of us "know not what we do".

When we look upon our trespassers, let us look with the eyes of Spirit, not with our human eyes.  This earth can be a hard, confusing place of suffering for many.  Let us just acknowledge that their bad behavior is often simply coming from that place of fear that each and every one of us knows far too well.  Let us see their bad behavior as we are advised to in A Course in Miracles, where we are asked to see "everything as either an expression for love or a call for love."  Fear acts are merely misguided calls for love.  Yes, sometimes they can be very misguided.  But it is important to remember that they come from a place of fear, and fear is always suffering.

Look beyond that suffering to the love that is ultimately at the core of the higher essence of each and every one of us.

"What was so powerful about the ministry of Yeshua ben Joseph, who became Jesus, the Christ, was how people felt in the way in which he saw them.  He saw them in their wholeness  He saw them in their natural beauty.  He saw them in their wonder."  --Marry Morrissey

Son, Your Sins are Forgiven

I'm reading a wonderful book right now by Adyashanti called Resurrecting Jesus, Embodying the spirit of a Revolutionary Mystic.  Adiyashanti is himself a modern day mystic and his take on Jesus's life and teachings is fresh and beautiful.

This morning I was reading in Resurrecting Jesus about a healing Jesus performed in Mathew 2:5.  In it, a paralyzed man was brought to Jesus for healing.  Jesus simply said to him, "Son, your sins are forgiven." and the man was healed.

Adyshanti points out that the word sins, at that time, had simpler connotations than they have been given in the following 2,000 years.  The original Greek meaning for the word hamartia or sin, was to miss the mark. Another meaning is simply the word flaw.  Our current meaning of sin is so much darker and deeper.  We think of our sins as being evil and they are strongly attached to feelings of shame and guilt.

What if, instead of thinking of sin as the source of guilt and upset in our lives, we merely choose to see the ways we have missed the mark?  After all, we are simply trying to do what it takes to survive and find a few comforts here in our earthly reality, our space and time reality.  We all make mistakes here, we misjudge, we miss the mark.  We all have flaws.  Having a flaw is not inherently evil.

Adyashanti makes a second point; that the paralytic had to do nothing to be healed by Jesus.  He was merely brought into Jesus' presence.  "And this is really Jesus's greatest healing power, the power of his presence."

Jesus bestows his forgiveness on people as a kind of healing balm.  For a human being to receive true forgiveness is a potent thing.  When the forgiveness is authentic, it has a very deep and powerful effect.  Sometimes another forgives us, and sometimes we are called to forgive ourselves so that we can move on in a really heartful way.  When we repent (repent means to have a change of heart), our sin (missing the mark) is forgiven.  Then we are realigned with the wisdom of the unified heart.  --Adyashanti

Adyashanti goes on to say:

The healing balm is forgiveness; that's what heals the flaw.  That's what allows us to rebalance ourselves, to find our equilibrium-- psychic, emotional and spiritual.  That is really what Jesus does: he is righting the person,  helping them to quickly find internal balance.  When they find balance, when their inner state is unified, the healing takes place.

I really enjoy Adyashanti and I admire what he has to say here, but I think he misses one important point in what Jesus has to say.  The first word that Jesus says to this man is Son.  Jesus addresses him as Son, not as in "young man", after all, Jesus himself was only 30 at the time.  But rather as Son, Son of God, the Son of God, an essential member and vibrant part of the Sonship.

When Jesus uses the word Son, he is reminding the paralytic of his true identity, and Jesus is raising his own thinking.  He doesn't see a poor broken sinner in front of him.  Rather, he sees a true Son of God, one whom God created in his own image and whom is loved by God infinitely.  This man is just as God created him to be.  He is perfect, whole and complete.  He is eternal, everywhere and always, unchanging in his true state.

Let our own forgiveness be as Jesus's.  Let us know that everyone misses the mark sometimes.  We all have flaws.  Let us always be firmly anchored in the presence of the divine which resides in each of us.  And finally, let us look deep into the mind of our trespassers and know their deepest truth.  They are Sons of God.  

Jesus...on Forgiveness

And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.