In this episode I point to our true nature and the nature of Reality. This cannot be done directly so I will use a metaphor. One of the best is the traditional Zen koan about seeing our original face before we were born. I am going to do a variation on this by asking you to look at both what you were before birth and what you will be after death.
In this episode I point to our true nature and the nature of Reality. This cannot be done directly so I will use a metaphor. One of the best is the traditional Zen koan about seeing our original face before we were born. I am going to do a variation on this by asking you to look at both what you were before birth and what you will be after death.
Who You Were Before You Were Born
In this episode I point to our true nature and the nature of Reality. This cannot be done directly so I will use a metaphor. One of the best is the traditional Zen koan about seeing our original face before we were born. I am going to do a variation on this by asking you to look at both what we were before birth and what you will be after death.
We look in the mirror, and we see an image of ourselves. We see a physical form that we have become used to over the years and have watched as it changed. We sense behind those eyes a being who dwells within that physical form. I will ask you to look deeper than the physical and psychological self. Look at who you were before this body and brain were born.
This may sound like an impossible task, but that is the mind speaking. It thinks there is nothing greater than itself. I assure you that who – or better yet, what – you are is much older and bigger than the body and mind. Look at what you were before that body was born. You were before you were born. You were before your parents or grandparents or ancestors were born. Jesus was referring to this identity when he said, “Before Abraham was, I am.” Or as more recent translations put it, “Before Abraham was born, I am.” Jesus saw this. We can too.
Also look at what you will be after you die. This is harder to see because of all the myths and fantasies that human minds have spun about individual afterlife – whether in a celestial heaven or reincarnations. Ignore for a moment all those religious conjectures. Look at what you know for sure to be true about what you are. What you sense in the core of your being, not what some religion has told you.
This means looking outside the box, and we are not used to doing that. We have this stubborn belief that we are individual persons that reside in physical bodies. It seems like that is what we are, and therefore it is the only way that we can conceive of ourselves as ever being. Do not go down that road. It is a dead end. Individuation will keep you stuck in fear and suffering and illusion. You are more than that. You know that intuitively.
When we try to remember the origin of the person we think we are, it eludes us. We can’t remember our beginning as an individual. It disappears into the mists of early childhood. The person we think we are was created gradually during the first couple of years of life by our brains and our society. And it is continually changing even now as we constantly edit our self-image. This self is not real. It did not exist at birth. It did not exist during the first year of life, except in very rudimentary form. It does not even exist now. It is a mental creation, a fabrication of the mind. It is clearly not what we really are. It is a role we have written and we play.
It is not what we were before birth, and it is not what we will be after death. This is one of the hardest things for those of us who are – or were – Christians to get beyond. The idea of an afterlife as individuals in heaven is hard to get beyond. We have taken the metaphor of heaven literally. We assume that our personalities are going to survive the death of the body. We imagine we will become disembodied spirits - spiritual individuals forever living with a divine spiritual individual named Jesus and a heavenly Father who is a divine spiritual Super-individual in his celestial kingdom somewhere, where we will sing hymns forever and walk streets of gold and be reunited with loved ones who will also be spiritual individuals. And we will live happily ever after. This is a fairy tale.
The Truth is much, much better. Much, much more. That idea of afterlife is dualistic thinking that is patterned after what we think we are now. We can’t imagine ourselves as anything other than human personalities, so we project that image into the future. We think we are separate beings and so we assume we will be separate beings forever. Either as spiritual entities or as resurrected physical beings in a physically resurrected new heaven and new earth, which is really just a variation on the heaven and earth that we know now.
The truth is we are not beings. We are Being Itself. We are not separate entities. We are One. What you are after death is exactly what you were before birth, before conception, before the birth of the universe, before the Big Bang, before time and space. Look at this directly. When you look directly it may look like you were nothing before birth and will be nothing after death and therefore are nothing now.
And that is true in the literal sense of no thing. We are no thing, not a thing, because we are everything. We are not an individual consciousness inside a body. We are Consciousness and everything is inside us. This can be seen. The way to do this is to let go of yourself. Jesus referred to it as denying yourself. Leave your individual self behind and rest into your Bigger Self - what you really are before and beneath that little person that your mind fashioned and that you have mistaken for who you are.
This is not hard to do. It is the most natural thing. It takes no effort at all because it is what you are always have been. It is always right here. We have to make an effort NOT to be this. You don’t have to go looking for it. We know this as our true nature. We sense this as our true Self. It is self-authenticating truth.
It is so obvious that we overlook it. It is like missing the canvas while looking at a painting. We mistake ourselves for the person in the painting and become infatuated by it, when the truth we created that painting. Or rather our mind did. It is more accurate in this metaphor to say that we fashioned the canvas and stretched it out as well as made the image. This metaphor breaks down if you take it too far. We are the whole process and more than that.
These metaphors are clumsy and misleading. The reality is that we are the whole. The whole universe is who we are. And more ancient than the universe. The universe is the canvas. We are that from which the universe was born. We are the source. We are the infinite thinking that we are finite, the eternal thinking we are mortal. We are the Playwright thinking we are characters in the play.
The idea that we are going to be reunited with our loved ones and our God after death is the script we have written as human beings. We are one with our loved ones now. We are our loved ones, thinking we are separate from our loved ones. We are one now and forever. This union is more intimate than any scheme of an afterlife reunion. The same with our union with God. We are the Beloved thinking we are the Lover. That is what Jesus was referring to when he said, “I and the Father are One.”
There is only always ever One Reality, and we are that. The traditional conception of heaven pales in comparison to the truth of Eternal Life, which is present here now. We do not have to hope that one day we will be good enough or religious enough or spiritual enough to be reunited with loved ones in heaven. We do not have to hope that our faith in the grace of God is genuine enough. We do not have to fear the possibility of being separated from loved ones or God in hell if we do not hold the right beliefs or do the right things or been chosen by God in some cosmic plan of predestination.
We are one with God and everything now and always. We are one with our ancestors now. That is the truth behind the Old Testament referring to the patriarchs being gathered to their fathers. That is the truth behind ancestor worship and animism, which are the oldest forms of human spirituality.
We are not these mortal bodies and minds. These bodies and minds are expressions of the Eternal Reality that is our true nature. Who we truly are is not born and does not die. We are not a petty little personality encased in a frail little body. The universe is our body. Eternal Spirit is who we are. We are one with those we love forever. We are reconciled forever with those whom we have considered to be our enemies. All is one. This is Divine Love. This is who we truly are.
This is not a religion or a philosophy. This is a realized reality. It is present now. All we have to do is notice it and rest in it. Abide in it. It is what Jesus means when he instructs us to abide in him. There is nothing you have to do to wake up to this reality. We simply need to see that we are already this. Let go of the illusions and the fantasies and see who we were before birth and after death. See Reality as it has always been and always will be. That is what Jesus meant when he called himself the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. This is who you truly are.