subject: Have You Rediscovered Your Lost Self? - The Little Prince Series [print this page] Ongoing Insight into Consciousness fromThe Little Prince
When I look back at my life, I see so clearly how I trod the identical path the pilot is treading as he begins his journey into consciousness. It mirrors my life so accurately.
When the pilot encounters The Little Prince in the Sahara Desert, the little fellow asks him to draw him a sheep.
Since the pilot's development of his skills with a colored pencil were terminated at age six in favor of more "sensible" studies such as arithmetic and geography, all he knows how to draw is a boa constrictor.
But when The Little Prince insists, the pilot cranks out a drawing of a sheep that'ssick, followed by a drawing of aram that he mistakes for a sheep.
I became interested in spirituality at a young age, attending Sunday School at a Church of England in my hometown of Harrogate, Yorkshire. Probably around age twelve our group went to hear Billy Graham speak on a visit to Manchester. I had by that age already "accepted Jesus into my heart as my savior" as we called it, but this event sort of formalized it.
Back then I imagined this was what Jesus taught us to do. I had no idea that I was getting into precisely what's depicted by the pilot's drawing of a sheep that's very, verysick.
What do I mean by sick? Not that one can't enjoy being part of a community of believers in a mainline or independent church, a mosque, or a temple of one kind or another. For instance I attend the Episcopalian Cathedral in Phoenix. What I mean is that when we look for an answeroutside of our own authentic being, we become like the sick sheep the pilot drew.
We limp along searching for the reality Jesus epitomizes outside of ourselves, when the Christ reality can only be found within ourselves. To look for it elsewhere is what it is to be a sick sheep.
It was in my late twenties that, after journeying through several versions of "Christianity," I began to really question.
You see, the sense of fulfillment, inner peace, and joy that Jesus and his followers talked about just wasn't happening in my life, no matter how much I dedicated and rededicated myself to this path.
I was already aware of Jesus' statement that humans are part of the divine, the offspring of Godan insight I encountered when I was about sixteen, though I really had no idea what it meant. But in my late twenties it became clear to me that we are the self-expression of the creator, in the very image and likeness of God.
I realized Jesus taught that we aren't just something Godmade, quiteseparate from the divine presence, but amanifestation of that presence in finite form.
All these years I had been limping along very sick because I had embraced a distorted form of the message of Jesus by looking outside myself for answers, when Jesus so clearly points us within.
Well, truth be told, what we meant when we spoke of Jesus as our savior really had nothing to do with the essential teaching of Jesus. I was to discover that the term savior meant somethingvery different from "accepting Jesus into my heart."
As I began to understand myself as apart of the divine, an expression of God, I shifted into a phase of my journey that's represented by the pilot's attempt to draw a sheep and coming up with a ram.
Now, I was determined to stay present, meditate, work the law of attractionall the sorts of things people do in order to pursue what they think of as a spiritual path.
But after years pursuing this approach, reading countless books, going on retreats, listening to endless teachers, I wasn't at peace within myself.
I was alwaystrying to get there, but never actually arriving.
Consciousness, enlightenment, being truly present in the moment throughout my day were always goals, somewhere up ahead, not a reality in which I lived.
I justhoped to live consciously someday, and in the meantime experienced only short bursts of what being present feels like.
When I began to understand the difference between our ego trying to be "spiritual," trying to be conscious, trying to be present, and simply relaxing into my true beingmy essential self grounded in the divinethe fulfillment, peace, and joy I had sought began flowing quite spontaneously, becoming a natural and easy way to live.
So this was what Jesus was talking about when he said we have to die to ourselves so that our true self can be born!
To becomepresent like we once were as a child is what he meant when he declared we need to be born again.
This life-changing experience was nothingat all like what I learned in Sunday School, from Billy Graham, or from all the others who I journeyed with in Christianity, including the charismatic movement and a host of other "spiritual" experiences.
All of this I discovered is of theego, whereas what Jesus called for is thedeath of the egoic self we have all learned to be as a result of growing up in the grip of the boa constrictor.
What Jesus saves us from is the boa constrictorthe distorted sense of who we are that we begin imbibing in childhood, whereby we lose sight of the precious person we came into the world to be.
Theway he saves us is bymirroring for us our true being, the person we are as a manifestation of the divine source, in contrast to thefalse egoic self we have grown up to be.
The crucifixion, with the shedding of his blood, mirrors how we have crucified the child we came into the world to be ever since the boa constrictor got hold of us.
It mirrors how, by killing our real essence in order to conform with what family and society wanted us to be, we generated so much pain that we then turned around and crucified everybody else in our life.
Conversion, Jesus explained, is torediscover our essential self that the world has robbed us of. This is what it is to be born again: to again enter into our original identity as a manifestation of the divine presence that is our source.
To recover our awareness of the unique individual we were born to be in the divine likeness is what it means to belost andfoundor, in other words, lost and then saved. We've been lost ever since the societal boa constrictor began squeezing the life out of us.
With a boa constrictor, a sick sheep, and a ram behind me on my journey, it was time to draw a different sheepone with which The Little Prince would be delighted.
*Note: My Namaste Publishing bookYour Forgotten Self Mirrored in Jesus the Christ goes more deeply into how our true nature is always present and how consciousness is our most natural and relaxed state.
Have You Rediscovered Your Lost Self? - The Little Prince Series
