My Journey into Consciousness
photo by S Glarum
In 2007, I attended a class by the Rev. Billie Blain, who was co-minister of Unity Church of Portland. The class focused on the basic spiritual principles found in the wisdom teachings of Jesus as expressed by Dr. H. Emilie Cady in Lessons in Truth, a book she wrote over one hundred years ago. Rev. Blain taught from Lessons in Truth and the Bhagavad Gita, an ancient Hindu source of similar teachings. As we studied the principles found in both works, Rev. Blain guided us in comprehending divinity, discovering its presence within ourselves, and expressing the essence of God that we are.
Today, I do not see myself as an essence of God, nor do I use the word divine. However, the principles in Lessons in Truth and the Bhagavad Gita remain with me. The principles represent the wisdom teachings of spiritual masters from several faiths over many centuries. They hold true no matter the terms used to present them. My terms have evolved over the past seventeen years, so that now, for example, I say consciousness where once I had said God. I believe that consciousness is that which I AM without any separation. To me, that means there is no divine that is separate from the earthly realm. All is one in the totality that is consciousness.
I had studied Unity materials for many years before taking Rev. Blain’s class. Each lesson, each book, and each course had brought me closer to knowing God, myself, and my purpose. Unity believes there is only one presence and one power—God—all good and present everywhere, the source and creator of all. Unity teaches that we are spiritual beings, created in God’s image. Because spirit lives within us, we are inherently good and can increase our connection with God by turning within through affirmative prayer, meditation, and thoughts of love, peace, joy, and abundance. We have the power to create our life experiences through our thoughts. Right thinking, or following the ways of God, can improve our lives. But just knowing God’s ways is not enough. We must live them. I have tried to apply them to my life as best I can.
In general, God is conceived in Western thought as a supreme being, deity, or entity separate from its creations. As I immersed myself in religious, spiritual, and scientific writings, I felt that I needed a new term to describe such a presence and power. A supreme being that was separate from its creations no longer felt adequate as an answer to my existential questions. The term I use now is consciousness. Consciousness is not an entity, creator, or source that is separate from the world. I see consciousness as the emptiness that is nowhere, the eternal field of infinite possibility that is intelligent and aware. There is consciousness and nothing else.
One of the key principles that I took to heart from Unity was the idea of turning within. I also found this teaching in spiritual writings, such as those of Buddhism and Taoism. It was evident to me that finding God was a journey inward for many of the masters, including Jesus who taught his followers to seek the kingdom within. Another principle that struck me was that we are good by nature and that we create our life experiences by the thoughts we hold in mind. Better thinking can lead to a better life. Finally, I was taken by the thought of consciousness being oneness since consciousness is all there is. It crossed my mind that maybe I am more than I think I am if I am the same as all.
Unity encourages us to explore its teachings within our own understanding of spiritual truth, applying them in our religious traditions as we can. All paths to God are honored in Unity. Salvation is seen as our journey from this world back home to spirit, using the traditions we know best. Our knowledge of spirit grows on the journey as awareness lights our pathway. Awareness comes from applying spiritual principles to our lives with the help of study, meditation, prayer, denial, and affirmation. These are effective tools for learning and using the spiritual principles which come from the wisdom traditions, which we find in Christianity through the story of Jesus. Unity is practical Christianity applying the wisdom, love, joy, health, prosperity, and peace given to us in abundance through the grace of God.
I grew up in the Presbyterian Church. My folks were active in our small neighborhood congregation, but open to other paths as well. Besides getting me to Sunday School each week, my mother also introduced me to Unity, Jewish mysticism, and the Course in Miracles, as well as other spiritual sources. She was a seeker, of sorts. At least she was intellectually curious. Even though she had her faith, she did not deny others in her seeking. Like mother, like son, I kept searching for my own sense of self. As expressed above, I feel—even today in my eighties—that I am on a journey from this world back home to spirit.
Unity draws its teachings primarily from the Holy Bible, especially from the wisdom expressed by Jesus in his parables and aphorisms, as well as from the stories told of Jesus’ life, his healings, and the miracles he performed. Wisdom teachings like these are found in all faiths, which is why the Bhagavad Gita can be woven with Lessons in Truth to highlight Jesus’ message and further our understanding of God.
In 2007, my understanding was that all faiths are cultural attempts to explain our relationship with the mystery of life and the world in which we live. The Truth they point to lies beyond our human grasp, much like the story of the blind men touching the elephant, where each man, after touching the beast, describes it differently because he has only touched upon one part of the unknown. Whatever concept we have of God is not enough, because we can never fully know God. The idea of God always represents our best attempt to explain Truth, and it changes as we evolve. Truth is a mystery that might best be left alone, but we are creatures with awareness and intellect, so we ponder. Our best sleuths offer up their wisdom by removing the veils which block our view of the divine, allowing us to see better into the holy of holies within us.
Today I call that holy of holies, the room within. Unity, Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism all teach us to turn within to find our true nature. That nature may be called the Christ, the Buddha, the Tao, or Atman, depending on your faith. In other faiths, it has other names. But never mind the name. Enter the room within when you are ready to remember your true nature. For me, that nature is that which I AM, or twia. I am that which I AM. There is no other.
In the spirit of Rev Blain’s class, wisdom teachings present us as spiritual beings. The spirit of God lives within and is felt as a presence. The lessons as taught by Jesus and explained in the Bhagavad Gita express our spirituality and stress that spirit is the path to follow rather than worldly desires. In Hinduism, spirit is the infinite center of everyday life, the hidden self or Atman. In Christianity, Christ is the infinite center, or true self. Whether you seek Atman or turn to Christ, the principle of turning inward to find the presence of God is the same. Unity says: The Christ in me knows the Christ in you. Christ knows God fully. Through Christ, God provides for all we need. Through Christ we are one with God.
We are spiritually abundant from within. There is no reason to rely on the outside world for fulfillment. But too often we look to the world for meaning and purpose. They are not there. The false sense of satisfaction we find in worldly pursuits is neither lasting nor fulfilling. Worldly pursuits are false hopes because they are not God’s desires, they are ours. We have created our own meaning from our false sense that we are our bodies rather than spirit. With this false thinking, we have lost our sense of oneness. We have forgotten that we are God’s perfect creation. We have turned our backs on God to go it alone, creating our own imperfect world. But we are still perfect no matter what we think or do. That gives you and me the power to change our thinking about who we are and return to God. The wisdom of spirit can show us the way.
The spirit of God lives in us. It is always present, whether we acknowledge it or not. If we choose to seek its presence, we will find it. If we knock, its door will open to us. To know who we truly are, we must stand before our God seeking knowledge. When the door opens for me, I hope to have the courage to enter, but my fear of the unknown is strong. So far, my knocking has led to a renewed sense of spirit. I know that behind the door is the source of all that we know and don’t know—the one presence and power of creation. When I pass through the doorway, I expect to know that presence and power, to feel oneness, and to grasp fully that I am eternal spirit. If this is true for me, then it is true for you, because the presence in me is the presence in you. We are one with God and thus with all that is.
In oneness with God, we are inherently good. God is all-good, never changing—the source of all love, joy, peace, and abundance. The appearance of evil comes from our own false thinking. We create misery by acting like we are separate from God. We limit our good with envy, fear, greed, injustice, revenge, and other worldly pursuits that make us appear evil when we are not. This duality between good and evil is false because God is not evil, and God is all there is. Because duality is only in my mind, I can choose between God’s good and the evil I have created for myself. It’s a mystery to me, though, why I have thoughts of separation at all and why I experience the suffering that goes with them. None the less, I find comfort in Jesus’ advice to turn from worldly pursuits and follow him. In other words, if we extend to others love, compassion, justice, and peace of presence, we—humanity—will realize our goodness.
We connect personally with God through prayer and meditation. By focusing our thoughts on God, we can align ourselves with God’s presence, gaining insight that has practical application to our lives. The act of stilling our minds and taking refuge in silence brings us closer to God. By closing out the noise of the world, we find spiritual understanding through heightened awareness. This brings a sense of intimacy with God which fills us with peace. I find serenity in these moments. My quiet space within expands over my being and I feel like I have no substance. I just am. I can return to this space when I find myself drifting in the world. It is a place to experience God’s love and to feel the joy and peace that come with it. Life is good even in times of deepest anguish, because I know God’s love. There is true joy in that pure love, and it trumps my false sense of anguish every time.
We create life by the way we think. The thoughts we project result in how we see our world. To say that some folks have all the luck and others never catch a break is a simple way of acknowledging that our thoughts create the world we live in. We can think resolutely about goodness and create our own luck, or we can pile one excuse upon another and wallow in misery with an attitude of woe is me. When we choose goodness, we choose God. Then thoughts of love replace fear, and life is better. I think the worldly path of desiring wealth, power, and recognition for fulfillment is a dead end. I feel more satisfaction when I stop buying into worldly pursuits to find happiness and realize that I already have God’s love and abundance in spirit. God wants me to be happy and prosperous, which I am when I stay focused on my good.
I am aware of Truth. I know it is there in realms beyond my thinking. I know in my heart that I am part of something that is greater than I, greater than humanity, and greater than the universe as we know it. This something is my idea of God, and I have faith in it as the source of my eternal being. Jesus says to love God with all our heart and mind, and to love each other likewise. Love paves our path to God. Without love we are dead. I think we have created death, disease, and evil because in bodily form we have turned from pure love to seek power outside of God through our own greed and injustice, which we have created to get what we want when God does not desire it for us. To return to God, we must live in spirit, where we find the compassion and justice that Jesus teaches. Then God’s desires become our desires, and God’s will becomes our will.
We should not over intellectualize God’s love, or we will have only a small cup to catch an ocean of understanding that God wants to reveal. Revelation comes through the heart. In our hearts we receive wisdom and find oneness. Spirit is our guide. If we listen only to our intellect, we will find our thinking limited to the world we have created. If we open our hearts to spirit, we will receive God’s revelation beyond what can be described rationally. I like the adage that we are eternal spirits having bodily experiences. It puts into words what my heart tells me is true. It is as close as I can come to expressing that we are part of something greater than our understanding.
Our capacity to understand Truth is limited by the body. Yet, we have the power to open ourselves to God and receive divine knowledge intuitively. Our souls seek liberation from the bondage of our worldly pursuits. The world will not set us free. Its desires limit us to our worldly attachments and our fears of losing them. These are limited beliefs not found in spirit. They block the door to God. We stumble over them while reaching to knock. We can clear a path by tossing aside our old beliefs about what makes us happy. We may think we need more money, a bigger house, a new car, a better job, better looks, or better luck to be fulfilled, but when such false values are let go, then we open ourselves to the true joy and prosperity that come from within. Jesus says the kingdom we seek is within us now—not later, not somewhere else, but here and now.
We can help clear our path to God’s door by using denials and affirmations. We can deny the power that worldly circumstances have over us, and we can affirm the good that God offers. Humanity without spirit is evil because it spreads greed, injustice, envy, and all such wrong thinking that Christians call sin. This wrong thinking occurs only in our minds and causes suffering and misery because it is not God. We can deny the power of wrong thinking and choose God, which is love, joy, peace, and abundance. Through right thinking we affirm God’s goodness and our oneness in spirit. Our true self, Christ, can be manifested in body if we choose to follow God’s will and not our own limiting desires.
Choosing God requires planting our faith in the ground of goodness with the conviction that abundance will bloom from our belief in God’s love. Faith knows that goodness provides for all our needs, like a mustard seed knows it will grow to be a great plant and a shelter for many birds. Faith trust that all we are and need exists in God here and now and that God wants us to prosper. Jesus tells us to ask for what we desire, and God will provide. But what is a desire? If I ask for my enemy to die, is that a desire God will fulfill? I don’t think so. It may be my worldly desire, but it is not spiritual. True desires that grow from the ground of goodness are seeds given to us by God. From these spiritual seeds grow the sweet fruits that truly nurture. By putting faith in God, we can know love without fear, prosperity without greed, and peace without injustice.
Divinity is a mystery we cannot leave alone. Our awareness of something greater than ourselves gnaws at our minds until we create an idea of God. We always have faith in something. It lies in whatever we place our trust. For me, God has become a presence, a sense of the spiritual within that is represented by Christ. It is my connection to the incomprehensible mystery of Truth. I accept Christ as my true self, and I turn to Christ to express the love, joy, peace, and abundance I receive from the presence within, or the essence of God in me. God is the dancer. I am the dance. I am, like you, an expression of something beyond our human intelligence. Our worldly desires to be the dance without the dancer do not work. Our attempts to express ourselves without God do not work. Worldly pursuits do not fulfill our true desires, and we stumble and fall trying to dance alone.
What is our purpose? —to realize God: to know that we are one in spirit rather than thinking we are separate worldly creatures outside of God. We are spirit in human form yearning to return to God like prodigal children. We can go home by developing our awareness of presence as fully as possible, planting our faith in goodness, and following spirit as our guide instead of looking to the world for answers. The answers lie within—in Christ, in Atman, in the eternal spirit that is our true self. Jesus found the path home and calls us to follow him. His wisdom leads to the door of God’s kingdom. The more we seek Christ as the answer, the more our path clears and the brighter shines God’s light to keep us from stumbling in the darkness of worldly desires. I am trying to stay in the light, and when I do fall, I have my space within where God’s love wraps me in oneness. Going home is my desire, and I am trusting that my fear of returning melts away as God rushes to greet me and we walk through the doorway together.
That was 2007. The words that I use today are different, but the fundamental principles are the same. The world may be my oyster, but the pearl that is my true nature lies within. It is in my true nature that I find fulfillment, not in the world. To find our true nature, turn within. Jesus spoke of knocking on the door and it will open, so I use the term the room within for that inner place. Entering the room within is to remember that which I AM, or twia. Twia is my true nature. Turning-within is one of two major principles that guide my journey. The other is knowing that I AM is all there is. There is no other. I AM is consciousness expressing existence, and there is only consciousness. There is nothing that is not consciousness. In 2007, I said it as, we are one with God and thus with all that is. To me, there is no separation no matter how it is said. Consciousness, in my book, is undivided totality. Some might call that, God.
I owe much to my mother for her spiritual guidance. She introduced me to the teachings of the Unity Church, which gave me a foundation on which to build my faith. That faith found structure, not only through Unity, but in the mystical teachings of the Kabbalah, the Tao Te Ching, and the Bhagavad Gita. The faith that I have is in my true nature, which I call twia. There is no separation between twia and consciousness, and consciousness is all. I am that which I AM. There is no other. That is my truth. So be it.