Brian’s Reflection: Thursday, December 22, 2011

Each minute of life should be a divine quest.

Paramahansa Yogananda

These kinds of statements often make it sound as if we human beings are something other than human. Mystics write that we are to “become divine”.

I would say: There is only one goal for a human being: to become a Human Being. There’s the rub. What is a fully evolved Human Being? We could ponder that today, on this Solstice when we ponder the Light growing.

The mystics of many religions and “paths” speak about becoming Divinized, becoming “God”. What do they mean? One thing they certainly don’t mean is that we will become the power of Life in the Universe. That power is Eternal ….. and we human beings are mortal and transitory, at least in this earthly form. But they do mean that there is a resemblance, an intimate connection between “God” and us. In essence, we humans have invented God. And one of the things we have done is to invest God with all the characteristics that we have come to think would constitute the kind of Beings we would like to be at our “best”: Loving, Kind, Gentle, Wise, Just, Vulnerable, Caring.

One premise of much religious thought is that we cannot be fully human unless we are infused by “God”. (be “born again”) The Torah and the Gospel propose this. Putting aside all the tortuous theological gymnastics, fundamentally I agree. But the question still remains: What does it mean to be a “fully actualized” (well, on that path, at least!) person?

One thing I think it means is that we become more and more ….. simple. Which is not to say that we won’t always be “complex” - that’s part of being an evolved life-form. Simplicity is what I think the Beatitude means by “pure of heart”. To desire one thing. The Gospel proposes that it be LOVE. That’s good and simple … at least as an organizing concept. I like to think of Love as The Great Benign Black Hole: regularly you just let yourself get caught in its gravity, get sucked in, get molecularly reassembled, and pop out the other side ready to give it another go!

So: off you go! Good luck, and enjoy the ride!

Brian+