IMPERSONALIZING
I’m walking along and meet a guy who has a chicken on his head. So I say, “Am I crazy, or is that a chicken right on top of your head?” And he says, “Hmm. Does that have to be an either/or question?”
We’re all mixed up in this world together.
We’re floating together in a bowl of soup, with a potato between. To me, it looks as if the potato is stuck on your nose. To you, it seems glued to me. But the problem does not belong to anyone, it’s floating in the soup.
When I’m working within myself, you my problem person are doing that work too. We’re all partnering together, Beloved, we’re all eating the hearty potatoes.
Our impersonal surface problems, our impersonal divine core, both are a single holy activity.
Forgiving is the crucial ground of awakening to this energy, of loving. Impersonalizing is an essential step in forgiving. First, when we meditatively look inside all the good and bad appearances of the Other, we discern the image and likeness of God within his center. We see through the person’s outer picture and conditioning, a powerless suggestion, the universal and impersonal claim of our failings. Instead we commune with his true inner nature, even for a minute. We realize, as Omniscience already knows, that there is nothing to criticize, no fault in him to forgive. At the axis, his identity is pure, unassailable, blameless and unsullied, loving and beloved, and the very Self of my own Self. As Pogo says, “We have met the enemy and they are us.” So in acknowledging his unboundedness we release our Self in synchrony with the person whose soul is recognized.
Secondly: Our problems aren’t personal to us, but serve a purpose in our mass psyche, the group level of human awareness. We do not judge or condemn. Rather, we value our faults: Consciousness elevates all the more as we transmute every terror, each deflection from human goals. As we shall learn in coming chapters, we honor the sacrifice of each struggling individual, and have compassion move our hearts for formless God appearing in this vision of a world, to grow surprisingly and create a flourishing Love. Their mistakes or our own: none can harm or be harmed; even if we kill another, the Other continues living. When we fall off the beam, and do destructive things, even after entering on the spiritual path, in reality we can only help each other progress. Yes, we always advance in our great mission, one Life acting, as we each delve deeper in encountering our angels.
Impersonalizing, universalizing stands as one of the key spiritual principles, and an essential ingredient of our praying, of our meeting God As us.
In meditation: O mine enemy, you rage like a tempest, while in the eye of the hurricane we sit ever at peace together. Your attacks disperse like a drop of blood, feeding the lake, bolstering life, used in ways never seen before. We all climb the ladder ascending and descending from heaven. We are the whole and holy process.