In the last few posts I have attempted to set the stage for many posts about Lena and Judy and Trudy (LJT). I believe these characters give us tremendous insight into who we really are and who we were intended to be and how this life on Earth is about discovering ourselves.
Our divine origins are self-evident. Our divine nature is our innermost certainty of acceptance. Our union in the divine is our innermost being. Is that too obtuse? It probably is for so many of us but once we awaken to our true self we are brought to life from within. Our awakening is like being born again from something greater than ourselves. Some call it a spiritual awakening. Some call it nirvana. Some call it enlightenment. Jesus called it salvation or being born from above.
Imagine God in His infinite wisdom and power can and has done anything He ever wanted to do. He created a universe and this Earth. He created us to participate in His creation as one of Him. Check out this quote from Thomas Merton:
“THE Lord made His world not in order to judge it, not in order merely to dominate it, to make it obey the dictates of an inscrutable and all-powerful will, not in order to find pleasure or displeasure in the way it worked: such was not the reason for creation either of the world or of man. The Lord made the world and made man in order that He Himself might descend into the world, that He Himself might become Man. When He regarded the world He was about to make He saw His wisdom, as a man-child, “playing in the world, playing before Him at all times.” And He reflected, “my delights are to be with the children of men.” The world was not made as a prison for fallen spirits who were rejected by God: this is the gnostic error. The world was made as a temple, a paradise, into which God Himself would descend to dwell familiarly with the spirits He had placed there to tend it for Him” (Thomas Merton, “New Seeds of Contemplation”)
Now check out this video.
Is that too far? Have I stretched your brain too much?
If we look at ourselves as Lena and Judy and Trudy, then this kind of thinking begins to make sense. If Lena is our interaction with the world, she can be very selfish and more chameleon that anything else. You know this is true because we all have a Lena who can be so dependent on what people say and think. She can be hurt by rejection and elated by just one complement. Still all of that, when it is from the world, is temporary. When our Lena is only a product of the world, she is temporal and not eternal.
Judy is that voice that should help us in discernment of danger but she has been corrupted by the forbidden fruit. Judy is so often in denial of our union with the divine. She is the reason that Adam and Eve hid in the bushes in the first place. Her assessment and opinion and “mastery” of the good-bad, sent us running from God. Her insistence on being right drove a fictional wedge between ourselves and our creator. In Judy we believed in an illusion of separation that sent us spiraling in religion and superstition and self effort.
Trudy is our innermost being. She is our connection to the divine in our person. She is like Jesus. She is a wave in the ocean where the ocean is God. She is of the nature of God but not all of God. Trudy is divine union where we finite thinkers meet the infinite. She is the point where the unseen meets the seen at the horizon of oneness. Yeah, she is tough to really understand but she is at the center of our true self. She is at the core of our eternal self.
When you put them all together you can understand that we are complicated creatures. That should be no surprise to anyone. But I hope this image helps us see our eternal self in our true identity. If Judy is loved and accepted by Trudy she no longer needs to judge. Her fallen fruit inspired judgment is of no value since she is aware of a deep, unearthly acceptance. She knows she is connected to God and from God and God will never leave her. When Judy is loved, she loves Lena. Lena then comes to know Trudy and begins the journey of “spiritual awakening” and “salvation.” Often Lena has only known the world and reacted to the world in a way that she feels accepted. Now she is accepted by God and can know God through Trudy and can come to know herself in Trudy.
When a person “meets Jesus” they often have a radical encounter. They “experience the presence of God.” Want to know why? Judy is forgiven. Apart from knowing the love of God, Judy assumes that she is not forgiven and cannot be forgiven because she can’t forgive anyone herself. She is the perfect judge that can’t go against the evidence. God on a cross for no reason other than He loves us, will shock Judy into knowing she is forgiven. Jesus is the evidence of Love that Judy needed to see. Then the gap between Lena and Trudy is closed. The encounter happens. Lena is loved by Trudy. Judy is free of judgment. This person who just “met Jesus” has met Love. In this loving moment they are whole.
Sadly they then return to “life” or go to a “church to experience more of this Jesus” and they find Judy back in full force. They find Judy contradicting Trudy and declaring “see it was too good to be true.” The institutionalized Judy of religion gives our Judy some intense study about g.o.d. judgment that now includes fiction about eternal torments and all of that from a g.o.d. that isn’t real. That is why Paul says something like this in the Bible:
Phil 2:12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling , 13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. (ESV )
Now let me put in my substitutions (based on the original Greek words and a substation of Trudy for Theos):
Phil 2:12-13 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always listened to me intently, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, bring to the conclusion your own wholeness with excitement because Trudy is the power in you to finish what was started with her energy to do it, which is her delight within you. (LLT)
This is why it “feels so good” when we have an “encounter with Jesus.” We “see” that we can’t be hated or despised or rejected or punished or any of that nonsense when we “see” Jesus. This is why Judy takes a break and Lena finds Trudy. This is the joy that bubbles up from within because you have awakened to your divine union. You have awakened to Trudy. Now you are on a journey to find wholeness between Lena and Judy and Trudy. Your perspective changes to see the beauty of your existence and life and eternal nature. You have powerful moments of awareness of something so much greater than ourselves but strangely familiar deep within us. He is us, in this life, living His life, as us. It is an amazing thing and when we “see” it, the light that shines in the darkness, we find joy and peace and rightness in God in us. That is our wholeness. That is our salvation.
Yay God!
Lance
alancetotheheart 