As a divine extension of God in this temporal and spacial reality, we are here to experience absolute truth in this reality and in this form. Those experiences produce concrete knowing to conceptual truths that are self-evident in our divine being. We are one with God and are His form in this reality because God wanted to experience His nature and essence from this physical perception as us. Through our senses whether physical, metaphysical or spiritual, we have the opportunity to awaken to the truth of our divine origin. We are creators, as God’s extension, that create our own reality which can be based on illusion or divine absolutes. Through this process, we are waking up to our true self, like awakening from a dream. Love is our guide, our litmus and our filter. Once we discover unconditional love through our physical experience of divine love, we are on the path to higher levels of awareness. We discover that all is not always as it seems, but a shadow of the divine truth. God is this love. WE are his children, his love manifest. We are HIM in this reality to experience the truth of love, the truth of the divine.
OK, is that too philosophical? Is it too “new age?” Maybe it is in your own perceived reality and circumstantially manufactured identity based on other’s inputs, opinions and perceptions of truth. Just maybe. But that is the point. We are waking up. We are re-creating ourselves in every moment and those can be moments entrenched in the illusion of separation and so many other primal perceptions. But there has been at least one that has revealed truth. His name was Jesus. I’ll unpack how Jesus was telling us the same thing in future posts.
For now however, lets depart from the deep, philosophical discussion and talk about another movie. That will be fun and yet another allegory of our life on planet earth. Are you game?
Have you seen the movie “Total Recall”? There have been two versions. I like Arnold in the older one, well because he is Arnold. But I like the new one even better.
Proverbial spoiler alert… If you haven’t seen it and still want to be surprised, then maybe you shouldn’t read further, but I’ll try to minimize the “spoilers.”
In this movie Colin Farrell’s character (Douglas Quaid) is living what he perceives as a pretty boring and mundane life. He is an assembly line worker who gets up every day and grudgingly goes to work and comes home and dreams of something better. Actually when he sleeps, he has vivid dreams about another reality, another love interest and another life. In his desperation he goes to Rekall (the dream implantation center) to have a new experience. The Rekall people insert dreams or realities where the receiver experiences these dreams as if they really happened. It is sold as a kind of vacation that you couldn’t possibly have in your “real” life.
When Douglas is hooked up to the Rekall machine and begins the dream sequence, something goes wrong. The technicians discover a previous implant in Doug’s memory. From here forward the movie is a real mind bender. Security shows up to take Doug into custody but when they point a gun at him, he discovers he has super secret agent skills to escape the security and so much more.
As the movie progresses, Douglas is perplexed. He is now questioning who he really is. Is he a secret agent, is he dreaming in the Rekall center, is he living an alternate life….who is he, really? What I love about the movie is he discovers “clues” along the way that help him remember who he really is. In the climatic moment, his clues lead him to a video that he recorded previous to his current perceived reality. It is a “note to himself” that is the only truth he can depend on.
You might say “how is this an allegory of our lives? Nobody inserts memories or erases memories here and now. It is all fiction.” On some level you are right but I submit there is a profound truth in this fictional story.
We do receive implanted memories or false inputs to our perceived reality. From the day we are born, we are creating our identity based on many inputs. Most of them are from others. Most of our facts and data are perceptions of other people. They come in the form of paradigms, structures, societal norms and more. We compare ourselves to others and what others consider normal or acceptable. When we are kids in school, we try to fit in. When we are adults, we try to change ourselves to adapt to a society in such a way that we can be successful within a perceived norm. We go to churches and often are infused with “absolute” teaching that suggest we are evil at our core, we are depraved and unworthy. Even in our families, we are often presented with “family first” and “the family way or you are out.” We clan and tribe and click and exclude and divide and categorize. We use our perception of good-bad as a litmus which is often based on dogma and doctrines that have divided the human race for centuries. We come to believe we are separate and independent individuals that are in no way connected to anything else. We create a sky-god in our superstition to manipulate with penance and sacrifices so we can be blessed. Most all of that is an illusion, a perception based on data that is not our inner experience. We go with the flow to keep the peace to avoid conflict to fit in so we can have what we think we want to have.
But don’t worry, we are like Douglas. We have left ourselves clues to our true self, our divine nature. We have left little videos of our true self telling our perceived self what is really real. These are those transcendent experiences that reveal our oneness and our origins. In those moments we know we are a part of something bigger. We are an extension of God experiencing this reality so we can know Him and know ourselves as Him.
Think about it. You’ve had those moments. A baby is born, a beautiful sunset, a personal encounter with the divine, unconditional love of another, helping the needy, loving your partner, giving freely of yourself with no expectation of return, forgiveness, beauty, majesty, glory…all these and so many more are the harmony we feel when our innermost reality collides with our outer reality. In those moments were are like Douglas remembering who we are.
And here is the best part… There is no right and wrong on this journey.
When Douglas discovers his true identity, something very profound happens. He discovers that he is a secret agent and he has had an implanted memory. He isn’t the factory-worker-Douglas he thought he was. As the secret agent he was not a nice guy but fell in love with one of the members of the rebellion he had come to infiltrate. This love for this woman had changed him inside. When Douglas’ bosses discovered this, they implanted the new memory hoping to get Douglas inside another way, deep undercover. When Douglas sees the video of himself telling himself who he is, he could go and have the new memories removed. He could go back to a time before any of this happened including falling in love. But he chooses against it.
With his new “truth” of his identity, he realizes that he is a product of all of it. He is Douglas, the man he knows today. The illusion is gone and he has found his true self. It includes parts of his implanted memories, parts of his original identity. His anchor is his love. In his love, he knows who he really is…not Douglas of old, not Douglas of middle, not Douglas of the new, but just Douglas.
That is our journey. When we wake up to this truth of our true identity, we realize that we have created ourselves to be ourselves. Every moment, every encounter, every experience brings us to this moment. Even the religion, the opinions, the separation lie, the desperate attempts to fit in, the manufactured and fake identities we have had in the past. All of it brings us to this moment. Now we know that this journey is a journey of enlightenment where we can embrace life for the beauty it has for us. We can love life. We can know that not everything is as it seems but be excited that the clues are everywhere. We have videos waiting. We have encounters just around the corner. We have messages to ourselves. We are waking up to Total Recall when we know we are the divine experiencing all that there is to wake up to all that there is.
Yay God!
Lance
alancetotheheart 