In honor of the season I am posting a writing I did a couple years ago about the Original Self. I didn't get it up here last week because as it turned out I was really working at understanding this writing in my own life last week, reconnecting with my original self.
I was raised Catholic. These days I find many teachers in many different traditions. I have to say that one thing that never made sense to me in the Christian tradition was the idea of original sin. So one day I was sitting at the river and this writing came to me about the Original Self. It made much more sense to me!
Jesus did not die for original sin, Jesus died for original self. He did not die to cleanse us of some imagined sin that we are born into, but died for the original self that we are born into and quickly forget. He died for a remembering. He died to show us what the original self looks like. It is risen, and glorious and eternal. It is faith and light and truth. We are not born into darkness but into light. Not into sin but into self. Our divine God self. That was Jesus’ greatest lesson. He taught of our original God self, our inherent connection to the divine. We are made of the same thing that God is made of, we are divine, we are divinity, just as Jesus was. He hung there on the cross in demonstration of self not in cleansing of sin. Hate and fear could have no power over him in his original form; they could not touch his divine heart. He revealed to us the divine heart. One that is of light and love, one that guides to truth and is eternal. There is no other lesson. The divine lies within each heart. That divinity is who you are, your true original self. That is who you were born to be. That is who can emerge from the human self if you allow it. Then the Divine Heart brings the human heart with it on the journey. They work in unison for joy. Joy is the celebration of the Divine and the Divine within. Let the Divine Heart lead you as it led Jesus, with joy always in his eye and the eternal Divine always in his heart. Live your original self.
1 comment:
I like what you wrote here. It is very very gnostic. You should read the Gospel According to Thomas, wherein Jesus, or Yeshua, tells his disciples that we are children of the living father. Jesus said, "When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you will dwell in poverty, and you are poverty." This is the exciting thing about the Gnostic Jesus, as opposed to the Orthodox Jesus. He is telling us to go within and to know ourselves, and it is there we discover, as you wrote, "the original self." In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus also said: "Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me; I myself shall become that person, and the hidden things shall be revealed to that person."
There is also a famous Zen koan I think you'll like: "What was your face before your parents were born?" In other words, what is your true self.
Namaste,
Todd
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