The Myth of Soul Evolution
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We may have moved
from the belief that we go to Heaven when we die to the belief that the
It appears that
Jesus understood this tendency and expressed it in a parable.
“A man once gave a great banquet, and invited many; and at the
time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been
invited, ‘Come; for all is now ready.’ But they all alike began to make
excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go
out and see it; I pray you, have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have
bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them; I pray you, have me
excused.’ And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I
cannot come.’ So the servant came and reported this to his master. Then
the householder in anger said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly to the
streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and maimed and
blind and lame.’ And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been
done, and still there is room.’ And the master said to the servant, ‘Go
out to the highways and hedges, and compel people to come in, that my
house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those men who were invited
shall taste my banquet’” (Luke 14:16-24).
The message here is
clear. The banquet is prepared and people are too preoccupied with their
lives to attend. It’s the ones who are struggling that get the seats at
the banquet table. The struggling are the more open-minded, the more
receptive, hungry for a change that will make their life better.
Before we jump to
the conclusion that Jesus intended to say that we have to be suffering
before we can partake of this banquet, we should remind ourselves of
another parable he gave. This one is about a man who discovered a
treasure buried in a field. In his joy he sold everything he had in
order to buy that field.
The single thread
that runs through both of these parables is that a banquet is now
waiting and a treasure presently lays buried ready to be dug up. Jesus,
of course, is not talking about banquets and treasures. He’s talking
about
you
and about
me.
He is talking about the completed nature of our
soul.
The deepest part of
us, our spiritual reality, our soul, is not in a state of evolution. It
is not a banquet
being
prepared; it is a
prepared
banquet. It’s sitting on the table steaming away, filling the room with
its great aroma. It is not a treasure that
some day
we will find; it is a treasure that we
have
found. It is a present reality that prompted Jesus to say, “Truly, I say
to you, there are some standing here who will not
taste death before they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom”
(Matt. 16:28). The phrase,
son of
man, simply means
a human
being. In other words, Jesus was saying to his listeners,
there are some of you who are, in this life, going to wake up to the
full reality of your own soul. You have come to understand that there
are not four months before the harvest; the fields are ripe
now.
If you will examine
your view of your present state and compare it to the state you believe
you will one day achieve, it’s my guess that you imagine a vast chasm
between these two points. I have some bad news and some good news. The
bad news is that the chasm you imagine is not vast enough. You will
never
reach the state of being that you imagine. The good news is
that you don’t have to. The state of being that you aspire to—the ready
banquet and the buried treasure—is not the futuristic state of being you
imagine. Paul captured this when he realized that “no
eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what
God has prepared for those who love him” (1Cor. 2:9). If you are
laboring toward a conceived, futuristic state of being, you’re going
after the wrong prize. No wonder your mind is preoccupied with all your
temporal affairs. You don’t plan on arriving at your imagined
destination anytime in the near future, so you might as well stay busy
doing other things.
If I were to select
a field of research that I believe has the most potential for impacting
the quality of our spiritual quest and, in turn, the quality of this
earthly journey, I would place at the top of the list the research that
is going on in the field of near-death study. The reason this research
is so important is because it is unfolding a picture of the soul of the
average person as something that is quite advanced in contrast to the
image most of us carry of ourselves. Simply put, there is a vast
dimension that exists within us right now. If we were to suddenly open
the door that keeps it confined, it would flood forth as the answer to
all we seek in life and put and end to every single one of our
struggles.
Of course we talk
about this inner dimension as our spiritual nature, our divine Self, our
Christ. I like to refer to it as the native soul because it is the
native core of each one of us. The problem is that to most of us this
dimension is conceptual. We have thought of the possibility of such a
dimension but few have actually experienced it and it remains an
abstraction. We can conceive that we have a spiritual core, but we think
of it as something we possess, like a full stomach or heartburn. “I have
this thing,” we say, but it doesn’t sink in that we
are
this thing.
The near-death
experiencer, as they are now called, comes back with the
conviction that they
are
this thing. Research is showing that those who return to their bodies
and retain the memory of their brush with “death” report what seem to us
phenomenal capabilities of knowing, seeing, hearing, and travel
unhindered by space and time. None can find adequate words to describe
the joy they feel or the beauty they experience. Their quiet conviction
about the reality they moved into reveals a shift from perceptual
knowledge to
knowing,
the kind of knowing that comes from direct exposure.
None of these
people were prepped for this exposure. In fact, it’s not unusual to hear
such people say that they had all but abandoned religion and spiritual
concepts. Yet they are “given” an experience of such immense beauty that
they cannot adequately describe it.
I believe this type
research calls for a major shift in the way we as individuals approach
our spiritual quest. We have seen it as an arduous journey of training
and retraining our great trove of perceptions, of years of exposing our
minds to the works of others who have gone before us. Years spent in
study, however, do not yield the impact of even a ten minute exposure to
the pure soul level.
Is it possible that
we are missing a portal to direct knowing, a portal that has been draped
over by the belief that we are of necessity locked in a long-term
struggle for understanding that may be available in the blink of an eye?
It seems that we have found that narrow, inner gate Jesus spoke of, but
our so-called spiritual study consists of analyzing that gate instead of
walking through it. We love to say, “the
kingdom is within,” and it’s almost as if we believe parroting that
phrase over and over is the same thing as passing through the gate.
Our lives may
improve somewhat, and because we’ve cast off the weight of the theology
of sin and judgment, we may even feel better about ourselves. Like the
man in the Gospel story, we make it to a spot near the pool then spend
the next 38 years in hope of healing. It’s there, right within the sight
of our logic, and as soon as we find someone—the next guru, the next
book, the next whatever—to cart us into the pool we’ll get what we’re
after.
The power of the
story lies in its illustration that there is another way. I won’t use
the word “shortcut” because this implies that there is a way to
circumvent the rules. Jesus said he didn’t break the law, he simply
fulfilled it. We’ve been looking at the spiritual journey as a long and
winding road. It has not occurred to us that we’re designed to be on
this road, not blindly groping for the way, but with the full use of our
spiritual faculties. “The kingdom isn’t a place you end up,” as
Sig Paulson used to say, “it’s
a place you begin.” We need to stop thinking that life is all about
spiritual growth and start realizing that we are created to experience
this journey as beings fully enlightened to our incredible powers—right
now. Enlightenment should be the norm, not the exception. The story of
Jesus and the invalid illustrates that the condition of wholeness is a
present reality and that laying hold of it does not require another 38
years of study. It only requires a shift in perception. As the
near-death experiencers illustrate, we are already in possession of the
faculties needed to handle the full impact of a spiritual awakening.
These faculties need no development. They sit idle ready to go right
now.
What happened to
this man who could suddenly walk? Was he the recipient of a special
divine force exuded by Jesus? The traditional Christian says Jesus was
born with special powers because he was sent from God. The metaphysical
Christian says we all have these powers, but Jesus had evolved them to
perfection as the result of many incarnations. If either of these were
true, this story would be of little value to us. We would need a Jesus
or a Jesus-like figure to work his or her special magic on us. What if,
on the other hand, Jesus actually called forth this man’s native soul, a
dimension of himself that had been with him all along? Then we are no
longer faced with the problem of a supernatural miracle. We are faced
with the fact that an ordinary man had within him the extraordinary
power to transform his body in the blink of an eye. We are faced with
the equally profound question: If this can happen to such an ordinary
man, can it not also happen to me?
I would answer
“yes” to this question. Research shows that while they were in their
bodiless state, individuals who were physically blind were able to see
scenes witnessed and confirmed by others. Some traveled great distances
and reported correctly events they saw transpiring in locations remote
to their bodies. In other words, there is sight beyond the physical eyes
and there is the ability to achieve locomotion beyond walking. These
abilities are not learned and they are not developed over long periods
of time. They presently exist as integral aspects of the individual’s
true nature.
While it is
fascinating, I am personally not as interested in the experiences these
people report having as I am interested in their newly discovered
capabilities. The experiences themselves come to us filtered through
their attempts to describe a four-dimensional reality with a
three-dimensional language. The point of view from which they experience
these things, however, is significant because it is nearly always
described as beautiful, joyous and fulfilling beyond anything they have
hitherto experienced. They are, for that few minutes, living out of a
present dimension accessible to all people and veiled only by a thin
curtain of false belief. Can this part, or even a portion of it be
called forth at will, or is it so blindingly beautiful that it would
have a tsunami-like effect on our daily life and so it’s best to work up
to it, to take it in small doses?
That people are
exposed to this level at their “deaths,” prepared or not, indicates that
there is no cosmic guardian dealing out wisdom or any requirement to
receive it in bite-sized portions. Near-death experiencers get a
substantial dose of a transcendent level of their being. All indications
are that this experience, and the quickness in which it occurs, has a
positive rather than negative impact on their lives overall. Many people
report being more loving and understanding of others. Given their
elevated view of themselves, others report not being so easily perturbed
by the little rubs of life. In general, this glimpse into their eternal
nature has an affirmative impact overall on their life.
It’s interesting to
point out that many are reluctant to share their experience with friends
and loved ones because they feel these people will think they are lying
or describing a hallucination. This reluctance is not unfounded. It is
safe to say that most people define themselves from a body orientation
and do not quite know what to make of the idea that their real existence
is not body dependant.
This belief is
reflected in science and its theory of how life began. Here it is
speculated that life began in the sea. At some point a number of
material components came together in just the right way, got hit with
something like a bolt of lightning, and inanimate material was suddenly
endowed with a new energy we call life. This energy then seized the
opportunity to inhabit the organic and ran with it. The theory places
the material realm first, with life more or less a chance effect, a
stroke of luck. Life isn’t seen as preexistent to matter.
We do not have
masses of people who embrace the presence of a limitless soul as an
experiential possibility, so few are considering the possibility of
bringing it out.
Those who are more
spiritually oriented, who have the knowledge that their real identity is
spiritual, often express the need to “get in touch” with this deeper
level. Such expressions indicate the belief that they are separate with
this level and after years of study and meditation will eventually get
in touch with it.
The other morning I
was getting ready to go to the office. I had just stepped out of the
shower and had reached that moment in my daily beautification process
where I was ready to use the hair dryer to dry my hair. Earlier, Beth
had spilled some spaghetti sauce on her shoe and had washed it with a
wet rag. I suggested she dry the wet spot with the hair dryer. Now I
could hear the hair dryer running in the other room. I looked down at
the vanity where the hair dryer normally sits and, sure enough, it was
gone. As I listened, the hair dryer seemed to have a different sound. I
knew we had two of them and the one she was using sounded like the
second one. But the other hair dryer was missing, so I wondered if for
some reason she had taken both. Then a strange thing happened. When I
glanced again at the vanity, the hairdryer was there, right where it was
supposed to be! Had it magically appeared? No. It was there all along
but my belief that it was gone prevented me from seeing it though it lay
in plain sight.
The soul is not a
thing we get in touch with; it is who and what we are. There is indeed
distance between who we think we are and who we actually are. The
identity we think we are resides in the realm of consciousness; our real
identity is our core. The instantaneous elimination of this gap, this
quantum leap from the supposed identity to the real is, to me, the
primary wonder of the near-death experience. Does this closing require
the arduous journey of self discipline that we normally associate with
it, or is there another way?
Striving to attain
material goods and conditions does not, in and of itself, pose the
problem. Trying to find more of our completed Self
in these things does. If we bring our desire and ambition to the single
focal point of literally awakening to our wholeness, our completed Self,
our entire relationship to the material plane is elevated. Its value is
not in what it can give us, but in how we can express our wholeness
through it. This is a complete reversal in our relationship to the
material domain.
It is a fact worth noting
that people out of their body often report a feeling of absolute
fulfillment. This is intriguing because in this state they have no
material thing, not even a body, and yet they experience a level of
fulfillment and satisfaction they cannot adequately describe. This
stands in direct contrast to how most of us feel. We have a list of
material wants that we believe will give us that
something
we are looking for. Before their encounters with death, these people
also held their list. And yet when that gap between their false self and
real Self is suddenly closed, they discover
their true identity is satisfied even to the point of being overwhelmed
with joy. Their joy is drawn from nothing but the thrill of
being.
Can’t you imagine that if you were always filled with the thrill of
being, your desperate attempt to draw that experience from things would
undergo a dramatic change?
How can we release
our desires and ambitions when we have a body to feed and we want to
experience at least some of the earthly pleasures that surround us? Are
we to walk away from everything we know and devote all our time to
meditating on the real Self? This would
probably yield some satisfaction, but it could just as easily prove to
be a long and frustrating exercise in futility.
Obviously we can’t
just walk away from everything, even though the overwhelmed part of us
finds this a tempting thought. Interestingly, near-death experiencers
often report that it is the thought of their families and the revelation
that they had been living their lives from a very limited point of view
that drew them back into their bodies. Because they are able to view
this business of earthly living from a more elevated point of view, they
see it from a very different angle.
This sudden shift in perspective
seems to especially impact those who have attempted to terminate their
earth life by suicide. They realize that it’s not earth life that is
their problem, but their view of earth life. The problem is that they
have made their little
self
the center of the universe. They have been behaving like a
black hole.
Astronomers tell us
that the black hole exerts such a powerful field of gravity that not
even light can escape it. It’s like a huge vacuum cleaner that sucks in
all the energy around it. The
little
self does this as well, and the one that is stuck in its
gravitational pull goes through life sucking the energy out of everyone
and everything trying to satisfy its insatiable appetite for
satisfaction. Because nothing can satisfy the needs of this little self,
the suicidal person wants to go to a place where the rules are
different. In their bodiless state, they do indeed discover that the
rules are different, but not in the way they anticipated. They discover
that they are already in possession of a
Self
that is not little, frail and needy but is so large that it
doesn’t have to spend its existence vacuuming the universe of every
usable thing that will make it feel better about itself. They discover
that their center is not a black hole, but a sun, a self-sustaining
source of light and energy that actually gives life rather than takes
it.
So here again we
have evidence of individuals who are exposed to a life altering
awakening that have done little or nothing in the way of study and
preparation to earn it. And this awakening is neither a mere
intellectual shift of philosophy nor an attempt to become a giver
because someone told them that it is more blessed to give than to
receive. This is an electrical jolt, a sudden bolt of lightning that
blasts them into a new way of seeing and thinking.
When we try to
change through willful intellectual redirection, we are still coming
from the black hole consciousness, and giving, as far as we are
concerned, is just another technique for getting. If we become givers,
we reason, we will open the treasure chest of the universe and great
wealth will suddenly shower down on us in such fabulous quantities that
there will not be room enough to put it all.
Few of us stop to
think that we have already achieved this kind of wealth. All we have to
do is look at our garages or our closets, or that storage facility we
just rented because our garage is already stuffed to the brim. And still
this is not enough. Our junk is not the
right
kind of junk. Our junk is garage sale material. So we clean out the
garage, have a sale, or give it all away. But we often do this with the
hope that such letting go will produce a bigger, perhaps newer garage,
and maybe this time it’ll be surrounded by mountain peaks and pine
dotted meadows.
What ends up
happening here is that we trade up our junk. Yes
it’s worth more on the garage sale market, but it still becomes
junk. We can’t fit our Mercedes into the garage because it serves as a
repository for castoff things that were supposed to make us happy but
did not. The black hole identity is still out there vacuuming away. The
garage is simply the bag that collects it all.
Now this should
cause you to stop and think about who is running the vacuum next time
you conclude that your life sucks.
To most people it
is a radical idea to think that their soul is already complete, or at
least so advanced that its sudden emergence would overwhelm them with
unspeakable joy. We have accepted that there is a great chasm between
where we are now and where we want to be. In all likelihood, we set
ourselves up for a long and arduous struggle to enlightenment. The very
fact that we think of spiritual enlightenment as a goal to be attained
puts it in a place that actually makes it unattainable.
Think about this,
think about what you are saying to yourself in this now moment. “Someday
I will become enlightened but today, I still have a long way to go.”
Everyday you get up and say this to yourself, and every day you find
yourself no closer to enlightenment. If you have been in these teachings
for ten years, you will notice that you have been making this statement
for all those ten years. Twenty years down the road you will also be
making this exact same statement. Your “someday” could, in fact, include
a period that extends beyond this lifetime. “It’s going to take me a
couple of lifetimes to attain the level of enlightenment that I desire.”
Though you may say this as a joke in passing, in all likelihood you are
simply stating a belief you have embraced.
If this is true, if
it really does take years, decades, and perhaps multiple lifetimes to
open our eyes to the spiritual dimension, then how do you explain
ordinary people who leave their bodies and, within the matter of a few
minutes, discover and, at least for those few minutes, live from a
dimension in themselves they did not know existed? The temptation is to
say that it’s because these people shed their bodies that they were
thrust to this dimension. But this dimension is not suddenly created
because they lost their bodies. The spiritual dimension they describe
exists simultaneously with the more easily perceived material dimension,
like ultraviolet and infrared light exists simultaneously right next to
the top and bottom of the visible spectrum. With the proper
instrumentation, we can see both of these bands of light. Some animals
are able to see in infrared all the time. Their eyes are designed for
this. Infrared has always been factored into their version of reality.
We so associate the
death of the physical body with an otherworldly psychic or heavenly
dimension known only to clairvoyants and priests that we, again, create
a mental chasm between ourselves and the possibility of imminent
enlightenment. We reason that because we were not born with the “gift”
of clairvoyance or that we have not devoted our lives to the study of
heavenly issues that ours must be, by default, a long and arduous
journey.
The fact is that we
were born with the faculty of clairvoyance. The physical senses are
actually the manifest counterpart to the complete range of clairvoyant
senses. It has been demonstrated beyond doubt that a physically blind
person can see when they step from the body. The wholeness of sight
exists to the extent that they are able to describe in minute detail the
room, the doctor and nurses, and the sight of their own body as they
hover as a spectator witnessing the attempt at their resuscitation.
Additionally, they often know the thoughts of their would-be rescuers.
They report communication with others, either in the body or not, by a
direct knowing, a direct exchange of information that, according to
them, is far superior to language. Prior to this they may have only had
brushes with clairvoyance that manifested as hunches or vague intuitive
knowing typical to nearly everyone.
It is my belief
that Jesus was an individual who perceived this inner reality of the
individual and was able to call it forth instantly. When an imprisoned
John the Baptist sent a messenger asking Jesus if he was the expected
Messiah, Jesus sent the messenger back to John with the report that “the
blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the
deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news
preached to them” (Matthew 11:5).
These things are considered miracles because they transcend the
expectations of people then and now. If these things are true, then
Jesus knew how to bring that invisible, already complete individual to
the forefront of their experience. And what one can do, others can do.
He made it clear that it was not his special power that made these types
of things possible. It was his acute awareness of this inner dimension,
this inner
When he passed by the man that lay by the Pool of Bethesda for thirty
eight years he simply asked the man if he wanted to be healed. The man
explained his problem that he had no one to carry him to the pool, so he
could never make it in time. Jesus simply commanded the man to get up
and walk, and the man did. I can see this as being possible because
Jesus knew there was a walking man within this invalid, and he called
forth that walking man.
Was Jesus a man with unique powers sent to earth to make the lives of a
relatively small number of people better, or was he a man that
discovered the great truth of human capacity, a truth that, when
grasped, can change instantly any condition of apparent limitation? I
believe it is the latter. This is the Gospel, the good news. Is it good
news to the poor to promise they will receive rewards of abundance when
they die? What’s so good about that? They probably have that belief
already. The good news is that the wholeness we seek, whether it is in
the form of physical healing or the expression of some material
thing, exists in its fullness and it has the
potential of being brought forth right now.
We must begin thinking of ourselves and our life on this planet in a new
way. We are not here to create a utopia, but to bring forth the utopia
that has already been created, that utopia that is reported by those
who, during their brief excursions from their bodies, experience it as a
present reality. To me, the value of reports of the near-death
experience does not lie in the descriptions of things these people
encounter. Much of this is obviously subject to their predisposed
thinking. The value lies in the descriptions of what they discover about
themselves. What they discover is a level within
themselves that is not subject to any of the perceptual
limitations we consider normal. This level is a present reality that
does not require years of training to access.
So, how do we access it? We do it in the same way that Jesus brought a
dead Lazarus from the tomb. We acknowledge the existence of our
wholeness, and in the “loud voice” of absolute conviction we call upon
it to come forth until it emerges from the tomb of our false, perhaps
even cherished preconceptions. Because you presently exist as an
unlimited being, it is possible for you to tap this dimension and
experience complete enlightenment
within the
next few seconds.
Observe what your mind does with this statement and you will see that
you doubt this. You will chuckle. You will say, “Oh right. I know myself
too well to think I could change that quickly.” But I am not suggesting
that you change. I am suggesting that you acknowledge there is a
spiritual reality in you that has existed from the beginning and will
always exist. It is the real thread that runs consistently through the
beads of multiple phases of life, even multiple incarnations, the part
of you that you thought needed to be developed and strengthened through
long periods of evolution. Going through another ten incarnations will
not develop this level of you that is already developed. You will, in
fact, likely go through ten more incarnations, not because this is some
kind of cosmic requirement, but because you will not now embrace your
wholeness and call it forth.
The belief that the soul evolves is simply a myth. It is our
consciousness, our belief system that evolves. What our consciousness
evolves into is an
environment conducive to the soul’s emergence. For many, this
statement will not only mean nothing, it will be totally confusing. So
it is right here that a shift in our thinking needs to occur. Instead of
working toward some perceived enlightenment, approach this problem from
the standpoint that you are inviting your already completed Self to come
forth. Be still, listen and let your mind open to this wholeness that
you are. You are already in possession of the faculty to perceive and
awaken to this dimension. All that is left is for you to use it, to take
up your pallet and walk.
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