What Really Matters?
We just want to be ourselves, but don't always know who we actually are; or what we are meant to do - aside from paying the bills and existing day to day.
Every action serves a purpose, and service of some type, is part of every action.
When a person uses anything in one's sphere of influence to serve and enhance love, respect and compassion, a useful purpose is served, knowingly or unknowingly.
Love matters, and being an active agent of love is actually the soul's constitutional function. Consciousness, as a symptom of the spirit/soul achieves it purpose and it's heights, in loving service.
How one self-identifies, seeds one’s values and sense of purpose. One may see oneself as a purposeful cog in a great reality, or one may, in egotistical delusion, envision oneself as the center of the universe. Real ego or identity flourishes when loving service to the greater good or Source, is mindfully engaged in.
Truth be told, according to ancient revealed wisdom, one's spirit or conscious life force is actually created by divine love, for divine love.
Divorced from this conclusion, megalomania has many thick and thin layers of ego-tripping along with it's polar opposite - thinking of oneself as totally useless, worthless, or simply not enough.
Thinking of oneself as useless/worthless fuels a sense of self-loathing - thinking which extends to one’s external world, projecting a determination that nothing actually has any value - that nothing has a point, or serves a worthwhile purpose.
Rage over failure to control one's world sometimes leads to depression which can fan such flames of delusional thinking. Oversized ego may conclude everything and everyone else only exist to serve one's self-centered schemes - which is clearly unbalanced, but not uncommon.
Alternatively, seeing oneself as a spark of Divine energy, in service to the Divine, brings not only a vision of a higher reality, but an experience of divine joy.
We need not be uninformed or shy in recognizing our divine birthright. It begins a uniquely sweet surrender into gradually succumbing to the all-attractive Source of divine love and beauty. It involves a courageous and heartfelt choice to express one's desire to re-unite with the Source/Creator of all love, truth and beauty.
By taking such a bold move with even a shred of faith, the Divine responds in a personal and unique way.
Once experiencing a glimpse of divine love and grace from within, the desire grows for another audience with the Lord who dwells within and without - both personally as the Supreme Lord who hears and sees us, and who manifests His all-pervasive energetic presence throughout the universe.
“Who do you think you are!? - can actually be a valuable point of reflection and liberation, rather than a belittling accusation. We are of Spirit for Spirit, with a mission to experience and expand love.
Somehow we tend to project our identity into the material elements and temporal circumstances that cloak the eternally conscious self, until the blinders are removed by transcendent knowledge.
Self-identification and self-reflection are greatly enhanced when one realizes that each person, as a point of consciousness, is connected to a greater reality or consciousness - which is not limited to one’s body, social body, or cultural conditioning.
Bhagavd-gita (the Song of God) Ch 15 "Yoga of the Supreme Person" verse 7:
"The living entities in this conditioned world are My eternal, fragmental parts. Due to conditioned life, they are struggling very hard with the six senses, which include the mind.'
Sacred texts assert that the real self is a conscious spark of spirit, presently covered by mental conceptions - linking it to matter in the form of the physical body and subtle mind. Such coverings are only temporary, and ultimately do not define one, any more than a car defines its driver.
What matters is the real self, which is spontaneously joyous, complete in knowledge, and has a loving relationship with everything “outside” itself - once liberated from the prison of misconceptions.
Fashioned in the image of the Creator, underneath all material costumes each person has a transcendental body formed of eternity, complete knowledge, and unending bliss - which is the real fabric of eternity and spiritual body needed to spontaneously dance with one's divine Source.
The point, and what really matters, is realizing one’s true identity and nature as a fragmental portion of eternal truth and beauty - meant to purposefully exist for engaging in eternal loving energy-exchanges with the Source of all love and beauty.
God as Source, although sometimes misrepresented, is inconceivably as distant as the stars, yet simultaneously is as close and present as one's heartbeat. Seek and ye shall find, as the old saying goes. Everything has a use and it all matters, when seen as connected to Source energy and love.
After trying on so many temporary shells or conceptions the self, with actual knowledge of one's spiritual self as connected to God, one can relax into being a player in the cosmic orchestra spreading love - by seeing the Divine in all things and acting accordingly.
Perhaps it's time to give thanks, utilize the ticket of sincerity, and jump back on the Soul Train; being grateful that we can be our real and eternal selves again - now and always.
by Sly and The Family Stone
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