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| Moses and the Burning Bush by William Blake Source: biblioklept.org |
Below is the second chapter from my metaphysical primer, Take Away The Stone: Resurrecting The God Within, recently republished on Amazon with updated content.
“I am
the LORD, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God… I form the
light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD,
do all these things.” Isaiah 45: 5,7
“Before
anything else the One must exist eternally; from his power derives everything
that always is or will ever be.” Giordano Bruno, Italian Renaissance
philosopher
“God
said to Moses, “I AM THAT I AM… this is my name forever, the name you shall
call me from generation to generation.” Exodus 3:14,15
Just what is this I AM, the Power which keeps the planets
in their courses, spurs the tiny acorn to morph into the towering oak, and
regulates the beating of our hearts? Though the germ of personality exists in
It as an avenue for expression, It isn’t a personal Deity with the fickle
temperament of a human being as popularly depicted. Jesus emphasized this point when he said,
“God is spirit.” (John 4:24) The dictionary defines spirit as “an animating or
vital principle held to give life to physical organisms.”
In an effort to convey the nurturing nature of this
Universal impersonal – yet intimately indwelling - principle the ancient
shamans, priests, and philosophers presented it in relatable names to the
people, i.e. Father, Great Mother, and the holy host of titles used by the
various religious systems down the ages.
In
all languages, a name is indicative of the nature or character of a person,
place, or thing. The Name of God in Hebrew – variously translated as Yahweh or
Jehovah, represented with the four characters of YOD HE VAU HE – is therefore an attempt to describe within the limits of
human understanding the nature of this formless, faceless, and ageless
Presence, dwelling in the depths of all manifested forms. In the words of the Tao Te Ching: “Since before time and
space were, the Tao is. It is beyond is and is not.”
It is that Life, spoken of in the Hindu Bhagavad Gita:
“Flame burns it not, waters cannot o’erwhelm,
Nor dry winds wither it. Impenetrable,
Unentered, unassailed, unharmed, untouched,
Immortal, all-arriving, stable, sure,
Invisible, ineffable.”
It
is the energy of science, interchangeable with matter, which
can neither be created nor destroyed. While the countless forms, great and
small, it inhabits for a brief span wither away as the grass it endures forever in a state of
continual evolution and expansion, moving from “glory to glory.”
As far as we yet know, this Presence finds its highest form
of expression on this three dimensional plane in humanity. We have unfolded to
the greatest capacity the two gifts, as they were termed by the Hermetic
philosophers, of “mind and speech”: the creative ability to conceive a state of
being through the faculties of thought, feeling, and imagination, and the
kinetic action to “speak” or bring that state into objective manifestation.
This is the implanted Word – also known as the Logos or Om – that “in the
beginning was with God and was God” and through which “all things were made.”
(John 1: 1, 3)
We are all individual inlets and outlets of focalized expression
of the One I AM, as the language of our everyday conversations show. When a
family member, friend, loved one or coworker asks us how we’re doing, what do
we preface our response with? “I am” or in its contracted form, “I’m”.
When we’re happy, how do we express it? “I’m happy!” When
we’re sad we declare, “I’m heartbroken.”
In each of those instances it is I AM – “the Christ in us”
– expressing a state of being, according to our level of conscious awareness.
We unceasingly create and perpetuate our moods and experiences with this Power
morning, noon, and night, more often than not completely unaware of what we’re
doing.
To illustrate with a common example, let’s suppose we’re at
work. We hear several of our co-workers coughing and sneezing loudly. We’re immediately
struck with a sense of dread and begin thinking to ourselves, “I’m going to
come down with a cold; I just know it!” “I’m going to have to call out of
work”; “I’ll be miserable”, etc.
Lo and behold, the next morning we wake up with a stuffy nose
and a fever, our self-fulfilling prophecy having come full circle. We can
lament with Job, “What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened
to me.” (Job 3:25)
While
most of us would chock up coming down with the cold to purely bacterial causes,
findings in medical science are increasingly demonstrating the powerful
connection between our mental and emotional states and our physical health,
known in medical circles as the mind – body connection. One study conducted by Dr. Richard Davidson, a leading research psychologist,
represents “some of the best evidence” demonstrating the connection between
negative emotions and lowered immune system response. The research, according
to Dr. Davidson, “…begins to suggest a mechanism for why subjects with a more
positive emotional disposition may be healthier.”
It holds true also for our psychological, social,
financial, and creative well-being as well. That is why the ancients strongly
emphasized the creative power of our words and the concepts they express:
“So is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not
return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose
for which I sent it.” Isaiah 55:11
“Thou shalt also decree a thing, and it shall be
established unto thee.” Job 22:28
“As within, so without.” Hermes Trismegistus
“For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of… By your
words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.” Matthew
12:34, 37
“The Word became flesh.” John 1:14
It is the outworking of the law of cause and effect, which
is no respecter of persons, moving neither to the right hand or the left,
acting as a mirror reflecting objectively our embedded subjective patterns of
thought, emotion, and belief, conscious and unconscious.
“To the faithful you show yourself faithful, to the
blameless you show yourself blameless, to the pure you show yourself pure, but
to the devious you show yourself shrewd.” (Psalm 18: 25 – 26)
How can we avoid falling victim to the dice toss of Fate
and unfold our divine Destinies? By learning how to bring the conscious and
subconscious mind into accord, symbolized in the mystical marriage of the
active (which the old writers called the male) and receptive (or female)
principles: the head (representative of intellect) and the heart (emotional
nature). That is why we are instructed to “Above all else, guard your heart,
for everything you do flows from it.” (Proverbs 4:23)
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