We cannot go forward without first bringing down our small self. What is the small self? Simply, it is who we think we are. It is not who we are. The small self is just a set of ideas, but we then believe those ideas are who we are. Our true Self actually enlivens these ideas, but our small selves forget the Self and decide those ideas are alive and who we are. Who we think we are and how we act may have no similarity; for when we are deluded imagination runs us. Reality may not even come close. One of the first steps in spiritual practice is to bring into harmony our actions and our ideas. Then, when we shine the light of consciousness, we call our actions, ideas, attitudes, motivations what they are, not what we would like to call them.
We must own that we are sinners. That we do not do only good. That we are not innocent. Isn’t that what Christ was modeling? Jesus had to die as a criminal in order to have Christ rise in glory. The Passover narrative also does not depict everyone as either good or bad. Pharaoh wanted to let the Hebrews go, “but God hardened his heart”. Life is a play in which each character has to know the part he is playing and the lines that go with it. It is a play in which we are all the characters, both the victims and the bullies, and we must embrace this fact if we are to own our connection to God. Who we really are is all; we are all as God is All. It is losing our subject in the object of the small self, the individual, that causes us to be blinkered and miss the Truth.
Yes, there is relative reality, and each of us sees the world through a different individual’s eyes. However, there is also Absolute Reality, where the Truth is the Truth. We have the same Truth if we are looking from Absolute Reality. The Self is the same for All. God is God. Do you believe that evil is in fact separate from God? There is no place that God is not. From the standpoint of Absolute Reality, evil is a part of God. In relative reality, we distinguish between God and evil, which in itself limits God. This limited view comes from our being identified with the small self. We believe we are the sun when in fact our small self could not survive or shine without God, the Self. We are the moon, not self-illuminating but illuminated by the Self, but we will not face that Truth.
If we can accept that our small self as an independent entity has nothing to be proud of, then we can begin the work of disentangling and turning inward to the sun, the true Self.
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