Waking Up

Waking Up

Imagine you started waking up....from making money, paying bills, entertainment, sex, eating and drinking, vacations, and everything that made up your daily routine. You started waking up from it and wondering “What's this all about?”

The question's so big it might make you go right back into your shell—back into Plato's Cave—back into the shadows. But maybe you're big enough to keep pressing against that big question: What's this all about? What is the Truth? [If there is a Truth.]

So you get your head up out of all that stuff of daily living for a little while and look around. What do you see? If you're not careful all that noisy stuff you just came up out of will pull you right back down into it. It might be a few years before you get your head out of it again. Maybe you never will. Maybe you'll just stay busy, always trying to get caught up, dealing with the next thing coming up on the horizon, until you die. I believe some people do just that.

Or maybe you'll be strong enough to resist that gravity and keep your head up—like a little infant, trying to hold his head up and look around.

What do you see, if you're still, right there, long enough to let all that noise fade farther, farther and farther away, until there's just you, alone, looking for the Truth?

Maybe you start with your own body. Look at it. Feel it. Feel all the awesome wonder of it. It carries you through life; let's you know when you need food, converts it to energy in an awesome process we call the “Krebs Cycle”; eliminates the waste, takes in oxygen and supplies it to every one of the trillions of microscopic cells that make it up; expels carbon dioxide, keeps you warm in the cold and cool in the heat; fights off harmful bacteria and hosts helpful bacteria—all without you ever thinking much about it. Where'd you get that body? Who thought that up? Nobody? The cosmos accidentally give that to you? [You better thank the cosmos.]

You could spend a lot of time being amazed at your body. And maybe later you can come back to doing that—in fact you probably ought to a little of that every day. But just now, let's look around some more. There're people with bodies different from yours—alike, yet different. Opposite gender. There's some more amazement for you in this quest for Truth. Male and female. And how they can come together, and from the two of them, one new one starts out as a single microscopic cell that has within it the “knowledge” to make/create/produce every cell of every part of every organ, all the subsystems and systems that fit together perfectly to make a whole new person with a beating heart and seeing eyes; like the parents, but also unique among all its kind. [No one has the ghost of an idea how this happens by the way.] Now we could sure camp out right here in some amazement too! But we haven't gotten to the Truth yet have we? Is there a Truth that transcends the truth of our existence? How did we get here? We didn't do it, did we? I didn't make myself or my children. They were gifts to me! Who's the Giver? The lifeless, unconscious cosmos? I'd like to thank it but it'd be like thanking a rock. “Thank you rocks and gasses. Thank you stars. Thank you universe. Can you hear me? Do you know me? Do you care...cosmos?” Does the cosmos know that I'm gonna die? Does it care? Am I going back into the nothingness of unconsciousness—like the unknowing cosmos? Is this all there is? Was I given the unspeakable gift of this amazing, priceless, awesome life for this brief time, with the capacity for creativity, laughter, love and beauty, only to dissolve into nothingness; all the while knowing that's where I'm going? Maybe this quest for Truth is not so good. Maybe I should go back into the cave and pay my bills, with no other thoughts than what I'll do tomorrow.

Or....is there some other Truth out there? Maybe I'll seek some more...ask around...keep an open mind.

Some folks say there is one in history who said “I am the Truth.” Whoa! Pretty bodacious. Was he in a psych ward? No. In fact he had a major impact on the world. All of history is demarcated by his life on the earth. Everything that has happened in history—all the wars, risings and fallings of civilizations, catastrophic events, wonderful discoveries—all demarcated by his life: A.D. [anno Domini, in the year of our Lord] or B.C. [before Christ].

Christ? The one who said “I am the Truth.” So a lot of people apparently fell under his spell, and are still being pulled into his....Kingdom. That's what he called it: a “Kingdom”. The “Kingdom of God”.

God? He said there is a God?

Yeah. Some folks pull out right there and go back into the cave: Death = nothingness. No one to be thankful to. Random accident. All this life just fell together over billions and billions and billions of years of inorganic cosmos [that has always been here] bumping and mixing it up together. After all we can see the cosmos. We can't see God. Can't put him under a microscope or observe him through a telescope. And what one cannot see does not exist. [Like love? A thought? Peace? Beauty? Try breaking those down into their various observable components.]

“Hey, God, make something happen and I'll believe. There, you see? Nothing happened. No God.”

[Meanwhile, our scientists are trying to figure out what a thought [the mind] is. How does the brain generate the mind? What's an electron? Light? Gravity? We don't know for sure what these are; but we're convinced there is no God. And you're living in the superstitious dark ages if you think otherwise.]

But I digress. Back to this Truth-guy. What'd he say? What'd he do? Well, the people who lived with him, ate with him, followed him around, they wrote about him. And the impact he had was so powerful that those people and those who came after them were very careful to get it right. They considered his words “holy”; and you don't mess around with “holy”. Some of them suffered a lot and even died at the hands of those who believed his words were heretical and dangerous. His way threatened kingdoms and shifted power away from tyrants into the hands of the people. As you might imagine some powerful people didn't like that. [In fact, to this day, wherever tyranny reigns, the word of the Truth-guy is suppressed.] So those in his day pulled out all the stops to put the brakes on it. Threatened his followers with imprisonment or death. But they just kept on telling people what they'd seen and heard the Truth- man say and do.

Now you'd think if they were making that stuff up, when it came time to be fed to the lions or burned or crucified, they’d come clean and admit it was all a good-hearted effort to keep his words alive. After all his words were better than any that had ever been spoken. Why wouldn't his followers try to keep 'em alive and circulating around the world? But no; when they came right up to the brink of death and torture, they walked right on into it, still claiming that he said what he said and did what he did. Now I'm saying this to say that the information we've got about this Truth-guy is pretty reliable. In fact, a lot of smart folks have set out to disprove him; and no one's ever been able to. And a lot of 'em became his followers. Imagine that!

So we still ain't got to what he said and did have we? Well here's the gist of it: He said there is indeed a Giver—a Giver of all things, all the universe and all life, including us. In fact we're made somewhat like the Giver—in His “image”. That's why we're superior in many ways to all other life on the planet. Made in the Giver's image. And these amazing bodies and this amazing earth with all its intricate interdependent complicated life; the ocean and sounds and smell of it, the night sky the warm sun flowers, butterflies, fireflies, laughter, beauty—I could go on for a while—the Truth-guy said that's all here because of Love. That the Giver is Love, and loves us with the love we feel for our children times infinity. Sorta makes sense cause you know we didn't choose to have that love. I didn't wake up one morning in an inspired mood and say, “I think I'll create a really good feeling inside me; a feeling I get when I look at my little son smiling at me and reaching out to me to get me to pick him up and hold him. Yep, I think I'll call it 'love'. That's a good name for this feeling I'm gonna create inside me.”

It didn't happen that way at all!

This feeling that I have that's more than a feeling that causes me to do hard things for no reward for a little life that depends on me totally for survival: I didn't choose it. However I got here, it was already in me. So, if there's a Giver, He gave it to me. And that radical feeling-that's-more-than-a-feeling is the thing in me that I consider to be the best that's in me. I can't think of anything higher to be motivated by than that. So, If I'm created in the Giver's image, like the Truth-guy says, it makes sense that the best that's in me is who he is: LOVE.

So the Truth-guy seems to have some credibility; both from his followers and from the way his words resonate inside those truth seekers who take the time to get their heads up out of the mundane and look deeply into them.

There seems to be some resistance to that process. And the Truth-guy spoke about that also. He said that though light has come into the world, “men love darkness more than light.” He also said that there's an evil spirit, a powerful one, that works against the Truth and the pursuit of it. Now that would explain what happened to the Truth-guy. He was accused of heresy, tortured, mocked and crucified. Now that seems really strange considering what he taught. He told us to love each other the way he loves us which is the way the Giver loves us. Now why would anyone want to torture and kill someone for that? Unless what he said about that evil spirit is true too. He said that all the bad stuff we keep doing to each other is because our minds and hearts have been invaded by this evil spirit. And he said he came to deliver us from that evil; and to provide forgiveness for the bad stuff we did while we were under its spell, as well as all the bad stuff we would ever do in our whole lives because of our weakness and ignorance. He said the Giver didn't want to punish us for that stuff, so he, the Truth-guy, came to take that punishment for us—sort of pay off our debt to the Giver—the debt we obligated ourselves to by not living according to His Love. The Truth-guy was another wonderful manifestation of the Giver's Love.

But He got killed, right? Well here's the most amazing part: Since the Truth-guy came from the Giver, and the Giver can do anything [I mean, just look around!], He raised the Truth-guy from the dead to demonstrate to the whole world that He really is the Truth, just like He said. Because we all know that nobody can raise himself from the dead—that would be a miracle. But that's just what all His followers [and some who weren't His followers] said happened. And they went to their death saying it.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the Truth-guy said He would leave His Spirit—the “Holy Spirit”--on this earth; or that He would ask the Giver to send His Spirit so that anyone who believed what He said and who He is would have that Spirit inside them. He said that He had overcome the evil spirit and that His Spirit inside us would help us overcome the evil spirit also. He said that without His Spirit we didn't have a chance against the evil spirit because we are blind to the Truth and don't even know that we are blind. [That's scary! To be blind and not even know that you are blind!] He said that His Truth sets you free if you continue in it. He said some would hear and understand and be “saved” from the dark evil of this world; and others would not, which is really sad for them. But to those who heard His voice and recognized it to be the Truth, He promised abundant life, peace, joy, and [get this] eternal life! He said that that love for life in us that does not want to go into nothingness is there because the Giver put it in us. And He put it in us so that it could be fulfilled—just like the desire for food, comfort, intimacy and purpose was put in us to be fulfilled—not to be withheld, like a false promise. And if we put our faith in the Truth-guy, we'd find the Truth. And it would be so good that we'd never stop being thankful.

And that's exactly what happened to me. And that's why I'm writing this. Because He said we should share His message with other Truth-seekers like a Light in the darkness. And now you've heard. And you can go back into the darkness of unknowing, or you can continue in His Way and see if it does indeed set you free like He said.

I'm praying for the latter.

Mark Graham [Truth-seeker]