Recognition! Recognition! Recognition!

Did you ever have the feeling that some really big truth was being withheld or hidden from you? A truth that would unlock the mystery of why we’re here and what’s really going on? If you’ve been following some of my essays, you’d know that I’ve been on a personal “archeological dig” of sorts, to see what I could find, and I think I may have struck some gold.

I came across a series of videos on youtube that really resonated with me on what is referred to as The Esoteric Path, which describes a different way of understanding the spiritual teachings of Jesus. Esoteric refers to teachings and practices that are not widely-known and typically meant only for a small specialized group of people.

This path emerged out of the Gnostic gospels of Thomas, Philip and others, including the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, (who knew?) and the mystical traditions of early Christianity, dating back to the second, third, and fourth centuries AD. These important scrolls were discovered in upper Egypt in a town called Nag Hammadi in 1945.

These videos really got my attention because they offered some different versions of the Bible stories we’re familiar with, as well as different interpretations of Jesus’ teachings from the official ones approved by the Church. AND, they made way more sense to me. Just sayin’.

Through my exploration of the Esoteric Path, I became aware of deeper truths that had been hidden from us by institutional religion. And at the same time it seemed that we were also entering into an age of remembrance where we are being encouraged to remember who we really are, the persons we had forgotten we were, so we could now reclaim our birthright. It also looks like humanity as a whole is about to experience a big shift to a higher level of knowledge and consciousness, or so the astrologers and some spiritual teachers tell us. These all felt like synchronicities to me, drawing us toward deeper self-knowledge and awareness.

Nevertheless, it seems that now the timing is right for these teachings to begin being made available to all seekers of truth.

In my last essay I talked about prayer, “being the prayer”. But there are different kinds of prayer, and one of the ways that the Esotericists define prayer is to offer ourselves up as instruments for God to breathe creation through.

That reminds me of something I read a few years back by Paul Levy, the Tibetan Buddhist practitioner, Book Release for “Undreaming Wetiko” at 5:33m. In this video, he talked about the importance of creativity not only in connecting us to our true nature, but by every act of being creative we offer ourselves as instruments for God to incarnate through us. This is how we participate in the second coming, in the incarnation of the higher self through our species.

When the Pharisees asked Jesus when God’s Kingdom would come, he responded by saying, basically, the Kingdom is already here now. It is within you. All you have to do is recognize it. Luke 17:20.

And that is another type of prayer, the Prayer of Recognition. When we stop looking for God out there, or up there, and recognize God in here,

not as a belief, or a concept, but as a real live manifestation of one’s own identity, the divine revealing itself as my, and your unique (and speaking for myself, probably peculiar) way of being conscious. I’ve learned that the important thing is to recognize that we are not separate beings from God.

One of the quotes about truth that came to me during that eight week span of time that I wrote about in a previous essay, I Want To Dig, was from Oriah Mountain Dreamer, from her book, The Call, Discovering Why You Are Here . She asks her readers:

If you knew the world were listening attentively, what is the one word you would say? Of course, she acknowledges that the world is listening all the time and writes, How we are ripples out from us and affects others. We have a responsibility, an-ability-to-respond to the world. Finding our particular way of living this responsibility, of offering who we are to the world, is why we are here. We are called because the world needs us to embody the meaning in our lives. God needs us awake. This world we live in is a cocreation, a manifestation of individual consciousness woven into a collective dream. How we are with each other as individuals, as groups, as nations and tribes is what shapes that dream…

So, Remember, there is one word you are here to say with your whole being…spend yourself completely on the saying.

So I looked and listened for that one word that I’m here to say, or more accurately, here to be. I decided that it was Recognition. It felt a bit weird at first. I tried to imagine myself literally walking around and saying to people, recognition, recognition, recognition. It sounded ridiculous, but the more I kept coming across it in my reading, I was convinced that it was the right word, for me anyway, even if not the right way of sharing it, (lol) because I needed to be the one doing the recognizing, the remembering, and the one becoming aware of who I truly am. It was my responsibility to express my version of the divine nature that I seem to have inherited by some strange process of spiritual osmosis. And this recognition is completely accessible to every one of us.

So where am I going with this? Well, as I mentioned above, it looks like humanity as a whole is about to experience a big shift to a higher level of knowledge and consciousness. Perhaps that’s why we’re being encouraged to remember who we are as individual human beings and reclaim our birthright. This may be the important truth that we’ve been seeking.

Jesus was often referred to as Teacher or Master by his disciples. I guess we could refer to him as the Master Teacher, and as such, we could think of him as here to model that truth of remembering, and mirroring who we are, to show us what we are capable of as higher level human beings. He is quoted in John 14:12 as saying, Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these.

I know, that’s hard to believe because, as I’ve mentioned before, nothing has changed. This is still a pretty messed up world, and the worst may be yet to come. But it just came to me that I bet those low down, dirty, rotten scoundrels (another favorite expression of my mother’s), the authorities who pretend to be in charge of this world. You know them, the Church hierarchy who rewrote parts of biblical history to maintain their control of the masses, and the global and national governmental authorities, all of whom do the bidding of the obscenely wealthy and depraved “elites,” and the forces of darkness that have attempted to capture our humanity and our institutions. I bet they know what we’re capable of, and are doing their level best to keep us in the dark, throwing one spectacle after another at us to keep us confused, distracted, and feeling powerless. They want to keep all that human potential to and for themselves, so they can maintain their power and control. So they lie to us, steal from the fruits of our labor, and hide from us those gifts like the ability to heal our own bodies, that the Creator gave to humankind from the beginning of time so that we could live happy and healthy lives. And then they saddled us with laws and regulations and made us fearful and feel broken and undeserving. Maybe their reign of terror is coming to an end.

Nevertheless, I don’t think we’re supposed to be waiting for Jesus’ second coming, which is happening right now as each of us awakens to the truth of who we really are. So, I think we’re supposed to rescue ourselves, and stop being dependent on these institutional authorities. They do not have our best interests at heart.

The theme song from the Jefferson’s TV show just popped into my head. The refrain goes:

We’re movin’ on up (movin on up)

To the east side (movin on up)

To a deluxe apartment in the sky.

Yes! We’re gettin’ out of that dark, small, dingy basement apartment through which nary a sliver of natural light ever passes. So they can just take them apples! (There she goes again, my mother, Sara, with another favorite expression of hers.)

Anyway, remember, “recognition, recognition, recognition!!!” of who you really are. lol

And in closing, as Rev. Katie Grace would say:

To recognize the kingdom of God within, acknowledge the presence of God hidden within you and within the dynamic events of everyday life. Trust God, know your worth and do your best. You are a glimmer in the ongoing revelation of the kingdom of God.

A couple of months after I wrote this essay, I came across this short video entitled Esoteric Truths. It so perfectly coincided with the message I was trying to deliver. It’s only about 2 minutes. So, check it out. Thanks for reading.