Seeing God
January 13, 2010
by Jeffrey Pierce
In my own work, I don't often rely on my spirit guides for instruction or insight, preferring to find my own way through the lesson at hand, learning all I can, not just from my successes, but from each place where I misstep. That said, there is one teacher that I call on more than any other in my work - a monk by the name of Acarya. I've mentioned Acarya's lessons a time or two in the pages of Old Ways. He's an older man with something of a timeless air to him. Acarya's ancestry could stem from almost any Asian country as his features aren't distinctly from any particular race - they're just his.
Whenever I call upon him, I've found Acarya wandering in the midst of a vast orchard of trees that are perpetually in bloom. The orchard is surrounded on all sides by an endless evergreen forest and Acarya has a comfortable home at one edge of the field, the structure a mixture of traditional Chinese architecture and Japanese gardens.
Acarya is one of the few guides that ever I've encountered who I truly look up to. He's wise beyond measure. His advice is always deep, penetrating, and impossible to refute. Long ago, Acarya made it clear that he was willing to teach me anything - all I had to do was ask the questions.
That may seem like a tempting offer until you understand the implications. This wasn't simply knowledge that Acarya was offering, but a pulling back of the veil, a revealing not of a single fact or piece of spiritual trivia, but a concise view of how it all fits together.
For years, I resisted accepting Acarya's offer. I went to him from time to time, asking questions when I couldn't find the answers for myself. He explained unconditional love to me and showed me a template that I've struggled for years to mirror. All of Acarya's answers are like that. They aren't threads of the tapestry, nor even the tapestry itself - but a knowledge of how each thread came to be, how it was dyed, and the people, lives, and visions that formed and dyed the thread and how and why it was woven into what it became.
Dream a Little Dream
In November and December of last year, I had a series of dreams that led me to the place that I felt I was ready to accept Acarya's offer. I wasn't excited or arrogant enough to believe that the answers wouldn't send me reeling, but the dreams carried me along my path to where I was up to the challenge of trying to accept the truth.
In the first dream, I was taught how to unravel the fabric of the Universe, pulling apart the weave of illusion and bringing forth the soul of the situation, person, place, or thing. The technique involved a brutal, incredibly challenging process of shedding one's ego like Snake's skin and reorienting the flow of your own energy to the point that loving the truth of the individual was more important to you than holding onto your own identity in the face of their energy.
In the second dream, I found myself in an approximation of ancient Greece, standing in a Forum and passionately debating the nature of religion and faith. I was so incensed that I woke Bri up as I thrashed around in bed and mumbled words she couldn't understand. At the time I was angrily arguing with a group of respected elders, insisting, "God does NOT need you to worship him! You were given life and a soul to create with! Live! Love! Be uniquely you! That's what God wants from you! It's man that insists you give up your power, become servile and worship, not God!"
In the third dream, I received a massive amount of instruction in what I'm now referring to as "fluid reality" - the principles and common ground between manifestation, magick, and the flow of life around us. The instruction encompassed multiple simultaneous levels of reality and was deeply involved, not in the concept of nonlinear time, but in the complete absence of time. In the process, I was shown how past lives, future lives, the space between lives, and our current moment, are all simply the same resonating song.
After these dreams, I was filled to the brim, overflowing, feeling like I was going to burst with new perspective, answers, and insight. The decision to go to Acarya wasn't to find more answers, but a simple following of the flow and symbolism that my dreams had held over the previous three nights. A part of me felt as if I were going to truly burst - and I instinctively trusted that Acarya would put my new worldview into perspective.
I Know Who Acarya Is
I found myself in Acarya's orchard once more. Usually I simply appear, finding myself standing under the trees. This time, I found myself in Acarya's home, kneeling at a low desk and standing up from where I had been writing with a quill on a roll of parchment. My sandaled feet carried me through his home and out into the orchard to join my Teacher.
Acarya always understands the question before it's asked, usually with more clarity than the Seeker holds.
"I'm ready," I told him simply. "Show me everything."
And as Acarya looked into my eyes, I understood completely, in that instance, how much ego I still have to shed.
When we think of ego, we think of "importance." To put it in very simple terms, when we consider the role of ego, to us Ego says, "I'm BIG!!!" That bigness has a tendency to get in the way of our spiritual growth. It blocks our heart; our love. It keeps us from embracing the beauty of servitude. Ego causes us to hold onto old patterns and old defenses simply because they're ours.
What we don't consider is that ego also whispers, "...i'm small..." We NEED certain structure because we're afraid. We NEED the world to flow a certain way, because we NEED to hide within that flow. We NEED someone to love us or else we're unlovable. We NEED there to be a God or a Goddess because we NEED something bigger than us to watch out for us, to love us, to be in control of the whole process.
Taking it a step farther, Ego doesn't really say, "I'm BIG!!!" or "...i'm small...," it says, "I know better." I may have all this power, but I know better and God needs to watch over me. I may be destined for great things, but I know better and I need to take this path to reach it, rather than simply embracing it. I may be worthy of love, but I know better, and this person couldn't possibly love me.
In my opinion, shedding ego is the single biggest challenge we face on our spiritual paths.
Mirror, Mirror On the Wall
As I looked deep into Acarya's eyes, I simply wanted to scream, "NO!!!"
The answer was simple.
I am Acarya.
And that was possibly the most painful realization I've made along my spiritual path.
At some point, almost all of us call upon God/Goddess/Universe, needing to know that it's there when we have nowhere else to turn. Acarya had become that to me. Like a Christian who only prays when they need to, I only called upon Acarya when I had no other option. Discovering that I was Acarya, wasn't a exultation of power. To me, it felt like a loss of safety, of refuge, of love. It wasn't a celebration of Self, but a panicky loss of a teacher.
If you stop and think about the Divine, about how you picture God/Goddess/Universe there are certain qualities inherent in that image. We may try to convince ourselves otherwise, but each of us can feel it. We can actually feel that connection, that persona, the way that energy manifests to us, even though we often push it away.
That connection is different for each of us. It's as unique as we are. What's ironic is that we've probably heard that said more times that we can count. "Our connection to the Divine is as unique as we are." Funy how the answer was right there all along.
It's as unique as we are.
We aren't simply divine.
We are God.
That image you see of the Divine? That energy that you feel? That persona that you glimpse when you think of "God?"
That's you.
In layman's terms, it’s your higher self. But that's ego talking. "I know better than to think it's who I am, so I'm going to raise it above me. I'm going to call it my higher self." But it's not. It's just you.
All of your beauty, all of your power, all of your sacredness is mirrored in how you see the Divine. When you look at God, what you see is your own reflection.
You are God.
The Next Step In The Journey
Hold onto that concept. However you picture God, you're simply picturing yourself. That doesn't erase the concept that there is a source of sacredness bigger than ourselves. It gives us a place to start understanding exactly how all-encompassing the Divine really is.
For one moment, allow yourself to imagine God, the God, the Goddess, the Universe, the Great Spirit, as you have always pictured it - with all of the love, strength, patience, and confidence that image holds. Now understand that image that you see is simply a glimpse of your own soul, who you truly are.
Whatever the Divine truly is, and the fullness of that concept is unbelievably difficult to express when we're considering life from a linear perspective, it is that much more loving, strong, patient, and confident when compared to our "soul reflection" than our soul reflection is when we compare it to how we see ourselves.
The easiest (if tremendously limited) way of explaining it is to picture how individual energy merges and blends into a single whole when you're doing energetic or ritual work with other people. In that process, our individual energy becomes unified and something more than the sum of the whole.
Now imagine that it's not us with all of the limitations we allow our Ego to place upon us in that Circle, but the energetically open soul, a soul so beautiful that we see it's reflection and think, "God/Goddess/Universe" that is blending its energy with other fully present souls. Imagine the manifestation of love, of power, of beauty in that place.
That indescribable concept is, in a word, "Wow."
Whatever the Divine truly is, it's more than that.
If you're in a place in your own growth where you still take comfort of a Deity watching over and loving you, if you still rely on the assurance that someone has their hand on the tiller, don't despair. Love nurtures, comforts, and protects us. While you may realize that the way you previously saw Spirit was simply your own reflection, remember that you aren't alone. You are surrounded by a family of those "reflections," friends and lovers, sisters and brothers (whether blood related or simply bound by path and outlook) and each of them is as beautiful and powerful as you see the Divine. The difference is that their "God" has qualities that challenge and strengthen your own. Where you're weak they're strong and where they can't see you shine your light.
We've never been alone. We simply haven't considered that the Divine truly is everywhere.