ORIGINAL GOODNESS--NOT ORIGINAL SIN

DID YOU CHOOSE THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED --AND HAS THAT MADE ALL THE DIFFERENCE?

In the past few months of being home bound and watching more  TV than is

probably healthy. One show has grabbed my attention THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED on AWE channel.

 The main person on this show travels around the world -- often walking or using a bike or motorcycle, and I have liked the way he finds and takes us to unusual places and people. 
 It came to my mind that he was on a spiritual quest, but until today that  idea never surfaced in the show. 

Today he travels to Kashmir and it becomes  clear that he is exploring some  stories that Jesus Christ visited India both in his youth and then he returned there after his death.  

I was startled and gripped by this sudden shift in the show. I realized that I have my self wondered what Jesus of Nazareth was doing  before he took up public life when he was 30.  His entire public life as described in the  4 gospels was over in three years.

What was such an exceptional person doing in his  20s? 

We talk about how we  are made in the Image of God.  But when Jesus was born in that stable, he also took on himself the Image of our humanity.

ANOTHER WAY OF TALKING ABOUT HOW WE ARE MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD

LET RICHARD ROHR EXPLAIN:

Eknath Easwaran (1910–1999) was an Indian born spiritual teacher and author, as well as a translator and interpreter of early Hindu texts such as the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. I was personally introduced to him during a visit from Henri Nouwen in the late 1980s. He encouraged me to spread his teaching, which I have not done enough until now.

 Easwaran writes:

We are made, the scriptures of all religions assure us, in the image of God. Nothing can change that original goodness. Whatever mistakes we have made in the past, whatever problems we may have in the present, in every one of us this “uncreated spark in the soul” remains untouched, ever pure, ever perfect. Even if we try with all our might to douse or hide it, it is always ready to set our personality ablaze with light.

I find that paragraph fascinating and almost ecstatic. READ IT AGAIN!

What did [Meister Eckhart (1260–1328)] teach? Essentially, four principles that [Gottfried] Leibnitz would later call the Perennial Philosophy, because they have been taught from age to age in culture after culture:

• First, there is a “light in the soul that is uncreated and uncreatable” [1]: unconditioned, universal, deathless; in religious language, a divine core of personality which cannot be separated from God. Eckhart is precise: this is not what the English language calls the “soul,” but some essence in the soul that lies at the very center of consciousness. As Saint Catherine of Genoa [1447–1510] put it, “My me is God: nor do I know my selfhood except in God.” [2] In Indian mysticism this divine core is called simply atman, “the Self.”
   
• Second, this divine essence can be realized. It is not an abstraction, and it need not—Eckhart would say must not—remain hidden under the covering of our everyday personality. It can and should be discovered, so that its presence becomes a reality in daily life.
   
• Third, this discovery is life’s real and highest goal. Our supreme purpose in life is not to make a fortune, nor to pursue pleasure, nor to write our name on history, but to discover this spark of the divine that is in our hearts.
   
• Last, when we realize this goal, we discover simultaneously that the divinity within ourselves is one and the same in all—all individuals, all creatures, all of life. . . .

A mystic is one who not only espouses these principles of the Perennial Philosophy but lives them, whose every action reflects the wisdom and selfless love that are the hallmark of one who has made this supreme discovery.

 Such a person has made the divine a reality in every moment of life, and that reality shines through whatever he or she may do or say—and that is the real test. . . . [A mystic is marked by] an unbroken awareness of the presence of God in all creatures.

 The signs are clear: unfailing compassion, fearlessness, equanimity, and the unshakable knowledge, based on direct, personal experience, that all the treasures and pleasures of this world together are worth nothing if one has not found the uncreated light at the center of the soul. [3]