“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
Both of these ideas can be found in most bibles. I don’t know about you, but to me they both offer sage advice. “Be still and know” tells me to open my heart and mind to greater awareness and understanding. I can do that! What about you? The second suggestion is a little more complicated. To do unto others as we would have them do unto us requires that we figure out what that is.
What’s the most direct way to approach this? Why not start with questions? For example, what if you ask me what I want most from you and I ask you, what you want most from me? What do I want most from you? Here is my answer. What I want most from you is love and understanding. Put another way, you could say I want to be loved and valued. Who doesn’t?
Now, what do you want most from me? If you don’t know for sure right now, think about it. Sleep on it. Be still and know. Take as much time as you need, until you know in your heart that you have the right answer. In other words, refuse to settle for short term, frivolous answers. Go for the big kahuna. You’ll know it when you find it.
Here’s another line of thought I find exciting. It came to me as a voice in my mind several years after I asked my larger, Inner Self the question, what is my deepest Feeling Tone, my greatest impulse in Being and Creation? The answer I received was: Seek the greatest understanding and serve the highest good.
I can’t think of a higher ideal. Can you? And to think it came from inside of me was a revelation because when I was five years old, I was told by a nun in catechism class that all of human kind are “born in sin.” Why? Because according to the Story of Creation in the bible, all humans are descendants of Adam and Eve who disobeyed God’s command not to “eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the middle of the Garden of Eden.” Speaking with the authority of the Catholic Church, she added, “And, you cannot trust your flesh because it will always betray you.”
This experience was so traumatizing I refused to go to school two days later (for more on this, read, What I learned in Catholic School). At the age of eleven, I began having the same nightmare about once a year that continued to trouble me into my mid-forties. It’s title, My Recurring Superman Nightmare.
Why did I have these particular experiences? Was I trying to teach myself something? Was there something I wanted to learn? Was I a victim or a willing participant in these subjective and objective dramas or experiences? Are these fair questions to ask myself? After all, I was only five years old in catholic school.
I think it is entirely fair for me to ask myself these questions for two reasons. First, it gives me a sense of power to accept some measure of responsibility for the creation of these experiences for they were truly extraordinary. Second, by accepting my share of responsibility for the creation of these experiences, I give myself the opportunity to learn from them.
What did I learn? I learned that I can be as alive in dreams as I am in waking reality, if I choose to be. It’s all a matter of focus and attention. If I value dreams enough to explore them, I’ve discovered that there is much I can learn. I learned that not only can I create bodies and objects instantaneously in dreams, I have “inner senses” that allow me to think, feel, act and react, just like my outer senses in waking reality. It can even be possible that my outer senses are extensions of my inner ones, and that my inner state of consciousness may be my natural one.
What if we’re much more than we currently give ourselves credit for? Should we be exploring this possibility? Can it be that disruptive behavior like endless war, limitless greed, political corruption, unchecked population growth, increasing poverty, hunger, environmental degradation and climate change are talking to us, that they’re telling us to make adjustments? Again, what are we trying to teach ourselves? What do we want to learn about ourselves and All That Is?
