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our divine parent. And by understanding the spirit of referring to the relationships of a loving family to see the relationships between God and us, we can understand the ideal relationship we should have for one another, that is, the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God. Again the words are insufficient and misleading, it would be more accurate to say the brotherhood and sisterhood of humankind and the motherhood and fatherhood of God, but that gets rather cumbersome; we must take these things in the spirit of which they are given.
God cannot be truly understood without having a personal relationship with him, even then it is an understanding that must evolve through time. However, because of the absolute and eternal nature of God, we will never be able to understand him completely or repletely. But that is no excuse for not trying to understand what we can of our Creator.
The closer we get to understanding the divine nature, the closer we are to understanding true reality.
The Foundation of the Soul
Self-awareness is the foundation of the soul.
If there is a deep part of one's inner self that is shrouded in darkness and covered with a veil, the potential of the soul is diminished. One cannot fully express one's soul if it is under lock and key. It is like giving someone food that is in a locked box. One must open the box before the food within can be shared. The thing that keeps it locked and inaccessible is fear.
For the soul to release its potential, for it to become a vibrant reality in itself, one must be aware of the deepest parts of oneself, the things that are shrouded in darkness and fear. The box is locked for the reason that we lock anything, out of fear or concern. With material possessions, this is natural as in some places there are people who will steal your precious belongings if given the chance. But with your inner secrets, what is the concern there? No one will rob you of your personal secrets. However, there is fear that if they find out your secrets, they will castigate you, hate you, revile you, demean you, and treat you in an undesirable way. Then there are deeper secrets, the ones that you even keep from yourself. You keep those locked away, not from others, but from yourself, so that you won't have to look at them and deal with them. Many people are afraid to see themselves for who they really are.
What are some of those things within a person that he or she may be afraid of even looking at? There are feelings of inadequacy, desires that go against societal mores, bad habits, hatreds, envy, jealousies, greed, even positive potentials. There may be just as many things that can go on this list as there are people. I cannot go through every one of them, but I can go through several within my own experience, although it was not easy for me to be so candid in the earlier part of my life, for there was a part of me that cringed at revealing myself for all to see. It is only by knowing now that the universe is friendly to those who are born in spirit that all such fear is released.
The feeling of inadequacy was an issue for me that I kept hidden within me for a long time. Because of a brain tumor that I had in my childhood which was surgically removed and the ensuing medical challenges, I had felt that somehow I was not good enough. But it was something I overcame as I matured in mind.
I had been conditioned by my circumstances to think that somehow I was abnormal and inadequate. I dealt with this in various ways. One was by reading a lot of books and sharpening my intellect, thinking even if I wasn't physically equal, I could be smarter than most everyone. I kept up a strong front and ignored the deepest parts of myself. One way of propping up my self-esteem was by intellectually overpowering others with logic. I was good at it and used to revel in being intellectually superior, to compensate for my perceived physical shortcomings. I am now aware of that tendency and keep it under control, but this control did not come easy. Back then, there still remained within me something that I did not acknowledge. Something that I had kept locked away in that box within me.
One night in bed, I was tossing and turning, unable to sleep. I might have been a little depressed over something and wondered why I had these problems. Then I started thinking about how my life was shaped by my medically challenged childhood and I began to look deeper until I was face to face with my locked box. I was afraid to unlock it and look within, but a quiet, almost silent voice told me to go ahead. "Trust me," it said, "it's okay." So I did.
What I found were two things. One was that I was not facing up to the incontrovertible fact that I had medical problems and that my life was being shaped by unique circumstances outside the experiences of most people. (I had surgery when I was a child for a brain tumor that damaged my pituitary gland so that I had to get growth hormone shots for a while and subsequent medications.) Although it was mostly in my head, it was a fact that physically I was inadequate in certain aspects. I was inadequate in becoming a football star and scoring touchdowns: I was not the physically vibrant superhero I liked to read about when I was a kid. I was a nerd with some ongoing medical problems. I was who I was. These were facts that I had not faced squarely before, always evading and denying it in the core of my mind. But these things were not that difficult to face and acknowledge. And once I did, it was not such a big deal. Because the many potentials I had were being suppressed by my fears, once the fears were dissipated, my potentials could be realized. I began to think and act more positively. I worked on my physical health and condition and now, I am in better shape than most people that I know of at my age.
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