HOW TO IMPROVE OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THE DIVINE By DENNIS J. WILSON

A friend asked me to think about the question, “How Can We Improve Our Relationship With The Divine?” As I began to think about the question, it immediately became apparent that, for me, the answer lies at the core of our path in life.

First are the questions, such as, What Is The Divine?, How Do We Have A Relationship With The Divine?, What Interferes With That Relationship?, What Makes Us Unique?, etc.

The Divine or God is the unknown, eternal, indestructible creator of all things, from the tiniest part of an atom to the entire universe. It is the Infinite Order of Infinity and permeates all that exists. It is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. In this dimension, it is what is known as the Kingdom of God.

Yeshua (Jesus) said that,,” the Kingdom of God lies within”, and “seek ye first the Kingdom of God.” As a start, that caused me to think about what that meant. For me, that was a variation of the question that was posed. However, if the Kingdom of God is within, how did it get there?. The answer that seemed obvious to me, was very simple. My belief is that each entity that is born is given a soul that is part of the Divine or the Kingdom Of God and is eternal and indestructible. In addition, there is a paradox, since each soul is unique but at the same time each soul, being part of the Divine, is identical, how can that be?.

After considerable thought, an analog occurred to me. The analog is simply a molecule of water. Each molecule of water is made up of two Hydrogen atoms and one Oxygen atom that are bound together. In addition, as the molecules are gathered together they can take the form of a drop, a river, a lake, or an ocean, etc.

Further thought suggested that an ocean is analogous to the Divine insofar as it is composed of innumerable individual and unique molecules of water. It is NOT made up of two giant atoms of Hydrogen and one giant atom of Oxygen that are bound together. Hence, as in the analog, each soul is a unique part of the Divine and yet identical Also, since the Divine is completely positive unconditional love, each soul also is positive and consists of unconditional love.

In addition to the soul, each entity is given a Mind that has the innate potential of spiritual awareness, and consciousness, as well as the ability to discern between the positive and the negative. This suggests that the Mind has direct access to the Divine, if it chooses to utilize it, and is also completely positive.

Finally, each entity is provided with a Body that has the inherent ability to automatically maintain the body’s vital functions to survive. This means that the Body is totally materially focused and, as a result is completely negative. In addition, the Body is the repository of the subconscious/ego that is the home of all of the negative emotions. These emotions, can, in some cases, be essential for survival.

Insofar as the Body/subconscious/ego has a total material focus and the Mind being potentially spiritually aware with the ability to discern the difference between the positive and the negative, suggests that this is the source of the classic spiritual (positive)/materialist (negative) conflict. The beginning of this conflict is rooted in our enculturation.

As we grow and develop into adulthood, our initial values are provided by our cultural environment, as well as our physical experiences. Both of these are readily accepted by the Mind as being positive because there is insufficient knowledge or life experience to question these values. However, the body/subconscious/ego complex is only focused on the material world, whereas the mind/conscious/ awareness complex has the ability to focus on both the material as well as the spiritual. But the spiritual aspect of the mind must be consciously developed.

The beginning of the conscious development of spiritual awareness is when the individual starts to question whether there is something beyond just the material life. There are innumerable questions that arise, such as, who made the stars? or how does a plant grow from a small seed?, etc. As time passes, deeper questions arise, such as, where did I come from?, who am I?, and what is the meaning or purpose of life ? If the individual is fortunate enough to have maintained the curiosity to try to find answers to such questions, their spiritual development will start.

Spiritual development requires conscious and continuous lifelong effort. My spiritual development began by reading the Bible as a young person. This proved to be my first eye opening experience. When Bible verses were read and interpreted in church by the preacher, my reading of those same verses did not support the interpretation that was delivered. Early on it was clear that any questions that challenged such interpretations were usually met with doctrinaire hostility and./or derision.

As my quest for spiritual growth continued over the years, I read multiple religious texts and attended a variety of churches. As a result, I was left with the impression that each religion was sure that they had all of the spiritual answers required to reunite with the Divine. However, not a single church was teaching their congregation how the individual could grow spiritually.

As time passed, I read the foundational documents and many of their supporting commentaries of most of the major religions including Christianity, Judaism, Kabbala, Islam, Sufi, Mormanism, Zoroastrianism, Sikhism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confuciusism, Taoism, as well as writings, about Polynesian Kahunas, and Native American beliefs. As the reading progressed, it became evident that throughout these readings, the message was the same. The underlying principle to spiritual growth is the practice of unconditional love for all people and all things in our daily life. The different messages were written for different cultures to show the people the way to apply this principle in their daily lives in order to grow spiritually. The tragedy is, that in every case this message has been perverted by organizing to allow the priest class to hide the message in order to gain power and to suppress the people.

The key to spiritual growth is the direct connection that the Mind has with the Soul. And, that spiritual growth is nothing more than the application and utilization of unconditional love to every aspect and situation in our daily life. That being the case, what is it that interferes with spiritual growth?

Spiritual growth requires that the Mind has an increasing conscious contact with the Soul. This contact is the channel that allows unconditional love to flow into our daily life from our Soul. The expressing of ego based negative emotions interferes with the Mind-Soul contact and, as a result, impedes spiritual growth.

Earlier the Ego was identified as the repository of our negative emotions. This is only true insofar as the Ego is the repository of the instinctive, intuitive aspect of our emotions that have no basis in reason or knowledge, and that were created by our initial enculturation as we grew to adulthood. In addition, the Ego is the trigger for the instantaneous expression of these negative emotions in response to any given situation. This often results in overreactions or irrational responses.

The instantaneous negative emotional responses of the Ego prevent the Divine based unconditional love response of the positive Mind from being expressed. This then, supports the definition of the Ego as, “Edging God Out.” This takes us to the heart of the answer to the question of, how do we improve our relationship with the Divine? The answer is simply to eliminate the Ego.

Ego is defined as, a person’s sense of self esteem or self importance. This definition is consistent with the negative material focus of the Ego. In fact, the true sense of identity of a person is in their recognition of the fact that they are a unique creation and part of the Divine. Having identified the requirement to eliminate the Ego the questions becomes, how is this accomplished?

The answer is to become aware of the overreactions and/or irrational instantaneous responses that occur for any event. As an example, in the Parable of the Good Samaritan in the Bible, both a Priest and a Levite exhibited a response of revulsion to a victim of robbers lying in the road. That prevented the unconditional love to flow forth from them and help the man and allowed them to rationalize their negative emotion and ignore the man’s need. On the other hand, the unconditional love of the Samaritan caused him to render appropriate aid to the robbery victim. On the other hand, an example of anger as an emotion based on reason and knowledge is the story of Jesus overturning the tables of the money changers in the Temple In that instance, the reason for the act was the knowledge that the presence of the money changers in the temple was a desecration of the Temple. These examples illustrate the difference between instantaneous Ego based material oriented negative emotional responses and Divine based spiritually oriented positive emotional responses.

To begin the process of eliminating the Ego driven immediate reactions, it’s first necessary to become aware of the reactions when they occur. For me, this awareness revealed that there are certain subject categories where instant responses are triggered. These include politics, the economy, international affairs, and government ineptitude among others.

This realization led me to question why this would occur. Further thought revealed that this was the result of the early enculturation that I was subject to as I grew up. My family had instant and very biased opinions on any subject. Generally there was no basis for their opinions in reason or knowledge. This was especially true in relation to politics, the economy, international affairs, race, etc.. And they were very vociferous in expressing their opinions at any opportunity.

As I grew into adulthood there emerged a growing desire to get completely away from that environment. Little did I realize that that early enculturation was such an integral part of me. And, that it would play such a significant role in interfering with my developing a better relationship with the Divine.

This insight provided the opportunity for me to access and to examine the beliefs that were causing the Ego based instant negative reactions for each category where these were occurring. That resulted in the beginning the elimination of the instant negative responses, one at a time, that are blocking my Mind’s access to the unconditional love of my Soul. As a result, very slowly, unconditional love has begun to more easily flows into my Mind and my daily activities.

It would appear that the great Avatars that have come to show the way back to the Divine all had complete and unhindered access to the Divine. They represent the ultimate goal of spiritual growth, that is, the reuniting of with the Divine.

To summarize, in order to improve our relationship with the Divine, it is necessary to develop sufficient spiritual awareness to recognize and eliminate all of the negative, Ego based, instantaneous responses to any given situation as well as to totally eliminate the negative aspects of our emotions.

As shown, the solution to improving our relationship with the Divine is simple and straight forward. However, the application of the solution is difficult and requires a conscious and continuous lifelong effort. The ultimate result far outweighs all of the effort required.