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by
Allisone Heartsong
© 2003 In God We Trust
The children of God are like myriad sunbeams radiating out into the darkness from one central sun. Because these sunbeams are created in the image of their Father-Mother-Source, they have the gift of free will as well as consciousness. As a consequence, each sunbeam has a fundamental choice as to whether it is going to direct its attention outward into the darkness or inward into the light.
Now imagine yourself as one of these innumerable sunbeams radiating joyfully out into the darkness. At first, it seems like an exciting adventure; but after a while you may begin to feel like you are becoming lost in the darkness. This is because you are in separation consciousness so long as you keep your attention focused in an outward direction, experiencing the world through your physical senses.
Viewed from that perspective, it appears as though you are separate from the other sunbeams around you, whose outward-bound paths gradually diverge from one another as they move further and further out into the darkness. What is more, the illusion of separation consciousness gives rise to the false belief that you are separate from your Source. As a consequence, you may actually begin to misperceive yourself as being part of the darkness that surrounds you.
Now imagine yourself making the fundamental choice to redirect your attention by simply turning around and looking into the light. Such a radical reorientation usually occurs in response to a major identity crisis that shakes you to the core of your being, thereby causing you to wake up to the remembrance of who you really are. For, as a result of this radical reorientation, you are suddenly able to see very clearly that, in reality, you and all of the other sunbeams are simply extensions of one Source who are inextricably connected with one another and that the appearance of separation was only an illusion.
This radical shift from the unenlightened orientation of separation consciousness to the enlightened orientation of unity consciousness is invariably experienced as an opening of the heart chakra, which allows the negative judgmental emotions of fear, anger, grievance, guilt, and depression to be transmuted into the positive feelings of love, joy, enthusiasm, gratitude, and bliss through the practice of unconditional forgiving love in every situation. Regardless of whether it is called entering the Kingdom of Heaven in Christ consciousness or entering Nirvana in Buddhic consciousness, this radical reorientation constitutes the true goal of all genuine spiritual practices and is commonly referred to as the process of spiritual awakening. The inner peace that comes from the choice to be one with everyone through the practice of unconditional forgiving love in every situation constitutes the unmistakable hallmark of all enlightened masters who have achieved at-one-ment.
To comprehend this state of being, simply imagine yourself as a sunbeam who has made the empowering choice to fly into the sun so as to become one with the sun. Such a choice requires the willingness to release the ego illusion of being a separate person in order to experience full God-Realization. When viewed from the perspective of the sun, it is clear that all sunbeams are equal, regardless of whether (at any given moment in the illusion of time) they are choosing to disacknowledge their Source while looking outward into the darkness in separation consciousness or to acknowledge their Source while looking inward into the light in unity consciousness or to merge with their Source in full God-Realization.
Let us now bring our parable down to earth by shifting from the analogy of a radiating sun to the analogy of a baseball game. As everyone knows, the basic goal in a baseball game is to score runs by moving runners from home base around the first, second, and third bases and back to home base. This four-phased process of leaving home base and then returning to home base after moving around the baseball diamond provides us with a useful analogy for the four-phased process of becoming enlightened.
We can begin by saying that the process of incarnating into physical form, during the course of which we experience spiritual amnesia that temporarily prevents us from remembering who we truly are, is analogous to moving from home base to first base. We may next say that the process of disacknowledging the Source of our being and temporarily becoming darkworkers as a consequence of losing our way in the labyrinthine darkness of separation consciousness is comparable to moving from first base to second base, which is as far away from home base as you can get. The move from second base to third base may then be said to represent the process of acknowledging and aligning to the Source of our being as we shift out of the unenlightened orientation of separation consciousness into the enlightened orientation of unity consciousness and begin to wake up to the remembrance of who we truly are as lightworkers.
The final move from third base back to home base can then be seen as an appropriate symbol for the process of achieving full God-Realization by choosing to fly into the sun so as to become one with the Universal Son of God, thereby releasing the illusion of being a separate person. Needless to say, it usually takes many lifetimes for a soul to complete this cycle, during the course of which much wisdom is gathered through the process of first making choices and then experiencing the internal as well as the external consequences of those choices. Nevertheless, it is theoretically possible for a soul that has already become enlightened to accomplish the entire cycle in one lifetime, which in terms of our baseball analogy, would be comparable to hitting a home run.
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