3 steps to remember who the hell you really are
Spoiler: You're the light of the world
It was English poet laureate Robert Southey who penned the famous nursery rhyme that we all know, and may love:
"What are little boys made of? Snips and snails and puppy dog tails; that's what little boys are made of," and the complementary verse: What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice, that's what little girls are made of."
Of course, we all know little boys and girls, as well as men and women and everything in between that defy those verses – embodying all manner of snips, snails, puppy-dog tails and sugar and spice and all things nice to various degrees. The rhyme, while famous and quaint, doesn't really try to capture everything we human beings are or can be – but it does point us to one thing – we have no idea who we truly are.
Ask somebody to describe themselves to you and they'll tell you a lot of facts: where they come from, what they do for a living, what they like to do for fun or why they blame their parents for everything wrong with them. No one ever truly tells you who they are. Why? Because most of the time we don't know. We have no clue. As far as we know we are a paradoxical mishmash of all sorts of thoughts, feelings, emotions, habits, and desires that usually make us run hither and yon in search of something, anything, out in this world that we feel will give us peace and security.
This leads us to believe that we are a mixture of both darkness and light – an id, an ego and a super ego, as Freud put it – who constantly has an angel and a devil popping up on our opposite shoulders whispering in our ears about the right or wrong thing to do in every situation. This is why we think we are our ego – that loud-mouthed, bossy, critical, contradictory voice that screams at us and either tears us down or builds us up – depending on what we think we need at the moment.
A Course in Miracles tells us we have an "authorship problem," because we believe we are the author of our own lives – the captain of the ship – and God is merely our co-pilot. This is why we believe in separation – which is the only problem we truly have, the Course notes – because we have forgotten who we truly are – an innocent spirit that has never left the mind of God.
Here's the really good news: We are not our egos. We are not the darkness we often feel inside of us. We are not our anxieties. We are not our fears. We are not our worries. We are not our anger or hatred or frustrations. Conversely, we are also not our grandiosity, or our arrogance or even our own self-assurance or confidence. Anything that makes you feel special in either your suffering, or your success, is not who you truly are.
When you feel any of these ways – either stressed or accomplished – you are in the illusion. We talk about this world being an illusion all the time and I'm not saying this world around us isn't physically real. Punch a wall and you'll discover how solid it is.
What I'm saying is this: When you are in your ego, you are living in a false world. That world is one of competition, it is one of lack, it is one of insecurity and fear. It is a world of bravado and brashness, bluster, and buffoonery. It is a world that is never peaceful, and you are never satisfied.
Why do you want to keep on living there? It is not your home, because you are, as the Course says, a child "of light" and you cannot live in the darkness of the ego because the darkness is not in you. "Do not be deceived by the dark comforters," the Course says, "and never let them enter the mind of God's Son, for they have no place in His temple."
The dark comforters are our fear, anxieties, insecurities, and woes as well as our self-assurance, grandiosity and anything that makes us feel spiritually superior to anyone else. These are not the qualities that we are made of. Lesson 93 in the Course tells us our true ingredients: "Light, and joy, and peace abide in me."
Be a lampstand, not a bushel
Jesus, in Matthew 5:14-16, gets right to the point of who we truly are: "You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Creator in heaven."
You are the light of the world. That's what you are, that is your function, your reason for being here. No snips or snails or puppy-dog tails, not even any sugar and spice and all things nice – lest we be tempted to see ourselves as special in either our perceived darkness or our true light. We are nothing but light – nothing but love and joy and peace.
These words come from Jesus' famous Sermon on the Mount where he talks about who is blessed, such as those who mourn, who are meek, poor in spirit, merciful, pure of heart and those who thirst and hunger for righteousness. This is a list of our human paradoxes, of course, our blend of snips and snails and puppy dog tails along with sugar and spice and all things nice. Despite what we believe we are, Jesus says, that's the illusion – and we must bring our darkness to the light – our illusions of separation to the reality of unity.
We do that, he says in the next section of this sermon, when our "righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees." Whoa, we think, that's got to be a high bar to overcome. We can't enter the realm of God until we are more righteous than those guys?
Jesus is inviting us to bring the illusion to reality here. What is the definition of righteousness to the Scribes and the Pharisees? It is the ego world's definition, of course. The righteous, in the mind of these ancient religious leaders – and many modern-day ones – is about believing rightly, even if your behavior betrays those beliefs.
The Pharisees and Scribes reserved places of power for themselves, demanding others follow the laws that they themselves could flaunt. However, they demanded others must make sacrifices for their sins and that poor give their last dime while they lived a comfortable life. This kind of religion, of course, gave way to the modern-day versions where God had to sacrifice his son on a cross just so he could bear to look at our worthless carcasses with some manner of love. It's nonsense.
Jesus tells them he didn't come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. What is the law? Not what the Scribes and Pharisees thought it was, and it's not what today's version believes. The law isn't about our behavior, it's about who we are: Love and Unity. He came to fulfill the law of wholeness by abolishing the ego's law of separation. His example shows us how to be more righteous than the pious religious leaders of the world's egoic systems by following the law of Love and Unity and abandoning the ego's cruel ideas of separation and competition.
"You are the light of the world," Jesus says, and when we truly can believe that, then we'll never again buy into the ridiculous nursery rhymes and fairy tales that tell us we possess any shred of darkness. The key to this, though, is not just believing that we are the light of the world but recognizing that everyone else is also the light of the world. They, like us, may be hiding that it under a bushel, thinking they have some inherent darkness that makes it impossible for them to shine that light, but it's there. That darkness is the illusion and to enter God's realm, we must abandon it.
The Course says in chapter 11, "You cannot enter God's Presence with the dark companions beside you, but you also cannot enter alone. All your [Holy siblings] must enter with you, for until you have accepted them you cannot enter. For you cannot understand wholeness unless you are whole, and no part of the Son can be excluded if he would know the Wholeness of his Creator."
We are all the light of the world, and we must, at the level of spirit, see all our Holy siblings as children of light who have no true darkness within them – even if they seem to be trapped in the darkness this ego world has created. It's only as a whole – as the one spirit that is here having all these disparate bodily experiences – that we enter God's realm. We do that be remembering who we all really are – children of light who must learn to shine their light together.
Oh, how we love our tales of darkness!
There are many more verses to that Southey poem than just the ones we're familiar with. He goes on to list what sailors, soldiers, nurses, fathers, and mothers are made of such as pitch and tar, bushes and thorns, pipes and smoke and ribbons and laces. The last line, though, goes like this:
"What are all folks made of? Fighting a spot and loving a lot. That's what all folks are made of."
This is the duality in which we live in this bodily world. We think we must make a choice between fighting a spot and loving a lot. It's a false dichotomy that the ego perpetuates for its own survival. If we awaken to the fact that we are all the light of the world and there is no darkness within our true, Divine Self at all, then the ego knows its days are numbered. If we know that peace and love and joy abide in us, then the ego will have no quarter in our heart or mind.
How do we get to this state? You only get there by changing the stories you believe about yourself. Do you know why you think you have darkness inside of you? Because you believe the fairy tales and nursery rhymes that we all grew up reciting. We fully believe that we're a mix of snips and snails and puppy dog tails as well as sugar and spice and all things nice. We believe that we have darkness within ourselves because we have told ourselves that story our entire lives.
Do you want to change that? Do you want to believe that the only thing that abides in you is love and joy and peace? If so, change your story. This is how you bring that illusion – that perceived darkness of separation – to the light of unity. You practice – every day, sometimes moment by moment – remembering who you truly are.
For years, the story I told myself was terrible. I believed that I was a victim – a child of divorce, plummeted into poverty and lack by the choices my parents made. I told myself was doomed from an early age to fail at life, not doing well in school, and feeling stupid most of the time. I deeply believing that the deck of life was so stacked against me that whatever I did in this world would amount to absolutely nothing.
Darkness … that's all I had. And I wallowed in it. Until I discovered that story is not true. It is a tale spun by a wounded child, told to a rapt audience of one. When I discovered the Course, my life changed. Here was a way of thinking that tells me I am not snips and snails and puppy dog tails or even sugar and spice. Instead, I am a child of the light. Joy and peace and love abide in me.
When I began to tell myself THAT story instead of the tale of darkness and woe – my life transformed. Do I remember that true story all the time? No, because our false tales of darkness are powerful. We pay money to Hollywood to remind us how real and inescapable we believe our darkness to be. But, if you're tired of dwelling on what you think is your darkness of fear and anxiety, the first step is to stop telling yourself your tales of woe, and to stop believing they are true.
The most powerful tool I have used from the Course is this one phrase: "I am willing to see this differently." Whenever I start to tell those well-worn tales to myself about how I'm either inadequate or that my poop don't stink, I say, "I'm willing to see this differently." That phrase is powerful because it loosens the ego's grip on you just enough to open that little bit of space for Holy Spirit to work a miracle – to give you a new perspective about yourself – to help you remember who you truly are: You are the light of the world and there is no darkness within your true, Divine Self.
"God pours light into every cup," that Muslim mystic Hafiz reminds us, "quenching darkness." Not everyone is ready to get that, he says, because: "The proudly pious stuff their cups with parchment and critique the taste of ink while God pours light."
This is our choice. Will we be among the proudly pious, clinging to our darkness, stuffing our cups with parchment, and complaining about the taste of the ink? Or will we embrace the true righteousness like Hafiz's trees, who fulfill the law of unity and lift their limbs, without worry of redemption and make every blossom a chalice to overflow with the light that creates us all?
If you're tired of complaining about the bitterness of life, I invite you today, do the work and change your story. Stop seeing the world as a place of darkness and refuse to see any darkness in yourself. Instead, remember who you are. You are the light of the world – and so is everyone else, even if they're believing the stories that tell themselves to hide that light under a bushel.
To know your own wholeness, though, you must see others as whole on that level of light and spirit and leave behind the dark companions of ego. This week, my Motley Mystics, I invite you to bring that darkness of fighting a spot to the light because, in Reality, we are all truly made of loving a lot.
Oh, and here are your three steps, as promised:
1. Stop telling yourself stories about how awful or how great you are. Remember, as the Course tells us, all the children of God are special and none of the children of God are special.
2. Tell yourself a new story – you are the light of the world because you are made of light, love, joy, and peace.
3. Remember that everyone you meet is also the light of the world. Make a practice of seeing them as that, especially when they cut you off in traffic.
Music for the journey
“We’re All Light” - by XTC
About the Motley Mystic:
The Motley Mystic is an online community for people who have realized that the truth speaks with many voices. There is no one religion, philosophy, institution or dogma that captures the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth. No one needs to swear allegiance to one line of thought or belief to discern Truth, because Love is the only thing that’s real. That’s what we explore at the Motley Mystic - all the tools and strategies we need to remove our barriers to Love and live fully as our true, Divine Self.
Candace Chellew is the founder of Motley Mystic as well Jubilee! Circle, an interfaith spiritual community in Columbia, S.C. She is also the author of Bulletproof Faith: A Spiritual Survival Guide for Gay and Lesbian Christians published in 2008 by Jossey-Bass. She is also a musician and avid beer drinker.