Seek First the Kingdom of God
by Todd Schaefer ©2006
What is our Divinity?
One of the intriguing misconceptions about our divinity is that it is often perceived as "something that we earn." Being a divine human, however, is not a pedestal concept reserved for enlightened beings and ancient masters. We are not separate from them, except in our thinking. What makes us enlightened is remembering to choose our divinity, just as the masters chose it for themselves.
We cannot escape our divinity because it is who we are. Divinity is what we are made up of. It is what resides beneath the many layers of what we have learned to be. When we remove these layers, we allow divinity to shine from within us. The inhibitor to our divinity shining through us is our mind.
Our minds are helpful companions when they are in alignment with our divinity. Sometimes, we allow our minds to rule us and smother the divine in us. The part of our mind that we often allow to rule us could be called the ego-mind. The ego-mind is our default consciousness for our survival. This part of us is valuable for addressing potentially harmful "fight or flight" situations, but it is not ideal for thriving in our consciousness growth. While the ego-mind is designed for survival and safety, it unfortunately only reinforces itself. In other words, the ego-mind does not encourage consciousness expansion because we usually only experience the ego-mind within a state of ultimate contraction for the purpose of safety. When utilized as a mode of being beyond our immediate survival, the ego-mind can suffocate our sacred presence and unknowingly rob us of our trust in our divine nature.
Thankfully, our mind has a built-in relationship with our body and spirit (or divinity) that constantly promotes and restores full and natural alignment in our beings. The body believes what the mind tells it (whether it is true or false). And the mind can be cooperative with our divinity - the truest truth.
The greatest gift our divinity provides us is the real truth about who we are when we subordinate our minds and commit to divinity with full decision. When we try on different truths through our divinity, we develop a sense of knowing what is most real and truthful for us. This is more real than if we had made a mental assessment or an evaluation with our mind. With our divinity, we are allowing ourselves to feel truth. Through integrating our divinity, and learning how to quiet our minds, we learn to listen within. We learn how to provide peace to ourselves. We learn that we can access our truth within ourselves, rather than seek out an external pacifier. We discover what is rooted in our ego-mind, and what is rooted in our spirit, or divinity.
Divinity means returning to our hearts and our core essence. In order to grow spiritually, we don't focus on reaching outward; we focus on returning inward, into the now. This is the place of creation, abundance, healing, peace, and more. Any effort to "be" in any other moment than now is a function of the mind, and temporarily sacrifices our joyful presence.
Many of us would give anything to be able to experience more joy. We want to experience that sense of wonder and awe as we did when we were children. Children are fully present in the now. This way of being is pure and sacred. A child knows only this natural approach to life, and must either be taught or choose differently to change that approach. When we return to our true nature of divinity, an entire new world begins to illuminate. Our sense of feeling begins to increase again and we return to our joy. Our sense of aliveness and passion re-emerge.
Apart from the ego-mind, we have our normal operating, conscious aware mind. When our minds aren't in fight or flight mode, they do a good job of helping us live our daily lives. Our minds facilitate our growth and follow our directions. Our minds enable our "doing" which promotes our way of "being." Our minds are the vehicles through which our divine nature is expressed. However, our minds are not the destination of our growth.
Sometimes we wonder concerning matters of spirituality when we cannot derive a sense of truth regarding our divinity within our minds. Divinity deals with truth, but facts appeal to our minds more than truth. When we look to fulfill our spiritual needs, we encounter frustration when our mind does not give us the answers that it wants. So we then make our mental assessment of what spiritualism means to us based on what our minds are willing or are not willing to accept and believe. Facts don't set us free. The truth does.
We use our brilliant minds involuntarily and as second nature, in most cases. It rarely occurs to us to "be" or operate in any other way, unless we first filter things through our processing and evaluating system called the mind. It rarely occurs to us that there is another part of who we are, and yet we occasionally struggle to mentally look for these spiritual answers on Sunday mornings at church. We hope that our minds can grasp and understand where we look for answers and experience some relief. In reality, we are evolving our minds. But we tend to want to "go through" the mind before we allow ourselves to experience our divinity. Our minds are the turnpike through which we evaluate what we will allow inside our being and what we will allow to come out from us. Needless to say, our minds alone are not designed to take us home to the "promised land." Our minds do not substitute for our divinity. Our minds supplement our divinity.
Through our divinity, we discover new meaning and new awareness about our lives. We see ourselves from an entirely different and fresh perspective. The clarity that we have gained by allowing our divine nature to surface has afforded us the opportunity to see a clearer, expanded version of who we really are.
And our mind is happy for us as well! Our mind is happy to release the burden of being overworked. Our mind begins to see that there is a being that stands silently with it, usually either watching or participating with the mind. With this awareness, we begin to look in the mirror and we see someone who is peaceful and courageous, living in trust beyond the mind. We develop a new definition of who we are, and we arrive within ourselves again. We have a clearer picture of what we are, and how much self-love we have. By looking beyond the mind, we have found the real us - the Divine Human.
Divinity is our sovereign nature. Divinity is built into each of us, yet we are still learning to use it. There is a finite list of applications and capacities for our overworked minds. But our divine nature is limitless. As we surrender our mind's control to our divinity, we begin to experience everything in life with more richness and vitality. “Quality of life” takes on a whole new meaning.
We seek first the kingdom of God within ourselves. We learn how we operate in mind, body and spirit. We realign ourselves with the Divine. Beneath all of those layers of who we thought we were resides pure love at our core, waiting for us. Divinity is who we are.
Copyright © 2006 Todd M. Schaefer / Soul Solutions Group
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