#direct inquiry

I was a voracious reader as a child. 

That was my escape.  For long hours and entire weekends, I would immerse myself in other worlds.  It was immersing myself in another time, not another world which led to my stumbling on what I would later recognize to be a powerful form of spiritual inquiry.

Around age 11, I became enraptured with a story centered around a boy of similar age in the 1700's.  The tales of a simpler time, the time without technological distraction, time with family and community seemed idyllic.  For some reason I kept returning to a vision of the main character walking down a dirt road around his house.  Though this wasn't a central part of the story, somehow this formed a bridge with my world.  So much of the going on's of that time were so foreign to me that I couldn't imagine myself in that world.  But walking down that rural path seemed somehow similar to the wooded lanes around my home and spurred a new type of thinking which would forever how I saw myself.

Somehow, that image stuck in my head and I could return to it and imagine it was myself in that world.  This wasn't so implausable as the syfi tales, with space stations and far out beings.  The humble community of the 1700's may have been idylic, but it didn't seem impossible.  And so I started to imagine myself in that century and what life would have been like.  

But then I realized... despite the changes being more plausible, the world would have been so different that those differences could not have escaped changing who I, myself was.  And I started wondering; how different would I have been?  

And more importantly... more significantly, what would have been the same?  

It didn't take long to understand the magnitude of any one change and the "butterfly effect" (though I didn't know that term) on not only circumstances, but the way I manifested myself in the world.  Attempting to find what would be the same led me to the core of what we are.  To the quality of attention itself.  

It would not be for decades that I would make the connection between this essential quality of life and Christ himself.  Of the pointers Jesus left for us, the most pertinent for this inquiry is, "Before Abraham was born, I Am."

Let's look at the entire passage from John 8.  

54 Jesus replied, “If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me. 55 Though you do not know him, I know him. If I said I did not, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and obey his word. 56 Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.”

57 “You are not yet fifty years old,” they said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!”

58 “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” 59 At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.

Comments:  

54:  If Jesus glorified himself, it would not be from the core of Being.  He rested in that core, the presence of God, the "heaven within," and in so doing, was radiant with the energy of the Holy Spirit,  affecting all those around him.

56:  Some commentators believe Jesus appeared physically to Abraham.  He may well have.  But in light of verse 58 and the way this is written* ("seeing my day"), it makes far more sense to acknowledge the deeper reality of awareness as what Jesus was pointing to.  Let us not make the mistake of limiting ourselves to physicality and projecting that limitation onto Jesus and Abraham.

What part of yourself has never changed across time?  

Don't be satisfied with an intellectual answer.  Don't stop at "I Am."  It's too easy to come to that place and stop.  That's not the answer.  What is aware of the I Am?

As you find qualities of yourself, the things which make you, you, investigate.  Would those qualities be the same centuries ago?  Would those qualities be the same far into the distant future?  What would be the same if you were a stone age cave dweller?  

Even within your own life, there is something which has been there with you from infancy and will always be with you.  What is that?  Can you see how it is the basis for all you perceive?  Can you feel how this is there even before you know I AM?