Can you remember that when you were young, you had a certain sense that there was a greatness about life and somehow or other you were related to it?
We are born seeking something through which we know we matter. But little by little, this need to know ourselves through something is taken over by a nature that only begins to understand who and what it is by looking outside of itself for that confirmation.
So we go from this innate need for greatness to wanting to become great so that everyone else would know that we matter. And it is unavoidable that children have no recourse other than to be taken and shaped by the culture they were born into, inculcated with the belief that the only kind of greatness there is, is the greatness they win through the eyes of others.
And what happens as we seek to become great? Do we draw nearer to our authentic place in life, or do we wander farther away from it? Do we integrate ourselves in greater measure, or is there an unconscious process of separation taking place when others don't confirm us, or when life doesn't do what we want? We either launch ourselves back out, or we retreat in anger, convinced that the reason that we're not experiencing the greatness we ought to is because the world doesn't recognize our greatness. And so we strive and strive.
But now maybe it's beginning to dawn on us that the road we've been on doesn't work, and we need a new understanding of what we're doing with our lives, of who we are. Because the truth is, we can't change what we're doing until our understanding of who we are changes. We try to change who we are through what we do, and it doesn't work. We believe that if we can go here, get this, or when we go there and get that, we'll be different. And maybe we are for a day, or an hour, or for ten years...
But how many races do you run where instead of getting the Winner's Cup and sitting down and having a nice rest, a starting gun goes off as soon as you cross the finish line? If you say, "I don't want to run any more races like that," then you begin to become close to a new kind of understanding.
There's nothing wrong with goals. It's how we've discovered what we've needed to discover to this point. But where we've been living is in the world of becoming. And the world of becoming is when? When you are this way; when I am that way; when the world does this; when they don't do that; when you finally change -- that's the world of becoming. And it is a world we are presently caught up in.
When a man or a woman comes up with a new want, they enter into the world of becoming. And in the world of becoming, there is servant and master. The servant is the one who wants, the master is the thing they want and what they must do in order to become what they imagine will make them whole. So we go, we get, and we find out there's nothing there for us. It didn't answer the hole in the soul; the hole remains.
What are we really looking for in this world of becoming? We want to know that all is well. We want to be at peace. It's that simple. This peace we want to know is that everything is in its proper place. Isn't most of our scurrying about -- psychologically, physically -- trying to just get everything in place?
The problem is that we're imagining the place where everything's going to be in place. When we want to become something, we've imagined what will make us whole, and that we're going to become one with that. And when that happens, everything will be in place and we will be integrated into that, and we will have the peace, the comfort, the security that we imagine for ourselves.
In our arrogance, in our idea of what it means to be great, we set out to achieve that greatness and literally refuse any lesson that comes along that doesn't confirm what we have set out to establish ourselves as being. Separation ensues, as do hatred, fear, greed, and every negative state that is the product of resistance that comes from refusing the lesson the moment has brought to show us that the greatness we have claimed is not our own.
So how do we find our real place? Our true place in life is where integration never ceases to take place. It is in a conscious relationship with the active forces of the world around us -- the lessons that are riding in on the back of events and the relationship that we have with what those lessons are showing us -- all in the middle of this Presence Moment.
This place of our own has been held for us if we will enter into it. We make that choice by finally seeing that every place we have tried to make for ourselves turns out eventually to be a place of emptiness or punishment. Not that there was anything wrong with achievements, excellence, or recognition; all are valuable. But the value is not in the moment that we seize and hold onto as proof of our intelligence. That is not the proof of intelligence! Intelligence moves. Intelligence is part of a process in which integration never ceases to take place.
Our innate spiritual need is to not only be in place, but to know in that place there is something continually producing integration. That is where we are intended to live as human beings. Yes, we're in bodies, and yes, we have minds that seize moments, make pictures of them. We derive a sense of self from the icon that was established religiously, spiritually, success-wise. But at the same time, we can be in that world and be in the Presence. And in the Presence, everything is taking place, and we are part of all that is taking place. That's where integration is, and that's where love is. That's where greatness is. And it is not my greatness; it is not your greatness. It is the greatness of Divine Intelligence. Find that place, work to stay in it, and you will gradually lose all the false ideas you have about who you need to be, because your being will be provided for you, just as it was in the beginning and shall be until the end.
