In this teaching of the Gospel of Thomas,
We read,
Yeshua says,
If your spiritual guides say to you,
Look,
The divine realm is in the sky.
Well,
Then the birds will get there ahead of you.
If they say it is in the sea,
Then the fish will precede you.
No,
Divine reality exists inside and all around you.
Only when you have come to know your true self will you be fully known,
Realizing at last that you are a child of the living one.
In this teaching,
The kazuma masters are pointing us again to the unity,
To the absolute inseparability of the inner and the outer,
The inside and the outside.
That what we seek,
Which is knowledge of our true self,
Cannot be discovered by going elsewhere,
By going outside of ourselves.
If we seek it in the sky,
The birds will find it before us.
If we seek it in the sea,
The fish will find it before us.
But only when we discover that the divine exists inside us and outside us.
In the ancient Hebrew tradition,
This is framed in the language of Mimali kol almin and sovit kol almin,
The Aramaic sort of twist on the teaching that the divine reality fills all the worlds and surrounds all the worlds.
The divine fills us and surrounds us.
It is our very nature,
And it is the nature of all of creation.
What that means,
Of course,
Is that who we are at our core when we discover ourselves at the very heart of our being when we awaken to what we truly are.
That discovery is also the discovery of all that is because who we are and all that is are the same reality.
It is one divine nature that both includes and transcends,
That both fills and surrounds,
That is both who we are and is also that which is all.
And so the master goes on to say that only when we have come to know our true self will we be fully known.
Because in this experience of knowledge of self,
Of true self,
There is the distinct sense that the one who is knowing,
That which is knowing ourself,
That which is being known as ourself and the knowing itself,
The knower,
The known,
And the knowing are one inseparable reality.
There is no division between subject and object.
There is no knower and known.
There is simply a knowing that is all inclusive.
It is a knowing that is the knower and the known at once and as one.
This is the quintessential realization of one's true self.
One's true self is not an encapsulated individual self.
It is the knowing of ourselves as the all,
As the living one,
The one living divine truth,
Reality itself.
So the teaching here is that we can through turning inward,
Through shifting our gaze from the sky and the sea as sort of symbols of the external world.
By shifting our gaze inward,
We have the possibility of connecting to our true selves,
Which paradoxically is the discovery of the truth of all.
Because it's the meeting of the inner and the outer inseparable,
Indivisible,
Unitive whole.
So,
May we be blessed to discover who we are as a true offspring of the living one reality,
Of the non dual,
Undivided unity of being,
Of which we are a living expression of,
And the totality of at the same time.
May we be blessed in this time in particular,
Where we are being called to go inside,
And to truly take this teaching to heart as the Kaduma Master reminds us that what we are is the totality of reality.
And when we experience this directly,
And we experience a very deep,
Silent peace,
A peace that knows no bounds,
As if our individual experience of spacious,
Silent peace permeates and ripples throughout all the universe,
Throughout the whole world,
Throughout all the cosmos,
Because that peace that we are at our heart is actually the peaceful nature of all reality,
Totally inseparable.
With much love and blessing,
I look forward to seeing you again soon.
