Man in the Mirror PROJECT: Recognizing Patterns and Conditioning

We are all conditioned to a certain extent.  Our family relationships, our religious upbringing, society's rules and even our countries origins and customs.  Every person on the earth is conditioned by their environment, what's been told to them, and what's been experienced.

When we speak about our "divinity", however, we aren't talking about the exterior self that has been impressed upon by outside thoughts and beliefs.  We are speaking about the true source of light that you were created from originally.

Every religion, every custom and every tradition doesn't fit everyone because we have all been raised with a different set of ideals.  Those ideals have been handed down through generations of families, cultures and society.  If Jesus himself were to arrive today many people would not even recognize him.  We would be too caught up in our thoughts about "who" he should be, "what" he should look like, and "how" he should act to ever accept that even though he may be standing before us, that he was "real" - all because of our preconceived ideas about "who" Jesus was or even is.

The same holds true about ourselves.  What we have learned to believe about ourselves is who we identify with.  We say things like "I am a lawyer.", "I'm a teacher", "I'm the son of a king", or even "I am well educated".  Somehow our roles in society have shifted our thinking to have what we "do" become who we "are".

I can almost assure you that when you pass on you won't be given special rights because you have more money, status or fame.  If you pay the church more money than anyone else, it won't save you a place in heaven, and because you believe you have been born again, doesn't make you any more special than the person who has lost their way in life.  All people, no matter what their beliefs, no matter what patterns they possess, have access to their birthright - their own personal connection with the creator himself.

When I was a child I used to question why it was that I had to go to a priest to ask for forgiveness from God.  Why was he the only one who could talk to him?  Did God give him special training that was off limits to the rest of us?

I later found God within myself.  The love force that I was created from and that unites us all. There is not any one of us that this force is taken from.  There is not one of us that is denied access to this powerful force that has created us all, simply because we all were created from Him to begin with.

To recognize our true selves as perfect shiny lights that have been emitted from God himself, we must overcome the feelings and thoughts that keep us from being that light.  In order to do that we have to begin catching ourselves when our thought and feeling bodies refuse to accept the light and love present not only in ourselves, but in the people and world around us.

We all have different beliefs, different conditionings and rules we have placed inside our heads, but the fact remains that we are all still divine beings, all with equal rights, equal power, and all have equal opportunity to connect with source.  With that thought in mind, we must allow for ourselves and others to play in their patterns and conditioning while we too try to come to terms with our own.  This means that the moment you begin to judge someone else for their beliefs, culture, sexual orientation or other traditions you must recognize the same about yourself.  You too have been conditioned.  You too have been raised with beliefs and rules that have governed your own life. We can no longer judge someone else if we ourselves don't wish to be judged.  We are and have been doing the same thing as these others have, playing in our own patterns.  Yet it is we ourselves that are doing the judging.  If we wish it to end the cycle, we must start with ourselves.

There is no right or wrong when it comes to this recognition.  It is simply a realization that perhaps our thoughts and beliefs are not what is true in the real universe.  Perhaps they have been given to us somewhere along the line.  When we recognize those judgments, the thoughts about other people or about ourselves, we simply need to stop and notice.  Is this my divine essence or just the thoughts I have and have come to know about my world today?  Tomorrow you may have a different view.  One that holds the light of your divinity in place of the thoughts of your judgments that you held about yourself and others yesterday.

I was recently afforded the opportunity to meet John Lennon on the other side.  In tribute to the message he portrayed in his life and even now in his death, I offer his work and contribution to us all with his gift of music.  Here is "Imagine".