Few weeks ago, in a bible study class, the leader passed out a white sheet of paper with the picture of a stone and the phrase:”Cast your cares.” It is taken from Ps. 55:22 which says. “Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you.” He asked us to write down all our worries and cares on that paper. And the group started writing. Few of them asked for more sheets of paper because their list of worries were too long to contain on that one sheet.
I sat there with my eyes closed.. I had nothing to write. Some group members looked at me funny, may be thinking, why is this guy not writing anything. Is he rebelling against the group leader or is he too lazy to write anything? The group leader said: “I was curious that you didn't write anything down, don't you have any cares or you don't care about my assignment?
And I said: “I have nothing to write because, my cares and worries are deleted by the divinity within me before I can write them down. They are resolved by dissolving them in my soul, before they evolve into major problems. I know it is heavy stuff. Let me explain.
The phrase “Cast your cares on the Lord” presupposes that God is is this supreme being up there and I am this helpless sinner down here. I don't see God and I like that any more. That changes everything.
Let me share with you my story. I am 64 years old. I take that back. This body is 64 years old. I am ageless. I am a spark of Divinity. I am a soul with a small s connected to the Universal Soul with a capital S. I am a physical manifestation of the big I AM who is God. I say that with no sense of arrogance or hubris but with utmost humility and responsibility.
I am not oblivious of my sorry-side, but I am highlighting my glory-side. I am not denying my shadow-side, but I am focusing on the light within. What is a shadow any way? You get a shadow when the light is either in front of you or behind you, which means the source of light is separate from you. When you are separate from the source of light, separate from from God, you will always have a shadow, in fact you live in the shadows—that is when you have cares and worries.
Didn't Jesus say you are the light of the world? Is it possible that we don't believer it, or we have not found it? Or may be we found it, but we don't know how to switch it on? May be the battery is dead?
Imagine buying the latest iPhone and walking around with it in your purse without charging it? You cannot do anything with it unless it is charged first.
For many, the divine spark in them is like an uncharged battery. It is dead. Just like dust and fungus grow on a dead battery, cares and worries contaminate our divine spark and then we wonder, why we are so anxious and miserable.
Back to my story. 64 years ago, in a remote village in southern India, a spark of Divinity was incarnated. When I use the word incarnation, you might immediately think about the incarnation of Jesus. How dare you use the same word for your birth? you might ask.
Let me tell you something. Every birth is an incarnation. Incarnation simply means “being in flesh or becoming flesh.” "Carnem" in Latin means flesh. Words like carnal and carnivorous come from the same root.
Like Buddha, Jesus and Mohammad, you are an incarnation of divinity that took flesh and appeared on earth at a specific time and place. Like them you are a promise of God; unlike them you rarely turn that promise into potential.
So, that tiny piece of God incarnated in that remote Indian village was wrapped in the tender body of a 7 pound baby boy and his parents named him Paul.
That is me. But for the first 45 years of my life, I was not aware of it. I was like an iPhone with a dead battery.
I was raised in a strict Catholic home. I went to church twice a week. Saturdays in honor of Mother Mary and Sundays to attend Mass and attend catechism class. I was an altar boy. I said my daily prayers. O I observed Advent and Lent. I celebrated Xmas and Easter. I engaged in a lot of religious practices.
Nobody told me I was a spark of divinity. No religion teacher ever told me that my soul was part of the Soul of God and that my mission in life is to manifest that soul. All the efforts were focused on “saving my soul” from this wicked world rather than “showing my soul” to this wonderful world.
Priesthood seemed like a good idea to accomplish that goal. I can save my soul and save the souls of others. I entered the seminary at the age of 16. During the next 9 years of training, I studied, scripture, church history, philosophy, theology, the sacraments. Made several retreats. Said so many prayers.
At the age of 25, I became a priest. I don't think anything had really changed at the core of my being. I still got frustrated with people. I still became anxious and afraid, I was jealous of other priests. I got offended when others were not nice to me. I really didn't care for those who didn't care for me. It took a long time to forgive others. I worried about all kinds of stuff. I had too many cares. Every day I cast them upon the Lord as I was told; but they seemed to boomerang than benefit me.
Another 20 plus years would pass and I repeated the religious insanity. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over rand expecting a different result. I said my prayers, I read the bible, I did my retreats, I went to church every day. I was the church, because I was the priest. But no real transformation.
In the early nineties, my consciousness shifted about who I was and who God is and that changed everything. Until then, I thought of myself as a sinner in need of salvation. A weak sinner born with original sin, destined to suffer and struggle in this valley of tears and somehow make it to heaven after death. I was basically living the life described by Fiction writer David Gerrold this way:
Life is hard. Then you die. Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you. Be grateful it happens in that order.
I said to myself: A person who is created in the image and likeness of God, a person who is a spark of divinity should not be living such a marginal, miserable, mediocre life. It doesn't sound like the life that Jesus promised: “I came that you may have life and have it abundantly.” Where is that abundance? How do I find it? Was that an empty promise? It can't be, because the whole purpose of the incarnation of Jesus was that we experience abundant life.
I was awakened to the realization that I was a soul not that I had a soul. That changed everything.
It is interesting that after a plane crash, the passengers are referred to as souls. As in “A plane was shot down over Ukraine, and there were 295 souls on board.”
Is it possible that we are so body focused that we fail to notice that we are souls, until we are at the brink of death? That they pray for our souls after we die, rather than live as souls before we die.
Understanding the difference between having a soul and being a soul is the key to a transformed life.
I wrote a book describing that shift in consciousness and I called it THRIVE: Six keys to a fuller life. Thriving is the same as living the abundant life. It is the same as living with the power of resurrection of Jesus.
I wrote this book not to become rich or famous (altho that would be nice) but to shake up and wake up people to see, experience and enjoy the fullness of life that is their birth right. That fulness of life is an undiscovered treasure, an unclaimed gift, a lottery ticket of ultimate bliss that is buried in a mess. It is like a a visa gift card that is not activated. That life is available and attainable and at your disposal, if you are disposed to see it.
You need to wake up from unconscious living. You need to see through socially and religiously induced illusions. You need to see God as part of you, not apart from you. You need to see yourself as co-creator with God, not co-dependent on God. You need to show your soul not save your soul. You need to charge the battery that is pre-installed in you and, like a fully charged iPhone, experience and enjoy the magic and majesty of the world at your fingertips.
The book contains my philosophy of life which has transformed my life. I describe how to Thrive in life by using the six letters of the word Thrive in six chapters. I will be using the next 6 sermons to explain each chapter. Having a copy and reading it in prep for the sermon will help you get more out of it. 200 page material. Can't explain all that in six sermons.
(If you want a copy I have some for $10. On Amazon it is sold for 15)
T in thrive stands for thinking. I blivet that our brain is the least used organ in the body. If we really use our brains to process our lives, the outcome would be very different. Thomas More said; Life is complicated. If you cannot think, reflect and actively imagine life into existence, you are condemned to a half-life of unconsciousness.
The H in thrive stands for Harmony. Experience the harmony of the universe around you. The cows graze gracefully, the dogs wag their tails joyfully, the fish swims freely and the birds sing soulfully. Humans are the only species that argue, complain, fight and struggle and make their lives miserable in the process.
The R in thrive stands for Re-cognition. Re-cognize means to re-understand or to know again. Many things we think about God and Jesus and life could be wrong or incomplete. We have to consciously unlearn a few things we may have unconsciously learned as children.
The I in thrive stands for introspection which is another word for meditation. He who does not go within, goes without.
The V stands for Vision. Many people go thru life seeing reality only thru their physical eyes. They have eyesight, but no insight. When we start looking at the world around us with the eye of the soul, everything changes. The illusions of separation becomes unity consciousness.
The E in thrive is for Expiration or death. Death is a dreaded word and a taboo topic. We refuse to talk about it with the unintelligent hope that if we don't think about it or talk about it, we don't have to deal with it. When you are constantly aware of the unpredictability and impermanence of life, love comes naturally. We erase our resentments faster, become less attached to stuff, we care deeply, share joyfully, forgive generously and attain peace with ease.
There is a bed time prayer that says: Lord, don't let me die before I wake up. You should reverse that prayer and say: Lord , wake me up before I die.
Wake me up to see my identify as an image of God, a spark of divinity as salt of the earth and light of the world. Wake me up to see the beauty of god's creation; Wake me up to see that every human being is my brother and sister; Wake me up to realize that I should die to my ego to manifest my soul. Wake me up to the reality that death is inevitable but resurrection is guaranteed if I walk the path of Christ- the path of passion, death and resurrection, in that order. An awakened life is a thriving life, a risen life.
Thriving does not mean that you will be doing LOL all the time.
Thriving does not mean, you won't be sad when bad things happen but that sadness will not control your life.
It does not mean that you will not be frightened when scary things happen such as getting a terminal diagnosis or suffering a terrorist attack, but that you will not be buried under that fear.
It is not that you will not get disabled, ill or die but none of those inevitable realities of life would have tyranny over your life.
It is about accepting that pain and suffering are endemic to our existence but happiness and joy are also available and attainable.
It is living with the awareness that the landscape of our life may be riddled with landmines such as loss, regrets, disease and death, but it also contains diamonds of pleasure, peace and ecstasy.
It means in the words of poet Jack Gilbert, having the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.
It is actually living the mystery of death and resurrection-the life of a follower of the risen Jesus.
