Conclusion
On a practical note I wish to mention that reading St. John is inconclusive because the book Light on St. John did not follow all the chapters of the original text from the Bible all the way through. Beas’s notes on Jesus’ teachings stops with Chapter 17. Chapter 18 – 21 is not worked on by Beas, I suspect, because most of these chapters are the chronicles of events of Jesus’ capture and crucifixion.
On a personal note, as I am reading his book, I notice that I am actually reading the teachings a disciple and a minister ‘should’ live by. And as I am reading them I am also integrating them. In some cases, what I was reading made sense of the experiences I was having at the time. In some cases, the text in Bear’s book clarified the meaning of some inner experiences I was having.
It is such a pleasure for me to experience the power of the Teachings and how magically they are offered. They are always somehow organised in a way that the disciple can easily receive the guidance they need at the time in order to advance using the very faculties she/he is blessed with.
It is more and more apparent to me that the main focus of my becoming a Minister is to minister to myself. The reason for my ministering to myself is that I can become the version of me who resembles God and who is with God. It is like Jung says: “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”
I understand and accept the fact that me acting as a minister will come from God through His guidance to me. It never happens. The best teaching I can ever offer to anyone is my life, the way I live it, hoping, that I am inspiring enough for others to notice that there is another way to live life and that is in God. That is my main aim as a minister, to be inspiring beyond the words I may be able to offer.
This morning I had a rather strange encounter with God. As I was contemplating on my conversation with my teacher the previous day I remembered telling her about my greatest fear: the fear of being vulnerable, not being able to protect what I care about, be it a drawing or my relationship with God. As a human, I do not feel powerful enough to protect what I love so I prefer not to have a relationship with what I love at all. It must be a long standing battle between me and the Universe because I can remember reasons why I made that choice long ago. Well, this morning God responded to my opening saying ‘ I will protect you from within. Upon our union, I will provide you with the tool that will make you feel safe.’ I was gobsmacked but I let it lie. A bit later, I picked up my book with the intention to finish writing the conclusion to my essay. To my surprise in Beas’ conclusion I read “The human form is given to us to enable us to escape from this prison and go up and merge back into the Lord. He, … , is nowhere outside. He is within us. … the human body is the abode of the Lord, or God – as Christ says, “the temple of the living God.” … the Lord is within every one of us. What a lovely confirmation of God’s mysterious workings in my life!
Though God is inside, we are not! “The Lord is inside but we are outside. We have to knock from the outside so that the door leading to our house may be opened. This knocking at the door of our house consists of bringing our consciousness back to the eye centre. When we bring it here the door opens: …” How interesting it is to consider that we often think that our job on the path is to let God into our lives. However, it is not the case. We need to let ourselves into the house where God forever resides waiting for us prodigal sons to return home.
When I consider my walk towards God, it often seems like a rather arduous journey through the rough wilderness without much apparent reason apart from a vague idea of ‘how about knowing God?’. But what keeps me coming back? What is it that makes me sit down daily offering my time and considerable effort in an attempt that does not – maybe ever – produce a tangible result? This is Beas’ answer ”… that sound is so fascinating, so charming, so tempting that once we are attached to it, we are automatically detached from the senses. … Thus we start our spiritual journey.”
In the light of recent events in the world, I wish to conclude my essay with a thought that means a lot to me. Coming from a world of deep seated detest towards anything other than the collectively accepted, I was delighted to read this passage by Beas,
“It is simple logic that if the Lord is one and He is within every on of us and if we have to seek Him within our body, then the path leading to our destination, to our home, cannot be two. It must be one. So, it is impossible even to think that there can be one path leading to the Lord’s house for Christians, another for Hindus, another for Sikhs, and still another for Muslims. There may be a difference in our interpretation or in our understanding, but there cannot be two paths leading to His house. If we seek Him within, we all will find the same path, and that is of Sound and Light. But if we search for Him outside, then everybody has his own path, then it is impossible to come together. It is a spiritual basis that we can come together and be near to each other. … the nearer we are to the Lord, the nearer we are to one another. “