Come Into Harmony
by Rev. Cory Coberforward
Readings
Matthew 23:8-12
“But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Psalm 133 (Responsive Reading for Live Service)
How wonderful it is, how pleasant,
for God's people to live together in harmony!
It is like the precious anointing oil running down from Aaron's head and beard,
down to the collar of his robes.
It is like the dew on Mount Hermon,
falling on the hills of Zion.
That is where the Lord has promised his blessing—
life that never ends.
Read the written message below with music videos
Coming into harmony with the universe and our Higher Power sounds aspirational and nice, but I think many people believe it’s beyond human capability or, at least, their own. Sometimes when we assess our mental or spiritual situation it may seem disheartening due to our lingering issues, or we may feel that there’s too much chaos going on to ever tap into a true beingness at harmony with the play of the natural realm and God. The trick, though, seems to be realizing that the part of us that says it’s impossible and feels at odds with things isn’t us and really isn’t even a friend, it’s a voice that we feel is intimate but it’s also an illusory manifestation of us not understanding our true selves. Instead, we must turn to Beingness itself within to learn our true nature and give up our attachment to listening to that false teacher we’ve come to call “me.”
“But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher… nor are you to be called instructors.” Seems farfetched to never call anyone by these terms that often connote “teacher” and “spiritual leader,” but in a way Christ was both speaking about how God(dess) teaches through all things, as well as more practically, that we should stop learning from the aspect of each of us that seems to typically be in charge of our lives: our lower, rambling minds.
Within us there is a space that we all share, a space of sanctuary and peace. We can discover this space through a number of practical methods (albeit, less than some advertise!), but specifically, it is the silent space of awareness itself – the light of love and wisdom from Divinity. The scriptures invite us to contemplate on this inner spaciousness, to turn to stillness and beingness itself, the space of “I am” beyond false identity. To find this spaciousness we must centre in it, as it doesn’t fall below our sense of perception as it is perception itself. In this silent space (silent even when there’s no audio silence or when we’re doing the dishes), we start to uncover wholeness, peace, transcendent love, and joy.
The thing is, our sense of self tends to be centered in what we might call the delusions of “the fall.” The great 18th-century sage Emanuel Swedenborg believed that the story of Adam and Eve was a symbolic story about humanity’s transformation from being in a place of harmony with life and the earth (“Adam” meaning earth) to a place of division from our eating from the misleading “tree of knowledge of good and evil.” You see, our wisdom shouldn’t centre on the knowledges we seem to cultivate from our own efforts (picking and eating from the tree), but from God herself, the root of our very own consciousness. And interestingly, Swedenborg believed that this “fall” from the Eden of our true natures started when we began to name and divide all the things of the garden – when we started to believe that all these things are actually divided in nature and that there’s a real fundamental difference between Eve and Adam.
In an important way, Christ was calling us back to an understanding of our oneness when he said that there is only one Teacher: The One within all things that is not centered on the fundamental ignorance of our thinking, divisional, “fallen,” ego minds. He called on us to understand that this One (known by many names, from Krishna to Christ) is always the one that we truly learn from, especially when we come to learn of something truly valuable such as our true natures. Indeed, without our intrinsic connection to God we couldn’t be aware, let alone rediscover within that light of awareness that we are children of God and not stepchildren!
But Christ’s teachings are similar to many ancient and modern sages’: they fall on deaf ears if they are only accepted intellectually and not discovered in our beingness itself and lived out. This is why Jesus asks us, “Why say, ‘Lord, Lord!’ and not do what I’ve told you to do?” More than telling our teachers, “Well, Jesus said I can’t call you my teacher anymore,” I think this is a call for us to let go of our “fallen” perspective and turn toward the light of the Teacher within, even while our teachers continue to lecture. This starts by noticing that all of our mind’s delusions, deep divisions, and false ideas of self falls within the seemingly endless yet dimensionless space of awareness within; meaning that we start to see that all the things we tend to get caught up in fall within the peace of perception, and that we can centre on that spaciousness instead even while we continue to live our lives.
On this journey of discovery of harmony within, part of us will be quite dubious. But it is that voice of dubiousness itself, our sense of judgmentalness and limitation, neediness and mortality, that keeps us from becoming aware of our natures still rooted back in the Garden. That voice or feeling isn’t us. And like anything that seems at odds with God’s harmonious nature, we are called to see it while letting God work through us. Not striving to destroy that aspect of our minds (this is just lower mind fighting lower mind), but by gaining some much-needed perspective and distance from our intimate identification with our conceptual, division-centered thinking and sense of self, while also repeatedly finding that ever-present place of humble peace and shared transcendental spaciousness, that great “I AM” beyond analyzing, until we don’t have to look for it any longer.
Peace is with you,
Rev. Cory