The Revelation

Years ago, I began my meditation with the question, “What is life?” I then asked, “What is?”  I began concentrating on the senses that I am not aware of, encouraging them to be expressed in my awareness, feeling them, being aware of using them, being them.  A question came into my mind: “What is my true essence?”  No answer came and I ended that day’s meditation, but continued to use this question as a focus in my subsequent meditations.

Subsequently, I went to a concert featuring Rickie Byars-Beckwith, a singer and music director at Agape, a church in Santa Monica.  For some reason, her singing evoked a strong emotional response within me.  One particular song moved me to tears and I don’t believe that I actually heard the words on a conscious level.  Since I didn’t know, or remember, what the song was about – only that it had moved me – I purchased her CD.

The song that had so moved me was “Genesis” from the CD entitled “I Found a Deeper Love”, Copyright ©1993 by Eternal Dance Music.  That song spoke directly to me.  It filled my whole being.  I played it over and over again and shook with emotion and cried each time.  It was as if I remembered something that I already knew, as if that song touched something that was buried so deep within me that the reawakening of it, the bringing to memory of it, was overwhelming.  It was like it pointed me in a certain direction.  When I listened to the song, I had no desire for doing anything that wasn’t going to lead me in that direction.

What in this song grabbed me and shook me so deeply?

i was walking asleep, dreaming i was awake

These words seemed to embody where I was at that point in my life.  I thought I was aware.  I was definitely doing all of the things that were supposed to make me spiritually conscious: meditating, reading, attending services.  Yet my life was in disarray.  These words made the reason clear: I believed myself to be awake; but, in actuality, I was still asleep.

What could i be to please my mother

What could i do to bring peace to my father

Although a part of the impetus behind my achievement mentality stems from my Taurean nature, I have had to accept the sometimes negative effect of my mother’s rare approval of however I chose to express myself.  It was like she was never happy with me just being me.  Her approval or disapproval (her love?) seemed to be based upon whether I lived up to a specific standard.  Although I consistently rejected this criterion, I, nevertheless, (against my will it seems) judged myself by my ability to please her.  I rebelled against the very subtle, negative comments; yet, I was intensely pained by their use, and tried for many, many years to generate from my mother expressions of the love that, deep down inside, I knew that she felt for me.

My dad was my heart, as I was his.  Denied the opportunities to be a man in America, to stand tall with pride and dignity, to speak one’s mind without retribution, he suffered a pain that was and is common to the transplanted or colonized African male.  I was his star child, the one who could and would achieve all that he could not.  But, in securing his peace, what price did I pay?

i was spinning around, ’til i finally found

that part of me that was always free

If I hadn’t yet realized that I was “walking asleep,” I recognized in myself the song’s stated characteristics of this condition all too clearly.  I was definitely

. . . pulled by the weight of this world

so turned around ’til it’s hard to discern

what is up or what is down

I knew this, of course.  What I didn’t know was what to do about it.  I was trying different things – taking a small business course to help me run my law practice more efficiently and productively, sending out resumes, taking spiritual classes, meditating, crying, complaining, pleading with God.  What else could I do?  I did everything!!! . . . but one thing:

stand still and be your own salvation

you are a child of God’s Creation

you’re the light of this world

you are God in the flesh

This was the awakening, the reminder of who and what I am.  This was what I had forgotten and why my life was in such confusion and without direction.  Stop running to and fro.  Stop using so much effort to find solutions to problems the nature, the genesis, and the context of which you don’t even understand.  Stop looking outside of yourself for resolution.  Wake up!  Wake up!  You are already that for which you seek.  It was as though I was flooded with memories – memories of me outside of myself, beyond myself, other than myself; memories of my original embodied self, the me who first became and why I became.  I remembered!

 and as you awake you must confess

I am here for my God to

reveal what was said in the beginning

. . .

go back to the beginning

in the beginning, God

“Genesis” answered my question about my life’s purpose and so became my revelation.

Note: A video of Rickie Byars-Beckwith singing Genesis with the Agape International Choir is in PathLinks