Thursday, January 26, 2006
To Be Or Not To Be
This marks the fifth and final article that I wrote for Automata Magazine. I plan on setting up a link list of them all on my side bar this week. They have been published and quoted in numerous zines, articles, sermons, websites, and the like since they were originally published in Automata. I've been told that they reach far beyond the Christian audience they were written to. I feel honored that they have had so much of an impression on so many, and hope that they continue to do so as I enter into the world of other-than-Christianity.
Automata 9.0
Have you ever asked yourself what you would want said of you at your funeral? What is it that you would want to be remembered for? Would it be for the things you had accomplished, having been a good worker, the actions you had taken? Or would it be the inspiring character, the realness and freedom you expressed no matter what action you took?
I've written before on becoming who you are created to be. But instead of asking what it is you should become, how often do we ask ourselves who we truly are now, in the depths of our being? So often we react to life, living up to expectations put on us from the outside. We settle for things we like to do, and things we are good at doing, but often at the sacrifice of pursuing our deepest desires of who we dream of being. Is it only a dream though? If these desires are instilled into your inner being, how much happier would you be if you were living them? Releasing yourself to live that dream, you are allowing the real you that has been hiding to reveal itself. You are allowing yourself to be who you really are, at your core. And you are bringing others a message of freedom to do the same.
Imagine the freedom you have to offer to others. Imagine the greatness you can achieve. Mohandas Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela - These people, author Stephen Covey describes in his book The 8th Habit, are some of the great people of our history who were driven by vision, discipline, and passion. They had developed the four intelligences -mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual. They had expressed it through vision, discipline, and passion. The main difference, however, between them and one like Hitler is that unlike Hitler, they were governed by conscience instead of ego. They had a moral authority, a spiritual guidance. The character which had been instilled in them by God, shone through. You have that same choice, to put aside your ego, your reactionary nature, for the purpose of restoring the world around you. This is not, however, a call to serve others at the detriment to your own self; quite the contrary. They had answered, and so can you, the call at the core of your being, to allow yourself to be what has been instilled within you to be.
Without being true to your self, how then can you be true in your relating to God or your understanding of Him? And how could you then bring an honest message of healing and restoration to the world around you? Elizabeth O'Connor said in her book Journey Inward, Journey Outward, "The discovery of the real self is the way to the treasure hidden in a field. The gift a person brings to another is the gift of himself." If you are truly made in the image of God, would it not stand to reason that you are instilled with His attributes. I would go further, to call each of us a unique expression of God. He Himself called us "little Gods."
These are the very things Isaiah chapter 58 speaks of. When you are your true self before God, the character of God shines through you. You become "like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not." You will be called "The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in." You become the expression of God that you are intended to be, the very arms of God to the world around you, when you take rest in Him and allow yourself simply "to be."
"We are not free to be anyone we wish. We are free only to be who we are." -Rabbi Rami Shapiro
So I ask again, what is it you want to be remembered for?
