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Return to First Unitarian Church Website This sermon was delivered by Greg Nooney on 2/7/2005. Metaphors
for an Enhanced Life Series —
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[Summary of the Children's story: There is a place which I call "Always Land" as opposed to "Neverland." Some call this place "Home" or "Heaven." In this place there is a very big mansion. Inside this mansion is a huge game room. Everyone is playing an incredible RPG (Role Play Game). In this game, the characters believe they are separated from the players so that they can have total freedom to do whatever they want. They are not separated, but the players agree to allow them this freedom. When the game ends the character comes home and reunites totally with the player. . . . We are alll these characters and we can seek help whenever we want from the players who are still in "Always Land" because those players are our higher selves and there is really no separation between us and the players.] [A reading from The Way of the Wizard" by Deepak Chopra (lesson four) where Merlin returns after a long absence and challenges the knights of the round table to tell him who King Arthur is. Merlin is not satisfied with any of the answers, and finally accepts the wind's answer, which is nothing.] So Merlin leaves us with 0% here, 100% somewhere else or rather everywhere. I am not ready to go that far. For me, 10% is about right. I know that there are many of you that perceive this spiritual dimension as pure fantasy. And perhaps it is. We know that this world that we see and hear and touch and smell is solid and can be measured and experimented with. I hit my hand on this podium and there is an impact. All of you could hear the sound. I could feel the pain on my hand. I do not know if the podium felt anything. Quantum theory tells us that the probability of this happening again if I perform a similar action is very good. In fact the probability of my hand flowing through this podium is ridiculously small. However the probability of that occurring is not zero. This is because we also know that the tiny bits of matter within the atoms of this hand and this podium are so small and the distances between these bits are so large, that it can truthfully be said that both are composed almost entirely of empty space. String theory postulates that even those tiny bits of matter, those so called subatomic particles, are actually made up of strings of energy vibrating in certain ways. So as way of a thought experiment let’s say that we have devised a way to allow our vibrations to coalesce in certain predicable ways so that we will mostly agree on what is happening here around us. However, this world out here, as we perceive it, is certainly not real. The slightest change in our agreed upon vibrations would dramatically alter it. I’ll come back to that. So if this world that seems to be so real is not as we think it is; in fact it may not be real at all, then what? Certainly, to postulate that there is a spiritual dimension that is real can be even less supported. At least in this world of matter and energy, we can conduct experiments and those experiments will come out the same over and over again. There is a certain consistency in this world whether it is real or not. When I go to sleep tonight, I expect the sun to come up the next day whether or not I specifically imagine it. In fact if I purposely imagine that it will not come up, it still will come up. However, I would like to ask the simple question of who is doing this imagining or not imagining. And who is reflecting on these questions at this moment. I invite you to close your eyes for a second, and notice who has done so or who has decided not to do so. Can you sense the intelligence behind the action, behind the thought, behind the choosing?
So let’s engage our imagination a little. Let’s imagine that our experience here in this body, on this planet, is only 10% of who we really are. 90% of our essence exists in some other plane, some other dimensional reality. Let’s further imagine that we are in fact sitting in a room somewhere playing an RPG game. We are of course very powerful beings and we worked hard to construct this elaborate gameboard, which we call planet Earth. When we began playing, we created a character in cooperation with all the other powerful beings playing the game. In order to make the game more interesting, we gave the character independence from our control. We gave it free choice. And to ensure that it stayed free, we constructed a barrier. We erased its memory banks of any experience of its true origins or its true nature. It cannot see its other 90% and doesn’t even know of its existence. It thinks it is totally alone and cut off from the rest of itself. In fact it doesn’t even know about the existence of the rest of itself. Of course this 90% is not cut off from the 10%. The 90% knows that there is no cutoff. But the 10% doesn’t know this. This perception of a cutoff was not designed for pain or for difficulty. It was designed purely so that there could be absolute freedom to do whatever it wants to do. So let’s shift our perception to this 90%. I will call it the higher self. Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of this higher self. The higher self lives in a realm that we cannot easily imagine. This is a realm of connection and love. The higher self is intrigued by the experiences of polarity and conflict that are present on the Gameboard, and becomes fascinated by these experiences. The higher self watches its character make decisions, experience suffering and pain of all kinds, engage in conflicts and hardships, fall in and out of love, experience ecstasy and despair, anger and peace, over and over again. Each time the higher self tries to do two things. The higher self tries to integrate these experiences into its life in the realm it lives, and the higher self tries to comfort the character and provide some subtle influence to the character. The higher self cannot impose any influences on the character because that might damage the barrier or veil, and the character would wake up and come home before the game is over. So it tries to be subtle. Perhaps the higher self talks to some its companions in the game room and asks them to subtly influence their character to interact with its character in some way. It wants its character to partially wake up, to re-member the connection and love that is its nature, but to not do it too dramatically so it won’t come home and end the game. [Comments and sharing of personal experiences with lucid dreaming] Of course sometimes the character does come home and then gets another life and tries again usually in a different character form. Our children do not even flinch when this happens in their RPG games. They just start over but they keep the knowledge they gained from the last time. O.K. now lets switch perspectives again to the perspective of the character on the Gameboard of free choice. Here I am. I begin having some kind of spiritual curiosities. I imagine myself on a spiritual quest. I seek out opportunities for solitude. I start to meditate. I work hard to improve my interactions with other characters. I try to be loving to my family and friends. I even try to find common ground with my enemies. Perhaps I begin to sense a connection with a higher power, a higher self. Perhaps I notice that I have gut instincts or intuitions that tend to be helpful when I listen to them. I begin to listen to these instincts more often. I become less angry and miserable because I begin to imagine that there is a presence that loves me and is in fact a part of me. Perhaps I even imagine that there is a spiritual realm. What if I sense the 90% rule, and start to live my life by such an idea. How might my life be different? So what could be the purpose of a game such as this? Again let’s turn to our children’s experience in playing electronic games. The first games were all about winning. Pac Man had to get through the maze without getting killed. But that has gradually changed. Now the characters have experiences that change them. Some of them even have enough AI or artificial intelligence to make some decisions on their own, based on those experiences. Sometimes they express emotions. There may still be a quest of some kind to accomplish, but that is not the only concern. Ask the teenagers you know about this. They will often go on journeys which have little or nothing to do with the actual winning of the game, and much more to do with the experience. So back to us here living this life as a character in our higher self’s game. It is not about winning the game. It is about experiencing the game and trying to re-member who we are without having to leave. Closing Words (in unison): The
Silent Prayer |