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FLOW FROM THE CORE
4-18-10 In my Chattanooga Times column of 11-26-96 I wrote, “We minister by who we are just as a rose ministers by its own distinctive aroma. Not one person on the planet is without something unique to give. Every person is a one-of-a-kind miracle of creation ... Whoever you are is special and whatever flows from that core originality is your glory.”
To me, this is the bedrock spiritual idea upon which spiritual lives must be built. I will go so far as to say no person can built a spiritual life of any quality and beauty without believing in the value of their core essence.
Paul Williams was an old rock and roller and edited a rock magazine called Crawdaddy but he will always be a spiritual teacher to me because of his wonderful book titled Remember Your Essence. When I first read it I bought a whole box and gave them as gifts. I can’t remember ever doing that with another book.
The central idea of the book is to get in contact with our core, our essence, and flow from there.
Some truths are so powerful they can pass right through a wall of resistance. I gave a copy of the book to a lady who claimed to be an atheist and she loved it. She said it was something she needed to read.
There really is a difference in religion and spirituality. Religion is paraphernalia of a complete belief system. Spirituality is the experience of any value, idea, concept or truth that transmits spiritual power and energy to us. The lady to whom I gave Williams’ book received that spiritual power and energy.
I have no idea of Williams’ religious affiliation or history but I doubt he is affiliated because there are none of the telltale signals in his writing. I can read a few paragraphs of any book and usually tell you where the writer comes from and where he is trying to take you. All I feel when I read Remember Your Essence is a man sharing a deep truth that has been directly revealed to him.
In rsponse to my recent column praising mysticism a person asked, “How does a mystic know what is true if he or she does not believe in divine revelation?” What can you believe that is more solid than your own lifetime body of experiences? Over time we learn the experiences that are truth to us and those that are spurious. Can’t God reveal your truths to you through experience more convincingly that through words written thousands of years ago? The most powerful experiences I have had in my basic Christian orientation asnd even with my more limited study of Buddhism were direct experiences and not based on words someone had written about them. Christ spoke Arabic Greek and Buddha wrote in Pali and I find that languages themselves place some limitation on the ability of the writer to be understood.
If we cannot understand that God has given us a completely unique inner core -- one unlike anyone in the word -- and that through this core we are able to express our truths and essence to the world, what can we believe that has any real spiritual significance?
Everything else is diversionary. It just takes us away from finding and using our gifts.
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