The Part of You That Can Never Rebel Against God

There is a place within us that is one with God. That place cannot rebel. It cannot stray. We can betray that place by behaving in ways that are misaligned with our true essence. But we cannot change our true essence. Our true essence is oneness with God. And on that level, it just automatically expresses God's will. never the opposite doesn't go against God God's will but the fact is we're multi-levelled beings so there can be misalignment between the different levels so you could have your behaviors be misaligned with your essence meaning you can behave in a way that's not true to yourself maybe that's really what it means to thine own self be true perhaps that's what that means Uh and it's not just that behaviors can be misaligned with our essence because it's obvious that behaviors can be misaligned with our essence because behaviors are the most external superficial level of of the human experience. But even things that are more internal like let's say um thoughts thoughts are more internal than behaviors, right? Thoughts are not even physical. And yet our thoughts can certainly be misaligned with our essence. We can have scripts that we're reciting out loud in our own head. I mean, not physically out loud, but we can have these these monologues that we tell ourselves repeatedly that are not even true. You know, if you tell yourself that you're anything other than a child of God, that's, you know, that's not true. Um, you know, you can go go even deeper than thoughts because thought is still external because it's still an form. It's still a form of expression. You can have things that are even deeper than expression like emotion. Emotion comes before thought because thoughts express emotion. The emotion is what is expressed in the thought. The emotion is the the the energy that's before even expression. Even internal expression like thought. So emotions you could have emotions very internal but emotions that are misaligned with your essence. Meaning, you could love things that your essence doesn't care for, but you can have a really strong pull or an attraction to something and and find it really important, but your essence doesn't find that thing important or valuable or worthy of love. And conversely, you know, you could have a really strong fear of something that you think is really really um formidable and your essence being at one with God is completely not concerned with that thing. It's not intimidated. So in that case, your your emotions are misaligned with your essence. And you go even deeper, even your intellect. And by that I don't just mean your thoughts because thoughts are the expression of the intellect. I mean even deeper intellect itself meaning the wiring itself meaning the capacity for processing information. The way the hard drive is built not the software. Even that could become misaligned with your essence. So that your way of processing reality is is not a reflection of the truth. So there are so many levels on which we become misaligned with our essence. And if you want to use the cabalistic terms, so these are names of the soul, but they're not all the same entity that they're naming. That's why they have different names. They're different levels or layers of the soul. So nephish you can't translate these words you know but uh nephish is the spiritual energy which animates behaviors action and ruah is the spiritual energy which animates the the emotions and um nama is the spiritual energy which animates the intellect and then kaya is even deeper it's it's much more rarified and abstract it's the spiritual energy which I would say it animates your faith or your beliefs your your your most deeply held convictions, but even those could be misaligned with your essence. And then the highest level is comes from the word, which means one, united in union with is the part of us that's one with God. And and so here's the deal. The atonement slashatonement is really a process of allowing the layers of false self to fall away. And this is also why this cannot be done until we have a rashana until we have the opportunity for surrender. Because if you haven't yet surrendered to God, then your self-concept is still a humanpowered self-concept. Which means there's a limit to how much of yourself you can give up. You're not going to let yourself surrender all those layers because that's you. And how can you not be you? But if you have surrendered first, then you're ready for whatever. You're ready to freef fall into infinity and find your true self or not. Or not. That's also a possibility. Or not. Or I won't find my true self. But at least I'm not going to continue to play the role of a false self. And what happens is all that stuff that was a betrayal of my essence, it comes to light as just that, as a betrayal, as a an a a false expression, a a a a misalignment. and um and it becomes irrelevant and it just drops off. I I I think you know anyone who's been through the the steps understands what I'm describing here. Even though this sounds very poetic and maybe it's hard to relate to these words, but if you've done the steps, you know, what does it mean? Um, in six and seven, we're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character and humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings. Basically, it's so interesting. It doesn't mean that we go and work on our shortcomings and we try to fix it or change it. Doesn't say that at all. It actually means we're just ready for him to take it. We say, "God, I'm ready to surrender this. I've been using this a lot. This character defect here. Um, this has been my defense mechanism. This is my coping mechanism. This is how I've been getting through life until now. I I use this all the time, multiple times a day. This is my go-to thing in all the most stressful situations. This is what I go to. And you know, this has been a prized possession even for all of the chaos that it's brought me in my in my life. But this is what I know and I've been I've perfected it. You know, I I I'm a I'm a master at this. I'm a black belt in this. And yet, because I've done the surrender already, I'm ready to give it up. I'm ready to let it drop. And you know, what will I use to protect myself from now on if I don't have my coping mechanisms? It's a very important question. Listen to me. What will I use to defend myself now? From now on, if I let my coping mechanisms drop away, if I if I've identified that my defects of character are essentially coping mechanisms which have exceeded their functionality and I'm ready to let them drop, then how exactly am I going to function and how exactly am I going to protect myself and and and how and or how will I be defended and what will defend me and what's the answer? What's the answer? And why can this only happen after surrender? The answer is I'm retired. I don't protect myself anymore. I don't pursue my agenda anymore. I'm not here to be responsible to shield myself from reality anymore. I've surrendered. God has taken care of me. He is curating my experience. I will trust him even when he brings me through through something that that causes me distress. I'll breathe through it. I'll move. I'll keep just I I'll get to the other side. I'll flow through it. But no, I'm not going to try to curate my own experience. I'm not here to try to buffer things or block things or deflect things or I'm really surrender means I'm ready to experience reality naked and to let it all come at me however God wants it to come at me and at the end of the day it's only him bringing it to me. So you know who could hurt me? What can hurt me? Nothing. It's all fine. It's all good. All right. So that's again why you can't you don't have a chance to let the character defects drop away until you've done the surrender because you first have to be ready with no longer being that version of yourself. No longer being that version of yourself that as far as you know because it's all you have known that's the real you. Even though you kind of sense how could it be the real me? It leads me to doing things that are in violation of my own morals and principles. How could how could I be in I mean it's a terminological inongruity. How could my true self force me or lead me to engage in behaviors that I don't even approve of? I don't even think this is a good way to live. So how how is that supposed to make sense? And so I know that it can't really be the real me. I know that this isn't the real me. But it's all I know. It's all I've experienced. And if I let this false self drop away, what am I going to be left with? And how am I going to function? How am I going to live? All right. So again, if you try to do house cleaning before you do surrender, you have no adequate answer to the any of those questions. And basically, no matter how much goodwill you have and how much you want to turn over a new leaf, you're not going to be able to because sooner or later, you're going to have to you're gonna have to do something to function and you're probably just going to do the go-to thing that you know that that it works. So, the surrender has to come first. We have to be comfortable with free falling. We have to be comfortable with at least the notion that my true self is nothing like the self that I've gotten to know over this whole lifetime. And with that, then you can have the atonement, the at onement. And that's what actually causes all of that garbage, all that schmutz, that cakedown debris to just fall off, blow away, disperse. Is that when you truly surrender, you get back to your truest self, your essential self, whatever it is. And then you have no need for the survival mechanisms which have exceeded their functionality.