The wisdom of men such as Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, and the Buddha shines through all mythic overlays and religious dogmas.
- The truths that they embodied in their lives transcend cultures and personal beliefs.
- You needn’t be an orthodox Christian to believe that you should love your neighbor as yourself. Nor do you have to be a Buddhist to acknowledge that the craving, hatred, and ignorance that derive from seeing ourselves as essentially separate from all other beings are a major source of suffering in our lives.
Regardless of the masters’ traditions, their teachings speak to us because they lived actual physical lives. They also confronted universal challenges on their paths to self-awareness and to comprehension of the power they carried inside them.
- Each of them had to awaken to the full measure of his Contract
- they were not born enlightened.
Their teachings are blueprints for what our spirits need to do make the transition from seeing life in physical terms to understanding the purpose and meaning of life on a symbolic level.
- We mistakenly believe that the great spiritual leaders, such as Abraham, Moses, the Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad, had their Contacts spelled out for them.
- Their life paths were not obvious but required that they develop the trust and stamina to surrender unconditionally to the will of Heaven
Re-source: Realization
the fulfillment or achievement of something desired or anticipated
When you become conscious of your Contract, as opposed to living it in an unconscious way, you go through a painful process of severance, similar to the Hero’s Journey, because you are no longer part of the tribal mind.
- “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it,” Jesus said.
- You have broken away from the general mind-set, and the group is likely to perceive your individuation – like anything new or different from the status quo – as a fundamental threat to its own unity.
- Ironically, as in the case of these great teachers, severance from one’s personal tribe can lead to something beneficial to the survival of the universal human tribe.
- The great mystics – Abraham, Moses, the Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad – all shared a common fate of abandonment and separation from their tribe early in their mission, and this alienation or exclusion was essential to the completion of their Contract.
You cannot come to know the depths of the purpose of your life if you are not willing to release those parts of your life that are no longer necessary.
In Jesus we encounter a real human being who found it necessary to undergo a harsh and seemingly unjust death. Yet from that scenario he created a model of forgiveness that now stands as an inspiration for all whose suffering is undeserved.
- During his last days, Jesus modeled the archetypal ritual of surrendering all that we are to the Divine.
- He showed that we are here to serve divine wisdom, as opposed to divine wisdom serving us.
- And so when we are in those desperately painful experiences that we must pass through because of the agreements we have made before our earthly lives began, the practice of forgiveness, illogical though it may seem to our minds, is the only practice that finally soothes our soul.
Although he would not have acknowledged making contact with the divine, the Buddha did establish contact with a universal level of wisdom and insight that transcends ordinary human awareness
The great religious leaders had to find their Sacred contracts in order to overcome their own limitations, fears, and shadows. You and I may never become fully realized beings, at least in this lifetime, but all we actually need to do is strive to realize our fullest divine potential.
- That may not be the same potential as that of the masters we’ve been studying; it may be less, or even more. But it’s our potential, and that’s all that is expected of us.
“The Mind, once enlightened, cannot again become dark.” -Thomas Paine, Common Sense
craving and resource from “Sacred Contracts” by Carolyn Myss
