“Everything you need is right here,” said the young woman behind the counter of the Philadelphia Airport food counter as she handed me my bag to go. “Really?” I couldn’t resist saying. “Everything? Absolutely everything that I need?” And we shared a laugh together at the idea that the bag of sushi rolls, wasabi, low sodium (wtf?) soy sauce, chopsticks and napkins could really represent the sum total of what I need for true happiness and fulfillment.
But the truth is that she was a messenger from, as Deepak Chopra would call it, “my nonlocal intelligence,” or higher self. Her comment caught my attention because she uttered a profound truth: everything you need truly is right here. And don’t I forget that truth all the time? Wasn’t it great of my nonlocal intelligence to remind me of it?
See what I know from my study of the science of mind is that right here and right now, every single one of us is whole, perfect and complete. Nonlocal intelligence (the unified field, Higher Power, Atman-Brahman presence, Holy Spirit, Mother-Father-Parent, Christ Consciousness, Sacred Grandmother Tree, Yahweh, Yemiya, Jehovah Jireh, God) has already given me everything that it is ever going to give me. The Holy They (see upcoming blog on why I’m using this term) has given me love. The Holy They has given me peace. The Holy They has given me joy. The Holy They has given me abundance. The Holy They has given me wholeness.
So when I am feeling sad, lonely, sick, poor, or angry, it is not because I lack all these things that have been given, it is because I not receiving what has already been given to me. It strikes me that “acceptance” which is often talked about as if it is about just reconciling myself to the hard truth of my existence could be reconsidered to mean literally accepting as in accepting a gift or something that is handed to me.
In Genesis 22, God introduces himself as “Jehovah Jireh” meaning
“the Lord will provide.” One analysis reminds us that this is not
provision in the sense of snacks or rent money, but in the context of the most profound need a person could have. This is the story of Abraham being commanded by God to sacrifice his son Isaac (a great gift from God already long coming) on Mount Moriah. Since the time I first heard it as a young child, this story has terrified and moved me. Abraham is being asked to make the ultimate sacrifice, to kill his most precious loved one and he is so willing and so faithful and so trusting of his God that he makes the preparations to do — he ties Isaac to the altar and raises the knife to cut his son’s throat. And indeed the Lord rescues him and provides a ram who gets caught in a thicket nearby and is substituted for Isaac in blood sacrifice.
While I might be tempted to take the violence and the blood and the idea that animal life is cheap out of this story, there’s a reason that the gore and the hell of it is important. So often I find that the times I need to be willing to do what the Holy They wants me to do is when I least want to. If I find myself saying “Please, God. anything but that,” I’m Abraham on Mount Moriah.
And what does that really mean? It means that I have forgotten that the true name of the Holy They is “The Lord will Provide.” Or, in new thought terms, “my good has been provided.” In other words, I can do absolutely the single hardest thing that is being asked of me. I am safe in the arms of Divine Love. Everything I need is right here.