The Mystery of Blood--A Spiritual Exercise

Part 1 of 2

Try this out:

How many lives do you think it took to make you?

The answer is one.

Someone could say, “no, its two--mom and dad fell in love and created me!”

While that's very nice, and warm, and fuzzy, consider this...

All of us have 2 parents. 4 grandparents. 8 great-grandparents. 16 great-great-grandparents. 32 great, great, great-grandparents. 64 great, great, great, great-grandparents. I’ll stop there. That is a total of 126 people. 126 lifetimes. (And that is only going back 6 generations—really not all that far in time, years and history. Less than a cosmic flash-in-the-pan.)

126 lifetimes. Eliminate but one of them, and you’d not be here. Just one. Any one.

Please notice I use the term lifetime in order to differentiate from life.
Not one of us has had more than 4 grandparents, nor only 3. These numbers are identical for any of us. No exceptions whatever. Remember, if but one of any of these were missing? No you and me.

So, where’s the one life?

All of these 126 forebears had one thing in common. Life. They all had the very same life. (You may also wish to ponder other relatives and loved ones, friends and family, both here and gone, or more distant ancestors—add an enemy, as well.) Their “garments” may have been different—personalities, the variant shape of their bodies, race, ethnicity, character traits, values, creeds, faiths and beliefs, etc. (Their situations, relationships, status, property, wealth or poverty, etc., was what they carried in their pockets,) but the life in all of them was the same. No exceptions. They all existed. They all breathed. That is what life, in its essence, is. Existence. Great-Grandma Pearl Mae Johnson wasn’t a phantom, nor a statue of stone. She was—she had life! All of these people breathed—the most basic essence of Life. The same life that is in you. Lifetimes have various qualities (garments.) Life has but one. Isness.
One life. Life.

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Gen 2:7

At the end of this paragraph, pause and experience this. Close your eyes and become aware of your breath. In the fullness of each breath, which is the primary, ever-renewing, indisputable evidence of the presence of life, experience your life. Experience your spirit. Know (experience,) The Spirit. Experience unity. Know eternal life.

***

We are really not our own, are we?

Contrary to what we might think, the Soul needs no healing. It needs no feeding. It requires nothing. How can it? It is perfect just as it is, because it just is. It is not a matter of fixing the soul, but getting to the soul that heals. (Or, more aptly put, to come from the soul. “Thy Kingdom come.”)

Often, we refer to someone as having a beautiful soul, or kind spirit, yet, what we are really describing is a type of demeanor, a positive outlook, or attitude, or a pleasing aspect of personality, or a character trait of some kind. These are still the garments.
The Soul just is. And requires nothing. It is our garments that need the work—sometimes to be cleaned or laundered, sometimes changed or updated, often altered and at other times discarded. Sometimes we wear inappropriate clothes, other times way too many. In many of us, they are often just right and stylish-perfect for the occasion, at other times all wrong, or we need the makeover.

But, the soul just is.

Part 2 tomorrow.