The Gift of Disillusionment

Sometimes we over-explain to be understood or to help one understand. We want people to know what we are saying and what we are not saying. Jesus seemed to not do this, especially when teaching crowds. The good news is I am not Jesus, but the better news is Jesus did go on to explain things deeper to those closest to him, to those who stuck around to really figure out what was being meant by what he said. Even after being with Jesus three full years, those closest to him did not understand what he always meant. It was only after certain events took place that a life lived “through” disorienting experiences understood the words. It was only when the Spirit of those words came to teach beyond the physical body of Jesus, that they started to understand things in their own body, in the depths of their own being.

The Word must become flesh… before it returns to the Spirit of what it means. 

This is why we invite people to be close to us. To remain. To linger long enough to move beyond what appears offensive or hard to understand, to see if you really want to know. To grow together, rather than apart. To finally see that we, and everything, has always been about how you and God are connected…to everything. To keep reading, not only our words, but the entirety of our lives. 

Disillusionment is a gift. 

Yet it is often where people retreat, not to a retreat center to go deeper into the invitation, but to the familiarity of the old life, the old ways of meaning and defining that which keeps you uncomfortable, while you remain comfortable in your illusions. 

Dis-illusion literally means “freeing from illusion.”

When we are frustrated by our own reality, our own illusions, our own interpretation of it, we can either move towards understanding what they are inviting us to, or stay inside their prison. Revelatory words, as Jesus speaks, are designed to free us by challenging our preconceived ideas until something new is conceived. Until something is born again from the original place of creation free of illusions. 

In the original place, we are naked and unashamed, again. 

So when you feel disillusioned and disoriented at challenging words, images, or life experiences, know that you are being invited to be reoriented towards the deepest meaning. Behind all illusions is the Spirit of Truth, awaiting to be discovered, if we only stay long enough until things over-explained become explained through embodied knowledge rather than mere mental agreement or disagreement. 

You have to be there, in the experience, to know.

Therefore we explain, not to be understood, but for you to know the message through the messenger, wherever that messenger appears. Whether in books, birds, bees, the stranger, or the beauty and hardships of life, here is the invitation to see everything as an invitation to return to the original meaning of our Creator. 

Here all things are understood, even when the mind does not understand. 

Here in the Mystery, we are fully known, naked, and unashamed.

Here, we are no longer there, in our illusions or definitions of the past, present, or future.

Here, we finally are.

I AM is no longer only I WAS or I WILL BE.

And LOVE is all that will ever remain.

-PH

Image credit: Oleg Shupliak

Jesus spoke to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable, so the prophets words were fulfilled:

“I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world.”

Then he left the crowd. His disciples came to him and said, 

“Explain to us the parable…”

- Matthew 13:34-36