Another parable from the Gospel of Thomas:
And he said, The human one is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea and drew it up from the sea full of little fish. Among them the wise fisherman discovered a fine large fish. He threw all the little fish back into the sea, and easily chose the large fish. Anyone here with two good ears had better listen!
And then from the King James Bible:
Seek ye the kingdom of heaven and all else shall be added unto you.
Luke 12:31
In the passage leading up to this, we are advised to focus on the kingdom of heaven. Robert Tennyson Stevens, creator of Conscious Language, refers to the kingdom of heaven as the heart’s first priority. The concept of “creating your own reality” often involves making lists of all the wonderful things we seek to have in our lives. Many of us get caught up achieving and acquiring without stopping to ask – what really matters to me?
What if, instead of attending to the wants and needs of the material world (we’ll get to that later), we first choose to be honest with ourselves about our heart’s first priority. The one thing that would truly break us open with shock and awe if we really got it. This is usually the thing that we have locked away, that we refuse to look at directly. It is the thing that we have decided we could never actually have because we don’t believe it exists or because we are unworthy of it. How much courage does it take to be wholeheartedly sincere and ask for the thing we believe we could never truly receive?
The heart’s first priority can be surprising. It might be to feel the love of a parent, to have a real home, to be with a true beloved partner, to be at peace with an event or experience that was unbearably painful or terrifying. It is a thing that evokes feeling. When we land with true sincerity upon the heart’s first priority, it is the doorway to our godliness embodied – the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God. When we touch upon it, allow ourselves to feel it, allow the possibility of it to take our breath away, we may feel vulnerable. There may be tears. And with the feeling and the tears comes a melting, a softening of the places we have hardened and frozen against the pain of not receiving that which matters most.
What could you ask for, that if you truly receive it, would restore your faith in yourself and in your world?
Once the door is opened, we enter a place of true receiving and can claim what we most wish to have: I claim my father’s love, I own my own true home, I have my beloved partner, I am the source of my everlasting peace. We melt into the heaven of receiving, owning everything that is there for us to simply let in.
Now from the kingdom of your own personal heaven, you are ready to allow your God (or whatever you want to call it) to provide for you all that you need. Not necessarily all that you think you want. All that you need so that you can be fully present and alive and if you dare to ask, so that you can turn your attention toward the next question: What am I here to be? What is there for me to do now that my needs are met?