Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.
—-Jesus of Nazareth
One of the quickest ways to turn off many an atheist or agnostic is to start a message with a quote from Jesus! Our egos certainly take a liking or a disliking to certain messengers, depending upon our vision and values, and how well the messenger conforms to our hopes and expectations. Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Mohamed, Kant, Aristotle, Nietzsche are all potential guides for those who consider themselves lost, which, typically, are all those still enmeshed with their ego, So this brings up a question:
Of what value to us is our ego?
Our ego can be likened to the shell of an oyster. The oyster shell is rarely recognized for its own beauty. Like the oyster shell, our personality may be appealing to some, ugly to others, or just plain uninteresting. Yet we all have access to different, unknown, and, potentially, sublimely transformative layers of our self, even though the personality often fails to consciously engage with them.
In an oyster, natural pearls form when an irritant, usually a parasite, or, perhaps, the proverbial grain of sand, works its way into an oyster, mussel, or clam. As a defense mechanism, a fluid is used to coat the irritant. Layer upon layer of this coating, called ‘nacre’, is deposited until a lustrous pearl is formed. The pearl developed inside gives the oyster its unique value to human beings, who prize the pearl’s positive response to a major irritant in its life. But, the shell has to be opened, for all to witness the beautiful visual delight developed and hidden within.
Ego is formed and continuously affirmed in an environment where spiritual discernment has not yet sufficiently evolved. Our ego is our static assessment of a dynamic, changing world, and it is constantly engaged in a state of “catching up” with the truth, however that may be expressing. It can be likened to taking a picture of a movie in midstream, and assuming that the picture represents the entirety of the movie. Wisdom is gained through our experiences in the journey through space and time, and the reinterpretations of and the release from all of the illusory static images stuck in our memory. Wisdom IS the perception that our memory may be clogged with a lifetime of the accumulation of static images, all out of context with our present day intentions to evolve and heal. Life in the Now is eternally dynamic and changing, while the fragile ego clings to its static fantasies and hopes spawned from its past.
If we resist conscious, rational change, our ego will hold onto worn out understandings of life, and become out of touch with the ever unfolding new reality. Yesterdays truth is today’s superstition, and yesterday’s inaccurate assessment of others is today’s isolation and pain, so it is imperative to keep an open mind to change. Otherwise, the ego will be left behind, and suffer according to the cognitive dissonance it allows itself to experience.
At all the intersections of the points of conflict between our inner world and our “outer world”, there are choices to be made. When a conflict arises, do we resist any new message or lesson being offered by another, especially when their understanding does not conform to our own? What about that daughter-in-law who hangs up on you, or the husband who talks more than he should, and is unwilling to change? What about that friend or writer who promotes a way of viewing life that does not conform to our own? These are irritants, and if we use the irritant to justify an inaccurate judgement against, or physical separation from, the offending party, we may have pushed away a layer of nacre for our own internal pearl of wisdom. Our judgements are only verbal measurements of an ever changing environment. Any judgement should be a temporary rest stop, to be left behind when we move in resonance with the new reality continuously unfolding before our eyes.
Change is irritating, and often threatening, to the ego. Our egos exist to help bring context and balance between what we are witnessing now with what we have experienced in the past, to assess what actions in life we must undertake to meet our social and societal obligations. It is our minds conscious attempt at bringing a balance between the world of form that we share with all of life, and the almost secret world inside of the personal mind. We might believe that we are keeping secrets from each other, but the truth is that we all share in the vast majority of thoughts and inclinations with our fellow man (woman), and we are only in denial of that fact when we don’t believe it and fail to act with compassion towards our self and to others.
If the oyster was a closed system, and did not allow for an internal response to irritants, whatever parasites or grains of sand that entered into the oyster might cause its very destruction. Because the irritant has been addressed, and stabilized through the deposit of the layers of nacre, the oyster continues to thrive, though it is now growing an internal “body” consisting of the layers of the nacre, which are forming into a most lustrous pearl.
So too do we, as humans, have the capacity to make pearls. But we must approach all irritants with love and compassion, or we will produce no spiritual nacre, only more pain and suffering. Those with spiritual discernment are finally able to see the Pearl for what it is, in Truth. Love, or God, takes many forms, and those with the eyes to see, and the ears to hear, witness its action through the loving co-creation of a new reality with others who are also honoring their own pearls.
Do not judge another by their “shell”, but instead, wait, until they can open their self up, and reveal the Pearl of greatest price.
Bring on the “irritants”, they are the gate keepers to the layers of God consciousness!
Our wisdom, created through spiritually discerning the irritants in life, is our Pearl.
To those who have not fearlessly faced themselves and their own personal darkness, I wish you more pain, as pain is a major gateway to personal change and transformation. The point is to learn meaningful lessons from the pain, and not assume that it arose out of nowhere. Unaddressed pain tends to take over small centers within the mind, and over a period of time the traumatized mind loses its ability to be an avenue of present moment awareness, and it becomes fixated upon a past that cannot be healed.
The institutionalized pain embedded within our memory becomes virtual scabs over our unexamined wounds. Are we just forming scabs that only partially cover our wounds, or are we facing our brokenness, in spirit and in relationship, which contribute to the formation of spiritual nacres within our own mind and hearts.
But truly, what is the pearl of the greatest price?
It is your pearl, strung on the same string with the rest of humanity. Our stories imbued with collective wisdom creates the necklace of ultimate value. We must each build our own unique consciousness of truth and love. Then, each of our stories can become the nacre for
THE PEARL OF GREATEST PRICE,
which is the story of the ever-unfolding wisdom of mankind. Some call this the manifestation of the Christ consciousness, the Buddha mind, or God consciousness.
Wear that necklace with love and compassion!
Wear that necklace with discernment and the applied wisdom of all ages!
“Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces”
—–Jesus of Nazareth
But, we still need to be careful with who and how we share our best lessons and messages with.
There are those who are so offended when their religious fantasies are challenged, that they might seek for your crucifixion, and speed your passage through those “pearly gates of heaven”.
We are just growing pearls everywhere, aren’t we?.
