Radical Godliness
I went to a Unity Church service several years ago with a wonderful intimate friend. I'd known the pastor for some years and had forgotten his dynamic speaking. It was really refreshing because he told of his deliberations over the sermon, and even had it ready to go, only to have a visit from his 'angel' during the night who informed him that he needed to speak about 'Radical Godliness,' as he had been put through some very interesting daily rigors recently. These rigors had called upon his deepest sense of connection and forced him to truly life his truth, not just preach it.
Radical Godliness... wow, what a phrase. Its power exudes and intimidates. What does it really mean? Well, according to the pastor, it means totally letting go and acting as if God were present in your very BEing. This calls forth the 'knowing' of our connection and puts us on the stage of life with the acting ability of a Richard Dreyfus or a Shirley MacLaine (my choosing to illustrate). Confidence in the ACT OF LOVE moving through your every fiber, becoming so present that everything around you reflects its power. I remember something about 'every knee shall bend and tongue confess' in regard to its magnitude... the Christ Consciousness manifest in human form - yours and mine.
What the pastor demonstrated is that he was willing to totally release his well-developed work for the day in order to speak from his heart. His 'angel' had kept him up for some time preparing him to deliver so it was a bit rehearsed. However, when I listened to his explanation of how he had interacted with those in potentially hostile situations, he described them with the reluctance, resistance and eventual release of his own desires for outcome. He simply did what moved him from his heart/mind in his knowing of truth. Truth being the obvious flow of harmony that was created. When he used the phrase, 'living in radical godliness,' I suddenly found myself shouting out a resounding, "Yes!" in the middle of nearly a thousand silent people. Hmmm.... I got it!
How does one live in Radical Godliness? Well, you start by being willing to appear a fool, or worse yet, an idiot to some. Why? We start playing like children in public. We crack jokes in the middle of an extremely tense moment. We do things that nobody in their 'right' mind would do to stir the chaotic stew, knowing that chaos also brings harmony. Because in the acts of living in radical godliness you begin to call attention to the absurdity of certain belief systems, behavioral patterns, and general logic trains that derailed long ago. As an actor upon a stage, we mirror the activity with gesticulation, intelligence, playfulness, and occasionally sarcasm. This often flies in the face of those who, shall we say, are lukewarm to cold.
This isn't to say that we act in reckless abandonment. Quite the contrary. We are able to release the patterns of polarities, let's call them 'polardigms,' that keep us on the cosmic yo-yo of good and evil, to use an obvious polarity. We get our rubber bands of emotions pulled to the point of the snapping return, only we forget that the rubber band actually comes to a state of total rest afterward. Instead, we carry the emotional inertia that takes us in the other direction. Nice analogy, eh? I know... How do you make it real and personal for you? It is ALL about you isn't it. Well, when it isn't about ME, it is. Still, there is only "I" in the center. Speaking of eyes having it, the light in ones eyes that has released the polardigms, or many of them at least, shines like no other, doesn't it. We've all seen it, reflected back to us in and through the eyes of others. Another obvious sign.
Radical Godliness begins with allowing the CREATOR THOUGHTS to manifest in your consciousness. It seems really strange at first because they aren't at all human, or at least what you are used to anyway. It would appear, from all the research, that God/Goddess wants to play with others of the same. We can recognize this natural presence in the statements of the ONE in Many, service to the ONE, connecting with the One, and so on. Most of us have spent our lives dreaming great dreams and then having the experience of our friends, neighbors, family, and employers doing their best to disempower us. Most of the time it isn't intentional. The pattern in ubiquitous among humans, steeped in competition and not cooperation. This is the time for the new path, the cooperation of the collective, to play as the Gods incarnate, even as sons and daughters we eventually grow up. That doesn't eliminate those who have gone before us. In fact, part of the process of self-realization is recognizing that we can never truly reach the levels of our perception of God, Creator of Heaven and Earth. So we honor the Divine Mysteries and evolve as good sons and daughters in our cycle of habitation in form.
What is amazing is that, through the skill sets that we have developed, there will be an ultimate natural evolution of the synergy of these skill sets in the culmination of a new world order, complete with science and spirituality in harmony. This is the action of Spiritual Intelligence... the obvious next choice in the lineage of the multiple intelligences outlined by Howard Gardner.