INNER LIGHT MInistries Journal Volume 21 Number 1
The Awakening
April, 2009
Experience
by Jim Gordon, President of ILM
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(from Fulfilling Life’s Journey, November 16, 2008)
e are generally aware of just a small part of our soul’s spiritual journey. For the most part people are aware only of the physical journey, and they are actually aware of just a very small part of that. It’s at the first breath that the journey begins in the physical form here. At the first breath, the soul enters the physical body and begins to have experience in this physical form that it has taken on. And then throughout its time of existence in the physical body the soul is having opportunity to learn, to grow, to experience that which it experiences in the physical world, as well as in the imagination, in the emotions, and in the mind. However, before the soul comes into the physical body it knows itself more completely than it does once it gets here, because it is in the spiritual state, not in the physical; it’s in its ‘original state’. And when we take that first breath and enliven this physical body, we begin to forget the truth of who we are. We forget about where we came from, and we get totally involved in this physical creation and this physical body. We go into a state of forgetfulness, and we live that way throughout most if not all existence of this physical body – unless we continue to look inward and upward to ‘wake up’. For the most part when people take embodiment in the physical form, they get caught up in the mind, the emotions and the body, and they begin to focus down and out into the world and get totally involved in the physical … however that is good because that is what the soul came down here to do, to have experience in the physical. So, it’s best that since that’s what we are here to do, to do it fully. And so in order for us to do it fully, we go into a state of forgetfulness. We forget who we are as soul. We forget who we are in our original state. And we just begin to live this life, this life in the physical. But there are those in the world who have completed so much of their soul’s journey, from one
physical embodiment to another, that they begin to go back inside and to remember. There’s a remembering that begins to take place. “I know I’m more than this physical body. I know that I’m more than this. How am I going to find out about what else there is?” The Path of Sound and Light that we share here in ILM is just that ‘how-to’. It’s a path of remembering, of remembering who we truly are, of remembering where we truly came from. And in that remembering we can begin to wake up here and now, while still in the physical form, and to know the truth and live the truth of who we are. And then at the time we take the last breath, we just continue the journey that we know we are already on. There are so many people in the world today who don’t know if the journey continues after the last breath until they take it. And that’s all just fine. It’s the way this creation is set up. But it is wonderful when you know by personal experience that there is more to life than this physical form, and that life continues after the last breath. When we don’t know, then we live in a state of fear. There’s a fear of the unknown. That unknown leaves a great question, and we all want the question answered sooner rather than later. But so many people have to wait until that last breathe to know: as we take the last breath in the physical form, do we keep on going or not? The only way I have ever found to get that question answered is to go inside: to let go of ourselves physically, to let go of ourselves imaginationally, emotionally, and mentally, and to rise up in meditation and connect back to the “seat of the soul.” This is the way to wake up once again to that truth that we came into this body with the first breath, but that we also still reside in the spiritual realms right now, except that we are separated from it by our mind. It is only through meditation that we can rise above the mind and all the structures of the physical form and wake up once again to that truth. And therefore we come to know that truth even before (Awakening continues on page 3)