Understanding Relationships and the Deeper Truth of Who You Are

And I know this is important to you because most people in the world are inordinately interested in relationships. It’s what they think about, what they talk about, what gives them joy, what gives them pain, what they work for, what they support. We’re all about relationship, you see, because who we are…we’ve come from a place of complete relationship with our Ancient Home, so different than this world it is. And not just human beings, but a universe full of intelligent life. They, too, have come from our Ancient Home, though they will be very different from us in appearance, attitude and belief perhaps.

We carry this relationship with us already, at a deeper level within us called Knowledge. Because we live with two minds, you see. We have the worldly mind that has been conditioned within us since the day we were born. It contains all of our responses to the world and its persuasions upon us. It’s shaped by culture, family, religion—perhaps. But deeper down, there’s a very different kind of mind. This is God’s great endowment. And at some point, if you were to take the Steps to this Knowledge, you would find out that it is actually who you are. It is the you before you came into this world. It will be the you after you leave, the part of you that has never left your Source, that is still in relationship.

While a God of the universe can seem overwhelming and incomprehensible, and of course at that level, God is, completely. But relationship is something we feel, we yearn for, we know. The Lord of this vast Creation speaks to the very heart of who we are—when we seek for it, when we need it, when we prepare for it. And sometimes that preparation requires that we really break free of the restraints that our former religious understanding may have placed upon us, with the pain we may have suffered there, to return again.

This deeper Knowledge holds the secret to who we are and why we’re here, who we must meet, what we’re here to accomplish—things that the intellect cannot really discern, though it may try, endlessly. It’s beyond the mind we think with. But it is embedded in the mind that is our heart and our soul.

So today I would like to speak of our relationship with God in a very elemental way. This is not complicated. You do not need to have a complex theory or theology to understand this because this is happening at the very foundation of our experience. What is important to understand here is that we have a relationship with God. This relationship is not based on belief, though belief may be our starting point, and for many people it is. It is not based on religious orientation because our relationship with God existed before there were any religions. It is not based merely on point of view, but on a deeper resonance within us.

The New Message teaching on Relationships and Higher Purpose, one of its great texts, tells us that relationships—with ourself, with others—are based on what we can do together. Our relationship with God is based on what we can do with God. Now think about that because this is really different. It’s simple, but probably very different than what you may have been taught or learned before. Our goal in life is not to experience God, or to transcend the world, or to engage in ardent spiritual practice to experience the divine. Our relationship with God is based on what we’re here to do. Because our world is not a place of being, like our Ancient Home. It’s a place of doing. It’s a place of action. We’ve been sent here to do certain things.

I’d like to read you a passage now from Relationships and Higher Purpose, from its first chapter entitled “Your Most Primary Relationship.” [reads:]

Your home, your Ancient Home, is where you live. (Still) Part of you has never left. The world is where you work. You have come into the world to work. God has sent you and you have sent yourself because there is the perfect Knowledge that you need to be here. (Perfect Knowledge) Therefore, you have come from home to a place of work. (The world) Your work in the world is in two arenas. One is the transformation of your experience of yourself and your relationships. And the other is rendering of your specific contribution to the world.

So what is this telling us? This is telling us that our relationship with God is about what we came here to do. That is because God redeems us by giving us something important to do, something we did not make up or something that isn’t just a product of our wishes or our preferences or what we think will make us happy or what the world tries to tell us will make us happy. God gives us something important to do. If we don’t do it, there’s no hell and damnation. We just have to come back and try again. It’s not belief based. [A] person who may have no notion of religion can be doing what they came here to do because of an innate sense of where to go and what to do in life.

This gives us a different reference point to understand ourselves. We value things. We’re in relationship with things that are meaningful to us because of what we can do with them. A relationship with another person isn’t just about being fascinated with their attributes or trying to use them as a resource. It’s because you can do things together. The more you can do together the deeper your relationship. Relationships require compatibility, purpose and direction. But what makes a great relationship is doing great things together, not just personal interest kinds of things, but meaningful things: service to others, service to the world.