If you haven’t read my first post on the story of the prodigal son, you can read it here. In that post, I talked about the younger son who had left his father’s house with his inheritance, squandered his time and money but eventually came to his senses and returned to his original home.
I did say in that post that there are many deeply transcendent themes in this apparently mundane or worldly story. And I did say I would write about these themes in subsequent posts. Today, I’d like to share some thoughts about the older son.
One thing that I’d like to remind us of is that when we look deeply into the meaning of this story, we will see that we are each of the main characters – the father and both sons. Which of these three characters we are at any given time is determined by our state of consciousness, our state of awareness (or lack of).
The older son never left his father’s house. Unlike his ‘prodigal’ and wayward brother, he remained at home faithfully performing the duties that he believed were expected of him. You can therefore understand his indignation and outrage when his father acts with such compassion and spares no cost in celebrating his younger son’s return.
Where is the justice (the punishment of the younger son and the reward for the older one) in this? the older son must have thought. Here I am, having toiled and sacrificed all my life. I could have easily indulged myself as lavishly and hedonistically as my brother, but I didn’t. No, I was responsible. I did my duty. But who gets the carefully fattened calf (reward)? Who gets my father’s unhesitating embrace? Who gets a feast thrown on his behalf? Not me! It’s my good-for-nothing, #&%ing brother!
The older son refuses to join the celebration, so his father goes looking for him and lovingly tries to console his son: Everything I have is yours, my son. But today, we’re celebrating the wondrous event, this miracle, that your brother, also my son, was dead but has come back to life (was asleep but is now awake).
The separated self i.e. the Ego, the personality-based self, needs and seeks constant reassurance that it is valued and loved. At the very least, it needs to be valued and loved equally. It would however feel better and more secure if it was valued and loved more. And it attempts to secure this ‘love’ (which it believes to be conditional) by doing the ‘right’ thing, following the rules, earning its worth, proving to be deserving.
Our social, cultural, financial, religious and political systems are all firmly fastened by the grand myth of separation and we are all, like the older son, embedded in it and fast asleep. We have not awakened to the truth, the unchanging truth, that ‘Everything I have is yours’
What it doesn’t realize in this separated state of consciousness is that Love, true Love, is unconditional and non-transactional. You cannot deserve, earn or purchase it. It is your birthright – Everything I have is yours. Period.
The collective consciousness of our human race is held hostage by the consciousness of separation. And each one of us is born into its prison, oppressed by its conditionality, needing to earn our rations of self- worth, dignity, place and significance on this earth.
Our social, cultural, financial, religious and political systems are all firmly fastened by the grand myth of separation and we are all, like the older son, embedded in it and fast asleep. We have not awakened to the truth, the unchanging truth, that ‘Everything I have is yours’
Are we willing to wake up from this grand myth (the younger son’s consciousness)? Are we ready to experience unconditional Love (the father’s consciousness), which is who and what we truly are? Are we willing to free ourselves from the falsehood of conditionality (the older son’s consciousness) and in doing so, liberate others from it too?
Join me today (Tuesday 6.30 pm) and Thursday (12.30 pm) and every Tuesday and Thursday to awaken to the consciousness of Love, which is unconditional.
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