The Holy Experience is when you know the difference between Divinity and Humanity - and when that difference disappears.
In the King James version of the Bible, John 16:12 quotes Jesus as saying to his disciples, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.” All my life I’ve wondered what he was talking about. He was speaking to twelve uneducated, untrained and unrefined men of the first century, so it’s not surprising that they couldn’t understand the deeper things. But that was 2,000 ago. We might be able to bear them now. What was the truth Jesus didn’t think they were ready to hear? I have a carefully considered answer that I wrote about in my book and I’ll repeat it here.
Jesus had taken his disciples from an understanding of God above them, to God with them, to God within them. He knew that was as much as they could take. The idea of God within them was already beyond the limit of their understanding. They knew who God was. They had left their homes, families, and livelihoods to follow him.
But when we read Jesus’ statement further, he says, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth”. That means there is more truth to come. And the next revelation will be the grandest of them all. We are to understand God as us. It was that understanding that empowered Jesus. He knew that he and his father were one, and that assuredness gave him power the rest of us only pray for. Why is it so hard for us? Jesus said it was our birthright.
In Disney’s The Lion King, the once-proud lion kingdom was reduced to a scorched-earth wasteland, an elephant graveyard crawling with bloodthirsty hyenas. Simba, heir to the throne of his father, King Mufasa, runs away and cowers in the desert afraid to go home. In the film’s most memorable sequence, Mufasa appears to him in the starry night sky to remind him - “Remember who you are.” When Simba reclaims his birthright as son of the King it empowers him with the ability to restore the land to its original place of beauty and peace.
Sadly, according to the Bible, man lost his birthright in the garden of Eden. But that doesn’t mean it’s not yours to reclaim.
Remember who you are.
