Disclosing your own divinity

Jan Phillips, in her book, “Stop Seeking, Start Finding” talks about how it is not enough that we find “spirituality” for ourselves and keep it to ourselves.  But, that our most important task is to disclose the divinity we find within ourselves to the wider world.  We have an imperative she says to “dance it out with our lives” – to reveal our inner sense of holiness through our art, our words, our movement in the world. 

What does it mean to “disclose” our inner divinity?  Phillips says it means “To be most oneself.”   To live authentically in the world.  To not hoard our private sense of an inner holiness, but rather to live it loudly. 

I know I sometimes feel that I need to couch my interest in and experience of holiness in my life.  It’s a bit vulnerable to go around admitting that one is seeking “holiness” or a sense of divinity here in this life.  Mostly I imagine that others are busy paying bills, taking out the garbage and trying to remember their passwords… as I am much of the time.  If I experience “divine moments”,  is that Divinity?  Or, is it me?  Phillips says the answer to both those questions is YES.  If we do not share our own searching and finding, we continue to feel isolated in our experience.  I yearn for settings where it is permissible to seek for and to talk about one’s spiritual searching and finding. 

Phillips talks about the “hereafter” being right here, right now.  I love the title of her book,  “Stop Seeking and Start Finding”.  Click HERE to find out more about this book.

Here is a poem from the book – reprinted here by permission of the author.

DIVINE HERE, DIVINE NOW

~by Jan Phillips

Why all this talk

about the hereafter and Heavenly Father?

The flames of the cosmos

burn in our cells,

atoms from the First Fire

swirl and spin in our livers and lungs.

What do you think “the kingdom is within you”

was meant to convey?

You waltz with the Beloved

every second of the day

yet you speak like the Holy One

is light years away.

Put away the pictures from grammar school.

Disinherit voices that led you astray.

Drop your fears of blasphemy and say it:

I am one with the Father,

one with the mother, one with creation.

[and I, Penny, would add – one with the goddess”]

Look in the mirror to find what you lost.

The hereafter is in the kernel of NOW.

There is nothing to find, nothing to earn.

The entire banquet is spread out before you.