No Natural Barriers

Question: In your writings you say there are no natural barriers between God and the individual soul. Isn’t spiritual ignorance an example of a natural barrier? Would you mind commenting on this?

Response: Spiritual ignorance is indeed a barrier between God and the individual soul. Is it a natural barrier? No. Spiritual ignorance is a learned barrier.

Spiritual ignorance, first of all, should be thought of as spiritual ignore-ance. Let’s contrast this with spiritual stupidity, which implies a lack of intelligence. Ignoring something is not a sign of lacking intelligence. Some very intelligent people ignore the entire question of the soul’s relationship to God.

To say there are no natural barriers between God and the individual soul is like saying, there is no natural law of error in the principle of mathematics. Yes, you can wrongfully conclude that 2+2=5, but the barrier between you and the correct answer of 2+2=4 is not found in the law of mathematics. You are confronted with the barrier of your own miscalculation. And because the error is not a natural occurrence, it can be corrected.

Believing there is distance between yourself and God does not make it so. It only makes it appear to be so to you. You can resolve this false sense of separation by acknowledging (stop ignoring) your oneness with God. The belief in separation is a perceptual problem that can be corrected with direct experience. Within every person there is a place that opens to all there is in God. Until we actually come to this place, God belongs to others. God comes to us in the form of a belief that has been hammered out by someone else. It’s not our God. It’s their God. So this barrier of false belief is there, but it is not natural. It is leaned, and it will be unlearned, not through argument but through direct experience.

I do not own beach property, so when I stand on a beach, it’s someone else’s beach. In essence, I’m looking at someone else’s ocean. But what if I buy the beach upon which I stand? Then it is my beach. It becomes my ocean. The spiritual awakening is about buying the beach. Not with money, but with attention. We stop ignoring the truth that our very soul opens to all there is in this ocean of God. What stands between you and your own inner beach? Many distractions, yes, but no natural barriers. The only thing that stands between you and God is your unwillingness to claim your beach. The belief that you’re not spiritually evolved enough to do so is an unnatural barrier.

The religious authorities of Jesus’ day despised him because he disrupted their long held narrative that there were genuine barriers between God and the common people. They convinced people that their professional services were needed to get to God. To say the kingdom of God was found within the individual, as Jesus taught, destroyed this myth.

I continue to point out that we each desire the experience of greater freedom because at the soul level we are already free. What is keeping me from experiencing this freedom? Perceptions of my own creation. These are barriers but they are not natural barriers. They are learned and they can be unlearned.

Whether I am willing to do the work of unlearning is the real question. The man who discovered the treasure in the field joyously sold all he had to buy that field. Am I willing to do the same? My buried treasure is that inner prompting to greater freedom. Am I prepared to sell all the unnatural barriers of false perception that keep me from experiencing this inner call that never has been and never will be silenced? Do I place greater value these unnatural barriers than I do on the real treasure of freedom?

Thank you for your question. I hope this response brings some clarity.