I started my day today by doing Hoon Dok Hae with my wife. The topic we read about was indemnity. Father gave a beautiful explanation as to the meaning of indemnity. I finished the reading and rushing off to work, only to discover that I had parked my car in the wrong space. Not only had I gotten a ticket, but my car had been towed as well. The ticket was $55; the towing expense was $150. Question: What was the indemnity to be paid in this case? The correct answer is not $205. In the reading from that morning Father had explained that indemnity is restoring the events which went wrong and getting them right, doing what was originally meant to happen.

Paying $205 does not rectify what I did wrong. So where does the idea come from that being punished or paying a fine is indemnity? The notion that paying a penalty, in this case $205, is restoration, comes from the image of an angry God whom I don’t want to irritate and therefore I gladly pay the $205 to in order to appease His wrath. But an angry God whose reprisals I must fear is a more apt description of Satan than of God.

Then, if enduring reprisals, punishment or wrath does not constitute paying indemnity, what does? Indemnity is going though whatever it is that I have to go through in order to get it right. And what does it take for us to get it right? Ultimately it comes down to a change in consciousness, a change in awareness. I can’t do it right if I don’t know what "right" is. What many of us mistakenly refer to as indemnity is in actuality only an alert which brings to our attention the fact that we have done something wrong.

When we are able to respond to those alerts without reacting, the process is far less painful. The problem, however, is that for the most part we are reactive and not responsive. As a result it is very difficult for God or anyone else to get our attention when the focus becomes something we did which was wrong.

This has been an historical and providential problem as well. Initially, after the Fall, the indemnity which Adam needed to pay was to respond to God when God asked him where he was. When God asked Adam where he was, God obviously was not asking for his geographical location, but where Adam was in his internal state. This was God’s way of giving Adam the opportunity to take responsibility for his internal state (foundation of faith) as well as the opportunity to talk about it and come up with a strategy which, when substantiated, would result in a return to an internal state of peace (foundation of substance). It is interesting to note that in the above-described scenario, if Adam had responded to God’s question instead of reacting, the indemnity by definition could not have been something God imposed on Adam, but something which Adam proposed to God. God of course would have responded by finding it acceptable or not.

As a respecter of free will, God first checked to see if there was an awareness on Adam’s part that he had a problem. If that awareness had existed, then solving the problem would have been as inevitable as the Fall became, once Adam and Eve reacted to the commandment instead of responding to it.

It all comes down to consciousness. The reaction itself began with consciousness, i.e., an awareness on the part of God that He/She had a desire to create. Naturally restoration begins with awareness as well. Once Adam demonstrated that he had no awareness of his problem, God’s response was to put an external stimulus in Adam’s life which would force him to reflect on the fact that in spite of his denial he did indeed have a problem. The stimulus was being kicked out of the Garden. That was not indemnity, only a stimulus. Depending on how Adam responded or reacted to that stimulus determined whether or not the indemnity process could begin.

Everything prior to response is within the pre-formation stage realm of indemnity. Indemnity itself begins with the awareness and acceptance on our part that we did something wrong. On the foundation of acceptance, we naturally receive what the right thing to do is. Our original minds, which are congruent with God’s ideal of true love, become disengaged when we are in a reactive state. This is the reason people who are doing evil can appear to be happy and genuinely unperturbed by their consciences. The reactive state is our animal state, and animals do not have a conscience. It is not a question of right or wrong, but of protecting their master. Satan controls us on the animal level and we protect him. It is only when we become the masters of our instincts and go beyond reacting, that we are qualified to receive the second and third blessings and become the center of the cosmos, transcending the position of the archangel.

Everything mentioned up to now in terms of doing the right thing, constitutes restoration on the external level. Internal restoration means knowing why a thing is right. To know why something is right is to know the heart of God. To know the heart of God is to know His motivation. The telling differences between God and Satan are within the realm of motivation and heart.

The principle is the same, whether dealing with something as trivial as a parking ticket or as cosmic as the Fall of Man. The advantage of exploring the issue of God’s heart in relation to something as insignificant as a parking ticket is that we are less guarded in relation to our repressed feelings of guilt and shame, and therefore are more able to remain conscious during the analysis and exploration process.

The heart of God was originally meant to be conveyed to Adam through the archangel. This presumed that the angel knew the heart of God. What about the possibility that the heart of God is something which can only be discerned or brought into focus through the unified consciousness or interactive awareness of angels and men? Whether we care to acknowledge it or not, Lucifer knows many things about God which we don’t. Lucifer also knows that there are some things about God which we have access to and therefore have the potential to know, which he doesn’t.

Lucifer’s realm of expertise is structural and conceptual. He co-created the physical universe with God, and was the sounding board God used to inspire Himself to actualize His ideal and the center of His creation, Man. Let us not delude ourselves into thinking that our knowledge is superior to Lucifer’s in this realm. The place where our knowledge can surpass Lucifer’s is in the realm of experience. We are capable of responding to God’s love because we have not declared was against Him. It is our job to love the archangel and through that process inherit his external knowledge. Then together we can come to an understanding as to who God actually is. It is just as futile for man to try to figure out who God is without Lucifer as it was for Lucifer to try to understand God without man. In the final analysis, the problem with Satan was not so much his actions, but the fact that he doesn’t know God’s heart because he hasn’t allowed himself to get close enough to be touched by it. His conceptualization of God was one of a perfect Being who could not tolerate mistakes. This was a projection of Lucifer’s internal state of not being able to forgive himself for losing control on an emotional level. Control is the critical issue for the Angel of Light.

Being able to remain in balance, without having a partner, was the "impossible" task that Lucifer was called to substantiate. Being able to remain humble on the emotional side, while manifesting absolute mastery in the realm of intellect, was the key for Lucifer to be able to transform that impossible task into a possible one. Remaining flexible on the intellectual side, while manifesting immaturity in the realm of emotion, was also a critical element. It was important that Lucifer not be arrogant toward himself, i.e., that he be non-judgmental concerning his shallowness on the emotional side.

In order to be a sounding board for God, Lucifer had to develop his cognitive and conceptual abilities to an extraordinary degree. That refinement on the intellectual side was achieved at the expense of his emotional development. It is not possible to make something which pierces like an arrow which is also as soft as clay. To be strong in one area means to be vulnerable in another. It is only when we are vulnerable that God reveals His heart, as it is the heart of God to place Himself in a vulnerable position, i.e., at the mercy of the one He loves. There was no way that Lucifer could receive the blessing he received from God without finding himself at a later time in a vulnerable position in relationship to Adam. If Lucifer had raised Adam with integrity, then Adam would have inherited the wisdom not to exploit Lucifer’s vulnerability. The ironic piece is that the people with whom we are uncomfortable, angry or jealous are the ones who, in the end, are most capable of saving us. The external lesson of the Fall of Man is obedience. The internal lesson is that there is no way to escape vulnerability as it is inextricably linked to the heart of God.

If Lucifer had understood both sides of his mission and taken it to heart, it would have afforded him the opportunity to have known God’s experience and existential dilemma of striving to create the ideal of True Love/Co-creatorship with man, while living without a substantial partner. Knowing God’s vulnerability, anguish and historical struggle would have put him in a position to accurately communicate to Adam with authority. More importantly it would have given substance to the passive position of co-creator that up to that time Lucifer had held with God. This was the substance which Adam meant to inherit from the Archangel. Had he entered into that realm of substance, Lucifer would not have doubted his value nor secretly projected it onto Adam, and later been jealous of his own denied value which he gave away. He would have known in his own heart of hearts that his role was indispensable and his personal essence irreplaceable.

The problem was that Lucifer didn’t really see himself as a co-creator with God. It was beyond his conceptualization. Only he and Adam together could have envisioned something as great as that. Without being in a positive, dynamic relationship with Adam, it wasn’t possible for Lucifer to ascribe that much value to himself. He avoided the whole dilemma by being sweet in the early days and projecting his value onto God. When Lucifer was no longer directly in God’s presence, he felt deprived. The piece that Lucifer didn’t understand was that having dominion of one’s intellect is different from having dominion of one’s emotions. It is not possible to have dominion of both at the same time. That is why God created partnerships in His creation; indeed, that’s why God created.

The reason we don’t understand indemnity is that we are dominated by the consciousness of the Archangel, who doesn’t understand indemnity. It all comes down to discerning what it is that we did wrong, but we can’t do that until we separate from Satan. Because we don’t feel good about that reality, we choose not to look at our intimate relationship with Satan. Over time we deny that we have a personal relationship at all.

The Archangel’s hold over us has more to do with our denial of his influence than with his actual active influence. However, once we deny that he is part of us, his dynamic presence becomes activated. We create a common base in the present moment; both of us are now organizing our lives around a lie. The nature of our lies are very different; but when we are unable to recognize or acknowledge that we are deeply involved with a lie, it becomes impossible to discern what the differences are. Without that discernment, it is relatively easy for Lucifer to convince us that we are guilty of the same crime as he, and therefore should throw our lot in with him and trust him as the elder to lead us through a cold and ugly world which he knows more about than we.

Our denying the connection which exists between the history of Adam, Eve and Lucifer and our present-day reality activates that history, and we find ourselves face-to-face with the living Lucifer who outmaneuvered Eve and Adam in the Garden. Denial is our worst enemy, as it immediately puts us on the defensive and gives Lucifer an enormous "home field" advantage. His first move is to challenge our honesty and discredit our trustworthiness. From the position of not wanting to be embarrassed, we are vulnerable to being manipulated and blackmailed. Satan agrees not to expose us if we don’t expose him. This presupposes that we’re already buddies and are in this thing together. However, in viewing the universe through the mask of our embarrassment, we are in no position to track Lucifer’s strategies or counter them.

The specifics of the "agreement" in relation to exposure is that Lucifer agrees not to expose us to humanity’s judgment and scorn if we agree not to expose him to God’s prosecution. In effect, we become a sanctuary for Satan, empathizing with his dilemma of not wanting to be embarrassed. By not challenging the premise that "we’re in this together" and by making no distinction between Lucifer’s issues and ours, we allow Satan to enter more deeply into our heart, which he is now claiming as his sanctuary for the purpose of hiding from God. This is very important to understand. We’ve all heard that, after the Fall, we became the servant of servants; but if we want to separate from Satan, it is important to know what the service is that we provide.

Once we allow Lucifer to use our heart as a sanctuary, God has a dilemma in relation to His desire to prosecute Satan, win the case and begin the internal process of restoration with Lucifer. If God drops a bomb on Satan it doesn’t just blow up Satan and his hiding place; it does irreparable damage to our hearts as well.

Life quickly becomes complicated when one enters into a co-dependent relationship with Lucifer. Such a relationship compromises one’s ability to enter into a relationship of integrity with anyone else. Vertically it compromises our relationship with God, as it is not possible for our hearts to be used as a sanctuary by someone who is running from God and at the same time serve as the channel through which we receive God’s blessings.

Now let us get back to the parking ticket, which was the original catalyst for this discourse. How do I separate from Satan and his misconceptions about God’s heart? I separate when I don’t become angry about the parking ticket and getting my car towed; when instead of reacting, I respond. If I’m not able to respond, i.e., if I react, then I respond to my reaction and ask, "Why am I reacting?" No matter how many times I try to avoid the realization, everything still comes down to accepting that I did something wrong.

So why is it so difficult to accept this simple fact? It is because Satan, whom I am housing and providing a sanctuary for, is operating under the premise that the wrong he did can never be forgiven. When the stakes are that high, indeed it is very difficult to be wrong. Nor should we be surprised under those circumstances by the lengths to which we can go to deny that we have been wrong.

Thinking precedes action, but belief precedes thinking. The reality is that thinking requires a filter to make explicit what our unconscious assumptions or beliefs are. Lucifer and Adam should have been filters for each other. A unified Adam, Eve and Lucifer should have been God’s filter. Because none of that took place, much of what passes for thinking today in reality is actually assumption. Deep thinkers inevitably borrow from humanity or their ancestors in order to think clearly. With that in mind, it obviously requires more than just changing our actions to separate from Satan on an internal level. We have to first identify the belief system which drives Satan’s thinking process, which determines his actions, and which in turn defines the world of those under his dominion. The problem with living in Satan’s world is that his underlying assumption that there is no forgiveness for people who make mistakes, is false.

Unfortunately it is impossible for Lucifer to reflect on the possibility that his assumption is wrong, because in Lucifer’s world "real men don’t make mistakes." This is a Catch-22 situation, in which Lucifer becomes the victim of his own internalized tyranny, and in that regard is also worthy of compassion. Not knowing how to ask for help is the scene of the crime for Lucifer.

Though his external persona is "The Powerful God of This World," on the internal level he is still the scared, overwhelmed angel running from the scene of the crime. Lucifer would rather rule in hell than admit he needs help. The hell he rules is the sewer of our unconsciousness. In the Bible, God says to Lucifer, "Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life." If we interpret that symbolically, as much of the Garden of Eden story is symbolic, we can read new meaning into the words "dust" and "crawling." The ground upon which Lucifer crawls on his belly represents a lower level of consciousness: Lucifer’s internal state of denial. The dust which he eats describes the nature of sustenance he receives from human beings who are in an unconscious, codependent, dysfunctional relationship with him. Dust accumulates in the parts of ourselves which we don’t allow ourselves to enter. The reactive world is the world of accumulated dust. We can’t respond to what’s going on in there, because we aren’t there on a conscious human level. That is why the fugitive Lucifer feels safe there, as he’s not worried about being discovered. Lucifer hides in our unconsciousness and is deeply invested in keeping us that way. However, once we stop reacting and start responding, our sanctuary becomes unsafe for Lucifer and he has to flee to someplace which is safe.

The internal reason that Lucifer wreaks havoc and terror on earth is not because of any love he has for destruction, but to create a climate in which reactivity is the norm. Lucifer knows that, as long as human beings are reacting, his sanctuary, which over the course of history has become an empire, is safe. This is the underlying premise of all con-artistry. Con-artists need a distraction or distractions in order to do their business. That’s all that violence and the emotions associated with their crimes are: a distraction. The internal reason that it initially feels so good to express rage and violence is that Satan love us when we do. He is grateful to us for being distracted and extending his reign. There is a sweetness connected to gratitude, no matter where it comes from.

So right now, for the benefit of the reader, I’m going to break down all the distracting emotions I had to deal with before the restoration process could begin. I was angry that my car was towed. I was angry that it was going to mess up my day. I was angry that I had to interact with a bureaucracy which could keep me tied up and waiting for hours and even days, if they weren’t satisfied with my paperwork. I was angry that this whole process was going to cost me a lot of money. I was angry at myself for misreading the sign.

However, miraculously, my anger left me. Why was I suddenly able to control the emotions which I had never been able to control before? The change didn’t come because I worked harder or tried harder. It was because I had the advantage of having Father as my spiritual Consultant. What changed was my perspective, my consciousness, my awareness. With the advantage of having read Father’s words on indemnity during Hoon Dok Hae service with my wife that morning, I realized that my anger was connected to Satan and the purpose of that anger was to distract me from answering the question, "What did I do that was wrong?"

Once I allowed the question to enter my original mind, I was amazed at how simple the answer was. What I did that was wrong was: I broke the law. It’s profoundly amazing to me, the convoluted course I have gone through my entire life in order to answer a simple question, or more accurately, to avoid answering one. I believe the reason it’s so difficult for most of us to answer a simple question is that in our deeply internalized paranoid state, we don’t have much of a common base with simplicity. We don’t know how to recognize it. We project our contortions onto simplicity, rejecting our common sense as inferior to acquired knowledge. Satan needs things to be convoluted and complicated so that he can come in as a clever hero, figure everything out, and rescue us at the last minute. What a guy! Cleverness is especially good at solving problems which cleverness caused; but most of the time innocence and simplicity are by far the greater sleuths.

Satan never really asks us simple questions, as that would be encouraging us to get in touch with our simple and innocent original minds. Satan’s questions are really assumptions, masquerading as questions. Satan doesn’t ask the question "Are you throwing your wife down the elevator shaft?"; rather he asks, "How long have you been throwing your wife down the elevator shaft?" When we take the bait, i.e., react, and thereby honor this assumption as if it were a genuine question, he already has the upper hand. As soon as we react by saying, "That’s preposterous; I never threw my wife down an elevator shaft," Satan responds by saying, "Now, now, you don’t have to be so touchy about it." It’s interesting to note that, though Satan is essentially a reactive being, he is quite capable of being sensitive and responsive, if we honor his reactivity as if it were responsiveness. In terms of self-esteem, appearance is everything for Lucifer.

Once I separate from Satan by responding instead of reacting, I am no longer under the dominion of the external authority which he represents. On that foundation I am able to respond to my internal authority and ask my original mind questions. I become my own prosecutor, but on my terms: with loving intent. The prosecution organizes itself around the premise of my original mind, which is that I have inherent, unchanging, unique, eternal value. I’m not attacking my flower; I’m pulling the weeds which surround it. I’m not prosecuting me; I’m prosecuting my unconsciousness. We’re talking about discipline as opposed to punishment.

The original mind always answers questions; the issue is whether or not we allow the questions to be asked. Once we do, it’s all over for Satan. He can’t "hang" when questions reach our original mind. He loses his sanctuary, and we get our hearts back.

Once my original mind told me that the thing I did wrong was that "I broke the law," the process of questioning became very easy. The next question obviously was "Why did I break the law?" My observation is that once we begin the process of asking our original mind questions, we go through a cycle of questions which are external in nature, and lead us to more internal questions. These inevitably bring us to our vulnerability and the heart of God.

The answer to the external question of why I broke the law was "I didn’t read the sign carefully." Let’s watch how the process goes from external to internal and brings me closer to my inner state of vulnerability and the heart of God as the question and answer process unfolds:

Question: "Why didn’t I read the sign carefully?" Answer: "I didn’t, because those signs are very difficult for me to understand. It requires a lot of detailed focus, and every piece of information counts. On the same sign there is information about when parking is permitted, when standing is permitted and when the sweeper comes by. It’s hard for me to hold all that stuff in my head and figure out what it all means."

Question: "Why is my mind not able to process the information on the sign competently?" Answer: "My mind is elsewhere." Question: "Where is my mind?" Answer: "My mind is deep in the realm of abstract thought about the differences between the cultures of the world, representing North, South, East and West, the differences between the races represented by Yellow, Black and White, and the differences between men and women in addition to the differences between God, humanity and the angelic realm, and how all of that plays itself out interactively on a conscious and unconscious level."

So now we’ve established why I broke the law. This is the formation stage in the questioning process. The growth stage is to ask if the law is right. In other words, in relation to God’s heart, is it I or the law which needs to change? How do we determine what is fair? If the laws aren’t fair, then they aren’t connected to the heart of God, as God is a just God. To be considered righteous, one has to be fair to both sides in a conflict. In resolving conflict, a critical piece to measure is how much good will there is on the part of either side to understand the other’s position.

So now we know the next question: "How willing are the city and police to understand my position and how willing am I to understand the position of the city and police?" When I came to this question, I noticed a reluctance on my part to ask it. So then the question became "Why am I reluctant to ask the question?" The answer came: "I’m reluctant to ask the question because I’m afraid of what the answer will be." After answering that question, I realized I am much more comfortable pointing out how inefficient and insensitive bureaucracies are, and how little attention is given to people like myself who are worrying about the bigger problems. I also detected an element of self-pity in myself, which made me uncomfortable.

Question: "Why am I uncomfortable with feeling sorry for myself?" Answer: "Because it is at odds with the image I have of myself of being a unique, creative, autonomous individual." That, in part, answers whether I or the law should change. It hasn’t been explored whether or not the law should change, but it is evident from the contradictions I discovered in myself that I need to. Some part of my understanding of who I am is at odds with who I really am. That false identity is what keeps me in conflict with others. So it becomes clear that the critical issue is not that I have little time left over to deal with such trivial things as reading a parking sign correctly. The issue is that I have internalized an image of myself which is false.

Question: "Where did my false image of myself come from?" Answer: "I’m not sure, but it has something to do with my relationship with Lucifer." Now we’re getting to pay dirt! As soon as I acknowledge that I have this unconscious relationship with Lucifer, he loses his power over me. I realize I’m no match for him; I don’t try to win. I acknowledge that I have been defeated for the past 45 years. How could I not be? He’s far better than I at tracking my unconsciousness. However, in spiritual battles, victory comes from clarity, not from strength. I don’t have to be stronger or smarter than Lucifer; I just have to be clear as to what my position is. The Fall came about not because people weren’t strong or smart enough but because they left their positions. It doesn’t matter what Lucifer has over me. The issue is not whether Lucifer can see my unconsciousness better than I can. The issue is whose responsibility it is. That is the critical question.

We can all see other people’s unconsciousness better than they can, just as they can see ours better than we can. As long as we know that our unconsciousness is our responsibility, it’s all right to get help from others. The question is, to what degree can we trust others to help us with our problem of unconsciousness. This is a very tricky area to negotiate, because without help it is impossible to address the issue of unconsciousness. The problem is, it is very tempting and easy to be seduced into believing that someone else can do it for us.

Escape from freedom, the belief that someone else can take responsibility for our responsibility without compromising our integrity and autonomy, is the driving force behind all addictions. Drugs are just the external expression of that internal emotional process. The belief system which drives the emotional process is the notion that someone else can do it for us. It’s what co-dependence is all about. It’s how Satan controls us. The question "Whose responsibility is it?" cuts through all of the above.

What it comes down to is something very obvious, which is that the most difficult problems are the ones we can’t solve by ourselves. The good news is that we’re not responsible to solve those problems by ourselves. We are, however, responsible for whom we choose to help us, and the criteria used in making that choice. There is no escaping the old adage that our characters will be judged not just by our actions, but also by the company we keep. A good rule of thumb in keeping with the universal principle of give and take would be to trust only those who are willing to reciprocate. Those who won’t allow us to be of help with their unconsciousness are poor candidates to trust to be of help with ours.

Once I acknowledged that I had an unconscious relationship with Satan, my original mind was able to explain to me the specifics. I had made an unspoken covenant with him that he would take over for me when I came to my unconscious areas, as they were too embarrassing for me. It was so obvious. That’s how it had always been. But I couldn’t see it, because I had been too distracted all my life by anger, rage and hatred. My original mind also informed me that the purpose of my anger, rage and hatred was to distract me from my embarrassment.

Question: "What was I embarrassed about?" Answer: "For years I was considered too ‘different’ to be considered part of the main body of people I grew up with." In answering that question I realized that being considered strange is just as much an issue for me as a 49-year-old adult as it was when I was a five-year-old. Question: "How do I make my peace with the fact that people consider me ‘different’?" Answer: "I respond instead of reacting to that reality." People have the right to perceive me any way they wish. For years I was deluded into believing that I should have the final say as to how people perceived me. I was so distracted that I couldn’t recognize the difference between subjective and objective reality. Because my foundation has been so weak in that area, some self-reflection is in order in relation to my embarrassment which I displaced as anger, rage and hatred over the decades. Question: "What is my reaction to having been perceived as strange?" Answer: "My reaction is the activation of the desire to retaliate or punish those who see me that way. Question: "What’s my response to having been perceived as strange?" Answer: "My response is to be curious as to why I was perceived that way. The bottom line is: I don’t know why people thought me strange, which means if I want to know the answer to that question I have to become more involved with the people who experience me that way.

So what I learned today after reading Father’s words about indemnity (foundation of faith) and getting my car towed and having the opportunity to apply those words (foundation of substance) is that I am someone who gets very deep into his own mind to the point that I am out of touch with what mainstream society considers normal. When I get past my reaction to the fact that others found me strange, I come to the more significant reality that other people matter to me. This brings me to the crucial question in relationship to my false persona of being Unique, Creative and Autonomous. Question: "Why do other people matter to me?" Answer: "Because on a core level, I identify more with myself in relation to humanity than I do to myself as an individual. It is as a result of identifying with humanity and feeling profoundly rooted there that I feel secure in exploring the outer edges, which is perhaps the reason that others perceive me as strange.

This new awareness gives me ammunition to dismantle my false image of myself as Creative, Unique and Autonomous. Though that image is true to a great degree in the external measurable world, it does little to explain who I am in terms of what motivates me on the internal level. When I measure myself by how others defined me, my relationship with my original mind becomes compromised. The issue is not whether in fact I am creative but: What motivated me to choose creativity to identify with. My original mind showed me that identifying with being unique was my way of trying to put a positive spin on being perceived as strange; there, it was reactive.

My original mind also showed me that whether or not I am unique is not my problem. On the internal level I don’t identify with being unique; I identify with being human. Identifying with being autonomous is the same. It’s my way of saying to the world: "You can’t hurt me. I’m autonomous. I don’t need you."

The vertical part of who I am, is that I have been given a human identity by God. The horizontal part is that I want to interact with other human beings in order to experience the richness of who they are and experience God in a more complete manner.

Because of my internalized false identity, which had its roots to a great degree in my unconscious relationship with Satan, I have been blaming others for my own inability to understand them. I have been externalizing my responsibility. In the process I have created a false and unnecessary world of conflict between myself and society/others. It’s Catch-22. The more I railed against society, the stranger I became in society’s eyes. The higher society put up its walls to protect itself from raging humans like me, the smaller and blander their world became. Satan is the master of the reactive world.

Yes, it’s true I am at times unique, different and even strange; but as the center of the cosmos, I choose to measure the world by how I define myself. The world is my altar—my opportunity to give by sharing who I am. It is my responsibility to discover my identity, not anyone else’s. That process embodies the essence of what the First Blessing is. Once I substantiate the First Blessing, it is my honor and privilege to share it with humanity. However, if I already used that opportunity to ask the world who I am, why should I expect them to be interested when I call again later to tell them what I claim to have discovered on my own, when in fact I borrowed it from them? It is not right to expect the world to stop what it is doing and listen to me, if I’m not bringing something new into the cosmos.

It is my motivation which defines who I am. What I’ve learned from this self-reflection is that what motivates me is my desire to bring the newness which is found on the outer edges back to the center so that newness can be appreciated. The new blossoms on a tree by definition happen on its outer edges. What motivates me is the desire to give. What I choose to give, to fulfill that desire, is merely the medium: significant, but nowhere near as significant as the motivation. The medium is the How, the motivation is the Why. If I had remained in the reactive world, Satan would have me grinding myself into powder, arguing and fighting over whose method is better. I would be dying a thousand deaths, running from my secret fear that someone else’s ways are better than mine.

However, because I choose to live in the responsive world, the most incredible revelation has come to me: on the internal level of Why, where it really matters, I’m just like everybody else. Therefore it makes no sense to get into conflict with others over external differences. The critical issue is not the gift which I have to offer, but learning how to offer it so that others will know its value. That is my responsibility, my riddle to solve. Actually it’s my privilege and blessing. It’s actually kind of a romantic challenge. You don’t ask your lover, whether it be an individual or humanity, "What would you like me to get you for your surprise birthday party?" I have to complete my offering in relation to humanity. I hear God’s voice speaking to me as he did to Cain thousands of years ago: "Cain, why has thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted?"

I will complete my offering. I will finish the offering which Cain never completed. I will learn how to make myself understood by others. This is my responsibility, not the responsibility of society. Why is it my responsibility? It is I who wants to be understood by others. I’m doing it for me. I’m doing it so that I can be fulfilled. Pretending that it is anything else is just another way to remain in the world of reactivity.

To me it is amazing how deeply God’s heart is imbedded in the small details as well as the majestic larger picture. Indeed, all things are connected, which is why something as trivial as a parking ticket could reveal to me something so cosmically profound as the exact location where God and Satan reside inside of me. Amen.

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