Do you remember reading the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), perhaps as a kid, and wondering what it all meant? The story is rich with messages of Love for us, and yet I often struggled with its deeper meanings until I began to see that it truly holds the keys to going Home, uniting in Oneness with the God/Goddess/All That Is.
At various points in my life, I have been guided to work with this story from the different perspectives of the 3 main characters. Initially, I identified with the “good son” who stayed home and conscientiously worked the fields. It did not seem fair that a wayward brother should spend years squandering resources and then come home to receive the same wealth. But from the Divine perspective there is value in everyone’s experience. As we come back together in Unity and Oneness, each of us has key pieces of Wisdom to share from our unique experiences in this experiment of separation. God/Goddess places no greater value in one path over another. There is no right or wrong way to do Love. It is simply our choice of what to experience.
At other times, I worked on pieces of unworthiness, seeing myself as the lost son, the wayward supplicant who erred so greatly during this Experiment that I was undeserving of being truly welcomed home with open arms and must “earn” my way back into the Garden of Eden through toil and struggle. I began to see myself through God’s eyes- to see the inherent value within myself without judgment, independent of what I had created, and to be willing to accept the Unconditional Love of the father (God/Goddess/All That is). The Garden of Eden, the experience of Heaven on Earth, is truly our birthright and is never lost to us.
More recently, I have been working with this parable from the perspective of the father, who sees no difference in his two sons, no preference of one over the other as better. For the father in this story, there is no demarcation between what is his and what is theirs. They are family, they are One, and what is his just as equally belongs to his sons. There is no judgment or expectation of any kind, but simply the understanding that the abundance and riches of life are available to us all who allow ourselves to partake. He never forced one son to stay and work hard to prove his worth, nor did he deny his love to the other son who left to follow a different path. In the father’s eyes (God’s eyes), there was never any separation.
The door back to the Garden of Eden and Oneness with the God/Goddess has only one lock- and that is on our side of the door. We are the ones who place ourselves into the struggle or deny ourselves a warm welcome upon our return. The moment we have the realization that we are One, the resources of the universe are ours. Past deeds, “good” or “bad”, fall away and the only relevance is in this one moment of Love.