Raising the Veil

There is a song by this title that we sing at Unity; it is one of my favorites . . . "I'm raising the veil, between me and my God, no separation, no distance at all; God is right here in my heart, I'm raising the veil."  I believe that within each of us is a deep yearning to know ourselves and each other as the magnificent children of light that we are.  Even when we are lost in forgetting, even when we are identifying very strongly with that which is not the highest we or the world have to offer, that need still burns. 

Our dreams of lack, the veil of forgetting who we are, create the perfect stage for recognizing what is not true of us.  In that sense all that comes to us is an answer to a prayer.  I love the idea of carrying God in my heart; God expresses through me when my soul is having a dark night, and when I know the light of her presence living as me.  Without darkness, we couldn't know light, and so both the veil, and its lifting, are answers to a prayer.

We can choose to experience that veil as an almost physical thing.  It is solid in its ability to separate us from our totality, but also very sheer fabric, easily pushed aside by changing our thinking.  I have viewed situations in this way before, where an instance of fear or pain is playing out on a small stage, and at its edge a curtain hides a much bigger, brighter creation.  The drama occurring on the small stage has immense value as an integral part of the sacred production unfolding.

We are meant to get caught up in believing that the drama developing on the small stage is our life, and defines who we are.  But we are not our struggles; we are pure spirit, able to step back and see ourselves as experiencing something, but at the same time acknowledging that the experience is not who we are.  Raising the veil and stepping out onto the grander stage of living as an unlimited creator made in God's image is a brave act.  When we stand up and claim that truth about ourselves and others, in their fear and forgetting many will say no, you are not.  We stand anyway.

My husband and I have a print on our living room wall that some may have seen; it is entitled "Fra Giovanni - Letter to a Friend - 1513."  It says, in part, ". . . The gloom of the world is but a shadow.  Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy.  TAKE JOY!  Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty . . . that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven.  Courage to claim it, that is all!"

May this tool be a blessing. . .