How to Be Yourself

Yesterday when I woke up it was all crystal clear to me. This is something I've been hearing and grappling with for years -- ever since God called me to the Catholic Church at the end of 1991. I used to hear or sense God say to me that what He wanted was for me to be myself, and it would frighten me, because I didn't know how to do that. I didn't know just what that meant. In some ways, it has been at the crux of my spiritual journey for the last three years, constantly. And yesterday when I woke up, it was so obvious to me that I could delineate it in steps.

How to Be Yourself

Step One: God calls to you.
You don't make this happen; this is God's initiative. But it is universal. God calls to everyone.

Step Two: Acknowledge the call
The response you give to God ("Yes, Lord?") opens and begins to align your heart to your Creator, your Origin, your Meaning.

Step Three: Receive
I'm picturing this in somewhat abstract artistic terms of one movable piece of creation lining up "under" so to speak a fount or source of something flowing into it. That piece of creation which you are can of course choose to move out of alignment, and sometimes changes in the force of flow can require some movements to stay in alignment. But the key is to constantly remain in/seek out that subordinate relationship with the vitality of the flow of the divine. You do not control this flow or make it happen. You must receive it.

Step Four: Live the Glory

As that vitality of God reaches you, it transforms you. It purges, cleanses, reshapes, cuts away, refreshes, enlightens and revitalizes you. In this state, you live and carry out your normal daily business. This is the presence of the glory of God in you. This is you being yourself: the self God has created and is creating, the self through which God brings His presence into the world and multiplies this on-going process in the lives of others, without you trying or even noticing.

You are not going to be without flaw, without weakness, without sin until we are fully purified and finally in the presence of the Lord Himself in eternity. But we live in hope, with the first-fruits of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, longing for heaven and loving our brothers and sisters, for we are all somewhere in the process all the time. God calls to all. Not all hear. Let us love and make His call easier for those lost in pain to hear.