The interrelatedness of religion is something that has always fascinated me. The acknowledgment of the Divine seems universal, but the way I see most religions arising is from a particular culture’s needs. Often stories and scriptures emerge to allow new insight and teachings to unfold and meet the needs of present-day thinking.

There are many layers to divine wisdom, and most people will find themselves deepening as they expand their awareness.

It might start as fundamentalism that gradually gives way to holism. You can come across a passage or quote you initially take literally and as you grow, you come back to it, each time finding a more evolved meaning. What was once literal is now metaphorical, turns to energetic, turns to transcendent, and so on… deepening in and expanding up.

One area, in particular, I have honed in on over the years just out of sheer curiosity is the overlap of the chakra system in various religions and modalities. In particular, I love playing around with chakras and the Judaic Tree of Life.

From the idea that man is created in god’s image, we get the tree of life. It is less about the reverse in which if a man is created in god’s image, then God must be like a man and more about the components that are the human experience represented through a system. As humans, we get to act out the expansion of divine energy. Through us, the divine gets to expand as we simultaneously become closer to it.

In the tree of life, it links the lower part of our system to grounding energy. Translated from the Sefirot scripture, we name the points as eternity and splendor. They are meant to depict balancing wings of the meaning they point to.

The information and the chart below representing this overlay of various modalities might excite you because you have been mapping the energy too, in which case, cool you can watch me process this.

You also might be thinking what the heck is she talking about. If you are, I assure you it doesn’t really matter because that is not my underlying point.

So how are eternity and splendor two parts of the same thing? It took me meditating on this for a long time to see the underlying meaning here. Where splendor is presence and surrender, eternity is mundane. It is the linear time, the day in and day outness of human life.

As I tapped into the concept of eternity in this viewpoint, the closest I could get to understanding was to compare eternity to work and the monotony of every day. There are many teachings about discipline and work why it is important and how it is a path to god. You can always tell when someone is in touch with this concept because they treat work and the mundane with joy and reverence.

What I noticed in me when I first approached this subject was that I saw eternity as suffering. In fact, that is another theme that pops up in a lot of religious writings. It is a theme or concept that triggers the human experience and is important in that way, yet it is also our destiny to move through it on our journey back to wholeness. This is a place where we hold on to the concept in a fundamental, literal way. Like, because we experienced suffering once, we are supposed to suffer our whole life. Being separated from the divine hurts. It does feel painful. And yet, we also know that in choosing to incarnate as humans, we have chosen to live out a life of possibility in an act of becoming closer to God, closer to wholeness than we were before.

This is my point. If I cling to the initial pain of being in this world, it feels like suffering. If I choose to believe that life is about suffering, I will find ways to constantly re-enact that. If I, even in the mundane, the painful, the grief remember that this is actually a path to god, eternity can be surrendered. It can be splendor.

There is a history and generational teaching that in order to receive good things you must work hard and work hard means suffering. Many of us were raised with the idea we have to fight for what we want. Fighting is the key word here.

I am inviting myself to continue on my path by deciding I do not need to suffer to receive. I know I am whole and every step I take reminds me of that, even when it feels like it is doing the opposite. I am giving myself the gift of ease and grace. My life is not actually a battle or a burden, but a clear path home and I am already there.