I believe that all of us are born with the image of God stamped indelibly into the fibers of our being. Despite our personal flaws and the brokenness of our institutions, we all have divine wisdom and goodness inscribed on our hearts. We don’t acquire it from without as much as we uncover it from within. Unfortunately, though, our personal experiences and cultural messages tend to have us believe that our worthiness resides in something external, something we can cultivate, achieve, amass, or purchase. This is a lie, an illusion, which obscures the divine goodness that is the birthright of each one of us. We see through a glass dimly. An important part of spiritual practice, then, is “cleaning the lens”: letting go of the layers of illusion piled up by the ego, which helps us to rediscover the deepest truths of who we are, what the world is, and how we belong.
