The Lord’s Prayer : Explanatory Note V – The Daily Bread

Give us our daily bread of spiritual consciousness
In the re-presented prayer we have expanded “Give us our daily bread” to “Give us our daily bread of spiritual consciousness” Why is that so?

It is important to remember that the Teacher of Galilee, who is credited with the Lord’s Prayer, in all his teachings and interactions with the people was more concerned about their spiritual wellbeing; about the heavenly things: kingdom of God; and about how the people can be set free or how they can regain their freedom from the theological aristocratic class and their draconian ideologies/laws. This is my personal interpretation or my reading of the Teacher’s work.

However, most of the teachings that got to us in the present age have since been reduced to the satisfaction of base physical needs only. One cannot but wonder that the guy who advised that if your eyes are leading you into spiritual problem, plug it out; or if it is your hand, cut it off, but to find that of all the important messages he taught, it is the miracle of feeding the masses with two fish and five loaves; and of healing few physically blind, deaf, dumb and crippled that are prominently highlighted by Preachers whose specialities are miracle and prosperity. But the core message of his teaching aimed at healing the spiritually blind, deaf, dumb and crippled are totally forgotten or reduced/sidelined to a mere addendum.

It is therefore not surprising that when we say this part of the Lord’s Prayer, the mind that has been made poor and is perpetually hungry for physical food because the Lords of the world have confiscated all the available means of production, cannot reason above their basic immediate need. The lords of the manor have hoarded the people’s bread under different guises. The people could do nothing else beyond pleading to God to physically supply their daily table bread. But by a sleight of the hand, the God presented to the mass of the people is indeed the lord of the manors who are the kings, barons, dukes, and chiefs.

Let us digress a little, and ask, how did this prayer got titled as, The Lord’s Prayer? We must note that the Roman Catholic Church version of the prayer is called, “The Our Father Prayer”. The Anglican Church version is from the  “authorized” English translation of the “Holy Bible”  produced by the committee set up by King James I of England between 1604-1611. The word Lord found all over this book, is hitherto, a common honorific title for the Nobles of England.

The common people of England, who were encouraged/forced by the various Lords of the Manors or Estates to attend church services in the chapel built by their lord/master on his large estate, would invariably think that when they come to this portion of the prayer in the Sunday Service, they were addressing their prayer to the lord of the manor. Through the deliberate named title: The Lord’s Prayer, the lord of the Manor reinforces his ‘divine right’ as the giver of daily bread to his serfs, and claims his inherited right to lord it over them as well. This is part of the institutional and psychological control system established over the people so as to make them eternal subjects of the earthly masters (Lords) and rulers of the land.

Up till today, lawyers or Queen counsels in the Royal Courts of England address the magistrates and judges as “My Lord” and we have a House of Lords in the British Parliament. Through all these institutional and cultural means propped up by theological mumbo jumbo from the pulpits paid for by the kings and nobles, the common folks with limited understanding of political rights, are psychologically brainwashed to pray to their masters for their daily bread and survival. With this subtle engineering of word, the chain of servitude is sealed forever because the mind has been fooled to imbibe and to believe a naked lie.

So when the modern-day religionists say this prayer today, they must be reminded about the history behind the title and understand that whatever the Teacher of Galilee tried to teach on spirituality has since been corrupted into a prayer for mere material bread and butter.

The question is, why should mankind be begging and pleading for food incessantly? Before mankind was created, the garden of food and plenty flowing with milk and honey was the first task undertaken by the forces/spirits/power/nature/gods that formed us. Everything on this planet is synchronised together to maintain a perpetual existence through interdependency and interconnectivity of all the created beings. Why should humanity at this juncture, with all the great developments in science and technology, still have to beg and plead for food, and on a daily basis for that matter?

Physical and Spiritual Consciousness

Physical consciousness has taken up all of our time and energy. Nothing at all remains for the nurturing and satisfaction of our spiritual well-being. The kingdom of the Chosen Ones is working us all to death literally and we are left with no time for the spiritual quest. Right from kindergarten we are nurtured to study well and work hard on the books chosen for us so that we can get into the “Ivy League” colleges (every country has its own form of Ivy league schools) in order to secure a lucrative position of power in the kingdom’s hierarchy. The goal of education set down by the Powers That Be, is to make each of us a truly soulless machine.

This human machine is consciously programmed and deliberately made to be perpetually concerned about daily bread and nothing beyond it. The knowledge about our spiritual being is purposely suppressed. When it is not suppressed, we are offered a corrupted and dumb down religiosity that has no meaning to the psyche of man. Looking around the world, we seem to hear so much noise about religion but godlessness abounds in all spheres of life.

Brothers are being set against brother because of differences in politically motivated religious ideologies. You hear one say to another, “I am a Christian and so my religion is the only way to heaven”. Another will reply, “I am a Muslim and Islam is the only true message and it is the last religion for mankind”. And another will look at the two contenders and say to them, “Both of you have counterfeited my holy religion that was given to Abraham, my ancestral father. Therefore, both of you are blasphemers”.

We can see from the above that by a clever but cruel human design, the world stage is set for perpetual religious and sectarian wars. Can any of these holy claimants with supportive holy books, allegedly recorded as dictated by the mouth of god, be right? Diplomatically speaking, I don’t know. But the teacher of Galilee, whose words and teaching my soul has found very nourishing say something like, “By their fruits you shall know them” (Matthew 7:20). And that is all we can go by, the fruits they bear. And to know their fruits we have to revisit the history of mankind with a keener eye of objectivity. We have to ask basic questions and see what the history books will tell us.

We ask, since the advent of the development of the Middle East political ideology of the God concept in the world, what has been its impact on world peace; and has the well-being of mankind been enhanced or jeopardised wherever any of the variant ideology has taken root? The “awe and shock” answer will confirm the truth of the matter without any iota of doubt. So friends, take out your history books and do some basic research.

Therefore, for all sincere seekers of the truth of life, in asking you to pray/meditate for a daily bread of spiritual consciousness, we are trying to reposition these laudable and inspirational words of The Lord’s Prayer to where they properly belong. They should be taken as tools for meditation towards spiritual growth and development. Our mode of prayer/meditation has to change away from begging to making a claim for what is rightfully ours when we understand what spirituality means.

Simply put, spiritual consciousness is the knowledge or instinctive awareness that one is a spiritual being and keeping the remembrance of this special identity alive in one’s mind at all times. Also, it is the habit of always keeping in mind the awareness that one is one part physical and two parts spiritual; and that individually, we live in God and God lives in each of us and together, man and God are one. This is a tremendous piece of spiritual knowledge. When the mind of mankind is able to grasp this knowledge, process it, understand it and imbibe it to the point where it is made the foundation stone on which all life’s ambitions, aspirations and plans are laid, it is the superlative of kingdom of God descending to earth. It is like saying, the kingdom of heaven has come down to earth indeed.

Spiritual consciousness is the practical awareness that everything both living and non-living is composed of the same physical material substances (metallic and non-metallic) and of same spiritual but non-material substances (mind and soul). However, from personal observations and researches of various formulated speculations by awakened souls, it seems only mankind is able to grow and develop the mind to a great level of depth and breadth while all other living things rely solely on instincts.

Unfortunately, a large proportion of mankind have never grown beyond the level of instincts and this basic natural gift has been taken off them as well by the elaborate but spiritually empty educational and religious knowledge that pervades the world. The understanding that flows from the above propositions that man and god are one, gives credence to the theory of equality of life; and this is the principle that supports or teaches us to respect all forms of life regardless of form, size, age, sex, colour or alleged superior pedigree and lineage.

When we meditate, that is, allow our minds to focus, on this portion of the Lord’s Prayer, it is for the purpose of raising our horizons higher than the physical level of existence. It is the gateway to the spiritual side of our nature where life is real. The ever-changing physicality of life gives us a make-believe sense of reality but experience of birth and death has shown that it is indeed very temporal. It’s like smoke that appears for few minutes and disappears soon after to be seen no more. The only thing that is real about our life is the Soul Being. Even the mind that is being fought over, for the purpose of domination and control by the powers that be of this world, is also of a temporary nature like the body that manufactures it into being. It dies with the body.

The overlords of the kingdom of man understand the power and strength of words to heal or to kill. True words have positive power to quicken the soul into life while untruthful words have the negative power to keep our minds perpetually sedated. In this respect, the daily Press of the mass media have become a weapon of mass control. This is what, G K Chesterton called, “that very synthetic substitute for daily bread”. It is a daily bread that gives no nourishment to the mind. Rather, it is sending the soul into deeper slumber.

A host of materials in the purported holy books have the same affect on souls because they are “synthetic substitutes for daily bread”. They are untruthful words about the nature of the creator that was coupled together by men with diabolical intents. They are closely and intricately entwined chains made solely for mind enslavement. They are designed to send the soul back to sleep not to awaken it.

This is the situation of the world where the up is now called down and down is labelled as up. It is surely a upside-down world. The solution is in seeking knowledge eclectically. Learn to understand the voice of your instincts. It is a better guide to unravel the truth of our world. Let your instincts spur you into action. Seek the spirit of discernment so that you can unravel lies no matter how beautifully it is packaged by the diverse snake oil doctors and salespeople.

Therefore, when we begin to meditate daily for spiritual consciousness, it shows that we have stepped up our game into the true reality of existence. It is the sign that we are now ready and eager to depart from the world of illusion, which the illusionist of our world have created for the enslavement of minds in order to prevent the emergence or the rebirth of souls.

The main goal of the soul on planet earth, after accomplishing its self ordained set objectives, is to go back home and to be in unity with the One, the creator. The whole idea of planet earth was conceived as a holiday resort for souls in order to know and experience their capabilities when they are temporarily separated from the Creator. Like any holiday we undertake on earth to exotic places, we still have a desire to go back home no matter how pleasant and enjoyable our holiday resort is. This is the riddle of our existence as a soul being that is eternally struggling with everything it has to wake up so that it can begin to do what is right for self and for life in general.

In The Spirit of Truth

SAM ABBD ISRAEL

(Continued at VI)