by Michael Maciel

Honoring our parents means recognizing them as a factor to be understood, not a model we have to replicate.

In its simplest sense, the Fourth Commandment means taking care of your elderly parents. But in a deeper sense, it means recognizing that which deserves honor and overlooking (forgiving) the rest. You can’t honor what’s dishonorable.

Biologically, we inherit all the genes we have from our parents. But which ones get turned on is determined by how we react to our environment. That’s why it’s important to “honor” the better angels of our nature.

Mentally, we “honor our father and mother” when we recognize the existence of the preconceptions out of which our ideas are born. An amoeba moves by extending itself through a narrow bridge of its own cytoplasm. It can’t jump from one place to another. It has to maintain a connection with its former position before it can fully take on another. Or, as the saying goes, “If a frog had wings, it wouldn’t bump its ass a-hoppin’.”

In terms of prayer, or the use of the Law of Prayer, it means that we can only move as far as our legs can carry us one step to the next. We can’t, by taking thought, make one hair white or black, as Jesus said. When the Wright Brothers set their minds on flying, they didn’t magically sprout wings from their backs. They worked with what they had and built an airplane. That was the answer to their prayer.

At the soul level, which is our spiritual operating system, we honor our Creator, knowing that we are infinite in our potential but, at the same time, confined to our humanness. It’s as though we have been shot into this environment so that the infinite potential that we are will raise up or redeem the whole place. This is the Christian doctrine of “The Incarnation,” the atonement and redemption all rolled up in one. Enlightenment starts with a spark from above that lights a fire, which then burns towards heaven.

These three actions—incarnation, atonement, redemption—are distinct. The Incarnation is the descent into matter. The atonement is Christ submitting to the tomb, Jonah to the whale, Shadrak, Meshack, and Abednego voluntarily entering into the furnace—allowing ourselves to be consumed by the Earth Plane and becoming one with it. The Redemption is regeneration—the transformation of matter into the New Man, the New Jerusalem, the Return.