gospel of Thomas 3

Jesus said, "If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realise that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty, and it is you who are that poverty."

In this little teaching, Jesus is telling us where to look. And he does it so beautifully. Some may say, "The kingdom is in the sky." The kingdom is what we seek. The kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of God. Liberation. Some may say it's in the sky. But then the birds are already there. That rather offends our sense of dignity. Similarly, if people say it is in the sea, then the fish already have it.

Well, our egoic human mind won't stand for that. But it's a nice way of saying: don't look in the outside world for this thing. Look inside. The kingdom is inside of you. And it is outside of you. But come to know yourselves then you will become known. In other words, the kingdom is everywhere, inside and outside. But to see it, we have to look inside. The outside we see all day long anyway. It is there. We know the sky, we know the sea. Actually, we don't know it fully until we also know the inside. Until we know of ourself. That's the part that is missing.

So Jesus is telling us where to look. Look inside. Come to know yourself.

And this has been the advice of all the mystics down the ages. All the sages have said we create our own problems. Jesus is saying that too. If you don't know yourself, you dwell in poverty. He doesn't mean you don't have money. He means you're living an impoverished life. Impoverished by your own ignorance, by your own illusions, by not having looked inside yourself. That's why he says, you are that poverty. And he's right, spot on. We create an impoverished life, and we are that poverty, right until we look inside ourself and see what we really are.

It's not an easy task. As soon as we start looking at ourself we begin to see things that we don't like; that we have been conveniently forgetting about; ignoring, for years. But we must do this work. We must look inside. We must know ourself.

And we have to be honest as we look inside. We have to see the little deceits that we are playing with ourself, the lies we tell ourself. We like to think we're doing things for one reason, when the reality is we're doing them for a completely different reason, less noble, less socially acceptable. We're playing these games all the time, with ourself and with others. And we have to see it all. See it all within ourself.

Through this rather arduous investigation, we become known. We come to know ourself, and also, we become more and more visible to other people. We are no longer hiding. We become transparent. This is becoming known. And it is an essential part of the journey, if we are to come home to the kingdom.

And Jesus also says, that if we come to know ourselves, then we will realise that we are the sons of the living Father. What a pity that in English we have to have these masculine, or feminine words, sons, daughters, father, mother. For here, we should really have sexless words. If we come to know ourself, we will realise that we are the offspring of creation. It's another way of saying, we are part of existence. Exactly as we are, we are valid. There's no question about our right to be here, to exist. We are part of creation. We are part of God. This is what Jesus is telling us.

But here, he's not just stating it as a fact. He's showing us the way for us to discover it for ourself. To come to the truth, for ourself. And that's essential. We can't just take second hand knowledge. We cannot just absorb what someone else is telling us is the truth. We have to find it for ourself. We have to search for ourself. We have to go on our own journey. 

This way we will come to the kingdom. And we will, like Jesus, know that we belong.