I was raised in a very religious home and Bible stories were a significant part of my training. I came down the Jewish side of the Judeo-Christian pipeline, so the Old Testament was our go-to book. But with a Philosophy of Religion course I took in college, I also got fairly familiar with the New Testament as well.

          Either way, most Bible stories felt like ancient history to me, with little relevance to my personal life. What did I care about who smote who, or who went to battle against the Hittites, why and over which piece of land?   

          Anyway, during college, I began to learn about the idea of inner evolution. It grew on me and after graduation, I spent some time in India, studying mediation and higher consciousness.

          During one lecture, I got exposed to an interesting idea about Bible stories. Instead of looking at them as just historical events, it suggested reading them as if they were telling you something about the present make-up of your own consciousness. Try understanding them as a form of internal roadmap and see where the path leads.  

          It was quite a revelation to me and as I started playing around with the idea, it put a completely different spin on the old, familiar stories.

          For instance, take the birth of Jesus in a manger.  No one knows the exact details, whether it was a barn, a stable, or a cave, but it’s accepted that he was born among a bunch of animals.

          From this new, inner perspective, you could say the Christ Child represents the Divine Presence that is at the very center of every human being. It’s within each one of us and exists in an ever-pure state. But even so, it is always surrounded by our animal instincts.  

          Now, whether or not we’re familiar with the Divine Presence within, I’m sure most of us are well aware of the vast variety of animal instincts that are in that inner barnyard of ours.  Although a lot of them are positive in nature, many others are rooted in the law of the jungle, which is the dog-eat-dog code of survival. Its basic element is fear and things can easily get out of hand. Afterall, this is where violence and warfare come from.

          The Bible story infers that Jesus was surrounded by many different kinds of animals, but it only mentions two specifically – an ox and an ass. Personally, I find the image of an ox and an ass next to the Divine Presence to be pretty telling, in a slightly comical way. Because God knows, there’s a part of my mentality that’s as stubborn as an ox and dumb as an ass. But that’s just me.

          So that’s the birth story of Jesus in the context of inner awareness. Another Bible story that works in this context is David and Goliath.

          Most of us know the details. Two armies, the Israelites and the Philistines were in separate camps on opposite sides of a battle filed. According to the Bible the Israelites and their leader, King Saul, are the good guys and the Philistines are the evil opponents.

          The Philistines have a mighty warrior named Goliath, who was gigantic for his time. Scholars think he was about six feet nine inches tall, which made him like an evil super demon because the average man of the time was only about five six.  

          For forty days, Goliath had been challenging Saul to send out one soldier to fight him, in a one-on-one battle. Whichever soldier wins the fight, that army wins the war, subjugating the entire nation on the other side.  

          Of course, everyone is completely intimidated by Goliath and no one will fight him. The Israelites are stalemated in a no-win situation, and every day, his hostile challenges grow more and more filled with ridicule and scorn.

          Then one day, David, a young shepherd, arrives on the scene with some food for his brothers, who are soldiers in Saul’s army. Although David’s age is not clearly known, he was definitely under 20 and may even have been as young as 15.

          When David learns about the situation with Goliath, he goes to Saul and volunteers to fight him. Saul tries to talk him out of it, but David explains that he is an expert marksman with his shepherd’s tool, the sling. Now this wasn’t a little slingshot. On the contrary, it was a deadly weapon. A stone would be whirled around in the sling, building a huge amount of centrifugal force. Then it would be hurled at the target. Scholars say the impact of the stone would be nearly equal that of a bullet from a small pistol.

          David says that with his sling, he has killed several wolves, a few lions and even a bear to protect his sheep. He also feels that he is called to the task to face Goliath and he will be protected by Divine Grace.

          Saul finally agrees and outfits David in his armor and gives him his sword. But after a short time, David returns it all to Saul, saying it was too bulky for him. He goes to a stream and selects five smooth stones and puts them in his sack.

          As he does every day, Goliath walks out onto the battle field, wearing his full-combat armor and starts taunting Saul with hostile ridicule about how cowardly the Israelites are.

          A few moments later, David walks out onto the field, nearly naked, dressed in only his shepherd’s cloak and his sandals.

          When Goliath sees him approaching, he starts to roar with laughter at the sight of this ridiculous boy. “What am I, a dog, that you send out a shepherd to fight me with sticks,” he shouts.

          Finally, as David confronts the giant face to face and shows no fear, Goliath becomes overcome with anger at the boy’s impudent lack of respect. “I’m going to cut you up into small pieces and feed your flesh to the birds in the air and the beasts in the field,” he says.

          David just stares into his eyes to paraphrase it, calmly replies, “You are going to die today.”  He puts one of the stones into his sling and says, “I’m going to cut your head off with your own sword and everyone will know the glory of God.”

          Then David whirls the sling around a few times and with a mighty force, hurls the stone straight into the center of Goliath’s forehead, right between the eyes. The giant falls to the ground and doesn’t move. David approaches the body, draws Goliath’s sword out of its sheath and cuts his head off. Then he stands up and faces the Philistine army, holding the severed head in his outstretched arm. The Philistines flee in panic and in grand Old Testament style, the power of good has won the day.

          So, the basic inner idea of the story is that we all have David and Goliath propensities within our consciousness, and they’re both pretty easy to identify.

           Goliath is the mindset of brute force, arrogance, intimidation and fear. It’s always ready to fight and it always thinks it’s right. It can take many different forms - from outright, raging anger all the way down to unending, self-defeating inner criticism. But it’s always based on some form of self-doubt.

          Speaking of self-doubt, our David mentality has none of it. With its highly attuned sense of intuition, it is aligned with its conscience, and has a clear understanding of right and wrong. And although it has the appropriate amounts of caution and concern, it’s not bonded to all the different fear-based mindsets.

          Knowing its own capabilities, when it comes to facing its responsibilities, it follows the dictates of the old Proverb which says, “Pray as if everything depends upon God. Work as if everything depends upon you.

          In the story, when the experienced shepherd, armed with his sling, faced the intimidating giant spewing out hate and fear. He knew what he had to do. He stared it down. And then he took it down.

          One last biblical story to consider in the inner context is that of Daniel and the lion’s den. There is a lot of speculation about whether not Daniel actually existed, but in the well-known story, he was a righteous man in both word and deed, but he had mighty enemies in the court of the king, who tricked the king into sentencing Daniel to death.

In those days, for executions, they had a cave in which they kept some captured lions. For a full day before an execution, they would not feed the lions to make sure they were hungry. Then they would throw the condemned prisoner into the cave of and roll a huge stone in front of the entrance, blocking any escape. The hungry lions would then rip the prisoner apart and eat him.

It always amazes me how kind and compassionate human beings can be, but on the other hand they can act in depraved ways that defy comprehension.  Afterall, this horribly cruel idea of feeding people to hungry lions didn’t just fall from the sky. It was thought of and implemented by some very disturbed human minds.

Anyway, one night, they threw Daniel into the den full of hungry lions and sealed the exit. They came to the cave the next morning, expecting to see the remains of Danie’s devoured body. When they rolled the stone away, to their astonishment, they found Daniel still alive and standing among the lions, which were surrounding him like tamed house cats.

According to one rabbinical version of the story, when Daniel entered the lion’s den, the lions reacted like they were his pets and he was their long-lost master. During the night, he petted them and they licked him continuously as they all fell asleep and woke up together.

In the consciousness class, this was presented as a tremendously important example of what can happen in our awareness. The higher side of our nature becomes so evolved that our wilder parts become tamed. Fear and agitation become replaced by harmony and cooperation. Inner turmoil ends and peace prevails.

So, in a way, if you link these three Bible stories together, an interesting message emerges about our own inner evolution.

As shown in the Nativity story, when we’re born, the Divine Presence, which is the higher side of our being, is surrounded by the animalistic tendencies of our nature. Stubbornness and ignorance are just two out of hundreds of examples.

At some point in our evolution, as exemplified in David and Goliath, the higher side of ourselves subdues the false invincibility of the giant ego.

And finally, as with Daniel, when the higher consciousness within has evolved into its position of true power, all the inner forces that could do us serious harm have been tamed.

The idea kind of reminds me of a quote from Abraham Lincoln. “People tell me that I must defeat my enemies,” he said. “If I have turned and enemy into a friend, have I not defeated him?”

Lots of things to think about here, as we come to the end of this particular episode. So as always, keep your eyes, mind, and heart opened. And let’s get together in the next one.