Click for audio: Message from a Little Man
If you are familiar with Google Maps, then you are probably familiar with the little man you can drag to any location and see a street view of that location. Once there, you can move around and see the surrounding scenery. The little man, in one sense, becomes your eyes. If you are looking for an address using this application, it is possible to become so fascinated playing with the technology and exploring your virtual world, that you forget what you were looking for in the first place.
In a way not unlike this illustration, each soul had dropped its own “little man” into this three-dimensional plane. Our little man is our physical body. In addition to sight, this one has the ability to hear, to touch, to taste and to smell the environment we have placed it in. It also has the ability to think and feel and make judgments about the places we’ve dropped it into. So real has our little man become that we have all but forgotten there is a soul that is sustaining and running it.
It is a helpful exercise to think of your body and your consciousness as your “little man” that you, the soul, have dropped into this place in your life at this very moment. It helps to draw a distinction between you, the operator, and the mind and body you are directing. Imagine you have just “dropped” your body and mind into your present environment. You see the sights, hear the sounds, smell the aromas and feel the seat in which you are sitting. From this more objective point of view, it is easy to see how so much of what has made up your life consists of “what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on” (Matthew 6:25). Your life, as Jesus noted, is so much more than food, and your body so much more than clothing. Your life is your eternal soul and your body is the vehicle you are using to experience this three-dimensional environment.
Practice seeing yourself in this way throughout your day. Your goal is not to separate yourself from your body or your general thinking mind, but to realize that you, something much larger than both, are controlling this earthly excursion. If your little man is not reporting to you a level of life you know should be yours, perhaps it’s time to reconsider what you are asking him to do.