Yeshua’s students asked: When will you appear to us,
and when will we see you?

Yeshua answered: When you strip naked without being ashamed
and trample your clothes underfoot like little children,
then you will see the Son of the Living One,
and you will be fearless.

(Matthew 24:3; Matthew 18:3)

To “strip naked” is to let go of ahamkara. My “clothes” represent all those things in which I have sought my sense of identity. They are the things in the external world by which I have attempted to establish my sense of self. They are the means by which I seek to establish my value as a human being.

Small children do not need these “clothes”. This is why Jesus said,

Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:3)

Children have no need to create for themselves any sense of identity in the external world. Small children have not yet reached the unfortunate stage of life where they feel the need to prove their worth or demonstrate that their lives are meaningful and valuable.

Jesus calls me back to this awareness of my inherent value saying,

do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows. (Matthew 10:31)

This is not to denigrate sparrows, but to open me to the awareness that my value lies not in anything “useful” I may do or any impact I may have.

This is why Jesus instructed his followers to

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. (Matthew 6:28-29)

Lilies simply are. They need no greater justification than simply being where they are, as they are, when they are.

Jesus here pokes a stick in the spinning wheel of ahamkara. There is nothing left to achieve, nothing to prove, nothing to get. The “lilies of the field” have no power other than the power of their own inherent beauty. When we rest in the deep truth of our own beauty, fear begins to dissipate.

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Today I will seek to rest in the beauty of my own true nature and trample under foot all those things in the external world in which I have sought to establish a false sense of security.