If “God” is a devotional word for Profound Reality, then the word “God” adds no rational or irrational content to our experiences of Profound Reality. “God” adds only the very important meaning of our trust in the trustworthiness of Profound Reality. In that context, what does it mean for us to return to this holy trust in Profound Reality from our “distant places” of estrangement from Profound Reality?

First of all, we see the Presence of Profound Reality as an encounter we can and do experience and to which we can and do respond. Our enigmatic consciousness can “see” Profound Reality, but cannot describe Profound Reality or even talk about Profound Reality in our ordinary modes of truth. Neither our quest for scientific knowledge nor our contemplative inquiry into our our inner being can reveal anything about the essence of Profound Reality or about the relation of Profound Reality to us. In order to talk about this unavoidable relation with Profound Reality we need parables, koans, myths, and other cryptic means of communicating with one another about our Profound Reality experiences.

In order to illustrate what I mean by a “parable,” I am going to reflect upon the familiar parable typically named “the prodigal son” (Luke 15:12-32). This parable is about the essence of the relation that Profound Reality takes toward us, told about in a parable. For my purposes it does not matter whether this parable came from the very mouth of Jesus, or from the creativity of the early church. This parable clearly joined the Christian scriptures in a major way and implies a major truth about the revelation brought to humanity through the event of Jesus, understood as Messiah in the sense of having shown us the full living of our human lives.

So let us set aside any attempts to make some sort of moral or ethical sense out of this parable. This old story is not about moral advice for sons and fathers, or for employers and their employees, or for slave owners and their slaves, or any thing of that sort. Instead, let is examine how this parable is about a return to Profound Reality from our trips into our grim unrealities (that is estrangements from the Real).

Let us view the “father” in this story is an allusion to Profound Reality. And let us view the two “sons” as allusions to two alternative ways of being related to Profound Reality. Viewed in this way we can see this story speaking to us of a key religious issue that arises in every century of human life. I am going to quote this parable line-by-line and then comment on the radical nature of these somewhat cryptic verses.

Once there was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, “Father give me my share of the property that will come to me.” So he divided up his property between the two of them. Before very long, the younger son collected all his belongings and went off to a foreign land, where he squandered all his wealth in the wildest extravagance. J. B. Phillips translation

To a human father what could be more disappointing than that happening. Not only is this an affront to the father, but it is a pitiful failure on the part of this son’s character, good sense, and outright indulgence. As a parable with regard to our own Profound Reality parentage, this story refers to going away from a home in realism into a far land of unreality.

And when he had run through all his money, a terrible famine arose in that country, and he began to feel the pinch. Then he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country who sent him into he fields to feed the pigs. He got to the point of longing to stuff himself with the food that the pigs were eating, and not a soul gave him anything.

This is a strong picture of the state of desperation that can ensue from fleeing Reality. We see how this state often comes to pass for an extreme drug addict. This story also applies to the state of persons who sell out to wealth and power at the expense of their integrity and common sense. Any flight from Profound Reality places us in a tension with the inescapable forces of Reality. Attempting to win a fight with Profound Reality or to flee from Profound Reality is a hopeless life project. When such flight continues to its conclusion, we end up in a state of hellish despair penetrating our whole lives.

Then he came to his senses and cried out aloud, “Why, dozens of my father’s hired men have more food than they can eat, and here I am dying of hunger. I will get up and go back to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have done wrong in the sight of Heaven and in your eyes. I don’t deserve to be called your son anymore. Please take me on as one of your hired men.”

A shift toward an honest facing of this intense guilt is taking place. So intense is this remorse that being a true son of Reality is too much to even hope for. Just a hired-hand status and some clean grub will do.

So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still some distance off, his father saw him, and his heart went out to him. And he ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.

In this part of Luke’s story, Jesus is playing with his listeners at a very deep level. Reality is being pictured as treating our return to Reality with remarkable enthusiasm. This son does not yet get the thoroughgoing nature of this forgiveness.

But the son said, “Father, I have done wrong in the sight of Heaven and in your eyes. I don’t deserve to be called your son anymore . . .” “Hurry!” called out his father to the servants, “fetch the best clothes and put them on him! Put a ring on his finger and shoes on his feet, and get that calf we have fattened and kill it, and we shall have a feast and a celebration! For this is my son—I thought he was dead, and he is alive again. I thought I had lost him, and he is found!” And they began to get the festivities going.

In telling this parable, what Jesus is saying about the essence of Profound Reality in relation to our crazy-making unrealism can seem completely preposterous. These sentences are like clubs beading down the last bits of human moralism. Returning to the mercy of Profound Reality means a fresh start in full sonship, or full daughter-ship, or full innocence, or full saint potential. No period of punishment is required. No apprenticeship is prescribed. Complete restoration is immediately granted by the Authority beyond all authority—Profound Reality “herself.”

The prodigal is being given far more than is being asked for by that prodigal bring. And if these sentences are not enough to get our attention, Jesus goes on to describe the offense of the elder son to this father’s response to this wayward son. Each of us may feel in our own being the feelings of this eldest son. And as we read the following words, let us keep in mind that in this is a parable in which the “father” alludes to Profound Reality.

But the elder son was out in the fields, and as he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants across to him and enquired what was the meaning of it all. “Your brother has arrived, and your father has killed the calf we fattened, because he has got him home again safe and sound.” was the reply. But he was furious and refused to go inside the house. So his father came outside and called him. Then he burst out, “Look, how many years have I slaved for you and never disobeyed a single order of yours, and yet you have never given me so much as a young goat, so that I could give my friends a dinner. But when that son of yours arrives, who has spent all your money on prostitutes, for him you kill the calf we fattened!” But the father replied, “My dear son, you have been with me all the time and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and show our joy. For this is your brother; I thought he was dead—and he’s alive. I thought he was lost—and he is found!”

The seeming unfairness of this thoroughgoing forgiveness of Profound Reality is rooted a deep moralism that can be found in us all. We expect Reality to be fair—fair by whatever rules of fairness are embedded in our own psyche. The extravagant mercy of Profound Reality rips our moralism to shreds.

The truth about forgiveness, as revealed in this parable, is essential for the full healing of the forgiven one. If Reality is not totally welcoming of us back to realism, then no such transformations are possible. We would all be stuck in an ever-descending spiral of guilt. But this is not actually true. Healing happens. The possibilities for redemption are real.

Profound Reality, according to this parable, cares nothing for being fair by the standards of any human morality—the only focus in this parable is that a truly guilty person can be restored to a fresh start in innocence. Reality is outlandishly happy that a guilty one who is self-condemned to some deadly despair is being restored to aliveness. Herein is the Eternal truth that this parable was created to reveal to individual persons and to communities of persons.

This parable does not support the notion that there is no guilt—that there is no primal human freedom that can go off the track of our Profound-Reality-supported realism. And this parable does not support the notion that everything is determined to work out just as it does, and that no one is to blame for anything. Rather, the revelation about Reality that can be seen in this parable fully acknowledges that guilt is real—that our experience of a valid self-condemnation unto despair is real, and that the experience of despair is a terrible sicknesses.

This terrible sickness can be treated, not by denying our real guilt, but by the divine treatment of total forgiveness for that all too real guilt. Forgiveness includes a defeat of unrealism and a fresh start in realism. Forgiveness does not excuse guilt; freedom transforms the meaning of guilt into a done deal in our past. Our guilt becomes a lesson in realism for our future choices. Forgiveness moves the healing person from the community of becoming ever more unreal to the community of becoming ever more real.

Our unreal state of living is a feed on the notion that our self-constructed ego gets to choose what is real and what is not real. Profound Realty alone determines what is real. This Totally Mysterious Truth is the judge of every humanly conceived truth as to whether it is true or not and to what extent it is true.

Finally, this parable does not support the notion that this total forgiveness is a type of sentimental indulgence of we untrustworthy persons—of we people who are inclined to take advantage of every leniency to be even more rebellious from Reality. Rather, Profound Reality is only forgiving of those to whom that same Profound Reality has already driven into despair—into despair over our foolish, self-inflicted flights from, and fights with, and outright rejections of Profound Reality.

Accepting forgiveness means surrendering to the rightness of our having been pushed into despair-ridden states of living. Only within a state of humiliating surrender of our commitments to unreality can we also become aware that Profound Realty has no need for revenge toward us or toward anyone. In accepting this forgiveness, life moves forward in the Here/Now of living to a fresh start in which all guilt is simply past memory. The karma of evil is broken. Freedom is restored. Aliveness is restored to full swing.

Profound Reality is stern only because Reality has to be Reality. When we return to Reality, Reality can be said to be nothing but glad, excessively glad beyond all proportion—joyous in the extreme. Such is the raw truth about Profound Reality that is revealed in this parable.

“Hurry!” called out his father to the servants, “fetch the best clothes and put them on him! Put a ring on his finger and shoes on his feet, and get that calf we have fattened and kill it, and we shall have a feast and a celebration! For this is my son—I thought he was dead, and he is alive again. I thought I had lost him, and he is found!”