The Oyster

 Consider the oyster,
seen as strong for its hard shell.
But do we value the shell?

             A whisper of mystery had just arrived, once again interrupting the mundane, petty chatter in my head. 

          “No, we chuck the shell.”  I watched the oyster pass into a hand, then a second hand tried to open its hatch.  No success.  The two hands grew in strength, both trying to open the hard shell. 

Last summer, at an oyster farm on San Juan Island, I learned that an oyster shell grows bigger, thicker, and stronger with age.  I also learned it’s not just the shell that keeps the oyster closed.  The shell is also held tight by its mantle and its exceptionally strong organ, the adductor muscle which secures the two halves tightly closed.  Its job is to keep safe the tender oyster on the inside.

            After much struggle, the two hands finally opened the oyster shell.  Then they drew out the prizes: the tender inside layers of the mantle, the muscle, and the gills.  Hidden beneath these precious, edible layers sat the greatest treasure of all: the pearl. 

One hand gently extracted it and held it between its thumb and index finger.  I saw the beautiful, round, opalescent pearl shine between the fingers.  Then the other hand tossed out the shell into a bin with other shells.

Humans have a shell too.
But they dawn their shell
as clothing, roles, titles,
and other external garb,
the masks that flaunt their pretended individuality.
Many take great pride in their shell
for its strength or beauty.

I was shown many oysters in variety of shapes, sizes, and colors, some quite beautiful.  The largest oyster zoomed in and twisted back and forth, showing off its strength, as well as its beauty of iridescent pink and pale blue.

The image zoomed out again, showing the oysters turning into people, also of various dimensions, sizes, colors, and attire.  A few strutted toward me, fashion show style, presenting their toned muscles, physique, and attire.  Then they turned around and pointed to the others, smirking and whispering gossip. 

Those who honor the shell
might mock and scorn,
unknowingly scorning not only the others,
but also their own internal riches.
What could be rich remains poor.

The image returned these people, beautiful and strong on the outside, back to oysters, still with their strong shells and iridescent colors.  Their shells were then opened and the image zoomed into their gills, now thin, sickly, browned, and weakened.  The camera further zoomed in, revealing a minute grain of sand. 

These also carry a pearl within,
but know it not.
If they scorn you,
they scorn your treasure,
If they scorn your treasure,
they also scorn the treasure within themselves.

I listened with a tinge of delight, glad these boasters will get what they deserve. The whispers admonished.

If you be glad for their dismay,
dismay will come to you too.

Uh oh.

You thought the grain of sand
was their pearl grown weak.
No, the grain is only the start.
What you saw was the infant pearl
waiting to grow. 

            I sighed, realizing now I was the one mocking.  I recalled what Plato had said: “Never discourage anyone making progress, no matter how slow.”

That was your limited, human self

            My whispers spoke with gentleness, understanding, and without judgment.  They have spoken with compassion about our limited, human self, a sacred part of ourselves that battles its limitations.  This part holds our feelings and the chatter in our heads.  My whispers have said it is not to be called our “lower self,” for it, too, is sacred, but it is limited.  The human self is the first-born in the creation of Adam, formed from the dust of the earth: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7).

Sometimes you are ashamed of your thoughts or feelings.
So you dawn your masks
to hide your human self, or even the pearl of your eternal self.
 
Your human self is not your shell.
But your human self sees your shells
and often sees from the lens of your own shell.
 
Those masks you hide behind?
That’s your shell.
 
The more glorious your shell,
the harder it is to find your pearl.

            In a flash came decades of my wrestling with God over the injustice of human life.  I’m one of the privileged ones: a white citizen of the world’s superpower – a great stroke of luck already.  But I was also raised in 1980s Silicon Valley, the only child of a computer engineer, a great mathematician who wrote codes to make our computers smaller, more compact, and able to fit into a typical home office.  My father had caught the American Dream.  Many have not understood this, but the truth is throughout life, I’ve been singed with guilt.

            Guilt and a question.  Why was I so rich when most of the world is so poor?  Could I not be a little less rich to feel, at least, a little less guilty?

            But I also carried a deeper, more troubling question.  Why was God so mean?  Why would he create a planet so abundant it can feed and shelter every single creature many times over, yet allow half of the humans to subsist in extreme poverty and most of the rest to struggle very hard for sustenance?  If this God wanted to give people poverty, could he at least have made the planet less plentiful?  Doesn’t the Earth’s abundance make the cruelty even worse?

            My whispers, knowing very well I had this bone to pick with God, continued.

Some souls choose poverty
to gain the kingdom of heaven. 

            They reminded me of a statement of Yeshua’s that it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than a camel the eye of a needle (Matt 19:24).  Having grown up rich, that statement had scared me.

            That “souls choose poverty” is a whisper I likely would never have received had I not read the books of Michael Newton and Delores Cannon or biographies of people who have had near-death experiences (NDEs).  Newton and Cannon were both hypnotherapists regressing people into past lives, apparently unknown to one another, who had independently and accidently regressed a subject into the “between life” state.  Having made this surprising discovery, they each perfected their method to do so with their future clients.  Both of them called it the “between life” state because they could take their subjects to the space both before an earthly incarnation and after one.  Their subjects reported the same thing, also reported by many NDEs: before we enter our life on Earth, we, as souls, choose our path.  We choose our place and time of birth, our parents, the significant people in our life, and any likely events or circumstances we might encounter.

            Often, as I read these accounts, I longed to understand why any soul would choose extreme poverty or harsh physical suffering.  Even the “answers” that came from the hypnotized clients that somehow satisfied the clients themselves (and, maddenly, Cannon as well) never satisfied me.  Nevertheless, the accounts did provide my heart with something essential: they softened my anger at God.

            Even more, they reframed God.  No longer, in fact, do I call the divine world “God.”  Too masculine, too singular, too associated with cruel divinity.  Today, I speak of the divine forces or the heavenly world or some other collective term for the grand, beautiful, and harmonious realm beyond and within.

            I paused now to reflect on the whispers’ message: Some souls choose poverty to gain the kingdom of heaven.

            By this time, I understood the “kingdom of heaven” was not what I had thought for many years.  It is not “heaven,” the afterlife.  It is here, now.  “The kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt 3:2).  Always, Yeshua spoke of the kingdom in the present tense: the kingdom of heaven is.  Present tense.  This discovery during my Summer in theTwilight Zone astonished me.  This was not what I had learned at church.

            Now I faced a new question.  If this kingdom of heaven is “here” and “now,” present tense, then what is it?  During the pandemic, more profound whispers of mystery arrived, which revealed the kingdom of heaven to be a heightened consciousness, connected to and aligned with our “eternal self,” that other part of ourselves, the second birth and younger twin of Adam’s creation, formed from the divine breath (see again Genesis 2:7).

The pearl is seeing Life
from the inside out.
 
The human self sees Life
from the lens of the material, physical world,
that tangible world of the five senses.
The eternal self sees it from the inside,
where the pearl is. 

They reminded me that Yeshua had compared the kingdom to one who had found a glorious pearl and sold everything for it (Matthew 13:45-46).

            One need not be poor to seek this pearl, though poverty can encourage it.  Likewise, one is not necessarily incapable of seeking it if one is rich, but is less likely to do so.  One has comfort.  Why seek anything more?

            None of this can be told, only experienced.  It can be shared in parables, as Yeshua did, or in metaphor, as my whispers do.  But to really see and know this pearl, we have to turn our awareness inward and experience Life from the inside out.

            It’s like the astronauts who get that grand opportunity to work in the Hubble Space Station, who watch the heavens through its powerful telescope.  When they return, they try, with their faces flushed in awe, to describe what they’ve seen.  They’ve taken photos, and they hold conferences and show slide shows on great big screens to share, to the best of their ability, what the heavens look like.

            But none of us who have never traveled into space, nor looked through those grand telescopes, could ever know what those astronauts do.  Like them, Yeshua tried to explain this heightened consciousness, knowing many could not receive it, so he often closed with the refrain, “he who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

            “Those who have ears to hear” are those who have begun to turn their awareness within and have begun to glimpse life from the inside out.  They know there is something more, something beyond this material life.  They’ve caught the wink from their eternal self.  And now, they long to live all the way into it.  They wish to live life no longer from the lens of the shell, but from that of the pearl.

© 2026 by Karina Jacobson.  Use only with permission and/or a link to this blog post.

The Oyster is part of a series brought by my whispers of mystery called the "Metaphors of LIfe."  These are the others in the series:

The Smorgasbord

Artificial Sweetener

The Deep-end Diver and the Backstroke Swimmers

The Bumblebee and the Hawk

The Laser Beam

The Misplaced Aurora

             Have you ever received an epiphany or a vision that seemed to come from outside of yourself that drew you into the divine world, and then, as confirmation that what you had heard was real, a double rainbow presents itself in that very moment?  I’ve heard people speak of this.  For me, it wasn’t a double rainbow, but a splash of brilliant colors in the heavens like an aurora borealis, at a time and place where an aurora did not belong: near the equator at lunchtime. 

Photo courtesy of scenichudson.org

This misplaced aurora arrived exactly 21 years ago today, while I was serving as an interpreter for a 3 week mission trip with my church to Valencia, Venezuela.  A mysterious, soft inner voice nudged me to take a step of great faith to be the fourth of the four translators the team needed.  An announcement at church came: the team was to serve in four churches, needed four interpreters, and had only three.  A fourth was needed for the fourth church.  I heard a quiet voice within me.  You are the fourth interpreter. 

This was the first soft, quiet, mysterious voice coming from outside of me, yet inside of me that became that familiar friend and loving guide, my whispers of mystery.  In 2010, I started my blog and titled it whispers of mystery.  But when this voice first whispered in early 2005, it was entirely unfamiliar.  Could I trust it?  I hadn’t spoken Spanish in ten years.  At the peak of my skill at the end of my study abroad in Oaxaca, Mexico, I could get by with my Spanish, but I had never been fluent, and now I was very rusty. How was I to be an interpreter? 

I found the mission’s leader after church, said I hadn’t spoken Spanish in a decade, but would pray about it.  I added that I was so rusty, he should keep looking for a qualified candidate.  Two weeks later, I asked him if a fourth interpreter had been found; he said no and would I do it?  I took a deep breath, silently prayed for a miracle of language skills, and said, yes.  

A week into the mission, on May 14, 2005, the four teams were gathering together for a full group outing.  Included was a trip to the beach that I had very much been looking forward to, but my life-long insomnia, coupled with the lack of my Prozac, accidently left at home, had kept me awake almost all night long all week.  I was exhausted and needed some rest.  Our group had three other translators, so a fourth was not needed on this day when all teams were together, so our leader encouraged me to take the day off to rest. 

I rested well, then in the late morning, decided to roam the city, buy some gifts for our Venezuelan hosts and my family back home, and find a local restaurant for an authentic Venezuelan lunch.  With its many small stores and gift shops nearby, our hotel was well situated for my plan.  As I roamed the sidewalks of the streets, I passed many others, coming and going through the shops.  The weather was warm and sunny, the air was crisp, and the sky was blue.  I was wearing spring attire: a short sleeved shirt and knee length capris pants. 

My first week in Venezuela had already been magical, with a download of memories from my very early childhood, what I was calling una cascada de recuerdos, a waterfall of memories.  When I was a year old, my family had moved to São Paulo, Brazil, where we lived until a few weeks before my fourth birthday.  Now in Valencia, a divine miracle poured through me of a great many memories of my toddler and preschool years in Brazil, the earliest of which you can read here, when I was only 22 months old. 

About twenty minutes into my walk, the blue sky grew grey with heavy clouds, and instantly, a thunderstorm broke out.  Magically, the thunderstorm complimented my waterfall of memories.  While others were racing into shops, I let myself get drenched.  A rush of energy entered into me, as I let the rain baptize me and the electric, oxygenated air fill me with euphoric breathing.  How glad I was to be free of any umbrella, hood, hat, and jacket and get fully soaked.  I prayed with glee, “Bring it on!” 

Sufficiently drenched, and having not yet taken a break for lunch, I looked for a restaurant and found one only a few stores down, a small family-owned restaurant with authentic cuisine.  I apologized to the server I was dripping wet, but he laughed, told me not to worry, and complimented my Spanish.  How had I learned it?  I told him I had picked it up fairly easy in school because I had learned Portuguese as a little girl, living in São Paulo.  He perked up.  ¿Vivía in Brasil?  “You lived in Brazil?”  By his tone of voice, I felt like a celebrity.  The Venezuelan fascination with Brazil had already been shown by my hosts, who all had given similar responses.  At one point as I chatted with two of my hosts, one of them said my accent sounded more Brazilian than American.  The other host agreed, adding it was a great compliment.  The Brazilian accent is highly prized in Venezuela. 

Since I was the only guest at the time, my server asked if he could sit down with me and hear about Brazil.  How would I describe São Paulo?  Did I like it?  I loved it, I said, and would be delighted to share, but admitted I was very small when we lived there, though I had returned again for three summers at ages 7, 17, and 25.  He returned with my dish, complete with the black beans I had been craving, and pulled up a chair.  

After sharing observations from my summers at 17 and 25, I returned to my earliest years, just shown to me by the waterfall of memories.  I described my house and how similar it was to those I was visiting in Valencia, with cement floors, a small sala (living are) at one end of the house, two little bedrooms on each side of a hallway, a covered add-on out on the patio with a toilet and sink, and a kitchen on the other end of the house, with the same design I observed in Valencia of an oven and sink toward the back, a refrigerator to the side, and a small table to the other side.  But my house had one difference: we entered at the kitchen, not the sala.  Later, I would learn from my mom that our front door was jammed, so we entered where the kitchen was, at the back door! 

I then said we had a maid I adored who lived in a casita in our backyard who painted my nails and read Monica cartoons to me.  I also loved feeding the ducks, driving push-pedal cars at the home of friends, seeing the city lights driving down the mountain from the University of São Paulo where Dad taught, drinking fanta laranga (orange pop), and, I smiled big, “eating black beans just like this!”  My server opened into a broad grin and said they are slow cooked overnight with a little vegetable oil, onion, garlic, salt, and a touch of bacon, very finely cut, and barely visible.  “Completemente brazileña!”  Then I added in Portuguese, “Gostoso!”  Understanding “delicious,” he put his hand to his belly and leaned back with a great big smile and chuckle.  I had given the cook a grand compliment, which he promised to pass on. 

Finally, I shared a memory that had upset me at the age of three.  Across the street from my house and those of my own neighborhood were another set of houses quite unlike ours.  They were dilapidated shacks, barely held up with scraps of wood, tarps, and slats of floppy, tin shingles, collected from the dump.  The mish-mash of materials collected from various dumps left openings that couldn’t protect their residents from the rain.  Our neighbors across the street cooked outside and the children were barefoot.  At three, looking across the street, I wondered, Why don’t they have a house like mine? 

My server was moved by my sadness.  I admitted I wasn’t used to seeing houses like that where I live in the US and that I was still sad not everyone has a house like mine.  With a warm smile, he agreed.  By then, my plate was clean and the sky was beginning to clear.  I headed out to a light sprinkle, struck by the timing of the thunderstorm suddenly coming and going and leading me to just the right restaurant and server.  

Although the thunderstorm might have felt like a surprise from nowhere, it was not outside of what I know the weather can do.  But what came next was definitely outside of what I had ever before or since experienced and not at all within the realm of anything I thought possible. 

The streets were empty and I must have trailed out into a clearing with a smattering of small homes, so I began to cross the street to turn back on the other side.  Just as I was about to cross, the sky fully cleared, opened itself up, and then I watched the entire sky shift into a wave of spectacular colors– violet, blue, lilac, and magenta, spotted with little bubbles of orange and yellow, spun together into a stunning and artistic spiral. An aurora borealis?   In Venezuela?  Near the equator?  At 1:00 pm?  This was an aurora entirely misplaced.  Not possible.  But what was it? 

 No, not an aurora, I thought.  Heaven.  I marveled.  Who is this Choreographer? 

Yes, Heaven.  Another of those mysterious whispers had just arrived.  But you think heaven is the afterlife.  No, heaven is here.  With you.  Now.  This was the same soft voice that had whispered that I was to be the fourth translator.  It had been right; no one else had stepped up to the plate, and, I smiled to myself, I was the right one to come.  Could I trust this whisper too?

What, I wondered, could I trust?  The aurora?  The whispers?  The memories?  How accurate were they?  I wanted to trust them, but wouldn’t know for certain until I could verify them with my mother.  Once I returned to the US and called her, she verified them all, in astonishment, as you can read in Remembering with Mom. 

I looked around and saw no one else.  The sidewalks had been plenty peopled, but not now.  Could not one other person be outside to witness this extraordinary sight with me?  Would others see what I see?  I couldn’t know.  I was alone.  

Yet not alone.  In that remarkable moment of the aurora vision, a moment that may have lasted a mere fifteen or twenty seconds, I felt myself one with the heavens.  I was not alone.  Not at all.  In that brief moment, I discovered myself connected with everything.  I also discovered, if I was willing to trust the whisper, heaven is not the after life.  It was here, with me, now. 

            The aurora arrived 21 years ago today.  I have never seen anything like it again, but the whispers of mystery and a great many other miracles have continued and increased.  Something magical shifted within me 21 years ago today.  I was shown that heaven was with me then and I know now it is with me always.  I also glimpsed that I and the heavens and every one of us everywhere are all connected.  We are each like a little bubble in a spectacular splash of color, a Grand Aurora within the Cosmos.  

Today, I glow in this 21^st anniversary, 3 cycles of 7, a divine synthesis of transformation.  So thank you for joining me in this celebration, and if you ever see anything that hints to you this Mystery of your connection with the heavens, don’t doubt it.  Let yourself be awed, and then let it magically transform you.

© by Karina Jacobson.  Use only with permission and/or a link to this blog post

If this post interested you, see my other two of my time in Venezuela, recalling my childhood in Brazil:

What my Eyes Could Read: my Childhood of Cultural Paradox

Translation Overload

If My People repost

             Today I unburied my original “If My People” poem, revealing its date: November 4, 2006.  George W. Bush was President.  Many Christians were enthusiastic to have him, but nonetheless making complaints, some petty like the marriage tax, while ignoring much greater inequalities.  They were crying out for the Ten Commandments to be posted in many public places and in schools.  Meanwhile, on a popular site for Christian prophesies, the creator and administrator of the site reported that he had been receiving many stories of “strange” dreams about the White House that “no one” could understand.  In one dream, Christians were coming to the White House, where their shoes were taken off and thrown out onto the White House Lawn.  In another, Christians were coming into the White House, at first welcomed, then brought into a back room where they were beaten up.  The administrator noted one more of specifics I can’t recall but also at the White House with Christians unwelcomed.  The administrator asked all of his followers to “pray for the President” and that many were concerned for his safety. 

How, I wondered, could “no one” understand dreams as clear as these?  “Get out of her, My people,” I thought, then, shortly after, wrote this poem.  I hadn’t yet started this blog, so it was later shared as one of my first posts, which you can read here, along with its comments.  After this repost of the poem, I offer some thoughts for today, including the hope of the phoenix.  From its own ashes it is born, a new creation, a finer one.

 

If My People
who are called by My Name
will humble themselves and pray
and seek My face
and turn from their wicked ways,
then I will hear from heaven,
will forgive their sin,
and will heal their land
 
But if My People
who are called by My Name proclaim,
“Our Kingdom is not of this world,”
yet they weep and wail
when their kingdom of the world
goes the way of the world
and, for this, they trust not in My Kingdom,
then My people have not heard My voice
 
But if My People
who are called by My Name cry out,
”Change their hearts and minds!”
and cry not, “Change my heart and mind!”
and pound their fist in prayer,
“Cleanse their heart, Oh Lord”
and not, “Cleanse my heart, Oh Lord,”
then My people have not heard My voice
 
And if My people
who are called by My Name say
“If the sinners stop killing babies,
if the men stop marrying men,
if the movie makers dawn modesty,
if Caesar cuts taxes,
if the schools discipline,
and if these people and those people ad nauseum,”
and, for this, if My People think
their marriages will be saved,
their children will follow Me,
and their land will be healed
because those I seek to save
have repented of their ways,
and been rescued by a political party
before I have saved them,
then My people have not heard My voice
 
If only My people
who are called by My Name
will loosen the bonds of wickedness
let the oppressed go free,
bring the homeless into their home,
clothe the naked,
and feed the hungry,
then I will hear from heaven
and will heal their land
 
But if My people
who are called by My Name say
“We are sons of David,
we are sons of Abraham,
we are children of great fathers,
so God is with us,”
and they honor Me with their lips
and claim Me in their hearts,
but they have set up their high places,
and turned My gift into a god
and cry for the right to pledge allegiance to their god,
then My people have not heard My voice
 
And if My people
who are called by My Name
render more unto Caesar
than the taxes and votes that are Caesar’s
and render less unto Me
than the humility and trust that is Mine,
and with Caesar commit adultery,
and if My shepherds preach from the pulpit a political party
for salvation to the nation,
and garner power for themselves
through their flock as a voting block
to bully those they claim will save the nation,
then My people have not heard My voice
 
If only My People
who are called by My Name
will seek and save the lost
not by Caesar,
but by My Power, Cross and Blood,
and show compassion to victims of calamity
and conservation to My Creation,
then I will hear from heaven
and will heal their land
 
But if My People
proclaim My Law
upon those I seek to save
and petition My Law become a shrine,
and if My people do not themselves follow My Law,
and if they weep, wail and whine
when those I seek to save
grumble against a shrine for My Law,
then My people have not heard My voice
 
And if My people
who are called by My Name cry
cry out in fear,
“Touch not the wine or the oil!”
and cry out in fear,
“We suffer the hundred dollar marriage penalty!”
and worry not only for their daily bread, but luxuries too,
and trust not in Me
or My promise to clothe them
more than the birds of the air
and the lilies of the field,
then My people have not heard My voice
 
If only My people
who are called by My Name
will humble themselves
and return to Me,
and trust in Me for all their needs,
and trust they can do all things through Me,
even grow in obedience to My Law they seek to enshrine,
then I will hear from heaven
and will heal their land
 
But if My people
who are called by My Name
see not with their eyes,
and hear not with their ears
the dreams I send them
warning them to flee adultery
and tell them in dreams
the deceiver has tricked them
and tell them in dreams,
“Get out of her, My People,”
and if they ask instead
whether Babble-on is okay
and receive only a blank stare,
and send to thousands an urgent message
to pray for him and not for themselves,
then My people have not heard My voice
 
And if My people
who are called by My name
forsake My prophets
who cry out, “Wake up!”
and behead My prophets,
who proclaim to them, My people,
“Repent! 
For the Kingdom of God is near!”
by keeping for themselves
the body of the prophesy,
and cutting off for themselves
the head of the prophesy,
and instead display the head
on a silver platter for those I seek to save,
then My people have not heard My voice
 
If only My people
who are called by My Name
will love Me with all their heart,
all their soul, mind and strength,
and love their neighbor as themselves,
then they will hear My voice,
and I will hear from heaven
and will heal their land

11/4/06

 

            We humans are given two main methods to heal our land.  The first is to soften our feet, learn to walk gently, and begin to nurture the gift of Creation.  This road is less traveled by because, although in the long term it is easier, it also calls for discipline and humility.  The second method is to grind our feet even deeper into the dirt and so hard the land is destroyed, then, after a time, it is reborn, fresh and new.  This second method is the common road, the one most traveled by.  At first, it looks easier – until the day of the destruction.  Then, it is the hard road.  The good news is that the hard road can build something even better.  It fully destroys, then fully rebuilds.

            We stand at the door of our downfall.  Unlike in 2006, when I first wrote the poem, or even in 2010, when I first posted it to this blog, I see the easier but disciplined and humble first road to be no longer possible.  Each of us individually, of course, can humble ourselves and turn from our own ways, as we should, for that is how real change happens.  For me, it means recognizing in humility my own petty worries over my retirement savings during this appropriate “Sell America” trade. In light of such severe injustices to a great many throughout the world, I must face how small this is of me.  I am also to show love and mercy to my fellow countrymen, no matter their sight or lack thereof, while persistently and peacefully calling for justice and freedom for all people. I go down with the ship too, so my own calling is to do so gently, without anger.

            One way I can do so is to hold onto the hope of the phoenix.  The downfall is coming, but so is the new creation, the new Earth, the one that will uplift all of humanity, where all of our resources will be shared one with another, where each creation on our planet is dignified and celebrated.  What comes between now and then will not be easy.  May we fall gently.

 

© by Karina.  All rights reserved.  Please use only with permission and/or a link to this blog post.