The other night, I was giving the kids their baths. They love bath time! There is paint made just for bath time fun. Nathan gets out his pirate ship. Olivia loves to find her octopus and spray water above her so it will fall back down on her face. They would be in there for hours if I let them. This night, they decided to compare belly buttons while they put on their pajamas. Nathan noticed that his didn’t look like Olivia’s. Olivia has an “outie” and Nathan has an “innie”. The talk the rest of the night consisted of whether or not an “innie” was better than an “outie”. Of course my thoughts weren’t a lot of fun: Everyone is beautiful. Not everyone looks the same and that is the beauty of God’s creation. (Wah…wah.wah.wah….wah wah! as the teacher in Charlie Brown seems to say. We know, Mom! We know!)
Belly buttons aside, there is a difference between an “innie” and an “outie”.
When it comes to our spiritual side, we tend to be more of one than the other. An “outie” is a person who believes that his five senses are all that there is to life. What I can see, touch, feel, hear, taste, and smell is what is real. An “innie” person believes that what we cannot see, or what is invisible to us, is stronger than the visible. The sixth sense, or the invisible, is the hallmark of an “innie” person. “Innie’s” are people who are led by the feelings of intuition, their sixth sense. “Innie’s know, and therefore, believe in the power of an invisible source of life, known as God. “Innie’s have had some sort of experience where a greater power has led them, healed them, “talked” to them(intuition), strengthened them, helped them, or empowered them to do what they thought they could not do. “Outies” tend to be people who love logic, proof, and evidence of something labeled as “real” before they will believe it. They are the people who say, I’ll believe it when I see it. “Innies” are the people who say I’ll see it when I believe it. And that is perfectly fine with them. “Innies” don’t necessarily need a reason why something exists…they are content with their experience and that all things are possible. “Outies” tend to be more head-oriented, fact-oriented, and are pretty loyal to: because it can’t be proven by science, experimentation, and a number of people having the same exact experience of it, then it is impossible to know this.Therefore I cannot put it in the fact column. “Innies” have a much easier time believing in the miraculous, the power of God-in-us, and the world of spirit-led intervention in our lives.
This being said, there is a whole spectrum of “outies” and “innies”, and I would tend to guess that the majority of us fall somewhere in between a true-blue “outie” and a true-blue “innie”. For the most part, we come into this world as “innies” : pure love, pure God, pure miracle, pure joy. As we get older in years, we dive into the world of “outies”. Our five senses seem to become stronger and stronger. We rely on what we feel, what we see, what we taste, and what we touch and hear. We are getting used to a new world, and everyone around us is fixated on our five senses and fixated on helping us learn what these five senses mean to us. Gradually, fear sets in. We are taught how to be afraid in this “outie” world of all kinds of things. We learn to trust our five senses because they are the emphasis of learning how to live here. Meanwhile, our “innie” part of us, or our inner-self is all but faded away.
We are taught very little about the power of God’s voice in us, always speaking to us, always ready to guide us, always ready to show us the way. Our inner world goes dormant and awaits for something to awaken us to its existence. Enter Jesus. He was all about the “innie”. His mission was to help us remember that our five senses hold much less power over us than our sixth sense, our inner selves. The place behind our “innies” and “outies” where God lives. It is very interesting to note that when we think about our Center, where God lives and dwells in us, many mystics will point to the place behind where our umbilical cords used to be, the place of connection to our source of growth and life. Our umbilical cords were our body’s source of everything to us while we were growing in our mother’s wombs. That is the place of God as Source, and our belly buttons mark that place, a sign and symbol of connection, being fed, and the cord of life. It is a sacred place, a place of supernatural strength and power always available to us. It is our heaven, and we have full access to its peace and its love. Our breath takes us there and Silence(God) speaks to us there. That is why there are so many references to pregnancy in the bible- Mary’s pregnancy, Elizabeth’s pregnancy, Sarah’s pregnancy….It is literally the center of our body that is filled with life, filled with the power of God… filled with love and miracles. That is why it is so hard for people to resist touching an expectant mother’s belly. They feel the power and the energy of life, of God.
Through the consistent practice of prayer, we are slowly, but surely being returned to our inner world, making it stronger and far more reliable than our physical world. An “innie” begins to rely on the power of love. Because it is love that makes up our inner world.The only power that overcomes anything the physical world might throw our way. Slowly, as we are awakened through prayer, we move further and further away from our trust in the “outie” experience and we begin to gain greater and stronger trust in the God-given power of intuition, the power of the miraculous and the power to co-create the miracles we need. “Innies” can only see the light in others, the good in others, and the innocence in others. Our “outie” selves are now believed to be a false power, based on fear, darkness, and judgment. An “innie” now knows that they are limitless, eternal, and they are part of the magnificence of God, a flame that burns forever in the fire of God’s revelation to the world. A full-blooded “innie” is no longer enslaved to what we can see, hear, touch, taste, smell, and feel. The realization that our outer circumstances can be changed by the transformation of our inner world is now truth for the “innie”. We know longer believe that we are first body, then mind, then spirit. We are spirit first, then mind, and then body. “Innies” know and live by the Spirit. The season of Lent is a time for us “outies” to be transformed into “innies”…to make the journey from flesh-dependent to being spirit-empowered.
Tickle your child’s tummy and sink your nose into their belly button to hear their laughter, the laughter of God! Remember that all your power lies within you, your invisible self. And it is your job to help your children become “innie” people as they begin to understand that their physical world is temporary, misleading, and purely sign and symbol of our inner worlds. Our physical worlds are always changing, always in motion, and can never be stagnant. Our inner world, the world made only of love, is what is forever constant, unchanging, and eternally true. All of this in a belly button, the sign and symbol of the cord of life, never severed, a portal to the heaven inside us.
