Harry Potter's Invitation to the World

by Vickie Ewell

 

Chapter 99 – Dumbledore’s Key to Receiving the Stone
(HP Chapter 17)

Harry next asked about Quirrell not being able to touch him. Harry is 11, so Dumbledore gives him the Kindergarten version: Voldemort doesn’t understand Love. He doesn’t realize that a Love as powerful as Lily had for Harry left an invisible marking – a form of protection “in” Harry’s skin. This inferred that the Power or Spirit that is in all things and throughout all things is LOVE.

Quirrell was full of greed, hatred, and ambition. He was full of conditioning. He had chosen to share his soul with Voldemort. In a very real sense, he was Voldemort, a piece of Harry’s conditioning.

It was agony for Quirrell to touch Harry because he’d been marked by something extremely pure, the Pure Love of Christ. The idea was that darkness finds Light (or the Presence of God) painful. Light burns. Light disintegrates the darkness that lives within us. That explanation moved Harry to tears, so Dumbledore stared at a bird on the window sill, while Harry dried his eyes. A bird is a spiritual messenger, so even though the explanation is simplistic and will evolve over time, the bird alerts us to the importance of the overall message. Tears are salty water that cleanses us.

So what about the invisibility cloak? Who sent that to Harry? Harry’s father had left it in Dumbledore’s possession, so he thought Harry would like it. “Useful things…” Dumbledore said. This suggests that some of the things we’ve accumulated over the years are useful. Items needed to live in the physical world and Harry’s invisible covering are some of those things. Harry’s father had mostly used the cape to sneak into the kitchen and steal food while he was at Hogwarts.

James lived at the physical, programmed level of being. He sought instant gratification and avoided discomfort such as hunger even to the point of stealing, but Harry didn’t react to that revelation because he still idolized his earthly father. He still idolized his false self. He didn’t realize that James was HIM.

Instead of examining what Dumbledore had just revealed to him, Harry moved onto the next question. He also wanted to know about Quirrell and Snape. Quirrell had told him that Snape hated him because he hated his father. Was that true?

Dumbledore insisted that Harry always call Snape, Professor Snape, but he didn’t use the word “hate” in the same way that Quirrell did. He admited that Professor Snape and James detested each other, similar to how Harry and Draco detest each other, but James did something that Professor Snape could never forgive him for.

James saved Snape’s life.

“Funny, the way people’s minds work, isn’t it,” Dumbledore said. There was no judgment for Professor Snape’s tilted perspective in his youth. There was just acceptance and fact. Dumbledore used humor to look at how a fractured awareness works, rather than with condemnation. Professor Snape couldn’t bear being in James’ debt. When someone saves your life, it seals you to that person. “I do believe he worked so hard to protect you this year because he felt that would make him and your father even. Then he could go back to hating your father’s memory in peace…”

Throughout the series, Dumbledore always made it clear when he was expressing an idea, a belief, or a guess. He didn’t present his ideas as fact or Truth. He expressed them as only possibilities – possibilities that could be wrong. He “believes” that Snape worked hard to protect Harry, so he could pay back the debt, but he doesn’t know. He also believes that Snape hated James’ memory. His guess came from observing the way a typical, conditioned man would think and do under similar circumstances. It was only after Dumbledore saw Snape’s enduring Love for Lily – five years later – that he knew and understood why Snape had worked so hard throughout all the years to protect Harry.

True Love is eternal. True Love never dies. No matter what we say or do, it’s unconditional. While our own personal Snape is often feared, ridiculed, and condemned by us to be evil, he is no coward. He only works against those who might harm us. He works hard to protect us from Voldemort. He works hard to protect us from the damage the Dementors and Death Eaters can cause. But he doesn’t control us. He warned Harry not to approach the Werewolf in Book 3, but didn’t chase after Harry and force him to do what he thought was best.

Ultimately, Professor Snape helps us to escape Voldemort’s control, though it may not be in the style we think it should be. That’s because Snape keeps his identity and his Love for us hidden beneath his stern, dark, strict exterior. But his underwear – his True Self – is GRAY. It is only near the end of our journey that we will come to recognize him, and Know who he is. Harry ended up loving Professor Snape, but only because Professor Snape first loved his mother.

Thinking about Professor Snape made Harry’s head pound. The thought of Snape protecting him to repay a debt he owed his father brought Harry a certain degree of physical stress, so instead of digging into the matter deeper, Harry moved on to the next topic.

How was he able to get the Stone out of the mirror? Dumbledore was glad Harry had asked that question. That was the question that Dumbledore had hoped Harry would ask. This seemed to infer that the Spirit gives us only what we ask for. We “have” to ask. This was one of Dumbledore’s better ideas. “You see, only one who wanted to find the Stone – find it, but not use it – would be able to get it, otherwise they’d just see themselves making gold or drinking the Elixir of Life.”

This is what we call a KEY. It opens up the door to our understanding. Only those who want to find the Stone but “not use it” will ever be able to get it!

And with that, Dumbledore insisted Harry had asked enough questions and needed to start on the sweets his friends had given him. There is a purpose for us being caught within our conditioning. There is a purpose for the earth and world being created in the way it has been. Dumbledore advised Harry to partake of the sweets the world offered. He needed to get started – now! His friends (the sweets) gave Harry the opportunity to observe conditioned man and his fractured awareness in action, and it helps us figure out what to look for in ourselves.

Our friends, family members, business associates, and all others in our environment mirror or showcase our own conditioning. They mirror and showcase our own fractured awareness. Just as we would never be able to escape Voldemort’s grasp without our own personal Professor Snape, we can’t cleanse ourselves without each other. That’s why I personally do not subscribe to the hypothesis that the entire world will eventually evolve as a whole. Individually, perhaps, but there will always be a need for a world full of conditioned people. That’s how we come to Know ourselves.

Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans brought recollections to Dumbledore’s mind of the time he came across a vomit-flavored one. Since then, he had lost his liking for them. Every Flavor of Beans mirrors the world’s condition. People come in a variety of flavors. We are all at different points in our journey, with most people still stuck at Level One. Internally, we also have a wide variety of false aspects we’ve come to believe are us. These false aspects do not taste good once we begin to see them clearly.

Dumbledore “thinks” that maybe he’d be safe with a nice toffee. He knows that isn’t true. Even a Master of Compassion isn’t safe from suggestion or a newly-born false aspect of the self coming into being, but he chooses to partake of the world for a moment in order to make a strong point here. He smiled as he popped the golden-brown bean into his mouth. He was partaking of the world willingly. He’s doing it without any physical stress. He’s content as he pops the piece of candy into his mouth, but then choked on the flavor. “Ear wax!” he said.

That was a call for Harry and us to develop ears capable of hearing what Dumbledore had revealed in this particular conversation, but also what’s been revealed to us throughout the entire book. Most of the world is blind. Most of the world has ear wax blocking their ability to hear.

It appeared that Jo has written Book 1 in such a way that if it wasn’t accepted by the public at large – thereby paving the way for the rest of the series to be published – those with eyes to see and ears to hear would have everything they needed to Wake Up and set themselves Free