The Pulse of Spirit
Fresh Thinking, Inspiration, and Vision on the Process of Spiritual Transformation
Do
you feel a growing intensity? I hope you do because intensity is a sign
of life. The critical factor is how that intensity is experienced. It
is either happening to us—we are victims of that intensity—or it’s happening through
us. And how we are experiencing intensity is determined by our state of
mind. Our thoughts either revolve around the magic of creation or
around the perceived pathos and drama of our life.
It’s not that there is nothing happening to us. There is
something happening in our world all the time. But the main event for a
person who is truly free is creation, and the intensity that is felt is
the power for that creation.
Personally, I am seeking more intensity in my life, not less. When I
reflect on my world and all that I am about and what is happening in my
world, I want to bring an intensity of current—greater love, greater
penetration of whatever is not true, greater penetration of the darkness
to bring light.
Intensity gets dangerous for people when they are attempting to avoid
it. What the person often doesn’t realize is that the primary intensity
they are feeling is from within them, not from other people or
circumstances. The creative spirit within them sees the circumstance,
however it may be evolving, and wants to have a creative influence upon
it. That creative spirit demands entry into the person so that it can
move through them and act in the world. If you attribute the pressure
your own spirit is bringing to you to other people and circumstances,
you stop the creative process. And attempting to avoid that pressure and
intensity, you may be unwittingly attempting to avoid the flow of your
own creative spirit. Of course, the ultimate avoidance of intensity in
this way is death.
If a person feels intensity and doesn’t understand that it is related
to the creative spirit within them that wants out, then they may miss
the opportunity to participate in that flow. They may not see that the
creative current within them needs a way to ground in the world.
Electrical current is far safer if it is grounded. So is the spiritual
current within a person. So if there is great creative intensity working
through you, you have to have a way of grounding that intensity, of
putting it to good use, of living your life in a way that manifests that
intensity with integrity.
Often people believe that spirituality is good, that they will live a
better life if they pursue their spirituality. That’s only true if they
find a way to ground that spirituality. If you truly are opening up to
the current of universal love, you are plugging into an amazing power.
You are welcoming that current into your being. When you do, it is
looking for a creative way to ground, to manifest in your life. And it
will do you no good if it isn’t grounded.
Whatever spiritual opening there is in a human life has to be matched
by integrity in the world, which grounds the universal current that has
increased in the human capacity. The integrity that is needed is the
whole and accurate expression of the current of universal love. That’s
what lets the power within us flow out, unadulterated and unchanged.
Yes, maybe transformed, so that it can be in this world through human
form, but still unadulterated, uncorrupted by any preoccupation with
drama.
Today, there are people around the world, performing a spiritual act
together. We are coming together. We have come together, not in physical
space but in a space in consciousness. We have come together
energetically. That experience is both a state of being and a conscious
choice. We have come together for a particular reason—to let the spirit
within us collectively address the world as it is.
Do you believe you have that power in consciousness to connect with
people around the world and come together with them energetically? I
know I do. I prove it to myself when I travel and meet people in various
parts of the world. But conscious energetic connection doesn’t depend
on travel. So knowing I have the ability to connect in this way, I know
that you do too. Even if you haven’t yet found that capacity in
yourself, I know you have it, and I know we have it collectively.
In this moment, as you read these words, I invite that coming
together. To evoke that experience, think of the story of Pentecost. It
is fresh in my mind because on Sunday, May 19th, I was
invited by Clive Larsen to offer the sermon in his church in North
Reddish, England, on Pentecost. The occasion celebrates a biblical story
of 120 people that were in what was described as an upper room after
Jesus’ ascension. They came together in one accord and in one place.
And, coming together, a process unfolded whereby universal love became
real to them in an immediate way. Could we, as people around the world
right now, come together with one accord in one place? That requires
that we leave behind whatever is in our past. That past will go wherever
the past goes and wherever memories go. We are not booting it out with
dishonor. There is a way to set down the past that is honorable, with
gratitude to it for bringing us to this place and time so that we can be
fully present here and now, fully present in spirit, with an open heart
available to join with others.
Magnifying creative spiritual energy with other people, what I find
is that this work can’t be done without an open heart. There is no way
to be a powerful source of unconditional love with a heart that is shut
down, that is tied up with the drama of the past. So we are present here
and now to let go of all that. To whatever has brought us to this
place, “Thank you.” We are released to be fully present here and now.
And being fully present, we are released to be with one another, heart
to heart, being to being, gathering together with people around the
world. Wherever people are awakening spiritually, our hearts can be
available to them right now, so that together we can create a collective
crucible, a collective vessel that creates a home for good, clean, and
healthy intensity—not intensity that’s going to fry our circuits but
intensity that we agree to ground in our living.
The depth of our own heart, the depth of our own communion and our
own openness, allows us to receive a depth of current from within
ourselves, each of us individually and then all of us together. In that,
we are being empowered from within to receive healing. Healing is born
out of integrity with the current of universal love that flows from
within us. Experiencing that flow personally, we have that to bring to
our world. We become empowered to manifest it in our life, giving birth
to forms that embody it, each in our own individual ways and then all of
us together.
My recent experience of sharing the current of universal love
includes traveling in England, Wales, Norway and Holland with Ruth
Buckingham and Phil Richardson on our Practical Spirituality Tour.We
affectionately called it “Trains, Planes and Automobiles.” It was great
to meet new people in many places and go to spiritual depth with them.
Our experience included travel adventures, including finding ourselves
in Heathrow Airport for ten hours after it had been shut down for a time
on May 24th following the emergency landing of a jet. Our
travel included a train ride to Voss, Norway, to be with Kari Bye and
friends. That part of our journey took us alongside a rushing river
swollen with spring snowmelt. Altogether, our tour was an experience of
being in the world, and it made me think about my life and then about
what we are about together.
Sometimes at Sunrise Ranch, where I live, we have said that it’s a
place set apart, and in some way it is. But more and more, the world is
coming to us. We have the Arise Music and Camping Festival at Sunrise Ranch on August 14th,
for about five days, and the world will definitely be coming then. So
if it is a place set apart, it will be set apart for a lot of people. We
are in the world, even if we have been a little “out of the way.”
My recent experience leads me to ask this question: How about this
recipe as a fulfilling life? Be as far out there in the world as you can
go. Enter your world as deeply as possible and with as much breadth as
possible, and bring as much of a gift to that world as you could
possibly bring. And then, at the same time, holding the other end of the
spectrum of experience, open up to the highest and the most beautiful,
the most gorgeous reality of being that is within you, and open as
deeply and as profoundly as you can to that inner reality. Then let that
inner reality flow through yourself out into that furthest reach of the
world in which you live, receiving back what comes, however it comes;
receive it into yourself and offer it all the way up, as high as it
wants to go.
That is a recipe for allowing our humanity to be cracked open,
because definitely you and I would have to come totally out of our human
drama to be up for this one. We have to be totally at the service of
that which could come through us and could change this world in which we
live. We have to be committed to integrity in action that grounds the
spiritual current to which we have opened.
Spiritually awake people are coming together for this. This is what
we are doing with people around the globe—opening to the highest
vibration of universal love and letting that penetrate the world. We are
taking this process to its ultimate conclusion, which is the total
transmutation of the human experience. This is the Pentecost experience.
There are the more personal dimensions of my life and of all our
lives. There is a closer-in reality than the world-at-large, and there
is no skipping over the things that are closer in.But what if the
immediate things that come to us are all part of this opportunity to
bring the profound gift that we have to bring to the world? What if we
see the immediate events of our life as the world-at-large coming to be
with us to receive this gift?
We come together in one place with one accord to be about exactly
this: opening up to higher and higher ranges and awareness of being, so
that we are clearer and clearer in our attunement with those ranges. And
therefore that reality is coming through us in a more and more lucid
way, in a clearer way, in a more spiritually empowering way, in a wiser
way, in a more intelligent way, in a way that has greater perspective
and then greater reach into our world.
Maureen Waller and I are currently in South Australia at the
Riverdell Spiritual Centre, with Andrew and Lyell Horwood and friends. I
don’t know Maureen’s age, but she is older than me anyway. Many people
her age have retired, not only from their vocation but from life itself.
She got on a plane and went halfway across the world because she knows
she has a message of import and of value to bring, and she knows that
she has nothing better to do in her life than that. I’m so proud to be
traveling with Maureen and to be offering this gift with her.
This past Saturday, 33 people joined us for an in-depth exploration of our spiritual journey entitled Change: Navigating Life Transitions.We will be offering a four-day Practical Spirituality
workshop on Saturday, in which we will be assisting people, first of
all, to have a large vision of who they are and what their life is
about, and then assist them with the practicality of what it means to
receive universal love and act with integrity around what they have
received.
We are very serious about bringing what we have to bring to the
larger world. For me personally, I have no great need to travel—I don’t
think Maureen does, or Ruth and Phil. But I am interested in acting with
integrity and effectiveness to bring to the world what is mine and ours
to bring, to the highest of my ability now. I believe that’s the
calling of each one of us. I propose to you that our greatest
spirituality is in allowing this great spectrum of experience to be had
by us, from the outermost to the innermost, from the deepest to the
highest. That could be the most spectacular, the most magical, the most
ecstatic way to live a life. That could be the fulfillment of why you
are here, and why I am here.
When this is our experience, we are on fire with people around the
globe who are sharing this magnificent experience. I am on fire with
those who share this sacred agreement, who lock arms and join hearts to
be together in one collective field of consciousness, saying yes, we are
here for this. We are on fire together. It is the fire of love
that warms and holds us together and forges one body of love on earth.
It is that fire of love that is what we are bringing to the world. It
brings a blessing and brings the light that is inherent in that fire.
So whoever you are and wherever you may be, you may not be traveling
the globe on planes, trains and automobiles, but you’ve got the world
that is yours to touch and to bless. And your challenge, like mine, is
to be open enough to receive the highest reality within you and to have
the courage, the determination and the commitment to bring that
internal reality into your world. You have that gift to give. And if
you ever forget that you do, just let me know, and I’ll remind you. We have that gift to give.
So thank you for being together today, for communing with me and with
friends around the world in this openhearted space where we share
together this sacred agreement. And if there is any kind of faltering or
any kind of misunderstanding, any kind of failure along the way, we can
just forgive ourselves and others and let that fade into the past, and
then recommit. We are here for this.
