Fresh Thinking, Inspiration, and Vision on the Process of Spiritual Transformation
(Joyce Karchere, accompanied by Previn Hudetz on piano and Keith Anderson on soprano sax, sang “Nightbird,” by Mark Simos.)
In our men’s meeting on Wednesday, Steve Short invited us to consider our capacity to hold consciously and deliberately the people and circumstances of our world. It was quite an adventure to consider what can happen when we hold our mind steady in the face of something that is unresolved. Usually when we speak about the capacity of mind, we think of intellect. We think of being smart, being able to figure things out and having a high IQ. But usually, when the human mind is thought of, people don’t consider the mind’s ability to hold steady, to hold a tranquil place that can receive and offer understanding for what is happening in a person’s world. The mind is far more than a biological calculator.
As I reflected during our time together as men on how matters had come to resolution with people and circumstances in my life, in most cases the resolution took years, and in some cases decades. The cycles involved were certainly longer than I might have wanted. Most of us know that our mental attitude can go to impatience: I want it to change, and I want it to change now!
I wrote a poem a few weeks ago, “My Love Is Long.” It speaks to the capacity to stay with the creative process over a cycle of time. There is a rhythm to the creative process that is divinely ordained. The unfolding of events is also impacted by the openness of people. If we will hold steady mentally, things have a way of coming around right. You might say that what we hold mentally is possibility. We hold latent potential for another person or for a circumstance—and hold it, and hold it, and hold it, for however long is necessary.
As I ponder how that’s happened in my experience, I have to let go of my usual view of what the mind is like and what it does. Consciousness is a powerful instrument. Holding consciousness and holding possibility for another person is a powerful act. No matter what a person does, no matter what happens, we can keep the understanding that there is something wonderful that is possible for this person, and there is something that is true of them. If I am truly holding that, in some way I don’t believe anything else. I don’t believe the facts. I can observe the facts, but I cannot believe that the facts reveal what is true and whole and right about that person. No, they don’t. There is a higher reality than is being revealed in that person in a moment. The same may be true of a certain circumstance—there is a greater truth than this circumstance reveals, and there is a greater potential than is currently being made manifest.
To be a creative influence in our world, we have to be powerful disbelievers and be able to say, time and time again: “I don’t believe it.” As circumstances evolve, they may show to us something that’s unwholesome and unfinished, and not revealing of the full potential of the people involved. While we can meet those circumstances with understanding, seeing what is there in fact, there is a part of us that has to disbelieve. In our disbelief, we can make available to the people and the circumstances of our life a pattern of wholeness. Has anyone ever done that for you? Has anyone loved you when there was no rational reason why they should—but they loved you because they knew something about you that was true? While the facts of what you may have been manifesting in your life at the time may not have fully revealed what is true of you, they knew it. If we have received that from another person, we have received a great gift. We have that gift to give.
It is a large part of the service of this program, Emissaries of Divine Light, to assist people to see what is not there. That may sound like a prescription for insanity. It may seem that the things that are real, and the things that are of value, are the things that you can see and touch. It may seem that the real things in your life are the facts. The more a person ponders it, the more they see it is true that what has real value, what has lasting meaning, is what you cannot perceive with the five senses. It is ineffable. What has the greatest meaning and value are the qualities of being that are potentially revealed through people and through the circumstances of our life. But they may not be revealed through those people and circumstances right now.
So in the context of this program, people do begin to see things they hadn’t seen before. What we begin to see may seem obscure to another person. Someone may judge us as being unrealistic. It is certainly a challenge when it comes to our literature, because if we are talking about things that people can’t see, they may wonder what we are talking about. I would just say they have yet to see what they might see if they opened themselves to it.
The kind of sight I’m talking about does not involve peering into some unknown world, or peering into some high heaven someplace. It is the ability to see the inner nature of things, the inner nature of all people and all circumstances.
We could probably acknowledge that, for each of us, our own sight has varied in our life. We see more now than we did a year ago or two years ago or ten years ago, even though our eyesight may have deteriorated. You see more about the people around you. You see with greater understanding. You see more of what’s there; you may see more of the potential of a situation. We may even notice that our sight changes from day to day. If you are feeling grouchy, your world will look different. You are less likely to see the truth of the people around you. You’re less likely to notice what has not yet happened in your circumstance but what could happen if you let it, if you are in a mood.
So there are things that can be out of sorts in a person’s mind and heart that keep them from seeing. If those factors sort themselves out so that there’s clarity and tranquility of mind, and the emotions are in the flow of spirit through a person, they begin to see things. It is not only reflective seeing. It’s not only a matter of having light waves bounce off everything and come to the person. It is not only a matter of seeing facts. You may be seeing something that could become a fact.
In our seeing, we are performing a powerful act. The quantum physicists tell us we can’t observe something without changing it. So when we’re seeing possibility, we’re seeing how things could be with that person or that circumstance, with us there holding that vision.
In other words, true seeing is not objective. Our presence is a part of the picture. The question is, what could happen here if I really showed up and saw the hidden potential of this person or this circumstance? We begin to see—this is a wonderful person; they could be doing all these wonderful things. This circumstance could go all kinds of wonderful places. If you weren’t there, maybe it couldn’t go all those places, but if we really show up in our world and see its inner nature, there are many wonderful things we see that could happen.
We probably all love being around a person like that—a person who enters a room and sees all kinds of wonderful possibilities, and sees wonderful things about the people in the room. We have a chance to be that person, that creator-being who fully shows up in their world and sees.
If we open this level of sight, we may have a fuller appreciation of the facts. For instance, we may see people suffering. So we have to be prepared, if we’re going to open our eyes and really see, to see that too. But in that seeing, perhaps we also understand what we could bring into a situation to shift it. We have that power.
Our conscious mind is a very powerful instrument. We have the capacity with our conscious mind to bring a person or a circumstance right in the middle of our awareness and hold it in steady tranquility with our conscious mind. It is amazing, when you ponder it, that you and I have the capacity to have a person right with us and allow something to happen as we hold that person in our conscious mind and see what is true of them.
As we do that, what is symbolized by the nightbird in Joyce’s song comes. There is the grace of love that shows up for us and for our world, because something is being held, for however long. And when it is held, at some point it is very likely that the experience that is being held in a certain pattern by somebody, or by a group of people, just melts and re-forms and reshapes. Something else is made manifest that is glorious and beautiful and reveals in form what’s been true all along.
It takes a certain kind of work to know the fruit of that. It takes persistence. In that sense, we have to be strong-minded, holding what’s true, no matter what. We become big disbelievers of what is manifest that doesn’t fully reveal what’s true.
This is magic, particularly when there is a group of people doing this level of conscious work. The world can shift and change. Let this magic continue.