Fresh Thinking, Inspiration, and Vision on the Process of Spiritual Transformation

There are people all over the world who are celebrating a fresh spirit emerging in their own experience and in their friends and colleagues.

There has been a dark cloud hanging over humanity. It may sound ominous to say so, but it is true, nonetheless. Sometimes when we speak about a dark cloud looming, what we mean is that something bad is going to happen. When there is a dark cloud in human experience—when the atmosphere surrounding a person or a group of people carries negative energy—it doesn’t bode well for the future. But the experience of the negative energy is also a current reality. Certainly, the body of humanity is currently living in a negative energy field. In that sense, there is a dark cloud, and that dark cloud of negative energy has been generated over millennia. It has been fed by the words and actions of people, born out of all kinds of unwholesome spirits—the spirits of hate and fear and all that is born from them. The residue of all those words and all those actions, all that expression on that basis, is a dark cloud.

Most people are in touch with that cloud without even knowing it. They don’t realize that this cloud has descended into their emotional body and affected their thinking. So, unwittingly, people all over the world tend to express themselves from out of that cloud, having received something from it into their experience. In the process, a person often thinks that someone else in their world, near or far, has made them experience what they are experiencing and made them act the way they are acting. All the while, what they are unconscious of is that they’ve been reacting based on their experience of this dark cloud in human experience. Through that kind of a process, a person feeds the dark cloud, so it becomes larger for them and, to that degree, for all of humanity.

There are people around the world who are celebrating the reality of a different kind of cloud; because while humanity has a legacy that has produced the dark cloud, there is also another kind of legacy. There is the legacy of our spiritual ancestors, men and women of true integrity down through the ages, who have refused to live out of the human energy field as it has been. There have been people in every generation who have said no, I’m going to make a different choice in my life. I’m going to generate a cloud that carries the positive, creative energy, which is the most real thing about me. Living out of that cloud brings something glorious in living, something that brings fulfillment.

This cloud of glory, which is an already-existing energy field, is present and available. When someone awakens to its presence and brings that reality into the world, it becomes more palpable. It becomes easier for more people to connect to it. It becomes easier for our lives to be filled with that reality. That cloud connects us to the source of our own life, and the source of all things. We are more ourselves when we are acting and living out of that cloud.

When we become aware of how this works, we begin to notice what is happening for us spiritually. And I don’t mean religiously. I mean that we become aware of the spirit that we are experiencing in living—the spirits of love, compassion, blessing and good will. We become aware of the tone of what’s happening in our own experience, and we begin to notice what happens to that tone, depending on what we do. We find out that when we’re acting in a way that is reactive to other people, we’re buying into the dark cloud, and that doesn’t feel right. There is a part of us that wants to shuck that off, that doesn’t want any part of it. And if we’re watching what’s happening in us when we’re buying into the dark cloud, we see it and say no, I’m not buying.

There is the opportunity to tune into something else that is readily available. We are here to make it all the more available, so that when people come near to us they are feeling our cloud of glory. When they are feeling our cloud, they are feeling theirs. They are becoming aware of the higher ranges of their own atmosphere that connect to their own core.

When people are having that experience together, they experience what is most true at the center of their creative field. They find unity. That has been my experience being with people in England and South Africa recently. I was with people who know how to live from their own experience of the cloud of glory. And the dark clouds that can bring contention and confusion were allowed to dissipate. Consequently, there was a remarkable experience together.

In the natural world, a cloud obscures the radiance of the sun. But from a spiritual standpoint, this is a different kind of cloud. This cloud lets the radiance of who you are be conveyed to the world. People can feel your light through the generation of this cloud; they can feel the warmth that emanates from you through this cloud. And they can remember those qualities about themselves. This is a cloud that opens a portal to the invisible radiance at our core and allows what has been invisible and unseen to become seen.

You might say that this is our biggest challenge as human beings—to find a way to let the unseen and unheard that is at our core be seen and heard. It is seen and heard through the generation of spiritual substance, through the cloud of light and glory. This is a building process. And if the dark cloud over humanity has taken millennia to build, this cloud will take some time, too. Are you up for this building?

There are people around the world who have embarked on this journey. The journey brings all kinds of new experience because there is the generation of the cloud of glory, through which those experiences occur. We don’t know where that journey will go. We don’t really know where it will land us, either personally or as a body of humanity. We don’t really know what is possible, as much as we might have ideas about it. We might talk about spiritual evolution, we might talk about the restoration of consciousness, but in fact we don’t know what that experience would be.

But we know what we have touched, and we know that what we are doing works. We know that as there is spiritual generation personally and collectively, the cloud of glory thickens. And that changes our experience. We know that has powerful and profound implications for our world. We know it changes the people around us as they begin to touch it in us and therefore touch it in themselves. We know that, in that sense, this cloud is contagious, and it invites everyone to take responsibility for contributing to the generation of it. We have the experience that as any group of us cares more about contributing to the collective cloud of glory for all of humanity than we care about our own fulfillment as an isolated human being, we experience something glorious among us. We experience this cloud collectively, and it has profound implications for us personally and individually as we participate in it.

At first it seems like this is a personal, individual journey, and it has to start that way. But what we find is that the personal journey only goes so far, until we see that our fate and our destiny are tied up with a much larger fate and destiny. We find that our own fate and destiny only makes sense in that larger context. And as much as we might try to work it out personally and individually, that attempt keeps us locked into the dark cloud, because in that is self-interest, and in self-interest we get locked into the human state as it has been. We become free as we are investing in our collective future by investing our substance in the cloud of glory that we are generating with other people, and ultimately for all of humanity.

We find that while we used to think that doing something for all of humanity seemed hard and impossible, we now understand that this is the thinking born out of the dark cloud, because in fact exactly the opposite is true: Our life becomes easy and fun and joyful when we see that we’re really here to contribute to that larger outworking. That is our freedom and our liberation, and the fulfillment of why we’re here. It is our happiness, and our individual lives begin to make sense in a way that they never have before.

Here is a way you could consciously contribute to the cloud of glory you share with many people around the world. Think about your highest aspiration for your life and for your service to the world. Think about your unique gift, not only how you have been in the past but how you might be in the future. What you have to give to other people and to your world. When you touch the cloud of glory that connects you more deeply to your own core, what is the reality that is uniquely yours to give? If you are ready to enter that experience more deeply, write down your gift in a positive declaration of who you are and what you are bringing to the world. We have found that something brief and to the point works wonderfully well. No beating around the bush, no long explanations, no conditionalities. Just say it. Say how it is for you. Say what your gift is. Own your highest aspiration in whatever language is yours to use.

It can be powerful to let yourself be witnessed in making your declaration. If you would like to share your declaration with me, or another Trustee, we would welcome it, sent by e-mail or regular mail. We will look for ways to share what you have sent, and we will assume that if you send it to us it is all right with you if we share it with others, unless you tell us otherwise.

With such words of aspiration, we invest our substance in the cloud of glory and withdraw our substance from the dark cloud that has been looming over humanity for ages.