Each one of us is designed to be a continual revelation of true spirit. We can’t change that fact, thank goodness. The glory of life is being revealed through us and through all things all of the time. As human beings, however, we do have a grand and continuous opportunity to increase our level of conscious awareness of the spirit that is being revealed through us—as us—and we can steward that process. We have choices to make that directly influence the experience that we have of our own spirit.
On each person’s spiritual journey there is necessarily an experience that could be described as a remembrance of “home.” Not a physical home or a family home, but the experience of knowing deeply the larger spiritual context in which we live. In a particular way, each of us needs to identify that place in consciousness—that feeling—that does not seem to depend on outer circumstance to feel safe and at ease. This remembrance is a critical experience because it is this experience that human beings are continually trying to invoke for themselves unconsciously, often in unhealthy and counterproductive ways.
People have generally forgotten that they are designed to live “at home” and to emanate a constant state of deep and unalterable peace. The conscious recognition of that state is what is so critical. If we know and remember that we went home once, the experience itself logically begs the question: Why can’t we go there again and again? And why can’t we stay there? The truth is that once we have touched home, once we have experienced that spirit that is so real and alive, so forgiving yet so specific and absolute, it is indeed always there for us to remember again and again. We have only to choose to remember it and to let it fill our lives, fill our thoughts, to let our hearts open and remember it and experience it as reality now.
We have choices to make about how real and present this experience of home is, and we have choices to make about how real it is in the way that we are together as people. We have countless amazing opportunities to share that with each other each day. We can be a living inspiration and touchstone for other people to find that reality within them. That can be initiated for a person just by being in your presence. Literally, a person could walk up to you and, in your presence, feel “Yes, that’s me. I know who you are and that reality is my reality.” Suddenly their day has changed. The dramas of the day—so fraught with frustration, pain and bad memories—can be calmed with a subtle and often unconscious awareness of the peace that abides within them. They touched their true nature when they met you.
That’s the sort of everyday magic that we have the opportunity to work in our lives. And it really happens just by being ourselves—so wonderfully and gloriously ourselves. It can seem so simple in a moment of realization. In fact, it is simple. People enjoy making spirituality a mystery and have tended to impose the same sort of challenge and complication upon it that we’ve come to self-perpetuate throughout all the other matters of our everyday lives. The truth is that real spirit is already at work in all of those matters and is waiting to be acknowledged and consciously used by us in each moment. A meaningful, fulfilling spiritual life is always available to us when we are simply and specifically open and receptive to what we can perceive as the highest possible experience of life right now, and that is a life that is characterized by joy, peace and the deepest satisfaction.
As I meet with people every day, I notice how much fear pervades people’s lives. The truth is, we don’t have to live in fear anymore. We don’t have to live in fear anymore! We don’t have to live in pain. We can be aware of a wide range of feelings; we can take note of their power and feel them moving through us, and still realize that we are not those feelings. We can use them, gather them into our state of home, and remind the feelings where they came from. From the invisible source of all life!
Just take a few moments to feel the wonder of the opportunity we have as human beings on Planet Earth to bring the real magic of the transformative process to everything we experience. When you consider this more deeply you may take note that the words that we use are not just words, our thoughts are not just thoughts, and our feelings are not just feelings. They are the expression of our transcendent reality. While we have given a name to those experiences, these components of life are a magical experience that changes, that can be transformed as we allow them to transform. And when this magic that is ours to steward is consciously aligned with the nature of the universe, it is wondrous and powerful.
That movement of spirit—that is what’s real. That is what’s most real, and that is what is most substantial. You know you are getting somewhere, you know you are living a real life, when you are so deeply involved with what’s burgeoning forth from the deepest part of yourself and your experience with others that this magic is all that you see. You become a powerful inspiration to the people in your world when you can feel the reality that you love, and identify yourself with that reality coming forth through another person. Because you are living in that ancient Home of homes and you are familiar enough with its nature that you can see it in other people. It has become natural to you. You can see and feel that home in everything—this beauty, this revelation of wonder. When that is what you see in other people, they can feel it. People can feel it when their true beauty is being seen.
The glorious manifest earth apparently doesn’t resist its design. Flowers, trees and birds don’t have the opportunity to choose whether or not they’re going to respond to the spirit of life, so they just reveal it. It is no wonder then that people are inspired by and tend to revere the nature of the earth and its constant state of response, because we are designed to do the same throughout our lives. You could say that nature is doing a better job of it these days, but the major factor that differentiates us from nature’s automatic, instinctual response is our freedom to choose. Even though our cosmic purpose is to reveal the true and living spirit in all things, down through the ages humanity has seldom been consciously choosing to do so. Often enough it seems that we would rather just wallow in pain! Why would we choose to do that? I’m not really sure. Probably memory—memories that a person allows to have their way in this moment, rather than taking full advantage of the opportunity to create something grand out of a high experience of life.
This awareness of our cosmic purpose and design stirs an awareness of ancient destiny in me. Whatever destiny means, it has a truly deep and spiritual awareness. In my heart, the destiny of mankind itself feels intrinsically linked to something both ancient and something that is yet to appear. When I read ancient texts, I have a deep and excited feeling of familiarity and possibility about what I’m sensing from the experience that is described. Words from thousands of years ago can incite me to think “This just feels so real, so at home, so true…. I feel like I was there!” I can have the same experience when I think about things that feel like they are destined to occur, moments that are coming into the present moment from out of the future to be here with me. That experience feels like home too. That feels natural. It can become a natural, everyday experience to see and feel life coming forth from the eternal, and yet what a truly thrilling adventure it is to be in the position of sensing what is waiting to happen, and continually finding your way into position to let that which is yours to be revealed, be revealed.
We all have a specific place to be in each moment, to let the revelation of what is to come be revealed through us. And collectively we have a destiny. We do not have to feel stuck in our own little world, left to our own devices to create a life out of our own singular imagination. No, fulfillment doesn’t even work that way, actually.
We are ultimately connected to one another in ways that we don’t usually understand. It’s not about who is special for knowing something that someone else doesn’t know yet. Our collective destiny is related most intrinsically to the fact that deep down everyone knows and can identify themselves with the truth of Being that is inherent in all people and all things, and that it is waiting to be revealed in any given moment and used to its own highest purpose.
What does that mean to us? What does that mean in our living? That’s what it ends up boiling down to. What are we doing? What are we thinking and feeling? How are we being with each other? I have noticed that if we give our attention to that finest feeling that comes with the revelation of Being, that exquisite reality that is letting all of this be born, we end up knowing what to do. We can trust the thoughts that come to us in that state of trust and fine awareness. The process of transformation ends up getting easier. Full of change? Absolutely—bring it on! Let that which is new to be born be born through us. But it doesn’t have to be so painful, if we’re actually giving our heart and mind to the fineness that’s trying to be born, to the fineness that’s already there. We actually get to think freely. We can think freely, and feel free. We can know true freedom when we’re open to that true destiny that is shared by all of us.
When we do open up to this wondrous reality, trust it completely and speak and live from that place of knowing, we sound a tone that is truly nourishing to our world. Each and every one of us has an ancient answer that can come to us new in each moment from within. This reality is a living reminder that we can offer to our world. It is the one true and abiding place to come home to.