We are sharing an ongoing discovery and a continuing journey in consciousness. There is an unfolding of understanding, and with that an increasing radiant spiritual release into our world. For that to happen, there has to be a deepening for us and a moving into a deeper place than we have been in our lives.

I don’t know about you and how this past week has been for you, but for me there have been many encounters with people in which I walked away thinking: Did it have to be like that for this person? These were instances in which I could feel the hurt or the diminished place that the person was in. In more extreme cases we may label the places where people get to in their lives as mental illness. When it is less extreme we just see some kind of limitation or disappointment that defines a person’s life.

In the middle of that, we may become aware that there is what I might call “Another world.” That phrase has all kinds of bad connotations or references. There was a soap opera by that name, Another World. And sometimes we say in a disparaging way about somebody, “They’re in another world.” But the truth is that there is another world from the world in which we as human beings typically live. And as real as all the limitations of a person’s life can seem to be, and as important as all the ways in which we may have disappointed ourselves—or believe we have been disappointed by other people—seem to be, what is truly real is another world, a reality that is different from all that. The glory of being is present in that other world.

The glory of being means everything, and all the pettiness and all the limitation of the human world means nothing. The only significance of the limited experience is that it is a placeholder for an experience of another world. So whenever we encounter the limited reality in another person, or in ourselves, when our heart feels like crumpling up and we feel like crawling within the walls of our own heart, we can simply acknowledge that that disappointment, that limitation is a placeholder for the potential of an experience of something radically different. That radically different experience, that radically different world, contains the glory of being that is present even right now.

We have the ability in this moment to fully embrace the glory of being, and therefore to fully live in another world. It does take a letting go of limitation, a letting go of disappointment and disillusionment. It takes a letting go of all the things that attach us to the human world as it has been known. For most people, that world has its hooks into them. It shows up differently for different people, but as the person goes through the scope of their life experience, there are typically those experiences in which there are hooks.

Martin Cecil had a summary phrase for all those hooks that fasten a person to the human world of limitation. His very simple name for it was self-centeredness. That phrase has many implications. There is the obvious one, that a person is self-preoccupied and is looking to gain things for him- or herself. But it also has the implication that a person has become preoccupied with their human experience as it has been, and therefore has shut down their capacity to experience what seems to them to be another world, but which is in fact the real world.

I recently took advantage of the opportunity to hike in the Rocky Mountains, which are fortunately only an hour away from my home. A hike in the mountains is certainly not the only way to experience the real world, but in that context it is very easy to know what is real. There is something real happening here in all of creation, and there is the glory of being and the power of creation that’s manifesting through all of being and through you and through me. That is the real world, which sometimes comes more vividly into our awareness. There are so many levels of human preoccupation and self-centeredness that hook us, as members of the human race, and make us unavailable to live in that real world.

The typical human world is all around us. So for people there would have to be some kind of betrayal of that human experience to live in the real world. There is a grand conspiracy on Planet Earth to live in an unreal world and to persuade everybody else that they ought to live in that world too. And if you are not, you are betraying the conspiracy.

I don’t know how it’s been for you in your life, but for me, I can remember at quite a young age becoming aware of the conspiracy. I was about ten, and I remember having a discussion with my sister in which I was trying to convey to her that, as I looked around, I had a vivid awareness that the adults in this world were in the middle of some kind of conspiracy that was defying and fighting the natural order of things, and particularly the naturalness that was manifesting in us as children.

So living in what is in fact the real world, we have an experience of encountering the limited human consciousness. My friend Daphne Bramlett says that what comes back to us from our world tells us a lot about what we ought to be offering into it. That is a very creative way to understand what comes to us. If we are not looking at it that way, what comes back to us from other people and from the world tends to convince us that our own diminished experience in our part of the prevalent human state is okay and normal. It may be the politics, crime and war that are reported on the news. Or it may be the complaints and disappointments of other people. All that negativity can convince a person that self-centeredness is normal.

I take joy in saying that it is not normal. It is not normal and it is not real, except as a living nightmare of an experience. And I don’t care if everybody else on the planet is living it as if it were real—it’s still not normal and it’s still not real. However you experience the glory of being, deepen into that experience. That is real. From the perspective of that experience, we have the opportunity to offer upliftment to those whose experience is defined by limitation.

The only way I know how to do that with sanity is to have compassion. We move every day in a human world that is largely defined by limitation. We move in the vibration of that world. The only way I know how to move in those vibrations creatively is by bringing the glory of being and bringing it with compassion and understanding.

In 1967, Pete Seeger wrote a song about the Vietnam War, “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy.” The song addressed the worsening quagmire in which the United States found itself in Vietnam. It was censored by the CBS television network for the truth it told. But it isn’t just the United States that has found itself waist deep in the Big Muddy. All of humanity is waist deep in the limited human experience, our own and the experience of people around us. We have the glory of being to bring into that experience.

We are called to stay conscious—but not to just maintain consciousness, because with that approach you will probably be sinking deeper into the Big Muddy. Life is not just about maintaining something. It is about magnifying the glory of being, more and more and more.

A person is either moving deeper and deeper into reality or deeper and deeper into the Big Muddy, into a state of consciousness defined by limitation. Compassion isn’t going with another person into that experience. We can be present with a person without going into it. Compassion is saying, “I see you’re going this way. I’m going the other way, actually. I’m deepening into something else. I’m magnifying the glory of being in my life.” From that perspective, I am fully present for my world. As far as I am concerned, that experience of being defined by personal limitation can pass away. And if it can pass away for me, it can pass away for you. I am here to know the glory of being with you. We have something to do on earth to magnify the glory of being. We can live in another world in this world.