The Cosmic Mother is the female principle throughout creation. The Cosmic Mother holds all Her children. In Her, all is conceived and all is born and grows. And in a human life, that principle is at work in so many ways.

We have responsibility for honoring and embodying the Cosmic Mother, whether we are a man or a woman. Women hold the first womb for us all, the physical womb in which the child is conceived and grows, and out of which the child is finally born. But we have the experience throughout our lives that there is a surround that either provides for growth and development and nourishment, or is faulty in some way. There is the surround of family, the surround of school and community, and then the surround of institutions of higher learning; the surround of organization; and ultimately the surround of the world. We are not only consumers of that surround. We are creating it.

We have the opportunity to allow the Cosmic Mother to be embodied in all those contexts. At a personal level, we have the opportunity to create a surround for other people, in which they can be more themselves. Things can happen for other people because they are with you, if you are providing that kind of surround.

At Sunrise Ranch, the community where I live, one of our goals is to provide the kind of culture in which experiences can happen for people that wouldn’t happen otherwise, so that they can be freshly inspired. They can experience themselves differently. They can know something deeper about themselves. They can know that the expression of their own being is welcomed in this world. In this community, it is welcomed.

So how about for you personally? Do people feel that from you? In your presence, do they easily feel, at a depth, the truth of who they are? Do they get in touch with their own wisdom and their own beingness? Do they find that who they are on the inside is somehow strangely welcomed in your presence? If that is so, it is because you have become an embodiment of the Cosmic Mother. That is what the Cosmic Mother does.

We have that opportunity personally. If we are taking advantage of it, we are making a great difference in the lives of people around us and in the life of the planet. We also have the opportunity to collaborate with others to create a culture in which people experience extraordinary things that are actually normal. The physical womb is an extraordinary place, and because it is, magic happens, creation happens. But it is entirely normal.

I say only half-jokingly that spirituality is far too important to be left to religion. The responsibility for a context for spirituality is in your hands and mine. We have the opportunity to collaborate together, to create an extraordinary context, an extraordinary container where magic happens for people, where a depth of experience is known like it has never been known before.

I think of some of my experiences with people over this past year. We enjoyed a day of healing chant in a place called Phakalane, in Hout Bay, on the Cape in South Africa. In this amazing sound chamber, we spent a day creating a container of sound, and experienced healing and a depth of prayer that we hadn’t known before. I think of experiences in chant that we have known right here in the Little Chapel at Sunrise Ranch, when amongst the few of us who were chanting it is very clear that there was a larger presence, a larger intelligence that had entered into our consciousness. It is personal and it is individual, and it prompts you to sing in ways you hadn’t thought to sing before. But it’s also collective—there is a collective intelligence that entered into us, a collective consciousness.

For many people these things are extraordinary, but I say we have to experience the extraordinary to know what is normal for us, because the world in which we live is not normal, in so many ways. It takes some ingenuity, some personal genius to create the architecture for the surround that allows the presence of being to come forth and be born. At the physical level, certainly there is genius in the human anatomy that allows a baby to be born.

I think of my own experience of coming into a greater depth of knowing of the truth of my own being and the expression of it, and the opportunity I have today to be truly myself. And when I reflect on the people who were involved in letting that happen, I know there was genius at work. There was care and thoughtfulness and planning and intention and collaboration. There were people who came together and said, in essence, “Let us create a plan for a space into which people could come, so that they could have an extraordinary experience of who they are.” They did that for me, and they did it for many others. And you may have had that done for you.

This is the Cosmic Mother at work through people. She is sometimes spoken of as Sophia, who is wisdom. Our minds are made for this kind of genius; the genius of conspiring with others to bring a blessing to people. The genius of creating a context, whether it be simply a one-on-one interchange, a community of people, however large or small; whether it be a seminar or a workshop, such as our healing chant experience; or a global program, such as we are, Emissaries of Divine Light.

I am interested in collaborating with you and using our inherent genius to create a place to be used by the Cosmic Mother. That place may be a physical location, it might be a website, it might be a teleconference—whatever the form, a context in which people could have an extraordinary experience as they were open to it.

In the Christmas story, the three wise men brought their gifts. Presumably they had lives they were leading; they had important things to do. But they left those important things because they had a gift to bring. They had something important to contribute to creating the context in which Divine Being could come forth. And there were shepherds, watching their flocks by night, indicative of the state of the world where the light of Being isn’t always shining so brightly. They were watching their flocks by night, but they came. They came because they knew that they, too, had responsibility for creating the surround for Divine Being to come forth.

There are many people who touch the context that we share and that we are collaborating with to create. What I know is that they may be inspired and enthusiastic as they touch it, but there has to be a transformation in that person’s experience if they are to be as the shepherds and as the wise men. If they are to make their contribution, they have to move from being a cultural consumer—someone who is looking for some kind of cultural surround for themselves—to being a cultural creative, somebody who is conspiring with others to create a surround for something magnificent to appear. Someone who knows the magnificence in themselves and who is devoting their life to creating a context for the magnificence of Being to appear through all people.

When you set your mind on that purpose, it is surprising what brilliance, what genius comes forth. Sophia—the wisdom of Being. She is present and awaiting embodiment in every person. Yes, in operation always, regardless of what human beings are doing, but waiting for the opportunity to be honored and embodied by human beings; waiting to be operative in human culture, in the humanexperience, through people, as people.

Do you think that the deeper reality of our Being could come forth through us, through you or through me, without some kind of radical commitment to that happening? That is portrayed in the Christmas story. We don’t know exactly how far the three kings traveled or how far the shepherds came, but they made a commitment to something. The reality of Sophia, the reality of the wisdom of creating a culture for the coming forth of Divine Being, can’t come through a self-preoccupied person. It’s just not going to happen. It comes through people who have found that they have nothing better to do, no pressing matters other than that. It seems like a radical step for a human life. But what you find is that the Cosmic Mother cares for Her own. She cares for those who are embodying Her in their life. You find that you are taken care of when you are part of who She is.

This is the Christmas story and the story of Mary; this is the story of the coming forth of the Cosmic Christ through Jesus. And this is our story today, for all who claim it as their own. We are the surround for the coming forth of Divine Being, and we are also the Christ child who is being born. The order of the story portrays something about the order of how it happens in a human life. There was Mary first—there was the context. And in a human life, if we’re all concerned about our own coming forth, we’re probably preoccupied with ourselves. When our concern is to create a context for the coming forth of the Cosmic Christ in anyone, we find that it’s coming forth in ourselves, in selflessness and magnificence and in glory.

These words from the Book of Revelation portray, in mystical language, this coming forth of the Cosmic Christ:

In the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle.

His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire;

And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.

And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.