We live in an age when spirituality is evolving from the worship of a God separate from human beings to a direct experience of being the Divine. The marathon effect is at work, so there are many who are still in an experience of separateness while others are “crossing the finish line”—entering into an experience of oneness. And there are many who are doing their best to disengage from the marathon, rejecting any experience of spirituality out of disillusionment with conventional religion.

For those of us who see what is happening, this is a thrilling, fulfilling time. This evolution in human consciousness brings experiences of connection, joy and love. It brings an experience of communion and oneness with all that is—with the Creator in all of His and Her myriad faces, and with all of Creation.

This evolution in consciousness has profound implications for the human world and for Planet Earth. We are witnessing the transition from a world governed by an unevolved experience of self, separate from all others, to an experience of self that is, at the same time, unique, and one with all Being. Through this process, the world, itself, is evolving from domination by separate human beings to an experience of being held in the hands of the Creator through humanity. It is not, necessarily, a peaceful or easy process. But it is occurring as the shift in consciousness happens.

Thirty-two years ago, in November of 1982, Martin Cecil wrote of this shift. Thirty-two years is long in terms of a human lifetime, but short in the sweep of human history. The change Martin knew for himself and shared with others is still at work strongly in the human experience around the globe today.

Martin took Jesus’ teaching on prayer, commonly called The Lord’s Prayer or The Our Father, and rewrote it in the first person. It was brilliant and it was audacious. Most significantly, it was a true expression of where this shift in consciousness is heading.

Here are the two prayers, interwoven.

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

I am in heaven.
The revelation of myself is holy.
My kingdom comes because I am here.
My will is done on earth because my will is done in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

I give the bread of life in each moment of my living on earth.
I forgive, and that forgiveness is received by those who share the spirit of forgiveness.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

I lead no one into tribulation, but deliver all evil into the creative cycle.

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

For mine is the kingdom present on earth because I am present on earth.
Mine is the creative power of the Word.
And mine is the glory which results, shining round about, to be reflected by the world which I create.

These two prayers trace the spiritual path from awakening to the full blossoming of spiritual emergence. The Lord’s Prayer is about looking up. There are parts of who we are as a human being that should always look up, always be yielded and open, always ready to receive what comes from on high. And the more up we go, the more down we look. How else would it be? When you are up, you can look down. You gain perspective on what is below you.

When consciousness rises to fully accept the oneness of Being, the individual experiences themselves as who they really are. That is evolution of consciousness! They also have a changed experience of the place in which they live. Their home is not only the physical circumstances of their life. They experience a heavenly home.

From the place of our heavenly home we are not aspiring to that reality anymore. We are being that reality and relishing it and loving it and embracing it, and bringing that reality into our world. We are seeing our world from the standpoint of that reality. We are seeing that world with the eyes of the Creator, the eyes that see the incompleteness of the world around us, otherwise known as evil—the bad parts, the limitations, the failures and setbacks of other people and ourselves. We are looking at all that evil, as it’s referred to in the prayer, and we’re simply folding it all into the cycles of creation, knowing that creation itself heals and makes whole. Not just God’s creation—that’s back to the second-person reality. Our creation, in our creative field. In the current of our vibration, in the perspective of our love, all that is half-finished and incomplete is in the process of coming around right. And if it doesn’t look like it’s come around right, it isn’t finished yet. And yes, there are comings and goings, risings and fallings, successes and failures, and it’s all held in the creative process that we have set in motion from the place of Being.

Is this how it always looks to you in your life? Me neither, honestly. It takes honesty to walk our spiritual path. And in the parts of us that are incomplete and still growing and developing and emerging, it takes openness and vulnerability, a willingness to learn, a willingness to change, and a praying, as Jesus so beautifully demonstrated.

We have the potential as human beings to come into a full awareness of the Being that we are—that glory, that strength, that wisdom! To know that we are in heaven, that we are surrounded by magic. We are not just there all by ourselves. The larger part of who we are lives in a magical realm. I won’t go too far down the road of trying to paint the picture of what all that looks like. But there is part of us that knows magic, that is not content to define ourselves or define our life in terms of the mundane things that are around us. Those mundane things become infused with magic when we embrace the heaven of our Being and the surround of that heaven, and then bring that to the practical, bring that to our own souls and the souls of other people. Because it is who we are in our heaven that brings healing, that brings wholeness, and does allow things to come around right.

The old Shaker hymn, “Simple Gifts,” by Joseph Brackett, sings of this:

’Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free
’Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
’Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come ’round right.

But it isn’t just us who come ’round right. All things are coming ’round right. And they are doing so in my own experience as I am in the place just right—in my heavenly home, right here on earth. How about you?

This journey in the evolution of consciousness is an individual path for you and for me. We have this intriguing, curious, wondrous opportunity to walk this way together as a community of people around the world. Coming more and more into an experience of the oneness of Being, we share both an earthly reality and the heavenly home, knowing they are part of One Reality. They are both part of the Whole Holy World.

The image came to my mind this week of a circus tent as a symbol for the community of awakening people around the world. For that circus tent to work, there has to be at least one pole at the middle of the tent, a pole raising it to the highest height to which the tent is capable of being raised. The tip of that pole is a symbol for the altitude that has to be present in any spiritual community if that community is going to thrive. If a community of people can’t find a way of gaining altitude, of going up, there is not much hope. When that is achieved, there’s not only that tip at the top of the circus tent pole, but there is the tent itself. There is that which spreads out, which is the tent, which is the space that that community can be in.

If I can torture the analogy just a little bit further, there are things happening in that circus tent at all kinds of altitudes. The elephants may be going around the ring down at the bottom; maybe there are gymnastics at a little higher elevation. As you go up a little higher, there may be acrobats on the trapezes, and so on; maybe even higher, someone who is foolish enough to jump off of some high platform into a little bucket of water.

My metaphor is for community. There are people at all kinds of stages of development and places in their awakening. I have seen gross self-centeredness and egotism around this. I have seen people who came to a point of assuming that they had become spiritually awakened and fully emerged and enlightened, and decided that the whole community was too. In an instant, all had arrived at that level, and anything else was irrelevant. What gross ignorance! It certainly raised a suspicion in my mind about the actual altitude of the person involved. Because that is not how the evolution of consciousness goes. There is the marathon effect. There are different levels of consciousness for people, and that is just as it should be.

There is room for everyone in the circus tent. Wherever a person is on their path, the only requirement is that a person is honest. And around those things that have yet to open up in themselves and grow and develop and mature, the person has to have the honesty to allow for the continued openness that is needed, so that the wisdom and the power and the glory of the Father can come in and grow them and develop them, so that in the course of their life, the full measure of Universal Love that they were destined to bring into the world can come. The full measure of the wisdom and the clarity and the light that they were meant to bring in their life can come. But it can never come if there is not humility and honesty.

When there is honesty with oneself, it all works, at whatever altitude we are. And we find that wherever we are in our own process, there is a magic that’s possible in community. There is a power that is possible if we each play our parts and contribute what is ours to contribute.

My grandson, Xavi, is fifteen months old and he is only beginning to talk. His consciousness is not as evolved as it will be one day. But is he not perfect as he is? It is all coming ’round right for people when there is the perspective of Being present, for Xavi, his mother, Helena, and the surround of her friends and community. The perspective of Being is what holds up the circus tent. It is what allows a true spiritual community to work.

Uranda, who founded Sunrise Ranch, was often known to say, “Keep coming, Blessed One.” On our own path, there is that invitation that we hear: Keep coming. Keep walking down that path. You’re not done yet and the path isn’t over. Keep coming. Keep rising up. Keep learning. And keep finding that the more you rise up, the more you’re coming down, entering your own humanity more fully as the Being who you are.