The osprey’s great wings pound
the mountain air,
and he rises above
the blue-green water
of the lake filled with trout.
Sailing past pine trees
and over the bull moose wading below,
he circles and soars,
eyesight like laser light
penetrating the surface of the lake.
This one now!
He begins his dive
gaining speed until he enters the water,
his fierce talons piercing
his slippery prey,
lifting it out of the lake
to bring food to his waiting young.

Then leaving his piney nest
he circles and soars,
circles and soars
into the late-afternoon light.
In yet more rarefied air he rises
in flight through banks of cloud
over trees and peaks,
thousands of feet he ascends
until he is gliding free
illumined and warmed
where he belongs.
He circles and stalls,
dips and glides,
and calls for the sun to hear
“I am osprey!
King of the air!
And prince of winged flight!
I am home,
And I am free.”

We are poised on the brink of greatness. How do I know? How do you ever know? If you are about to manifest something great in your life, how do you know? By definition, it hasn’t happened yet. And if you take steps in your life to embrace that greatness and to let it come, do you ever feel a little foolish? Well, I thought it was coming, but I’m not quite sure. And I would feel a little silly if I was doing all these things and it didn’t come.

You have to believe. You have to trust, sense and know at the level of inner perception. Some say you must “act as if” to be on the brink of greatness. Here is the interesting thing: If you never do believe or trust, and if you never do take those steps that are your steps to allow the greatness that is yours to know in your life, it won’t happen. It’s rather seldom that a person does nothing, experiences no pressure, stands around, stays in their comfort zone, and then finds that greatness happens to them.

Greatness comes by prophecy. True prophecies are not only some kind of prescience. True prophecy is bringing the sight of the osprey from altitude. It is seeing greatness in your own experience and being willing to accept it and act on it—to take your steps. We prophesy on our own life. We bring the essence of our greatness so that it can manifest.

When I say that we are on the brink of greatness, what I mean is that we are on the brink of manifesting something great in the world of form; that we have something great that we are bringing to the world. Even though we are on the brink of manifesting it, the reality of it is present now. The essence of it is in the air. Can you feel it? Do you touch it? Can you accept it? Can you rise out of whatever little things are occupying your attention?

When I saw the osprey two weeks ago at Trap Lake in the Rocky Mountains, there were small mammals crawling around the scree above the water’s edge: pikas. There is nothing wrong with pikas, but perhaps they are symbolic of our tendency to scurry around with the little things of our world without the vision of the osprey—never rising to touch and know our own greatness and the greatness of what our life is about.

Each person has a relationship with the world at large. You have a relationship with the people close to you and with increasingly larger circles of people around you—in your circle of friends, business contacts, perhaps an organization, your community and your nation. You also have a relationship with the world at large and a unique gift to bring to that world.

When I began to examine that relationship for myself, I realized that when I thought about it I had a knot in the pit of my stomach. Scary stuff, being in the world! We become aware of our reputation and perhaps the scary thought of becoming a public figure in some way. But whether we become what is thought of as a public figure or not, we have a relationship with the world at large, and we have something to bring to that world. And then all of humanity has something to bring to the planet. Right now, what humanity as a whole is bringing to the planet is destructive.

To bring something great to the world, you have to come to terms with your own relationship to that world. Then you are in position to conspire with others to bring that greatness. We have to do that because no one brings something great to the world all by themselves. We have to come together with others.

I have come to a place in my life of reclaiming the call to greatness that arises from deep within me. Like many people, I felt it as a young man. I feel it even stronger today. That calling within me motivates me to rally people to their greatness—to the greatness of what a man or a woman is, to the greatness of what humanity is, to the greatness of our individual calling and destiny. But more than that, to the calling and the destiny of all humanity.

The book I have written, to be published soon, is entitled Becoming a Sun. I like the title, and I’ll tell you why. The sun is a remarkable symbol for what we are becoming as human beings. We are called to bring warmth and light as the sun brings it, and to have gravity as the sun has gravity, and to embody many other qualities of the sun. The title also has this meaning. To become a sun is to incinerate everything within us that cannot withstand the heat of Universal Love that burns within us. So the title is truth in advertising. All humanity is in the process of burning from within, and whatever cannot withstand the flame of Universal Love is being incinerated.

One of the implications of this is that all our smallness, all our penchant for comfort, all the dead institutional things within us, are burning up. They are burning up in the power of Creation that’s within us. We are emerging as the sun that we are, standing full and free in our sun nature.

I trust the power of that sun, the power of the greatness within me and within you. I trust it far more than anything else.

We are all going to leave this sphere in some way. I am not given to morbid thoughts, but I want to leave in a blaze of glory. I want to spend my whole life leaving in a blaze of glory. That could be a way to live a life, couldn’t it? Spend your whole life leaving in a blaze of glory, with nothing to lose, just in it for the glory? And not only leaving in a blaze of glory but living in a blaze of glory. With that thought, you can ask yourself, just how glorious could this be? Just how great could this be? Just where could we take it? Just how much could we bring to the world? Just how much could we inspire, incite, encourage and rally other people around the globe to be in it for the glory?

You can get distracted about a lot of different things, and I can too. You can be like the pika. You can make your life about a lot of things that give you no joy. You can be absorbed with all the things that are not happening but which you think should be happening, and all the things that are challenging you. I say that is no way to live a life. The way to live a life is to let it be about the glory and about anything in your life that is a part of that glory. Anything or anyone that is ready for that glory with you. We should be up for challenge and adversity. We have to be. But even that is an opportunity for the glory. Let it be about the joy of Creation and what you and I are here to bring to this world to snap it out of its misery.

In some way, we are all going to become a sun. For all of us, we are going to shed the earthly things. We can do it unconsciously, getting our butt kicked the whole time, with no fun and no joy. Or we can do it with glee. We can do it with glory. And we can bring that same opportunity to other people.

This is the way of the osprey. There he was—he had no reason to circle high above us. He had already caught his fish. He was up there in that late-afternoon sun just for the glory of it. That is a way to live a life. We are poised on the brink of greatness. Let’s jump!