We have discovered something at Sunrise Ranch that we believe could make a very big difference in your life; in your experience of relationship, your ability to creatively manifest in your life. This could make a big difference to your experience of grace and to your ability to make a contribution to the world. It relates to the creative field in which you operate and your effectiveness in that field. In fact, it is the primary principle that establishes and activates your creative field.
What I am addressing is totally voluntary. In fact, it works on no other basis. So no one can force you to do this; it doesn’t work on that basis. It works on the basis of your free choice as a Creator Being.
The name we have given to this is The Pact. The origin of the word is Latin, referring to something agreed upon. The word is familiar to Americans who will be celebrating Thanksgiving this month. It is contained within the name that the Pilgrims gave to what they agreed upon, The Mayflower Compact:
Having undertaken, for the Glory of God, and advancements of the Christian faith and honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together…
I came across the word pact while meeting with two friends at Sunrise Ranch. We were considering an area of our work that has felt stuck for some time. There has been slow, lurching progress, and we all aspire to a much higher level of creativity than we have been able to achieve. Important tasks seem to get lost in the shuffle or fall between the cracks, or whatever other cliché you want to use.
I said this to my friends. I am inviting you into a pact. It is a pact to create what we all sense is possible in this area. The Pact is totally voluntary. But if we join together, committing to each other that we won’t stop until we have achieved our goal, I know we will be successful. So we committed ourselves to be in a process together and stay in that process and see it through all the way.
The Pact I am speaking of is among human beings, as it was amongst the Pilgrims and in my experience this week. But it is firstly a pact with God the Possible. It’s born out of our awareness of possibility, out of something that is present in essence in the realm of potentiality but has yet to manifest. If you are touching that potentiality and I am too, and we are sensing that we have a part to play together in manifesting that potential, then The Pact is not only to be true to the potential and our commitment to let it manifest but also to stay with each other in the process of Creation. The Pact is that we will be together in the creative cycle for as long as that cycle continues, to see Creation all the way through into manifestation and functionality in the creative process.
At the same time, The Pact is not only with the field of potentiality and with other people. It is also a pact with the substance of the creative field. It is a pact with Creation, itself. That field of substance could relate to a family. It could relate to a community, a garden, an organization, a country, or a project. It could relate to many things, and ultimately it relates to the whole world and beyond. The Pact is a commitment to that field, to see the process of Creation through. It is easy to see, in the world at large, how this pact with the planet has been broken by humanity as a whole.
What I am saying is that your experience of Creation and of your creative field, your experience of relationship with other people, and your experience with God the Possible will change when you realize that you have the opportunity to make a pact, to enter into a committed relationship with all the other dimensions of the creative field.
I see people struggle in all these areas. I see people struggle in relationships, not understanding why things don’t come around right for them, not understanding why they seem to be on some kind of treadmill or carousel of futility—of excitement and expectation and then letdown. Many times, it has to do with the inability of the people involved to enter into a pact and then see it through.
Working with people for many years regarding their spiritual life, I notice that often their relationship to God, by whatever name, seems to them to be ephemeral and elusive. Through meditation or prayer they may have a glimpse of the spiritual and some momentary peace of heart. But they then find that peace eludes them and their connection to the reality they have touched fades. Other concerns overtake their experience. Oftentimes what the person doesn’t realize is that they have an opportunity to enter into a pact with the Invisible.
That pact is to be of service to that Invisible Reality, to understand that the wonder and the greatness of the Creator—the wonder of love, the clarity and light of truth—is asking something of us. It is asking to manifest through us in this world. It’s asking that we enter into a pact to be the means by which that happens. And then, it’s asking us to be true to that pact.
When it comes to the manifestation of something wonderful in people’s lives, there can be great disappointment: great expectation in projects and endeavors, and sometimes some success, but then all too often an experience of letdown and futility. What is missing? To powerfully enter the process of Creation, we have to enter into a pact—with God the Possible, with other people, and with the field of Creation itself.
It is easy to see some of the reasons that people avoid entering into such a pact. They may imagine that it would be confining to live a committed life; confining to be committed to other people, to the potentiality of your own life, or to your Creation. A person’s notion of freedom may be to avoid commitments. But Creation comes from commitment to the process, and to all the elements in the process. And if you aren’t creating, are you really happy? Are you really free?
The Pact is about Creation, and it is about bringing the pattern of Creation into Creation. That was what my meeting with those two other people was about. There had to be the pattern of what we were going to create brought more strongly into that field. There had to be some control brought into processes that were out of control, so that the pattern of creation would actually manifest. Working with people, I notice that control can be frightening for them. They realize that if they are going to bring control to the process of creation, they may have to accept more control into their own experience. They wonder if someone may be trying to control them. When you know that you are the Creator who is bringing the control, so that you can create something beautiful, those issues go away.
Control issues are part of any pact. If two parents are going to raise a child, they find out very quickly that they are going to have discussions about control for children. How are they going to do it so that the potentiality for the child and for the family is realized? Any creation involves considerations of control. So if you are going to be in a pact with other people, you will be dealing with those issues. You will be committing yourself to letting the control that’s inherent in God the Possible, which holds the pattern of creation, to flow through you. You are going to have to be willing to let that pattern penetrate your consciousness thoroughly enough that it is patterning not only your thoughts, feelings and action, but the substance of your Being, and then the substance of your creative field. You are going to have to do that for yourself and then share that process with another person, and let that experience evolve over time.
For many people, the control factors that arise in the creative process become a reason to sit on the sidelines of life and never fulfill the potential that is theirs to fulfill. It can seem easier for them to watch life happen around them and then blame other people when the results aren’t what they would like.
The hurt heart doesn’t want to engage in The Pact. The hurt heart wants to stay separate, keep itself defended and safe, or so it thinks. But in the end, separate and safe is alone and dying. So it’s not so safe after all, is it? The real safety, ironically enough, is in vulnerability, because in vulnerability there’s connection, the ability to connect with others in this pact of Creation.
Whatever stops a person from entering into The Pact causes them to miss the elation of Creation. They miss the Field of Grace that forms between people with God the Possible, and then with each other. That Field of Grace is a field of pleasure, enjoyment and delight. It is the basis for creation. It contains the pleasure of communion.
The Field of Grace that is created by The Pact is a place of deep meditation within the mind and heart of a person, and between people. It is an ongoing experience of meditation in living, and also the opportunity to enter into periods of deep meditation intentionally, sometimes with another person, or with a group of people. This reading is, itself, an opportunity for deep meditation between you and me with all the other people who share The Pulse of Spirit. We are welcoming a particularly intensified penetration of awareness by God the Possible. When that happens, we can’t help but extend that awareness into the larger field of consciousness in which we live. We are allowing our own consciousness to be transformed by that awareness, and allowing the field to be penetrated by this process of deep meditation.
The Pact is relevant to our individual creative fields. Those individual fields are held within the larger creative field and The Pact that holds that larger field together. I share The Pact with friends around the world. We live in a Field of Grace through which the light of God the Possible shines and the Fire of Love burns. It is an already-existing Field of Grace that is re-created in our own experience because we consciously open to it and we consciously choose to be a part of The Pact that creates it.
The Pact is a committed relationship for as long as the relationship is useful to God the Possible in the creative process. I want to be there for that, and I want my relationships to be there for that, knowing that relationships change and evolve, even as I change and evolve in the dance of reciprocity. But even though they may be putting on a new recording at the dance, I’m ready for the next cycle of creation.
It takes our fluidity and openness, our reciprocity with God the Possible and with our partners in the dance, to say Yes, I’m here for you. I’m here for this dance, whatever it takes. I’m here for God the Possible and for the Creation. There are going to be learnings, and I’m going to change and you are going to change. It does not look now as it did when I began or you began, but here we are. And here is grace.
The Field of Grace needs to be solidly held by the committed relationships of people who enter into The Pact, because there are many things happening in the substance of Creation around us. Certainly, there is tumult of all kinds in the larger world in which we live—terrorism, hatred, war and degradation of the planet. In a marriage, you find out very quickly that the chaos of the creative field around the couple can invade the marriage. So what happens then? Does the couple hold the Field of Grace that’s between them, and hold it strong? Do they keep The Pact? Or do all the things that are happening in the creative field invade the sanctity of that grace?
And so it is for all of us who hold The Pact. There are so many things that could invade it, that could corrupt it, that could seduce us into something less than holding the Field of Grace. If that happens, we no longer have the experience of the Field of Grace. Participation is totally voluntary, so we can always choose to compromise the field. But there’s another choice: to hold the grace. And the grace of The Pact that we hold together brings the power of Creation into the field. It changes the field. If all the distress of the child is going to come into the marriage of the parents and cause confusion in them, they have no ability to bring the love and the truth that would hold that child and let them grow into the adult that they are meant to be. If partners are holding a business together, and all the ups and downs of that business come into their partnership, and they begin to blame each other and attack each other, they have no ability to hold the grace that would allow that business to thrive and take off.
We hold the grace to bring the positive power of Creation into the world. And the positive power of Creation comes through the grace that you and I hold. We know if there has been something that has invaded it. It happens—no shame, no blame. It happens. And if it does happen, what do we do? Very simple: just go back to the grace and to The Pact that we are holding. Because it’s about that, isn’t it? It’s about the dance. It’s about the Creation that we are holding together. So we forgive the past, sanctify the present, and move on in the grace that we are meant to know together as human beings.
It is the nature of this Field of Grace to include all who choose to be a part of it. It is totally voluntary. That’s the only way it could work. The only price of participation is personal commitment to The Pact. So I have the privilege of extending the invitation to you to enter into The Pact with me and many others and to thereby participate in this Field of Grace. You can write to me and answer yes if you would like. Or you could just know for yourself that this is true and this is your choice.
Thank you for holding this Field of Grace.