Do you feel the urgency of this year? I feel the urgency of life, and the urgency of what we have to do as spiritually conscious people. We are hurtling through the universe in a spiral fashion, following the sun, and there are new factors that are opening up in the unseen powers of Creation, just as there are new factors opening up in our lives.

From day to day, it can be easy to overlook such things and to be caught up in a daily round of events. Yet we are called to bring together the power of consciousness and to bring it into the world as a message of awakening.

There is so much at stake in our world. It certainly comes to focus in our politics. It comes to focus in our care for Planet Earth. It comes to focus in how we treat one another and in the conflict between cultures and people. But behind all that, what is the most significant factor on our planet today? What is behind our technology and our politics and our religion? It is what’s happening in consciousness—in heart and mind, for people everywhere.

If we are called to spiritual awakening, we are called to not only stay awake but to bring awakening to the world in which we live; to bring it purely and clearly; to be one of those on the planet who commits themselves to that, above all else. Why should we bring spiritual awakening? In no way is it for any kind of personal benefit. And while it’s true that someone who’s bringing spiritual awakening to the world has to be supported in that work if the work is to go forward, it’s not about that support. It is about that work. It’s about having the courage to follow the impulse of spirit that’s moving through one’s own awareness and allowing that to come to focus in every aspect of one’s life, but certainly consciously with others. That impulse calls us to rally with other conscious people. There’s something to be done in the world and something to be brought to the world, forthrightly and boldly. I don’t know another good way to bring something to the world, except with courage and clarity—the courage to tell it like it is and to say it like it is; the courage to speak about the most important factors that are present on earth today; the courage to face whatever ridicule you might face for doing so; the courage to be the living expression of the creative spirit inside you.

There’s also the courage to rally together in a place of sacredness before the Most High and to participate spiritually in the generation of the new. At this time of year, we think of things like New Year’s resolutions, plans and, for some, vision boards. All those things can be wonderful. But behind them, where is the spiritual generation in one’s life that will take whatever plans you have forward, that will be the conviction behind whatever resolution you’ve made, that will be the power and the energy of that for you?

If our plans for 2015 are to gain traction, they have to have meaning and purpose. And what does ultimately have meaning and purpose in our lives? It is our connection with something that ultimately is unseen. Yes, it can show itself in the seen, but it is our communion with the Most High that truly gives it all meaning.

Through history, there have been people who have courageously brought the truth of Being. They’ve known it for themselves and they’ve brought it to the world. They’ve had the courage to live a life that was about that.

A truly creative life is not just an alternative to everything else. My life isn’t an alternative to human culture as it is. Life is a thing of itself. The life we have to lead came before the world. It isn’t simply an alternative to the world. It is the reality that created the world in the first place. It is the life that beats within every person. And yes, we can distort that life and make an atomic bomb, and we can pollute the world. But the life we are made to live is the one true life, the life before any human distortion of it. It’s the beauty and the wonder of life itself.

So we have that to share in communion, having the courage to rally together with people around the globe, to be together in fact. Here in America, we can exercise our right of assembly. It’s an assembly in person, wherever you are, with whoever you are. But most importantly, it is coming together in consciousness.

Who are your people? I know who my people are. My people include anyone who is spiritually awake or spiritually awakening. That person is a friend to me. That person is joining with me, and I with them. They are committing themselves to what I am committed to, and I am committing myself to them and what they are committed to. We are friends because of that. And yes, I have friends and companions who I probably would say aren’t fully awake; people who may not even express an interest in conscious awakening, spiritually speaking. I have love for those people, and companionship at times. But there is nonetheless a special place in my heart for any human being who is awakening. They are a friend to me because they are a friend to the Unseen that I serve. They are a friend to the Most High God.

I speak about God here sometimes, but not too often, because it tends to evoke all kinds of different ideas and beliefs. Some people are in favor of those beliefs. That’s sometimes even worse than if they were against the idea of God, because of the nature of those beliefs and what they can lead a person to do. So I often avoid the word. But I want to be clear that I’m not speaking about your God or my God. I’m not speaking about the God of religion, the Protestant God or the Catholic God, a Hindu God or an Islamic God. Honesty, I think, compels us to acknowledge that the reality of God shows up in human consciousness in all kinds of ways, dressed up in all kinds of clothing, and called by all kinds of names. But if God is real, God transcends any of those names or any of the ways that He or She is dressed up in human consciousness.

No, I’m talking about the one true God. I don’t care to have a very strong relationship with the Gods of human belief. But a relationship with the God of Gods, the real God, means everything to me. It is that unseen reality that I serve and I suggest, for anyone, is worth serving. And how do we serve that reality? We serve the real God by listening with the heart, by listening to what is given to us to live in our life. In 2015, for me, this is a year of living the life of the real God. We can only live that life because we listen and fulfill our part of the friendship, our relationship with the Unseen.

Our part of that relationship could be spoken of in many ways. It is to listen; it is to pay attention. It is to receive what we’re given—the life that we’re given, the truth that we’re given, the inspiration that we’re given—and to do something with it. And that comes to the other part of the bargain. Our part of being a friend to the Unseen is to carry forward and carry out what we are given. To dance before the Lord, to the Lord’s tune, to the Lord’s rhythm. To dance before the Unseen and embody it in our life, to embody the beauty and the wonder of it in our creation.

That’s another part of the bargain with the Unseen: to be a creator on earth. There clearly is a Creator that’s not on earth, that’s in the unseen. The life that we’re given wasn’t created anyplace where we can find it. There’s no life manufacturing plant that we go to, like you would go to an electrical generating plant. There’s no furnace, even though the sun up in the sky is doing a pretty good job. But there’s a furnace from inside. Life is being created in the unseen and given to us. The Creator in the unseen is doing His and Her work.

We’re here to be a creator in the seen, to take what we’re given from the Unseen and to give it expression, to give the light of that truth that we’re privileged to receive in our minds, to live the vitality of that life and bring the power of that love that comes to us, which is the fuel for our fire. That’s what it means to be a friend to the Unseen, to live in communion with that reality in a passionate way. We’re called to live with that passion, to be that creator in all things, to be that creator with everything that we touch, all the kingdoms of the world—the plants and the animals, the mineral kingdom, and most of all with other human beings. We are called to be the creator for another person and to be a friend to them.

And I’ll make you a deal: I’ll be the Creator in flesh for you if you will be that for me. Spiritually awake people have this amazing opportunity to hold each other’s humanity with the grace of angels, with the grace of forgiveness that’s unquestioned and un-thought-about.

With the grace of that love, we have the opportunity to hold each other’s humanity that way and to let our own humanity be held in the grace of angels, in the presence of one another. In that grace, there is mercy, there is forgiveness, there is the truth of redemption—not a religious redemption but the calling forth of our humanity to dance, to be truly alive, to be an embodiment of the Creator on earth in everything that we think and say and do.

We’re called to this kind of communion with people that we’re with every day. And I’m calling out to friends across the miles, because in this friendship miles don’t matter. We’re called to the communion of the Most High. We’re called into the grace of angels together that’s known by spiritually awake people—not by the slumbering people of the world but by spiritually awake people. This is the privilege that we have. We don’t have to be in the slumber of resentment and jealousy and separation and fear, and all those other things that separate people. That’s for spiritually asleep people. For people who are spiritually awake, we have the opportunity, indeed the calling, to know our communion and our friendship, holding one another in the grace of angels, all for our larger friendship with the Unseen, so that the Unseen might be present. Our presence that lets the Unseen be seen through us, shared by us consciously in thought and feeling and in spirit.

Spiritually awake people know one another. Yes, we get to know each other’s humanity. But we have the privilege of knowing one another, angel-to-angel, knowing that we both serve the same unseen reality. You can’t get there by serving the God of religion, however you might name that God. The only God that brings us together into an experience of communion and oneness is the one true God, the real God, the God of Gods.

I have something I’d like to read and share. It’s a poem sent to me by Maria Zayas, called “The Shepherd.” It’s an invitation into this communion that we know in the temple of the living God.

Come rest, he says
Find you in me
As One.

His voice is warm
Flicker, lights inside.
Life awakens.
Tired eyes and heart
     And cells respond
To rhythms locked away,
     Forgotten.

Time and space shifts,
     Configures
To the current of exchange.
Waves of fire and air
     Dancing
Flames burn.
Stay centered, follow my voice,
     Look up.
Do you love me?
     Tend my sheep.

Enter in – it is safe.
New sights and sounds swirling,
Overwhelming – stay centered –
I pass through the black whole
Into the Heavens, the Cosmic night.
We are One.
One voice, one body.
Light enters us from above
     And burns in our heart temple.
We are the Altar.
Our flames lap upon each other
     Burning all that is not true, Pure in heart,
We serve as One.

We are a Sun. And join other Suns.
We warm the heavens.
We bring new life.
And hold eternity with our brethren –
     New each day
We dance and speak the call
Together –
     A jewel, a star in the night sky.

Arise! Awake! Come forth and share
In love with me,
     Lover and beloved
And sing the holy praises
To God Almighty, forever!

I love these tones of holiness—not sanctimoniousness or holier-than-thou-ness. Life itself is holy. Spiritually awake people are not sanctimonious people. They are people who, in their surrender, know the holiness of Being, which is the holiness of themselves. And if I know that of me, I know it of you. And I have the privilege of becoming the shepherd on earth, bringing the voice of the shepherd, which is a call to awakening.

Here at Sunrise Ranch we are contemplating raising a flock of sheep. We have practical reasons for doing so. Beyond those practical implications, it’s symbolic of something else, which is that we’re called to be shepherds—not just of sheep, but we’re called to be shepherds of our world, and mostly shepherds of awakening, present for the birth of Christ consciousness through humanity.

Do you feel the urgency of this year? Things seem to be progressing slowly from day to day, but it doesn’t take much to take just one step backward and take a look at the world scene, and see the urgent need for spiritually conscious people in this world.

Do you ever need a reminder? Do you ever need some spiritual support in this matter of awakening? Do you ever need an encouraging word from another? If so, how many people do you know who need that same word, that same spirit of encouragement and love and upliftment, that same reminder of who they are? Are we on hand for that as the shepherd? We’re called to be that for the Unseen, so that when we put our head on our pillow at night, we can know in our heart, “I did it for you. I fulfilled my part of the bargain in being in life in human form. I did what I came to do today”—today, this week, this year, this life.