As you read these words, how much of what you are experiencing right now is familiar to you? The place where you find yourself, the thoughts you are thinking, or the very act of reading?

In a spiritual context, the longer we’ve been on a spiritual path, the more spiritual “known” we have. Sounds deadly to me. The very phrase a spiritual known is an oxymoron. The spiritual is the unknown. The known is the familiar, and as long as we insist on living in the world of the known, there’s nothing new in our life. We’re not truly living.

This is from a favorite gospel hymn, “Sanctuary,” by Randy Scruggs and John Thompson.

Lord, prepare me to be a sanctuary
Pure and holy, tried and true
With thanksgiving, I’ll be a living
Sanctuary for You

So much meaning contained in that little refrain! I am particularly interested in the tried and true part. For many people on their spiritual path, there is an initial response. The experience is beautiful! I have the privilege of traveling the world and introducing people to a reality that they have not yet known. It’s such a pleasure to be a witness to someone’s spiritual awakening.

In the living of life, we continue on, and we hear the encouragement of the spirit within us, perhaps spoken in some way by another person: Keep coming, blessed one. Keep coming.

But there is another message we receive in life. No. No, life is not going to go exactly as you want it to go. No, you can’t have a wonderful life without being the one who creates it. No, you can’t have this certain experience forever. You have to be open to what is yet unknown to you.

Very often, the no that a person receives drowns out the messages that are there for a person that encourage them to move into the unknown. The no drowns out the invitation to keep coming, blessed one.

This past week, I led a wonderful course that assists people to gain an enlightened perspective on their life, From a High Place. As I did, I reflected on how, in my teaching over the years, I have attempted to provide familiar points of connection. Certainly, people look for that—perhaps even demand it. And sometimes complain if you lead them into territory that is unknown for them. I realize that I bend over backwards to make the spiritual familiar to people so that they can connect and relate to it, so that there can be starting points that are familiar in their own experience, so that they can embrace what they already know of the spiritual, and then move from there.

In seeing my tendency to do this, I have some regret, because I have not succeeded, to the degree I need to, to introduce people to what they do not know. I believe I have to do a better job at conveying to people that yes, you are blessed and you are loved exactly the way you are—and there is something you’re not knowing. There is something to leave behind and there’s something to move into.

There is a no for anyone to accept in their life. Ultimately it is this: No, you cannot bring your known into the unknown, however good you may think it would be. And those of us who have been on a spiritual path for a little while—whether it’s a month or a year, ten years or a lifetime—have some pretty good things we think we know.

Here is a reality that most people don’t know. If you are a man who is reading this Pulse of Spirit, you are here on earth to be God-man. Not just a good man. You’re here to be God-man, a living embodiment, as a man, of the Creator—the Creator in a man’s flesh, flesh of a physical body, flesh of heart, flesh of mind. You are here to be a God-man. This is not a familiar experience.

And if you are a woman reading this, you are here on earth to be God-woman. Not just a human woman, not just woman as you’ve known women to be in your life, not just a woman as all the women you’ve met and the woman you’ve known yourself to be. You’re here to be God-woman, to bring the essences of feminine God into the world, just as I, as a man, and all men are born into the world to bring the essences of masculine God, God-man.

I could attempt to describe the qualities of character of this reality. I could say that a God-man or a God-woman doesn’t live in judgment of others but intercedes in their life to bring an opportunity to enter a new reality, no matter where they’ve been. I could say that a God-man goes to the weakest among us and lifts them up, and strengthens them, and loves them, sees their wholeness, protects them, prays for their emergence and for their healing. I could say that a God-man or a God-woman is a creator, bringing their highest and their finest, not only through the practicality of their work but in the quality of spirit that they express, the quality of love that comes through them.

The place from which God-man expresses is the highest. A God-man gives glory to God in the highest, as does a God-woman. Glory to the Creator that is above them, that is all around them, that is within them. In the expression of my life as a God-man, I give glory to the Creator. A God-woman is doing the same. A God-woman celebrates the very act of creation in herself, all around her and in others. She celebrates the Creator of us all.

But it seems that all the aspects of character that I might mention, all the patterns for creative expression I might reference, could easily be subject to interpretations of the past, to things of the familiar and things of the known. They can so easily be misconstrued as me exhorting you to be a spiritual person, a better person, an improved version of yourself, or to work on yourself, to let go of some of your bad habits. Or to follow some earthly cause. And that is not what I’m saying.

I’m saying that the reality of who you are is a God-man or a God-woman. And I’m saying you know, somewhere inside you—not in terms of past experience but in terms of the Being that you are—who and what you are. I believe you know somewhere deep within you that you are a God-man or a God-woman. And while that experience is unknown in the world as it is—and in familiar terms the best way that we could envision that reality is in terms of a good or improved human being—it is real. And while the experience I am speaking of is virtually unknown in terms of the past, it is nonetheless true, known in the highest reality of who we are.

The no’s I face in my life could bring up disillusionment and disappointment, bitterness, resentment, fear, and all manner of ill things. Yet I accept the no’s that I meet in my life with acceptance and ultimately a gratitude that, in essence, says, Yes, I will leave the known behind. I will leave the familiar behind. I will leave the improved self behind. I will leave the spiritually evolved person behind, to step into the unknown, which is the reality of Being that I am and the world that I create in that reality. I am a God-man. You are a God-man or a God-woman.

Lord, prepare me to be a sanctuary—a sanctuary for that higher reality that I have not yet experienced. The purity and the holiness comes as I embrace that on my path, I accept the no’s on my path. No, you can’t do it that way. No, you can’t keep this limitation going. You can’t keep this that is impure in the purity of what life is. But I am also man enough to hear the voice of my Beloved, who says, Keep coming, blessed one. Keep coming. Keep coming into the unknown. Be the God-man that you are.

This is what it means to be prepared to be a sanctuary, to be pure and holy—not sanctimonious, not improved, not religious, not even spiritual. “Pure and holy, tried and true.” I didn’t just say yes at the beginning. I said yes—I heard the no, and I still said yes. I heard the invitation to keep coming, blessed one.

Pure and holy, tried and true, with thanksgiving, I’ll be a living sanctuary for You, O Beloved, God of my heart.

When I acknowledge the God that’s above me, the God that is so much larger than me, the God that is in me and the God that is in you, it’s then that I am embracing the godliness of my own experience as a man. It’s in that that I am God-man. Not because I’m claiming something to myself but because I’m humble enough to open to a reality that’s larger than who I’ve known myself to be. With thanksgiving, I’ll be a living sanctuary for You, O Beloved.

I am ready to enter this cycle of Creation with friends who are coming into this knowing for themselves. Here is what I desire to share with those friends:

I would like to be loving each other. I want to live in deep, mutual appreciation.

I want to be creating together at all levels, generating rich love substance between us, filling the community we share, sharing ideas and new awareness of reality, visions for our creation, working creatively side-by-side to manifest a new life, a new world, a living embodiment of the Creator in the form of our creation.

I want to share in a spiritual radiation that is a powerful shining of the Light into the world. And then I want to work closely with brilliant people to give voice to that radiation in an excellent way through many avenues, so that it reaches the world.

I want to work intelligently with others, creating a collective mind that organizes all our creative endeavors in an evolving way, such that the effort of organization diminishes and the joy of creation increases.

I want to share the joy of creating and the joy of creation with dear friends. And then I want to invite new friends into that circle of joy.

I want to bring a profound spiritual vibration to the world that creates a massive change in human consciousness, and then creates a new world.

Here is the conscious agreement I invite from anyone who wants to be about this:

 That our lives are about the joy of creation; that we are surrendered to the Creator within us and within the Universe in which we live; that we are dropping our resistances to Creation as we become aware of them; that in the act of creation, we see and celebrate the God-being in each other and in ourselves; that we are interested in entering more deeply in communion with the reality of God and with each other; that we are God-man and God-woman.

This puts words and ideas to what it means to be a God-man and a God-woman, to what it means to be that together. This is a reality to be lived into. When we live into this reality, a world is born through us. If we don’t live into this reality, whatever gets born through us is stillborn. There will be forms created but not set alive by the vibration of Creation. To give birth to living form we have to be the reality of God-man and God-woman, the reality of the Creator together, sharing the spirit of the Creator, which is love. Then the forms that we create will be filled with that reality. Try to work it the other way around—try to create a form and then fill it full of your spirit. It is useless drudgery. Good luck if you want to be about that—not with me.

This is a reality to be lived into that transcends any ideas that anyone might have about it, or any desire I might have to realize it. It is a reality to be lived in, to be expressed, to be embodied at all levels of our flesh; the words and the music of our life being the words and the music of the Creator.

It is so joyful to be with all who share this reality. May we enter the unknown together because we each individually enter it alone.