Within the word merge is the word mer—the French word for “sea.” But the origin of the word merge is from Latin and from a more ancient language before that. Its origin is a primal word for “to dip or plunge.” Words from that root appear in languages around the world, including Sanskrit and Lithuanian.

To “merge” is to enter something else as if it were a liquid (as opposed to “emerge,” which is to come out of a liquid). You merge onto the highway. A merger is when one corporation combines with another. And two people can merge at a personal level. Whether it’s a personal matter, or whether it’s the merger of a corporate entity, the basic principles are the same.

A merger can also be a fusion, just like the fusion of hydrogen atoms on the sun. Just as the merger of hydrogen atoms creates the radiation of the sun, a human merger can generate creativity. And just as in the fusion of hydrogen atoms, in coming together we are transformed.

Of course, not all mergers go well. Corporate mergers can take an organization down. And similarly, merging at the individual level can bring a person down when it’s not on a creative basis.

Did you ever know somebody who kept getting into bad relationships? Perhaps a younger sister or a friend? You watch them go from boyfriend to boyfriend, and you think, “Oh no, not again!” Why is this person being drawn into relationships that are their undoing? And then sometimes they see the pattern and make a different choice. You see them enter into a merger that is beautiful and life-giving. Phew!

 Why do some mergers go well and others not? Is it because it’s the right one, not the wrong one? I suppose it might be the right boyfriend, the right girlfriend, the right corporate entity to merge with. But it’s also something about how we are in that process—where we are in our life experience when we come to it, and then how we engage with it.

A creative merger allows us to experience more of ourselves and not less. So beyond momentary excitement, a true and good merger lets us feel ourselves, the integrity of our being, in a heightened way. It allows us to express ourselves in ways that we weren’t able to express ourselves before. And it allows us to fulfill the mission and purpose in our life in a way that we couldn’t without the merger. On the other hand, a merger that is not going well tears at our integrity. We feel diminished, like we’re being less of who we are, not more. Who we are is being torn down in the merger, not enhanced and enlivened.

I believe this: that the stronger our knowing of who we are, the more prepared we are to enter into a merger. That’s true at a corporate level. If a corporate entity doesn’t know who it is and what it’s about and what it’s doing, then it just disappears in the merger. What would otherwise be a merger becomes an acquisition and there’s a loss of corporate identity. Perhaps the assets of the corporation are being acquired and used, but the real value of what might have been goes away.

Similar things happen at an individual level. If we’re not sure of who we are, and if in fact the merger with another person is a compromising of who we are, or an attempt to lose who we are and find our identity in somebody else, there’s a diminishment and then, necessarily, a falling apart. We call that dysfunctional or codependent. When one person’s leaning on somebody else, they are not shining in their strength in the relationship.

These experiences ought to be signposts for us in choosing where it’s right to merge, where that’s indicated in our life, and where it isn’t. And they also say something about how we need to be in a merger: courageously and uncompromisingly ourselves. That is exciting! It is exciting to be with somebody else, being uncompromisingly who you are and sharing who you are, and then seeing what happens. So often we make some calculation of compromise. Oh, if I’ll just be less of myself, this will work better. I won’t tick them off, or I won’t…whatever.

It really becomes exciting when you are inviting that other person to be wholly themselves and you’re courageous enough to be wholly yourself, and you think, Let’s see what happens. There could be a nuclear fusion in all that. There’s probably going to be some heat. But then, the sun needs some heat and some pressure for fusion. We do too. Are we up for that heat and that pressure in the human sphere? That comes when we are in the boldness of who we are and we are willing to express all the juice of who we are as a Creator-being with somebody else.

For many years, at Sunrise Ranch, we’ve taught the basic process of merger. We call it the One Law of Creation. The One Law of Creation is a law of merger. The working of that law leads to this: Radiation, response, attraction, union, unified radiation.

It’s a process that begins with radiation. There has to be some creative radiation that attracts the merger. There is something radiating from somebody else or something else that’s life-giving. The process continues if there is response to that radiation. Response to the radiation leads to attraction. There is a coming together, and then there’s a merger, which is a union. The two become one. And the final step is that there’s unified radiation. Now in that union, what was two is one and it’s radiating something into the field that’s being shared by the two together.

We describe the process as if it was totally one-sided. It virtually never is. There has to be mutuality and reciprocity if it is to work. So the process of merger involves, initially, radiation. Typically, it’s not totally one-way. Between two people or two corporate entities, as we think of it, there’s something radiated by each. And there’s a response that’s mutual, and that response brings the two together. So often in the world of relationships, the radiation is being altered and calibrated: “Hmm, let’s see if I can radiate to this person. Let’s see if I can adjust my radiation so that it’s attractive and brings a merger.” Well, if those adjustments are a compromise of the integrity of the radiation, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble right off the bat—and so is the merger.

Often, in the human experience, what the person is radiating is altered to achieve the response that the person wants. While it is understandable that we adjust what we express to others so that it can be received easily by them, the core of what we express should not be subject to that kind of adjustment. If you make friends based on being someone you are not, you have a baseless friendship.

Let love radiate without concern for results. Just let the pure radiation of the integrity of you as a being be present. And don’t be worried about what it will attract and what merger will come from it. You could think of that at a personal level and you could think of it at a business level. We could think of it in terms of what we have to offer as Emissaries of Divine Light to the world. Let it be true to what it is. Let the radiation of love, which is the radiation of the power of the universe, come as clearly as possible through you, full spectrum, big and bold, courageous and true to who you are. And let it attract what it will. In that process, there is affinity, but it’s affinity based on empowerment, not on weakness or compromise.

It is interesting that, in a corporate merger, it’s often the intellectual property of the corporation that’s being sought. That intellectual property could be many things: software licenses, ideas, inventions, or the corporate processes, for instance.

There is a parallel to that in the creation of a baby. We don’t think of it that way and we don’t speak of it that way, but when the father and mother get together there’s some intellectual property that’s joining, is there not? We call it DNA. There is the code of creation that the mother and the father are bringing to the table, not only in the DNA itself but in the epigenetics that surround it.

The radiation we each have to bring contains the power of the universe. It is the power within the atoms of our body. It is the power of stars and the love in our hearts. It is the power of Universal Love. The reality is that we are bringing that love to a human world laced with hate.

If we think of many of the people that we have respected and admired down through the ages, it is clear that they each brought the power of love into a world laced with hate, whether it was Jesus or Nelson Mandela, or even John Lennon. Hate is the power of the universe expressed in a way that is not true to its nature.

Expressing love in a world laced with hate is a very large part of the art of what it means to be a human being. So often, we are faced with the question: How do I love in the face of the lack of love in my world…in this person, this circumstance, this group of people? The answer to that question is not simple and it is not easy. But the source of the answer is both those things. Let love radiate without concern for results.

Emissaries of Divine Light is dedicated to being an expression of that love, in teaching that and shining a beacon of love in the world. Along with that beacon of love comes intellectual property, the source code for a culture of love and a world of love, a world that comes together and creates together. So our radiation is a radiation of love, but it’s also a radiation of intellectual property, of a knowing, of an intelligence that sees beyond the ignorance of the world in which we’re living. So there’s a radiation of that and a desire to bring that intellectual property as we merge with the world in which we’re living.

I understand that Jesus spoke about being in the world but not of it. Nonetheless, I believe we are here to merge with the world. It is possible to merge with the world and just get swallowed up by it. You could lose your integrity as a human being and just become a cog in a machine. That’s not the kind of merger I’m interested in. I want to merge on the basis of being true to what I know and to the love that I am, and bringing that uncompromisingly, radiating it to all the people I know and to the world. I want to find those who naturally have affinity with that and who naturally respond to that. I want to find people who are in fact themselves bringing the power of Universal Love sourced from the same place. I want to merge with that so I am able to fulfill my purpose and destiny in my life through that merger in a way I couldn’t all alone.

I do believe we’re here to merge with the world, but to merge uncompromisingly in the integrity of the love that we are, bringing the intellectual property we have, which is about bringing that love wisely. The challenge we face as human beings is bringing the power of that love into a world that is laced with hate.

I’ll give you a small example. On the Internet I came across a video of Michelle Obama speaking to educators. She was applauding them for the service that they were offering, and encouraging young people to be empowered and to build our country. She was moved almost to tears with appreciation. She was using the power of her office as First Lady to offer them blessing and encouragement. And she was doing it in a full-hearted, certainly nonpartisan, way.

Did she have some kind of ulterior motives in doing that? I don’t really know, I suppose. They weren’t apparent to me. I don’t know how a person comes across bringing that kind of tone of love and truthfulness if they are motivated by ulterior motives, though I suppose it is possible. And I’m not claiming sainthood for Michelle Obama, but there she was, saying something so clear and loving.

I decided to post it on my Facebook page, saying that my post was not a political statement but just an expression of appreciation for those who serve. I could hardly believe what was posted in response. It was racist and depraved. I won’t dignify it by repeating it here. But it was hate speech. People were using their God-given intelligence and energy to damage another. And of course, this is only one small example of such things.

How do we live in a world of hate as a being of love? How do we keep our integrity as a being of love and keep radiating it, and in fact, in some ways, confront that world, without becoming hateful ourselves? Is this not a crux issue in a human life?

Let love radiate without concern for results. Let the intellectual property, the knowing that you have, the intelligence of Being that’s within you, shine in your world without being adulterated, no matter what you see. And by the way, when you react with hatred to hatred, you are merging with it on an awful basis. You are not only in the world but you’re becoming part of the darkness when you are merging on a reactive basis and not merging in a way that retains the integrity of your own spirit.

Without strong spiritual centering personally speaking, and the integrity of expression that comes from that centering, we are faced with two bad choices when it comes to mergers. The first choice is staying home and watching TV: don’t merge, be a recluse. The other bad choice is to compromise ourselves in the merger, and if we haven’t found our strong personal centering—if we don’t know who we are and what we’re here for—then that is exactly what will happen.

Authentic, strong, spiritual centering brings the ultimate merger, which is with the molten core of our own Being. The ultimate merger comes from turning to that, feeling the radiation of it from within ourselves, maybe pointed to by somebody else but nonetheless originating within ourselves. It’s turning to the core and the juiciness of that power within us, and loving it overwhelmingly. And just as those hydrogen atoms draw to the center of the sun, we, in that response, are drawn passionately to that core within ourselves when we are centered in that core. We passionately merge with that core that is the source of our own integrity, the source that makes us who we are. And being willing to lose the struggle of our life up to that point, we surrender and give ourselves to the only reality to which we can totally surrender without losing our integrity—the reality that makes us more of who we are, not less.

So will you join me on that wonderful journey? Take whatever step is yours to take in this moment into the center of your own Being, feeling the power and the strength and the warmth and the beauty of that. Facing it and moving towards it, feeling it coming into you all the more, feeling the beauty and the wonder of something that at first you might have thought was something other than you. But in embracing it, surrendering to it and releasing everything up to this moment, there’s a flood of that reality through consciousness, through mind and heart. And we are released to the full expression of our true Being.

Then we can say to our world, I am here. I am available to merge creatively in the wondrous and complex panorama of my life and yours. I’m available to become a sun with you, a source of the unified radiation of Universal Love and a new wisdom for the world.