Home

Where I come from is a place without form. A place both larger and smaller than even I can comprehend. At home, I am not singular or separate, but my being is in all things. At home, I am made of light. I am in everything, both seen and unseen. When I am home, I am even a part of you. There is no pain there, no suffering. There are no agendas or ideals. I am expansive, and the only sensation I feel is love. More powerful love does not exist anywhere else. It is more love than a first kiss, more love than a baby being held for the first time. There is no greater love. 

Here on Earth, this love is only felt in glimpses. When it is felt, the purity and beauty of it brings even the mightiest of kings to tears. 

I have come to bring you glimpses. I have left that home for you. The agony of my choice is ever present. I feel the pull of home, constantly. I am grateful for the pain. I am glad I made my choice, because knowing this pain gives me strength and adds to the truth of my words when I say, “I love you more than this hurts. I love you more than your pain. I love you more than I long to go home. I love you more.” I can only offer you glimpses, but they are the most precious gift in all the world.

Courtney Herrera

I would like to explore our potential as a universal priesthood—people from around the globe who feel the urge of Creation within themselves; people who are saying yes to that urge, and so people who are becoming a living expression of the impulse of Creation. Can you feel the possibility of that calling for yourself?

A universal priest or priestess is spiritually transparent. When we say yes to the impulse of Creation, we invite it into us and through us in a transparent way, so that the things that have obscured that experience turn transparent. Perhaps they are not yet totally gone—we don’t lose our humanity. But with the experience of transparency, we know something firsthand for ourselves and share that knowing with other people.

Courtney’s mythic story speaks of a glimpse of love. The transparency of a universal priest or a priestess shows a glimpse of love to other people, and then sustains an open window to that experience. Do you ever have the urge to be that for another person? When we do, the universe streams through. How inspiring!

Let me show you the universe!

For that to truly happen, the usual stuff of the human experience as we have known it has to clarify. It has to get out of the way to make room for the creative urge that we then have the opportunity to share with other people.

That creative urge within us meets the same urge in others, and what a pleasure that is! I had that experience teaching a recent course, Primal Spirituality 2, at Sunrise Ranch. There we were, by the end of the time, looking at each other, feeling that same urge in us all. How extraordinary! And yet how familiar. How normal it is to be with other people in synergy based in a higher love, with a higher genius streaming through each one. Looking across the room, you think, Where did this gorgeous person come from? This brilliant person who is so uniquely him- or herself. And how is it that we could all be so uniquely ourselves, and yet we fit together and we synergize in a whole?

While extraordinary in the world in which we live, there is also the clear awareness that there is something natural about this. This is how we are made to be, and it is actually odd that we don’t do it more every day. There is an urge in us to come together in higher and higher orders of creativity. It is natural, and yet there has to be the yes from us individually that takes us to transparency, that allows us to be a living expression of the urge of Creation. Then we get to be that with each other. We become a priest or a priestess for each other. If we do that together, we become that for the world.

We were considering in Primal Spirituality 2 how, at every step of our human experience, what opens the door for us to receive the urge of Creation is our yes. For every impulse of Creation that is available to us, it doesn’t become relevant in our lives until we surrender to it. No brilliant thought will come to mind unless you open to the source of genius within you. Any loving urge is meaningless to you or to me until our human heart turns its response to that urge.

What does it take to surrender to the creative urge within us as human beings?

It is an ancient spiritual teaching that trying to be great leads to failure. And admitting to your smallness, surrendering to what is greater than your current experience of yourself, and letting it in leads to true greatness. True greatness is the urge of Creation that is within you that now is finding expression through you when you surrender to it. And then you have the privilege of knowing that the creative urge is you. It is nothing other than who we are. It doesn’t seem like that at the beginning, and if we start out by trying to be great in our own eyes, or attempting to appear great to another person, we crash and burn.

At every step along the way, there is that need for saying yes. There is a need for the ultimate humility and innocence. When we show up that way, there is always more that comes into our human experience—more understanding, more creativity, higher love.

Sometimes we have to reach what seems like the end of the road to come to that point of surrender and openness. So if, in any way, we seem like we have come to the end of our road, that is the time to open—to surrender and be empowered. When we do that, we learn the secret formula—for ourselves and for anyone. We can then hold the window of heaven open for another person. We can’t say yes for them, just as no one can do that for us. But we, in our own surrender and our own transparency, can open an opportunity for another person. We become a universal priestess, or a universal priest.

I can only offer you glimpses, but they are the most precious gift in all the world.

Have you heard of the marathon effect? William Bridges likened the process of change to the running of a marathon. He described how leaders of change can be like leaders of a marathon. While everyone starts the marathon, and hopefully everyone finishes, not everyone is at the same stage at the same time.

That is how it is with this conscious evolution. Why are we, together around the world, having these thoughts? Somebody in the house next door might not be, but we are. Hard to say why, but we are. It is the marathon effect. And it is important, in this conscious evolution, that those who are awakening surrender to that awakening and let it happen, no matter where they are in the race. It is part of what needs to happen in the larger body of humanity. We are not better than the person next door; awakening might just have happened to us first. And we have our part to play because of that. We have our opportunity to embrace. When we do, we make it easy for everybody behind us.

Leaders can be like runners who are out front at mile 18. They can become tired of the race while throngs of people behind them are still in the early stages. If those who are in front stop, what would happen? They might get trampled. They might clog up the path.

Don’t be that lazy leader. Continue to run the race, continue to move forward, continue to surrender. That allows those who are only beginning to awaken to move easily. We create a draft behind us that pulls others along when we are moving forward.

Jesus had something to say about that.

And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.

If I move forward in the marathon, I will draw all those who are behind me forward. I will blaze a path and create a draft that makes it easy for those behind me. I don’t want to be standing in the road. How about you?

Some of us have been on the marathon for what sometimes seems like more than the 26 miles that a marathon should be. We have been at it a while! Is that a reason to be stopping in the road? No, we just keep moving. Whatever is happening for people behind us, we run our race. There is one marathon. And yet we each have our race, our marathon. Our life experience depends upon us running that marathon and not stopping. And in fact, the people around us are depending on us to run our marathon, whatever that is uniquely for us.

That race, for you, is different from the person next to you. Have you noticed that? Why are there things that you know that the people around you do not? Why do they have a different job than you have? Why do they seem to have different privileges and different opportunities?

We are all running a different race, and yet the same marathon. The important thing is that we run our race, and that we keep moving. All the people around you are depending upon you to run your race. When they see you doing that, the inspiration is not to try to run the race you are running—it is for them to run their own race.

It is interesting that we don’t experience togetherness out of sameness. The togetherness of a group of people is born out of the uniqueness of the individual. We know we are together, not because we try to blend in and be like somebody else or all be the same. That has been attempted. In many cases, that is the attempt of religion: If we could just get everybody to shape up and follow these practices, these beliefs, these rules, there would be some kind of togetherness and order. It doesn’t work, simply because uniformity is not the basis of our oneness. Uniqueness is.

It is counterintuitive for us sometimes, as human beings, that when we are being uniquely, transparently ourselves and we are with other people who are doing the same, we are together. We are all doing the same thing—being uniquely ourselves.

In being uniquely and transparently ourselves together, we become part of a universal priesthood needed for the marathon being run by humankind today. We take our place in making the path clear, laying down the bread crumbs that mark the way, and showing a glimpse of the future to those who are running the race with us. We bring a transparent shining of the Light. We show the world a glimpse of transcendent love, real to us as we know it for ourselves. And the people in our life feel that transcendent love from us.

I love you more than your pain. I love you more than I long to go home. I love you more.

Love to you, universal priests and priestesses all.