I have chosen to title this article by the same name we use for the series of articles we post on our blog: The Pulse of Spirit. As you read further, I think you will see why.

These words are from Lloyd Arthur Meeker, who was known as Uranda to those who followed his writings and teachings. They are from a six-month course in Attunement he offered at Sunrise Ranch in 1954:

Attunement is with cause, and if Attunement is with the secondary or distortion pattern of cause we have illness, we have chaos, we have something wrong, we have a lack of peace; because no one can live without primary cause, and if he accepts secondary cause into his body, into his mind, into his heart, he forthwith has chaos, a lack of peace. What is peace? It is a state of harmony, of coordination of all the systems, no conflict.

I’d like to explore the significance of these words in both the public and the personal sphere.

Yesterday I took a drive down to The Mumbles on the coast in South Wales. We were driving behind a Rolls Royce convertible. Karen Pritchard, who I was with, recognized the driver as a Welsh actor, Ioan Gruffudd. In the film Amazing Grace, he stars as William Wilberforce, who was instrumental to the end of Great Britain’s involvement in the slave trade in 1833.

This was a sad chapter, not only of the experience of Great Britain and other countries in Europe but also the United States. All the northern states had given up the practice of slavery by 1804, and the practice of slavery ceased in the southern states at the end of the Civil War. But that didn’t resolve the issue. For eight years after the war, President Ulysses S. Grant led the country through a period of Reconstruction to help the South move into a new era. But in so many ways, through the Ku Klux Klan and otherwise, the treatment of African Americans in slavery before the Civil War continued afterward, though in a different guise. At the end of Grant’s presidency, the country gave up on the Reconstruction effort.

The sad truth is that there are remnants of slavery that significantly affect the Black population today. And so, the wounds of my country, America, still show themselves—the deep divisions, the lack of clarity over these things, the violence to Black people, and particularly young Black men.

Five days ago, professional basketball coach Doc Rivers spoke these words with desperate passion, following the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin:

It’s amazing to me why we keep loving this country, and this country does not love us back.

His words address the broken reciprocity in American race relations. That history of brokenness has manifested the events of today. It took 400 years to create what just happened in Wisconsin.

Personally, each of us has a history. How far do you want to trace it back? There is our own lifetime, and lifetimes upon lifetimes before that. How long did it take to create the personal world that we know today? There are the parts of our current experience that we had most directly to do with. We can attribute them to the events of our own lifetime. And yet, there is so much in each of our individual worlds that took lifetimes to create. Decisions our ancestors made influenced where we were born, our culture, and our genetics. And so it is for each of us, and for all of us together as humankind. We’ve been working on what’s happening right now, in our individual and collective experience, for millennia. It took millennia to manifest the racism, the pandemic, the division, and all the rest; millennia to create the Internet, rocket ships to the moon, and Coca-Cola.

Whatever happens, we are not going to change it all in an instant.

So here we are today, around the world and in America. There are all the forms of the society in which we live, and in nature, born from out of the past. They have landed into the present moment. The simple truth is we cannot change the past. Really, we cannot even change the present. It’s been born here from out of the past, and there it is. Fighting against the past, or even fighting what has manifested into the present, is an exercise in futility. There it is, in our common space and in our individual lives.

And yet there is also the opportunity for the birth of the new. And just as there was the opportunity for something new to be born in days, years, centuries, and millennia gone by, that same opportunity is present here and now. This is what Uranda was referring to when he spoke of primary cause. Primary cause is Original Cause. It is the originating Reality for what emerges now through the expression of a human being, and through all of us together. We have a chance to connect with Original Cause.

But of course, we have to cease being distracted by all that is present from secondary cause. Secondary cause is all that has manifested from out of the past. The manifest world calls to our attention—perhaps evoking fear, regret, disappointment, or shame—all kinds of emotions that inflame the heart and then bring division, first of all in us as individuals and then among us as human beings.

All these secondary causes pull us in multiple directions, and getting pulled in different directions individually, and then collectively, we get pulled apart. That is the story of America today. We are being ripped apart by secondary causes—by things from out of the past that have landed into the present, and that divide us. But not just America. The whole world is involved in this divisiveness without coming to the place of conscious awareness of what we have the opportunity to give birth to in this present moment.

So we are here now to know the peace that comes with finding Original Cause. Original Cause is the point of origin in ourselves. It is full of life because Original Cause is the fountain of life in ourselves. There, the Pulse of Spirit keeps beating. The heartbeat of Creation brings overflowing life.

We can feel that pulse if we open to it right now, in this present moment. It is beating in the field of our collective spiritual substance. It is the pulse of Universal Love that brings peace. It is the vibration of Light that brings sight.

All of this is born out of Original Cause. It doesn’t manifest in physical form instantaneously, although there are elements of it that manifest quickly. The reverberation of it lands in physical form over days, weeks, years, centuries and millennia. Creation is set in motion now, to manifest in physical form in the future but to be enjoyed as the vibration of it ripples through conscious awareness, setting the foundation for what will manifest in form.

The way we touch into that Original Cause is through consciousness. What a remarkable thing, that human consciousness is made to be aware of the Pulse of Spirit. Consciousness includes our mental awareness, but that’s not the first component of consciousness that opens up to the Pulse of Spirit. We have a name for the part of our conscious awareness that opens up spiritually. But we associate the name for it with all kinds of things that come out of its misuse. And so, even to use the name gives a false picture of what it is. But I will use the name anyway, and it is emotion.

The emotional body is designed to be an instrument of perception for the Pulse of Spirit. Beyond that, it is an instrument of Attunement, enabling us to attune to that pulse within ourselves and then within all things. It is through the emotional body that the Pulse of Spirit moves into all the other dimensions of human experience. It moves into our spiritual body so that the human spirit is filled with that pulse. It enters our mental function from the emotional body. It moves into our physical body. That’s why Uranda said that when a person offers an attunement, they don’t first offer it with their hands. He said you offer an attunement with your heart. And why would that be? It is because the heart is an instrument of vibration. It tunes in spiritually, and then allows the pulse to move through, into the world.

When that happens, there is the possibility of reciprocity. A creative gift moves out with the Pulse of Spirit, and something returns, like the blood that surges through the arteries on the beat of the heart and then returns through the veins. That is what’s called for in our human experience. All through our spiritual commons, there is meant to be reciprocity, so that what pulses out returns. In that loop of reciprocity, there is health and vitality, and the human heart is instrumental to it all—not only in the outgoing vibration but also in opening to what’s coming back. It’s an instrument of perception and reception.

The heart is closely associated with the field of spiritual substance. We perceive spiritual substance through the heart. We feel it. In days gone by, I found that when I entered a worship service, as the opening hymns were played and I sang them, I began to cry. It was just a cracking open of the heart. I did my best to retain composure so I could keep singing and keep participating in the service.

In different ways, the same is true today. When I am in the midst of a strong spiritual current moving through a group, I feel a heart-opening to the Pulse of Spirit, and everything in me says, How beautiful! How beautiful is that pulse in all its forms! How beautiful is it within me, as it is within us all! The sweetness, the beauty, the loveliness—to tune in to that and to allow it to find expression through one’s own thoughts and feelings, through one’s own words and deeds! And in a way, it makes little difference if it’s that internal voice of spirit, or whether it’s that same pulse coming through someone else, or shared collectively, perhaps, through a body of people.

The secondary causes are all the feelings that come up about what has manifest, and all the reactions to what has manifest that we don’t like—that we resent or that we are afraid of. Instead of responding and opening to the Pulse of Spirit, we could react to the words and actions that have manifest through another.

Reading an article from this weekly series, which is named The Pulse of Spirit, is an opportunity to attune more and more deeply to Original Cause. The word original doesn’t relate to something from a long time ago. It is the place of origin here and now, where there is the fountain of life. More and more, as I come together with other people, I find us coming quickly to that fountain. Sometimes there are those secondary causes—those reactions that could take us off course and distract us. But instead, we come right to that source of things that we share and the generation that comes out of it. Whatever the manifest is, whatever is happening that could become secondary cause, something in us tells us to keep coming back to primary cause together, to experience that together, knowing that the future is born out of that Original Cause.

This week, I invite you to this experience.

Come to the fountain of life. Let it emerge up through you. Let it splash down upon you.

 Bring the fountain of life to all your encounters with other people. See if they will share it with you.

 Let your heart do what it truly wants to do. Let it be an instrument of perception of the Pulse of Spirit—within you, within other people, and within us all.

 Let peace come to you and to your world this week because you embrace Original Cause in all things.