When we tune in to the source vibration of our Being, we touch power, Presence, and wisdom.

The power we find is the power of Love.

The Presence is Divine Presence.

The wisdom we touch is the pattern of Creation that makes us wise. When we open up to it, it guides and inspires us.

In his 1936 book Seven Steps to the Temple of Light, Uranda names Divine Presence as the Wonderful One Within. The fourth step is Assurance. It includes these words: 

When separateness ceases and oneness is Realized, Assurance is certain, for the Blessed One knows that all things are, and in full response to the Wonderful One within, the outer man acts with the consciousness of Divine Being. Here is that which allows perfect Expression according to the Perfect Plan, for in it is that which is called Faith. Absolute Assurance is ever known by the Blessed One who abides in the Presence of the Wonderful One, but it cannot be known by such as have not Realized the Presence. 

Assurance is halfway through the Seven Steps that lead to Love in full expression through a person. At this pivotal point, the lightning rises up from us and touches the Presence of the Wonderful One within us. That assurance ultimately leads to the lightning coming down. It leads to the radiation of Love into the world.

What is it to touch the Presence within us? It is incredibly personal. If we are all having that experience, we can share it. But still, when we experience it, it is unique to us. It is internal to us. It’s our connection.

Connection is a feeling-neutral word. It might even evoke the image of something mechanical, like a plumbing connection. But this is a love connection.

Biblically, this connection is stated as a commandment: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all.

The phrasing and tone are curious. We are being commanded to love. From a rational perspective, we can see the imperative for human beings to love the source vibration within themselves. But we don’t love because someone tells us we have to. We love simply because we love.

Perhaps something got lost in translation biblically. Because the love connection to the Wonderful One Within is, first of all, something of the heart. We connect through the heart.

What are we connecting to?

Divine Presence pervades the universe. It is vast, with unimaginable power and presence. This is God Almighty. How do we connect with that vastness? If it’s just vast, we’re left to contemplate that vastness with awe and wonder, but not necessarily feeling connected to it. Much of what happens for people in their religious and spiritual pursuits is like that.

We know a love connection to the Wonderful One Within when we know not only the vastness of Divine Presence but also the nearness of it. That was one of the greatest gifts that Jesus brought to the world. Moving away from whatever dogma there is about Jesus, I invite you to consider this: Jesus had a powerfully intimate relationship with Divine Presence. It was passionate and real, full of profound love and devotion.

The word he used to address Divine Presence was Abba. In Hebrew and Aramaic, the word means “Father.” How intimate! How loving!

When you read his prayers, particularly the Prayer of Intercession, you might feel a deep exchange as it might be between family members or close friends. He was speaking to a reality close to him that he was intimate with. And then, in what he shared with people, there was the clear sense that he brought Divine Presence close to them. He invited people to share the spiritual intimacy he knew.

Whatever you might want to think about Christianity today, for better or worse, there is still present within it the feeling that Jesus is there for you—that you can call upon him. He is not just wandering about the universe, taking care of important things. He is there for you.

The words I quoted from the Seven Steps say to me that assurance comes from this intimacy with Divine Presence that is not only vast and powerful but close to us. We can touch it. We can know a love connection.

So, in the face of whatever is happening in your life, however challenging, however awful, you know assurance in that circumstance, because when you turn away from it—when you are not thinking about it or the results of what is to come of your actions—you are not thinking worried thoughts. As Jesus put it, you’ve gone into your closet, that private space of your personal love connection with that spiritual presence. You’ve turned to it, opened to it, and now you’re fully engaged with it.

You are in your closet. Never mind everything else in those moments. You are engaged in your love connection with the Presence that is near to you, almost as if it were assigned to you as your guardian angel.

When that happens, and when you discover that your life is about loving that, serving that, and sharing what comes from this love connection—passing it on, giving to the world—you are living out of the assurance that comes from spiritual intimacy.

The love response that naturally comes forth from us in love in that connection is the lightning rising to the heavens from within us. The story of Jesus contains the story of his lightning rising to his Father.

Just as with physical lightning, the lightning comes up, and then the lightning comes down—that’s the love radiating through us. Once lightning has truly gone up, there is a pathway for it to come back down into and through us powerfully, and into the world in which we live.

The last chapter of the Seven Steps is Love. It includes this statement: 

Love bargains not because Love has need of nothing. 

I’ve done a fair amount of bargaining in my life. I’ve bargained in marketplaces and in business. And I’ve negotiated human relationships. I imagine you have too.

So, we bargain, but love doesn’t. What could that mean?

Both are true—we are navigating our social contact with each other. We are navigating the world, sometimes bargaining and reciprocating with each other. But there has to be something else happening through us that is at a higher level of our experience—that is about letting the lightning come down. And if your whole life is about bargaining and there’s no room for anything else, there’s no room for the lightning.

Love bargains not because Love has need of nothing.

If you are just bargaining with other people, trying to work it out, at what point do you say to yourself, I’m letting the lightning come, no matter what. This is not negotiable. Some things are negotiable, like who is doing the dishes tonight. But the lightning isn’t. Love is not negotiable. 

There has to be that attitude if the lightning is to penetrate our human world.

The lightning of Love is meant to ground in our world. And, most importantly, the lightning coming through us is meant to ground in the field of consciousness we inhabit, starting with our own.

The lightning is supposed to come down and strike our own heart and mind, enlighten it, and put fire in our hearts. And when it does, we are transformed. Or, to use the Christian term, we are born again. The substance of consciousness in us is transmuted.

For this to happen, the lightning has to fully penetrate consciousness. Bargaining doesn’t help this process. Worrying about the results of this process stops it from happening. 

If the lightning is grounded in us, we can include another person in the circuit. It might even spark and inspire their love connection so that the lightning comes down in them. They could become aware of this intimate presence inside themselves that they open to. They could discover the power and wisdom it brings.

Power, Presence, and wisdom are in the voltage that comes down into a person when there is lightning going up from them, when there is that love connection. Our lightning could assist them to experience that for themselves. Then we have something to do collectively to bring the lightning to our collective field and let it emanate beyond that, to light up a larger field of consciousness.

This is the point in this article when you, the reader, get to decide if this is real or just a load of baloney! I want to assert to you that this is what’s happening. And then I could add, it’s either what is happening or what is not happening. For many people, it’s not happening. But it’s still the game we are all made to play. They are just not in the game.

We are all made as lightning rods. We are all made so that the voltage that erupts from our flesh ascends to connect with the power of Divine Presence of the Divine. And we are all made to let the spiritual lightning penetrate our soul.

Let’s be the lightning!