After Karen Pritchard and I landed at the Cape Town International Airport last week and drove to our hotel, we had the overwhelming feeling that we had come home. We were last here in 2019, as travel was difficult in the intervening years. It was so good to be back in this familiar landscape, where Table Mountain towers over the city. Most of all, it is good to be back with dear friends.
Cape Town is a home for all who come here. And because we are here, you are here; just as because you are where you are, we are there. We are with each other. So, I reach out to everyone reading this Pulse of Spirit on behalf of us all. Big Love to us all.
Since arriving here, we have thus far held an Interfaith Celebration Day, an Energy Medicine Conference, an Attunement Card workshop, and Attunement Services. It has been an international time, a multicultural time, a multiracial time, and an interfaith time.
People of different backgrounds have woven together. But you can take separate things and weave them as much as you want, and you will not have oneness, and you will not have harmony. You will not have peace unless something else transcends the mixing of separate things, as the name interfaith implies, so that there becomes an experience of one thing, with one reality known by all and a knowing of ourselves as part of that one reality.
We begin to understand that, as humanity, there is one faith. We either have that faith, or we do not. Yes, there are multiple paths in our individual lives and in our communities. But we share one faith as humanity, to whatever degree. And we either have that faith, or we have lost it somehow.
This time in Cape Town has been an experience of profound faith together. I find a particular joy in being with people who are radically different from me, with whom I know oneness. Do you find that? It is as if we are saying, Aha! We tricked you, world! We figured it out. We are one people, whatever our backgrounds may be. What a joy!
Where I live, at Sunrise Ranch in Loveland, Colorado, there is a heavy clay content in the soil. When people originally came to Sunrise Ranch in 1945, they spread truckload after truckload of manure on the fields to break up that clay and the hardpan that can form in Colorado.
You can have long periods without rain in Colorado, and the soil can become parched. And if there is hardpan, when it does rain, it runs off instead of soaking in. In the summer sun, it won’t be long before it is dry again.
And so it is with the human heart. If hardpan has formed over the emotional body, it can rain, but we do not get wet.
We are here to bring the rain and assist people to let it soak in. That is what happened for us over these last few days. The rain came, and it felt great.
At the end of our Energy Medicine Conference time, we shared in Healing Chant. I think of the configuration that we were in as a flower. Four energy medicine practitioners sat in the center, surrounded by a ring of people seated around them. And then the outer ring stood around them. The point was to bring blessing to the four sitting in the center through our voices, the vibrational medicine from our hands, and with our eyes.
In the last rounds of this, Amienabie Dastagir Harnekar and her friends sat in the center. These are Muslim women who offer Aafiyah Healing to their community. Here is a description of Aafiyah Healing:
About Us
Aafiyah Healing is an alternative healing modality that helps to identify the underlying emotional root problems of ailments. The process involves effectively combining various healing techniques and therapies to promote ‘deep healing’ and emotional releases, ultimately leading to holistic well-being.
One of the goals of the conference was to support the healers. And it happened in this Healing Chant session. The rain came, and there was no hardpan. Amienabie and her friends drank it in. As the blessing soaked into us all, it was apparent how thirsty the human soul is to let the rain in.
When the hardpan breaks up and the rain comes down, it is as if a dam has burst. It is profound and life-changing. We are meant to live like that. We are meant to live in a way that allows the rain to come in and flow through.
When the dam first bursts, it is dramatic. Sometimes, people don’t know what to do with that drama. They want to repeat the experience over and over again. But once the dam breaks, what comes next is to let the water flow through in the living of life.
We are in a world where people get used to the hardpan. They walk around without letting the rain penetrate, so there is an experience of dryness and a lack of fulfillment. And, of course, there would be—we are made to let the rain in, not walk around being parched.
So, having that experience of letting the flow in can be emotionally profound and ecstatic. But we are here for something more than that emotional breakthrough, though without that emotional breakthrough, we remain a desert. We are here for the flow-through. And when we are there for the flow-through, the rain is present and available in the world in which we live. We bring the rain.
I take the attitude that it is raining because I am here. I bring the rain. And if someone is open to it, I say, Feel the rain.
We can bring rain to one another. But, ultimately, rain comes from inside us all.
Our Interfaith Celebration Conference was an experiment. Can we be together with others who walk a profound path of faith without compromising our own journey? Can we appreciate another person’s faith and the way it manifests in their life? Can we share our own faith without attempting to proselytize or convert?
I assume you are on your path because that is your chosen path. You have decided that that path is best for you. You probably think it is the best path in the world, and I respect that—and I am curious about what you experience on that path. I suspect that your faith is leading you to the same place my path is leading me—that at the heart of your faith is nothing different from what is at the heart of mine. But let us see. I am curious to move past the forms that seem foreign, to know something deeply familiar.
The outer form of religion and spirituality can divide. It can keep us separate. And yet, right within the spiritual paths around the world is a teaching that says that the practices of the faith are pointing to something that is a knowing, that is an experience, that is a reality. Confucius said it something like this: The wise man points to the moon, and the fool looks at the finger. This is perhaps what Paul spoke of in Corinthians when he said that the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.
In Islam, there is a word that is probably familiar to us all: ayah. Many years ago, I heard from an Imam that the word ayah referred to a window. It is sometimes spoken of as a sign, but to him it was a window of heaven.
We are familiar with the word from the title Ayatollah. The Ayatollah is supposed to be a window to Allah, though it may not always be exactly like that.
The verses of the Koran are spoken of as ayah. But I wonder if it might be easy to forget that those verses are supposed to be windows—not something that has a meaning all by themselves but which are meaningful because they open up an experience of a larger reality. The Imam said that all the forms of life are like that. Another person can be a window of heaven. The forms of nature can be like that for us.
The prophet Malachi made this promise. He said:
I will…open you the windows of heaven….
Martin Cecil taught that there were two ways to read that: that God is going to open up the windows of heaven for us, whatever those windows might be—I will open for you the windows of heaven, or you could read it as saying that you are the window of heaven. I will open you, the windows of heaven.
We are meant to be that. And when the windows of heaven are open, the rain comes. If the soil is fertile and loosened, the rain can soak in. It can soak deep down into the human soul. That is how we are meant to live. That depicts a fulfilled life, where the rain is not just hovering. We have that in Colorado. It’s called virga. The rain begins to fall, and you can see it across the prairie. But the atmosphere in Colorado is so dry that it can evaporate before it reaches the ground.
That is not how we are meant to live. We are made to allow the rain to penetrate us, and we are meant to bring it so that it penetrates the field we live in. We are made to bring the rain in such a way that it penetrates the thirsty soul of another human being. We are made to be able to give a glass of water to another human being.
Water is the symbol of truth. The truth we bring is designed to fill the field of consciousness and energy, and it does when we bring the rain. Everything changes when that happens. Things grow. And this is the kind of rain that carries the pattern of Creation in it. Just as the verses of the Koran bring the truth of Allah, this rain brings the truth of the Creator and the pattern of Creation. This rain brings the power of Love.
Let it rain. Loosen any hardpan that keeps the rain from soaking your heart and soul. And help others to do the same. Let the rain flow through you into your world.