It seems clear from recent events that the tectonic plates of the geopolitical world are shifting dramatically. For some, this brings disillusionment and a loss of hope. And if a person has hope in things that have no real, long-term promise, it can be healthy for them to be disillusioned. If something really is hopeless, it is better to find out sooner rather than later.
In the Pulse of Spirit last week, I wrote that a conservative view that attempts to return to the past is ultimately destined to fail, simply because that is not the way time works. It can’t go backwards.
I also commented that a form of progressivism that attempts to live in an imaginary future is likewise destined to fail. True hope is in living fully in the now. When we do, the elements of lineage from out of the past that support life in the present come rushing forward to greet us in the now. Our destiny is drawn to us out of the future and begins to manifest now.
Psychologist C. R. Snyder was one of the foremost authorities on the dynamics of hope in human experience. He named three elements that create hope:
- Goals
- Agency
- Pathways
Here is how I see the significance of these elements. Goals include a sense of purpose and a vision of possibility. Agency is a sense that one is empowered to fulfill those goals. But goals and agency are not enough to bring hope. A person has to begin to see a pathway for their goals to be fulfilled.
The Creation story in Genesis is a story of the ultimate agency. On the Sixth Day of Creation, the Elohim created mankind in its own image and likeness. Then mankind was given a commission, described this way in the English translation of the Hebrew as it is set forth in the King James Version of the Bible. The word “God” in this verse is a translation of the Hebrew name for God, “Elohim.”
I encourage you to, as much as possible, see through the problems that inevitably arise when reading any translated material, especially when the original comes from out of the distant past. Doing so will help you to discern the original meaning of these words.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
…Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
Genesis 1:27,28
Talk about agency! This is the ultimate agency. If we believe what the story is telling us, we as human beings are made by the Divine according to a template of the Divine. And our purpose is to steward Creation on Earth. Critics of the Bible claim that an interpretation of this biblical instruction has had humanity dominating nature in destructive ways. And there is a measure of truth to that. But that doesn’t take away from the astonishing truth behind these words from Genesis.
Consider this possibility—that being made in the image and likeness of the Elohim doesn’t just mean that we look like them. The deeper meaning is that humankind is made in a way that allows the spiritual powers held by the Creator to operate through us as human beings on earth. This is the basis for the fruitfulness, replenishment, subduing, and dominion referenced.
This is our goal—the thriving of the world in which we live. I don’t think we could have gotten a more glorious commission. We were made with the ability to bring the spiritual into the physical—to bring spiritual powers through our human form into this world in which we live. And you could ask, What happened? Because that’s not the common experience. It’s not the collective experience for us as humanity.
I don’t know how it was for you in the culture where you grew up. But for me, there was almost no sex education. I think America has gotten better about that. I’m not complaining. I’m just saying… Can you imagine? A person is made as a sexual being with all the equipment at every level—physically, mentally, and emotionally. And then, as a young person, nobody tells them anything about it. They feel things in their body. They hear random things from their friends. But they don’t know how to use the equipment. There is no owner’s manual. It becomes a grand experiment that can be enjoyable, but which can also go terribly wrong. In the process, there is no guarantee that the person will ever fulfill a potential that is intrinsic to how they are made.
But this article is not about sex education. It is about the latent creative powers within us all that no one tells us about. We feel all the things that someone who has those powers, but doesn’t know how to use them, would understandably feel. It would have to feel strange and confusing to have godlike powers but not know you do or know what to do with them. And then—with all that going on—a person encounters a world of people who are often not acting that godlike. No wonder there is internal turmoil, and eventually a sense of hopelessness that can infiltrate the human experience. Where is the manual that tells us how to use the powers of Creation that are within?
If you believe the story in Genesis, the Creator imbued humankind with heavenly power—the breath of life. But apparently, something happened. Christianity makes a big deal out of what happened and interprets it in certain ways. Christian beliefs tend to center on a spirit of shame, with interpretations that miss the plain meaning of the biblical text. There was no apple in the story of Adam and Eve. There was no sex. There was no mention of original sin, the concept of which wasn’t introduced to the world by Judaism or Christianity until St. Augustine wrote about it in the 5th century A.D.
If you dismiss the symbolic meaning of the Creation story and consider it as a literal description of how the world—including humankind—was made, it doesn’t make much sense. How can something transpire in a day when the earth is without form and void? There was no day. And the picture of God fashioning a human being out of dust and then breathing life into his nostrils, as if giving some kind of artificial resuscitation, seems more like a matter of myth than science. But if you read the story as a symbolic description of how cosmic powers of Creation formed Planet Earth and human beings, isn’t that literally what happened from a scientific standpoint? Whether you believe in the Big Bang, or some other theory of the process, didn’t energies of the universe work to create a world when there wasn’t one? More than that, what else are the forces that operate through the entirety of the human experience other than energies from out of the cosmic whole? And is there not the urge in us as human beings to tend and keep the world in which we live?
Considering these things, what are we, as humankind, experiencing? The cosmic forces that made us built into the human form the ability to be an expression of those forces in the world. But that potential is largely dormant.
With little idea that we have been given the agency we have been given, and without an awareness of the purpose for which it was given, the odds of an individual fulfilling their purpose are low. And the same is true for humankind as a whole.
While humankind frets over its apparent problems, this picture of agency and the purpose for it brings hope. One of the subtexts of the Creation story is that our existential circumstances are far better than we ever imagined. We have to awaken to the reality of this to find hope. Perhaps the first step is to entertain the possibility that what is outlined in the story of Creation is true—that the way we are made is based on the template of a higher reality of Being. We can then begin to explore the use of these human capacities to bring spiritual creativity and power to this level of Creation.
Like many thousands of people, I’ve had the opportunity to study the works of the founder of Sunrise Ranch and Emissaries of Divine Light. His name was Lloyd Arthur Meeker, and he wrote using the pen name Uranda. From 1932 to 1954, he taught how to awaken the latent potential within the individual and within the body of humanity. Uranda published books, taught courses, and gave talks throughout the U.S. and Canada. He taught people brilliantly—and with exquisite detail—to find the pathways that manifest the highest goals and the spiritual agency I have outlined here. This is the third element of hope that C. R. Snyder named: a pathway. You can have a goal, and you can feel empowered to fulfill that goal. But if you see no pathway to accomplish it, hope withers on the vine. Uranda showed the pathway—the how.
He addressed the key questions a person has to answer to activate the latent powers of Creation within themselves. How do you wake up your own capacities and utilize them to fulfill the true goal? What are the mental attitudes involved? What are the factors of your own feeling realm that must be transmuted?
Whatever the powers of Creation that the Elohim have in heaven, or that are at work somewhere else in the cosmos, we are made to have those powers right here and now, on earth. Those powers are intrinsic to how we are made, and so they are largely latent within us. We just have to activate them in ourselves. And when one person activates those powers, they are bringing them to others. They are assisting others to awaken to them in themselves.
Religion so often confuses the matter. It can get caught up in doctrine and dogma, attempting to shame people into living the moralistic life that it prescribes. And who’s against morals? But that dogmatic way of thinking misses the larger point, which is the activation of the spiritual powers within people.
I had the pleasure of watching a TV program last night that I thoroughly enjoyed. It was a documentary on the 50-year career of the U.S. folk music trio, Peter, Paul, and Mary. They’ve been a part of my life since I listened to their records as a boy. I played their music as a teenager. With half a million people, I sang with them when they performed on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Later, Peter came to Sunrise Ranch twice to perform at the Arise Festival, where I had the great pleasure of meeting him in person.
Watching the documentary of them singing through the years, I was reminded of their remarkable public influence as a group. The voices were distinctive and rich. Together, their harmonies always seemed to blend perfectly. They had a deep heart connection with each other, and they invited the listener to join the bubble of powerful love energy they created. And there was a compelling message to their music. The result was that they brought a spiritual activation and influence to the world.
You might think that I’m overstepping the mark here. But the emotional connection they shared and the activating spirit they brought was transforming. In some measure, they took spiritual action in the world.
There are other performers who have done that to a greater or lesser degree, often without fully realizing the significance of what they were doing. I think of the Beatles. They brought new values and new sensibilities to the world. They awakened people to a deeper feeling of attunement with the creative powers in their soul. And the world went wild.
Cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead said this about the process of transformation:
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
There is something for us, as human beings, to do in the awakening process. Mostly, we have to open to the cosmic powers within us so that they can do their work. So while there is something for us to do, the heavy lifting is actually done by the powers of Creation that are latent within us. When they are awakened, they transmute the experience of the individual. And they awaken the world.
A founding leader of the chiropractic profession, B. J. Palmer, spoke of it this way:
The power that made the body heals the body. It happens no other way.
The hope for humankind is known when we open to the breath of life that made us and let it work through us. This is what awakens the latent spiritual power within all humankind.
Let us awaken to the highest goal, accept the agency we have been given, and see the pathway in front of us to bring fulfillment to the world.
Let us bring hope to humanity.