At Sunrise Ranch, we have just completed the Becoming a Sun Workshop, a four-day program based on my book Becoming a Sun: Emotional and Spiritual Intelligence for a Happy, Fulfilling Life. For the first time, I didn’t lead the workshop. It was led by Keahi Ewa and Oren Yakovee. From all reports, they did an amazing job, and it was a transformational learning experience for those who attended.

Step by step, we are building a remarkable academy, teaching enlightened spirituality. So far, the world hardly knows that we are doing this. And that is often how it goes. When something truly new is introduced to the world, it can be outside the mindset of the culture of the day. This is why the work of some great artists and writers goes undiscovered until after they are gone—people like Vincent van Gogh, Emily Dickinson, and Franz Kafka. For us, something profound is happening in secret—not because we are keeping it secret, but because the world can’t see it. I am content to continue to build what we are building, with faith that those with eyes to see will find it.

It might seem as if what is offered by Emissaries of Divine Light is a body of knowledge. After all, we publish books on subjects to which we have devoted ourselves. We give speeches, publish articles, and offer courses. It is as if there is an established body of knowledge that we are teaching from. But the truth is that what we are doing is far more than that.

Many years ago now, I lived in New York City. I was reverse commuting at the time, which meant that while almost everyone else was driving into the City to go to work, I was driving out of it to an office in Connecticut.

I had gotten hold of the Basic Tape Series from Sunrise Ranch, which had recordings of Uranda and Martin Cecil on cassettes. Listening to them on my commute became a daily occurrence. I remember distinctly driving on the Henry Hudson Parkway on the west side of Manhattan one morning when I had a life-changing realization about what I was listening to.

I had taken a one-month program with Martin Cecil and Bill Bahan after high school and a three-month program with Martin after college. But this was years later, after some life experience. I had begun to lead services at the New York Emissary Center on Long Island with Patricia Gursu and others.

My startling realization driving to work was not only that Uranda and Martin weren’t reading from a script, they also were not simply conveying a body of knowledge. They were supremely present, standing in front of whatever body of people they were addressing, allowing a profound flow of meaning to move through them spontaneously. It was born in that moment through what they were saying. That was so different from how I’d thought of it. I then saw it as an act of ultimate courage. And I could hardly believe the courageousness of both these men, knowing the radical nature of what they were saying, which was in stark contrast to the city I was driving through. I still aspire to know that same courage for myself.

The flow of meaning—this is what we are engaged in. It might look like we are teaching a philosophy, but it is far more than that. It might look like we are speechifying. But what is happening transcends the mere giving of a speech.

There is a term that has become popular, sometimes claimed by a person relative to a particular field—thought leader. Often, it means something closer to knowledge leader. The person has accumulated more knowledge in a particular area than anyone else.

But the term thought leader has another definition. It can refer to someone who is adept at allowing a flow of meaning to flow through their conscious awareness. And profound thought leadership requires something else—feeling leadership. Because the deeper meaning of things does not flow only through the mind. It needs the heart for the full bandwidth of it to enter human awareness.

Then there is the word leader. It implies that the person is not only thinking for themselves. They are leading a flow of meaning in which others are participating. The world needs true thought leaders.

In his book Will to Meaning, Viktor Frankl asserts that the deepest human motivation is the desire to find meaning and purpose in life and that when meaning is blocked or frustrated, it leads to what he calls an “existential vacuum” — a sense of emptiness or aimlessness.

Viktor Frankl named creativity, service to others, and Love as central components of the human experience of meaning. Love is an experience between people, but it is not limited to that. Ultimately, it is an ineffable quality that is impossible to define, and yet in some way, we all know what it is.

Universal Love. Can you imagine meaning in life without it? Life experience just turns to dust without the meaning that’s given to it by Love. There is Love itself. And then there is the pattern of expression of Love that allows it to take shape in a way that is beautiful and true to its own nature. That’s important because we know that it’s possible for people to do things that are motivated out of Love, but which become horribly corrupted as that motivation is acted upon, all because the pattern for Love’s expression was distorted. Truth is the pattern by which Love’s expression accurately reveals its inner nature.

For the people who subscribe to this Pulse of Spirit and who associate together in this spiritual community in whatever way, How is our thought leadership? How is the flow of meaning going for us?

I happen to believe that philosophy is important. I love literature, and I’ve written three books myself. I appreciate a good speech, and I admire people who are eloquent and inspirational. But there is something far more significant to me—the flow of meaning we share. My heart longs to be in dialogue with people who share that flow. Yes, there has to be thought leadership to activate a flow of meaning, and I’m up for playing my part in that. But the goal is a mutual experience.

In her brilliant book Time to Think, Nancy Kline names ten components of a Thinking Environment. One of them is equality. In my experience, the equality that creates a fertile thinking environment is not sameness. One of the most creative thinking environments I’ve been in looked highly unequal—one person talked while everyone else listened. But what a casual observer wouldn’t have realized was that all the listeners were thinking brilliant, inspired thoughts while that one person spoke. At unseen levels of human experience and interaction, they were each feeding the thinking environment, creating a profound level of engagement.

This is mutuality. It is reciprocity—a back-and-forth engagement in the flow of meaning, where one person activates the field and another receives and responds, leading to them bringing the activating element for what comes next in the engagement themselves. The external pattern of communication can facilitate this. But the reality of it transcends the external pattern. The essence of it transpires at unseen levels of the human experience.

The flow of meaning changes dramatically for people when they no longer conceive of their interactions together as dredging up relevant pieces of a body of knowledge buried in their memory banks, but as the activation of the conscious and subconscious elements of the mind by the infinite source of wisdom, and the activation of the human heart by Love. And then it is sharing that flow with each other. This is how we move beyond speechifying and philosophizing to giving voice to the unfolding pattern of Creation, which is Love in all its myriad forms.

Books, speeches, and courses can assist in that process. They provide a guide to the patterns of truth that allow Love to express in a way that is true to itself. And they can assist a person or a group of people, to enter the flow of meaning. Ultimately, it is the participation in that flow that brings to people what has supreme value.