Congratulations to all of you who conducted Primal Spirituality 4, and all who participated. I am happy we are doing these courses for a lot of reasons. I think it is good to be in a space every so often where you get to unpack what is happening for yourself, bring something creative to it, and engage in self-reflection. And certainly, we can do that by ourselves, but it is powerful to do it with other people in a safe container—a good container—with facilitators who know what they are doing and can provide guidance and hold the space. So I think that it is a wonderful thing to do, and I do believe we do it in a good way. I have noticed that there are some who come year after year. So, it is not a one-time deal.
So again, congratulations to all of you. Let us do more of this. Let us create spaces for ourselves and set aside times when something can unpack and then unfold creatively. And whatever has gotten knotted up in our own life experience can ease up and life can move. I am so glad we are doing that here. And I encourage anybody to attend the courses we hold here and in other places.
A longtime mentor of mine just wrote a response to the Pulse of Spirit. He probably did not know he was a mentor to mine because I think the last thing in the world he wanted was to be a mentor to others. That was what I intuited. And I have not heard from him for about 30 years.
His name is Hugh Malafrey. And around here, we have much for which to thank Hugh. He put together the Third Sacred School for Martin. He was instrumental in compiling all those volumes. He was a college professor. He wrote lyrics for several of the songs we sing here. And as a poet, he is truly amazing, bringing the holy into words. So, hats off to Hugh. I believe he is up there someplace in British Columbia.
We are here to share something. I thought of the time when I first came to Sunrise Ranch some years ago. I will not go too far down memory lane, but I have been here 26 years. When I first came, services were in a bit of a state, it seemed to me. Martin Cecil had been offering services here about half the year for many years until he passed on in 1988. And I think collectively we were looking to find our way.
I remember standing up in front of the room and there were great expectations about what I would say. I had a lot to live up to, given the history of what had happened here in services in a very creative and powerful way. I had sense enough not to put undue pressure on myself, not to try to live up to other people’s expectations or create some kind of tremendous performance in the talk I was going to give. I was content to be myself and be in the process with other people and allow something to occur through my own awareness, and in that, be in a process with other people who are having the same experience.
That had been my experience with Martin Cecil, actually, when I was here many times over the years. He was, in his own way, a very powerful presenter. But still, he was bringing something into focus in the collective consciousness that everyone was participating in. A number of us had this experience along the way of feeding him lines in our heads. And then he would actually say them. It was not that we were deliberately trying to make him say something. It was more just that there was an unfoldment in consciousness. We were participating in collective consciousness and the bubbling up of creative thought and its movement. I hope we are doing that today.
I want to pick up on the theme of fulfilling mission. There are many workshops, seminars, and training programs that focus on that. I do not know if it is quite as popular as it was at one point, but it was a big deal to have a corporate mission. And if you go into the local hospital, they probably have their mission statement on the wall. And then, for men, if you ever went to a New Warrior training, I think part of that training had guys come up with their mission statements. In Primal Spirituality 4, it can be a powerful process to come to terms with our personal mission.
So, in my view, it is a good thing to think about one’s own personal mission and perhaps write a statement of it. Allow it to come into focus in words. But beyond that, what is fulfilling mission? It is personal, but it is beyond something personal. At least it implies something beyond the personal. And it is profound when you begin to think about it. Fulfilling mission implies that there is something to be fulfilled and accomplished. I could use another word—manifested. There is something to appear in the living of life.
Fulfilling mission. It has the implication of taking something that is invisible—a potentiality that you could be in touch with and think about and have feelings about—and then letting it land in the living of life. Letting it come true. Letting it take form.
There is something about that that proceeds over time, yes? Anything of value that is going to be fulfilled and manifested does not happen just like that. And so, part of fulfilling mission is being present for the cycle in which it is fulfilled. I am here for this.
There is something about a mission that transpires over time, and there is something instantaneous. We really cannot live in the future. It is not a happy thing if we try to. But we can be here now, aware of invisible potential now. We can feel it now. We can express it now. We can share it now. And the magic of it all is that if that is really happening for you and for me and for us together, the future has a way of taking care of itself.
If that is what we do, then in our future, we will be doing that. We will be there allowing the invisible to become visible and be fulfilled. And in the magic of Creation and in the magic of life, it is not just a series of snapshots. Something unfolds. There is a lineage that has come out of the past and that moves into the future.
But our place in all that, for sure, is right here, receiving what is coming to us out of the past. If you think about it, everything you see has come to you out of the past. Receiving that, we allow what is happening to move into the future while being right here now. And we get to do that together! Everybody here at Sunrise Ranch, all of you wonderful people online. We get to be here together to fulfill this mission.
I have a friend who was talking about fulfilling mission, and he said he realized at one point that it can go differently for men and women. And this was, I suppose, an expression of his humility: he realized that, as a man, he had a way of thinking about and being with mission that his wife and other women he knew did not. And so, he called it a wission. There is a mission and there is a wission. And the wission, in his view, based on what he observed, was more personal, more focused on family and home, more being-oriented, perhaps, than accomplishment-oriented. And I thought of that as the participants spoke and shared their experience. There was something of the wission being expressed. Without those qualities, without the wission, there is no mission. Without the being elements—without being here right now and sensing what is valuable and wonderful in the invisible in the present moment—no accomplishment is worth very much. It is just the form of a thing.
So, if we are accomplishment-oriented people—in that sense—mission-driven, it is a good thing to remember that if we lose ourselves, if we lose home—our sense of being on the way to fulfilling our grand mission—nothing is being fulfilled that is of ultimate value. So, I want it all. I want the mission and the wission. We are here for it all.
This is primal spirituality, which we define in a number of ways. We say it is our first spirituality—what we were born with, what is intrinsic. And for humankind, it is what we were born with, what was planted in us, our first spirituality as humankind.
I would like to think about this with you and ask the question, how do you know what your primal spirituality is? There are many spiritualities taught in the world. There are many ideas that we probably all have and many things we encounter. When do you know that this is it? This is it. This is the pure stuff. This is the gold. This is true. How do you know? What are the signs of it?
Let us start with this. Our primal spirituality has a vibrational signature to it. There is a vibe. It is a vibe of nobility and purity, a vibe of underlying joy, a vibe that has to do with what is referred to in this term, fulfilling mission, meaning it has the vibe of something of the beautiful invisible reality being realized now—not just up there or in the future or back there in the past, but somehow available to be known and drunk in now—known in our hearts and minds and embodied in our actions. And in that way it can be fulfilled. It is not spirituality postponed—postponed to after you take the next course, complete the next training, read the next book, become more enlightened, or die.
Over the millennia, that last one has been a big deal for humankind. There have been all kinds of spiritual teachings built around and oriented toward the hereafter, however you want to name it.
It is a bit of a buzzkill, I would say. It ruins the vibe if it is all about what happens after you are dead. The vibe of our primal spirituality is this purity of touching what is eternal, knowing it and drinking it in and giving it expression now, and letting it be fulfilled now.
Over the ages, there has been a whole mix of teachings on spirituality that did not have that pure vibe. Some of them were very ancient. But just because it is old does not mean it is original or pure or true or right. God bless the ancient Egyptians. Consider what they got up to with their mummies and their Book of the Dead and all of that. God bless them. We probably owe a lot to them. You can guess that underneath it all, there was something true. And yet there was a great preoccupation with something other than their primal spirituality.
Primal spirituality is a now thing. I get suspicious when people start talking about a postponed spirituality. If you do all these things, then… That is a good way to manipulate people, because it usually ends up being: If you do all the things I tell you to do…
There is something to be known now. It turns out that all over the ancient world, at different times and in different places, there were beliefs about the hereafter and what you needed to do while you were alive to deserve to go to the good place. There were all kinds of teachings about the path after you died, all the terrors you would face along the way, and how to traverse that path.
It turns out this was widespread. It was not only the Egyptians who were up to that. There was a version of it in North America and in many other places around the world. Just because it is old does not mean it is pure and true. And yet, from ancient days, a pure teaching of primal spirituality has survived. Often, it is mixed in with things that got corrupted along the way. So how do you sort through it all? How do you find the gold?
I get back to the vibrational signature, the vibe. Our primal spirituality has a vibe to it. That vibe is the fulfillment of something now. You can feel something now. You can be with something now. You can share something now. You can express it, embody it. We can let it be fulfilled now in our life, individually and together.
Last week, I spoke of the emotional intelligence teaching that is right there in the King James Version of the Bible, if you are willing to wade through the Elizabethan English or find a good modern version. It is amazing that it survived.
How much teaching about a postponed spirituality—postponed fulfillment—is there in the Bible? How much teaching is there about a hereafter in which, if you are good, you get to go to heaven and, if you are not, you go down there? Not very much, even though there are parts of the Bible that got corrupted along the way.
The Jewish people did not have a belief in a hell down there. That tended to come from the Greeks. They did not teach that. When Jewish people spoke about hell, they were talking about a hell on earth. And when they were talking about heaven, they were talking about a heaven to be experienced now. Not that there is not a hereafter. There is a tomorrow. And if we are not here, maybe we are someplace. But the focus was not on that. Not in the teachings of the Hebrew Bible. Not in the New Testament.
What was the teaching? It was about fulfillment. It was all about fulfilling mission. How did Jesus say it in his teaching? Our Father, who art in heaven… The source of life, the source of all, the source of Being, hallowed be thy name—an acknowledgment of what is present within us, the Being that is within us, and of the vastness of Being that is of greater expanse, of greater scope than us, too. The Being that encompasses all of us collectively, our Father who art in the invisible realms present here with us now. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Something happens when you acknowledge the holiness, the sanctity, the nobility, and the wonder of Being that is invisible. You are acknowledged back, and you can feel the wonder, nobility, and holiness of your own Being. If you deny the presence of a Being that transcends yourself as a human, you tend to be denied the awareness of your own nobility, holiness, and wholeness as a Being. There is a reciprocal relationship. So, when the holiness of all Being is acknowledged by us as human beings, what is given back to us is our own holiness, our own wholesomeness.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.
That is fulfilling mission. There is the will of Creation. There is a will of Being that is present. It is present within us and we know it when we awaken to it. There is this urge of Creation that wants something to be fulfilled. There is a pattern of Creation that is unfolding through us when we touch into it and allow it to express itself. Thy kingdom come. The kingdom is the pattern of Creation.
The kingdom is also a realm. We do not talk too much about kingdoms in the world today, particularly here in America. We are not a kingdom. But we get the idea. A kingdom is a world, a sphere.
Thy kingdom—whatever pattern, whatever world is up there, a world that has not been spoiled by human culture, that perfect world—come here, manifest here. Let us experience that together. Let us allow it to come down. As Tuck and Patti say, let’s bring heaven down here.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth—in earth. That is the very essence of fulfilling mission, as those of you who just took the Primal Spirituality course must know. It is the relationship between the spiritual and the earthly. That is the very dynamic of what it means to fulfill mission. We are allowing what is in the invisible and the spiritual to come down here in our earth, in this earth, in the physical, in the world in which we live, and through all the levels of form. Thy will be done in earth.
What we spoke about last week is so relevant to this—to put it really simply, and to use our human bodies as a living diagram of how this works, this is about allowing power to move from head to toe and back. It is about letting the powers of the higher realms of what we experience and are in touch with—the higher chakras—move all the way down. And it is about letting the root energies of the human experience rise all the way up, back to the highest level.
That is fulfilling mission. It is to let it come all the way down through our whole energy system as a human being, so that the earth of our experience relates to heaven and is loyal to the highest spiritual range of our own human experience. But there is something in the middle of all that, isn’t there?
If we think of it in terms of the endocrine system and count seven major endocrine glands from the gonads up to the pineal, the thymus gland is right in the middle of it all, associated with our heart center. It is associated with our emotions—with the human heart.
So, energetically, if we are blocked here, how does what is up get down? And how does what is down rise up, energetically, if the heart is jammed up—blocked or impure? I do not mean impure in a holier-than-thou, moralistic way, but impure in the sense that it is filled with distress that is blocking the movement of energy, blocking our lives, blocking our primal spirituality, and blocking the fulfillment of our mission and our wission, so that we are not being what we are capable of being. We are not expressing, accomplishing, and fulfilling what we can fulfill if something is blocked here.
And so, to speak of the Bible, that is the wonder of it. It teaches not only Thy will be done—the fulfillment of mission on earth—but also an emotional intelligence that is mandatory if that mission is to be fulfilled.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. They shall relate to the invisible. Jesus instructed us to have our treasure in heaven because when our treasure is in heaven, when we value what is in the invisible, that is where our heart is also. Our heart is with that invisible reality that is the truest and most essential thing about ourselves.
So, we become vitally interested in what is happening in the human heart—our own and our collective heart. You cannot fulfill your mission otherwise, because it is all getting wrecked along the way. And even if you have big goals about what you want to accomplish, those goals are being spoiled if there is some kind of turmoil at the level of the heart. And this is not about a guilt trip, because it is fair to say that that is the current state of humanity that we are in touch with. None of us is exempt.
We are in touch with it, but what do you do about it? Do you let all the entanglements, all the confusion of the heart, and all the distress of the heart catch up with you and overtake you? Or do you find a way to allow the heart to open up to what is above, allow it to give itself to what is above, so that what is above can come down into it and through it and into the rest of the human experience, into our creativity?
If that happens, our creativity has juice. It has juice in the sense that it has creative power and can accomplish something in the world. But it also has juice for us. It is thrilling. It is exciting. It is fulfilling for us as we fulfill our mission.
The manifestation of fulfillment brings the pride of creatorship. Look at that! Around here, we have Keith Anderson on the job painting buildings that have not been painted for years. And painting is such a wonderful thing. Not all creative projects that we accomplish have such a clear and obvious effect. Derik Lane has been digging in that hole attempting to repair our irrigation lines. He might be asking what he has to show for it. But painting is not like that. If you paint a wall, you can stand back and say, Oh, look at that. It looks beautiful. It looks different. Diana’s Cottage! The Fourplex! Mountain View!
There is a joy and a pride that is natural in creation, in the fulfillment of our lives, because we are here to be creators.
I think that should have been mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. Certain unalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Perhaps they should have added the right to create. Perhaps that is what happiness really is.
We are born creators. It is our birthright to create and to fulfill our mission.