I want to acknowledge the anniversary of Emissaries of Divine Light. Uranda called what he was undertaking the Third Sacred School, and he spoke of it as “the spiritual expression plane approach.” It is an interesting turn of phrase. In using the word spiritual, he was not referring to the ultimate reality of Spirit; he was speaking of that dimension of us as human beings that has the ability to bring the spiritual into the human experience and into the human world — our spiritual nature. And the work he was undertaking, along with those who were with him, was at that level.
What we know is that what happens in our spiritual nature affects everything else. It is not limited to that dimension. What is happening in our spiritual nature affects how we think and feel, what we do and what we say. I do not know how fully those who have been associated with this program have appreciated the significance of what was being said. That level of human experience has largely been taken over and occupied by worldly priesthoods and religious institutions — occupied by them and governed by them. You have people who follow all of that, with all the dogma and disciplines that come with it. And increasingly in our day you have people who say, “Enough of that noise, I am out of here — and by the way, I am going to reject any kind of spiritual approach, because it is obviously corrupt; it has been taken over by institutions and it has no life.” They do not realize that, in the process, the spiritual itself is being thrown out.
The spiritual nature of humankind is not really owned by any institution or by anything else of human culture. It is owned by the Divine, and ultimately by us, in the name of the Divine.
So this ministry is about a takeover. We are not interested in overthrowing the Roman Catholic Church or any other religious institution. This is not a takeover in that sense, but a takeover of the space, throwing out all the old idols, all the old dogma, for or against. None of that is relevant. What is relevant is this tremendous capacity for spiritual expression that we have, and that we are now owning. If we do not have the courage to confront all the religious ideas, the doctrines and dogma, all the rites and rituals and disciplines of worldly spirituality — in the name of the reality of Spirit — then that area lies dormant in human experience. And then we settle for other things. Are Emissaries of Divine Light an elevated social club? An alumni association? That is not what Uranda created — and I dare say that none of us came for that. We came for something vital: the vitality of our own spirit, the vitality of what we touched in people for whom Spirit was real — people in whom there was, in fact, spiritual expression.
Last week especially, and again this morning, we are going into depth on some of the factors involved in spiritual expression. It is not all monotone — “spiritual expression,” as though I flipped a switch and now it is on. There are all kinds of colors to the expression of Spirit. There is the pattern of Creation, the essence of it, the shape and the color and the rhythm of it. And then there is the power of Creation, and its ultimate value and ultimate reason, which is love — the creative power that moves through the patterns of truth.
Last week I was saying that truth is like a flower. In the beauty of the flower, it attracts creative powers; it attracts the sun; it welcomes the rain. That is how beauty is. When we know the beautiful, we are calling in creative powers, which all ultimately originate and center in love. And that creates life — the power of life, the pattern of life. We are alive, and it is beautiful, and we know it. All of these things are happening when our spiritual expression is open and alive.
I think of another term: spiritual fluency. Speaking about expression, fluency is a valid word to use. So how is our spiritual fluency — our ability to express whatever color of spirit, whatever dynamic of spirit, is called for in the moment? What is called for from us? And do we have the emotional fluency and the spiritual fluency to give it expression? Or are we somehow embedded in some facet of human culture, some facet of human personality constellated as what we think of as ourselves — embedded in a personality or culture that tells us this is who we are, this is how we express, this is how we come off, this is the impression we want to give? And even though the moment calls for something else, we are chained to culture, to that personality. No fluency.
I have an unusual topic for a Sunday morning: gender fluidity. We are not going to get into all the political and social ramifications of those words as they are known today — that is not for me to get into, and not for us here this Sunday morning. I will make only one comment about it: a good place to start is being thankful for what you have. Whatever we have, however we think of it, being thankful for what we have allows us to use it with optimal pleasure and creativity. But I really want to speak of something else.
We can be embedded in our culture; we can be embedded in our gender, as we think of it on a cultural basis — so that even though the circumstance or the person is calling out for the love of Mother God, we cannot go there, because we do not have the fluency, spiritually, to go there. We do not have the fluency to open our arms and let them be the arms of Mother God, holding that person, or that group of people, in the arms of the great Mother. And if a circumstance calls for the power of the Father — the nobility of the Father, the assurance of the Father, the confidence of the Father — but we are stuck in some phase of personality, some concept of our own gender identity, and we cannot go there, that is sad. And the same is true for us together. Are we spiritually fluent? Can we go where we need to go? Can we bring the dignity and the power and the nobility of the Father, and the loving arms and the patterns of truth of the Mother? Can we go where we need to go spiritually, and allow for a spiritual expression that is called for in this day?
In the last book of the Bible, the Revelation of the Apostle John, there are all kinds of fantastic imagery — dragons and beasts and angels and more. In chapter 18 he speaks of Babylon as the fallen state, and of all the demons of Babylon. He was colorful in his language, and I will not share it all here. But in the middle of all that, he says something so powerful and memorable: Come out of her, my people. Come out of your cultural identity. Come out of your personality identity. Come out of her. It is portrayed as coming from a great voice out of heaven: Come out of her, my people.
We are not meant to live in all of that — in a humanly defined state of consciousness, or culture, or world — but to come out of it into a place of higher awareness and expression: an appreciation for beauty, which is truth; speaking out of truth, speaking out of love, spiritually fluent, knowing an abundance of life.
Is this spiritual bypassing? Come out of her, my people — are we just going to take off to some heavenly realm? No — quite the opposite. Come out of her, my people, so that you can then go back into her, and express into her authentically, as who you are, with the authenticity of spirit that is unaltered by the cultural state into which you are speaking. Rightly, our expression does not originate there. It is not changed by that. It speaks into it and then embodies itself through personality and culture. Come out of her, my people, so that you can go into her as me. That is what Spirit is telling us.