Reflecting on it, I have had the honor and privilege of having been taught the secret of life by people who knew it. And thinking about this morning, and what I might share here, I realize I could offer a very simple formula. But I am not sure how much that would help. I do think we could be on a journey together in which all of us could come to know, at a deeper level, the secret of life for ourselves and then together. So that is what I am up to: taking us on that journey.
I want to start with this. The secret of life is beauty. It is the beauty of all things, the beauty of life itself, the beauty of Being, the beauty of Creation, the beauty of other people, the beauty that we have a chance to know and to express ourselves.
Beauty is the pattern of life. It is the shape of it, the color of it, and the rhythm of it. Where there is no appreciation for beauty, where that fades from a person’s experience, everything goes so wrong. And where there is an appreciation of beauty, something happens.
Beauty is not just something to be appreciated from afar; it is something to be known and understood. The rhythms of life are to be understood. And if we understand them and know them, we are moving with them. If we appreciate the rhythm of life, we are with that rhythm, and with the unfolding process that brings life. We also know there are things in the process of living that do not engender a fuller experience of life—that end up as some kind of erratic rhythm that depletes life.
Beauty is something of form. If something is beautiful, the form embodies the beautiful. Within that form, there is an essence that is expressing itself. So yes, it is the form that is beautiful—but not the form all by itself. It is the inner pattern and essence of the form that makes a person beautiful. And you could have a plastic flower that looks more or less the same as a real one, but is not the same, because the inner essence is not there.
The same is true of us as human beings. What is beautiful about a human being can be the outer form. That is part of it. But there is something expressing through that outer form. There is an essence. There is a pattern. There is the nature of a person. And when that is showing itself through the outer form, the person is beautiful. Whatever the worldly judgment of that person might be, when their inner beauty is expressing itself, it is gorgeous. And that is how it is for all of us.
So why is beauty the secret of life? It is because when there is love for beauty, expression of beauty, embodiment of beauty, something else happens. That flower is beautiful of itself, but it is also calling something in. It is calling in the sunlight. That plant is calling in the sunlight. That is what beauty does. Where there is beauty, there is an invitation to the cosmic powers of Creation to enter the form that is beautiful. Beauty attracts creative power. And those powers bring life.
We have a Thursday Global Service Preparation time, when people from around the world who are conducting Emissary services get together and feel into where we might go on Sunday. I was sharing this past Thursday how there are Sunday mornings when I get up having had some thought about where we might go, and my mind is blank. I have sent something around to people; I have some idea of a theme. But still, I can wake up in the morning and wonder, What? Where did it all go?
Do you ever wake up in the morning and feel blank like that? Where did life go? Where do I start?
For me on a Sunday morning, very reliably, as the day proceeds, things begin to stir. What is to happen, what is happening, becomes real. And it is because I am in a process of engaging in what is beautiful. When that is happening, I am calling in cosmic creative power. I come here and others have something to say, and we start to share something, perhaps musically. And then what seemed blank becomes rich. There is a creative impulse on the move.
To me it is a very familiar process. This is how Creation works. It begins with engaging in what is beautiful, in the pattern of life. Something begins to flow; and if we do not interrupt it, and we let it take us where it wants to take us, something beautiful happens.
It is a self-perpetuating process, is it not? As we open to the beautiful and express it, we are inviting in a higher love, a higher power. And as that finds expression, it energizes the beautiful and makes it grow—just as the sun makes the flower grow. The more it grows, the more beautiful it becomes, and the more cosmic power can come in, and then it grows further.
Beauty is the rhythm of things—like the rhythm of the drum that we heard from Steve (Lange) and friends. And when we appreciate that rhythm, we are calling in the power to move with the rhythms of life. Beauty is also the design of life. Rhythm is something that happens over time; it is about process. The design of things is how they are laid out in space.
I am envious of the visual artists among us who see the beautiful. Is that not what a painting is? People paint because they are revealing—even more than might generally be seen—the underlying pattern of the beautiful that is within form. In some way they are saying, Look at this. See this. You could go out and look at the thing itself. If it is something in nature, or another person, you could just go look at that person, or at that form of nature. But the artist is saying, Look at this beauty. You have not really seen the underlying pattern that is in the form you are viewing. And so, the visual artist helps us have a deeper appreciation for the beauty of the world in which we live.
That world of form is interconnected in so many ways. That flower does not live all on its own. Maybe it lives in a field of bluebells, with trees and grass and all the creatures around. Beauty is like that. It is one thing—but so infinitely multifaceted. Knowing beauty, participating in beauty, is participating in both that oneness and the multifaceted nature of what life is. Both are important in the living of life, in the fulfillment of life, and in knowing the secret of life.
So here we are as human beings. We are somehow stewards of all this, in our lives and on Planet Earth, apparently having a dramatic impact on how it all unfolds. We are participants. We have physical bodies and a world of form that we embody and then live in. So there are the outer elements of beauty, the beauty of a human life. And then there is the very essence of that pattern. Just as the artist is revealing something of nature in a piece of visual art, the secret of life includes knowing what is on the inside of us as human beings—the essence and pattern of how we are made. It is knowing both the multifaceted nature of how we are made and also the oneness.
That is the secret of life, not as some grand esoteric idea. The esoteric idea of it all will not reveal the secret of life to you. But if you tune in to the beauty of life—the beauty of how we are made, the beauty of what life is, the beauty of us as humankind—you can know it. And it is the secret of life because living in that place of awareness and expression and embodiment invites the powers of life to flow easily and powerfully through us and among us.
So many of the religions and spiritual paths of the world omit this secret. They attempt to teach how a person ought to worship an all-powerful God, without paying attention to the vessel through which the God of the universe expresses—through all people and through the planet—without paying attention to the cultivation of beauty in the human experience, and the expression of it.
In the expression of the beautiful there is an openness, like the flower. There is an openness to God if you want to call it God. There is an openness to the God of the universe that says, Yes, come here.
The secret of life is absolutely effortless. If you know that secret, you look around and realize that it is, so often, evading people. You see them trying to work it all out, to make it all go—without paying attention to the beauty of life, the beauty of themselves, the beauty of other people, and the beauty of the pattern of life in which we are all involved.
And so, no matter how devoted someone might be spiritually or religiously—however they think of it—without the secret of beauty you are left with dogma and discipline. People go looking for the spiritual and all that comes with it, and so often they end up with a plate of dogma and discipline. And usually along with that comes some kind of guilt and shame, because they think they are not believing in the dogma enough and not applying the discipline strictly enough. All the while, the secret of life is present—beauty. We have the opportunity to come to know it.
I want to go into a range of this multifaceted, interconnected world in which we live, which is at the same time one. The range I want to go into is us as human beings. We are multifaceted. The pattern of life is not only for the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees. The pattern of life relates to us as human beings. There is a constellation of beauty, a pattern of how we as human beings are configured. And we are one.
When we come to the world on the inside—we become open to the beauty of how we are made and interested in it—interested in the beauty of how we ourselves are made, and in expressing that; and then interested in the beauty of other people and the beauty of all of us together. Perhaps we begin to see that constellation. We feel the affinity we have with all people, the connection we have with all people, in that constellation of humanity.
On the outside, it so often seems that we cut across the patterns of beauty as human beings, and struggle with that terribly. All of that can mar the appreciation of the perfection of how we are made already on the inside. Then that place on the inside that connects us is not known, and the spiritual intimacy that is a pre-existing fact of our existence becomes blotted out by human personality, culture, and the human world, obliterating an awareness of the constellation of our beingness, the multifaceted nature of it, and obliterating the oneness of it in our awareness.
Awakening to the beauty of how we are constellated on the inside is a wonderful thing. And then, in another sense, it is no big deal. It is no big deal because it just is what is. It is to be enjoyed and delighted in. You do not have to try hard to make it so or try hard to somehow convince other people of it. It is simply the reality. If we awaken into that reality, perhaps we get used to seeing people not living in it—which is strange, is it not? It is strange to be relating to people who seem to have no awareness that we are already connected on the inside.
I might want to get to know you on the outside and become friends on the outside, which is a delightful process. But what I know is that we are already one on the inside. We are already in this constellation of Being that is miraculous and wonderful. It has its own beauty, its own pattern. I am not here to invent that. I am not here to make excuses for it. It is what it is; it is how we are made. And we can come to know the beauty of all Being and of all the beings in the wholeness of Being and know that we have a place in it all.
You are who you are, and you have your place in the pattern of Being. You are surrounded by all the wonder of Being—all the scope of it, all the majesty. You are loved and adored right where you are, by all of Being; and on the inside, you naturally love and adore all of Being. That is the natural state. It is Reality.
If we come to know that for ourselves, we have the opportunity to express the power that moves through that constellation, and to bring to focus our part in it all. What more could we do than to bring forward that power—the power of the human family and the family of Being? And in bringing that forth in the human world, we can hope and trust that other human beings resonate with it and awaken themselves to that Reality. We cannot make them do that. But our own expression of Reality can resonate with another and open up an appreciation of the beauty of how we are all made, and of the powers of Creation that move through that beauty.
There are eight billion of us incarnate now. Relating to eight billion human beings could seem overwhelming. But we are already doing it on the inside. It all works there. But how about at the human level? Unless people are awake to what is already happening on the inside, the answer is, Not very well.
Sometimes, it all gets so overwhelming that people shut others out and isolate. And yet, knowing the beauty of Being in ourselves and in others, there is a dignity, a wisdom, and a naturalness in being with all others. And then, being reasonable about our human capacities, we each have only so much social bandwidth. That is a practical, realistic thing. We can only receive so many emails, Facebook posts, conversations, or texts in a day. At the level of outer connection there is a finesse to it all. There is the opportunity to know the dignity and wisdom of letting it work for us as human beings, being considerate of our human capacities.
So there is the delicacy of doing that—while at the same time not checking out in isolation. Being present, we have the opportunity to know, through our own humanity, the inner connection we have with all people. And then, we may offer ourselves through the reality of that connection, to other people to the degree that another person wants to receive. I am talking about being there in the core essence of who we are and relating to other people from that place.
That is our opportunity. And that is the opportunity I am putting before you now, from me. I could make the invitation in a general way—let us all go there. But I am going to say it in a more personal way, specific to me. Meet me here. Let us be here. Be here with me.
He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High…
Let us be here.