Fresh Thinking, Inspiration, and Vision on the Process of Spiritual Transformation
My love is long
Like this path in front of me,
With blind turns
Around sandstone bluffs
And endless switchbacks
That climb to unknown places;
And like a young man
Who would walk
Such a mountain path,
Enjoying the sweat
Dripping down his torso,
Thirsting for a gaze
From the yet distant peak.
O, yes, my love is long,
And it would climb that way
Today,
Tomorrow,
And for so many tomorrows to come,
Until this earthly frame
Could walk no more,
And the spirit of my love
Walks on alone,
Like a rustling wind,
A shimmering and a flickering
That could do naught else but continue
Until I reach the end and aim
Of all my climbing;
Until I know
My hunger is complete,
At least for now,
That I have loved you
With every hidden part,
All given,
All consumed in living flame
Until love alone continues,
Informing all its wondrous shapes and colors with itself,
Dancing and laughing free
In total joy,
And unquenchable celebration before you.
It is a powerful urge that moves in my heart, and I believe in all human hearts. The depth of a person’s passion for the mission and purpose which life gives to them can go unrecognized and unacknowledged, even by the person themselves. But it is nonetheless present for all people, because that is the very nature of the impulse of life itself, which would dance free and reveal the Source from whence it comes.
It is quite possible for a person to be distracted in mind and heart, to be about other things, and in some way turn their back on life’ s compulsion. It’s possible to become distracted with worries and concerns, failing to fully receive and acknowledge the strength of the compulsion in our life. To the degree that happens for a person, something destructive follows. There is an impact, because the wonder of what life would bring through a person is not coming through in that case, at least not the fullness of it.
Where a person who has their attention—and not only their mental attention but the attention of their feeling realm—turned to what is happening in their world, so that they are focused on that with no room in the heart left to entertain the beauty of life itself, and the wonder of it, our world does suffer, because our world needs the man or woman who brings that kind of openness. The strength and wisdom of the creative impulse of spirit comes generously through a person who is open to it.
It’s easy to think that the world isn’t providing enough for me; it isn’t sorting itself out the way I would like it, and circumstances aren’t coming together the way I had expected. The more that this is a person’s attitude, the less of the creative impulse of spirit comes through—and, consequently, the less that comes together creatively in that person’s world. Of course, this gives further cause for concern, and perhaps prompts a person to raise the level of energy that’s being put into trying to make the world conform to their wishes.
Hopefully, somewhere in that whole process, a person comes to a point of letting go. For the particularly dedicated and energetic of us, we keep at it for a while. But as has been said, at some point we may turn and face the voice that speaks with us. We may face the creative compulsion of spirit. That might be done in a religious context or in a spiritual context, as we may think of it. But the essence of the turning I am speaking of doesn’t really have very much to do with those contexts as such. It has to do with what happens in a person’s heart when they let go and welcome the reality of what brings life. As that happens for us, we become the creative cause for something wonderful to happen in our world.
When a person has turned in heart and spirit and opened themselves to what gives them life, to what inspires them, they end up being generous with their world. There are many ways to be generous. The word itself tends to be relegated to giving gifts or money. It turns out that the word generous has the same origin as the word genes. So the origin of the word generosity has to do with people who are highborn in a society, knowing that they have a responsibility to the rest of their world because of what they have been given. I think there’s something very accurate about that for anyone. Because of our spiritual origin, we have something to give to our world. When we’re fully in touch with that spiritual origin, we are in touch with our own generosity. We’re in touch with the fact that we have something to give that our world needs. We have a gift to give.
I was thinking of various ways that people are generous. I realize that in my upbringing, my mother had a background of being brought up in the Christian Science church. She didn’t consider herself a believer in that regard, but somehow her upbringing instilled in her a faith in the nature of life itself. She had an underlying conviction that life is strong. She had faith that the nature of life would keep her and her children whole. Growing up, we told stories about getting hurt in some way and my mother taking it very casually. There was the time my sister cut her knee on the front stoop, and my mother said, “The Band-Aids are in the medicine cabinet.” That may seem uncaring, but the blessing was that her attitude instilled in us a belief in the resiliency of our own bodies and of the life that was in us, and the sense that we would be okay in the world. We came to know that life was generous and strong, and that we could rely on life as it moved through us and in the world.
In looking back, I appreciate the sense of generosity that I feel about my body and its strength, and the way I am physically in the world, and I realize I owe a debt of gratitude to my mother for that. Anyone can come to a place of feeling generous about their physical experience, knowing that they can meet what happens in their life with a sense of adventure and pleasure and assurance. That’s generosity in living one’s physical life.
But generosity applies to thinking, as well. We may not have used that word to describe someone’s mental process, but we’ve probably noticed people who aren’t generous in their thinking, who in some way think small, who think in confined compartments with limited possibility. Or who constantly fret about the small details of their life, or the character flaws of another person. That’s not generous thinking.
Generous thinking is open to the wonder of possibility, and to the wonder of how things are. Generous thinking is curious thinking that refuses to believe that I’ve got the world narrowed down to a little box, a little set of beliefs, however cherished they may be. Generous thinking is open thinking.
And how about generosity of heart? I think it relates to blessing: the belief that there’s something at a feeling level that I have to offer to other people that would be of assistance, that would be a blessing—that my love and care could mean something to another person and could make a difference for them. Someone who is generous emotionally lives in the faith that the love and affection that rightly comes to them will come in its own time and in its own way. The generous heart lives to give to other people and to the world.
So we can be generous in all kinds of ways. And generosity opens doors that wouldn’t otherwise be open.
“My love is long….” Generosity may seem to be something to aspire to. I think it’s also the reality of who we are. Our love is long. The reality of it sustains over time. It is, ultimately, eternal. And if we live our lives like our love is limited, we’re not actually being truthful to who we are. We’re cutting something off of our own reality that is endless. Our capacity to love knows no bounds. That’s not just a poetic-sounding saying. It is the reality of our spirit.
In the recent sessions here at Sunrise, the Trustee sessions and the Servers Gathering sessions particularly, we were considering creative fields. There is a universal creative field. It is a field of energy and intelligence. That field is present no matter what we do as human beings. It didn’t take us being here to create the universe. So, at one level, the words the creative field relate to that universal field.
But at another level, there is a creative field for which we are responsible. That field relates to us and how we function, and what we as human beings have the opportunity to share. So at that level of things, you might say it is something that may happen or may not happen. Certainly for many people, they don’t have the experience of being part of a creative field. They feel isolated and alone, separate and impotent, and for them, the world that they are living in is not fertile. So at this level of things the creative field is a choice. It is a choice whether we participate consciously in the universal creative field. If we do, we have the opportunity to make quite an impact.
I want to read from something from Lynn McTaggart, author of The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe. Incidentally, Lynn McTaggart’s work is referenced in Dan Brown’s latest novel, The Lost Symbol. She says: “What they [referring to scientists] have discovered is nothing less than astonishing. At our most elemental, we are not a chemical reaction, but an energetic charge. Human beings and all living things are a coalescence of energy in a field of energy connected to every other thing in the world.”
So she’s asserting that we are an energetic charge. That sounds something like a spirit. But while we are an energetic charge, we are much more than that. This universal creative field that we’re in is not just energy, apparently. If it were just energy, we might think it would end up creating a random universe. In the universal creative field there is not just energy; there is intelligence at work, is there not? Are we just energy? We have the potential for incredible intelligence, wisdom. We are smart energy! But, you know, we’re more than that, too.
We are sentient beings. The intelligent energy that emanates from us emanates from sentient beings. Could it be that that’s exactly how this universe is made? Could it be that the universal creative field originates from sentient being, and that we are an aspect of the sentient being from which it emanates?
If that’s true, the creative field that we have the opportunity to hold consciously is best held when we are being ourselves—when we refuse to be anything less than or other than who we are. If we are being ourselves, we are by definition being our generous selves. Our love is long and sustains a creative field. That is who and what we are.
And if this is true, all our creative endeavors are best fulfilled, not because we’re trying to be something other than what we are, or more than what we are; but it is because we are refusing to be anything less than what we are, anything less than the cosmic sentient being that is the reality of who we are. We have that to give. We have that love and care to give to other people. We have the strength of that to give in our living, and we have the wisdom of that to bring to our world.
As we do that together, we become aware that we are holding a creative field. The creative cause for that field comes through us. Ultimately, it is us, as we are centered in that creative impulse of spirit and not centered in all the things that are happening in our world. We find ourselves drawn into the experience of being the creative cause for our world.