The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.

Over the centuries, people have taken comfort in these words. It can be comforting to be aware of the overarching spiritual presence holding everything on this planet, including you and me and all the peoples of the world. As the old spiritual says, “He’s got the whole world in His hands.”

The rest of the psalm goes on to portray how a person can have the experience that not only is Planet Earth and all the human world held by an overarching spirit, but they themselves are that spirit, that they have a world that is theirs, as we each do; that indeed the truth is that we are the creator of our world. We are the Lord for the world that is ours.

The psalm begins to speak about this journey in these words:

For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods.

 Here is a reference to the waters of the world, on the face of it, and I’m sure it includes that. The oceans and seas of the world, and the tides and currents that move through them, move to cosmic rhythms. At the same time, we ourselves are mostly water. So it’s not just established out there in the waters of the world. There is a movement in the fluids of our own body, and in our own emotional nature, which is very closely tied to the fluids of our body. The overarching dominion of spirit is established right in the emotions of a person, even though most people fight it. The spiritual journey begins when we release our emotional nature to that overarching spirit.

Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD? or who shall stand in his holy place?

 The Bible is written in symbolic, poetic terms—and if you think about it, how else would it be written? Understanding that, how more clearly could it be said that we are here to be the Lord whose world it is? How more clearly could it be addressed that there is a process by which we come into that place in ourselves where we are that overarching spirit, for our own capacities, for our immediate world, and ultimately for the whole world of our awareness?

“Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD?” Who shall be in that high place of perspective? If there is to be an overarching perspective of our life and of our world, there has to be ascension in consciousness. We have to come to a different place than is common in the human world and probably common for us. There is another place of perspective to go, a higher place to go, where we can see and know and understand that indeed this is our world, that it is mine—not mine in any kind of self-centered way, but mine because I bring the spirit of the creator that I am.

Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD? or who shall stand in his holy place?

He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.

 Usually, for people who read the Bible, this would be seen as very good people—the pious people. They get to go to heaven. But that is not what is said here. On the spiritual journey, who shall come to a place of enlightenment where they really see? Clean hands and a pure heart are a plain reference to action and emotion. Clean hands are a symbol of action as the creator who is responsible for his or her world. Put in more contemporary language, if you are to have an experience of enlightenment, you have to act like it. You have to take action on behalf of the creator in your world. You have something to do to bring the spiritual into your world. When you do, you have the experience of knowing that these people in your world are your people who deserve your care and stewardship.

The psalm tells us that actions alone are not enough. It is not enough to do “the right thing” if what you are expressing emotionally is not aligned with your action. The words and the music have to go together, so that not only are there the actions that are being taken, but the feeling current that goes along with those actions is consonant with the action. You don’t come to the experience of being the creator for your world if your expression of emotion contradicts your actions.

On the spiritual journey, a person can feel all kinds of things inside, and that does not in any way sully the reality of who they are and who they are being in the world. It is the feeling current that a person chooses to express that lets them ascend the hill of the Lord, that leads to the experience of being the creator in the world. And launching a destructive feeling that is inside, and bringing the energy of it to the world, prevents a person from having the experience of being the creator of their world.

He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.

Vanity goes well beyond the common use of the word today, referring to obsession with personal good looks. As the verse says plainly, this is a vanity that relates to the soul, to the whole of a human life. Life stops making sense for a person when it becomes about them, when the most important consideration in the living of life is oneself. Other words for vanityare self-concern and narcissism.

“Nor sworn deceitfully”—no four-letter words! Surely, if this verse has meaning, there is more to it than that. Swearing deceitfully has to be seen relative to the meaning of the rest of the psalm. To swear deceitfully is to begin the spiritual journey—to commit yourself to be available to be the creator in your world, and to begin to act like it, and then to express something that contradicts that intention. When that happens, a person’s ascent of the hill of the Lord ceases. To ascend the hill of the Lord, you have to act like it and express an emotional current that is consistent with your action. And you have to keep doing it. You have to be consistent.

That consistency is not about the contradictions a person feels inside. You haven’t sworn deceitfully just because you feel something inside. There are all kinds of things sorting out in our waters, and that’s not swearing deceitfully. It’s what we choose to give expression to that determines how we move on our spiritual path.

He shall receive the blessing from the LORD, and righteousness from the God of his salvation.

What is the blessing that is received? There are many implications to receiving the blessing of the Lord. That blessing includes the blessing of the holy spirit—the universal energetic pattern that descends deeply into the soul. It includes the experience of being welcomed by your world as the creator. But the essence of this blessing is very simply the honor and the privilege of knowing that this world that you live in is yours. You are creating this world. These are your people, these are your circumstances, this is your life. And you have that creative spirit that is needed in that world. You have all you need as a creator.

Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.

The person who comes all the way home on the spiritual journey inherits the creative power to be the King of glory for their own human capacity and for their world. They inherit the capacity to open up the gateways in body, mind and heart for all of who they are inside to come out. The love that is inside us has the potential of flooding our world, of reaching out to other people, of filling other people, of holding other people, of offering a blessing. The light that we bring into the world—our vision, our understanding, the very power and energy of creation, can fill our world. As it does, the world changes. We open up the energetic gateways in ourselves that bring health, vitality and happiness.

Certainly we experience that personally; when the King of glory is coming through us, it vitalizes us and brings happiness personally. But those qualities are difficult to contain personally. They are contagious. For while there are gateways that are personal to us and specific to us, we find that the gateways that are present in human awareness are also collective. We inherit the capacity to bring those positive, radiant qualities of spirit that open up doors for other people, that bring life for other people, that create opportunities for other people that they couldn’t see before. We inherit that power.

What stops most people from inheriting that power is the dread of taking full responsibility, not only for their own expression, which is a step along the way, but full responsibility for the people and the circumstances of their life. Sometimes it is hard to own your family members, and in extreme cases family members are legally disowned. There may be things about our mother and father that don’t make us happy. But after all, they are our mother and father. And owning that they are, puts us in position to treat them in a way and to offer a blessing to them in a way that we can’t if we’re holding them at arm’s length.

In any relationship with another person, this is a critical factor. A life partner may have some quirks; they may have some things that they do that over the years wear on you. They may do things you don’t understand and wish would go away. And after fifteen or twenty years, you may think they aren’t going away. If the relationship is to continue to be creative, a person may have to come to the point of saying, “You know, this is my partner, for better or for worse. They’re mine. And I will love and encompass their humanity and accept that as part of my life.” I’m not saying there is never a time for people to part ways. But I think it is a powerful moment in a person’s life when they understand that they can embrace their world and all the people who are in it, and all of their own humanity, from whatever proximity is appropriate.

Being a leader is like that. From a distance, leadership may look appealing. For most people who provide leadership of whatever kind for a period of time, there is a point where the leader questions, “These people? I want the other people—I want better people, I want the smarter people, the nicer people.” No, these people—these are my people. They deserve my blessing, my love, my care, my guidance, my inspiration, my vision. These are my people.

Anybody can say that about those people who come to be with them in their life. They are here for a reason. Whatever the circumstances of our life, whoever the people are that have come to be with us in our life, this is my life, this is your life—the only one I have and the only one you have. We don’t get to trade it in for another. We might hope it gets better up in heaven, or better in the next incarnation. But the person who is waiting for that is not ascending the hill of the Lord, not coming into the place of knowledge that’s spoken of in the beginning of this psalm:

The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.

 It’s all very nice to believe that the Lord sees it that way. How about you? How about me?