Here in South Africa we’ve entered into the season of spring, moving towards early summer, and there’s an expectancy in the air of what this new seasonal cycle might bring—opportunities for intensification and re-creation.

The powerful message to awaken, arise, activate that we just heard through Gary Goodhue’s powerfully presented poem is pertinent to whatever cycle in which we find ourselves, even to those in the northern hemisphere as you move into the quietness of winter. Life is on the move in some way, through every season.

Awaken to what? Well, awaken to the truth of who we are. Awaken to what’s really going on: that life is on the move, that Spirit is present, flowing as always. No matter what the outer circumstances might be, there is the power and the presence of Spirit.

The call to arise to do something creative, arise to express something true, to bring the power that’s ours to bring to enliven and transform our world.

To activate—activate the very molecules that make up our physical bodies, the structures that make up our physical world, that they might serve as they were designed to serve, that this world can once again be all it was designed to be.

In this moment together, as we allow the atmosphere and the connection between us to continue to intensify, there is the truth to be made known in our own experience, in this very moment right now. As Gary’s poem suggested, not waiting for something external to tell us who we are, tell us what we should be doing, but to be awake to the inner divine compulsion that has us returning to our true function as a creator-Being.

The only things that stop me from living my life as that creator-Being in expression, that block the inner knowing that’s really always present at a deeper internal level, are the stories that I have about myself, about you and about my world, that can easily separate me from the truth of myself, the truth of you, who you really are, and what’s really going on in my world. That can end up with wrong knowing, wrong assumption and a way of me being in my world that’s based in a false premise.

I’ve realized that any story lodged in my consciousness that has me withholding my love for any reason is an inaccurate story, even if the facts are true. If that story has me withholding my love from someone or in a circumstance, it needs to be dissolved so that the full power of that love can flow into my life, into my world, because I’m expressing from the truth of who I am, I’m in touch with the immediate reality of that. I can choose to deliberately ignore the stories that have accumulated in my consciousness, in my memory banks over the years, let them dissolve in the face of the truth that I have awakened to, and I can come to a place of reality and truth right now because I’ve made that decision. Because it’s worth it. Because nothing is worth more than taking the opportunity to bring the full power of my love and my blessing into my world.

There’s been a usurping of humanity’s power. I’m sure each of us knows that for ourselves. We find ourselves slipping into old patterns, and the power that we would rightly bring as creator-Beings gets distracted, gets redirected in uncreative ways. Our minds and hearts are rightly not the creators of our world. They are tools in the hand of the Creator, who I am and who you are in truth. But of themselves, mind and heart, when left to their own devices, with the best of intentions, wreak havoc.

But we can catch ourselves and know when that’s happening. The Bible refers to the will of the Father, the will of the Creator, the design of the Creator, the purpose for which Creation exists, including our own physical capacities. Not the will of the human mind, even the best-intentioned and most clever human mind, but the will of the Father. When our human minds and hearts find alignment with that greater will, then we have what we call attunement; there is an unbroken, undistorted connection between body, mind and heart and the Creator of those capacities. Oneness. We have then the ability to bring the power of that Oneness in a creative way. The whole world changes when we each do that and when we find ourselves doing that collectively. Transformation and re-creation happens on this basis.

All too many people in the world, myself included, have at times accepted the belief patterns that block the awareness and the experience of the truth of who I am. I think we can ascribe most of the humanly generated destruction and distortion that we see in the world, in so many different ways, to that loss of identity. All too easily, mind and heart are triggered into unhealthy reaction by external events, external impulses, and tend to be lost to the hand of the Creator. I have my work to do, as I’m sure we all do, in clarifying and freeing up those capacities and ensuring that they are available and fully online for creative purposes.

What it takes to return to that state of availability usually requires facing a truth, which may sometimes seem somewhat inconvenient. It seems easier to stay in our accumulated habit patterns, even if they’re not producing in our experience what we would prefer, and it can seem preferable to stay with the familiar. Somehow there can be a numbed acceptance of the resulting discomfort and a lack of motivation to clear space for the truth—it can feel so inconvenient to make the necessary changes!

As I observe, many of the most critical issues in the world are being ineffectively addressed, or not addressed at all, because of a lack of political and moral will to make the changes that are necessary to allow something more creative to happen. Prevarication and expediency have been used for millennia by people in power to get their own way and retain and build that power as insurance against change and perceived threat. Often, human nature in general carries those tendencies as a consequence of living life in an unconscious way and not having awareness of the fact of Oneness we have been discussing. We each have to face that necessity of allowing change to happen in the well-established habit patterns of action and belief.

I’m aware how serious it is in the United States to be caught driving under the influence of alcohol or other intoxicating substances, commonly referred to by the acronym DUI. How about LUI—Living Under the Influence, or Living Under Illusion, as an accepted life pattern? I think that’s probably even more destructive and even more serious in the longer term than driving under the influence.

We each have choice relative to how much the destructive influences that prevail in our lives will determine the way we live our lives. There are many circumstances that we can’t change directly but we always have choice as to how we will live within those circumstances and not to allow the influence of those factors to constrict in any way our ability to be who we really are. Living creatively within adverse situations can be the most effective way to allow them to change.

There are times, such as this, where there is a clear, unmistakable call to awaken from an unconscious state. Thankfully, things happen in our lives that stir us from our slumber and we become aware that we haven’t been fully present. I don’t know if you’ve ever fallen asleep while driving. I have. It’s a scary thing to wake up to. Once, while driving by myself, I was awakened by my shoulder landing on the passenger seat! Luckily it was a straight stretch of road and, by some miracle, the car had not swerved. You really know that you’re awake and alive after an experience like that, with the adrenaline in full flood! Oh, to be that awake, maybe with a little less adrenaline-driven intensity though!

It is good to be awake enough to realize that we’ve been asleep and we’ve missed opportunities to bring our gifts, to bring our love. And we’ve missed many opportunities to receive gifts that have been brought to us, whether it’s from life in general or from particular people. How sad it is that we would be asleep and miss giving or receiving those gifts.

There have been many times I’ve looked back and been deeply saddened and grieved the opportunities that I’ve missed because I wasn’t awake to what was going on at the time. I wasn’t awake to what someone or a circumstance was offering me in love. I just walked by, got on with my life, and only later, looking back, realized that there was a gift that I could have received, and that someone in my life could have had the pleasure of giving me that gift. And the times I have not offered others the blessing that could have brought healing or joy to them.

I’ve been considering the question: what is love?—something that is not easy to define using language and only really makes sense in the experience and the expression of it. I came up with a term that I think describes the function that’s ours as awakened human beings, that has us knowing love through personal experience: Love Transmission Organisms, LTOs. How’s that? Organisms whose primary purpose is to bring an aspect of divine presence that no other part of Creation can bring. We’re designed to manifest a specific range of the spectrum of love. That’s why we have the capacities that we have, to bring love into the world like no other creature, no other part of Creation can bring. Within that overall purpose, we each bring our own unique aspects, allowing the diversity and infinite variety of God’s love to be present in human experience. And if we don’t bring it, it doesn’t get brought. It’s missing.

I’ve been enjoying remembering the recent “Becoming a Sun” workshop here in Cape Town, and feeling such acknowledgment and honor for the people who, through various processes, expressed the beauty of themselves so clearly, working through any feelings that they might have of embarrassment or even shame, to really bring forth an authentic expression of their true selves. It was such a privilege to participate with them. It just confirmed for me yet again what the potential is for everyone when we just open up our hearts and our minds and express the truth of ourselves.

In further meditation on my experience of that four-day workshop, I found myself contemplating a deeper meaning of the words man and woman. I realized that those words actually describe aspects of the Divine. That’s been a profound awakening for me and I’ve realized that I’ve been missing something all my life, relative to what it means, in my case, to be a man. The primary purpose of being a man is to bring the masculine aspect of divinity into this world. A woman brings the feminine aspect of God called woman. That puts a whole new meaning on being men and women—that part of the Cosmic design that allows the conscious presence of the masculine and feminine aspects of God to be incarnate, physically present on this planet. That opens up a whole new dimension of meaning for my life! Doesn’t it for yours?

This led me to further think about the deeper meaning of the word man or mankind. I realize that I have taken the meaning of that word very lightly, and I now think there’s much more involved in being a part of mankind. It has to do with providing the physical, manifest, conscious body of God on earth. That’s no small thing! It is joyful, it is wonderful and meaningful, but it’s no small thing that as a member of the human race, we carry that profound purpose. If you’re looking for the answer to the question “What is the meaning of life,” there it is. Awaken to that, arise into the implications of that, activate all your capacities to serve that, and you will know the fulfillment of Heaven on Earth!

Our precious planet and all its living creatures are all held in the safety of God’s love as there are those who have awakened to the scope of their true purpose and bring the power and blessing of that in everything they do. Let us count ourselves amongst those ones and live our lives accordingly.