Have you heard of silent discos? There is no music audible in the room. Dancers wear wireless headphones and choose the music to which they want to listen. As it was explained to me, the advantage of this is that they listen to the music they like, which may not be the same as the music of the person next to them, or even the person they are dancing with!

And I am not here on a soapbox to advocate for a shutdown of silent disco. But it does seem like it is a sign of the times. Tracking the evolution of dance, it has become less and less intimate through the past century. We went from dancing cheek to cheek with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers to more and more distance between the dancers—from jitterbugging to rock and roll, and now to silent disco.

Dancing with others reminds us that there is a space for us to share as human beings. There is a space of consciousness—first of all, in ourselves—that holds the possibility of magic. No room in consciousness, no magic. A person’s business can squeeze out the magic of life. Some households are like that. There is so much frenetic activity, such a lack of peace, that the magic of life is gone.

If we are in a group of people and there is no clear space between us, there is no way that spiritual intimacy can deepen, and no way that the creative power latent within that group of people can grow.

Karen Pritchard and I visited with her friends from the Midlands in England. They are both Asian, from families who have roots in the Indian subcontinent. One is from a Sikh heritage and the other from Hindu background. It was clear that they both come from a culture of close family and friends. And so, last night and most of today we have simply been in conversation, speaking of all kinds of things and enjoying each other’s company, taking a walk down to the beach, enjoying meals, being in a space where the magic of friendship could unfold. They are both followers of a Buddhist community, so there is certainly a shared spiritual interest. I loved the process of getting to know each other. It reminded me of how much I long to share that space with others.

What does it take from us to create a space where the magic of spiritual intimacy can work? The Creation story in Genesis is a mystical code for our creative process as human beings. It contains a profound symbolic teaching on creating space. This is from the Second Day of Creation:

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. (Genesis 1:6)

When was the last time you used the word firmament in social conversation? I am going to guess it was not recently. It is a word for sky, and so it relates to atmosphere. We have probably never seen what is being pictured, or at least not as we might envision it based on the Creation story—atmosphere between water above and water below. Atmosphere is air. So, the elemental cosmic powers of air and water are being portrayed, at work in the human experience.

When I think of water, I reflect on the flowing nature of human experience, particularly the emotional component of that flow. If all we have is that flow, we have feelings of all kinds that flow all over the place, and there is no structure in the picture. It just flows. And the flow is wonderful but only takes us so far because, at some point, we become aware that there has to be some kind of facilitation of this flow. There has to be direction to it if it is going to go anyplace. And if not, we are brought along unconsciously in the larger tide of Creation.

So, in the middle of all this flowing water, we have the introduction of air.  

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

Now we have waters above and waters below. There is a higher flow of reality, and then there is our flow as a human being and the flow of the human world.

In between is air, the firmament. This is the birth of a conscious awareness of a reality that transcends the human world. At the same time, this awareness separates the higher truth from the truth of the world in which we live, and it connects the higher and the lower. At least it has that potential. When consciousness stays clear, it opens transparently to the higher flow of reality. It connects to a higher truth and a higher love. It opens to it.

When we look at the usual human experience, we have the cosmic forces of Creation present with all people. God-power is present in the human experience. If not for that, we would be pushing up daisies. So there is God-power, but what is generally missing? The mediating factor of consciousness so that the activating nature of the God-power can inspire and move us in harmony with the great tide of Creation. When that power is present randomly, mixed up in the flow of the human experience, there is the animation of human emotion, thought, and action. But without the conscious awareness represented by the firmament, the higher flow and direction of the God-power doesn’t have a chance. The activating of the human experience is random, without participating in the larger tide of Creation.

I invite you to reflect on your own experience and on the world that you are looking at every day. Is this not what is happening? It is happening at the individual level, where people are doing the silent disco in whatever form. They are activated, they are dancing; but for them, the cosmic music ain’t playing. And therefore, the creative direction that might be felt in that person’s life isn’t.

Then, collectively, there is a tremendous tendency for people who are not connecting to a higher love and truth to fractionalize—to break into smaller and smaller groups that contend with each other. There are all the nations of the world, many of whom are at odds with each other. But then, within the nations, there are political parties and ethnic groups that battle with each other.

Up until recently, I thought there was an English accent that was prevalent in the Midlands. Not so! It turns out that pronunciation can be different only four miles down the road! And if you are familiar with accents in that part of the world, you can identify where a person is from, based on their speech. And just like any place in the world, where you are from and how you speak can be the basis for separation and contention.

The answer to separation is oneness, and the experience of oneness comes from the waters above—from a higher truth and higher love. So the answer to separation is spiritual. But that answer cannot be accessed without a clear space in consciousness. It takes the dedication of the human heart and mind to keep that space clear, so that it can be a conductor of the higher intelligence and the higher power to activate our human experience and the world we share with other people. Without keeping the mind clear and heart open, how quickly there is absolute mayhem. There is Afghanistan, January 6^th at the U.S. Capitol, and all the global warming, with people getting hot under the collar for all kinds of reasons. And why? The direction of the higher truth and the activating power of a higher love is left up in the heaven. And it is never going to come down clearly without a field of consciousness through which it can come.

This is the purpose of meditation. It can create a firmament that connects the spiritual with the human world. It can allow thought to be infused with the higher intelligence and feelings with the higher love. Then there is a field of awareness that carries spiritual energy and power.

Are we not here to be keepers of the field of consciousness? To be cultivators of that field, to keep it right, and to keep it pure between us?

It is by design that the field of consciousness gets filled with impurity. And why would that be? Because we are living in the world! So, the field of consciousness receives into itself all the elements of the human experience, including pandemics, war, hurricanes, and fires. Our consciousness is meant to be connected, not only with the heaven above but with the world in which we live. So it is made for those things to come to it.

The question becomes, What do we do about them when they come? Are we a guardian angel for our own experience, allowing the ongoing process of purification to work? Allowing the process of clarification of the mind to continue? If it is not, we are sunk because apparently the way we are designed as humanity is to suck in all that is unclear—thankfully, not all at once. But it comes, just by the fact of incarnation. We incarnate, and we pick up all this human experience.

The question becomes, What do you do with it? It is not whether or not all of that is going to come to us. It is coming. It comes to every last person on the face of the earth. The question is, Do you keep it clear? Do you allow the process of purification to continue? Do you let there be a clear firmament that can still tune in to the higher frequencies of reality—the higher intelligence and the higher love?

That is our role as humankind. It is our job to keep the field of consciousness clear. Sometimes people trudge on diligently, keeping a stiff upper lip, staying at it, and often with at least a tinge of victimhood. And what they are hiding is that they have stopped listening, and they have stopped keeping their consciousness clear. The factors of the world in which they live have overtaken them, and therefore a higher intelligence and a higher love can’t get in. If that is what has happened, we are called to allow the processes of clarification and purification to do their perfect work.

When we do, we move out of the silent-disco experience to know a field of consciousness and creative power. The enjoyment of spiritual intimacy and community appears, infused by the love we have opened to. And having touched that, who wouldn’t want to keep it safe in the only way it can be—by a personal devotion to the ongoing processes of mental clarification and the purification of the heart that banish any influences that would spoil the preciousness of what is being known and shared.

You have now come to the recruitment part of this Pulse of Spirit. I am unabashedly recruiting people who commit themselves as warriors for the field of consciousness, who keep the space of thought and awareness clear, and the space of the heart pure. I am enlisting guardian angels for human consciousness. I hope you sign up.