Though Martin Luther King’s sermons and public talks came off as very alive and spontaneous, they were mostly all written out. And yet, when it came time to give his most famous speech, “I Have a Dream,” he went off script. In the middle of the speech, Mahalia Jackson cried out, “Tell them about the dream, Martin!” And though the phrase “I have a dream” wasn’t in the speech he had written, he spoke the words and invoked the powerful imagery of his dream. Some say that people close to him got nervous when he strayed from the written text. And yet, on that day, he uttered his most compelling words.
Maybe there’s a learning in this for us. When we are off our usual script, we have an opportunity to access something highly creative from within ourselves. We might conceive of that source of creativity as a place deep within the very core of our soul. We might conceive of it with another preposition—up. Our human senses and our human way of looking at things have some limitation. But however we conceive of it, there is a place out of which things are born. It is a place of stillness where Creation emerges. We as human beings have a special gift of being able to consciously open to that place and to access it within ourselves.
We access it through the heart and through our spiritual nature. It begins not even as a thought but simply as a ripple; a high-frequency vibration, rippling down through who we are as a human being. What most often happens for people is that their mental faculty is in control in such a dominating way that it obliterates the awareness of that vibration. There is a fear response to the circumstances in which a person finds themselves, and an attempt to control so as to calm that fear. So, the human capacity doesn’t have the space to open up to that higher frequency vibration. And at some point, as the vibration is descending through the person’s awareness, it stops, because the disturbed mental pattern is interfering with what is happening in the heart that would connect spiritually to that rippling vibration.
We have the opportunity to experience the Spirit of Purification, which releases the heart from fear and disturbance and opens it up to the high frequency of Creation itself. We find that we are the Creator—not in all our mental busyness, not in all that fear thinking, but deep within us as the source of the vibration. Deep within the core of who we are is the Creator, the reality of Being that we are. That reality lives in a place of stillness, from which Creation emerges, starting as a ripple—as it’s put, a still, small voice.
As we open to what is rippling through us, it moves into our feeling realm and ripples into our thoughts. Our imaginative thinking, our poetry and the images that we allow to be played upon our mind, is our way of opening up mentally to that ripple so that Creation itself activates our thoughts. We begin to think enlightened thoughts about our lives, about ourselves, about the people around us, about what is possible, and what is now being born into the world. Those are our dreams. But they’re not just nightmares, and not even imaginative nighttime fantasies. They are dreams in the sense that they are the stuff out of which concrete reality is formed if we take the dreams seriously.
And how do we take them seriously? How do we act in earnest around those dreams? We have to have the courage to live out of those dreams. We have to speak our enlightened thoughts into our world.
We each have a world around us, and it’s unique to us because we’re standing in the middle of it. Even physically, we are the only one who is. The center of the world is the invisible dimension of us. It is the source of the ripple of Creation that begins in stillness. That stillness is the home for the Creator that we are, who is the focal point for our individual world. When we have the courage to allow that God reality to ripple through us in all the levels of our Being and consciousness, and then to express it and embody it in our life, we become the living embodiment of the focal point for our world, around which it revolves. That is our divinely ordained sovereign destiny: to be the focal point for the world that is uniquely ours.
It is a wonder to behold a person who is knowing that for themselves. And when we truly witness such a person, it may inspire us to do the same for ourselves. We have the joy of being in their world, but then we have to own our world for ourselves if the example that they are is to become meaningful for our own lives.
This same principle is at work collectively. It works among us, not just for your world and then for my world. This principle is operative for our world and for the world. It is at work for the field where I live, Sunrise Ranch. It is at work for the field that is the United States of America. When Martin Luther King told the world about his dream on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, he galvanized a nation. He inspired us all. Why, when he said, “I have a dream,” did our hearts leap to hear that? It was because he was speaking out of the spiritual DNA of the United States of America that is the invisible focal point for this field. All men and all women are created equal. That is an expression of the central creative core of the United States of America. He was speaking out of that living core today for this field of humanity, so that when we heard him speak those words we were stirred.
That’s what happens. Sometimes, if we are lucky, a political leader of a country speaks out of the core of the field of that country. And when they do, our hearts leap and we feel, That’s right! That is good. They are telling us who we are together.
Of course, there can be a great blankness from someone we might have hoped would speak for the focal point of the field we share with others. When mental activity dominated by fear takes over in the place that is looked to as the focal point of the nation, there is a great vacuum. And there is confusion to the extent that people listen.
The expression of the invisible focal point of a nation could come from a political leader. But Martin Luther King wasn’t exactly that. It may come from a poet. It may come from a songwriter. It could come from anyone, really, who touches the invisible focal point for any field of human beings and expresses the essence of that focal point.
We are celebrating the 50th anniversary of Woodstock. Joni Mitchell’s iconic song by that title contains these words: We’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden. She was naming something for all humanity. Julie Gold’s song “From a Distance,” made famous by Bette Midler, did the same. From a distance the world looks blue and green… She spoke from a perspective that wasn’t enmeshed in the fear-based world. She spoke out of the invisible center of humanity. And because she did, it resonated with people around the world. Do you believe it’s possible that you and I could do the same? That we could tune in to not only the core of our world but also tune in to the core of the world?
To make this more vivid, think of our solar system. Obviously there’s a physical focal point for the solar system, which is the sun. We think of the sun as a fiery ball up in the sky. Depending on how you think of it, the sun is at the center of the solar system. But the sun is actually permeating the whole solar system, because the rays of the sun are the sun, are they not? The sun didn’t stop being the sun just where you could stop seeing it. The rays of the sun are permeating the whole solar system. But anyway, the sun is a physical focal point for the solar system.
Do you think that’s all there is to it? Is there just a physical focal point where there is a massive concentration of matter and nuclear fusion occurring? Could it be that there is an invisible focal point that we cannot see, except that we see the sun as its physical manifestation? Could it be that there’s a focal point of Being for the solar system within the sun that is invisible to us? That in fact the solar system is held together by Being? Another way to say that, using religious language, is that the sun is a living expression of God. Of course, using that word could invoke all kinds of religious dogma, which I would like to avoid. I am simply using the word God as a reference to the reality that we are part of a living universe. The universe is more than energy and matter. It is Being.
We use that word God to refer to an invisible reality of Being, but that invisible reality manifests in a physical reality. So, our solar system has the invisible reality of Being that is at its focal point, as well as its physical manifestation, which is the sun.
And so it is for us as human beings. There is that invisible dimension of us that is the focal point for our world, but that invisible reality only becomes meaningful when it is expressed and embodied at the level that our world exists. We don’t leave the focal point to the Invisible because the Invisible becomes operative when you and I have the courage to express it and embody it in our lives here and now—to be it. It becomes real for us when we bring the energy of our God selves into the world with each other, expressing it and embodying it.
The core essence of that energy is a vibration of love. The invisible focal point for every individual’s world is characterized by that vibration. The invisible focal point for all the world is characterized by love. So, our function as human beings who have encountered that core essence of love is to express it in our culture in ways that don’t freak out the people around us, but which nonetheless lets the vibration move. As we encounter other people, we are, in essence saying, I see you, I understand you. I see your God reality and I love it, and I want more of it in my life and in the world. And I’m not just with you, I am for you, for more of you, and for your prolific expression in the world.
And now, the field that we’re living in has become energized in a way that it wasn’t before.
We are speaking about our individual fields and collective fields, and then ultimately the field of all humanity. If we can practice in our individual field, and then with other people in the culture that we share in whatever community it is, then perhaps our community can become a collective expression of the focal point for the world. That can’t happen on the usual human basis, with all the usual human attitudes: We’re better than you, we know better than you, and you better believe what we believe. That’s simply spiritual pretense. Without any of that silliness, just be it.
Paul Bassis said about the Arise Festival that while some festivals are called transformational, Arise makes no such claim. Arise is a transformational festival, but to call it that seemed a little presumptuous to Paul. He said it’s a little bit like calling yourself cool. If you have to call yourself cool, you’re probably not cool!
We’re not here to brag about being something. It helps to name it occasionally for our own awareness, but mostly we are here just to be it. If we’re really being it, it’s undeniable, just as the Arise Festival is undeniably transformational. And when you walk onto Sunrise Ranch, it’s undeniable that there is a kind of magic going on. We can give it a name if we need to. But it’s the magic itself that matters.
Let’s untether our mental process from all the fear that it gets involved in, so that the whole capacity of consciousness—mind and heart, and then this incredible spiritual nature that can tune in to the vibration of the infinite—is available for the highest vibration to come all the way through. And then let us have the courage to actually live it and embody it and be it together.
We say: Let Love radiate without concern for results. This means that we don’t own it and it is free; free from personal investment, free from intervention or pollution, free to do that which it needs to do.
Love is not linear as it is beyond dimension. It is cosmic, abiding in the invisible center of humanity. The poet TS Eliot referred to this location as the still place of the turning world.
This is the one place where those who do not feel the true power of Love will tell you it does not exist, that it is a figment of the imagination, that life is random and that we live in dangerous times. But then, how do they explain electricity which cannot be seen or microwaves- except by that which they animate. And yet, here is a whole world and a universe where we live and how did that come about? Not just a big bang, but water and trees and creatures and…. everything else we know and perhaps take for granted.
Wonder and gratitude; I can express these aspects of Love. and be happy to be alive and free from fear and hopelessness. I can feel the world about me being energized and nurtured in this current. This is true magic and not just a dream.