The word power means different things in different contexts. Scientifically, power is the rate at which work is performed. And work is defined as moving things.
Often, when people use the word power, they are speaking about something else—control, and the authority to control other people.
I define power in the human experience in a different way. Power is the ability to create. That includes the ability to manifest, re-create, transform, and bring life.
Defined this way, power is important to anyone. Everyone needs power to fulfill the purposes of their life and the values they hold.
Power is a necessity for the purpose for which Emissaries of Divine Light was formed—the spiritual regeneration of humanity under the inspiration of the Spirit of God. It is a noble purpose. But it cannot be fulfilled without power.
We all have some degree of power—some measure of the ability to create, and in this context, to fulfill divine purpose. So, I could exhort you to use the power you have to do that. There might be some value to that, because most people have unrealized power lying around on the shelf as unfulfilled potential. Sometimes someone can help us wake up to that fact, bringing the imperative to get ‘er done. Avail yourself of the way you are already equipped to create in your life. This is the bungee jump approach to life. And to a point, it can work.
However, this approach only goes so far. What if a person has a limited present power to get ‘er done? In some way, we are all in that position. We don’t yet have the reserves needed to create all that we have to create in our lives. We have enough to do something now. But shouldn’t our reservoir increase over time?
It is like money in the bank. Hopefully, we have enough to take care of the needs of today. But we might have more deposits to make to be prepared for the needs of the future. There is an equivalent of this process in the rest of our lives, and related to our use of power.
There are all kinds of ways we build our reservoir of power. There is rest, recreation, exercise, a healthy diet, and much more. Our prayer life, our worship, our gratitude, and praise are potent ways to do that. I’m not primarily speaking about organized religion. I am, first of all, speaking of our individual experience of participating in the Ascending Flame. But we can’t exclude what we do with other people in this regard. It builds power for a group of people when they participate in the Ascending Flame together.
As the Ascending Flame burns bright in a person’s life, their life experience ascends to higher levels. The essence of their life rises from the fire created by their passionate life experience, like the vapor rises from a burning candle.
The human heart is vital if a person is to participate in the Ascending Flame. Jesus spoke of the process this way in the Sermon on the Mount:
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
—Matthew 6:20, 21
Here is a description of what it takes to build the richness of the heaven of your Being. You have to value what is truly precious to you, and there has to be heart engagement.
Elsewhere, Jesus instructed his disciples on how to do this work:
Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.
—Luke 24:49
Endued. We don’t use that word very much, or the word tarry. To be endued is to be endowed. And to tarry is an Elizabethan English way of saying wait or stay.
What does Jerusalem symbolize here? Of course, Jerusalem was a real place, then and now. I stayed in the old city for a week, many years ago. It is surrounded by walls and smelly, and yet ancient and intriguing.
But Jerusalem also represents consciousness, and in this case, a high state of consciousness. Tarry in Jerusalem. Stay in a high place of consciousness. Spend time allowing your consciousness to live in a high place that is not all taken up with the everyday issues of the world in which you live—all the people, all the circumstances. Allow yourself to be in a place that is above all that, so that you may allow power to generate in your own life experience. Allow the Ascending Flame to burn inside as incense before the Most Holy. When a person does that, they are building a reservoir of holy power that is available in all the acts of Creation in which they participate.
In the Book of Revelation, John is instructed to write this:
I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed.
—Revelation 3:18
Here is a vivid portrayal of the necessity of building a reservoir of power. When we participate in the Ascending Flame, power rises through our human capacity.
How do you add to the reservoir in your own experience so that when you go to do something, you bring the power of Creation to a circumstance, you don’t find yourself spiritually bankrupt, and you have all that you need to bring to that situation? You have all the energy to move things, all the fire, and something more that we need to create—true intelligence that knows the pattern of Creation. We don’t need wildfires out of control in our lives. There are patterns of composure and wisdom as a creator that come when our heaven is full. This is what contains and directs the Descending Flame of Creation as it moves through a person.
I hope this Pulse of Spirit offers an inspiring spiritual message. But there’s something more that I am seeking to address here that is beyond inspiration and beyond an abstract discussion of spirituality. I am addressing something supremely practical. I believe each and every one of us needs this kind of power and intelligence in our lives to create. I know we need it here at Sunrise Ranch, where I live. We have a lot going on here. We need some power to get it done. And we certainly need a penetrating intelligence that knows how to direct that power.
The kind of power we’re talking about is holy power. The power of Creation is holy. Abiding in a high place, we are generating that power. This high place is a place of meditation, prayer, worship, and Attunement.
Shall we be in that place together? There is the city of Jerusalem for you, and there’s the city of Jerusalem for me. But then there is that city of Jerusalem that we share. It’s the opportunity to be in a high place of awareness together. Together, we can agree that all the petty things that tend to rule a human life are banned from this space. All the petty things between us are gone.
This place is reserved to allow us to know a state of consciousness together. That state of consciousness becomes a reservoir of collective power. It is a place where we experience a joined heart, so that when it’s time for there to be an intensification of the Descending Fire from us into the world, we are ready. We are prepared. We are equipped with the reservoir of power that we are sharing. And we can allow that to find expression in focused, practical ways, to create, transform, and make all things new.
This, which is symbolized by the city of Jerusalem, is our most precious resource. It is for an individual. If you strip an individual of that reservoir of power, what do they have? If you strip Sunrise Ranch or Emissaries of Divine Light of it, what do we have? Nothing, other than the opportunity to regenerate it. No, we’re here to be rich, to have money in the bank.
We have some literal money in the bank. But that’s the lesser part of all this. The greater part of it all is that we have a reservoir in the field of power. We share a full heaven, not heaven up there, but a heaven right here, known together.
We are in the process of allowing this Ascending Flame to burn in us. It burns because we turn to what we love, what we treasure, what has meaning and purpose for us. We turn to it. We praise it in ourselves and each other. I am not so much talking about external exclamations of praise. I am talking about our own reverence for life. I’m talking about our own revering of what has meaning to us and purpose, of what is beautiful and precious to us.
Ultimately, it is Being itself, the beingness of all things, the beingness within all people, so often forgotten. That beingness is precious.
As this is true for us collectively, there is a strengthening heaven. Just like money in the bank, it’s there to be used, but not all at once—thoughtfully. The reservoir that we share in our shared heaven is meant to come through us in Descending Fire so that we have authority in the world in which we live. We claim the right of authorship, which is the assumption of the role of the Creator in the field in which we operate. That authority in that role is meaningless without the Descending Flame, or without power behind it that we know and share.
As I began by saying, there is something individual about this. So, this is relevant for you and me in our individual lives. And there is our own individual city, our New Jerusalem, that we generate for ourselves. There is our own individual worship. However, there is not much of significance to what can be created as long as that’s all that’s going on.
Yes, we need that individual pool of potential power and the individual Ascending Flame, because none of the rest of it means anything unless that’s there. But we need more than that. To actually create what we’re here to create, we need a collective reservoir of power. We need to learn how to bring it all together into one place. We cannot be in collective spiritual poverty.
Here is how the prophet Malachi said it:
Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
—Malachi 3:10
People have their personal storehouses, and those are vital to our individual creativity. But that will not achieve the purposes that have brought us together. To do that, we have to have one storehouse of power that we all share, and which is available to us all. That collective storehouse powers the collective creativity to which we have committed ourselves. Without that, we lack collective power and have little ability to create in our shared field.
We have gathered together because we know better. We cannot do it that way. Yes, there is something individual, and we need to take responsibility for that. But we’re here for something bigger than that. We are playing for all the marbles. And if you want to play for all the marbles, you have got to bring the tithes into the collective storehouse. Give it all to Joseph, as it was said.
So, on this day, let our Ascending Flame burn bright. Let our collective reservoir be full so that we may bring the holy Descending Flame that transmutes, transforms, and makes all things new.
Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.
—Acts 1:8