Fresh Thinking, Inspiration, and Vision on the Process of Spiritual Transformation

I am honored to be here before you this morning, following my three beautiful sisters who spoke in this place last week—Sara Puharich and Susan Noyes and Jane Anetrini. I must say I was deeply moved by what they brought to us. I was awed by the power, the magnificence and the refreshing essences that they brought. I experienced something exhilarating coming through each of them. So my personal watchword for the week has been “exhilarating.” How about you? Have YOU had an exhilarating experience this week? I realized, through the pleasure evoked by witnessing these friends last week, that I want to live in that exhilarating energy more fully in my life. That IS the spirit of life. If I’m not having that kind of experience, what am I doing? What have I forgotten about who I am and why I’m here?

And I DO forget, sometimes. I become a little too involved in my humanity. Lately we’ve been talking about blessing and appreciating our humanity. This morning I’d like to continue appreciating my humanity and yet focus on an appreciation and a celebration of my divinity, as well. After all, the reason for the existence of our humanity is so that our divinity can come into the world and be known. Our humanity is the only means we have to make visible the unique heavenly gifts we each bring to share with the world.

Last week Susan offered a poem, which I found very beautiful. And I wanted to share one particular verse in it with you today. When I received a copy of the poem from her, last night, I discovered that there was also a prelude to it, which I thought was quite profound. So I’ll share the prelude with you first, and then the verse. The prelude said: “Many of us merely exist and think that we live. What we should regain at all costs is the freshness and intensity of being.”

Without the freshness and intensity of being, what’s the point? It seems to me that would be no fun at all! And here is the last line of the poem, which to me gave the instruction, or the indication, of how that freshness and intensity of our being is known. It says:

So there seems to be something significant about having a memory, a consciousness, of “whence we came.”

Back in 1974, I picked up a continuing education catalog from a local community college. I was looking for a crafts course or something, and I came across an ad for a class called the “Art of Living.” The ad said: “Who are you? Where did you come from? And why are you here? For those not seeking vague philosophical answers, this is the class for you.” I thought, “That sounds intriguing! I’d like to know who I am, where I came from, and why I’m here.” So I enrolled in the class. And it took me a while to connect the dots. It didn’t land immediately, because I guess I didn’t have a very strong experience of a connection with the memory of who I am, just yet. But taking that class did initiate a process of learning more about my true origins—at least in theory.

Today, some 34 years later, my interest in the deepest reality of my identity is still vividly present with me: Who am I? Where did I come from? Where AM I coming from? And why am I here? I find that I need to answer those questions every day, every moment. And if I’m not giving the right answer in my daily living, I simply do not have the refreshing and intense experience of my being. The way that I have come to understand this for myself is that I need to remember that I am an incarnate angel. There is an angelic memory that I can know and that we all can touch directly in our lives. In fact, we’ve already had the opportunity to touch it this morning, both personally and all together.

I would call this experience of touching the freshness and intensity of our divine being “vertical memory.” And vertical memory is different from historical memory. Historical memory relates to all the things that happened in the past and, based upon what happened in the past, what might happen in the future—trying to work it out so that what happened in the past that we didn’t like won’t happen in the future, and what happened in the past that we did like WILL happen in the future. But that’s never the place of fulfillment.

There’s a different kind of memory that’s connected to “now.” I believe that’s why it’s so popular these days to talk about living in the present moment, because that’s where we’re connected to the vertical memory of who we really are—the flame of our being, the passion of our being, the purpose of our being. I may have made all kinds of mistakes in the more distant past, or even a moment ago. But if I reconnect to the vertical memory of who I am NOW, in this moment, the past is beside the point. I can be engaged with the reality that is my real nature, that is my eternal nature, right now, no matter what has happened in the past. To me, it’s a miracle that you can totally let go of anything in the past that didn’t belong in your expression, and you can be here, fresh and new, now. I have the chance RIGHT NOW to be myself, to be the magnificent person that I truly am at the core of my being.

And that’s a very passionate experience. I’ve known that experience over many years of my life, and in certain moments there has been a particular intensification of that flow of energy. In one such moment I wrote a poem that I would like to share with you now. It’s entitled “Remembrance,” and I think it has something to do with living in the flame of our being and remembering from whence we came. This poem includes my humanity, and I thought about taking some of it out because of that, but I decided that it’s all good. So I will read the whole poem, intact, as it was originally written.

That was an exhilarating experience! That poetic expression came from a real, living experience of heaven on earth, and because it is an expression of my true and eternal nature, it still speaks to my heart today. It speaks of a state of being, “from whence we have come,” and it speaks about what we have come to do together in this lifetime and what we have been doing together for eternity. We have sung pristine worlds into life. And we are here to sing a new pristine world to life in this world, on this planet, today. We have come to bring THIS dominion.

When we do that, we have a wonderful, exhilarating experience for ourselves, but it’s not meant for ourselves alone; it’s not only for the transformation of our personal human facilities and our own singular fulfillment. When we do it, we ignite something in others. And when we ignite something in others, they have a chance to remember who they are and from whence they came, and that we have something to do together to allow this world to be lifted up, to become the blazing, radiant revelation of heaven on earth that this planet and its inhabitants were always meant to be.

That is my dream. That is the reason why I continue to participate in the program known as Emissaries of Divine Light—that I might offer something to others, that they might also touch this memory, and that they might awaken more fully to what they already know and what they have actually known for eternity. That they might join together, as we join together this morning, to lighten the world, to stand in the flame of our being, to embrace one another, to dance together, and to remember who we are and why we have come.