I’m curious if you have had a childhood experience of a spiritual world that is relevant for you today. I just recently recalled such an experience in my life.
The realization I had long ago was the simplest of things, yet profound for me as a boy of about nine years old. I am alive. I remember going to my older sister and exclaiming, “Martha, Martha, we’re alive—we’re alive!” What I was trying to say was not just that we breathed and moved. More than that, it was that we exist.
With the awareness of being alive came an awareness of a reality of Being. From that perspective, it seemed to my childhood consciousness that I lived in an adult world that was antithetical to Being—that the adult world excluded this awareness and therefore dealt in untruth.
Did you ever experience anything like that as a child?
We just completed a five-and-a-half-day Servers Council at Sunrise Ranch. This was an annual opportunity for servant leaders of Emissaries of Divine Light to gather in person, with some online. During the Council, we each took a walk to contemplate our spiritual journey. As I strolled through the valley, I realized how this awareness that came to me as a child has been with me throughout my life. There is the reality of Being that I innately, intuitively know, and which, I believe, all people know in some part of themselves, even if it doesn’t surface to the level of conscious awareness for them as an adult. And then there is the world in which we live, which so often seems antithetical to that.
People tend to get caught up in the “adult” world. Or perhaps they fight it as best they can. But being against the world as it has become doesn’t ensure that a person will embrace an experience of Being. For myself, I notice that throughout my life I’ve been confronted with a human culture that ignores what is primal in our experience—the fact that we are alive, that we exist.
Martin Cecil gave a talk in 1986 entitled “The Powerless Conspiracy.” He spoke of what I saw as an adult conspiracy. Of course, we don’t think of it in those terms now, because we are adults, and perhaps have become part of the conspiracy. Martin says that it is a conspiracy to control the human world in a way that excludes Being.
To put it simply, the conspiracy is a denial of Being, a reality that is so innate, so intrinsic, and so obvious, that sometimes, as adults, we lose awareness of it. We look right past it. And so we end up not being in our own Being, not knowing our own Being, or knowing the Being of others. We can get sucked into the powerless conspiracy.
And why is it powerless? Conspiracies can look all-powerful. They are thought to manipulate governments, rule financial markets, and control the media. And sometimes they do. So why are they powerless? Because in the end, God wins. Humanity is not going to defeat the powers of the universe that are at work here. We are not going to overcome the powers of Mother Earth. We might be able to put Her through something, but who’s going to get the worst of that? I don’t think Mother Earth minds a hurricane or two. But recent hurricanes have had a profound impact on us as human beings. The conspiracy is ultimately powerless.
An ancient Hermetic teaching has come down to us as, As above, so below. It is the realm of Being that is above the everyday human world. The child innately knows that what is above penetrates what is below. The powerless conspiracy is to ignore what is above and attempt to wrestle the human world into patterns of its own devising. It’s a conspiracy born of forgetting and ignorance.
It is difficult to describe the conspiracy to people in a way that makes sense to them. How do you talk about matters that are so intrinsic to us all as Being, but which we have lost awareness of?
We live in a world of things—nouns. We have physical bodies and we live in a manifest world. What is largely forgotten by humankind is that there is another dimension to that world, the world of Being. That dimension is the source of what activates the world of form, including our own human form. That’s why what we see in physical form is not just a thing. It’s not just a noun. It’s a verb. It’s animated by the spirit of the Being who lives within it. Another person is not just a thing. There is an adult tendency to objectify others. It’s hideous because people are not just objects. They are Beings, whether they know it or not.
If you try to talk about something that is intrinsic to who we are, but ignored, you can end up sounding weird. You might give names to it, like the Higher Self, the Angel, or the Wonderful One Within. Perhaps those names evoke a reawakening to a reality the person was ignoring. Or a person might think you are making up a fantasy that you are suggesting they attach to their “real” experience of everyday life.
What the young child knows is a realm of Being that is an intrinsic dimension of the way things are. As we mature, we have the opportunity to let that realm of Reality have more and more relevance to the human world in which we live. All too often, it has less and less relevance, until it is largely forgotten.
If I could say something back to my nine-year-old self, I’d tell him, You got this, dude. It’s true! You are alive. Never forget, no matter how much ignorance you face in the world around you.
We are meant to be a portal between the world of Being and the world of becoming. The world of Being is sometimes called heaven. That could evoke images of clouds and harps. But heaven is simply the realm of Being, where the source of Creation lives. Being is the source of Creation, which is why we sometimes refer to it as the Creator. Being gives birth to the physical world. It gives birth to the human being. That’s what’s happening right now for you and for me. Remember?
We are designed as a door between what is above and what is below. In last week’s Pulse of Spirit, I quoted from Bob Dylan’s song “The Times They Are A-Changin’.”
Don’t stand in the doorway.
Don’t block up the hall.
Essentially, that’s what human beings do. They mill around the doorway without realizing that it’s meant to be opened. It’s there so that we may enter into an awareness of the realm of Being. And when the door is opened, the presence, wisdom, and power of Being can pour through it into the world in which we live.
That short description encapsulates pretty much everything that’s important in a human life, it seems to me.
This is what an authentic Emissary of Divine Light is knowing and allowing to happen. They are an open doorway between the realm of Being and the realm of becoming. What follows is a poetic description of this, intended to convey the reality of it in symbol. The symbology is not meant to assign gender roles related to the human world. It is intended to portray spiritual experience.
Imagine the gates of heaven. This is the passageway between what is above and what is below. Standing at each side of the gate is a cherub, one male and one female. The male is ushering light from above through the gates. He is lit up with that light from behind him and it is streaming through him into the world.
The female is receiving what is ascending from below through the gates and into the realm of Being. She is receiving the hearts of people and the essences of all Creation that are called to join with the reality of Being.
Those two cherubim are us. They are any one of us, or any two of us. They are all of us who are authentically Emissaries of Divine Light together. We stand at the gateway between heaven and earth.
There’s a higher wisdom that establishes the unfolding nature of the emanation that appears through the gateway. It is not established by human determination. It is established in Being.
There is also a higher wisdom that determines what is drawn to the gateway and what may pass through it. Only what belongs in the realm of Being may ascend through the gateway. This is not established by human judgment, prejudice, or bias. Only the cherub knows. Only Being knows. When the way we receive our world and the people of it is subject to the determinations of our human mind on its own, we are standing in the doorway and blocking the halls of heaven.
And so, my friend, if these words stir a memory in you, reminding you of who you are and why you are here, let us stand together at the gateway of Being. Let us remember we are the cherubs at the gate who bring light from the heaven of Being into the world, and who invite the people of the world to return to the knowledge and experience of Being.