Focus, Velocity, and Spiritual Penetration

It is good to be together today, and to see old friends and new. Good to have Canada in the house, online. And good to be in Australia and to have this experience of sacred hospitality, an experience of entertaining the beingness of others. I certainly feel there is sacred hospitality offered to Keahi Ewa and me as visitors. Thank you, thank you.

Last night, some of us had a chance to go to the Kingsford Hotel in Gawler to watch the Australian Football League festival game that was on the telly. Andrew Horwood’s team won, much to James Swatman’s chagrin.

It was fun to be part of the scene in Gawler, which is the oldest inland town in South Australia. After the football game, we joined the karaoke going on in the other part of the pub, and Cheyne Morris, Keahi, and I rocked the house. It was all kinds of fun and a great way to be in Australia and mix it up with people here.

I got a lesson in Australian football from James. It is very different from American football, with 18 players on a side. They play in an oval instead of a rectangle. What’s that all about? And there are no helmets or pads.

There were close to 50,000 in the stadium watching the game, and another half a million watched on television. Some of the stadiums in America for college football and professional football go up to 80,000 and even 100,000 people in the stadium, and then millions online, especially for the Super Bowl, with people all over the world watching.

Here we are in this beautiful sanctuary at Riverdell. There must be about 20 of us in the room here and 15 stations online. Where are those 50,000 people?

I enjoy American football, and I loved being introduced to Australian football and educated in it by James. It’s enjoyable. Is it of world importance that there were 50,000 people in the stadium last night? I hope it was enjoyable for all the people who attended, and those who played, and all the others who viewed online. But I don’t think we imagine it is bringing an answer to the issues in the world today.

They say that one with God is the majority, meaning it’s not about the numbers, whatever it is. What we are doing, and the rightness of it, is about something else. It is about an inner significance that we tap into that we understand is real and important. That is what is happening here today among us.

In an increasingly secularized world, things that have a hint of religion are shunned by many. And yet we acknowledge that in the space occupied by religious faiths and spiritual practices is the spiritual nature of a human being.

The religions of the world have had a tendency to claim authority over that space. We are the experts on your spiritual life. We’re going to tell you how it goes. We’re going to tell you how to behave in this space. We’re going to tell you what’s real. We’re going to tell you what’s not real. We’re going to tell you who you are. And often not in a good way.

Religion has occupied that space and sometimes in ways that give religion itself a bad name. In many countries, with the secularization of society, people are leaving the church, synagogue, or temple. But also, most unfortunately, religion has given the space itself a bad name, as if the spiritual nature of self is something to be shunned and avoided.

This is especially true for younger generations of people. That’s problematic, it seems to me. Participation in a spiritual community is associated with higher levels of physical and mental health, a sense of life purpose, and a feeling of belonging. And if the answer to the issues faced by humanity is to come through the spiritual nature of a person being revitalized, reborn, awakened, and yet there’s an avoidance pattern, what do we do?

The first matter is for us to be clear on what we are called to know for ourselves in our own life. And then, in that calling, there is something to bring to the world, and to share at the micro level of our lives and in every human exchange.

There is sacred hospitality to be shared and something to be conveyed of a spiritual nature. That’s not about preaching. It’s not about belief. It’s not about dogma. But there is this nature to us that is not just physical, not just mental, and not even just emotional. There is a dimension to ourselves that is an expression of Being itself.

We might think of the vastness of Being, which is the vastness of the family of God, by whatever name. In the book The Physics of Angels: Exploring the Realm Where Science and Spirit Meet, Rupert Sheldrake notes how in ancient times the heavens were viewed as full of Being.

If you look up at the night sky, you are not just seeing dust; you are not just seeing the energy of stars. You are not just witnessing matter, energy, and the emptiness of space. You are witnessing something that is alive. You are witnessing evidence of the vastness of Being.

In this increasingly secularized world, space has become dead to the modern mind. It has become just matter, energy, and empty space. Not Being, and not alive.

In our healing chant session the other day, I spoke of the term child of the universe, a seemingly whimsical phrase. It is said in Desiderata, “You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars.” While it might seem whimsical, it is literally true. We were born out of the universal whole. As Joni Mitchell says, We are stardust. We are made out of the same stuff as the stars, somehow configured here in our bodies as a human being.

We are also born out of the beingness of the stars. We are part of the Family of Being that inhabits this planet. Somehow that has become cut off in consciousness so that the vastness of Being seems to be just matter, energy, and the emptiness of space. That is different than being alive.

There is the vastness of Being. And there is the nearness of Being.

God is not only beyond us in the vast reaches of Creation. God is near. Near to you. Near to me.

There is the nearness of God for every person. In the wonder of a spiritual life well lived, we find that we can turn to that nearness. Its Presence is there for us. We are loved by it. We are loved by Him. We are loved by Her.

And then there is a further wonder: Immanuel. God with us.

In Jesus, this was not only taught. It was embodied. He was a living embodiment of God with us.

And we are devoted, as Emissaries of Divine Light, not merely to seek God to be with us, but to become a living expression of God with us. To know the nearness and the vastness of God so deeply in and through ourselves that the Presence of the Holy Spirit is embodied in the human experience.

We become an expression of Immanuel, God with us.

We become the Presence of the Holy Spirit at work in the human experience.

This is our calling.

And when Immanuel is embodied in human life, it does not remain private. It moves into the field of consciousness we share. It enters the field of human culture.

It moves through consciousness.

And it moves through energy.

This is not only personal. It has consequences in the field we share. We have come to call that the Creative Field. And for those who feel called to participate in that field consciously and creatively, the Creative Field Project is an opportunity to do so together.

The Creative Field Project makes this experience real. Usually when people sign up, they scratch their heads and ask, What is that? What is a Creative Field? Sounds very amorphous. The term recognizes that we share a field of consciousness and energy. You could call it a spiritual field.

It is a field that creates the ground for the human experience individually. Collectively, we call it culture. The ground of culture is this spiritual field, and culture is conforming to that field.

So whatever is happening in this spiritual nature that we possess as human beings, whether it is self-centeredness, greed, and fear, and all the rest of that, or whether it is God with us in expression in that field—the culture conforms to it.

And you can try to change culture, and you can try to change your life. But if the creative field behind it does not change, everything reverts back to that unregenerate field because it is the causative factor in human experience.

We are becoming conscious of this field of consciousness in our life and our work together. And energy is linked to consciousness. So we find the magic of our capacity in consciousness to be masters over the movement of energy.

It’s happening unconsciously all the time anyway. If you have a low level of consciousness, you are going to have a low level of energy. If you raise the level of consciousness, you raise the level of energy that you are experiencing. And this applies not only to you as an individual, but to any group of people. If you become aware of the field of consciousness that we share and you participate in shifts in that consciousness, the energy of that field is changing. That is what we are doing here together this morning. If anything substantial is happening, it is because shifts are happening in our consciousness. Something is moving in consciousness, and with it there is energetic movement in the vibrational field we share.

That is the particular responsibility of somebody who brings it to focus at the front of the room. If there is dull consciousness here, we are all probably living in dullsville. There is no inspiration, motivation, or activation. But if something is brought to focus that is an enlightened awareness of Being, then something alive begins to move.

I am thinking of several qualities of consciousness, and therefore energy, that are important in this work. They are certainly important in a service such as this, but also important in all of life.

The first one is focus. Something has to come to focus in consciousness. If consciousness is foggy and spread out all over the place, nothing much is going to happen. An awareness of Presence has to come to focus in a person’s consciousness. And if that happens, then something begins to move energetically, and you have a quality that is important for fulfillment and manifestation in the field we share—velocity. There begins to be a velocity to the movement of energy. And we need velocity in life. It can’t forever be slowsville. There has to be some activated moving energy with velocity, and with velocity comes power.

When you have focus and velocity, a third thing can begin to happen—spiritual penetration. The movement of Spirit penetrates the experience of all of us in this field. We are being penetrated by spiritual energy, and it’s beautiful. It’s activating, uplifting, and enlightening.

We are here to let that happen.

We are having the experience of this in the midst of an increasingly secular world in which religion tends to claim ownership of the spiritual dimension of our human experience. But now, the spirit of the Creator is overtaking us and urging us to take ownership of this vital field. Responding to that urge, we become masterful. We bring the authority of our creatorship to our creative field.