The process of Creation transpires over time. And fulfillment is an experience that happens over time, or at least we can look at it that way. We could also look at fulfillment as an experience in the present moment because, after all, when else are you going to experience it? It is something that happens now or it doesn’t happen.
Many of us are familiar with the depiction of Creation in the shape of the torus. It is the shape of Creation. For those who haven’t seen it, it looks something like an energetic donut. Creation emerges from the center of the donut, moving out into the field of Creation. And then something is coming back around to the middle. The torus is the energetic picture of a man, or of a woman. It is the picture of an atom, the solar system, and galaxies. It is a picture of Creation.
The torus brings us to the ancient teaching of the One Law of Cause and Effect. Sometimes it’s referred to as the Law of Karma. Here are some quotations that address the Law of Cause and Effect. The first one is actually from Ecclesiastes:
Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days. (Ecclesiastes 11:1)
Some of us knew Dr. Bill Bahan. He had a comical way of fracturing biblical quotations. His saying was: “Cast your bread upon the water, and it comes back sandwiches.”
The tennis player Yannick Noah said:
I believe in Karma. If the good is sown, the good is collected. When positive things are made, that returns well.
Megan Fox says this:
I try to live with the idea that karma is a very real thing. So I put out what I want to get back.
Here’s another quote, from the author Sol Luckman:
Contrary to popular misconception, karma has nothing to do with punishment and reward. It exists as part of our holographic universe’s binary or dualistic operating system only to teach us responsibility for our creations—and all things we experience are our creations.
Edith Wharton said this:
People pay for what they do, and still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it simply: by the lives they lead.
In spiritual paths around the world, there is this teaching: As you sow, so shall you reap. It is a profound and ubiquitous spiritual teaching, and an ancient one.
Sometimes the Law of Cause and Effect is distorted by some idea of goodness. That distortion goes like this: If you are good, good things will happen to you. For those of us who have made some attempt to be good, how disappointing! It isn’t always very fruitful. You might be good in your own mind, doing the things that society or your parents might have told you are good. And then your life becomes meaningless, boring and confused.
What is truly good? Goodness is generative. It brings creativity and it yields abundance. That is the truly good. The truly good is purely creative energy.
In the context of Emissaries of Divine Light, before the ideas about the torus became popular, there was a related teaching of the flow of Creation depicted by the figure 8. The lower part of the figure 8 is a depiction of the torus. It shows what comes out from us and what returns to us. But there is the upper part of the figure 8. That is the part that goes into the Invisible. The teaching goes like this: We belong at the crossover point between the Invisible and the visible, right at that nexus point where the power of Creation comes out of the Invisible into the world. It comes down from God, out of heaven, out of the Invisible.
In my mind, I see a picture of us as human beings on the planet, in the midst of the visible world. As I look at nature it seems clear that the natural world has its own relationship with the Invisible. We have an opportunity to play a part in that, but as we witness nature, there it is: something constantly emerging out of the Invisible in the unfolding pattern of Creation. In the coming and going of the year and the seasons, we see that pattern being made manifest. Leaves emerge on the trees, and then the life within them goes back to whence it came. The whole natural world is participating in this process.
Where are we, as human beings, in the process of Creation? In my mind’s eye, I see us coming along as observers of nature. If you picture Creation as a figure 8, there is nature doing its thing, relating to the invisible patterns of Creation. We come along, outside of this pattern, and say, “We would like it to be this way.” And so we bend the process of Creation to our will.
Standing outside the crossover point of the figure 8, we mess with the natural processes of Creation. I think most of us live in the faith that Mother Earth knows what she’s doing, and she knows how to handle herself. As the bumper sticker with the whale says, “Save the humans.” In the end, it is actually us who are putting ourselves at risk in that whole process, while causing havoc in the creative field in which we live while we do it.
What would it mean for us, as human beings, to stand at the crossover point? That implies that we are not just imposing our good intentions and ideas on our creative field that is represented by the lower part of the figure 8.
To pretend that we’re going to experience fulfillment by standing at that point within the torus, just looking out at the manifest world and deciding what we think it ought to be, is ultimately the great disappointment. My experience is that it’s a recipe for unhappiness, because what else would you do in that position than attempt to bend Creation to your will? Of course, it’s a good will.
In Brazil, a far-right candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, swept the recent presidential election. Christian Poirier, the program director of Amazon Watch, commented on the election results:
His reckless plans to industrialize the Amazon in concert with Brazilian and international agribusiness and mining sectors will bring untold destruction to the planet’s largest rainforest and the communities who call it home and spell disaster for the global climate.
To Bolsonaro and the Brazilians who voted for him, it would be good to develop the resources of the Amazon for the people of Brazil. But without being in touch with the pattern of Creation that’s within all things and within us, we lack wisdom in our movement in the world as individuals, as a culture, and then as a race. We ruin our creative field, which is ultimately our own undoing.
At this time of year, as we move into Thanksgiving and the winter holidays, there is a particular opportunity to find our place, first of all—not in the outer manifest world but relative to the Invisible and the Infinite that is inside us, above us, and within all things. It is an opportunity to come home in that sense. We are made to live at the crossover point of the figure 8, so it’s not as if we can escape the manifest world into the Invisible. I suppose there are cycles in our life where one or the other tends to emphasize itself to us. But certainly it’s impossible to find a sense of home, a sense of rationality even, in the world in which we live if we exclude our sense of relationship to the Invisible.
For any of us who stop long enough, becoming still enough and open enough, we find there is something there for us in the Unseen. It may be invisible, but it’s not blank, and it’s not nothing. There is the reality of Being, in the Invisible. And in fact, that is where Being is. Opening up to that within ourselves, we are at the same time opening up to the Beingness of one another. We are touching all of Being—the Being of all people, the Beingness of the manifest and the unmanifest, the Beingness of this world and of this earth. A person becomes wise when they are relating in that way, and there is the possibility of fulfillment.
Fulfillment is, in any moment, standing at the crossover point, between the two circles of the figure 8. It is being there and allowing to pour forth from oneself the forces of Creation that naturally come through us as human beings. It is allowing those forces to come into consciousness and through consciousness into the world, creating a world—our Creation. And it is being there and receiving what comes back out of the world with gratitude, from the perspective of the crossover point, lifting up what comes to us.
In the fulfillment of Creation possible to anyone, they realize that while their own nourishment is being provided for, what comes to us is for the all of Being. What comes is lifted up in puja and in worship.
I know that some of what comes to me is meant for my personal nourishment—spiritually, emotionally, mentally and physically. But far more is meant for the field in which I serve—for the entire flow of Creation. And so I offer it up to the creative powers that are bigger than me, for creative use. And so it is when we’re standing at the crossover point with all things that come to us. That is fulfillment. Fulfillment is not dictating how our needs are to be met or what should happen in our world. It is simply bringing the creativity that is in our heart to bring, that is pregnant within us and within all of Being, and then using all things to feed the flow of Creation.
This teaching of karma can go so wrong. Getting some glimpse of how all this works, people can get into spiritual engineering: How to make a million dollars with our spirituality. Eek! How to tweak what you are expressing into the world so that it will make money, make you satisfied and happy, bring you fame and fortune. I’d rather be a pauper. We are meant to know fulfillment, but on Love’s own terms, on reality’s own terms, not our own.
This was Uranda’s beautiful statement on the Law of Karma:
Let love radiate without concern for results.
Fulfillment involves results; it involves manifestation. And we’d have to be a fool not to be aware that what manifests in the world has a relationship to what we radiate. But what Uranda was calling for was an innocence of heart in the process, so that our fidelity with the Invisible can be total and unrestrained; so that our openness to what truly wants to be born can be total. We are not sitting there trying to engineer our love so that it’s making us money or bringing us the results that we want.
I’m just open, I’m just passionate, I’m just responsive. I’m just giving myself to what has ultimate value. I’m giving myself as an instrument of expression of that, in service to it, with the aim that the way that it comes through me is as clear and transparent and as powerful and potent as it is meant to be, as fertile as it is meant to be, as loving as it is meant to be, on its own terms—not trying to extract the resources of my own personal Amazon River, whatever that might be.
Fulfillment is found in the willingness to be consistently present at the crossover point, in the now, letting the stream of Creation flow more and more powerfully. It is doing that together with others at the crossover point. I want to be there with you. That’s fulfillment. Does it have practical results? Yes, of course. This is the process that created the world, after all.
I love this quote from Isaiah on fulfillment and the Law of Karma. It is among the most profound and beautiful poetry in all of sacred scripture.
For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater:
So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.
For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
(Isaiah 55:10-12)
Spiritual Practice
This week, through the day, bring yourself back to an experience of relationship to the Invisible with this simple thought: “The fact that I am alive is proof of how much I am loved.”