Give Them Back Their Name

MARIA ZAYAS is a teacher and counselor of the heart and soul. She helps people gain insight that leads to an experience of liberation and fulfillment.

Good to be with all of you here in this new year to hear the music and the words that remind us that there’s always a new day and there are new opportunities in every moment.

Every moment is new, and yet there are familiar aspects that we often share as human beings. At times, we may feel disconnected, fragmented, unseen. We are cells in one body, and yet, no matter how hard we try, we do not always feel as one.

With each new day, there is a new message of hope, divine guidance, and instruction that is available to us. There is a divine message for each one of us to hear and to speak into our world as only we uniquely can do. And we don’t always know who will hear that message. We may speak it to our neighbor, and yet it may not be heard by our neighbor. But it may be heard vibrationally by someone somewhere else on the planet.

It doesn’t matter who we think we are speaking to. What matters is that we speak, that we live the truth of our lives, the divineness of our life to the best of our ability, to the best of our hearing and resonating with the tone of the spirit of Love and Truth and Life.

In that way, we are all responsible for the whole, and we are all responsible for one another. We are our brother’s keepers. What we do matters. It matters not only for our own unfolding but for the unfolding of the entire body of God in the Earth.

As much as we might long to fulfill that responsibility and bring healing and serve our brothers and sisters, we often also have a sense of feeling disconnected and fragmented, unable to complete that process, resulting in feeling as if we are carrying the weight of the world upon our shoulders. In truth, we are not disconnected; in truth, we are one. But, to the degree that we are unaware of that, the world can feel very heavy.

Yet, there is provision from above that brings lightness and healing to ourselves and the world around us. The provision is given to each one in our own language. My language is different than any one of your languages, no matter what earthly language we speak. We have different tones and symbols and musical qualities to our inner vibrational voice, and to our outer vibrational voice. Isn’t that the wonder of being a cell in the body of God? That all of our voices together create the music of the spheres, which brings wholeness and healing to the nations.

In the spirit of recognizing the worth and the value and the necessity of each one of us sharing in our own voice the unique message that we receive from above, I’d like to share with you something that occurred recently in my own life. I will tell it in my own language, which may resonate with you or not. But, in any case, we know that the Word goes out and finds those whom it needs to find.

Here is what I heard when I prayed for vision and wisdom regarding the sense of carrying the world on my shoulders. I was shown something that was being held somewhere in my energetic body. It was a vision of a prison in Ireland, seemingly centuries ago. I could see ten or twelve individuals, all dressed in black, mourning, crying, screaming in agony. They were being held prisoner and were not being treated well.

I wondered why I was being shown this and what it had to do with me. I was told that we each have a unique responsibility for bringing healing and forgiveness to whatever comes to us in our field, even if it does not appear to make sense. I asked, “What must I do?” And I was told that I must give them back their names, each one, and I must write down all of their names.

I thought about the passage in Revelation about one’s name being written into the Book of Life. I understood that there is something that each one of us must do for another that we cannot do for ourselves. We cannot bring restitution to our own self. We are our brother’s keeper and must bring restitution and recognize the divine name for one another.

What a huge responsibility! And yet it feels so natural that we are, in fact, truly responsible for bringing the fullness of our being to the restitution of the knowing of the divineness of others, whether we know them personally or not. Whether we understand what is being asked of us or not, our job is the same: to speak our true Divine Self, and in so doing, to assume the responsibility for restoring dignity, honor, and truth to all beings who come before us.

There is much for each one of us to know about how that responsibility works out in ourselves and how it not only frees those whose names we restore, but also frees our own selves. It removes the darkness and the heaviness of the weight of the world from our shoulders. Not only do we keep our brothers and sisters, but that act frees us, our own self. As long as one of us is not free, none of us can be free.

It is our daily, momentary responsibility to offer the light, to offer the knowing of that reality, to write one another’s names into the Book of Life, because we cannot do it for ourselves. It simply doesn’t work that way. It is not the design. It is not the law.

So, may this teaching, this guidance that has been shared with me and that I share with you now in the spirit of knowing the uniqueness of self, travel through the vibrational realms and reach all of those for whom it is intended. And so, may the same be true of each one of you who speaks the word of the Lord through your own unique voice. Let that reach all of those for whom it is intended. And as we all speak together in a choir of truth and love, we become the one body, we become free, and we become Light and all is well. With that, I turn it over to you, David.

Maria Zayas
mzayas@emnet.org
Dahlonega, Georgia
Posted on January 8, 2026

DAVID KARCHERE is a speaker and workshop leader who assists people to renew their Primal Spirituality—an experience that virtually all human beings know at birth, and that ideally grows as they mature.

There is a phrase that comes to mind: By the power of our Word. Or perhaps more accurately, By the power of the Word, the Word that comes through us. We have the ability to bring the restoration of oneness, born out of Love, all by the power of the Word, which must become the power of our Word.

I was thinking about the matter of being given our name. We’ve all got names of some sort. But we are speaking of something deeper here.

In cultures around the world—in modern, ancient, and indigenous cultures—there are naming rituals, sometimes at birth, and sometimes as a person reaches young adulthood. Church traditions have christening and confirmation ceremonies. Native Americans returning from vision quests receive new names. And so it is in many cultures around the world.

In contemporary culture, including the culture of Sunrise Ranch and Emissaries of Divine Light, people sometimes come to a point of dissatisfaction with their given name and adopt a new one. At Sunrise Ranch, people come to participate in our internship program. We who live here attempt to remember their names. A few weeks roll by, and then we find out they want to be known by a new name. But we were just getting to know you by your given name!

Both of the founding leaders of Emissaries of Divine Light adopted new names. Lloyd Arthur Meeker became Uranda after his awakening experience in 1932. Martin Cecil became Martin Exeter after he joined the House of Lords as the 7^th Marquess of Exeter.

We ourselves could adopt a new name, as many people do. Does that address the deeper matter that Maria so powerfully introduced? Perhaps it could. But still, what does it mean to be truly given back our name?

Many of us have had such an experience, though you might not have called it that. Hearing Maria’s vision, I recall how it happened for me. I have always been reasonably satisfied with my first name, David, so I haven’t felt a need to change my name in that sense. But I met someone who gave me back my name. Along with that comes many things: the knowing of who you are, forgiveness for any way you haven’t lived up to who you are, and a natural pride.

Being given back your name is such a powerful act. We could think of the acts of healing, inspiring, teaching, and forgiving. Those are all powerful acts too. But is there anything more central, anything more pivotal than one’s name—one’s identity? Is there a more powerful act than to give someone back their name? Not a name that you have in mind for them. This is giving them back their awareness of who they are and consciously including them in the Book of Life, as the Apostle John so beautifully spoke of in Revelation.

They go together, don’t they? Our name is not just an individual thing. It is that and the uniqueness of who we are. But that uniqueness has its place in the wholeness of things. We are a member of a divine community, spoken of as the Book of Life.

We could think of that in terms of the Transcendent—a reality that reaches beyond space and time. But I think of it very specifically as a body of awake individuals on Earth who have come to the awareness that they are each a child of the universe, that they are a son or daughter of God and belong in the body of the sons and daughters of God.

That does not wipe out the uniqueness of the individual. But our uniqueness has a place in a body of awakened individuals. That may sound extraordinary. In many places, I would be looked at strangely if I spoke of such things. And yet, perhaps we have the sense that it is what we are made to be as the body of humanity. We are built collectively to be a spiritually awake body that is aware that we are children of the universe. We are the body of the sons and daughters of the Creator. That is our intrinsic state. And yet, in the world in which we live, the experience of it is rare enough that if you talk about it, it might come off as something you are promoting, as if it were a product of human imagination.

When you are given back your name, you are aware that you are being given something that is both vividly present—it is a current experience—and also a reality that has the resonance of the Eternal. It is both ancient and what is yet to come. It has the resonance of eternal permanence.

From the perspective of culture, we might like to contradict Maria when she said that it has to be given by somebody. Oh, no, I can do it for myself. I can find who I am for myself. That is a very entrepreneurial, American attitude. But is that how it happens for real?

Certainly, there are things for us to do individually when it comes to knowing ourselves and being true to ourselves. We have individual responsibility in the matter. But there is something to be received from someone who knows who they are and knows that they, themselves, are written into the Book of Life. Such a person has the power to give someone else back their name.

If this is true, what is the take-home message? First of all, if you have not come to the place of being open to being given back your name, go to that place and receive it. Do not be too proud to receive it from another person, knowing that in the end it is your name. There is a gift to be given by another person. Do not be too proud to receive that gift.

And if you have been given back your name, don’t forget it. Stay conscious. Know who you are. Be who you are. Know that you have thereby been empowered to give another person back their name. And don’t fail to do it.

If we truly enter this experience, there is so much that comes along with it. Does healing not come with this experience? The heart of healing comes as we know who we are, as we’re given back our name. Does not forgiveness come with it? The weight of shame is lifted when we are given back our name.

Knowing your name is the kernel of knowledge upon which all knowledge must be built. What is any body of knowledge that does not have at its root a knowing of who we each are as a human being and who we are as humankind? This is the core of knowledge. All other knowledge has to be connected to that, does it not? And if we have so-called knowledge that does not have its root in a knowing of who we are as an individual and who we are together, that becomes dangerous.

The most central piece of knowledge comes with being given back our name and written into the Book of Life. The Book of Life has to do with the body of the sons and daughters of the Creator, the body of the living. By the power of our Word, we bring this knowledge and remembrance.

There are those over the millennia who have performed this function. At Christmas time, we celebrate Jesus of Nazareth. Uranda had inherited the power to give people back their names. And Martin Cecil certainly had that power, and many of us could attest to that.

Do we need another Jesus? Do we need another Uranda or another Martin? In one sense, it is ridiculous to think that someone is going to be another Jesus. Anyone I have met who thought that was going on for them seemed ridiculous. I cannot imagine someone being another Uranda or another Martin. So, in one sense, that thought is silly, and even ugly. For each of us, the world needs us as a unique individual. The world needs us knowing who we are and being who we are with the power and authority of who we are as a Creator Being who knows their name. And yet, while we could say that Jesus was a one of a kind, as I was pointing out in last week’s Pulse of Spirit, He was not a one-and-only. He was one of a kind.

He was not a one-and-only in the sense that there was something that was happening for him that is needed in the world, whether or not he, himself, is here in person. We could say the same of Uranda or Martin. They were one of a kind, but not a one-and-only.

We need people on Earth today who can give humanity back its name. In that sense, we need another Jesus, another Uranda, or another Martin.

Jesus made the statement, I am the vine, and you are the branches. His metaphor paints a simple picture. There is something central that he brought—the vine. It is who we are—it is our name. And it is the Spirit of Love that emanates from the inner reality of who we are. That is the vine. Jesus identified himself with that reality. More than that, he embodied it as a human being on Earth.

Humanity needs people on Earth today who know that vine for themselves—who live, embody, and express it. We don’t need another Jesus, but we need a vine—people who are the vine in living expression, who carry the experience of what is most central to us as humankind. If we do not find that, we will find a lot of other things that are not central to who we are, which are diversions and distractions. We seem to be very busy about doing those tangent patterns as humankind.

There is something central to the human experience. Not everybody is called to know that, be that, live it, and embody it consciously. But if we are, let us not be shy about the matter.

The vine is what has the power to give humankind back its name. When the vine is activated through people, those people carry that power. They give people back their names and write them into the Book of Life.

Let us do this. Let us be the vine, making no claims for ourselves. Let’s just be the reality of it.

Let us allow ourselves to be given back our names. And then let’s not be shy about owning who we are with pride, strength, and power. And by the power of the Word—the power of our Word—we bring that reality to people.