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

There is a great tendency in our culture to attribute the cause of things to the world of space and time. It seems easier to believe that the causative factors in our life are things that happen away from us, as opposed to inside us, and in the past as opposed to the present. I’ll give you an example from the scientific world.

The most prevalent theory of Creation in the scientific world is the big bang theory. The theory proposes that the cause of everything dates back to a long, long time ago—about fourteen billion years. And it happened way, far away—that’s the space part. So there was a big bang, as the theory goes, that started everything off. And I’m not here to dispute or to speak in favor of the big bang. But I wonder if our inclination to believe that the cause of things is in the world of space and time, perhaps far removed from right here and now, is at play.

What if the beginning of things didn’t happen way, far away and a long, long time ago? What if the real “big bang” originates in a realm beyond space and time but is present within us and with all things, manifesting in the world of space and time?

I’d like to take another example of this tendency to think that the cause of things comes from the physical world. This relates to our own anatomy and physiology. Taking biology in college, a professor explained how the human body works. He carefully described how one thing causes another. He traced it back to the RNA and the DNA of the cell. Finally, the chain of events traced back to an event which cannot be explained. It seems that the nucleus of the cell simply decides to act. Isn’t that how it is with effects that are traceable to a cause in space and time? You can track it back so far, but you never reach the true point of origin, on that basis. If there was a big bang, what made that?

We come face-to-face with the reality that the universe is vibrating from the inside. Everything is moving. We’re very aware of our movements as human beings around the planet. It can tend to look like we’re the only things moving and everything else is staying still. The rocks seem to be staying still; the trees seem to be more or less standing still. For many people, they are far away enough from the animal kingdom that they are largely unaware of what’s happening in it. Of course, if you had time-lapse photography, you would notice that our whole world is moving, and so is the rest of the universe.

There is a vibration coming from inside all things, and there is a rhythm to it. The title of our “Slow Down” events suggests that we’ve been out of rhythm, that there is a frantic scurrying around for many people. It’s good to check on our own rhythm, to see if it is healthy or if it is out of sync and somehow vibrating us apart. We probably know that, with our cars, if there is a vibration that’s not supposed to be there, metal fatigue is likely to set in and some damage is going to occur. Are we that different?

There is a rhythm and a vibration that is natural and right for each of us. We are responsible for the attunement of our own human capacity with the inner rhythm of life that emanates from inside us.
We have been taking note of Masaru Emoto’s research on water. We are about seventy percent water, so it seems to be an important topic. Emoto found that thoughts and words have an impact on water. He took photographs of the molecular structure of water and what happens to it when people are thinking and saying different things. For instance, when the name “Adolph Hitler” was taped to a bottle of distilled water, there was a negative change in the molecular structure. When the words “Thank you” were taped to a bottle of water, there was something beautiful that happened in the crystalline structure of the water.

From Emoto’s experiments, we know that there is something that we do consciously with our thoughts that impacts our physicality. But we are made of more than just water. We have a physical body, but we each have an emotional body as well. Our emotional body is, in many ways, watery, and it is connected to what is happening in the fluids of our body. So the mental attitudes we hold and the words that we speak have an impact on our waters and on our emotional body.

A creative mental attitude opens us up to our natural vibration and rhythm. It invites that power emanating from deep inside us to move in our experience. Do you think that power might have an impact on our emotional realm?

There are mental attitudes that have a negative impact. For instance, if we are constantly agonizing over what has happened in the past, it is hard for the creative vibration of life to come through.

The body is involved in all this, too. Feelings that resonate with our own creative vibration help bring physical health. There are many fluids in the body that, at the physical level, provide some control. For instance, the hormones from our endocrine glands provide balance for what is happening physically. Your thoughts have something to do with those hormones. And when those glands are operating in balance, there’s a balance kept in the body, and we become strong and capable of bringing the vibration of who we are into the world.
The biblical story of the First Day of Creation is relevant to what we are considering this morning. “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” (Genesis 1:2) Whoever originally wrote those words didn’t have the advantage of Mr. Emoto’s research. But in their own terms, I believe they were saying that in the beginning of all creation and in the beginning of our own creating, the vibration of what comes from an invisible reality moves on the face of the waters.

And what do you think that word face might have to do with? We may say, “Of course, the face of the waters—that must be the surface.” But the literal meaning of the word suggests something else, as well. When we see someone’s face, we see their consciousness awareness through their eyes and their smile. So the face of our waters is the conscious part of our awareness that is on the surface. The spirit of God moves on that. This story of creation suggests that there is something we do consciously that relates to our whole feeling body. That conscious action is critical for the vibration of who we are to move through our whole capacity. It is where we have the choice to assume an attitude that will either empower or disable us. The healthy function of our emotional nature depends on whether we allow the face of our waters to be open to the creative movement of the vibration originating within us. It depends on our creative mental attitude.

Creative mental attitude is also critical for our thinking. Do you think very well when you are depressed or in deep grief, or when you are afraid? Psychologists call the emotion of shame “a global assault on the self.” They have discovered that if shame is filling a person’s capacity, a large part of the person’s function shuts down. If a person experiences overwhelming shame, their thinking shuts down, their feeling shuts down, and their decision-making process shuts down.

Of course, most of us don’t walk around paralyzed in that way. But I wonder how many people experience diminished personal capacity due to shame. How else might you explain the diminished capacity for thought that we sometimes notice? We do become stupid when we act out of an emotional body that has flared up, when we act out of what Eckhart Tolle calls “the emotional pain body.” At the root all emotional pain is shame.

We can do something about our own emotional body because our emotional body has a face—it has a conscious component. We probably don’t understand everything that is going on in our own emotional body, but there are things that we are conscious about. There is the power of consciousness and, with that, the power of choice. We can choose to open up to the power of who we are.

We find that there are already structures in the feeling realm, just as there are structures in the water of Emoto’s experiments. Where do they come from? From a space and time perspective, they come from out of our past—perhaps from our parents, our upbringing, school or culture. Wherever they come from, there are structures already in our water—our patterns of feeling that create patterns of acting. For many people, they simply decide to move from structure to structure, moving from one mood to another, never really becoming conscious, never owning the fact that there is a face to those waters—that they have a choice and that there is a vibration that they could bring into those waters that would change it, that would make it different.
If you meet somebody like that, they are probably in some trouble, and you are probably going to look for a way to say to them, “It could be different. You don’t have to go from emotional state to emotional state. You could open up to another possibility. You could bring the creative power of who you are into your feeling realm, and it would look different.”

The more ambitious among us manipulate the feeling experience so it will be pleasurable. They may be manipulating their own feeling experience, and they may be manipulating the feeling experience of others. Isn’t that basically what advertising is doing when they show the sexy girl next to the car? They’re taking advantage of the fact that people’s waters, people’s feeling realm, can be controlled consciously, to a point. The conscious mind can prey upon the feeling realm of others. It is not a very pretty picture but it happens all the time.

I say there’s another choice. There is a way we are meant to function, so that the conscious mind is playing its role in opening up to the vibration of what’s emanating from the core of us—in opening up to the true cause for all of creation, including our life.

We are each creator-beings, and the causative factors of our life are deep inside us. We are bigger than any of those emotional states that we may walk into in any given moment, even though they may try to define who we are. And we certainly shouldn’t allow ourselves to be preyed upon by the conscious mind, our own or anyone else’s. We have this beautiful reservoir of feeling-substance—a chalice, the Holy Grail, you might say. What a person does with their feeling-substance ends up being a critical factor in their life.

Our Holy Grail is designed to be open and vulnerable, even as the water in these experiments is open and vulnerable to the vibration and mental attitude of the people around it. Our mental attitude determines what we will open to—the invisible cause of a fulfilled life or ongoing distress.

So here is a creative mental attitude that can open us up to the vibration of invisible cause: “I prevail.” Whether the fulfillment of that is today or tomorrow, this year, next year, next decade, next lifetime, I prevail. I prevail in all things. Who I am prevails, and who you are prevails, in all things. And if I accept anything less than that for myself, I am not being true to who I am.
I am a creator-being who prevails always and in all things. And I and we have created time and space just to give it a chance to all work out. But I prevail. Living in that reality, the patterns that naturally form out of the invisible take form.