For those of you who are not familiar with Martin Cecil, he led Sunrise Ranch and Emissaries of Divine Light from 1954 to his passing in 1988. For some of us, he was our teacher, our leader, and someone who had our utmost respect. What I want to present is a reflection on the gift that he brought to the world; and ultimately what I am speaking of is not about him, but about that gift. I want to share with you an idea about what that gift was and how it came to focus. And then I want to read a prayer that is an articulation of that gift and in some way a culmination of it—not that his life was all about that prayer, but nonetheless it comes to focus in the prayer. I will also include a consideration of the significance of our human flesh and the soil of the planet upon which we walk.

Martin advanced the experience of spirituality on the planet. I am simply stating what I know to be true, fully appreciating that you have the opportunity to think whatever you want about it. So I am not saying you need to believe what I believe, but I am saying what I believe to be true—that Martin evolved spirituality on the planet in a very real way, in his own embodied experience and in the invitation he offered to others. He evolved spirituality from an experience of the spiritual, seen from the human standpoint, to an experience of spirituality from the spiritual standpoint. He invited an experience of not just looking up to God or trying to experience the spiritual, however conceived, but to know that an experience of the reality of who we are is already spiritual and is in fact looking out through our eyes to the world and at our own human experience.

Martin Cecil is not the only one who has brought this message. So I don’t mean to claim that Martin was the only one who ever had this realization. But he brought it in a realized, embodied way that made it immediately available for those who were with him. That invitation from him was also a challenge. It was a challenge to all of us who were with him. We were challenged to actually have that experience and live our lives that way. While he was still alive, that challenge was only partially met. And then, in his passing, the degree to which it wasn’t met became obvious. So this isn’t about judging any of us who were involved. It is just about getting real. All of humanity, and most particularly we who live at Sunrise Ranch and anyone who is associated with us, are living with this challenge. The challenge is to live life as the spiritual Being you are, in embodied human experience and expression into the world. It is a huge challenge­—not just to think about it, believe in it, or imagine it to be true, but to know it as a realized experience.

Now to the Prayer. Early on in Martin’s teaching, he gave a series of talks that he named Meditations on the Lord’s Prayer. He took what is sometimes spoken of as the Our Father and went through it line-by-line in a series of talks, and the book that is the transcription of those talks is still available. It is titled Meditations on the Lord’s Prayer.

The Lord’s Prayer in the King James Version of the Bible looks to God the spiritual, Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. It is an acknowledgment of the spiritual and it’s beautiful. To reference Ken Wilber on the evolution of human consciousness, it includes and transcends what went before. So as far as I’m concerned, the Our Father is still beautiful. It is true as an expression of a human being to the Divine that lives within them. Our Father [who] art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done…. It is an appeal for the spiritual to come into our human experience and it is magnificent. So this isn’t about trashing what went before. We’re including it, and then transcending it.

Later in his life, Martin took this prayer that was addressed from the standpoint of the human experience to the Divine and he re-cast it as an expression of the Divine having a human experience. I mentioned that I’m not pretending that Martin was the only one who has ever had that thought. In fact, there was a bumper sticker that goes like this: We are spiritual beings having a human experience. That is an expression of what we are talking about.

Here is the prayer which Martin called the Prayer of Being:

I am in heaven.
The revelation of myself is holy.
My kingdom comes because I am here.
My will is done in earth because my will is done in heaven.
I give the bread of life in each moment of my living on earth.
I forgive, and that forgiveness is received by those who share the spirit of forgiveness.
I lead no one into tribulation, but deliver all evil into the creative cycle.
For mine is the kingdom present on earth because I am present on earth.
Mine is the creative power of the Word.
And mine is the glory which results, shining round about, to be reflected by the world which I create.

We were considering in our preparation of this service how Martin wrote a magnificent book early on, entitled As of a Trumpet. It was full of truth, and in that book he presented this statement: You are divine. Here, in the Prayer of Being, he invites people to be with him in expressing and embodying the Divine; to not only be told that you are divine and say I think I probably am, but to actually have the embodied experience, the living experience of what it means to be the Divine in expression—not in some arrogant, pretending kind of way, not in some fantasizing kind of way, but in a real way.

I want to continue by talking about Martin’s Prayer of Being as an invitation to be grounded in the flesh and in the earth as a spiritual Being. We are made to energetically connect to a higher vibration than the human form, so the power of love comes into us. We want to be deeply connected with that power but also deeply rooted in our experience of the earth in our own physical form. So we are here to connect to the power of love, but not just to connect up as if it is not going anyplace other than into our thoughts and into our feelings. It wants to be grounded in our bodies. There is something so powerful about grounding the power of love in your physical body. But it is not only grounded in the physical body; it is grounded in the forms of life all around us.

We had a meeting this week with a farmer, Brook LeVan, who is consulting with us on our agricultural operations. Brook practices biodynamic farming in Carbondale, Colorado, based on the work of Rudolf Steiner. We were asking for his advice on flood irrigation. One of the theories associated with flood irrigation includes the use of a Yeomans Plow, which can go as deep as 22 inches. It improves the soil because it breaks up the hardpan and also breaks up the root structure, which the microbes then feed on. For flood irrigation you can practice keylining with this plow, which means that you follow the contours of the pasture, so that when the water comes down the pasture it flows through the grooves you have created that cross the contour of the pasture horizontally. You can water the whole pasture much more quickly than you could through a sprinkler system.

I came in at the tail end of the work that Brook did with our farmers, Michael Costello and Alec Solimeo. Brook took me around to the large charts they had created. At the very beginning of that, he made the statement: It all begins with the soil. He talked about investing in the soil. We were able to tell him that Uranda’s attitude was that our farming had to begin with amending and improving the soil. Uranda had lived through the dustbowl era, when the plowing techniques in North America had created a dustbowl condition and we had much of our topsoil blow and wash away. So Uranda was very interested in enlightened tillage techniques. I think he would have been excited to find out about the Yeomans Plow.

Brook was saying it is all about investing in the soil, because if you invest in the soil, then all the vegetable life will thrive; and if the vegetable life thrives, the animal life thrives. And if all of that happens, human life will thrive. He said that on his farm they practice these techniques and they have flourished in ways that are otherwise inexplicable. They have had all kinds of interest and support from many different quarters. In his view, it all begins with investing in the soil.

You may be wondering why this is relevant to what we are talking about tonight. This is literal groundedness. People talk about having a grounded experience. Now we are talking literally about the ground, the dirt. We are investing in the dirt.

So what are we doing as a spiritual community investing in dirt? How spiritual is that? A religious person looking up to God is probably not thinking about the dirt. But do you think God is thinking about the dirt? The powers of Creation are serving the dirt. The sun is serving the dirt. It is growing the things that are feeding the dirt. The water is feeding the dirt.

Is humanity feeding the dirt? Is that what humanity at large is thinking about? Humanity at large is thinking about the Internet. You can’t eat the Internet. Ultimately the Internet, of itself, is not feeding the cycle of life. It could facilitate the feeding perhaps, but it is not feeding the cycle of life.

We as humanity, if we are religious, are looking to God, hoping God or Jesus will save us. But so often we are not looking down at the dirt. There is the literal dirt—the earth that deserves our attention. If you believe Brook, if the earth thrives, we thrive. But then there is the earth of our physical bodies. Our physical form is supposed to be receiving the power of love, which is the power of Creation. Love is supposed to be grounded in our physical body, moving through us, giving us life. But many people live from the neck up. They are living in their head, so the cosmic energy that gives our bodies life cannot get in because there are vital connections at the level of the emotional body and in the subconscious mind that are blocking it.

Why is this relevant to Martin’s Prayer of Being?

I am in heaven.
The revelation of myself is holy.

I am the spiritual Being who has incarnated in this physical flesh and, far from being shameful, my physical flesh is holy. I am allowing the energy of love, which I am as a Being, to land in my physical flesh and power it and move through it into the world. If I can do it for my own physical flesh, then love can land in the physical flesh of the people around me and it can land in the earth that I’m walking upon. It can be extended to an animal and it can be extended to a plant. I’m here to be the God force that is serving the earth of my body and serving the forms of life all around me.

The sun, as magnificent as it is, is serving the physical forms of life on this planet. Whatever cosmic force that you can think of relative to this earth—whether it’s from the Pleiades or Orion or the moon, wherever you think it is coming from—it is all coming here, ultimately landing in the physical forms of this planet. That is what God is doing. So if we are aspiring to be spiritual in some way, shouldn’t we be doing whatever God is doing? God is coming into the flesh of this earth and we in this human facility are meant to be an instrument through which that can happen in an up close and personal way. God can’t take a Yeomans Plow and pull it through our pasture and bring flood irrigation without you and me. We are here to bring the wisdom and power of the Creator, up close and personal, to all physical forms on this planet. We are here to say, We love you, we care for you, we’re stewarding you, we’re investing in you—even in something as lowly and humble as dirt. Most essentially, we are dirt farmers.

What I am describing is a change in attitude, a change in consciousness, and a change in our acceptance of who we are. We are that Being that is in the heaven of Being. I am in heaven. The revelation of myself is holy in all my forms. Mine is the kingdom—kingdom being a word for the design and pattern of life and the control of the processes of life in the cycles of Creation. Mine is the creative power of the Word—not just words but my creative expression in all things. My expression of creativity has power to it at levels that are almost unimaginable. And mine is the glory which results, shining round about, to be reflected by the world which I create. We are bringing glory into the forms of our human experience.

I am talking about these things here tonight. We are considering them together. But I am also expressing who I am as a Being. I am expressing what is true for me and sharing with you the vibration of that, the power of that as I know it for myself and express it in my life experience.

We have the opportunity to speak for our human experience, which we do as a matter of course all the time. I’m feeling good, or I’m feeling bad. I’m feeling tired. I’m feeling energetic. It can be valuable to speak for our human experience. But if that’s all that is going on, we are missing a huge part of the equation. We can also speak for the God experience. I am in heaven, and there is a power in me that is moving. I know the love that is in me, even though I am having a crappy day. I may not be feeling good, but the power of love that I am is moving.

Does that make sense to you? My best friend just did something I really don’t like, but I’m here. I’m in heaven, I’m bringing creativity, I’m still here. I’m speaking not only from my human experience but I’m speaking for my heavenly experience. I am being that, and then that experience of me as a spiritual Being can meet the human experience and there is an answer to the human experience. I’m tired and I’m here to bring comfort. I’m here to bring the power of love and the power of care, and also the source of more energy to take my next step. I’m here to do that for myself and then we can have that conversation with each other.

A merely human conversation is a boring conversation:

 I’m tired.
Yeah, I’m tired too.
I am not feeling so good.
Yeah, me neither.

The conversation is not going very far if it’s all about the human experience.

The conversation between us could be between your human experience and my experience of the Divine. And then tomorrow we might switch. Tomorrow I might tell you, I’m having a really tough day and you can say, I’m here for you. I’m here with the power of love that is who I am and I’m here for you. I’m here to gentle your experience and bring you the comfort of who I am. I have that power within me. I am in heaven and I’m bringing the holy to you.

Now we have a conversation that can go someplace. There is some comfort in it; there is some creativity. Comfort isn’t just palliative care. Comfort is a strengthening, and I can learn what it is that I need to bring to you that strengthens you as a human being and you can learn that from me. We could do that dance as we share our life with other human beings. We can share the delight of it.

Did you ever notice that if it is just the usual “merely human” back and forth, it is a conversation that not only goes no place but to a bad place? It goes from bad to worse because the creative that should come into it isn’t there.

My will is done in [my] earth because my will is done in [my] heaven. In the realm of Being it is a cinch—you know all is well there. I am bringing my creative will into my earth. I can bring it to you. I bring the creative intention of the place of Being, where I live, to you and I share the strength of that.

This is a large conversation and a critically important one. I’m hoping you get the sense of the neck-up issue. If the higher vibrations that enter the human experience through the pineal gland, and flow through the pituitary and thyroid, aren’t allowed to penetrate the emotional body and move down into the physical body, then we are not fully present in our own flesh. The flesh is not being revitalized and renewed by the power of love that we wield as the Creator. When we come in the name of the spiritual Being who we are, the emotional body opens and we begin to enter our own flesh fully. We enter the world. We bring the regenerative power of life to the soil and to Planet Earth.

I am in heaven.
The revelation of myself is holy.