It’s been quite a week in the world. There is a war in the Middle East. There has been the assassination of political leaders in the United States. Yesterday, there was a military parade in Washington, D.C., and over 2,000 No Kings protest rallies across the country.
Grief is a rational response to what is transpiring in our world. If we don’t acknowledge the sadness of it, perhaps we’ve gotten numb to it.
One of the saddest pieces of literature in the English language is Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. It is a story of love not being able to live in the world. In the play it is about the love between two young people. But the theme is larger than that. It dramatizes how hard it is for the truth of what love is to blossom in human culture.
These lines are spoken by the Prince of Verona in the last verses of the play:
See what a scourge is laid upon your hate,
That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love,
And I, for winking at your discords too,
Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punished.
A glooming peace this morning with it brings.
The sun for sorrow will not show his head.
Go hence to have more talk of these sad things.
Some shall be pardoned, and some punishèd.
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
The play is a tragic depiction of human culture. And behind it all, we can rest assured, is love. Yes, there’s love at work. And yet in some sad twist of human fate, love prompts people to do things that are irrational and destructive.
I have no doubt that the mullahs in Iran are full of love—love for their country, their culture, and their vision for humanity. They are full of love. So is everybody else. And yet something is tragically missing. There is a tragic lack of the ability to ground love in practical, rational, wise action. And so, love is corrupted.
People can aspire to the highest ideals, including things divine. They can touch the reality of Allah or God, by whatever name. They might have some perception of the angelic realms. But there is no guarantee that what they have touched will become creatively relevant in their lives. There is no guarantee that it will lead to anything but tragedy.
In 1960, Martin Cecil gave a talk on the subject, The Organization of God-Beings Composing God. In it, he made this comment:
What I’m talking about now is just a theory at the moment, insofar as you are concerned, but it needn’t remain that way if it is true.
Martin encouraged people to apply what he outlined in principle in the living of their lives. It is vital that the principle be true. But even if it is perfectly outlined and believed in, that is not enough to avert the tragedy faced by human culture. For tragedy to be averted, human culture has to correlate with the truth being outlined. And the reality of what is true has to penetrate human experience in the land of the living.
There is a key distinction to be made as to how we love our lives. It applies to the closest elements of life—our own thoughts and feelings, our physical body, and our personal life path. It also applies to how we relate to others and to the world, especially to what we might consider to be our own.
In spiritual teaching, it is often said that we shouldn’t be attached to our life, including what is closest to us. Jesus taught Whoever loves his life loses it. In writing about victory in human experience, John writes this in Revelation: They loved not their lives unto the death.
There’s a way to love your life that is not life-giving. If you idolize your own thinking, you can become obsessed with your thoughts. And the same is true of emotions. Have you witnessed people who say, I feel it so deeply. It must be true. Or perhaps you have thought that yourself.
It’s possible to love life in a way that a person is controlled and dominated by the factors in it. Those factors could seem to be external to the individual. Or the individual could be dominated by their own thoughts and feelings.
If you haven’t noticed, the human mind can be a brutal dictator. If you love your own thinking and allow it to guide what you do without a higher wisdom, it’s brutal. It’s cruel to you. It’s brutal to the people around you. The human mind is a hard master. And there is a way of loving your own thoughts that makes you subject to them. The same is true of the thoughts of another person or the feelings of another person.
Don’t love your life unto the death. But this teaching is only part of the story. Having learned not to love our lives in a way that makes us subject to all the facets of human experience, we have to learn to love ourselves and our lives in a way that transforms us. We have to learn to penetrate our lives from above. Otherwise, we become aloof and disconnected, without the ability to penetrate human culture with love. This is what is sometimes referred to as a spiritual bypass. And no matter how much you love the theory you believe in, and regardless of how accurate that theory might be, until you apply it thoughtfully, wisely, and deeply, the patterns of human tragedy remain unchanged.
There is a way to love your life from above that does not idolize it and does not make you subject to it, but which penetrates your life with the higher spiritual truth that you know. That process begins with penetrating your own emotions and thoughts.
If we have the vision to love from above—to rescue our human life and the human world from above—we can penetrate our life and our world with the authority of who we are as a Creator. That’s a different way to love your life. It’s a different way to love another person, too. It’s a way of loving another person that isn’t subject to them and whatever they come up with as a human being. Yes, we can be blessed by the interchange. But there’s a way to love another person from above, just as you’re loving yourself from above. And if you ever have an experience of both of you doing that, then you are in for a profound creative exchange.
So often, a loving relationship between people can become combative. There can be a reactivity going on so that their love is subject to what is moving back and forth between them. That can be between two people in a personal relationship or between nations. Where are those who say, I’m here in this relationship to come from a higher place and bring something higher to the relationship, whether it’s seemingly more personal, work-related, or the diplomatic relationship between nations?
Here in Colorado, we have virga—rain that never reaches the ground. It can be so hot and dry that you can see the rain falling from clouds across the prairie, but it evaporates before it touches the earth.
It can be like that in the spiritual experience of the individual. There’s something up there spiritually. The person is beginning to be aware of it. They feel it. But it doesn’t come down enough to drench the person. It does not come all the way through and penetrate their human experience. So it doesn’t pierce their heart or inspire their thinking.
If your mind is like most people’s minds—including mine—it wants to be the boss of you. It wants to tell you what’s going to happen, who’s right and who’s wrong, and why life is impossible. But there’s something higher that can descend into the human experience that shouldn’t be like virga. That higher cosmic intelligence should be moving your mind and mine, so our thoughts are born from it. It can penetrate our mind from above so we don’t have to be subject to every foolish thought that our human mind might come up with.
We can just say this to those thoughts, I hear you. But we have something bigger we’re about here. And if we can do that for ourselves, we can do it for each other, so that we don’t have the experience of bumping into each other like bumper cars. Doesn’t that often happen in human experience? Can’t we become like human bumper cars just bouncing off each other? If that’s what is happening, there’s not an actual penetration spiritually between us, so there isn’t the spiritual flow that’s natural in life.
When there is a flow, you inspire me, I inspire you, and now we are creating together. We are no longer bumper cars—an experience that is going on all over the place, near and far. It happens up close in the interior spaces of a person’s life. You could probably watch that happen to other people, and maybe even yourself. And you can see it among nations. It’s the human bumper car phenomenon.
All are punished. All are punished. Near and far, it’s tragic, and there is no need for it. But human culture just keeps playing out the bumper car experience. It is the virga experience, where we’re not really penetrated from above with spiritual things. We’ve got all kinds of beliefs about them—the 70 virgins up there when you die, and all the rest, whatever it might be. We have all the beliefs about it. But an individual who is fully penetrated with the reality of what is above is rare. And then there is virga between people. The creative energies that could interpenetrate the field evaporate.
When the virga phenomenon ends and the rain comes, we know what’s happening up there, because it’s what’s happening here. And we make it real, spiritually, here between us. We have a real, live, honest-to-goodness spiritual experience between us as people that correlates with what’s up there.
As above, so below. And then, with the resonance of that, we can feel deeply and perceive deeply what it is that’s happening at a higher level of Being because what we’re doing resonates with it. We are relating to it and giving expression to the essence of that reality in form in our own lives.
This is what it takes to make spiritual things real. This is what it is to indeed live a spiritual life—not a pious life in the usual sense, not a religious life in the usual sense, but a life that makes spiritual things real in human experience, a life that allows itself to be penetrated by the spiritual. In the context of Emissaries of Divine Light, the founding leaders of this program did a remarkable job naming the spiritual energies that are available to us, that are looking to penetrate this human experience: love, truth, and life.
Today, we are no longer content with spiritual virga. We are no longer content with the human bumper car experience. We are in the midst of a full-scale spiritual downpour.
Let it rain.
More than once in recent months, I’ve found myself looking around at the various elements that comprise my life at present and asking myself,”Could I willingly leave all this behind that I’ve so carefully built up over years and decades if it became apparent that that was necessary to my ongoing spiritual service?” I believe I could, but of course I can’t really actually know until or if, it did prove to be necessary. what I do know from experience is that if I continue to let the thoughts of my mind and the meditations of my heart be in tune with the truth of love,then the spiritual substance thereby generated will transform my life and everything in it. So it’s not really a question of leaving anything behind, but of embracing what comes. I have many thoughts in a day, and some of them are true, but ultimately it is spirit that guides, that enlightens the moment, bringing clarity. And that is the adventure — the promise of Abraham to each one of us.
What is love? There is a lot of seduction.
In 1964, The Beatles brought out their rock’n’roll hit, “Can’t Buy Me Love”. It was a sensation, and yet the message was largely lost and yet everyone remembers it; you can’t buy love.
We have been largely seduced by advertising into believing in the fantasy of love. Gifts, flowers, chocolates, jewelry, sex and everything else. If you love me, you will buy me a diamond ring – so goes the song.
Do we give any consideration to the value of things that money can’t buy, like sincerity or integrity, of blessing? What is in the real shopping cart?
John Legend, in 2013, brought out his song, “All of Me Loves All of You”. It takes everything to love and be loved in return.
We are all diamonds. The diamond you have been looking for is within, and as the imperfections of the gem are cut and crafted, there is more sparkle and brilliance. We are indeed the spectrum of love and the stuff of stars.
I thought this poem Auguries of Innocence. Explains more the innocence of the creative consciousness the framelessness of cosmic expansion
BY WILLIAM BLAKE
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all Heaven in a rage.
A dove house fill’d with doves and pigeons
Shudders Hell thro’ all its regions.
A dog starv’d at his master’s gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.
A horse misus’d upon the road
Calls to Heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.
A skylark wounded in the wing,
A Cherubim does cease to sing.
The game cock clipp’d and arm’d for fight
Does the rising Sun affright.
Every wolf’s and lion’s howl
Raises from Hell a human soul.
He who respects the infant’s faith
Triumphs over Hell and Death.
The child’s toys and the old man’s reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.
The questioner, who sits so sly,
Shall never know how to reply.
He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of Knowledge out.
The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar’s laurel crown,
Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armour’s iron brace.
When gold and gems adorn the plow
To peaceful arts shall Envy bow.
A riddle or the cricket’s cry
Is to doubt a fit reply.
The emmet’s inch and eagle’s mile
Make lame Philosophy to smile.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne’er believe, do what you please.
If the Sun and Moon should doubt,
They’d immediately go out.
To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.
The whore and gambler, by the state
Licens’d, build that nation’s fate.
The harlot’s cry from street to street,
Shall weave Old England’s winding sheet.
The winner’s shout, the loser’s curse,
Dance before dead England’s hearse.
Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
We are led to believe a lie
When we see not thro’ the eye
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the Soul slept in beams of light.
God appears and God is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night,
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.
Thank you David — I am wide open to receive the divine intelligence pulsing within the currents flowing freely through the heart of your living words. I have disposed of all the umbrellas in my house. I stand naked and unashamed under oceanic and pacific skies. There is the smell of a mighty rainstorm coming. I hear the sound of an abundance of rain. Let it rain! When I was a younger man, almost all of my rain was of the spiritual virga nature—it rarely hit the ground. My spirituality was just fine in principle, but my air was too dry and my sun was too hot, so my rain never touched the ground, so a limited range of plants could grow in my garden—rather like a xeriscape, spare beauty but not a verdant jungle. Through a series of (un)fortunate events, I became aware that I was not adequately grounded in my spirituality—lightning inevitably struck. I was compelled to touch the Ground of my own Being, compelled to Kiss the Ground, and connection was established all the way through, from the spirit of love to the spirit of the new earth, from crown chakra to root chakra, from seventh seal to first seal. I wrote a poem to enshrine this cycle of emergence with few simple lines: “behold he cometh leaping; does this yet sound strange to you, my brother, that there now are men on earth who know the father; who lift their bodies into light, rejoicing—feet now firmly rooted in these hills”. Now the Lord is in the rain, and the Lord is in the wind, and in the earth, and in the fire—and this Garden is flourishing. In former days it was impossible, but now we meet together in this One Garden. And it is as you have written: “The rain comes … we know what’s happening up there, because we know it’s happening here … We are in this midst of a full-scale spiritual downpour. Let it rain”. Drenched in the water of truth, it is impossible to dry out. And who would want to, knowing what we know, now that this Grand Creative Cycle is working in balance and with evidence of abundant increase. The Lord is in Four Forces, and there comes the smell of an abundance of rain, a full-scale downpour, and here we are in the midst of the air of the spirit, grounded, and we let the fire fall. All of this can only happen in the Garden—in the Christ. Aumen
This Pulse, David, contains the most clear and compelling instruction in basic spiritual education. An email contact of mine wrote me this morning that she has been experiencing a lot of “rage and anger” and has resorted to beating her pillow with an umbrella to somehow relieve it.
This is the “bumper car experience” that is playing out all over the world, and it becomes especially deadly when it seduces nations.May my own heart and mind yield control to the transcendent Being of Love that I inherently am, allowing the Truth of Love to bring refreshing rain to my world.
Just being a real heavenly human here – I have come to realise that the essence of being a consistent soulful being, is lovingly knowing the reality of my own now, which is to simply realise that heaven is present in every enfolding in my reality.
When we acknowledge that our roles are to express honesty, beauty, creation, harmony, kindness, joy, support, love and dedication to our divine purpose, can we honestly feel can there be any room for disharmony, hate or war?
The forms of all religious society hardly include developing the self into being a divine manifestor and the bringers of heaven here. We are led to believe in invisible Gods and an invisible heaven to sort out our world and to rely on an invisible force above ? The truth lies in giving birth to our own reality which exists in rolling up our sleeves and getting stuck into bringing heaven here ourselves. To bring kinship here and true respectful love of one another and allow the heaven we can all create together to be seen here – It is as if the world has forgotten what creation we have inside ourselves is and wanting something invisible outside ourselves to make everything better and safe?
The true mothers of the world make it safe heaven to be, a woman wouldn’t deem death and destruction and bombing to achieve global heavenly harmony. No ! because women roll up their sleeves and actually do the dirty work, we clean up and we get stuck into the nitty gritty of life. A woman would not use arms of mass destruction to create Peace and heaven here, we use the skill of life, living, creation and love.
One life is too much to loose to any war and yet I’ve heard people say, “oh it’s only 200 deaths to stop an atomic bomb being built ? And this is from the conversations of many religious leaders and politicians, they openly talk about death and war is a natural thing? War to me and those being killed is crucifyingly painful to all my cells. I feel those deaths it affects me because it’s hate, it’s not love and it’s not heaven. If your cells feel for another being isn’t that love in action or will a psychologist say we are merely empaths? I feel because I Love.
I am daring to say NO to Religion and Spirituality until I truly see the results of these institutions actually building something of true value together for each of us to thrive in love. For example, build something of value for people to thrive, a well for the thirsty, a country for those without a place to live, stop starvation, share materialism, clean up war zones, stop war, look after the children, feed each other with love and life.
We need to acknowledge that religious leaders, religious words, beliefs and books create all this unnecessary disharmony and destruction. What “God” would declare war and as for death of another, what “God” tells another to kill another ? Even the weeds in my garden create pollen for the Bees isn’t that Godlike ? The seasons change isn’t that God in action isn’t that heavenly? We need to take time to appreciate that heaven is here and take physical action and realise that heaven is here now for everyone to experience. Why have we been given life if not to experience heaven here, why are we living until we die to experience heaven, isn’t that concept stupid ?
My discipline is to create heaven everyday because heaven is not invisible to me.
The heaven is in rain which evaporates magically, the magic is in flowers which self seed in areas you’d least expect them to, the heaven is seeing a pregnant woman carrying hope in her belly and heaven is children with no equation of mass destructiveness where they only know the innocence of hope.
I believe that religion will come to an end when everyone who relies on it sees the corruption in it. I believe when spiritual and political leaders become real about walking their talk and produces something lovingly tangible and heavenly real we will be able to see that heaven actually exists and its reality exists in our real world now. BECAUSE it’s here and it’s now it’s not above or below, its not in the invisible – it’s right in front of you now in every natural cellular molecule. We are the intellectual guardians of creating heaven here and love it into being, it’s us not a God or a phrophet, it’s you and I and yet we don’t want to take responsibility for creating it for some reason.
Trouble is we have been brainwashed into believing that a greater being will take care of all these global issues. Yet the most unromantic thing is that it’s us mere humans who have to sort these issues out for ourselves and not rely on that great big invisible God in the sky to help. It’s not going to happen we’re too intelligent ourselves and we have to know It. Wake up we are responsible.
When the all corruption of religious societies and these unnecessary religious/political wars have been torn down from our life and living. When they’re forgotten that is when it’ll be safe to truly bring the whole of our own heaven into being for all to experience in their love and their living reality.
Apologies for typos ❤️
So deeply important – Let it rain!!!! Thank you, Katie