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

Waters are gathered together unto one place, drawn together by love, by truth. A few years ago, Martin Exeter had something to say about the larger cycle and the larger rhythms. I’ll read it, just to give you a feel of it.

“Yielding to the movement of the cosmic rhythms that are present, we begin to discover that they are present. We had no room for them before because we were so busy about our human affairs, so busy in our human identity. So we come apart, open, yielded, to receive a new awareness that’s been part of an immense whole. If we have any individual meaning it is based in the fact that we are functioning and operating within that immense cosmic whole. That is our meaning.”

In that respect, there is a design moving and unfolding far beyond this planet we live on, and for sure far beyond my little world that I travel around in every day. In the little world we’re in, things sometimes loom very large. They take on almost epic proportions. Yet, really, we live in an area of cosmic dimension—something that’s unfolding, regardless of what we do. But our experience of it depends very much on what we do. A Prime Minister here in Canada used a famous quote about fifteen, twenty years ago, when a reporter asked him, “How’s the foreign policy?” He said (quoting from Desiderata): “The universe is unfolding as it should.” I like that one. It is true, even for you and me.

There’s change all across the world. Earlier, Ruth Buckingham mentioned the change with High View Gardens (in Johannesburg, South Africa), and the fact that she and Phil Richardson are moving to Cape Town. Even in the territory covered by this phone call, there’s a lot of change afoot. Here at Edenvale, at 100 Mile House, at Glen Ivy, at Sunrise Ranch, and for sure in South Africa. That’s just to touch what I’m aware of. We have forms in flux. Some changes are subtle, and some are right in your face.
When a woman is pregnant with a child, the fetus is carried in the waters, in the midst of the waters. That’s where the fetus grows and stretches and reaches the point where it can be on its own, can be born. The waters have to be held for that fetus to grow. We take it for granted in the case of birth in the human sense. It’s just as true in births in our own world: there is a medium; there is substance that the creative cycle moves in. That substance, the generation of it and the holding of it, is my responsibility and your responsibility.

As the creative cycle is proceeding and different forms appear, you could think, “My god, is that what it’s going to look like?” or “This isn’t really what I bargained for,” and at times we go, “Wow, isn’t that great?!” Rather than grabbing the form and rushing off, there’s a time for holding the medium and letting the creative process come to its full term. Sometimes there’s a bit of chaos in all of that. We look around and say, what’s really happening here? What can I sense is happening? Who can I trust in this process?

I was talking to someone the other day about this, and I saw that, when you get down to the exact bottom line, the one thing that can be trusted, the one person that can be trusted, is yourself. That self that is back behind bone and flesh and muscles, beyond intellect and emotion; that self that is part of this cosmic whole, which is the spark of life that we are—the One that I call “I Am.” That can be trusted.

There’s the need for a passionate person to be present if anything is going to happen, if there is going to be a creative cycle. There are some in my world that like to be observers, the “dispassionate objective observers.” Well, nowadays I don’t think there’s much time for objective dispassionate observers. There’s a need for a passionate presence that is participating, that is not just moving in the cycle but is expressing that force, that love, that energy that holds the waters, that holds the creative cycle and lets it unfold as it would, without great thought of results.

It made me think of a sports analogy that fits with any team or any group of people who are building something together. You can have individual “star power”—and we’ve had that all down through the ages. You can have stars that stand out, and sometimes we think, “Oh, we’ll get all these stars together and have an all-star team, and we’ll go over and beat that other bunch!” It used to be the Russians; we’ll probably go beat the Cubans at baseball, or we’ll win the soccer World Cup with our all-star team. Yet many times I’ve watched an all-star team be defeated by a lesser team, made up of lesser individuals, as far as talent goes. The difference was that in the team that prevailed, the people had given up some of their star power, in the sense of territorial ambition or ambition of agenda. They put it aside for the sake of the team. It didn’t mean they were less stars; they just weren’t competing with each other to be the star of the team.

What we’re about, in the sense of letting substance build on this earth, is of cosmic proportions and takes far more than any individual can put in. We’ve seen that down through the ages. There have been great leaders, all the way from Krishna to Christ to Mohammed, to many who are unknown to us nowadays. There have been great leaders, and they’ve been stars. But where it’s always hit a rock and come apart is with those around the great leader: there has to be a team. There has to be that group that’s drawn together where the waters are held, where ego takes second place and I don’t care who I set up to score the goal or the touchdown or the point, or to bring it all home. What I care about is that it does come home, that there is once more beauty and strength and design on this earth. That “the universe is unfolding as it should” actually means something on earth, actually has meaning among us.

It isn’t that we all come down to a medium level in what we’re doing. It is that we get the measure of each other, so that we can count on each other in the unfolding of what we’re about. There are a lot of stars in a group or a team that has a common spirit, that’s measured each other and works together with respect. That takes passion. The observer doesn’t get too far in that one. It takes bringing in the passion and trusting the greater whole. It takes giving beyond thought of results.

I have a brother-in-law who lives in Alberta, in Edmonton. He was very successful in selling real estate along the way. When someone would come to him looking for a house, he would find the right house for them. He didn’t care whether it was listed in his portfolio or his agency, or even with the competition across town. He would find that person the right house. He wouldn’t get much out of that sale, and yet he found in the long run that more business came to him. It was like a magnet.

That’s the way the universe unfolds. It’s the way we tune in to the cosmic rhythm. It’s the way it happens on earth because we are a focus of the cosmic rhythm. The great thing for me is that it works. Giving beyond expectation works. Giving beyond ego works, just as surely as the sun rises on July 5th.