Fresh Thinking, Inspiration, and Vision on the Process of Spiritual Transformation
The role of spiritually awake people today is to be a sun and to build a sun with others. Just as the physical sun brings warmth, light and gravity for the earth, we are called to bring those qualities to the world. A sun also provides orientation. In the human experience, there is certainly a need for that. There is the need to have a clear expression of what is most central. And you may find that, in all kinds of settings and contexts, people have a very difficult time discovering what is most central in their life and in their relationship with others. Consequently, people go in many different directions, often in conflict. So we are here to bring a sun, to bring what is most central to human experience, starting with our own.
Over the ages, there have been people who have done this work. Almost invariably, the orientation that was brought got covered over in some way by the culture that surrounded the person. It was covered over, sometimes in loving adoration, sometimes in denial, sometimes in vehement objection. But it didn’t really matter how it was done—if the reality that was brought wasn’t seen and appreciated, embraced and lived, it became lost to human experience.
Recently I visited a religious retreat center and in the dining room I had my meals underneath a statue of a dying man on a cross. While I respect that this symbol has religious significance to many wonderful people around the world, and in a way that I may not be able to understand, I found it unpleasant to be eating under this representation of one of the most awful forms of execution that humanity has invented. It made me think about the origin of this symbol. It is a remarkable feat that the Roman Empire, which crucified Jesus, claimed that its church was the authoritative proponent of his teachings and that the crucifixion it carried out was God’s will. As I gazed upon the crucifix, it seemed to me that the Roman Empire had a conflict of interest when it came to that view. As I shared these thoughts with a friend, she told me that there is such a thing as hiding something in plain sight.
Whenever spiritual vision has been brought, the surrounding culture has swallowed it up. The amazing clarity that Jesus brought was greatly misunderstood by almost all the disciples closest to him and by those who came immediately after him. So it wasn’t only the Romans who covered over who he was and what he brought.
Today, many people turn Jesus into a religious icon. They adulate him and call him Savior for having been crucified for humanity’s sins. Many more dismiss him as a fabrication of religion. Either way, the result is that the reality he brought has been almost entirely covered over, largely unavailable and inaccessible to people now.
Like other spiritual visionaries, Jesus brought the most central factor in human experience, which has been symbolized by the sun. He is a salient example of how difficult it is to bring true orientation into the human experience, and how quickly that orientation gets covered over. It seems that people are very busy finding some way to diffuse and hide the light. This, too, is quite a feat, when you consider that the spiritual reality symbolized by the sun is as central to the human experience as the physical sun is to Planet Earth.
So what is most central for you in your life and for our life together? What deserves to stand at the middle of it? What deserves to be the reference point for our life, for our work, for our thoughts and for our feelings? There are words for what is most central, and even the words become old and opaque. The word God, for instance, in its true meaning is what should be most central for anybody. But immediately, pictures of an old man with a gray beard are evoked, and all kinds of other strange ideas. We have the word Lord, and that may evoke the idea of a patriarchal system dating back to feudal times. Virtually all the symbols that would point the way to what is most central in people’s lives end up getting misused and misunderstood.
Sometimes the words spiritual focus have been used to name what is most central. Perhaps there is an acknowledgment of the need for spiritual focus in anyone’s life, something central to which they could orient and something they could provide in their world. At times, that phrase has become equated with a person, so that what’s said is, “This person is the spiritual focus.” A person, as such, is never spiritual focus—never.
Then, of course, that leads to all kinds of cover-up of a reality, so there is an adoration of a person, on the one hand—“Oh, this person is spiritual focus,” or call it what you will—and then, on the other hand, a rejection: “No, there’s no way this person could bring spiritual focus; there’s no way anybody could. We’ll all just overlap. We’ll try to find our common interests and be tolerant when we disagree. We’ll compromise and get along.” Sounds like hell on earth to me, frankly—a group of people trying to get along together and compromise their way through life, with no shared focus. I can’t imagine a worse hell. I can tell you, it’s nothing I’d want to be a part of.
Sometimes this is spoken of in such glowing terms—a vesica pisces. No shared focus, we just overlap and then find our commonality. Well, that’s what all of humanity is doing, isn’t it? That’s what they’re doing in the United Nations, God bless them.
We have an opportunity, with other people, to find what is most central and to let it live among us. The awareness of this possibility is faint and confused, at best, for most people. The opportunity that we have right here and now is to put in place, in our shared energy field, what is most central. We could put it in place right here and now. We could constellate a sun among us.
I believe we have that power. I believe that these capacities for thought and feeling, which get people into so much trouble, were designed to do exactly this. Our thoughts and our feeling and our capacity to move energy—and we do have tremendous capacity to move energy, for better or for worse, I notice—were created to build a sun, so that in our midst there is that which is most central, that which is radiant, which brings warmth and gravity and light to our world. I believe that if some number of us did this, it would have profound impact. It would be life-changing and world-changing. And there’s nothing this planet needs more than people who are being and building a sun.
When you lead, people notice. As we build a sun, people notice. It registers in human consciousness all over the world. It may not be on the morning news, but it will be in people’s awareness when they wake up in the morning, that there is something different, that a different sun rose on this day. A new sun has constellated among people.
We live in a world that is created by a field of awareness. That field of awareness brings with it a field of profound energy, enough to build a world. So that field of energy manifests something on earth that is quite a mixed state at present. When we awaken spiritually we find that we were designed as human beings to participate in that field of awareness and to let it be particularly relevant in the creative field for which we have responsibility. We find out that we were made for that, that our thoughts and our feelings and our capacity to carry energy through this human form were made for that, and that what’s most needed in our creative field is for there to be a sun.
I believe it’s possible for us together to find that every morning, when we wake up, the sun is present, our collective sun is there; that every night, when we go to sleep, the sun is present, and it’s present all through the night; that it’s always present with us, simply because we have accepted that it shall be so. We shall build a sun. We shall let it be a reality.
If we were only human, we could give up on this project. If we were merely human, this would be impossible. But we are not merely human. We are sun beings in human flesh. When we awaken to that reality, and when we reach out to the sacred core in one another, we say, “I see you. I know you. We are here together to be a sun.”
When a person awakens to the sacred core of their own reality, they inherit the power to reach out to another person and say, in whatever way, “This is what you are. I see you. Welcome home to this reality in your experience. Let us build a sun.” I have that power to reach out to others. You have that power, if you will allow yourself to inherit it. It is a divine inheritance. It simply has to be accepted by any person. When it is accepted by you, you have that power and capacity.
People notice as we do this work, because there is a spiritual technology that connects all people around the world. When people do this work, it’s as if the town crier was walking through human consciousness. We share a collective field of consciousness around the world. And when the sun is out, it is inviting sun-beings from all four corners of this creative field to come together and build a sun.
It’s time. Let us build a sun.