Sleeping Beauty is a classic fairy tale that is a parable for the human experience. If you see the characters within the story as dimensions of our internal human experience, it all begins to make sense. Sleeping Beauty herself is our human capacity. The prince is symbolic of the Sovereign Being who is the inner reality of who we are.

In the story, Sleeping Beauty is ensconced in a castle surrounded by thorns. Isn’t this the experience that people often have of themselves? Human consciousness is asleep behind walls that keep out their own Sovereign Being. So from the standpoint of who they are, the depth of their own heart and soul is not visible to them. It is inscrutable and incomprehensible. So the asleep person thinks, I am not sure what I am feeling or why. I am not sure why I do these things. There is an unknowingness about our own human experience. And it is so common.

Not only is our own human capacity often a mystery to us, the whole body of humanity is too. Why does human function go the way it does? What goes wrong for us? And how do we fit together as human beings? It’s a mystery to most people.

Look at the global picture when it comes to these issues. What kind of idea or vision is there about how the nations of the world or the peoples of the world fit together? How do the United States of America and Russia fit together? What is the synergy between our two great nations, or between any two great nations?

Sometimes there are alliances: Well, we’re paired with this nation against this one. But is that synergy? Is that really an enlightened idea about how we fit together as nations?

If you were to look out at the world for a vision of how we fit together, where would you find it? Is it the United Nations? What is the vision of the United Nations of how we fit together? One of the great problems of the United Nations is the paucity of vision. Perhaps it helps in averting war, but averting war is not the same as coming together in creative synergism as the nations of the world.

There are many people and organizations that bring a vision of world peace. In terms of the message of that vision that is actually communicated, how far does it go? We can all appreciate the possibility of ending war. But certainly we, as human beings together on this planet, have something more to do than to just stop warring.

If you look to all of the fields of human thought and invention, how much of a co-creative vision is present? We might think that religion should be offering this. But all too often, there is no real vision in the religions of the world as to how we are meant to function together on this planet. The focus can be on what happens after you die, whether it is the Western conception of heaven or the Eastern conception of reincarnation.

It seems that when we look into the human experience as a whole on the planet, it is the same as the individual. We just do not know how we fit together. We don’t have a vision of the place of our component parts or the pattern in which they fit together. The more enlightened among us speak about people from the various races, cultures and genders of the world being tolerated. But that does not constitute a vision of glorious creativity.

In the story, it takes the prince to awaken Sleeping Beauty. The prince comes in the name of love, which is the power that created the human capacity in the first place. After the prince fights through the brambles and thorns, and the ramparts of the castle, he reaches the sleeping princess and kneels at her beauty. When we show up in the name of love in our own human experience, we gain an ability to see the beauty of how we ourselves are made. That is holding ourselves with compassion in a spirit of unconditional love for our human experience.

When we show up as Sovereign Being, we awaken our own human experience. All of who we are—all the facets of personality and all the great resources of the human capacity—is made by the power of all Creation, which is love. So when we come in the name of Sovereign Being, we see with those eyes and we come as the owner, as the creator of the human experience, and our own heart and soul respond and we begin to see. All the dimensions of ourselves show up so that we can see them.

Picture the prince. In my storybook, as a child, he had a sword—of course, every prince has to have a sword. He uses the sword to cut away the brambles and the thorns and the branches that are surrounding this castle in which the princess is ensconced. In the human experience, there is a shielded heart with a big “Keep Out” sign. There is a retracted heart. So why is the heart retracted? Why is it defended? Why can we not see our own heart and what is happening in it, and understand it?

The simple answer is that, in the human experience, an attitude of judgment and condemnation is rampant. So, generally speaking, people look upon their own emotional experience and judge it as being wrong: You shouldn’t feel that way. What does the heart say? I am feeling that way. We are feeling what we are feeling. When we judge our human experience, the heart retracts and says, You can’t see me. And so most people cannot see what is happening in their own heart or in the heart of other people. We cannot see what has happened in our own thorny heart until we come in the name of love, in the name of Sovereign Being. And then the heart awakens and shows itself, and we can see.

For that moment to come, there has to be the quality of the sword that finds a way to part the brambles around the human heart. And then, with the eyes of love, we behold the beauty that is inherent in the human heart and in the human experience. Bowing and kneeling in the face of that beauty, appreciating and honoring the truth that is there, the soul awakens.

The kiss is the act of love that awakens the human soul. It is a symbol for the blessing that brings the spirit of love to heart. The heart shows itself; the heart comes out and releases all that has kept it asleep and imprisoned.

That scenario plays out for us individually, and our path of awakening, I believe, is like that. It calls us to be the prince. Man or woman, we are called to be that for ourselves and come as the prince into our human experience, and call our human experience and our human heart into life. Thankfully, we can play out this dynamic among us, can we not? We can come to another person as the prince, in the name of our own Sovereign Being, which is not separate from theirs. We can come with the eyes of love. We can do our best to take the sword and part the thorny protective walls that people put up, and come and honor the beauty of the Being that is present there in the human heart.

I believe that any real spiritual teaching is about this. Any real spiritual teaching has the spiritual teacher coming as the prince. Ultimately, no one is going to be the prince for you or for me. We have to be Sovereign Being for ourselves. But another human being can initiate us into that experience.

That can happen by virtue of the reality that Sovereign Being is One. Who you are at that level and who I am is together as part of one reality. And when I come as Sovereign Being, I am calling forth your Sovereign Being, inviting you to come into your own human experience as the prince. When you come to me as Sovereign Being, you do the same.

From the most intimate places of Being, we can come into the human experience and bring the resonance of love that causes the human experience to pulse with the very vibration of love. And then we bring the eyes of love to the human experience. We can see it—we can see the loveliness and the beauty of another human being. And then we can also see the thorns, and we can see what has gotten broken and call all the dimensions of the soul into Creation.

It is surprising how little clear vision we have as humanity as to how we work as human beings, inside. I know there are all kinds of psychological theories. Are you betting your money on any of those? How are we made in there? Why don’t we have a more real and vivid understanding of what is going on? Can’t we have an intuitive, innate understanding that is activated in us so that we find all the parts of who we are and they are brought online, and our creativity is online? And then who we are as a Being has the opportunity to express through all of that into the world.

This is at the level of the individual human experience. At a planetary level, don’t we need those who are coming in the name of Sovereign Being? Those who are coming in the name of what made us as the body of humanity, that very power of love that is within us?

I am coming in the name of that. How about you? I see this great beautiful body for what it was meant to be, for what it was created to be on this planet. Even though it has become so warped and distorted in all these ways, I understand how it got that way and I have a vision of it coming together in love. Not just as a big mushy pool of love, which is lovely—I love big mushy pools of love—but as distinct energies that are working together within the body of humanity. Creative genius, great heart, artistry, brilliance in science, all the different dimensions that are meant to come together, and all the peoples of the world who are constellated together with their creativity that comes out in different ways but which is meant to work together at every level.

We are looking at the global and the individual, and there are all the levels in between. In community, can we see and appreciate all the different parts of community and the synergistic roles they play, and how it is meant to come together vibrantly and creatively? And so it is at every level of our collective function.

It is all the same pattern, from the micro of the individual and how we are made as an individual, to the macro of the planet, and everything in between. It is all made out of the same stuff. And given that we are a body of humanity, what else would it be made out of but our humanity? It is the same humanity at an individual level and at the macro level. There is thinking and emotion, there is action in the world, and all the dynamics that arise between those dimensions of our human experience. That is happening inside us, and it is that stuff of human experience that the whole body of humanity is made out of. Through the eyes of love it is not hard to see it and allow it to be put together. It is put together for us individually when we show up as Sovereign Being for ourselves, and then we show up that way for each other. And then we collectively show up in the name of Sovereign Being in the world.

That does not take a great religious concept. I am just coming in the name of that intelligence and that energy that made us and that is the greatest reality of who we are. I am that power of love that made me. I am the wisdom and intelligence of Creation that made me. I am that creative power; I am that creative Being that made me. I am that Being. And I am expressing myself as that Being to you. How about you?

When we awaken to who we are as Sovereign Being, we are coming in the name of that reality that made humanity and made the world—the very power of Creation, the beingness of Creation, because we do not live on a dead planet and we do not live on a planet just full of energy and matter. We live on a planet created out of Being, and the most real thing about us is we are that Being that is being embodied in this planet. That is actually the most real thing about us. We are that Mother and Father God, embodied in us as men and women, in our humanity, which is the origin of the world in which we live.

It is interesting that in the story of Sleeping Beauty there was a sleeping world around the sleeping person. I notice that the prince did not go around trying to wake up all the servants and people in the castle. Perhaps we try to do that—we try to wake up the function of the world without awakening the awareness of Sovereign Being. The prince knew where to go. The prince went to the seat of the soul, represented by Sleeping Beauty; and, with the kiss of love, that reality was awakened. Her awareness of Sovereign Being—her Sovereign Being—was awakened. And then what happened? The world awakened.

We could try to awaken our world and make it all turn out right. I think we try to do that, probably, as human beings. Maybe right here where I live, at Sunrise Ranch, we try to work out all the factors—the cows, the conferences, and how everybody is getting along, and how the money works, and all of that. All those efforts are worthwhile and good; and yet, if we do not kiss the princess, our world will not awaken.

If we do not come as Sovereign Being and own the human experience and bring love to it, the human experience becomes impossible. That is what is depicted as the thorns and the ramparts of personality. The prince comes with the eyes and heart of love and the honoring of what is true in the human experience. We have the opportunity to let love into our own heart and see what is happening in our own human experience, and own it, in the middle of all the feelings of shame and anger and whatever else is going on. And then we have the same opportunity with one another in a spirit of forgiveness and compassion.

When we are coming in the name of Sovereign Being, something magical happens. We become empowered. We have the power of coming in the name of the energy and the wisdom and the Being that made us. And when we come in the name of that, somehow it resonates with another person and we maybe get let in, if we are lucky.

In a teaching story of Jesus, he talked about the sheep in the sheepfold and how there are those who come in to steal, and the sheep will not follow that one. But the voice of the shepherd is heard. The sheep hear that voice and know that voice. When we are coming in the name and in the resonance of what made us, there is a familiar tone. That tone can enter our own heart and enter the heart of another.

So let it in. And let it out. It comes down to that. The sleeping princess has to let the prince in. And the prince has to let out the love that is within him to awaken the human soul.