In this weekly blog, we sail past any dogma of religious belief or thoughtless participation in spiritual practice to embrace our primal spirituality—the spirituality we were born with and the original inspiration behind all the world’s great faiths and spiritual paths. We don’t do this to shun religious teachings, customs, rites, and rituals. We embrace all honorable faith practices with love and appreciation, especially our own. We do so to create a gaping hole in the veil within consciousness that separates us as human beings from our primal spirituality—from the reality of who we each are and the truth of who we are together. 

In this moment, I call upon the Ancient of Days. I call upon an ancient reality, still true today, to be known fully by you and me and by us together. May it resonate through our mind, heart, and spirit, clearing away any prejudice or bias; any worry, any fear, or any resentment, leaving only our original truth as a human being that we carried with us into the world when we were born, a truth known and taught by the ancients, resonating deep within the soul of humankind. 

Fragments of a teaching of our original truth are hidden in plain sight within the culture of the world, within customs, even within dogma, and within literature, even though it is mingled with distortion and falsity.

I would like to share such a truth that comes from one of the most ancient writings on the planet, potentially the most ancient extant today, attributed to King David. But its origin is perhaps even more ancient. It comes to us from what we know as Psalm 23.

Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

The ceremony of anointment is present in cultures worldwide—in Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and more. Monarchs and clergy are anointed. So are babies and guests to Arab and Zoroastrianism households.

We see oil as a symbol of love—yes, love for one another, but here in Psalm 23, it is the anointing of the Highest Love, the highest reality.

The ritual of anointment is behind the meaning of the word Messiah. The Hebrew word from which Messiah comes simply means the anointed, now often thought to do with a particular person.  Through ancient Greek, the anointed was translated as Khristos or, in English, Christ. People have piled heaps of dogma upon the word Christ, but here is what it simply means: the anointed.

The psalm doesn’t say that the writer was the only one who might be anointed. In fact, we sense that in speaking of themselves, they are inviting anyone to step into their shoes. They were speaking for each of us.

Anyone could be anointed simply by participating in the ritual. But the psalmist is not talking about a physical act, and they are not addressing a human being. They are communing with the invisible source of Universal Love within us all. Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

They are addressing a timeless truth. We are given Love. We were given Love when we entered this world. We came with the anointment of Love and with Love to give. In every moment of our life, the same has been true, right to this moment. We are now anointed by virtue of the very architecture of our Being.

This does not diminish the stature or the virtue of anyone who has known this reality through the ages. This is to celebrate the truth of what they knew and accept that this is how we, also, are made.

To put it in religious terms, you are the anointed of the Lord, using that word to name the highest reality of Being. I am the anointed of the Lord. Love pours into us from the cosmic reality of Being. So the ritual of anointment is an affirmation of an already-existing reality. It is a physical consecration of the human soul that creates nothing that is not already true.

If anyone reading this Pulse of Spirit has lost consciousness of their anointment, we affirm it here. The Spirit of Love anoints you now. Don’t you ever forget it.

You are the anointed of the Lord.

You are the Christ.

You are the Messiah.

It is hard to read such words without recalling the religious settings in which they have been used. But there is another far more significant context for their use: Reality.

In our current Attunement Training, we are moving through the Seven Spirits that are present in the human soul, working through the endocrine system. We have arrived at the Spirit of the Womb, the spirit of the pituitary gland which sits behind the brow. We noted that the naming of this spirit employs the beautiful poetry of a woman’s physical womb. A womb receives the seeds of Love that bring new life, and it holds the new life that Love conceives within it. While the Spirit of the Womb comes to focus in the pituitary gland, it is an expression of the entire human soul that welcomes the conception of Universal Love.

In the human body, the seat of the Spirit of Love is the pineal gland located near the pituitary gland within the brain, behind the brow. The arc between the Spirit of Love and the Spirit of the Womb opens what is called the Third Eye in Eastern traditions.

This is the anointing that is constantly available to each of us. A ritual can affirm and magnify the experience. If the arc between the Spirit of Love and the Spirit of the Womb grows dim, perhaps a smearing of oil on the brow with positive intent can activate it. Or perhaps an Attunement can energize this arc. But it is the internal anointing that is of greatest significance.

Spiritually unconscious thought and the disturbed emotional pattern that goes with it can blot out an awareness of our anointment. The result is that our cup is not filled with love. Our human soul becomes thirsty, and it certainly doesn’t overflow.

The remedy is simple. The powerful poetry of the 23^rd Psalm outlines the formula clearly. Consciously open to Love. Allow who you are as a Sovereign Soul to lead you to a place where you can receive Love’s anointing and are full to overflowing with that Love.

My cup runneth over.

It does not say, “my cup is emptied.” It does not talk about being exhausted, vacant, or poured out. It doesn’t say we leak until we are dry. Those are human states that occur when a person does not follow the formula.

The psalm takes care to point out that this does not only happen for us as human beings in a physical paradise. It does not say, “Go to Tahiti to be anointed and have your cup filled.” It takes care to point out the adversity in which we live, naming it poetically:

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…

Yea, even though there is a global pandemic, even though there is war, even though people can be cruel, some are ignorant and lie terribly…

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…

I am still anointed. My cup runneth over.

And as if saying it once was not enough, the psalmist repeats it with different poetry:

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.

I take this psalm as being written by one who knows. Through the poetry of it, it is clear enough that the author knew the formula for an overflowing life. So it was written by a sage who sought to spiritually inoculate anyone who would listen. This is a spiritual inoculation from what the psalmist refers to as the valley of the shadow of death and the presence of a person’s enemies, whether they are seen as being inside oneself or embodied in other people.

Here is a spiritual inoculation given to us from the Ancient of Days. Will we take the cure? Will we receive the spiritual vaccination carried through the spirit and truth of these words?

Here is the entire psalm. I invite you to transcend whatever religious crust is present in consciousness from our culture so that you may open to the beauty of the poetry, the formula for creative living, and the spiritual inoculation that was being given from the Ancient of Days.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. 

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. 

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. 

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. 

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. 

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

We are all anointed. We are all the Messiah. We are all the Christ.