Fresh Thinking, Inspiration, and Vision on the Process of Spiritual Transformation
We were made to create magic. That is what the human capacity is for; that is what human consciousness is for. To be more specific, when we say consciousness we’re talking about thoughts and we’re talking about feelings. Our capacity for thought and feeling is for the working of magic.
We know that, in the world as it is today, the kind of magic that is being worked often brings a hellish experience. We know that in various ways human consciousness produces hell on earth, near and far. We are here to do something completely and totally different, which is to let heaven be present. Heaven is the potential that is inherent in life—the essence of what could manifest on earth as humanity plays its part in letting it do so. And as Jesus said, the reality of heaven is at hand and available. When we are talking about heaven, we are not talking about something up in the clouds; we are not talking about something to be experienced after we die. We are talking about the essence of what is present with us now, a reality that potentially can manifest in our lives and in our world.
We have apparently chosen to incarnate into this physical body. As spiritual beings, we have flown in out of the eternal and the infinite, out of the heaven, to be present in physical form and to be present in thought and feeling, to work magic.
From the standpoint of time and space, we are strewn throughout the planet. We are sharing these words at different times, but we are all present here and now, in the present moment. And I notice that even when people are together in one place physically, they don’t necessarily create heavenly magic. But we could work heavenly magic, even though we are in disparate places physically. I believe we have that power in consciousness, in our thoughts and our feelings, to connect together, to commune together, wherever we may be around the world in this present moment, and to let something wonderful occur.
Here is the piece of magic that is mine to work—to be totally present where I am at the center of my world, and, being present, to allow the essences of heaven that I know within me to be expressed. In so doing, I bend the time-space continuum in such a way that I draw you to be with me, wherever you may be, that we might all be together in one place with one accord; that our collective waters of consciousness might come together in love and in worship, knowing that there is something that for each person, wherever you may be, is most high in your experience.
I believe that as I allow the most High to be welcomed in and through me and to find expression through me, and as you do the same, we can find ourselves in one place with one accord. We can together provide a vessel for the Holy Spirit to come into our life and into our world. That requires, for me, and I believe for each one of us, that we stand at the center of our world—that we are unmoving in that regard. That means that we commit ourselves to being responsible for our world and all that’s in it; that we take responsibility for who we are—that we live as creator-beings who have created a world.
We have created a world. The world that you know doesn’t exist as it does to you anyplace else other than in your consciousness. Noplace else does your world look like it looks to you. The world that all of humanity is experiencing doesn’t exist as it does for humanity anyplace else. We are creating this reality. We are on this bus together; we are taking this ride together. More than humanity has ever imagined, we are making this up as we are going along, and making it what it is. Knowing that we are making it what it is, we know we could make it differently. We could create our lives differently than we are, and we could create this world differently than we are.
It’s an ambitious endeavor to re-create the whole world, and I may need a little help on that one. How about you? So it’s in my interest to bend the time-space continuum, to invite people all around the world to do this together, to do this differently—to be together in one place, bringing our thoughts and feelings, the waters of our consciousness, together in love as we survey our world.
Looking at the world, do you think that it needs some help? In Christianity, it is sometimes said that Jesus came to save the world. I do believe our world needs some saving. I see people in the world in which I live who have gotten into deep water and need some saving. And the world at large has gotten itself into some deep water, too. So I do not doubt that Jesus came to save the world. But how about us?
This is only one example of many of the ways that the religions of the world are practiced; they have degenerated from their original inspiration. They have left the place of source in the here and now, which inspired their creation. They have degenerated into a sense of helplessness. That helplessness shows up in different ways in different religions. For many Christians, that sense of helplessness shows up as a hope that Jesus will save us.
Around the world, people may think they are practicing different religions. But if a person is practicing a religion that has degenerated from its source, they are practicing a religion that is common to many people around the world. It’s the religion of helplessness. It’s the religion of hoping that somebody else will come and save us. It’s the religion of thinking that it is impossible that something creative will happen now. It could happen long ago. Or perhaps it will happen later, after we die, after we reincarnate or after Jesus returns. It is the religion that believes, most of all, that I am helpless in the here and now to let what is heavenly be known. Maybe somebody else, or something else, will save me.
There are, of course, political religions. Maybe the politicians will do something about my experience. I’m helpless; maybe they will do something. Or perhaps a spiritual leader will come along and do something. Those are all religions of helplessness.
Real magic comes out of a spiritual practice that brings power, and that power is born out of our capacity to stand still in the present moment and never, ever move. Because if you stand still in the present moment, you find yourself aligned with the Eternal. That is what the Eternal is doing. It’s not moving—it is standing still relative to the time-space continuum. That is what saves the world today—a spiritual practice that brings the power that is born from standing still.
As you and I stand still and take responsibility for the creative field that surrounds us, we find that there is power available: a power to bring to us what needs to be brought to us, a power to convene human consciousness, a power that changes the flow of events in our world. Because if human consciousness, the way it is, created the world this way, a changed human consciousness—a human consciousness that is aligned with the Eternal—could create something different. You could create something different in your life and I could in mine, and together we could create something different in the world.
That kind of creation does take someone who refuses to move. And why do people move from where they are? For very simple reasons: They don’t like it where they are, they don’t like what’s being drawn to them, and they would rather be someplace else because it looks better over there. So instead of being responsive to the Eternal, in a state of prayer with the Eternal, the common human experience is in a state of prayer and responsiveness to the person’s creative field—to their own thinking and feeling, to what other people are thinking and feeling, and to what’s happening in the circumstances of the person’s life. It’s hard to be a powerful person in that kind of a state.
We are in our power when we are standing still, when we’re in a state of prayer with the Eternal reality of who we are. Then we’re not responding to our own feelings and our own thoughts. Our own thoughts and feelings are responding to the Eternal. We’re thinking new thoughts; we’re feeling new feelings. So if we’re thinking the same old thoughts and feeling the same old feelings, if the same things keep happening in our world, maybe there is greater openness to the Eternal for us to experience.
I can say with confidence that however long you have been on whatever spiritual path you have been on, by whatever name, what you have experienced thus far is not enough to create what you have to create now. It brought you to this moment, and that’s enough, but it is not enough for now. There is something more to happen for each of us, and for all of us together, that we’ve never let happen before. And if we’re not open to what we haven’t known before, individually and together, we’re buying into the religion of helplessness: “There’s nothing I can do. I’d just better wait around till somebody else does something, or until something happens.”
No, there is an unprecedented step for us to take, wherever we are in our life, whether we’re young or old, rich or poor, whether we are doing great or not doing so well in our own eyes. Whatever is happening for us, there is a step for us to take that we haven’t taken before. And that step is to greater openness to the eternal reality that is looking to come through us.
We have the magical capacity to bring to us what needs to come to us. But how is that ever going to happen if we don’t stand still, open to the Eternal? Or if, as things come to us, we look at them and say, “No, this isn’t what I wanted. I wanted the nice things; I wanted the good things, the things that make me happy. This isn’t making me happy. This circumstance looks half-baked. This one would need a little work. This person looks like they need a little work. I’ll just put them aside. I’ll just wait for that perfect person.”
There are people who spend their lives going from disappointment to disappointment in the people they meet, because they’re looking for the perfect partner, and darn!—time after time, this one isn’t perfect. Or they are looking for the perfect circumstance, the perfect opportunity—this one would need some work.
We become powerful people when we say, “I don’t care what happens; I’m not moving. I’m not leaving where I am. Things can come and go, but I’m not leaving my place of creation. I’m not leaving my responsibility for my world. I will accept what comes to me on whatever terms, and make what there is to be made of it.” It may not look like much, and for people who are looking for glamour, I say they’re buying into a religion of helplessness.
We become powerful when we take the circumstance as it is, however it looks, and welcome it; when we welcome the person that comes to us, however they look, and say, “I will make the best of this with you. And I will never leave you, because I’m not going anyplace. I’m standing right here.” When we take that attitude, we’ve taken the attitude of the Eternal, because that is the nature of the Eternal. The Eternal says, “I’m not going anyplace. The world changes—I don’t change. I’m staying here.”
Try that on. See if that isn’t truer to who you are than the person who is experiencing helplessness, looking for something better in their life. No, I’m a person of power and capacity because I don’t leave this place where I am.
As that’s true of us, we build a world. Our waters of consciousness are gathered together. It’s pretty clear that human consciousness has been broken into billions of pieces. How would it get put back together? I say it’s because there is a person and then a body of people who are standing still, standing together in one place, allowing their waters to come together into one place, providing an example of wholeness. The wholeness that we know can transform the larger body of consciousness of humanity. But clearly that would take quite a step of openness from each one of us, if that were to really occur.
Experiencing wholeness, we are weaving together the essence of heaven with what is coming to us from our world. Heaven and earth have apparently come apart for humanity as a whole. We have a chance to weave them back together because we are fully present in this moment, and we do that work. It happens as we leave aside the self-concern that we begin to understand is killing us. Self-concern is a self-inflicted wound. And letting it go, we open ourselves to the sanctity of what can happen here and now.
O Lord of Creation, our being rushes to Thee in love and openness and commitment. We would stand still here for Thee, that Thy wonder, Thy glory, Thy love, Thy truth may be known through us and in our world because we weave our world back into Thy reality in the way we live our life every day in this eternal moment, in Thy name. Aum-en.