Do you ever come to a point in your life where you wonder what comes next? Or do you ever embark on a creative project and wonder the same thing? What do I do now?

As a songwriter, I feel an initial inspiration that gives birth to the opening lines of a song. And then, somewhere about halfway through, I might question, Where am I? Where is this going? What is happening here? And what do I write now?

Here’s what I do when I have that experience. I go back to the song’s beginning and play it through in my mind or on my guitar. And when I arrive at the end of what I’ve already written, the next lines magically drop in.

My experience of writing text is just like that. I sometimes reach a point of wondering what comes next. So I read what I have written from the beginning until I reach the blank space on the paper or the blank computer screen staring me in the face. And what comes next appears.

As I prepared to deliver the message in this Pulse of Spirit, I did something similar. I read the past three issues. I reconnected with the powerful flow of meaning that we, who write and read this publication, have been experiencing. In that flow, it was easy to see what comes next.

All of life is like that. We pick up the thread of the unfolding creative process. We feel the creative urge behind that unfoldment. And life continues to blossom.

I would like to pick up the thread related to Sunrise Ranch and Emissaries of Divine Light. The man who founded Sunrise Ranch and Emissaries of Divine Light, Lloyd Arthur Meeker, described what we are about as the spiritual expression plane approach to the destiny of humankind. I will name it here in slightly different words. Our service to the world has to do with our spiritual nature as human beings. We see the growth and development of our spiritual nature—our spiritual evolution—as the way forward for humankind.

Lloyd Meeker traced the conscious evolution of humankind this way: he said there was a time when human civilization was all about something happening in the physical experience of people. There were huge survival issues, so the practical, physical reality loomed large. And so, with people who are oriented in that direction, the steps in the conscious evolution of humankind were relevant to that experience. The ten commandments and other laws governing people’s conduct were introduced. People erected physical buildings as reference points for conscious evolution, prescribed physical rites and rituals, and laid down dietary laws.

As consciousness and culture evolved, the arena for that unfolding evolution changed. The evolution of human attitudes, thoughts, and beliefs came to the fore.

We think of Jesus Christ as a human being of great Love, who taught us to Love. Yet if you look carefully at his teaching, it was supremely simple and foundational relative to human attitudes, thoughts, and beliefs.

Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven. 

Thy will be done. 

Love the Lord thy God with all. 

It was a teaching that addressed the mental nature of humankind.

Lloyd Meeker had the vision that we have now reached a point in our conscious evolution when the critical factor is what is happening in the human spirit—through our spiritual nature. And so, we are here bringing what he called the spiritual expression plane approach.

Lloyd Meeker had his awakening in 1932, ninety years ago. Some say things have changed, and that we are on to something else. And people claim to work at ascended levels of human experience, the oomphty-oomph level of reality, until we reach the twelfth of never.

There is a lot that has changed in world culture since 1932, and there are many new factors related to Emissaries of Divine Light and Sunrise Ranch. But what Lloyd Meeker was describing has not changed. The issue for us, as humankind, is what has yet to happen through the human spirit.

Religious and spiritual institutions have tended to take up the space of the spiritual in the experience of humankind. They have claimed authority regarding that dimension of human life. All too often, those institutions have done so in a way that shackled the human spirit instead of liberating it. And God forbid anybody comes along and actually has a new experience of their own spiritual nature that connects them to the source of life inside them. Shocking! Unacceptable! 

Human institutions sometimes act as if they own our spiritual nature. They lay claim to it in a way that does not liberate the human spirit. It might be entertaining to rail against that for the remainder of this article. But I won’t. We have better things to do than rail against what human culture has done. Nonetheless, it is good to recognize what goes on. We are here to facilitate spiritual connection so that the full potential of our spiritual nature is known.

Our spiritual nature does not come alive without something else—an opening of the heart. Spiritual connection relies on it. But people have tried to connect just emotionally, as if all that needed to occur in the human experience was an emotional connection. Sometimes there are religious names that are given to something that is mostly emotional and leaves out the full potential of the spiritual experience, as if the spiritual experience was all just the deep feeling. For instance, people talk about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Spiritual experience does not happen without deep feeling, but it is not just that. We do not know Love without emotion, but there is more that comes on the carrier wave of Love than emotion alone.

Where there really is a spiritual connection, we know an unfolding order that expresses itself through us and in our lives. The unfolding order is our central guidance system. When there is union between us as a human being and our divine origin, we are connecting to that central guidance system. And do you think we need that?

There is terror of all kinds in our world. Recently, the threat of nuclear Armageddon has risen to the surface. But that is not the only terror that visits humankind.

Looking at the terror in this world, what is needed? What is missing? The central guidance system from within the body of humankind.

If we were alien anthropologists studying humanity and looking at what is happening with world civilization on Planet Earth, would we not come to the conclusion that something has gone terribly awry with the human race? That the central guidance system for us as a species is missing?

You can observe a central guidance system at work in other species—ants, fish, deer, and all of nature. There is a natural order to their behavior. But there is an erratic, self-sabotaging behavior in the body of humankind. Why? And what is the remedy?

Lloyd Meeker’s diagnosis, and the remedy for it, both have to do with the spiritual nature of humankind. The malady from which we suffer is a sickness of the spirit. And the remedy is a reconnection of the human spirit with the central guidance system natural for it, borne on the carrier wave of Love.

How does the carrier wave of Love come to a person? The religious name for the medium through which it comes is the Holy Spirit. The download of the Holy Spirit into us brings Love. Love is the central nature of a human being. It is the central nature of our spiritual origin.

So the Holy Spirit brings Love. But Love is more than an emotional outpouring. The Holy Spirit brings the information that Love carries. It brings the wisdom of the unfolding order of our lives. But we have to be open to that—yes, open emotionally, because the download from the source of our Being is not on if there is not that openness. We do not walk around as hard-hearted people and then spiritually reconnect. So yes, we are openhearted, passionate people. But then, in that passion, there is a download of divine intelligence, which becomes our intelligence, the intelligence of life itself that can reestablish the central guidance system for an individual human being and for humankind.

In our current Attunement training, we have reached the study of the pineal gland. The pure essence of the Spirit of Love focuses in the pineal, which is in the middle of the brain.

The experience of that pure essence is an experience of grace. Our human journey is a journey to grace. And coming to that place, we have grace to bring to whatever is happening in the world in which we live.

Our training teaches that gratitude is a conscious practice that brings a person to grace. Gratitude is a fairly general word. But gratitude is more than a happy feeling. It is an imperative on the journey to grace.

In all things, give thanks.

Borrowing from the title of a spaghetti western, we live in a world of the good, the bad, and the ugly. There is so much that is imperfect. But even that word seems like a euphemism. There is so much that is far more than imperfect. That is dysfunctional! We live in a world of the imperfect, the dysfunctional, and what is good and noble. The world is like that, near and far. On the global scene, there is the threat of nuclear war and all kinds of other terror. And even in our own individual lives and our lives together, there is the good, the bad, and the ugly.

In all things, give thanks. That imperative fulfilled brings grace to the good, the bad, and the ugly.

In all things, give thanks. There is no other way to bring the ordering power of Love through oneself and into the world other than by accepting that world exactly as it is, being grateful that it is there, and for the opportunity it provides to bring the central guidance system to it.

If there is dysfunction halfway across the world, there is perhaps not much I can do about it directly. So, thank God there is dysfunction in my life close at hand, because it gives me an immediate opportunity to bring the unfolding order of Creation to the world in which I live.

Spiritual government is vastly different from human government. It is not an attempt to control anyone or anything humanly. Spiritual government is bringing the spiritual atmosphere that contains the unfolding order of Creation to my own personal culture and to the culture we share.

That does not happen without gratitude. It is easy to question what transpires in the world or one’s own life. How did this happen? Why is this person acting this way? What did I do to make them behave that way? What did I not do that I should have done? What happened in their childhood? What happened last year?

We can come to think that life’s judgment is imposed upon us for some reason—that we did something wrong and we are paying the price.

But Creation doesn’t operate based on some kind of karmic debt that we might imagine we have to pay, and it does not operate based on karma credit. Creation is simply what is transpiring now that gives you and me the opportunity to bring the central guidance system borne on the carrier wave of Love.

That is all that matters, is it not? Whatever happened before, all that matters now is that I am here to bring what I am here to bring to the people in my world, and so are you. We are here to do that together.

How did it get like this? I suppose if we were alien anthropologists, we might study that and try to figure it out. But we are not. We are here to bring what might be a religious-sounding phrase: the government of God. That comes through our spiritual nature. And that is what brings a natural sovereignty from within us.

Our connection with that inner sovereignty puts us into a relationship with it. It establishes the basis for reciprocity, the exchange that moves between us and the immutable, the unchanging, the rock of reality, the everlasting God. We, the mutable, who sing and dance our way through life, enter into a vibrant reciprocity with Sovereign Being. And in that relationship, Love brings the ordering power of the universe through us into the world.

This is our lineage. It is the unbroken line of conscious evolution we are on as humankind.

I invite you to raise your hands to shoulder height, facing forward, and join me in this Attunement meditation.

We attune to the source of Love that sends us the Holy Spirit and to the divine intelligence that contains the ordering power of the universe. Feel the atmosphere of that building now. Feel the Holy Ghost, the sacred auric substance that is the essence of the new culture we are creating together, constantly purified from within by the source of Love’s vibration. 

We open to the Love of Mother God and the Love of Father God and accept that we are loved. And we pass it on. May I Love you with that same Love with which I am Loved. 

We are aware that we are not only Loved. We are guided by divine intelligence. We are given the ordering power of Love, which we accept, releasing our dysfunctionality. May that ordering power guide our thoughts, feelings, words, and actions. May it bring harmony to our life and work together. May it bring enlightened ideas to all that we do. May it call to order all that is dysfunctional and all that is terrifying humankind. 

I call on my own human soul and the soul of each one I know: Come to this Love. Come to this order. Come to this intelligence. Know life, and life more abundantly, born out of Love. 

I wish this for you and for all of us together. I wish this for the world in which we live. And I say to my world, Hear our prayer. Our prayer is for life. Our prayer is for Love. Our prayer is for peace that is known because the central guidance system for humankind is embraced and allowed to order our life. 

So may it be. Aum-en.