If we look at the world at large, it’s evident that progressivism, as it’s present in our culture today, with all its virtues and in all its forms, is insufficient to bring what is needed to human civilization. That’s true politically, culturally, and religiously. And by the same token, conservatism, as it’s present in our culture today, with all its virtues and in all its forms, is evidently insufficient to bring what is needed for the world. Neither progressivism nor conservatism seems equipped to answer the deeper questions facing humankind.

In America today, after the recent election, these realities are starkly evident. But it is not just here that this is so. All over the world, there are people asking, Where have we gone wrong? What is really needed?

Pondering these questions, I think about the great urge that is present in some to go back to a reality from the past. And in others, there is an urge to move on to what they envision to be the future. The one rejects what they view as new and as a departure from the past. And the other rejects what they view as a belief from the past that does not embrace the new.

I’m presenting these tendencies in an abstract way. But if you think about the world in which we live, these seeming abstractions manifest concretely. There are media sources that present the view that we must go back to a glorious past. And there are media sources that insist we move on to a promising, enlightened future. Often, the people who hold these views are not talking to each other.

There are religions that insist we go back to a belief in a spirituality from the past. And there are contemporary spiritual teachings that reject religious beliefs and teachings from the past to embrace their vision of a newly emerging spirituality of the future. So it goes in most fields of human endeavor.

Here are thoughts to contemplate.

Just because an idea is old doesn’t mean it is true. And just because something is new doesn’t mean it isn’t true.  

Just because something is new doesn’t mean it is true. And just because something is old doesn’t mean it isn’t true. 

Surely, the test of truth can’t be age. The profound nature of reality is eternal—the most important factors in a human life. They are true now, and in all the nows to come. They may have been spoken before. But that fact doesn’t make them right or wrong. The most significant things are true just because they are eternally so.

There is an answer for the world in which we live that is neither a dream of going forward nor backward, but of being totally present now, bringing creative wisdom and the powers of universal Love into the world now.

From the dawn of civilization, humankind has sought to emerge out of the state of fear, savagery, and superstition that was part of the prehistoric world. From age to age, enlightened leaders have emerged to light the way before us. They all had an impact on the evolution of human consciousness and culture. But were they entirely successful in bringing light to the world and dissolving the superstitious mindset of world culture? The superstition of today in all its forms—belief in things you don’t understand—makes it evident that they were not entirely successful. Often they were ignored or rejected in their own lifetime. And then, after they died, their teachings were infected with the same fear, superstition, and savagery they sought to address when they lived.

Today, some are loyal to teachings from the past that have been so bent out of shape that they hardly resemble what was originally brought. And others reject those distorted teachings, without any recognition of the truth that was at their source.

At the time the original truth was brought, it must have seemed new, and to some, threatening. Today, it might seem old. But what does that really matter? If it was true then, it was of the eternal, and it has the possibility of becoming relevant to the culture of today. The way we are made as human beings, and who we are together, isn’t something that shifts according to trends and fads, or even cycles of human history. What’s true is what is eternally true of us, available now to express itself with freshness and newness. Is it old? Is it new? It is eternal.

Jesus was one of the leaders from throughout history who brought an enlightened message to the world. Here was his gospel:

Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Matthew 4:17

The word repent was from a Latin mistranslation of the original written Greek, metanoia, which refers to a change in heart and mind. And in the Aramaic language, there was a word used that we suspect referred to a return. 

Change. Return: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

But what was the kingdom of heaven Jesus was referring to? The Greco-Roman world in which Jesus lived, and in which Christianity later flourished, believed in an afterlife. But the kingdom of heaven Jesus spoke of was at hand. Immediately present. It was an eternal invisible world of cause and the dwelling place of Divine Being—God.

Imagine Jesus proclaiming passionately that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. Do you think he was making that proclamation without any reference to himself? Yes, the kingdom of heaven was present the day before and the day after. It was present regardless of his presence. But would he have said what he did without any personal awareness of the heaven he was talking about? I imagine the subtext of what he was saying as this: The kingdom of heaven is at hand and I know it. It is present right here in my awareness and experience. And it is knowable by you. This is, in essence, what any true spiritual teacher offers—the immediate presence of a spiritual reality known by that teacher and available to the student. 

What is a kingdom? It is a world, is it not? A realm. So the kingdom of heaven is an invisible world of essence and Being that is the source reality for the human world. On numerous occasions, Jesus spoke of entering the kingdom in life, without leaving the human world. But he also spoke about that heavenly world coming into the human world.

Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

Matthew 6:10

And how does it come? All at once?

The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: 

Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof. 

Matthew 13:31,32 

The heavenly doesn’t come into the human world all at once. The essence of it is planted here by us, just as the genetic seeds of the infant grow into a human being.

Perhaps the intimate relationship we have the opportunity to have with the invisible world of heaven reminds us of the way Jesus described his relationship with Divine Presence:

…as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee.

John 17:21 

When heaven enters us, we enter heaven.

There is another implication to the word kingdom. It is a world or a realm. But a kingdom is governed by the king and the government of the king in that realm. The kingdom of heaven known by us and brought into the world by us has the implication of government. I’m not speaking of a theocracy or any other form of human government. The government of the kingdom of heaven is government by the interior nature and pattern of all forms of life. It is the ordering power of Love at work in the world and potentially in the human experience. It is spiritual government at work through the human mind and heart and through the auric field.

The world in which we live is already governed spiritually, meaning that there is something already governing the human spirit. It is an erratic kind of government, originating from many places in the human world. The media plays its part, and these days, so does social media. Political, financial, religious, and business leaders play their part. Some of these are out in the open, and no doubt there are some that are behind the scenes.

This worldly spiritual government plays on the fear, savagery, and superstition of the human population. It enters people through compromised minds and hearts that let it in. And it doesn’t take much for it to rule by a form of spiritual chaos in the mass consciousness of humanity that plays out in the lives of individuals.

In light of this, the coming of the kingdom of heaven takes on a particular meaning. It is the coming of the kingdom that brings a spiritual governance to the individual that is true to their intrinsic source reality. This is the only governance that dispels the control of the worldly spiritual governance that is generally present in people’s experience. The kingdom of heaven is what brings the ordering power of Love into human hearts and minds, and into the auric field of the individual. Letting this happen for ourselves, and being conscious of doing this together, we bring the governance of the kingdom of heaven to the world.

As there is heavenly control in our vibrational space—it enters our hearts, minds, and physical bodies. And as that happens, we might begin to realize that there are intruders in the creative field of our culture and consciousness.

In America and elsewhere, there are concerns about national borders, and fear about immigrants entering our nations who don’t belong. But not many people seem to be aware of what enters their field of consciousness and energy that is foreign to them and doesn’t belong. Entering the kingdom of heaven and letting that kingdom enter us dispels the foreign elements that have entered our space without a visa. They are carried away on the waves of the ordering power of Love that move through our Being.

The truth of this experience is not old. And it’s not exactly new, as if it has never been here before. It is not a conservative experience, though it was brought to the world in ancient times. It is not progressive, even though it is the only experience that allows our life to progress as it should.

It is eternal. It is now. We have the opportunity to open to the kingdom of heaven now and let it govern in and through us and in the human world we are in the midst of.

Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

Let the Eternal come into the temporal. Let it enter me. Let it enter the world.

So may it be. And so it is.