Fresh Thinking, Inspiration, and Vision on the Process of Spiritual Transformation

The mystic Vessel like a gleam went by: it could not stay:
And the knights all fell to feasting, and the vision passed away,
That all shall quest, but few shall find, until the earth’s last day.

From The Quest of the Grail: On the Eve, by Ernest Rhys

In the Arthurian legend, the Grail cup was lost. The Grail is the capacity of a person that holds the wine of life, which is their indwelling spirit, and lets it overflow. Could it be that the Grail seems to be lost because in human experience it is broken? That we are living with the pieces of the Grail that are the parts of ourselves which, when fused, could hold the spirit within us in a life-giving way?

What is needed for a person’s spirit to flow freely through them is fusion, so that they develop the capacity, more and more, to hold the wholeness of their own spirit and let it flow out. For fusion to be present, there have to be the qualities of our own spiritual core that bring gravity and heat to our own experience, just as the sun brings gravity and heat to the solar system. The gravity and heat of our spiritual core brings fusion. That gravity and heat must be brought into the most foundational substance of a person’s being for there to be a real and substantial change in the person’s experience. And there is no way for that to happen without the fire of a person’s spiritual core brought into their emotional body.

For real change to occur, it takes more than a change of thinking, attitude or belief, even though those changes in a person’s mental state always play a part in personal change. Particularly if there has been a pattern of negative thought, a change at that level can be a relief. But changing one’s thinking alone is most inadequate when it comes to fusion. It is a little bit like the proverbial changing of the deck chairs on the Titanic. A little bit of change gives some relief in a person’s life, but far more is required if there is to be personal fusion.

There can be meditative practices, affirmations, study and reading—all wonderful mental practices—but that alone doesn’t bring the kind of transmutation that occurs when there is fusion.

There can also be physical practices that are helpful in a person’s life. A change of diet can bring increased vitality. Exercise assists the body to function better. But you cannot exercise or eat your way to fusion. It may provide some relief. It is part of the overall pattern for health and well-being. But you can’t experience personal fusion simply through your physical practices, no matter how commendable they are.

Something has to happen in the underlying substance of our awareness, and there is no access to that without the engagement of a person’s emotional nature, because the usual state of human existence carries solid structures in consciousness where there ought to be liquid—rock-hard beliefs, rock-hard ways of being that will never change if something doesn’t happen in a person’s emotional body.

If we find ourselves on a spiritual journey, as I believe we all do, we find it is a spiral. We may come to points of completion, even points of relief, when we enjoy some capacity to hold the current of Spirit. These are points of fulfillment and victory. But we find that there is something more being called forth from us in the cycles of life. There is something more that our own spirit needs and desires—more capacity to be filled from within, more fusion.

You cannot have fusion without heat in the emotional body. I’ve never seen someone experience spiritual transmutation without white-hot passion of the heart for the experience of the inner spiritual nature, a passion that cuts a person to the quick inside so that the things that have been rock-hard in them can melt and there is liquid substance available for the person’s thinking and for the forms of a person’s life. We are not meant to take the rock-hard attitudes, beliefs and patterns of behavior that people have, put them next to each other and hope we can build something that way. No, the Grail is not made out of solid building blocks. It is formed out of molten liquid. The passionate love of our spiritual nature, given and received, is what melts us inside.

If you look at a wineglass, it seems to be a solid. Though it is made from something that is solid—sand—that solid was heated until it became a liquid. The solid became molten liquid, and eventually a super-cooled liquid—glass.

So in the creative process in a person’s spiritual journey, for every person there come times in their life when they notice that their Grail cup is cracked. They are not holding the fullness of their own spirit. The intensity of life is not being held well and it is leaking out. The person’s capacity to hold intensity seems inadequate in light of the circumstances of their life. That is a sign that a person is ripe for fusion. It is time for them to expose their inside, their depths, to the fire of their spiritual nature. It is time to develop a personal practice, whatever that may be, which let’s that happen.

If this is such a time for you, or even for the group of people with whom you find yourself, you cannot think your way through this time, even though you might like to. Your thoughts alone cannot turn your insides to molten liquid. What you think plays a part in your transformation, but it is the heat of your spiritual core brought into your emotional body that lets the Grail cup be formed more fully in you.

That was the brilliance of what Uranda brought. His way of naming the work of Emissaries of Divine Light was to call it the spiritual-expression-plane approach. We weren’t going to do this by thinking our way through it, or even by what we did physically in the world, although both those things play a part. The work of this program was going to happen through our spiritual capacity. That’s where the fire shows up. For many of us, we would love it if our minds could figure it all out—just create and execute the plan. Plans are good for many things, but plans alone won’t bring personal fusion.

What comes through your spiritual nature and mine is supreme. It must be sovereign in our life. If it is, the substance of consciousness turns molten. And then we can think brilliant thoughts, because there is the molten substance available with which to think creatively. If there isn’t the molten substance of consciousness available, we are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic and thinking we’re being original and making a difference. But the thoughts we are thinking are just recycled from the human world if a person has not exposed their insides to the fire of the sun that burns in them.

I say that this is the day to let the Grail take form. As an individual, you have the opportunity to let personal fusion occur—to take total responsibility for what is in your emotional body. Your grail cup is formed from the substance that may currently compose your sadness and your fear, your rage and your tears. That is the substance out of which the Grail is created. Taking total personal responsibility for bringing the fire of our spirit into our emotional body, the pieces of the Grail cup are found and fused together.

Let me be the Grail cup, so that all that I am and all that I love and serve
may pour through me into my world.