We honor the 2,977 people who lost their lives in the terrorist attack on America on September 11, 2001, and we offer comfort to those they left behind.

We honor those brave men and women who gave their lives so that others might live and so that their country might be protected. This includes the 403 first responders who ran into the World Trade Center while others were running out. And it includes the 40 passengers of Flight 93 who prevented hijackers from flying a plane into the U.S. Capital Building and who ended up losing their own lives when they crashed on a Pennsylvania field only 20 minutes away. We honor their selflessness and courage.

We who publish this weekly blog, the Pulse of Spirit, see it as an opportunity to participate in a spiritual event together. By the nature of a reading such as this, we each engage at our own chosen time. Nonetheless, it is, as we see it, one event experienced uniquely by each reader. As the editor and frequent author of this blog series, I encode the text of the Pulse of Spirit with the spiritual DNA of the spiritual event as I experience it, trusting that through the magic of language, you, the reader, will not only understand the words but also feel the significance of the spiritual event.

I hope you feel the activation of spirit in your own heart and the great urge of life itself, powered by the Highest Love. That urge calls us to be true to ourselves. It calls us to create, to preserve life, and to let life flourish in our own experience and with each other.

By the very nature of any spiritual event, we are investing the finite dimension of our life with the infinite. The commemoration of 9/11 reminds us of this. There were the finite lives of all the people involved—there are only so many days in a human life and only so many opportunities in a human incarnation. At the same time, we commemorate the infinite love that people brought to the finite world on that day.

That is the nature of human life and of the spiritual event in which we are participating. We are investing the finite with the infinite. In so doing, we take what seem to be the constrictions of time and space and expand them. And then, where did the limitations go? We are living in the infinite, knowing the infinite, and witnessing the unfoldment in the finite, in the manifest world of space and time.

In this way, time and space are expandable. They make way for the infinite. Consider a footlong ruler. How many points are there between the 0 and the 12? Infinite, yes?

Now consider a minute. How many moments are there in between the 0 and the 60? There are 60 seconds but infinite moments. This is symbolic of how time and space make room for the infinite.

These words are from the traditional hymn, “Honor and Glory.”

Changeless in heaven, over earthly changes.

Changeless in heaven—the infinite and the eternal, the very source of all change. The source of the spiritual event in the finite is the changeless. God bless the author of the hymn for whatever knowledge he had of the changeless. And God bless anyone who knows the changeless. It would be almost impossible to be a firefighter rushing into the Twin Towers without the changeless—a reality of love, devotion, and eternal values that are not pegged to personal outcomes. In the face of what changes—in the face of tremendous adversity and terrible risk, there is the changeless; infinite love, infinite commitment, and a valuing of life that never changes, that guides Creation and lifts the human spirit. We are blessed when we know the changeless. We then know how to participate in what changes.

There is the ever-changing expression of the changeless, of the source of life in every circumstance—for us, not rushing into a building after a plane crashed into it. Most often, it is in ordinary, everyday activities: serving a meal, helping another person, doing something seemingly simple and mundane. But the mundane is not so mundane when it is filled with the infinite. It takes on another quality. And the way it unfolds becomes beautiful. When the changeless is invested in it, then the changes that come bring an abundance of life, a furtherance of beauty and wonder, and the magnification of love in the human heart and in the world.

In a very particular way, this Pulse of Spirit is for a magnification of the timeless.

These words are from singer-songwriter Phil Ochs:

Can’t be singing louder than the guns when I’m gone
So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here.

Most people don’t live within the sound of guns, though some do. But we all live within the sound of what guns symbolize—the destructive forces in the world around us that can grab our attention and distract us from our experience of the changeless. Singing louder than the guns is letting the timeless express through us and fill our consciousness more than any of the destructive forces at work in our world; louder than the politics, more thunderous than any war, more momentous than the pandemic, and more powerful than anything else that might be moving in our own heart and mind.

The universal Om sounding in heart and mind is louder than the guns. It fills the human spirit if we let it. As you read now, I encourage you to let that happen so that the sound of Creation from the changeless not only fills you but is loud enough, because you are resonating with it, that it begins to fill the vibrational space in which you live. Not just loud enough for us to get through another week; loud enough to inspire the heart of humanity. Loud enough to bring love to those who feel unloved, to bring life to those who feel an ebbing away of life, to bring beauty to those who have lost the eyes to see it.

That is what this Pulse of Spirit is for. That is why I am here, and I suspect the same may be true of you—that you are lending your heart, your spirit, for this purpose, that we may be a spark that ignites the soul of humankind.

A person who is unaware of the changeless is pummeled by the changing. There is no awareness of where all the changes are coming from, no awareness of constancy in themselves. They are simply aware of circumstances and events that they cannot keep up with, outpacing their endurance and overcoming them. So, there is a sense of desperation and an experience of falling victim to change.

That shifts when a person enters a heightened awareness of the changeless place from which all changes come. Changeless in heaven. Heaven is the place of Being, the home of our Being. It is hard to go through changes without an awareness of Being, not knowing who and what one is, not knowing one’s own permanence, one’s own eternality, and the infinite nature of the spirit that one is a part of. Without a sense of Being, one is simply pummeled by changes that seem to make no sense and go to no place good; changes that seem to lead only to disintegration.

The changes that bring life come out of the infinite and the eternal, the changeless in heaven. When we know what is eternal, then it is okay that the outer form of things changes. And we are part of that uplifting, powerful, creative spirit that does not only bring disintegration—it brings life, and life more abundantly. We become part of the reason things come together and thrive. And we lose the fear that we will disappear because we know we are the changeless; we are the eternal.

Coming to this awareness, we are no longer looking feverishly for the world to create a paradise for us. We are bringing our own portable paradise to the world. Wherever we go, we bring heaven and infuse the world in which we live with that portable paradise.  

The portable paradise is the state of Being. And it is the integrity of the state of Being inside you and me that allows us to be true to our nature as powerful creators—no longer desperate human beings looking for some kind of peace.

Where does the Creator live? In heaven. Heaven is the home of the Creator. And when we know ourselves as the Creator, we live in heaven and bring who we are and where we live wherever we go. We bring the portable paradise. It is intrinsic to who we are, and so wherever we show up, it is there.

In so many ways, human beings have sacrificed the integrity of that heaven. There were all the perpetrators of the 9/11 event, and there were many accomplices, named and unnamed—so many desperate people, not knowing the unchanging reality of Being and demanding that the world satisfy their desire for paradise. And if they couldn’t find it in this life, perhaps they would find it in the hereafter.

But that was not unique to them. That seems to be the way of the world, at least for so many.

We have the honor of knowing the changeless in heaven—that constant, infinite, eternal dimension of ourselves. As a dear friend said, we have Big Love to bring. Some things pass away, and it is right that they should. And yet, there is unfolding beauty and unfolding wonder. There is the manifestation of paradise, which is intrinsic to the process. But that cannot happen if we as human beings are looking to extract paradise from each other, demanding that another person make us happy. Do you think that paradise has ever been known on that basis, for any society, for any group of people, or for any single individual on the face of the planet, ever? Do you think any individual has ever extracted paradise from somebody else? It has never happened, ever! And yet the attempt is made. Total futility.

We are here to bring the portable paradise—to know it, to be in the changeless heaven over the earthly changes, and therefore have it to share. This means that for us the changes are not just coming willy-nilly to assault our humanity. They are guided by the ordering power of love in the changeless to bring the glory of Creation.

We are here to bring this knowledge and the legacy of it for those who come after us. But how do we do that if we don’t bring it to the people in our life now? And who knows, if we bring the portable paradise to them, they might even give us some back! But that is up to them. We cannot do anything about that. But we can know the portable paradise and we can bring it to another person. Here, feel this! Know this! Live here! Be the eternal. Louder than the guns is the urge of Be the changeless in heaven, over earthly changes.

Good to feel the presence of the portable paradise with you, and also to feel the urgency of its expression in the world of the finite. Good to participate in this spiritual event together.