I had this strange thought this morning. I’m coming of age. Usually we use that expression for a young person. I am sixty-four, that ripe old age celebrated in a song by the Beatles. Ready for the golf course. Ready for the beach. But I feel additional creative capacity coming on. The afterburners are kicking in.

Lloyd Arthur Meeker said that the first point at which a person had the opportunity to be mature is seventy. And that is the best-case scenario. So perhaps sixty-four is relatively young.

At the same time, Emissaries of Divine Light is coming of age. We are eighty-four years old as an organization. And we relate what we’re doing to a longer cycle that goes back long before that. But if we are tracking the age of this organization, it is eighty-four. There have been many phases to the Emissary ministry over these years. We’ve had our peaks and valleys, as a human being does. In this current cycle, we are coming of age.

You might say that these things are a vision or a prophecy. But there are two ways to see a prophecy. A prophecy might be a foreseeing of the future, but it could also be seen as an activation of the future. You might think of that in a hopeful way: I really hope that wonderful things are going to happen. For me, it’s beyond that. I see it happening, though not yet in its fullness. I see it happening in and through myself. I see it happening in what we’re doing collectively. I see us coming of age. We have to become an enthusiastic witness to what’s becoming so that it can fully manifest.

There is a wonderful story about coming of age in Genesis. As the story goes, Abraham was ninety-nine years old and his wife, Sarah, was ninety. They were both “old and well stricken with age.” Sarah was barren.

Abraham and Sarah experience a divine visitation and hear that Sarah is going to give birth. Abraham “fell upon his face,” laughing out loud. Sarah laughs to herself. But she conceives and gives birth to Isaac.

We’re never too old to give birth to the new. As long as we have breath, we are never too old to let life pour forth. As a human being matures, they have increasing capacity to give expression to the reality of Being within them. A person might be old and stricken with age, with physical infirmity of various types. And yet there’s more capacity that’s kicking in. We participated in the recent Attunement Retreat at Edenvale, in British Columbia, in which an increase of powerful expression appeared. For many of the people who attended, the afterburners are kicking in and there is new power coming online.

For me, over the past two days of the Attunement Retreat I have been feeling an intense calling coming into me and then through me. The calling is to be present at a higher level of Being than before and in a greater fullness of presence than we have been before.

In the process of Attunement, we open the function of the endocrine glands. There are seven glands or, in some cases, sets of glands. We begin with the pineal gland and the pituitary gland in the head, then the thyroid, the thymus, the Islets of Langerhans in the pancreas, the adrenals, and then the gonads. In mystical terms, we speak of these as the Seven Seals, or seven gateways.

For me, in the retreat there was an intense resonance through the first three glands. I felt spiritual energy humming through me with the others present, and a great awakening at those levels.

As that awakening transpires, it has great implications for what we are doing together. The pineal, pituitary, and thyroid glands are powerful influences on all of a person’s life experience. The pituitary is spoken of as the master gland. The pineal is still a bit of a mystery to many. It connects us to higher levels of reality beyond the immediate world in which we’re living. To live a sane life, it is crucial to be in touch with something more than the events of everyday. Without that, there is no sense of potentiality and no prophecy.

Activation of resonance through the seven endocrine glands brings awakening. The degree of resonance determines the degree of awakening. High levels of resonance bring high levels of awakening. Lower levels of resonance bring lower levels of awakening.

In a worldly sense, an asleep person can be a powerful person. They are not ultimately able to create goodness in the world. But they are nonetheless impactful, because someone who is really unawake and unaware might also be uninhibited about what they are doing. We have a president of the United States who seems to fall into this category—he seems to be blissfully unaware of how irresponsible he is acting in some respects. So he is having an impact because he’s unrestrained. Apparently, he is asleep in very important ways. Such a person can be a dangerous man or a dangerous woman.

A half-awake person often has less impact, because when they become self-aware and aware of the impact that they are having in the world, they may have an oh-my-god moment. They see the impact they are having on other people and on the world, and think, Oh my god, I don’t want to do any harm. So they tiptoe through life as a half-awake person. This might be somebody practicing New Age spirituality, who thinks: I won’t be of much consequence in the world, but I will channel a disincarnate being. Or they think, I will move with the attunement current in a timid and shy and sweet kind of way, but without actually bringing the fullness of that current into the world in a way that could have an impact.

So when I say that I’m coming of age and that we’re coming of age, what I mean is that we’re moving from being half awake to fully awake. We are becoming self-aware, and we are becoming aware that if we are irresponsible in how we act and speak and express in the world, we could do damage. But we are becoming fully awake. We are becoming aware that there is a tremendous creative urge within us and that the world around us needs us. These two realizations—the realization of the gift of the creativity within us and the realization of the need in the world around us—become very compelling in personal experience.

A person who is moving into full awakening becomes aware of their own individual essence—the realization that there’s nobody like me, and there’s nobody who has the gifts that I have to give. I’m somehow uniquely equipped; I’m uniquely made. “I am a unique self,” which is actually redundant—even though it deserves to be said—because selfhood is by definition unique. If you are not unique, you are not a self. An awakened individual becomes aware that they are unique and they have something unique to express that comes out differently through them than anyone else.

So that’s the first awakening—one’s own gift. But there is a second one that goes with it, and together they are so powerful. The second realization is that this world needs you and the unique gift that you have to give. And while you might imagine that somebody else could fill this need, perhaps even better than you, the truth is that nobody else is filling it. You are there. You are uniquely equipped with the gift that is needed.

I know from my own experience that when those two things come together, it is compelling. How could a person stand in the face of those two things and not take action in their life? How could they stop themselves from coming out of a half-awake state, out of timidity, and feel the courage to be themselves and give their gift? Because after all, this person, this situation, this world needs the gift they have.

It goes in that order. When we awaken to who we are and the gift that is ours to give, then we begin to see how that gift could make a difference.

How long can you sit there, seeing a real creative need that you could fill? I’m not talking about functioning on a codependent basis, helping somebody who is in constant need and is not taking the steps to take personal responsibility. I’m talking about a situation or a person where there’s a fulfillment that’s possible, there’s something that could grow and emerge and evolve into something really creative and wonderful. And there it is. The person is there, or an important project is there, and yet something is missing. And then you realize that if you stepped in with that something which you have to give, the situation could become something beautiful.

Thinking of us together as Emissaries of Divine Light, I’m seeing this on the very largest scale. Personally speaking, if you say you have a gift to give, you could be subject to all kinds of self-shaming and shaming from other people. Who are you to give that gift? What makes you so special? And how about everybody else—don’t they have a gift to give? Maybe they could give that gift even better than you.

So unless you are built very differently from me, you have some of those things that come up when you start to think about what you have to give. And so maybe you sit there with those thoughts. And yet, the need remains. Well, this person is so much smarter than me. This person speaks so much better than me. This person presents themselves so much better than I do. And yet there is the need, and it is not being filled. You are there. How long can you resist giving it what you have to give?

In the context of the world, do you think the world needs us? Oh, that would be arrogant. Emissaries of Divine Light? Oh, you’re just making yourselves better than everybody, as if you are part of some kind of spiritual elite. It’s the same pattern that occurs at a personal level. If we fully awaken to who we are, we know the gift that we have to give. And I defy you to know the gift that Emissaries of Divine Light has to give—who we are corporately, as a body of people, with the knowledge that’s present, and the awakening that’s encoded into who we are together—and then look at our world today and not give the gift. Do you really think there is no need for what Emissaries of Divine Light has to offer?

A gift, if it’s truly to be given, is given without strings attached. Here’s the gift. It’s just given without expectation. It is given for the sake of the good that it can do, not for the recognition that it’s going to give you as the giver. And even though, in giving your gift, it gives you a sense of pride and it increases your sense of who you are, nonetheless you’re not giving it for that purpose if it is truly given. You are giving it because you have it to give and the situation calls for that gift. There’s a need—it would make a difference.

That’s how it is for us as Emissaries of Divine Light, just as it is for anybody or anybodies on the planet. It’s true for any individual, and then it’s true for any collective of people that has a reason to be together. If they are together, there is a reality of who they are together, and then there is the reality of what they have to give because of who they are. So what I’m saying isn’t limited to any person or any collective. I take it personally, as relevant to me, just as it is relevant to you. But I have to be most concerned about me in this regard, just like each of us. I can’t do anything about your gift and your giving of it, other than to perhaps inspire or encourage you to give it. Where I have sovereignty is right here, with me. And then collectively, together, we have sovereignty over what has come to us.

I’ve learned to appreciate the creative fields where I truly have sovereignty and where something’s rightly given to me in that sovereignty. There are many situations where we are involved in a circumstance in which we don’t actually have sovereignty—we’re working with other people, we’re somehow cooperating, working back and forth, and we’re just letting it work out based on everybody who is present. It’s not a situation where it’s given to us to determine how things are going to go or to give a gift for everybody, because there’s not necessarily an “everybody.” It might be a collection of people who don’t have a collective, unified understanding of what they are doing. So in that situation, you can contribute, you can offer something, you can encourage, but you don’t actually have sovereignty.

But there are times we have sovereignty, when the creative field is rightly given to us. So it becomes important to see when we, as an individual, have sovereignty. And then collectively, the same is true. We could ask about that for us as Emissaries of Divine Light. Do we accept our sovereignty together? This organization is given to us, and if it’s not given to us, who is it given to? Who do we think has sovereignty if it isn’t us? And what does it mean to accept that sovereignty? It means that we give the gift that we are empowered to give together. We exercise that sovereignty.

At whatever age we are individually, I celebrate that we are coming of age collectively. I celebrate the current that is flowing powerfully through our physical bodies and through our endocrine glands. We are awakening at a new level. Seeing a great need in the world that we can do something about, let us give our gift.

David Karchere
dkarchere@emnet.org
Edenvale, British Columbia
April 9, 2017