The spiritual journey begins with turning—turning the emotional and mental attention to the creative source within, and receiving the inspiration, wisdom, and love that pours forth from it. That implies that any fearful fixations that have captured our emotional and mental attention are released and turned away from. When that happens in our experience, we are stimulated, activated, and elevated. We are drawn toward the creative source within to touch it, feel it, and join with it.

Turning, we ascend. We go to a higher place of awareness and experience. Jesus spoke of this as entering the kingdom of heaven. His gospel was: Return. The kingdom of heaven is here.

In the Psalms, this returning was spoken of as ascending the hill of the Lord.

When we enter the kingdom of heaven, we cross a threshold. It marks our movement from aspiring and responding, to joining in love. And in our joining, there is knowing. We are sharing in what we had aspired to. While our human experience doesn’t disappear, a deep awareness comes upon us. We have moved from a stage of mostly receiving, responding, and aspiring, to joining and being.

And then there is a second turning. From the high place we have entered, we turn to face the world. We now have a profound love to bring to that world. We have knowledge to bring—not just information or ideas but a knowing of something that has changed our life. We have an awareness of a reality we hadn’t known before.

There are some who speak of an uphill spirituality and a downhill one. The idea is that the spiritual path can only go uphill for so long. And what goes up, must come down. So at the moment of the second turning, we must descend into the depths of our soul, and into the world. Or so some say.

But it’s a perilous journey. If a person abandons the high place to which they have come, at the peak of their current experience, they might fling themselves into the valley of the shadow of death. And what does that prove?

Here’s the trick. We are called to a second turning, when the time comes. We are called to penetrate the depths of our own souls with what we have come to know in the hill of the Lord. It is our incarnational mission to bring the glory we have touched to a world that is at war with itself in so many ways. But that does not mean that we, ourselves, should forget what we have come to know, and again become entangled with the world, out of which we have come.

Here is another possibility. We abide at the place of the Most High in ourselves. And the radiance of profound love that overcomes us descends into the valleys of our life. The light of a new awareness shines forth from us. Our physical presence can walk through the valley of the shadow of death and fear no evil because of the awareness of who we are and where we dwell. We feel and know the larger reality that is behind us.

Long ago, there was a man who was told to walk before God Almighty. That is the divine guidance given to someone who experiences the second turning.

Imagine what that is like. You are turning your back on Divine Being, trusting that it is there behind you, supporting you, loving you, inspiring you, and directing you. And before you, there is the shadow of the Almighty, cast by your Presence, walking before God, with you, never losing your awareness of your home—of the kingdom of heaven.

You can then walk through the valley of the shadow of death and bring light to those shadows. Following you is a trail of goodness and mercy brought to the world. All the while, you never have to leave the place of the Most High you have come to know.