When Uranda founded Emissaries of Divine Light, he spoke about this ministry as operating at the spiritual expression plane of Being. It was probably an unfamiliar way of talking about something to most people. His point was that what was really at issue for humanity—and the area of greatest opportunity—is the experience and expression of our spirituality.

This is an area that has been claimed by religion, as if religion has authority over it. And so, for many people, it seems like you either play by the rules of religion or just leave the game. In either case, there can be a lack of a conscious approach to our own spirituality.

I want to make the distinction between spirituality, and religion without spirituality. Now you can have religion with spirituality, and to some degree that happens for people. People who are practicing their religion sometimes experience the spiritual expression plane of Being. Still, there are shades of gray and partial spiritual experiences that are part of the picture. And religion can easily degenerate into doctrine, dogma and unthinking ritual.

So, we make the distinction between religion without spirituality and the experience of spirituality wherever it might appear, which is what we are knowing and bringing to the world.

To some degree, religion without spirituality has spoiled spirituality for the world. Because if you have someone representing this field of human experience in a dogmatic way, without spirituality, it’s a turnoff. They’re telling you how life is, what you ought to believe, and all the rest. And it’s often not happy stuff. And so, for many people, they just turn the other way and look to make a lot of money or find some kind of happiness in the world without paying attention to their spiritual experience and expression. What a huge missed opportunity!

There is something else that happens as a result of the phenomenon of being turned off by religion without spirituality. A person can search for what they think of as spiritual things, but with little understanding of where to find them. They might have no map to the experience, or an erroneous one. They can become lost in some form of New Age spirituality, which is very much a roll-your-own experience.

In a world full of doctrine and dogma, the individual can come to distrust spiritual knowledge of any kind. There can be a sense that there is no spirituality that is real or solid, that there is no reliable truth to it, or intelligent pattern—that it is just what a person chooses to think or believe on any given day.

We might applaud a person’s spiritual search. But searches should lead to something being found, and not just a counterfeit or faded version of the reality sought after. It should lead to finding the real thing, probably not all at once but over time.

What we call spirituality is a reality that has a size and a shape to it. There is a pattern to it. Just like any reality, it isn’t just mush, and it isn’t just anything that a person might conceive it to be. It isn’t this way one day, and another way tomorrow. Reality is reality. There’s something to find, to get to know, and to experience.

It is not a physical thing. And even though physical form can manifest it, spirituality is the essence of the form. That essential reality is stable, though ever-changing. It is the bedrock of the human experience. For a person who is searching, they have to ask themselves if they are finding that bedrock, or just experiencing feelings and ideas that shift and change day by day—not really something that you can live your life by.

Authentic spirituality is experiencing the bedrock of reality. It’s a place of true north and true centering, the birthplace of wisdom. When we know that place, we can come to know ourselves and each other. We can find the basic pattern for success as a human being, and for us as people together.

So, Uranda, and Martin after him, and us today have sought to bring to the world the opportunity to know our spirituality. To some it might have looked like religion. It doesn’t really matter what it looks like to someone if they’re willing to find out what it really is.

It’s pretty hard to show the pattern and the shape, size, and feel of something that is invisible until it is known, lived and embodied. How do you teach it? Especially, when we live in a world that contains religion without spirituality, sometimes full of lifeless dogma and doctrine? But I will proudly say we’re doing it. We are teaching something that is a living knowledge. We’re speaking of something that we know. And we are not forcing anything on people. Or just telling them to believe what we believe. We are offering signposts so that a person can discover the experience of spirituality for themselves. We are showing them how to find it.

Does that excite you? Does real spirituality excite you? The idea of coming to know that and experiencing it and bringing it to the world? It excites me terribly.

The only time and place to find the empowerment of spiritual knowing and expression is here and now. This is how it came home to me. Maybe you can relate to the story.

I was living in New York City, right in the heart of Manhattan, working downtown in the financial district. I’d been there just a short time when I found myself thinking, How do I get away on the weekend? How do I get out of this place and get a break? And then I found myself thinking, How long am I going to have to live here? Perhaps I can do a stint for a couple of years and then move on to someplace else.

I had all these escapisms going on. And needless to say, that’s not a happy state to be in. I felt buffeted by all that was going on in the city—the smells, the noise, and the sheer energy of it. New York hums!

I don’t know how it happened. But at some point, I had a talk with myself about it. Do you ever give yourself a talking to? I said, Dave, you might be here forever. Get over it. Get used to it. Accept it. And I did.

Something magical happened. It had felt like I was drowning in the cultural sea that is New York. But when I finally chose to be here now, it felt like I bobbed up like a cork to the top of that sea. I went from drowning to floating. And all the influences that had buffeted me were now supporting me, stimulating me, and holding me up. I felt like the king of the world, or at least the king of the city.

The experience of spirituality is in the here and now. This is where we tap into spiritual power. This is the only place where spiritual expression becomes real. In this place, we connect with the source of power, which is above the human world, and above the world of form. We then relate to the world as an expression of that power. We are connecting with the axis mundi. We are connecting with a higher reality that’s empowering us.

Here is Jesus’ teaching on this matter:

And when it was demanded of the Pharisees when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation.

 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or Lo there! For behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

Luke 17:20,21

The text references both time and space. The Pharisees were looking for the kingdom of God in the future. Essentially, Jesus tells them to stop looking for it in the world of time and space because it is within you. How much more immediate can you get? He wasn’t really saying that it is in your stomach, your brain, or your liver. It is right here with you, inherent in who you are. Dr. Bill Bahan used to say, The kingdom of God is within you. Let it out! That’s spiritual expression.

Jesus was putting attention on what is right here, right now, with you, and in you. He was a profound spiritual teacher—not a teacher of religion, a teacher of spirituality. Here is the rest of the story:

And he said unto the disciples, The days will come, when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it.

And they shall say to you, See here; or, see there: go not after them, nor follow them.

For as the lightning, that lighteneth out of the one part under heaven, shineth unto the other part under heaven; so shall also the Son of man be in his day.

Luke 17:22-24

There’s something happening in the invisible ranges of the spiritual reality we share–the heaven. That’s where the answer for our lives and for our world appears. That’s where the power is. But you have to be in the here and now to see it and know it. And that’s never going to happen if you’re chasing after it over here, there, or the other place.

Something happens when we’re here now, individually, wherever we may be, and it’s miraculous. You here and now where you are, and me here and now where I am, we are here and now together. We are in one place spiritually.

We find ourselves on that basis. When we come home to ourselves in that way, we find each other. We find the community of people who are having that experience together in one place. And there you are, there I am. We greet each other with joy in this one place of power and light and knowledge, not just imagined or hoped for, but known.

I am making no claims here. I’m just saying that the more that we’re here and now together, the more we know the power of Creation. We come to know the essence of things, not just the form.

Years ago, I was commuting by car for about 45 minutes twice a day, mostly through Westchester County in New York. It was wintertime, and I was working in an office all day long. There was stress and challenge in my job, and in my life otherwise.

I was driving to work one winter morning. Above me was a gray sky. There was snow on the ground, and I was driving through the bare trees. It was cold and bleak, inside and out.

I had gotten hold of a CD with traditional Hawaiian chants and songs. And I had a killer sound system in my car. So I put the CD in the player, and all the warmth of Hawaii filled my car. All the essence of the beaches and the feeling of Hawaii came through. Even though I had never been there, it was strangely familiar. In those moments, I was transported to an ancient paradise. It felt more like home than anything I had felt before. And there I was in the middle of those cold woods with my heart on fire, inspired by touching these essences. I sobbed.

Last Saturday night, I had a similar experience. The Hawaiian Music Masters were playing in town, featuring George Kahumoku, Jr., on the slack-string guitar.

George has a beautiful, melodious voice. As the band played their enchanting melodies, harmonies, and rhythms, the packed house in the Rialto was transported to Hawaii. You could feel the Motherland through their music.

Between songs towards the end of the show, George called out, “Keahi, Keahi. Where is Keahi?” He was calling for Keahi Ewa, whom he had met the day before. He wanted her to share the hula while they played. So she danced on the stage in front of the band, her every micro movement evoking the essence of an ancient paradise.

This is not about trying to be somewhere we are not, across an ocean. It is not about trying to go back in time. The truth is, we all carry the essence of a dormant reality. When we show up fully here and now, those essences have the opportunity to come to life through us if we let them. And so we become interested in those essences in ourselves, in other people, and in all humankind. In this case, the essences of ancient paradise came to life through Keahi’s hula.

So much of reality is like that. It seems, perhaps, that the essences of things is ephemeral. But no, they are forever. They are eternal. They are part of the spiritual reality we are coming to know.

Spirituality is knowing the very essence of reality. Developing our capacity to know is partly a matter of the mind. But without a heart perception of what transcends all the forms of life, we can’t know. There has to be heart clarity for that perception to be available.

We are here to experience that clarity and perception. If we do, we can share it with the world. We awaken the world to the spiritual expression plane of Being. No human institution rules this field. It can’t. It is not theirs. It all belongs to God—to Being.