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

In my meditations earlier this morning, I was thinking about the clarity that I suspect all of us have touched in our lives. And I was thinking of it as a spring in a meadow that we may have come across, discovered first because there is a meandering stream in the meadow. When first discovered, that water may be full of whatever is in the meadow, and perhaps not fit to drink. But if we are curious, we may look for the source of that water, until finally we come to the place where it’s bubbling up out of the ground and where it is fit to be drunk.

Life itself is like that. We touch something of clarity and something of truthfulness, seeing that spring as a symbol of truth, something that’s pure and uncluttered. Over these last ten days or so, I’ve had a chance to be in the natural world. When I’m away from the usual human world and immersed in nature for a period of time, there’s a sense of peacefulness and wholeness that comes. I experience myself as part of that natural whole.

Coming back after a time of travel, particularly in the natural world, can bring perspective on the things that had been close and maybe taken for granted. In the flow of life from day to day, there are things that we may grow accustomed to, and some of those things may cover over the purity of the spring, the purity of the experience of truth.

Being away, we can perhaps gain some perspective on that, and see if there are elements of our experience that are covering over the inner spring, that are hiding it, that are somehow polluting it, making it unfit to drink. If that is the case, care should be taken to dislodge what may be there, to allow the spring to flow freely, and to make sure we’re drinking from it at its source. It can take strong action on a person’s part to cast off whatever doesn’t fit, whatever’s not true, whatever we’ve grown accustomed to that’s been injected into life but doesn’t actually belong as part of our life. So it’s good to find times to step back—daily I would say, and sometimes for longer periods of time—so that we establish in ourselves a perspective on daily life. In stepping back, we can move ever more closely to the source of that life spring that is at our core, so we can drink the pure water.

This is the great work to which we are called as human beings and that we acknowledge in a particular way through this program we call Emissaries of Divine Light. It is the opportunity to drink the clear water ourselves because we reestablish that flow in us as a human being, so that it’s present in our world. There do seem to be things that intrude and, if allowed to, would cover up that spring and pollute it.

I was noticing the presence of the spring as we gathered here this morning. Maybe you were too. Through the music that was played, the poem, and just in our gathering together, there was a deepening of spiritual current. The forms that were presented were beautiful but, just as forms, probably not exceptional. But somehow, in the sharing in those forms, there was a deepening of spiritual current that was unmistakable.

Is not that spiritual current worth everything? There are the outer forms of things that we pay attention to, and rightly so. Those outer forms have the possibility of giving deeper and richer and more varied expression to spiritual current. Ultimately, that’s their value. The forms of our life make sense as we use them as opportunities to magnify spiritual current.

There are unique essences of that spiritual current that we each bring. We may sometimes marvel at each other—how could someone be so different?! The gifts that we bring can serve the larger spiritual current. What we bring can also throw a spanner into the works, as it’s put. I’m not even sure what a spanner is—a wrench, I think. It’s probably obvious enough to us that other people can do that. What a person brings into their world can cut across the greater flow of spirit. But do we have perspective on how what we are bringing relates to the larger flow of spiritual current?

If what is going on in a person, or in a group of people, is cutting across the current of the spring, how does that current have a chance to flow freely? It has to meander through all the arbitrary things that individuals bring into the picture, with a lack of awareness of the larger flow.

Our spiritual work necessitates that we find those arbitrary things, those things that set the course of the spring meandering through the meadow—to one by one set them aside, to one by one put them in a place where they no longer are disrupting the flow and the purity of that spring. We have the opportunity to do that conscious work in ourselves. One by one, as things come up in our experience, we can look at them clearly in the light of the spiritual current that we have to bring, and ask ourselves: How is this part of my experience serving that spiritual current?

So we have an opportunity to do that in ourselves, and therefore to build the channel that carries spiritual current into the world. We also have the opportunity to do that with others. We have the opportunity to live a life of service that assists other people to take those things that are blocking their gift and their fulfillment in the world, and as much as possible help them set those things aside in a process of healing and forgiveness and purification, a process of stepping back from the turmoil of everyday things, to reestablish the inner flow.

That is the nature of the understanding service that was brought by Lloyd Meeker, who founded this place, with others. He assisted them to find that original flow in themselves and to deal with those things that were covering it up—to deal with them kindly and with love and assurance, but to indeed deal with them. He brought the knowing that such a process was possible, even in a world that had grown hard through years of depression and a world war.

We live in a world now that has grown hard because of many things. Where the inner spring in us is flowing free, we bring the assurance of what is possible to people—what is not only possible but what is real and true, of them and of life itself.

In that service is the knowing that we, of ourselves, can’t make an experience for another person, and in fact they can’t make it for themselves. They don’t have to, because that original experience is present with us all. It doesn’t have to be re-created. It is present. It is our ultimate reality. We can alter our experience of that original flow; we can lessen our experience of it; we can move away from the experience of it. But the place of origin for that flow is our ultimate reality. It is our home.