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

There is magic afoot! This past week there have been evenings when I walk down County Road 29 that runs through Sunrise Ranch, and under the stars I feel a very full heaven over me, embodied by the stars, the moon and the meteor showers. Beyond these heavenly bodies, there is an invisible quality that hovers over us that I feel so closely on those evening walks. We can look the other way and be very busy about our lives, and yet that heavenly reality continues to call and demand our attention. Of course, we can be busy about other things. But when we pause long enough to listen to the voice that speaks with us out of the invisible, we find that there is something being said, and there is a call.

Yesterday, I had a chance to hike at Cameron Pass at the Continental Divide. I came to a place where there was a steep incline and a pasture below. In that place, there was a mother moose with her two calves nursing, one on each side. I was close enough that I could not only see them but also hear their suckling.

Life is magical. Yet we know that we can become so preoccupied, either with the larger troubled world or the troubled world that is closer at hand, that we’re not paying attention to that magic. I find that I’m able to see the magic around me when I’m open to the magic inside of all things.

I have some words with me from “Hamlet,” where he spoke about what’s present in the heaven. He speaks of it this way:

“This most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire…”

There is the physical canopy, but there is also present, at a level just above the usual range of human attention, the heavenly world—not a heaven that is a faraway place in the clouds, but as a very present reality. Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand,” and I think that’s usually been taken to say “right around the corner,” or “after you die.” But that’s not actually what he said. He said, “at hand,” which I think means right here, now. There is something that’s present right here now, and yet the human tendency is not to pay attention—to be so totally focused in the affairs of the world, whether it’s the larger world reported in the media or the immediate affairs of human relationship and human activity. When the world consumes us, what is present just a little bit higher than that in consciousness is not seen.

This program was started by a man who was pursuing a spiritual path and offering spiritual healing. In 1932, at age 25, he looked up in a big way. He looked up, not just at the sky, but he looked up in the sense of opening himself to a world of spiritual essence that was at hand. Because he looked up, something very magical happened in his experience. Over the course of three days, he had an awakening experience.

Our rational minds tell us that we can’t be present with him five years after his awakening in 1937 to celebrate with him the victory that he was feeling as he reflected on some of the first fruits of his ministry. I would like to think that we could jump through the intervening years and be with him, and applaud his work, and applaud that victory that he felt at age thirty, which I have to say seems to me now like an awfully young age to be doing what he was doing. There he was, with a great sense of conviction and destiny, and great joy at having assembled with him a nucleus of people who were willing to take on this great mission that he had undertaken.

We each have this opportunity to feel the magic that is in the heaven with us, that is at hand, and to turn to it and to open ourselves to it. We have that chance in this hour together and in every hour of our life. If indeed we do turn, what we find is that there is no lack of flow through our mind and heart from the inner reality. It’s as if you turn on a faucet that is never-ending.

Such is the nature of what is at the core of what we call this program and ministry, Emissaries of Divine Light. Thank God there is a physical aspect to what we are doing. We have property and buildings, and obviously some physical flesh among us as people. We have what we call an “organization.” I think that word has been much maligned. The organization is part of our physical flesh, if you will, as a body of people and as a ministry. It’s been much maligned. I’ve heard the attitude taken, “We’re above organization. That’s such a worldly thing.” It was apparently important to Uranda, and those who led after him, to have some organization, to have some physical flesh to what was being undertaken.

So what is our attitude toward organization? Some say they could take it or leave it. It’s a very worldly thing, after all. I wonder if a person taking such an attitude has the same attitude to their own physical body? “It doesn’t really matter too much—it’s just my body, after all. I’m here to do spiritual things.” Oh really? We know that if we don’t feed and water this physical body, and take it out for a stroll every now and again, it won’t be present to do the spiritual work that it’s here to do, and it won’t be available to do anything else either. Maybe we should take better care than we do of our physical bodies, but I notice that most people take some care. It is precious to us. So how about the physical body of this ministry?

This ministry has a mental body as well. There are ideas that are considered at a mental level that could, from one standpoint, look like beliefs. Sometimes we’re a little hard-put to answer someone’s questions when they ask, “What do you believe?” But there are things that are said at a mental level that are part of what happens through this body. We have a mental life. I’ve seen people take the attitude, “Oh, that’s not important. It doesn’t matter what we think—we’re spiritual now.” I’ve noticed that most people are more conscious than that when it comes to their individual life.

And how about energetically? This body has an energetic life. We could say a spiritual life, but sometimes when we use that word “spiritual,” people think about something on the other side of the veil, which is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about our spiritual energy right here and now where we are. Uranda described that as being the primary aspect of what we’re doing. You might say it’s the spiritual energetics. So we have a program that invites a nucleus of people to come together and to do something, primarily in the spiritual energetics of what’s being undertaken.

I’d like to read something from Uranda’s writing, “Healing Radiations.” Uranda referred to his work as the Third Sacred School. By that he meant that there are, as he saw it, three levels of outer expression. There is our physical expression, which I spoke of; there’s our mental expression; and there is our spiritual expression, which I just called our spiritual energetics. He saw this as the outer world in which we live. Uranda spoke about the correlating inner world, a threefold inner reality, which I spoke of as the heaven.

Uranda’s work came to focus in the spiritual energetics of what was happening, and the understanding that if a new world was to come, something new had to happen through those energetics. A new world comes because the quality of spiritual expression changes, because the quality of spiritual expression is wholesome. He referred to our learning and engaging in spiritual expression as the “Third Sacred School,” and said this about it:

“The Third Sacred School is the highest school that is possible of manifestation in the outer world until after the complete world transition into the new age. Any who claim to have a higher school, or any who may attempt to establish what might be called a fourth-dimensional school, of any type or kind whatsoever, will be proven by themselves to be false; FOR WHEN A HIGHER SCHOOL SHALL MANIFEST IT WILL BE ESTABLISHED WITHOUT THE AGENCY OF HUMAN BEINGS, OR SO-CALLED ‘MESSENGERS’ OF SUPPOSEDLY INNER PLANE BEINGS. When the Fourth Sacred School…is established in the future, the only way of entrance thereto will be through the Third Sacred School.”

So I will tell you what I get from that. As long as we’re here, we’re here! We are here because we are supposed to be here. We’re here for a reason. We’re here in our bodies for a reason. We have minds for a very good reason, and we have this marvelous ability to bring energy. One of the great gifts of this ministry is the gift of language. We are like Eskimos, who have many words for “snow.” And why? It’s because snow is really important to Eskimos. For us, spiritual expression is the world in which we live. So we have developed a way of talking about it, and a language to talk about it. Without that language, and consciousness at that level, people may tend to bring any kind of energy they want into the world—any kind of negativity, any kind of downer energy. People get away with it all over the place because, for the most part, people aren’t conscious at that level. Most often, the person doesn’t get called on it, at least not unless it gets outside of some kind of “normal” parameter of human behavior.

We have these capacities to bring energy, to bring spirit in expression, for a reason. If we try to ascend out of this world in which we live into some kind of spiritual world, it does not work. We’re here! The point is not to try to ascend into some other world. The reason for human consciousness is to let what is in the invisible heaven be married with what we’re doing in the earth, in the world, so that we don’t have an imaginary, invisible world of heaven someplace else, and then this dreadful vale of tears that we have to get through here.

Humanity is here to be a bridge between two worlds, so that those two worlds that have become split apart in human consciousness are woven back together, so that the energy pattern that a person brings is the energy pattern of the invisible heaven. This takes us back to where we started: that we live in a magical world. The world is magical to us; the world is wonderful to us when we are open to that magic.

So what I just read from Uranda’s words is what this program is about. I take comfort in the fact that neither you nor I can change that. We can decide to do something different, we can live whatever life we want to live—that’s up to each of us. But we can’t make Uranda’s ministry anything other than what it is. I think that’s a good thing. We can participate in this ministry. We can take the attitude: this is my ministry. This is not just Uranda’s ministry, or Martin Exeter’s, or anybody else’s.

As Uranda tracked it, this ministry actually began long before him, because the problem of the fracturing of human consciousness started long before him. The splitting of heaven and earth started before he was present on earth, and therefore the task of allowing the reweaving of heaven and earth started before he was here. That reweaving is the legacy of this ministry. For this ministry to do its work, there must be those who will stand in the place where this reweaving happens, so that it is happening for them personally. If it is happening for you and for me personally, it happens for us together, and we have a chance to do collectively what we are here to do.

That is another attribute of this ministry. This ministry depends on individuals doing what is theirs to do, but with the knowledge that no individual of themselves could do all of what needs to be done. When you really face the energetics that are present on the earth today across the face of the globe, realistically speaking, can you or any one person take that on alone? You can do your part and I can do mine, and I don’t want to underestimate what that part may be. But I know I cannot do it alone. Jesus Christ himself could not do it alone.

It takes a band of angelic beings in human form, those who have awoken to their origin in the heaven, who come together energetically and together open themselves to what can very easily transform human consciousness. I will tell you that I know this work seems just as futile today as it might have seemed when Uranda initiated this ministry—just as futile, and yet just as possible and just as needed. The seeming impossibility and futility is put in its place by those who actually do it. Thank God there is a nucleus of people on earth today who are allowing the majesty of what’s in the heaven to be present on earth, so that heaven and earth are rewoven again in human experience.

As we close our time together, I want to acknowledge that we have something to bring, and yet merely as human beings, on our own steam, we are totally incapable of bringing the fullness of what we have to bring. But we are not merely human beings. There is a larger reality to our being, for each one of us. There’s a stature that, yes, is earthly. We have a physical body and all these wonderful capacities. But there is part of who we are that stands in the heaven. When we open in heart and mind and allow ourselves to be fully connected up all the way through, with all the parts of us, all that is needed, and more, is present to handle with grace and ease what is ours to do: to bring the unadulterated beauty that is ours to bring.

So in symbol of our openness to what is in the heaven, I’d like to invite all those who are online and here in the Dome, if you would like, to stand while I read some of these words from “Hamlet.” Let’s share an openness to what’s in the heaven, and let it come through into the earth.

“What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!…

“This most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire….”

May we now in this moment, and in all our moments to come, have a large part of us that is open to that “majestical roof fretted with golden fire,” so that fire may come through us as gold, a precious quality of spirit expressed in the living of our life, a gift to our world, intact, because we refuse to let it be anything other than what it is.