Do you ever find that the dynamism and meaning that you desire in your life has ebbed, so that what is left is the shell of something that used to be vibrant and alive? It may be that the universal law that brings creativity has stopped working in your experience. You may have stopped receiving what the universe has to give to you. Or you may have stopped giving what the universe is seeking to give through you.

The universal law that creates all things is the law of relationship between any two realities. It is the One Law of cause and effect. It is the law of karma, the law of giving and receiving. Life is created by this One Law and the dynamic between the two realities that are in play. This One Law shows up in all facets of a human life and the two realities take many shapes and forms, and the energy of them shows up in myriad ways. Through those energies, life is created. Our grace as a human being in this dynamic determines our own experience of joy and fulfillment.

Here are some of the ways that these two realities manifest.

They manifest as heaven and earth. We live on earth, and in physical bodies. We live in a realm of form, a realm of trees and matter, which seems solid. So clearly we live on earth in the form of things. But we live in relationship to an animating power that penetrates all forms and gives them life. No form is static. All form is energized from within. We use prepositions like “within” that relate to physical space for these things, even though such words do not fully capture what is going on.

Within the very atoms of all form, there is incredible power and energy. Modern science has been very busily trying to convince us that we live in a mechanical universe, that all these forms were created by the Big Bang and that they have been running down ever since. Biologist and author Rupert Sheldrake says this about the Big Bang theory:

Science requests, “Give us one free miracle and we’ll explain the rest.” And the one free miracle is the appearance of all the matter and energy in the universe and all the laws that govern it from nothing at a single instant. 

Scientists buy into that whopping big, free miracle, as if that explains everything else that is so miraculous around us, and it’s all just mechanical after that. And so we miss, if we buy into that, the miracle of heaven, the miracle of what is energizing everything all the time, and what is not only energizing it in some kind of random way but energizing it in an intelligent and beautiful way.

So here are two realities: heaven and earth—the causative power of creation and the form of creation. As we experience the form of our human existence—our bodies, and even the form of our thoughts and emotions—we are doing so in dynamic relationship with the energizing force and power that is in the heaven of Being. But it seems easy for us, as human beings, to experience disconnection from that inner reality. Do you ever find that for you the forms of your life have somehow gotten out ahead of all of what makes them meaningful and enjoyable and purposeful? Like you have just gotten out ahead of yourself, so that you are very busy doing all these things, but it comes to a point when it feels like you have been doing them a very long time. And back along the way there was a reason to do them, but that reason is long forgotten. It could be a job—you have a job and you had a reason to take the job originally, and you are doing the things that the job requires. And the demands of the job pile up, and so you work harder and harder. At some point you scratch your head and think, “I know there was a reason to do this, but that reason seems like it got left behind long ago. And now I’m just in the form of this thing.”

The same thing can happen in any facet of the human experience. “I entered into a relationship with someone, and I know there was a reason.” If it’s a love relationship, you know that at some point you were deeply in love; it was glorious. And now here you are, and it’s just not like that anymore.

That can happen in life. Somehow the dynamic between heaven and earth has broken down—heaven being that causative realm from which all power and meaning come. It is the realm that brings order and wisdom and intelligence to our life. I know that happens for me sometimes. One solution can be to slow down to the rhythm of life, because somehow your physical rhythm, maybe even your mental and emotional rhythm, has gotten out ahead of the rhythm of life. Life didn’t go anyplace, but somehow, it seems to me, I can get out ahead of it.

This is one way that the One Law defining the relationship between two realities manifests—between heaven and earth. You also participate in a dynamic between two realities every time you relate to another person. As it is said, “How you do one thing is how you do everything.” That applies to relationship. It might seem like we have different kinds of relationship, and in so many ways we do. But in the most fundamental way, how we are relating to anyone is how we are relating to everyone. In that fundamental dynamic, there is a give and take and a back and forth. How do you participate in that? When it is your turn to receive deeply, how deeply do you receive from another person? When it is your turn to give, how fully do you give?

Recently, I spent five days learning The Form Reality Practice™ with Bernie Prior. Bernie is a master teacher and the man who developed this wonderful consciousness practice. So I had an experience of receiving a great teaching from Bernie through learning The Form. He was pouring it out all week. It got to a point where I thought, “If I receive any more, this is gonna hurt!” It can seem hard to receive from other people, but it is deeply nourishing and deeply gratifying to receive the deep gifts that other people have to bring. It certainly was for me with Bernie. Sometimes, we just have to open more and more to receive what another is giving to us. It takes staying with it to receive in that way from another person. That was my experience in this workshop.

It is usually a mixed bag when it comes to what we receive from other people. Sometimes what we receive from them feels painful. How is it with your relationships? Is it ever just the good stuff that you are receiving from other people? Aren’t there always things that have some difficulty and pain in some way in the reception? And yet if it is really worth it to you, you stay with them and receive and find there are gifts in it all, and there is fulfillment to know for you and for the other person, and learning that goes on, too. And if you close yourself off from what another is offering, then there is also just something that breaks down in your relationships, not only with that one person but with all people. If you start picking and choosing and looking too hard for the painful parts that you don’t want to drink in, you may have aborted the working of the One Law in your relationship with all people.

Receiving what other people give to me is one of the joys of my life. I’m not very good at physical pain. I sometimes need multiple shots of Novocain in the dentist’s office. I don’t like needles either, so that becomes difficult. So when it comes to physical pain, I avoid it when I can. But I think I actually have a high tolerance for emotional pain, a high endurance level. That serves me well, because it means that I can receive a lot from other people. And even though there is pain that comes from other people—their pain, ultimately—I receive something else because I’m willing to be open and receive. I receive a great gift, which is the beingness of other people; the core of love and passion that lies deep in their soul, along with all the painful parts.

Receiving from another person is part of the dynamic of relationship. And then there is your own givingness—the gifts of your being that are yours to share; your deep care, your deepest knowing, the truth of who you are. There are the physical gifts, like the gift of your time, your work, and your money. Those aren’t to be dismissed, because the physical gifts can be imbued with the gifts of being that are present within you. It’s something to learn how to give of yourself, and to learn a way of giving, through which you actually have more when you’re finished than you did when you began.

Attunement is an energy medicine practice and a consciousness practice. Behind it is a spiritual practice that is based on the One Law. The One Law is at work between two people sharing Attunement and between anyone sharing Attunement and the heaven within them that empowers the practice. Like many people who practice Attunement, I find that when I pour out my heart and soul to another person in the practice, I am giving in a profound way, and there is energy pouring out through my hands. When the Attunement is complete, I am more energized than when I began. How did that happen?

Real dynamism is like that. In the giving and the receiving, there is a generation, and there is a knowing of oneness in true dynamism. There is the joy of knowing that we are separate and distinct from another and, at the same time, we are one with them; we are part of one reality with them.

Real dynamism in the working of the One Law is like that in the human experience. The distinction between the two realities involved brings creative activity, leading to a shared experience of being part of one reality. Not oneness without any dynamism. That’s boring. It’s lifeless. Oneness without distinction is dead. Distinction that does not lead to oneness is separation. Between people, it is war of one kind or another, which of course leads to death too.

Through the dynamism between heaven and earth, we are not only in our earth form—our body, mind and emotions. Our earthly form is penetrated by the Divine. Love is pouring into our heart. Inspiration is pouring through the mind. And life is pouring through the body. Through that dynamism, we have become the Divine that is pouring through our form. We have become that power of love, that inspiration, that life. It is we ourselves who are penetrating the form of our world through our presence in form. We are the presence of the Divine through our form, in the world. And we are inheriting this magical ability to bring that presence, not only to ourselves but to other people.

Then we may have the magical thought that we could be the Divine for another person. I could be that for you. I could be Divine Presence for you. And if I could do that for you, in the magic of the dynamism of the One Law, I could let you be that for me.

So we find that we are the earth, the form of things, but in being open to the heaven that is penetrating us, as form, we know the oneness of heaven and earth. We are the heaven, too. We know it is all one thing, one reality constantly giving birth, constantly renewing the form of its manifestation. And in knowing my dynamism with you, I know we are wonderfully two—two realities. But I know we are the same and part of one thing, one reality of Being.

I’d like to read from Holy Scripture, in this case the Bible as representative of all scripture, all utterance of truth everywhere, wherever it’s been written—and in appreciating these words, I appreciate all words that lead us to a knowing of what is true. These are the very first words in Genesis:

 God created the heaven and the earth.

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.    (Genesis 1:1-3)   

These words carry magic. There is the magic of what is said on the face of them, and then there is what is being said as you go ever more deeply into the words. I see them as relating directly to the human experience of the One Law of giving and receiving.

Here are my thoughts currently. The Spirit of God is moving on the face of the waters, and this is the beginning of all things. It is the beginning of the creative process, as it is portrayed here. As I see it, the Spirit of God is love, so the love of the universe is moving on the face of our waters—not just the face of the water but the face of the waters, meaning the depth of many layers of the waters of our Being. I see that as having a direct correlation to our emotional body. So for us, the beginning of the creative process is when the emotional body opens up to the spirit of love that is moving out of the heaven, and there is a download of love into the heart. We are then available for the amazing experience of what follows when we open up to the spirit of love.

If the Spirit of God is love, why does light result? The light refers to the illumination of truth. What I hear being said is that when your heart opens up to pure love and you are willing to drink in and receive pure love from out of the heaven, there is something else that happens. In that transmission of pure love, there is a message that is encoded.

Within that pure love, there is the transmission of truth from the heart of the universe to you. Like a programming code carried on the carrier wave of love, it is there to be received by you. So as you receive the primal transmission of universal love, you are receiving the spiritual DNA that is downloading into your being, telling you about what it is to be yourself and what it is to move and live in this life and to be creative. Because contained within love, which is the universal power of Being, there is truth, the universal pattern of Being. If you can’t receive that spirit of love in some kind of radical, remarkable way—at least in a way that may seem overwhelming and radical compared to how you are receiving it now—you will not receive all the intelligence that is meant to guide your life and help you to give form to that spirit of love that is streaming into you.

The spirit of universal love moving on the waters of your emotional body is not only the beginning of creation. It has to continue through all creation, through all of the cycles of our life. And if it does not, we find ourselves mired in the form of our lives, remembering that, yes, there was a reason to do whatever it is we’re doing, but that reason has become long forgotten. We have become stranded in the forms of our life—the job, the relationship, the state of our physical body—without either the love that makes it all joyful and wonderful and meaningful, and without the guiding pattern that is encoded in that love as the light that lights the way before us. The illumination has ceased, and we are in the dark.

The One Law creates dynamism if we let it—when we are open to receive what is ours to receive, in the way we are designed to receive it. And when we give what is ours to give, in whatever way, we are empowered and inspired to give it.

So what is your current experience of harmonizing with the One Law of giving and receiving? If you are like most people, the universe has far more to give you than you have yet been willing to receive. And you have far more to give to the universe than you have yet been willing to give. It is hard to give something you won’t first receive.

Receive. Give. It’s time.