This is an excerpt from a talk by Uranda, who founded Sunrise Ranch and Emissaries of Divine Light:

First, an altar—a place, any place. It can be a rock of peculiar formation; it can be almost anything. It can be a tree, a selected tree, that has a certain definite appeal to a number of human beings, where there is a pattern of focalization. It can be virtually any spot on the face of the earth. And in one sense we might say that here on Sunrise Ranch we are in the process of developing a shrine. So it can be here. But if we understand the principles involved we should be able to function more effectively in relationship to the development of that shrine, and the possibilities of greater blessings by reason of the shrine. First, we have considered the development of pneumaplasm. And in our meditations—to bring in another point which is essential—we have recognized the principle of the hedge: the hedge about the individual, about his house, and about all that he hath on every side. This hedge, in its original or first or primary manifestations, has within it the reality of the spirit of God, but depends upon the generation of pneumaplasm and the coordinated relationship of that which is humanly generated with that which issues forth from God. We have noted that the moment any resentment pattern, any rebellious pattern, any self-centered pattern of any sort, egotism, or false belief of any kind, distorts the vibrational field to the extent that there is no true meeting between that which is generated by the human beings involved and that which is issuing forth from God—anything that disturbs that point of meeting, that point of the beginning of the blending at the point of union between heaven and earth, will disrupt and spoil the result.

Shrines—Focuses of Creative Fields
Uranda
August 22, 1953

A shrine offers people an opportunity to have a mystical encounter. If they are open to it, they can feel something that they might describe as energy, presence, or some kind of activating power.

The person might ascribe what they experience to the place itself. They might perceive ley lines or vortexes that manifest earth energy. Sometimes unspoiled places in nature become a shrine to a person who thinks there is no human involvement. But still, there is the person who is contributing to the experience. (If there was a vortex in the middle of the wilderness with no people there, would it be a shrine?)

At Sunrise Ranch, people attribute what they perceive as they enter this valley to the exceptional physical beauty of this place. Eden Valley is an ecotone—a transitional biological area between the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains. Wildlife is abundant. Migrating birds land in the trees and float on the reservoir, and herds of elk and deer roam freely through the valley.

Sometimes people attribute what they feel at Sunrise Ranch to the Native American presence over centuries. You can still see tipi circles here, and people have found arrowheads on the ridge.

Here’s what I’ve learned about the energy field associated with spaces. People are a key component. Speaking to groups of people around the world and running many kinds of trainings, I’ve learned that every group is different. And I used to think it was the group as a whole that created the energy field in a space. But one day it dawned on me—it’s not just the group. The individuals in the group are each radiating a unique energy, some more than others. I taught myself to perceive what individuals were bringing and to assist them in making it as positive as possible.

County Road 29 cuts through the Rimrock on the east side of Eden Valley. When I first drove into Sunrise Ranch in 1975, I had an experience many others have had before and since. What is this? I was perceiving the fact that this place is a holy shrine. I attributed the energy field in the valley to the Sunrise Ranch community. And that was true. Since then, I’ve learned that it is not only the community as a whole. It is specific individuals who keep this shrine sacred in their hearts.

As I see it, how we relate to shrines (whatever we call them) comes down to this. We are either observing realities outside ourselves, or we are actively participating in the function of the shrine. If we are observers, we might even be subject to superstitious beliefs about the powers of a place. If we are actively participating in what is transpiring, we can become keepers of the shrine.

We each have our own individual shrine—our physical body.

Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?

1 Corinthians 3:16 

Knowing that is the basis for conspiring with others to create a shrine. It could be a home, a place of worship, or really any space that is used as a meeting place between the visible and the invisible.

People come to shrines for a restoration of the soul. They come for healing. So here at Sunrise Ranch, we are holding a vibration that allows for healing in a person. We don’t perform surgical operations or administer drugs. We offer an energy level that people enter. It has the power to open up the channel inside a person so that they too can be part of this meeting place. They can find the meeting place inside themselves. They can know it in the substance of the shrine, and that’s something they can take with them. They can be empowered by that meeting place in themselves that they’ve discovered.

Shrines in the world are sometimes desecrated. They say about some shrines that they’ve become money-making affairs for the church or whatever institution is behind them.

As a young man of 16, I went on an adventure. I traveled to Israel looking for what my life was about. I ended up in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. And I remember going into a space with a low ceiling. You had to duck down, and there was a priest in a black robe. He sprinkled holy water on me, and then he held out his hand for money. As a 16-year-old, I was crushed. I was looking for something sacred in life, and I came to this place that you would think would be a holy shrine. And it was commercialized.

Jesus became totally irate about that kind of thing. He upset the table of the money changers in the temple. And he said that the holy place had become a den of thieves.

This brings us back to ourselves and the responsibility we have not to desecrate the shrine that we are personally—not to allow in any attitudes, beliefs, or spirits that diminish the Divine Presence that is ours to know and to bring to the world.

In the shrine that we share together, we’re called upon to keep it sacred—not to say or do anything that undoes all that has been built thus far. And it’s true that words have power. Our words have the power to bring the substance of Holy Spirit into the space. We have the ability to infuse our words with Holy Spirit so that it may fill the hearts and minds of the people that we’re with.

Our thoughts and words also have the ability to undo the sacred. They can undo it for ourselves, and for other people, if they’re ignorant enough to listen to words that desecrate the shrine.

Have you ever been among a group of people who were desecrating the sacred? I have. It is a horrific thing to see.

Here is a way of understanding a dimension of the human experience. There was once a collective knowing of the sacred that was desecrated. And so the experience that the space we live in is a shrine was shattered. After the fact, people don’t know what happened. They’re not aware of why they feel such desolation, isolation, and loneliness. The reason is simple. The holy place that is natural to us has been desecrated.

So, we’re called upon to be supremely conscious of how we express ourselves, how we conduct ourselves, and how we are in space together. In a true shrine, there is fusion. There’s fusion in this meeting point so that the powers of Creation, the powers of love, that are pouring into us all the time are met by us and we’re fusing with them as an individual human being. And in that experience of fusion that we’re knowing for ourselves individually, we have the opportunity to know fusion together so that we create a fused body of substance, the substance of the shrine.

Over the millennia, shrines have been erected to a particular god or goddess, or to a specific supernatural power. To what or to whom is our shrine devoted?

There is one Presence, one Being, one Spirit, who is a focus of Deity for all people. Not just for Jewish people. Not just for Christians. Not only for people of the Western world.

That one Presence has the ability to include all Divine Presence for this world. All angels, all archangels. So in devoting this shrine to that one Presence, we are devoting this shrine to all divine Presence. Here is the reality of Love that includes all people, all nations, all worlds in the one world.

As it was said long ago:

I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. 

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.

This is what rings through this shrine. The voice of the Christmas angel sounds today through the field of consciousness and energy we share. I celebrate this shrine and the one Presence to which it is devoted.