Twelve Gates to the Holy City

I have the pleasure of participating today from the west coast of Oahu. And I’ve turned on my original sound, so maybe you can hear the surf in the background.

This is a truly wonderful place. All my life, I’ve wanted to visit, especially since meeting Keahi Ewa, close to 15 years ago now. She raised the possibility of taking me and perhaps others to see the place where she grew up. And now I finally have the opportunity to do so. And at the same time, as many of you know, I had the privilege of seeing the debut of Tom Cooper’s musical, Higher! Higher! That went fabulously well. The last performance—which is the one we went to—was Sunday afternoon last week. Then on Tuesday, we had an Attunement and chant workshop hosted by Tom and Eileen. That was a delight. We met all kinds of deep-hearted people with a keen spiritual interest.

Meanwhile, we have had a chance to see a lot of Oahu. We went to the north side, the east side, around Honolulu to the south, and now up on the west side. So that pretty well covers it. In the process, I’ve had a chance to meet members of Keahi’s family—her auntie, cousin, and cousin’s son. And then I met two men who were mentors for Keahi. At just the right time, they were there to give her the right encouragement, the right push to keep moving and follow what was next for her in her life. It was such an honor to meet them and feel the part they played in her journey.

This morning, I’m thinking about a line from that final book in the Bible, Revelation, from the disciple John. And it’s right toward the end of his life that he wrote this epic book. Quite apparently, he was leaving something for those who came after and packing into that one book all the knowledge that he could. It’s full of mysticism. Indeed, it’s been a mystery to people. But within that mystical expression is a truth that is profound and immediate.

This is from the 21st chapter, verse 27:

And there shall be in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

The “it” being named is the holy city, New Jerusalem. The holy city is a place of consciousness.

Isn’t it interesting when something enters what should be the holy city that maketh a lie, then the way consciousness works, everything else that is in consciousness tries to accommodate the lie that has been welcomed in. Yes, there is that one lie that got introduced. And then all of the human psyche has to say something about that. It has to relate to it and make something out of it, and perhaps try to solve what seems to have gone amiss. Before you know it, what should be a holy city is not so holy anymore, because the whole construct of consciousness has been thrown off by this one thing that makes a lie, that’s working abomination and defiling the sacredness of the human soul.

I think about how this is at an individual level. And it is true for each of us, is it not, that the holy city—the state of our own psyche, the state of our own heart—can be defiled by something that is making a lie, that is telling us something about ourselves, other people, or the world in which we live, that is just not true? And then that sets off a pattern of false understanding.

In another place, John says this:

And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.

—Revelation 12:10

Getting over the seemingly religious implications of the word salvation—which I believe meant something very different to John than it does in contemporary Christianity—there is the depiction of something that is all too familiar. We could think about it at a personal level, and about what our own human mind gets up to. …the accuser of our brethren, which accused them before our God day and night. Sometimes the accusative nature of the mind just doesn’t stop. If something false has come in that’s making a lie, there must be some cause of it—or so the mind thinks. And so, the mind is looking all over the place, blaming oneself, blaming another person, all to somehow make some sense out of what is simply a lie. John said it so aptly: …before our God day and night. Right in the face of what is holy, it can go on and on and on.

It happens inside a person. It also happens within what ought to be the holy city of human culture, even our own culture. Within our culture, all kinds of finger-pointing can go on, and then what should be the holy city is no longer that. It is a city of pointing fingers.

The promise of the accuser is that it is all going to be straightened out. We are going to find the cause of it all. We are going to root it out and make it all better. But it never happens, because the accusation is all based on an initial untruth—the lie that is believed in when a person enters the Phantom Zone. The Phantom Zone is not the New Jerusalem. It is the old Jerusalem.

I’ve been in the old Jerusalem, for real. It was smelly. I ended up being chased by kids with rocks at twilight. They were chasing us through the city until we got back to the safer part of town.

Nonetheless, the name Jerusalem is so beautiful. The best way I know to pronounce it is in Hebrew: Yerushalayim. Simply translated, it means City of Peace, which is the rightful state of our own consciousness—not necessarily total quiet or inactive, but full of peaceful activity, rooted in Love—the New Jerusalem.

New Jerusalem is a way to name the enlightened state of the human psyche, or the state of awakened human culture. In that same chapter in Revelation, Chapter 21, John speaks of it this way.

He says:

And had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel:

On the east, three gates; on the north, three gates; on the south, three gates; and on the west, three gates.

And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

—Revelation 21:12–14

And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass.

—Revelation 21:21

And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.

And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honor into it.

And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there.

And they shall bring the glory and honor of the nations into it.

—Revelation 21:23–26

Twelve gates of the city—what a beautiful depiction of the structure of human consciousness. It has design. It has a pattern to it, and we are all part of that pattern.

We are gates into the city, bringing light. There is a structure to the human family. And there is a structure to our own psyche, and it is all of the same pattern.

When we bring an element of truth into the human psyche, as we are doing so powerfully here this morning, what happens? Just like when you bring in a lie and all of the psyche tries to orient around the lie and somehow create some pattern out of that lie, when you bring something in that is true, the whole structure of consciousness begins to reorient around that truth. All the gates of the city, all the structures of the human psyche, then become an expression of the Divine. All the different facets of who we are that have become unholy are made holy—made beautiful.

We have shared another Hebrew word in this service. Probably for most of us, we do not think of it as Hebrew. We think of it as Christian. We think of The Messiah and the Hallelujah Chorus about to be sung in churches around the world, with Christmastime coming. The word is Hallelujah.

Hallelujah is an ancient Hebrew word. In Jewish synagogues at the time Jesus lived, there was a practice of calling out phrases of praise and affirmation. And that was carried on into the early Christian church, and the word hallelujah was one of those very powerful phrases with its powerful sequence of vowel sounds.

Maybe you want to say it with me. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! What a beautiful pattern of vowels praising the presence of Divine Being in the holy city of consciousness. The Lord of consciousness is present. The Lord of our consciousness is present. Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

Praise the Lord! Roughly translated, that is the meaning of the word. The Lord of our collective consciousness, our collective culture, is present. He has not disappeared off to some heavenly realm. No, he is instantly present with us.

Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

Often, people have an experience of a vacancy of the Divine—untouchable, unreachable. It is unreachable from the Phantom Zone. It is unreachable from that mental state in which the accuser is present, justifying itself and trying to find a cause for the old city of Jerusalem, for the Phantom Zone. Oh, it must be them. Or, Maybe it’s me! Perhaps what happened in my childhood is to blame.

Whatever. The accuser is there, and the accuser can never find the Presence of the Divine that is present in the house. That presence is only touched and felt through what has been a veil, which is the human heart. When the human heart softens and opens, it can perceive that Presence instantly. No effort, no trying. The heart opens, and there it is. There it is in the space, there it is in our space here, there it is in my brother, in my sister. I am no longer the accuser. I am the one with eyes to see.

I have had a journey like that here in Hawaii. I have felt a heart connection with this place for decades, even though this is my first time being physically here. We went to all the coasts of the island here on Oahu. And I found my heart looking for that essence of Hawaii that I already knew before I came. There are all the wonderful physical features of this land—the beautiful shorelines and the mountains—and there are all the people. I was feeling it more and more, until last night, I was on the upper part of the west coast on a beach where, as Keahi tells the story, she was once pounding the sand, asking what her life was to be about. In that place, I felt the deepest of heart connections with the essence of these islands, these people, their history, their connection to the ancient—not figured out, but just simply present, available to be connected with when there is an open heart. Otherwise, it is all hotels and hula skirts. And such is life in the old Jerusalem.

There is a deeper reality—this new city of Jerusalem, a deeper state of consciousness. It is available to those who have eyes to see. But you only have eyes to see when you have a heart that sees.

After the service last week, I thought, Wow, I was a little harsh saying, “Stop talking.” Thank you, Howard (Goodman), for picking that up here this week. And yet, is that not what we need to say to our own accusing mind? Stop talking. Stop talking so that you can listen, so that you can hear, so that you can open. So that the veil can lift, so that you can see the world for what it is, before it’s too late. Stop talking so that you come into a state of awareness where we can see each other for who we are.

That verse I read about the accuser goes like this:

I heard a voice, a loud voice saying in heaven, now has come salvation and strength in the kingdom of our God and the power of his Christ, for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.

—Revelation 12:10

I think for equality’s sake, I want to call out the accuser of our brethren and our sisters. Because it is not just men who are accusers or who are accused. The accuser is sometimes present in both men and women, and both men and women are accused. It seems like this is an equal opportunity accusation proposition.

We have a chance to come out of that—to stop talking, begin to listen, begin to feel, begin to enter a deeper state of Being, and see from that place of awareness.

I’d like to close by offering my hallelujah to John. Here was this heroic man setting forth in powerful prose the truth that he knew in the most vivid way he could describe for those who came after.

So, I say to him, Thank you. We have eyes to see. We hear your message, and we take it seriously. We will no longer be accusers of our brethren or our sisters. We live in the holy city together, as you called us to do.