As we pass through the anniversary of the initiation of Emissaries of Divine Light, I celebrate Lloyd Arthur Meeker’s spiritual awakening 85 years ago, and the spiritual commission he accepted at that time. As I have been reflecting on his story over these last few days, a simple statement has come to mind. It is composed of two words, and it applies to Lloyd Arthur Meeker on that occasion and to all his work. But actually it applies to all of us. Those two simple words are “Who” matters. Who he was mattered. All that he accomplished in his life was possible because of who he was. What he was able to do was born out of his Being, as it must be for any of us.

To access that in ourselves, we have to be willing to enter into a knowing of who we are, and then have the courage to express who we are. That is unique for each person. What is possible to you and what is possible to me is based on the creative essence of the Being that we are.

From the legacy that Lloyd Arthur Meeker left, it is clear that he was a remarkable Being and was able to do what he did simply because he awoke to who he was and then had the courage to live it. He was a man of incredible courage. And the same is true for us: We are Beings of great depth who have great creative capacity, and when we access that reality of who we are and we show up as who we are, we are bringing that creative capacity.

So I wonder whether we might be up for entering into a deeper appreciation and knowing of the reality of who is present, knowing that “who” matters. We might explore just how that happens for any of us.

There are two components that are part of our awakening to who we are. One is some kind of self-realization, a seeing of who we are and then the courage to be who we are. The second component is encountering another person at a deep level and having the humility, the surrender, the openness, the eyes, and the love to see that person for who they are; to honor and appreciate that, and to stand in humility in front of it, and encourage it. Without that component in our experience, we cut off our knowing of our own reality. Actually, it is impossible to show up in the fullness of who you are if in any way you deny another person that reality in your own mind. You cannot take it away from another and then give it to yourself. And in fact, when you give it to another, you are giving that gift to yourself.

Jesus’ prayer recorded in John 17 is a remarkable affirmation that “who” matters:

 And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. (Verse 5)

Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. (Verse 24)                                                                                           

Before the foundation of the world, Thou lovedst me. It is, in this current day, a remarkable statement that “who” matters, and that the whole world is born out of self. That is a worldview that is hardly even considered in Western culture today. And yet, the ancient view of the world was that there were Beings out of whom the world was born, and out of whom the solar system and the universe were born. It was, in the ancient view, all created by Being. In the Greek worldview, the world was created by the pantheon of Greek gods—Uranus, and then Zeus and Hera, and so on. But it wasn’t only the Greeks. All around the world, there was an understanding of Creation being born out of Being. In many cases there was superstition attached to that understanding, and there was myth and legend that in some cases we might think was fanciful. And yet, the understanding that the world is born out of self matches far more closely to what it is like to live as a sovereign human being than does the modern scientific view of the world, which is that we live in an essentially mechanical universe that is filled with energy and matter, devoid of Being. Today, contemporary scientists are challenging the essentially mechanical modern worldview.

In the verses I quoted, Jesus claimed his beingness before Creation. I was loved before anything was created. Before I was born, I was loved and had Being. Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. Not just before incarnation, but before the whole world was created there was love.

Our scientific, literal minds have a hard time with that, and how it might be real. Is it possible that we could move past our literal, scientific minds and touch into another reality? If you are living in your modern scientific mind, a world created out of Being is not a reality. It is a world of mechanics all around and a world of personality subject to that mechanical world and nothing more. Love becomes a matter of personality structure, and then social structure and psychology. And yet, when we own the significance of who is present—our own beingness and our own presence, and the significance of the presence of Being through another—we are moving past the veils of consciousness that obscure selfhood. We have the courage to express from a deeper place within ourselves, from a deeper knowing, from a deeper love. From that deeper place, we call to that same reality in another. And in that calling, we invite the knowledge of a shared reality that transcends the pedestrian level at which we have come to function in the prevailing Western culture.

We have the opportunity to have the kind of courage that was in Jesus’ words. He had the courage to declare his beingness to the world. It did not make him popular. It sounded to many that he was making unwarranted claims. But perhaps he was just taking the courage to break through the limited patterns of consciousness that were present in his day, to own his deeper beingness. Who we are matters. When we have the courage to show up as who we are, that matters. It matters when we have the courage to call to that deeper place in another person and invite it into awareness.

What if the core structure of reality is not defined by matter or in energy? What if the very structure of reality is held in Being, and that the outer visible parts of reality—energy and matter—are simply the embodiment of an underlying structure of Being? To our scientific minds, it seems far-fetched. But think about it in your own life. Isn’t your own life the challenge of knowing and embodying and sharing the structure of reality? And that structure is not just money and it is not just things. It may have the outer clothing of those forms, but the structure of reality that we are challenged to manifest in our lives is the structure of Being, known through individual human beings in our lives. It is not just the relationship between material objects. The structure of reality is the relationship among Being, because the nature of Being is the nature of self, and it is individual and unique for you and for me and for all of Being. In the whole constellation of Being, it is individual and unique. And at the same time, in the constellation of Being, it is one reality, every aspect of which is in right relationship within the structure of Being.

In your life and in mine, isn’t that what family is all about? Family is about finding the structure of Being and knowing it and sharing it together. Isn’t that what community is about? It is a grand adventure to see if we could know and share the structure of Being. Our task is to know it as human beings, held together, not by the covalent bonds that hold together molecules but by the very depth of Universal Love that is shared in Being.

Perhaps the greatest courage that a human being could demonstrate is the courage to love at that level. The courage to love as a human being, yes, with a human heart and a human capacity—but the ability to love in the way that Jesus demonstrated, in a way that calls to the underlying structure of Being that was before the foundation of the world. In that calling, Jesus was reaching out to a preexisting relationship with him.

He asked, “Lovest thou me?” In an outer sense, that is a question. In an inner sense it is not a question, actually. Love is the very structure of relationship and reality. The question could have been, Do you remember that we are already in love? Do you remember? Do you remember the transcendent nature of reality, which is the transcendent nature of self?

We have the great complication of experiencing self in the context of personality structure and social structure. That is quite a trick. So often that outer structure of personality and the outer structure of social fabric so conditions the experience of selfhood that it brings it to its knees. And so we worship at the temple of personality and at the temple of social structure, and thereby cut off our inherent, innate, deep knowing of reality. And at some point perhaps we give up on trying to wedge reality into personality and social structure, and we just try to live as a personality and live in terms defined by the social fabric. There is truly no solution to the conundrum of personality on that basis, and there is no solution to the social fabric. Some find it easier to get along in the social fabric of the world in which they live; but without accessing and being authentically the “who” of who you are in that, it is dead. Because life is in Being, life is in self, and life is born out of the structure of reality, which is the structure of love.

Our big challenge is not how to worship in the halls of personality and social structure. Our big challenge is to stay in the transcendent place of Being and move more and more deeply into that knowing, and then to invest our personality with that knowing—to invest our social structure with the structure of reality. Our challenge is to remember reality and call it forth.

Loving yourself is part of the remedy for a human life, and it is part of the remedy for human shame. But you cannot love yourself enough to pull yourself out of shame. In the end, it is the act of love for another, which includes the act of forgiveness of another person, which confirms our own reality and our own experience of the structure of reality; because in that act of forgiveness, in that act of love, we are forgiving ourselves of our own shame. As this master teacher, Jesus, taught, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” That is not a prayer for the action of a capricious god—“Yes, you were good, you forgave others, so you get forgiven”—but a matter of absolute truth and predictable function. When you make it a practice to acknowledge the structure of reality as it appears through another person, and forgive them for anything less than that, you are ennobled, you are empowered, you are changed. You have become, in outer form and in outer expression, who you already are. Reality is completed and fulfilled in you and in me through that act of love.

When you perform that act of love, nobody can take it back from you and nobody can deny for you who you are and what you know as the structure of reality. People try to deny others that reality all the time. We call it judgment. And yet, when we are living the reality of our Being and calling to that same reality in others, it does not matter. Nobody can deny it for you when you are acting out of that reality and you are giving it to the world. That is true for anyone.

This is what is happening for me and for all who are participating in this great spiritual awakening around the world. We are coming into a knowing of who we are as Creator-beings from before the foundation of the world. We are coming into our creatorhood as Beings, and who we are matters. Who I am matters; who you are matters. I become keenly interested in that about you—not seeking to deny you your creatorship and the very essence and heart of love that you bring, but seeking to play my part in the embodied structure of reality to allow the fulfillment of that gift through you, even as my own gift is given. How about you?