On Remaining Invisible

I knew a woman several years ago named Miranda, who had many acquaintances but few friends. Few, if any, that is, who knew the darker side of what she faced within herself each day. This darker side was filled with fears, and not only fears, but terrors. These terrors were not phobias related to such things as crowds or heights. Rather, they were terrors related to being seen for who she was.

Being seen seemed to involve something for Miranda that made her want to run in the opposite direction. Being pleasant and coongenial were easy for her, but these aspects of her persona did not touch her depth. Indeed, they required her to leave her depth where fear and trembling were her own inner experience.

Many people are afraid to be seen. Often it is because they secretly feel that they are hiding something bad or unforgiveable within themselves. This something is protected, the ego-self imagines, by striving to remain invisible.

Invisibility, however, is a lonely place. In addition, in order to truly remain invisible, one must also not have strong emotions, for strong emotions definitely allow others to see past the surface to the depths. And so invisibility also requires an emotional cut-off - a large price to pay for a human being.

To penetrate these difficulties, as I explained to her, two things were needed: first, a willingness to turn toward Divine love and light in order to deal with fear and raise all hidden issues into consciousness, and second, a desire to live as a whole being.

While God takes care of the first part - the healing offering of Divine light and love, the desire to live as a whole being is up to each individual soul. For it is the embodied soul that must want to reclaim its own wholeness, and it is the embodied soul that must pay the price of living without the full measure of life.

The Opposite of Fear

"What is the opposite of fear?" she asked.

I said: "Love."

"That's funny," she said, "I thought it was "freedom."

I said: "Fear is a motivation that closes things down. Love, by contrast, opens them up. Fear is a feeling that separates and isolates. Love joins us with others and with the entire universe of love. Fear causes self-protection. Love causes openness."

"Freedom can be used for selfish ends," she added. "It can also isolate if others are not free."

"Yes," I said. "Freedom and love must join hands, but love must lead the way."

A Tiny Voice

She barely spoke above a whisper, and when she did, it was difficult to make out anything that Melissa said. Her voice, unused for many years, had become tiny. It had started out as full-throated and supported by a strong sense of her own presence, but over many lifetimes it had become smaller through a sense that she carried of self-invalidation.

This constriction of voice was not only psychological. Her actual vocal chords and the mechanism by which she breathed to support her speech had changed as well. Once, she had been examined for nodes on her vocal chords to see if these could be interfering with her speaking, but there was nothing there. Nor were there any other anomalies that could be diagnosed.

Melissa's tiny voice reflected a constriction of breath, but it also reflected a constriction of life-force. When I met her, she had not yet decided that she really wanted to be alive.

Many people spend a good portion of their lives making this decision, most without awareness that this is the case. Some never firmly commit to being here in a body, but opt for a state of passive withdrawal in order to make an exit from the requirements of physical life. Melissa would not have acknowledged having these thoughts, but they were there on a sub-conscious level, preventing her from taking her place in the world.

When I met her, she was not in great distress. In fact, she had gotten used to being small. It was a matter of finding within herself the desire to live again with fullness, to speak with presence, to say out loud: "I am here." After some time spent reflecting on this decision, she said to me one day, "You know, if I am here, I don't really know if I have anything to say." The rest of her embodied life would be spent finding out about that.

Living in a State of Grace

There will come a time for humanity when grace will replace karma. This will completely alter mankind's relationship to suffering and limitation.

Living in a state of grace is living in a state of alignment with God and light. It is being at one with the Oneness of all.

Living in a state of separation requires the wisdom of the soul to institute healing into wholeness. This healing often takes place through the experience of limitation.

Limitation and the perfection of each moment are not opposites.
They are different ways of viewing the Father-Mother God.

The perfection of each moment is experienced through the Mother - the Divine Self that IS. The Essence of all things.

Limitation in the moment is a pathway to the Father, the Divine Self that is becoming, the Self that is evolving all beings into greater Wholes.

All that is, is contained within Father-Mother God.
We are That and are in That at all times.

Amen.

The Man Who Could Not Find His Heart

I know a man named Eduardo who has great difficulty expressing what is in his heart. He has a beautiful heart, yet it is unknown to him. When he came to the Earth in the beginning, he left behind the sense of the sacred. Instead, he wrapped himself in the cloak of human pleasure, experiencing the joys of the world without limitation. These joys took him in the direction of excess. He found himself wanting more of everything - more wealth, more life, more youth, more power, more young women to adorn himself with. He grew so used to satisfying his wants that eventually his heart became lost to him. It became so well hidden that he did not know how to find it again.

When I met Eduardo, he was looking once again for his heart. He was beginning a spiritual search for love. No longer was he caught up in all the things that he once wanted, but instead, he was immune to wanting anything at all. Indeed, he could barely tell, from day to day, what he really wanted. His wanting had turned to numbness.

This is the way that it happens, sometimes, with the healing of a soul. What was once excess in one direction becomes lack in the opposite direction. The soul, in its wisdom, knows what kind of healing is needed and proceeds at its own pace to institute it.

Nevertheless, this beautiful soul could not easily find his heart though he looked for it. Mostly, he felt nothing. The path of return emerged out of this nothingness. It was the path of longing to be alive once more. The path of longing for love. As he experienced the pain of being closed down, the desire grew in him to open up.

This was the beginning of his true story - the story of the path of return.

Anchoring

Holding everything loosely in a changing world,
what remains is truth and love -
the knowings on the inside that are part of the soul.
Hold to this and to God's presence as
relationships change,
feelings change,
locations change,
the body changes.

In a time of change, the deepest truth remains.

Withdrawing Projections from Others

Within the process of purification, one gains the insight and ability to withdraw projections from others in order to take full responsibility for one's own feelings and consciousness. Along the way, certain basic principles are established relating to one's emotional and relationship life.

It is understood, for example, that each person is responsible for their own consciousness. Although the tendency to focus on external causes for what one feels may still be active, it is increasingly perceived that these are less significant as reasons for our reactions than the underlying tendency to feel and respond in certain ways.

These underlying tendencies toward anger, withdrawal, anxiety, depression, numbness, distractability, restlessness, etc. are not caused by others. They are part of the sub-structure of personality that a soul incarnates with. These features, in turn, create a stream of consciousness that produces feelings and behaviors.

When this stream of feelings is activated in the presence of another, that other is not the 'cause' of the activation but the 'immediate catalyst' for the activation which could also have been initiated by any one of a number of other possible activators. Understanding this is an important part of withdrawing projections.

Purification asks for great honesty with respect to motives. It asks us to understand and accept that when certain emotional energies and states are ready to reach awareness, whether on a short or long term basis, the external event will appear that seems to precipitate these energies into consciousness. The external event did not 'cause' the emotional energies. The emotional energies needing to become conscious brought into being or manifested the external event.

This perspective is often difficult to hold since one is generally not fully aware of the energies in their pre-conscious state. That is, one is not aware of them prior to the event which seemed to cause them. Yet, within our awakening consciousness, we begin to see that all events that surround us have meaning because they bring into focus the internal issues in need of healing and transmutation.

Such a perspective leads to the awareness that we create our own lives. We draw to ourselves those events, persons, and situations which will help heal those places within us in need of healing. We are not acted upon as much as creators. This is the basis for understanding the power of thought and feeling and for understanding the need to withdraw projections.

Taking responsibility for one's own consciousness is often not easy, especially when external events are compelling and arouse strong reactions. Nevertheless, this movement begins the process of actualizing a deeper layer of honesty with ourselves. It promotes healing that will often remain inaccessible while projections are still in the way.

Freedom

We hold onto the past not because we must, but because our identity is tied up with memories, concepts, images, and beliefs that have traveled with us through time. We hold onto these concepts and beliefs, often at our own expense, because the fear of letting them go is stronger than the wish to let them go.

In any moment, a new awakening is possible to a new foundation for identity, built on the understanding that the past is not who we are but who we think we are. In any moment we may choose to let go of this clinging and allow the Unknown to lift us into freedom.

Light and Darkness

Within the cosmic and human stream of life there are different layers of energy and of energetic expression that affect human consciousness. When we speak of ‘light’ and ‘darkness’ it is often appropriate to include all those layers together, but sometimes it is important to distinguish between them. This is especially true when dealing with negative energies where it is useful, at times, to discern what is being activated from within the self and what is influencing mind and emotions from outside the self.

One layer of energetic expression has to do with human emotion, motivation, and feeling. Here, we can speak of emotional states as being permeated by darkness or darker energies. Emotions such as rage, despair, anxiety, and fear or dread fall into this category. On the mental level, such emotions have corresponding mental equivalents such as thoughts of giving up or thoughts of wanting to hurt others. On this layer of energetic expression, negative energies need to be countered by positive energies that alter motivation such as love, trust, hope, innocence, generosity, and compassion. When we engage in a process of trying to alter negative mental and emotional states through the introduction of positive states, we are fundamentally engaged in an alchemical process. We are changing the way we think and feel through the introduction of spiritual light which fosters these positive emotional states. This is the virtue of spiritual anchoring on a regular basis. It maintains an equilibrium of light-force within the self.

On another level of energetic expression, negative states are promoted by external energies that influence what is internal, but that have their primary location on higher dimensional levels. Such energies may be said to be ‘atmospheric’ or ‘ambient’. They exist in the spiritual atmosphere of the Earth and are promoted from higher levels of spiritual expression by forces that seek to limit and prevent the expansion of light on Earth. These forces exist in powerful combinations of intentionality, and especially where there are vulnerable places within the physical dimension, they activate all the negative emotional states that human beings are vulnerable to. Such forces are also part of Creation, for nothing exists outside of God. Yet they exist in opposition to the purposes of wholeness and of spiritual growth.

At this time of personal and planetary purification, human consciousness as a whole as well as each individual’s awareness are being affected by an intense acceleration of light’s potency upon the Earth. Today, the higher dimensions of light are capable of more fully entering Earth’s spiritual atmosphere and of transforming consciousness by merging with human bodies, minds, and hearts so that the positive emotional states of love, the desire for unity, and awareness of Divine reality are accessible to all. This process is still in its early stages, but already it is affecting the lives of many.

As the process of energetic expansion takes place to a greater degree, the darker energies are necessarily rooted out from where they have been concealed or suppressed, to make way for the transition into light for an entire planet. Such is the picture that we have of the Earth at this time – one in which all is in motion, even while much may seem to be quiet or intractable.

The importance of spiritual anchoring during this time of transformation is multi-level: it allows the process of change to flow more smoothly, advancing the goal of personal and planetary healing; it creates an invulnerability to the turbulence produced by the intrusion of unwanted negative energies; it transmits energies of light to others and to the physical Earth to assist with the process of planetary change; it upholds and joins with God’s plan for the Earth for this momentous time of transition.

May all beings be blessed with the awareness of the new possibilities of love, hope, joy, and union with the Divine that are now becoming available on the Earth. May peace and light prevail. Amen.

Becoming New

The great purification initiated by Divine intelligence and love is the way in which the Earth becomes new.

Do you doubt that it is happening, even to you?

Then look into your own heart and you will see there the tendrils of life reaching to light. The heart knows what the mind may not. It seeks the Living Water to quench its thirst.

The Great Quest

The 'Great Quest' that human beings experience at a certain point in their spiritual evolultion is related to the surrender of the lower-self and the desire-nature in favor of a deeper and higher truth .

This truth can be pursued and found in different ways: Through meditation of many different kinds one finds the space of pure Awareness that is more real than the turmoil of the mental and emotional self which claim our attention most of the time. Locating this Space does not involve 'overcoming' the lower self as much as letting it go - separating from the lesser reality in favor of the greater.

By contrast, the 'path of purification' aims to overcome the lower self through surrender of the lower to the higher and the transmutation of the lower, based on love. This fundamentally alchemical process changes the quality and frequency of vibration of the lower self, raising all emotional and mental energies to their higher counterparts. In this sense it transmutes and redeems the personality, divinizing it, removing negative influences through their exposure to and incorporation by spiritual light. In the presence of light, all that is separated and dark becomes aligned with the energy of light and love.

The alchemy of purification is based on the surrender of personal will to a higher Will by whatever name that higher Will is called. The lower ego-self, no longer in charge of what formerly was its own doman, asks to serve the will of the Divine - to become aligned with it in such a way that the healing of all that is not in harmony with love's purposes can take place.

Surrender to God's pure Will is accompanied by efforts on the human level to align with the power of love that emerges through that Will. Such love is the motivating force for Creation, and it becomes the motivating force for the pursuit of return to the Divine as well. The One Spirit that we call God is simultaneously that which we bow to and offer our loving service to, and our own deepest essence. This One does not only rule over life, it exists within life and within each molecule and cell of all that is.

The Great Quest absorbs all lesser quests within itself, not only because it is more difficult but also because it is more comprehensive.

All of human experience is part of this Quest, for we are each on a journey to Truth and Reality, yet much of this journey is not self-aware. However, at some point within that journey the courage develops and the need appears to let go of all illusions about the self, all defense, fears, and obstacles we have placed in our own way, in order to find the greater Reality that we are. Some reach that point earlier in the long arc of spiritual evolution, some later on, but all are on the same trajectory toward truth.

The mystery of the 'Holy Grail of Truth' is that what we seek has always been with us and within us. It is both 'outside' and 'inside', both 'above' and 'below', both invisible and visible. That which we seek is the Divine Being of the All - the Oneness of the One that is in and around all things.

Blessed be those who are willing to undertake the Great Quest, for their victory shall be assured.

The G20 Summit and Global Unity

There are two kinds of unity - strategic unity based on the practical needs of a situation, and intuitive unity based on what the heart feels to be true.

Strategic unity, while sometimes creating a bridge toward greater friendship of the heart, is often a temporary expedient that may cover a situation filled with conflict and mistrust. Here, each participant remains committed to their own point of view while being willing to cooperate with others to a certain degree to achieve mutual aims. Strategic unity, built primarily on collective need rather than brotherly love, can easily dissolve when conflicts arise over agreements made, for the underlying mutual trust does not find a secure foundation in the heart.

Inuitive unity, by contrast, involves a shift in the perception of who the 'other' is. From this perspective, the 'other' is seen to be more like the self than different, more desirous of the same goals than not, more cooperative than isolating or indifferent. Intuitive unity, at its root, is a spiritual perception based on love, which seeks the oneness of all and the exclusion of none. Its motive is not solely to resolve practical and urgent issues, but also to uphold a standard which presumes that the welfare of all is the concern of each.

Which kind of unity the G20 nations will be able to find within themselves remains to be seen. Clearly, the requirements of a global economic crisis have drawn together heads-of-state in the hope of resolving serious global issues. Indeed, many already feel that only this kind of joining has any hope of creating a solution for the current global crisis. It is hard to say, however, whether this kind of working relationship can be established along other lines now as well, initiating a new way of dealing with issues of concern to the entire planet. Though this is clearly a hope for the future, there are still many steps to be taken in the present.

And so the question remains, what kind of unity will the G20 summit lead to?

As we watch these developments from our own individual lives and worlds, rather than feeling separate from such movements, we need to support their growth through the prayers of our hearts, for we are each involved with the welfare of mankind and our inner awareness has an important role to play in whatever outcome we hope for.

May the blessings of light be with all heads of government so that now, at this pivotal point in our planet's history, we may find a way of joining together in our shared life and our shared essence as a human family.

Spiritual supports to further the advancement of light and unity on the planet:

One World Meditations

Invocations for the Earth and Her Nations

E pluribus Unum

Identity manifested or embodied - the last part of the sentence "I am a....."
Identity pre-manifestation - the same sentence without qualification - "I am."

This is the story of individuation and Being, the personal and the universal.

Personal: "I am a singular being and ray of light, defined by holy purpose and love for God."
Universal: "I am part of the "I AM" and therefore am not one but All."

Both 'personal' and 'universal' are part of the One.

In a parallel vein - the origin of time and space.

E unum pluribus - "out of One, many" - the story of Creation giving birth to life throughout the Universe.

E pluribus unum - "out of many, One" - the path of Return, the rediscovery of unity through diversity.

May all beings be blessed with the truth of their oneness. Amen

Anchoring in the Heart

Anchoring in the heart is an energetic phenomenon, part of the process of purification which includes the understanding that the mind is not the sole place of identity, and that there is another source of truth and reality available when difficult thoughts or patterns of thinking arise.

In such moments, we have a choice as to whether to give energy and attention to the content of our minds, or to redirect energy and attention to the heart where a deeper level of truth can be found. In the ordinary course of a day, depending on the content of our thoughts, the choice is often made to be with what is, without interference or censorship. However, when energies of negativity and darkness are pronounced, creating confusion, doubt, chaos, or despair, it is more constructive to breathe into the heart and to let go of mental content altogether.

This activity of shifting energy and focus is called 'repolarization' or 'repolarization to the heart.' What is involved here is not fighting with one's thoughts in order to gain control over them, but rather creating a space between awareness and thought so that the latter can be observed more from a distance and a new pathway can be created to a deeper truth. We turn to the heart, seat of the soul, as the contiainer for this truth - the place where love and light can be found even when the mind has completely forgotten these. Such love and light can still exist even in the presence of negative mental activity and even when they are not felt as specific emotions.

'Anchoring in the heart' is a spiritual practice, able to be engaged in at different levels of depth. Breathe into the heart center in the center of the chest, place your hand over that center, create a wish and intention to empower the heart's deeper knowing rather than the thoughts of the mind. Each of these elements helps to shift energy to the heart, and where energy flows, there content will flow as well.

Intrinsic to this process is the understanding that we are not our minds. We are not our thoughts. A deeper layer of being can be found and turned to at times of difficulty. Holding to this allows the tide of negative activity to pass more quickly.

Here are some forms of mental activity that often reflect darkness in the mind:

self-accusations and judgments
self-doubt
thoughts of failure
fear or dread
chaotic or fragmented thinking
anger or rage
accusations toward others
contempt or ridicule
depressive thoughts
disbelief in what one has held to be most true

When darkness in the mind is met with 'anchoring in the heart', this movement can help to stabilize the self, creating a current of peace and hope even in the midst of depression, anxiety or turbulence.