energy

The Many Faces of God

/ Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given at the Spring Equinox Worship Service on March 23, 2025.

This morning, I want to talk about God. I was asked to do so by one of our community members who said she was frustrated about how distant she is feeling from God these days.

Finding, sensing, living daily with God is an issue relevant for not only this individual but for all of us. It is a very big part of our evolutionary process right now as human beings on Planet Earth. There is a reason why diversity, equity and inclusion is such a hot topic right now; and that reason is not political.

I love it when people talk about diversity, equity and inclusion by asking the question: who should sit at the table. When we are discussing the issue of which people should be allowed to benefit from life’s bounty, what we are really trying to explore is moving our frame of reference from our individual culturally-programmed, outmoded, transactional tribal view to the larger picture, to God’s unconditional love frame if you will.

Image by Lorri Hetteen used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

As you probably know, here at the Church of the Harvest we generally avoid talking about God directly. What I do often talk about is how many concepts important about spirituality struggle with the words falling apart when it comes to conveying essential spiritual truths. People project their own life experience upon verbal statements. We almost always assume our version of any word with a particularly strong amount of energy attached to it, is the accurate version that applies to everyone. It rarely is.

Nowhere is this more evident than when trying to talk about God. When I need to point to the divine, I bend over backwards to use every variety of nomenclature I can think of. Sometimes I use words straight out of some religious playbook. I’ll talk about the Lord God, the Tao, Allah, Dharma, whatever. Sometimes I’ll reference concepts that at their purest I know to be a reflection of God but are concepts that other people usually do not consider religious, such as talking about the universe, Mother Nature, Truth, Justice or Love. Most often I end up talking about the All-That-Is, or the Creator-of-Us-All, phrases that are a bit on the awkward side to my own ears, and to many others, but also fairly neutral terms.

I always know that whatever word I use, I’m going to lose a certain percentage of my listeners, those who won’t be able to hear what I say through their particular version of religious programming. And more importantly, whatever word I use I know will be inadequate to encapsulate the whole of the divine.  

For the rest of today though, I’m intentionally going to use the word God. But trust me when I say, God as I reference it is not a he or him or a patriarch of any kind. He is also not a she or a her or trans or genderless, exactly. If we have to use a pronoun, maybe we settle for now on “it” or even “they.”

Due to the literary confusion, God is referenced minimally at the Church of the Harvest, despite the fact that we are a church, and indeed one that exists specifically to increase communication with the Creator. The last of our aspirational goals as written in our foundational documents–duly filed with secular authorities as well as living within our structure–provides a clue as to why we speak of God, when we do at all, using such varying terminology. The statement reads simply that we are committed to honoring all paths to God.

Given this context, what is the best word to use to address the Creator-of-Us-All? 

Short answer:  It doesn’t matter. God is everywhere, everything and everyone.

I say that knowing that our human brain cannot really grasp that notion. We would go crazy if we tried very hard. How can God possibly be everything in existence? How does that work?

We know that we have a physical body that is an extension of us that is a fully enlivened container separate from other forms of life on the Planet. We know that in addition to that life form God gave each of us we were also given free will, the exclusive right to decide what will occur within and around the body, as a different experience than any other embodied presence.

Additionally we know that we are spirit and as such, seamlessly connected with all other spirit. How can these two truths coexist?

They can and do. But not in a way our brain can track. So, let that part go. This is a thing of faith. Let us just all agree to take to heart the words of esteemed American author F. Scott Fitzgerald who famously once said: “The test of a first-rate mind is the ability to hold two opposed ideas at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

In psychology, the discomfort that arises when people try to hold conflicting beliefs in their mind is called cognitive dissonance. It’s a big deal. Cognitive dissonance can lead to a great deal of anxiety and depression, even to the point of inability to function. A large amount of cognitive dissonance can even result in suicidality or psychosis.

Image used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

Many people who cannot handle cognitive dissonance attempt to eradicate it by isolating themselves, structuring their life so that do not have to deal with conflicting viewpoints. Unfortunately in the digital age that is not really an option any more. So instead, what we are seeing more and more of, is people with less ability to tolerate contradictions trying to force their limited perspective on those around them. Sometimes I think there has never been a time when people have talked more about free speech and worked quite as hard at silencing others to make sure it does not happen. This is cognitive dissonance at its most intense.

Not viewing or speaking about the world around us does not make it go away. It just blinds or dumbs down those who participate in the cover-up. Image used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

A good example of cognitive dissonance running amuck right now is “control freaks” trying to rewrite United States history. Rather than simply dialoguing about their differing perspective, these misinformation addicts are scrubbing the history books of key concepts, banning certain film and books altogether, eliminating social media posts by inundating them with threatening or hate-filled comments, changing governmental policies including destroying programs or agencies that express differing cultural values, and passing laws or actually persecuting individuals and groups who express a perspective about the United States that creates cognitive dissonance for the small-minded addict.

The thing that Dylan got so right when he wrote this song many decades ago now, is the idea that one can allow oneself to be confused in the face of conflicting ideas and values. Living with the confusion on an emotional level can be a catalyst that creates space, making room for new perspectives. People who cannot tolerate ambiguity live in a very rigid and limited world.

Let me be clear. America is a truly great nation state. It has also engaged in systematic oppression of other countries and groups; and perpetuated vast suffering and horrific wrongdoing. The more developed mind, the brain of someone who has had more exposure to life’s inherent contradictions and has learned to emotionally tolerate them, knows both these concepts can be true. The weaker mind that has not grown beyond binary thinking is threatened by these seeming clashes. Cognitive dissonance with its disorienting loss of personal integrity, can kick individuals into extreme turmoil and even violence.

What has this got to do with God, you might ask? Well, people do the same mental shenanigans with our ideas around God. No doubt you have noticed that contradictory ideas about religion and God are at the heart of much of human warfare. Human animals collectively project onto the Creator wherever we are at. Whatever is unresolved in our world as we look outside of ourselves for understanding or for help shapes what we can understand about God. We create an image of the divine that is bigger than ourselves, more powerful, but somehow looks, thinks, and acts a lot like human beings do.

As cartoon Bizarro reminds us, even God-like figures suffer the fate of illusion. Image used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.
Lion-headed Goddess Sekhmet is an Egyptian goddess. Image used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

It has been so since the beginning. In our early hunter-gatherer days, the human species was focused solely on survival. God was unknown and unfamiliar, like the natural world around us. It was essentially devoid of understanding and to some extent, meaning. We created a God or Gods to fill that void. The world was dangerous and often deadly; and we looked everywhere around us for salvation.

During this period humans routinely saw God in the plants and animals around them. For early indigenous peoples, God could even be simply the elements themselves: fire for example, or maybe a rain God that was equally capable of nurturing crops or destroying places with torrential force. For the Hebrews, God was a burning bush among other things. Early Asian, Indonesian and other tribal groups living in mountainous regions were in awe of and also often terrified by their mountains that they often saw as Gods, as well as the God-like monsters that lived in the seas.

Xiuhtechutli, Aztec Lord of Fire. Image used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

As early civilizations began, our human images of God went from a wild, unknown and untamed deity or deities to a deity or deities that were somewhat known but often hostile. To use the phrasing coined by philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, humanity started with religious belief in God the Void that became God the Enemy. As people began to come together in stationary agricultural and other communities, there was increasing intertribal and other forms of interpersonal conflict. So now we see a God or Gods more actively involved with people, but a divine that is often stern, punishing and wrathful, like a capricious and bad parent. The Greeks and Romans had their pantheon of supernatural beings, all vying for control and servitude over their human underlings. The Old Testament of the Jewish people focused on God’s anger control issues; and Asians folks had their demons and devils plaguing all humanity.   

Where to now for human animals as our social groupings and our collective human consciousness transform?  As we continue to evolve towards our Creator, how are we changing the images of how we imagine it? North Whitehead would say that religious institutions are taking us from God the Enemy to God the Companion. This is where the discussion comes in about which side God is on. It is certainly more true that God walks among us, as opposed to simply observing us from a distance. But consider the idea that seeing the divine as walking only alongside a particular group or groups is already an idea that is rapidly becoming outdated.

The digital age is moving images and the information upon which it is based exponentially forward. The natural world is also speeding our internal world up as the vibrational levels of the Planet itself increase rapidly.

Personally, to describe our present confusion about God, I am drawn to a saying attributed to psychologist and part time mystic Carl Jung. According to Jung: “Modern people don’t see God because they don’t look low enough.” What I think he was talking about was the fact that we are beginning to come to terms with the fact that God is as much a fully embodied aspect of Earth as it is the ruler of Heaven.


Truth here from Buddhist monk, poet and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. Used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

Yes, God is our companion. God is indeed on our side. God is on everyone’s side.

But maybe more importantly to our present-day challenges, God is everyone. And God is everything. The air that surrounds us that we breath in to give our bodies continued life. The constellations above us, the stars that gave us carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen, the essential foundational elements for physical life. But also, the very ground beneath our feet. The waters that flow through the ground, huge bodies of which are all around us, not to mention the approximately eight gallons within our individual embodiment. Every cell in our body with its elaborate intricate structure, including every bacterium, virus, fungi and other “independent” life forms that lives there within and around us. Every insect, every plant, every animal, even the nasty ones.

The miraculous life that the divine has bestowed upon human beings as a reflection of its endless creativity was also freely given to all of Planet Earth. No exceptions.

Everything. Yes, indeed. Give up the human arrogance of thinking we are above it all. Don’t try to “make sense” of it. Just know. Image used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

To my friend and colleague who is asking how she might feel closer to her God, I say, continue to get to know yourself through meditation, to release what does not serve you, and thereby change your mindset. I am not talking about your brain, although that organ might be more useful if it was fed from a few different energetic streams. I am telling you, you are in need of more faith.

Please do not think I am talking about beliefs. I mean faith of the kind not petrified by religious dogma, but rather capable of glorifying the Creator-of-Us-All. The divine is within you, as it is everywhere. There are so many places to experience a living God. But tuning in to that aspect that dwells within you in solitude, as it/you simply awaits your recognition, is one of the most direct.

If this depiction of various religious avatars triggers you, consider that you may have your own religious programming to work through. God is everyone, and therefore walks many pathways. Image used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

Sraddha, the Hindu word for faith, means “to set own heart’s on.” It is an action, an everyday commitment that needs constant refreshment. This kind of faith involves giving shape to your life not through some limited intellectual process but rather by setting your fourth chakra and all the other corresponding parts of your intricate energy and physical systems in an conscious intent to acknowledge your relationship with every other aspect of God on the Planet. Which is everyone and everything.

In one way or another, all genuine love songs are an attempt to mirror the relationship we each have with the divine. As you listen to Groban, feel free to allow yourself to receive these words as an individual gift from God to you in particular.

I want to leave you today with a final question that comes from James Fowler. Fowler is a developmental psychologist who wrote about the various stages of faith that individuals can go through as they mature in their ability to live with God. I personally think Fowler was one of the most underappreciated theoreticians by religious and secular authorities alike because he himself was so far beyond the place that many are able to inhabit. I invite you to try to hear his words here almost like a mantra, not with your brain but with your heart. Fowler counsels us to keep moving in the optimal direction by continual alignment with God with awareness, dedication to self and others, and faith.

“The real question of faith is this:  To what vision of right-relatedness between humans, nature and the transcendent are you loyal?”       

Copyright by the Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven, 2025.

Chaos and Creativity: Imagining a New World

/ Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given at the Autumn Equinox Worship Service on September 22, 2024.

Welcome to Fall, 2024.

Autumn is the season when individuals are typically beginning to wind down from the more physically- active spring and summer months of production and in-the-moment adventures. . .and drifting towards the fall and winter months where there is more rest, reflection, and dreaming of what is to come. That is the natural rhymical trajectory for individual human beings going about their life.

This year though, 2024, things are a bit more complicated. There are some complexities and unique challenges going on as a result of what is happening not only inside, but largely outside and around our individual selves.

As you all know, each one of us on a spiritual level creates an entirely unique experience of our own, a world enjoyed through our senses, an idiosyncratic and completely unique universe of actions and reactions that each of us sets in motion and then undergoes, in order to learn the specific lessons each of us individually have come to this planet to explore.

Additionally, as a group of individuals who have decided to transgress life on Planet Earth, we collectively share the natural world outside of our physical body in conjunction with the divinely-created natural order. As individual spirits, we do not get to touch down on a ground level via our physical embodiment and benefit from the natural world here on this planet unless and until we have signed on to an agreement with the Creator-of-Us-All. Before going through the hassle. . .and yes, it can be quite a hassle. . .of birth into human form, we entered into this binding agreement with our Creator in regards to our behavior here on Mother Earth.

I sometimes refer to this agreement as “the frame.”

You can think of it like a picture frame—a beautifully ornate, intricate, golden framework. We human beings get to choose what we want to create in this frame. We can use whatever colors we want. We can draw or paint an infinite number of portraits, landscapes, abstract images, scribbles, or whatever else. We can leave the canvas blank or wash it with a thousand different blends and shades of colors. We can use any technique we want, any kind of watercolors or acrylics or other paints or supplies.

The frame, however, does not belong to us. It can and does change, but only when the divine decides the picture has changed enough that it is time for the frame to be rebuilt and the picture to get a new suitable outside edge.

Cocreating with the God-of-Us-All is one of the areas where humans tend to be the most confused, even or especially among folks who identify as religious. Humans write a great deal of our own story. . .but it is within the context of a larger story that we cannot really understand.

This morning, I want to look a little closer at how the frame is illuminated by the picture and how the picture and the frame interact. However, if we might, let us focus our conversation on the shared aspect of the picture within the frame.

Yes, we each create our own unique reality. But we also create a shared reality with all the other individuals in our world. Some people call this world outside of themselves “the collective energy.” In the past I’ve often labeled it “the consensus reality.” But maybe I need to update my language here, because the shared life experience that most of us are undergoing right now feels very far from consensual. It feels divisive. It presents as combative. It is awash with interpersonal and intrapersonal conflict. There is heart-wrenching cultural strife, both on the ground and in the heavens. Currently we find ourselves and the society around us reflecting a state of endless spiritual warfare.

Our collective space right now is the epitome of chaos. We are far beyond just disagreeing with each other about issues. There often seems to be very little point to even having conversations about things these days, as we have all seen in the political arena. We not only no longer share an agreed-upon set of rules about how to engage with each other in civil discourse, we don’t even share what true engagement looks like. Nearly every discussion seems to break down into name-calling, attempts to force others to take responsibility whether or not it is merited, an endless variety of petty squabbles at best, hate-mongering and calls for violence at the worst.   

The chaos is so pronounced that it transcends and nullifies any actual issues. If you look closely, what you see is a wide-spread lack of consensus right now about what reality even is. You can’t move forward in a shared world, when you don’t even agree on a vision of which parts of the world are real and which are not. 

As a result of the chaos, many individual souls are leaving the planet. They are in too much despair or fear or some such and are not able to maintain a physical presence in a world where the old structures are massively breaking down and the new world order has yet to emerge. There are many groups of individuals, whole regions and countries and other geographic areas who are creating an end to their physical forms, leaving the planet via extreme weather events. With great trepidation and a gut-wrenching sense of loss, others are relocating to places where they can ride out the storms and the additional aspects of the bone-crushing chaos reflected back to us from the natural world.

Many or most people are sensitive enough to feel anxiety without necessarily having enough information to identify to what their system is actually reacting. It is not always important to understand the source of your anxiety, but it is usually important to learn how to calm yourself down so as not to cause undue hardship on your body. . .or spread your misery onto others. Image used consistent with Fair Use principals.

So, let’s back up here, shall we, and attempt to examine from a spiritual perspective what is happening. Why the chaos? What is really going on?

Climate scientists and those engrossed in news stories often debate, sometimes ad nauseum, about a mysterious “tipping point” after which, presumably, life on Planet Earth is no longer really possible. Have we passed it? Is there still hope? Bless their hearts, these folks are trying in their awkward way to manage the fear and chaos right now that threatens to overwhelm all of us.

Here is what I have to say about this matter, take it as you will. Yes, indeed we have passed a tipping point. It is not, however, a “real life” turning point resulting in the Earth moving to a place where its human and nonhuman living forms will not survive. It is an energetic point. It is an energetic point that has already occurred, the unfolding of which is causing much of the confusion, much of the chaos.

The planet will be here for a long while longer. Increasingly it looks like some life on the planet will remain as well. . .but the “world order” per se will look very different for those embodied souls who remain, those willing to adapt to the new ways of being. 

We are resetting the frame, folks. Or maybe I should say the Supreme Being is resetting the frame for Mother Earth and all of her inhabitants.

Is it because we’ve been bad, we human beings? Are we being punished for our stupid, greedy, self-indulgent, hateful, God-rejecting ways? Not exactly. “Stupid” maybe, if you are inclined to want to caste dispersions on a lack of self-awareness. There are certainly many individuals and huge sections of human civilization that have acted in greedy, self-indulgent, hateful ways for a very long time because they have been unwilling and/or unable to look at themselves or their effect on others with any degree of clarity.

However contrary to popular opinion, the divine does not punish anyone. It does not punish individuals and it does not punish groups of people. The frame is not consistent with this type of interaction. But the divine does see all, keeps track of all, and brings the necessary elements to bear when corrections need to happen to keep the picture human beings are creating, in harmony with the frame.

And here is the REALLY interesting part, at least to me:  Essentially, we are ALL resetting the frame. That energetic tipping point about which I was talking? That was something that occurred in the hearts and minds of individual human animals.

Enough people began to believe in our shared humanity. Enough folks said that other person that looks unlike myself is still worthy of respect. Enough people in positions of institutional power decided to listen rather than talk at those “beneath” them in the increasingly-outdated hierarchy. Sufficient numbers of families with more-than-enough resources began to see that they were diminished by ignoring those living in poverty. A larger number of men began to realize that confining the women in their lives to an inferior role was not in anyone’s best interests. We created a surge of interest in companion animals to get us through COVID and through that experience enough people accrued new first hand knowledge of the importance of other species, learning from them how to live in present time. Etc.

We, the inhabitants of Mother Earth, have always been a part of one big picture. Right
now there has been enough love and therefore light, brought into the world that many
of us are beginning to better understand this unity, creating many more possibilities
through the unifying nature of Love. Image by Lorri Hetteen used in conjunction with
Fair Use Principals.

We have always had prophets and visionaries, artists and geniuses “ahead of their time” who have spoken of the need for humans to forge a new path in which we embrace all “others” as a reflection of ourselves. Now enough of us are walking that path that whole new roadways are being forged. It’s ordinary people, not just those on the top of the pyramid who are now setting the energy. Time to move on to a new picture.     

The Supreme Being is not punishing us by resetting the frame. Rather we might say it is rewarding us. The “Great Rebalancing.” of our individual and collective lives will go on for many years. It remains deadly for some and painful for many. But the new picture that is in the process of being painted also allows unlimited possibility, including great joy and happiness for those among us who embrace their creativity. 

What is this picture going to look like? Where is the new frame leading us? Get real, folks. How can we know that? We are only just now picking up the new paintbrushes.

It is often important to acknowledge the past, but fighting with it? Not so much. Meanwhile, it is very important to live in the present while periodically focusing on what you want to create moving forward.

Great chaos sets the stage for great creativity. As each one of us continues the healing journey of clearing disharmony from our individual space; many of us will find our way to the new natural order, the new frame of reference in which we join hands and hearts with Mother Nature with all her divinely-inspired inhabitants. We will come to know the new framework. This framework is of connectivity and relationship, so in a sense, it will find us.  

Actually, Calvin, you can turn on the infinite flow of creativity at any point. Fear is not necessary, except to the degree that human animals believe it to be. Calvin and Hobbes cartoon by BIll Watterson used in conjunction of Fair Use Principals.

The 18th century philosopher and cultural critic Fredrich Nietzsche may have said it best. As he reminded us: “You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.” All those here today and those reading these words, and indeed all embodied souls on this magnificent Third Rock from the Sun are made of starlight. Some of you even know a dance step or two.

Indulge in your creativity, any way you see fit. Dance with others when there is that opportunity. And dream. Above all right now in this season, dream.

As we slumber and rest through the fall and winter months we will be communicating with each other about the new picture we want to paint together, and making some decisions about it. We will also typically be learning from the God(dess) within about our individual role in it.

“May you dream of lovely things and wake to find them real.” Art by Amanda Clark used in conjunction of Fair Use Principals.

Dream on, my friends. Dream on.

Enjoy your creativity as you also swim the collective stream of dreams common to all life on Earth.  

Whales are the species on Planet Earth given the role of planetary recordkeepers. In this image, our fellow inhabitant is perhaps dreaming that for the sake of all of us, individuals find their universal truth with as much ease as humanely possible. Image is used in conjunction of Fair Use Principals.

Copyright by the Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven, 2024 

Praying for Peace; A Contradiction in Terms?

/ Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given at the Summer Solstice Worship Service on June 23, 2024.

Whenever times are hard, the amount of dialogue about prayer typically goes up. During these periods folks who would consider themselves not religious or maybe even atheistic, are prone to offering “prayers” to others who are going through a rough patch.

In the larger social context, saying you are praying for another person can be just a way of signaling that you wish for them the best possible life experience. I admit that I have on occasion told someone I was praying for them when I did not intend to offer prayers per se, only because the other person was in such pain. There was nothing else I could say or do for them to alleviate their suffering other than to acknowledge my wish that they receive help from somewhere in the universe, spiritual help of some kind that they believed would lessen their pain.

United States President Dwight Eisenhower is often credited with the idea that at times of extreme distress, even nonbelievers look to a higher power. He is quoted as saying that there are no atheists in foxholes. The aphorism of foxholes however, started at an earlier point in the historical cycle, the point at which humans began to engage in global warfare. It refers to the trench wars of World War I, and as such offers insight for our contemporary world affairs. As many of you know, we are currently coming to the end of the lengthy cycle in which our human experience has been preoccupied with dominating each other in every possible sense, including going to war when we are blocked from easier means of forcing our will onto others. In the (largely) absence of atheism currently, I think it a good time to revisit the idea of communicating with a higher power using the vehicle that is known as prayer. What can prayer do or not do when it comes to our pervasive and escalating global warfare? 

At its essence, prayer is simply an exchange of energy, an exchange that typically uses thoughts and often words to accomplish its purpose. As with any exchange of energy, it is intrinsically neither good nor bad. It is a choice, a way of proceeding in the moment with life.

There are many people who believe that prayer is the answer to all of life’s challenges. These people often spend a great deal of time, money and other resources engaged in this activity that they assume will solve all dilemmas. There are other people who believe that prayers are an empty or even an intrusive activity praying— (sorry, I couldn’t resist the pun)—on weak-minded or at best, naïve individuals.

As you all know, the dichotomies that human brains create can be deceptive and even addictive. Like all dichotomies, the trick here from a spiritual perspective is to find that place of peace in the middle. So, let us start there. Let us acknowledge that prayer as a human activity is neither good nor bad by itself. Whether it becomes a force for what some might label good or evil, depends upon a variety of factors, often laid bare primarily by context.

Who knows! You may need to let the stars crawl through your lap. Poem by Chelan Harkin used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

In the context of 21rst century United States, prayer as a simple act of communication, a means of creating energetically through matter, is very convoluted. There are multiple ongoing lawsuits with people fighting each other, trying to translate their particular set of beliefs into rules others must follow in regards to in what fashion, when and where others can pray. Essentially, prayer has become a primary form of warfare in this country, another way for folks to force their will onto others. The Supreme Court of the United States has weighed in on this debate repeatedly, imposing their own perspective on the rules for prayer in public venues such as in athletic events and graduations in schools; and governmental meetings such as town council deliberations, etc.

This increasing intensity of interpersonal warfare, this escalation of rules about praying seeping into the very fabric of the collective space is both a symptom of our national loss of a genuine spiritual perspective; and an opportunity that invites growth into a new level of spiritual development, individually, nationally and internationally.

Praying over or even for other people can be just a “sneaky” version of imposing your religious viewpoint on those who are better served by finding their own path. Image used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

Right now, all over the world prayer has been coupled with big business, with all the compounding problems that generates. Thousands, even millions of dollars are being spent to reward and enrich businesses and groups who pray for other individuals and collections of folks, with or without their consent.

I saw an interesting news story recently about a woman who was horrified to learn that the hospital that had provided essential medical services to her had subcontracted with a “nonprofit” to pray for her. Like many, she did not realize that patients who receive Medicare benefits can now channel these governmental funds in a manner to enrich those who use prayer as a form of health care treatment. Not only was she opposed to being prayed over, to add insult to injury she had had to figure out by decoding her complicated and some might say duplicitous hospital bill that she had been charged a copay for this “service” to which she had never agreed.

Part of me loves the fact that as a society we have progressed to a place where we can scientifically validate that the energy exchange that occurs during a prayer can indeed, bring real and vital healing. I welcome the addition of “alternative” forms of recovery to our outdated menu of medical services. But the part of me that understands how energy exchanges work, joins this patient in her dismay that she was not given a voice in her own healing. . .and indeed, was expected to pay money for this abusive act of disrespect and exploitation at the hands of others imposing their private values.

Apparently, the fact that the only time Jesus of Nazareth is known to have expressed anger was when he overturned the tables on moneychangers attempting to profit in a synagogue is still a lesson lost on many. The dangers of coupling spiritual explorations with business dealings are real and can be soul-crushing. Enough said.

The bottom line here, folks, is that prayer is best confined to the individual level, at least for almost everybody, for now. There is a way to use the energy exchange that occurs during prayer in a truly harmonious fashion in the collective space. . .but this is beyond the capability of almost all. Until you can work with your own energy system enough to pray from a place of peace, you will inadvertently be promoting war.         

Most of us have so much healing to do after lifetimes of traumatic events and unresolved karma, that we do not even recognize when certain aspects of our energy system is still trying to control others. Calvin and Hobbes cartoon by Bill Watterson used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

What, in fact, is prayer? Some people like to talk about prayer as sending a message to God, and meditation as receiving a message from God. That can be a useful distinction for some starting their spiritual journey. This perspective however, suffers from what I sometimes label as “directional distortions.” In actuality, since the Creator-of-Us-All is everything and everywhere, seeing ourselves as engaged in a back-and-forth ping pong type communication is a fairly limited way of looking at things.

In this community of late we have talked a lot about the essential nature of spiritual communication. It is paramount, profound, and multifaceted. It is also largely nonverbal. What can present more challenges than praying as a means to communicate with the All-That-Is? Prayer is complicated, much, much more than just rote recitation.

When I think of prayer, I am always reminded about one of the greatest attempts to elucidate the true nature of prayer, the one reflected in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. To me, perhaps one of the most profound aspects of the record we have of the Christ talking about prayer, is the timing of his main teaching about the subject, when he introduced to his disciples what is known as “the Lord’s Prayer.”

It is said that he was asked by his followers to teach them how to pray at a point rather late in his ministry. He had already gathered a dozen passionate, committed adherents around him, as well as increasing crowds of others attracted to his light. His disciples were spiritual leaders in their own right, each chosen for their leadership potential, deep faith and hunger for the ultimate Truth to which Yeshua was guiding them. One has to believe that these individuals to the person, had been exposed to and participated in thousands of prayers on a daily basis prior to this time of teaching. And yet, it was only during the last part of their journey together apparently, that the disciples thought to ask Yeshua to impart to them the ability to pray; or that he brought to them his divinely-inspired and deeply-held wisdom about that subject. It was one of his last gifts.

To me, this speaks to the complexity of prayer. It is not something for the faint of heart. At its essence, genuine prayer requires great preparation and insight, sometimes a lifetime or many lifetimes of such.

I am not saying that prayer should be left to the end stages of spiritual development. All important learning is done in steps, building great pyramids upon humble foundations. Whatever step you are on, is valid. What I am saying though, is that the goal of prayer is to adhere as close as possible to that flawless communication with Our Source that that is our destiny, that Yeshua stressed with the very first sentence of the “Lord’s Prayer.” Authentic prayer arises only from a context of deep internal spiritual connection, repeated sessions of private conversation in a myriad of ways with your Creator. It is NOT about shaping the behavior of others through public displays of belief systems.

Mother Teresa was actually somewhat of a controversial figure, historically speaking. She made “mistakes,” changed and learned a lot in her life before she became a saint in the eyes of many. Over time, she learned to subjugate her will to her Creator. Image used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

The true nature of prayer as a spiritual process requires seeing it as a means to dedicate one’s life to the Creator. All other uses of prayer are disharmonious at best. The intention of the person praying is paramount, along with their embodied awareness. In the earlier stages of learning to pray, many fall prey to versions and practices that are disingenuous or even potentially destructive because they have little or nothing to do with a soulful relationship with and thereby honoring of the divine. If you are praying for your own spiritual salvation, great. If you are praying for other people, be wary of your conscious or unconscious motivations. You could easily be doing more harm than good.

To this community, despite as experienced and advanced many of you are in regards to working with energy, I heartedly recommend that you confine the focus of your praying to your own life for now. Keep in mind that creating in someone else’s space is a form of space invasion. Praying for another can be dangerous to them and to you, unless you really know what you are doing. Believe me, that is rare. Do not trust your brain/intellect and/or your ego to make that determination. Even when others essentially ask you to invade their space by praying for them, actually doing so will only likely help the other person in the short-term and may very well create for both of you a karmic debt.   

Second of all, even when you are praying for yourself, be mindful of the direction the energy is flowing as you do so. Pray inward, not outward. Communicate with the God(dess) within, what is sometimes called the God(dess) of your own Heart by directing your awareness primarily towards your fourth chakra. Many people have been taught to offer prayers upward towards the heavens. What you are often doing in that case, is asking other spiritual forces to answer your prayers, rather than requesting the increasing presence of the divine.

When you direct your prayers upward, the Creator-of-Us-All will surely hear you, but who actually shows up to address your concerns may be—depending on what you got going in your space—some energy or entity sent by the Creator, your mother or father or another relative, a guide, an unembodied being who may or may not have your best interests in mind, your pet animal who passed away years ago, your pastor/preacher from another lifetime, a neighbor or friend who is not done with a conversation with which you are having, a being from another dimension just looking for a joyride, etc. You get the drift.

Even if you come from a culture that validates unembodied spiritual forces, rather than seeing them as intrinsically dangerous or evil; or you as crazy for acknowledging them, you are likely to be aware of only a tiny fraction of the foreign energies that live above and around you. “Helped by Spirits” by Intuit artist Jessie Oonark, Qamani’tuaq, 1970 used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals. Be mindful about your ignorance and do not leave yourself open to harm.

And last of all for these cliff notes, please be careful what you pray for. Potentially, prayer really is a fabulously powerful and life-affirming process of energy made ready for be born into your life.

Authentic prayer is the stuff of mystery and magic. Image used in Conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

Make sure you are ready for it. For maximum benefit, prayer should not be utilized lightly by engaging with it in from a place of desire or attachment. If you are praying that an object comes into your life, or an event unfolds the way you think it should happen, you have likely already lost many other possibilities, as well as your general life pathway to some degree. If you pray for specifics at all, one is best advised to doublecheck that these objects or events are a part of what the universe has in store for you.

One of the many reasons to “go light” on asking for specifics in prayer is that the human brain can never “hold” the entire picture. Only the divine sees what is best for us. Image used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

Rather, pray for the only outcome that truly matters:  greater understanding of and commitment to what God has in mind for you. Pray for God to be made manifest in you.

What is the bottom line for all of us here today that wish the world would come to reside in peace? Let me read you the invocation with which we started this service. Let yourself hear these words from Isaiah 2 from the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament.

God will judge between the nations, and settle disputes of mighty nations. Then they will beat their swords into iron plows and their spears into pruning tools. Nation will not take up sword against nation; they will no longer learn how to make war.

Understand that it is not your job to end war in the world. It is your job to end war in your own space, should you take on this challenge.

For those of you at war with yourself and others–whether or not you recognize it–and struggling with life in the trenches who want to employ the energy exchange known are prayer, let me summarize my message to you:  Pray passionately, fiercely, as frequently as you desire, but direct those prayers inward. Pray for yourself, not others for a long, long time.

Your goal should be to find the peace within you in your meditations, using prayer as one important and vital pathway if you so choose. . .and then let that peace on its own volition radiate from there. You do not even need to use words, or even thoughts.

Sitting in silence with your intention and awareness of the divine is all that is required. Find a tree to lean against, or a cozy chair in an indoor space and just be. It is enough, more than enough, that you focus your attention inward while you in some form or fashion ask the Creator-of-Us-All to reside as deeply within you as you can tolerate at the present moment.

Peace of mind and heart comes to those who learn to live within their own God-given space; and let go of any need to force others to a path created by your desires for them. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

 The rest will follow naturally.

Copyright by the Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven, 2024.

Warriors and Peacemakers

/ Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given at the Spring Equinox Worship Service on March 24, 2024.

Approximately seven years ago, this community explored the theme of our world’s energy shifting directions in some surprising ways, including downward. We did not know at the time much about these shifting patterns, why the energy that previously had been circulating in the upper atmosphere was increasingly flowing towards the Earth’s surface, or what the ramifications were. We just noticed that the change was profound, involving energy in every part of the globe. At the time I could only discern that this change had something to do with building new kinds of relationships–new relationships between humans; between human and nonhuman animals; and between humans and the planet itself.

If you want, you can read more about this “Part A.” It is still posted here on our website, under Winter Solstice 2017. To bring us all up to speed and take us all into “Part B,” I will reiterate a bit about the ongoing shift, starting from what we know from anthropology regarding human civilizations.

In talking about relationships, I remind you that when humans first embodied on Earth, we tended to come together in hunter/gatherer societies to help each other survive. These early human civilizations were almost always egalitarian in structure. Everyone in these groups had a voice in some form or fashion, and everyone had a role. When decisions about the group had to be made and leadership roles created, they were usually distributed among a mix of experienced elders, carried out by the most skilled and/or strongest clan members, with guidance from the spirit/natural world through shaman, priests, and other religious figures.

About 8,000 to 10,000 years ago when the world’s population grew too large for hunting and gathering, human society evolved into agricultural/industrial societies who organized their members hierarchically. Counsels of elders and clan leaders eventually gave way to leadership by warlords, family dynasties, and theocratic/civil governments who had the authority to intervene in human life, often in every aspect of individual life. Sometimes these new structures worked for the betterment of the group, and often they did not. The experience of any group usually is dependent on the strongest energetic force(s) in that group, the person who “sets the energy.” If this person does not have the intention and/or the skills to work on behalf of the common good, all kinds of evil can show up.

Hierarchies can be efficient, as any military or first responder can tell you. When decisions need to be made quickly, when large numbers of people have to be moved or otherwise helped without delay or hesitation, consolidating the decision-making to a select few becomes vital, even life-saving. But hierarchies also pose obvious real and important dangers. When the people at the top of the pyramid with the decision-making authority have not worked through their own personal issues, have lost themselves to their individual ego(s), succumbed to the temptations of the material world, and forgotten for whom they work, everyone is at risk. Whomever holds these political reins can and will likely advance their social and economic interests to the detriment of others not in power. Additionally, they can do so without having to see, feel or hear from the people affected by their decisions, minimizing the personal consequences for those interventions.

Hierarchies became the standard form of government even as the human population grew. They have gotten taller and the distance between those at the bottom and those at the top has become greater. The pedestals are now so high that the people at the top and the people at the bottom can no longer see or hear each other. Governments and agencies in pretty much every country and geographic location are increasingly making monumental, gut-wrenching, sweeping life-and-death policy changes that impact the lives of their citizens dramatically.

Hierarchy. When the distance is too great between those making the decisions and those affected by them, it wreaks havoc on human relationships. Image used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

The vast numbers of folks living on the bottom of the pile who feel cut off from the rest of humanity are getting more desperate as their sense of value decreases, and their fears grow as to what this may mean for their survival. Many respond by picking a surrogate in the upper tiers with whom they identify, giving that individual or group their loyalty, aka energy. Some respond by making up their own version of “reality,” one strewn with forces with which they feel more aligned. Giving away one’s power to a despot or dictator; and/or making up a fantasy world within which to live, are somewhat logical steps when one is no longer even able to accurately see what is truly going on with those at the top.

 

“The younger generation” has always been a catalyst in ushering in the next evolutionary period in human society. Psychology recognizes that optimal mental health results when a young person learns to separate what they have been taught in their family of origin from their own individual wisdom, needs and desires. In the current time frame there is a similar separation process going on in our collective human groups as we struggle to “grow up” as a species. The generation(s) who have been born into the digital age have been busy observing, building new networks consisting of those with whom they “vibe,” rather than just family of origin, and waiting for their chance to build a world that is no longer “top-down.”

Another life-threatening danger exists with hierarchies because they are intrinsically dependent on social programming, rather than on the moral compass of individuals within the group. Hierarchies requires rules; and enforcement processes for those rules. Most Western societies inherited a system from the Roman Empire, which was updated a bit and codified into laws that are often referred to as “law and order.” As hierarchies grow steeper, the law-and-order foundation that previously keep many conflicts in check has been breaking down. Accordingly, war and strife have increased in magnitude and intensity on every continent.

This breakdown of hierarchies as the way human beings relate to each other is happening everywhere, in the United States and internationally as well. The United States has been on the top of the global hierarchy, economically, culturally, militarily and in all other ways, but much to the chagrin of many, this is in flux. Chief among the groups who are expected to stem the tide of violence is the United States of America. We are currently witnessing the US’s role as “international peacemaker” of the world deteriorating rather dramatically. Certain segments of US forces, including military, governmental and civilian, continue valiantly to try to stem the escalating wars, but our own internal battles have increasingly made these efforts on behalf of peace around the globe less effective, or in some cases not even possible. Much of our federal government has been severely weakened or even destroyed.

Internally, the legislative branch of the US government has been gridlocked by rising conflict and breakdown of law and order, paralyzing international relief efforts and creating a congress who are largely worthless in regards to solving even the problems within our own borders. Even local areas have erupted into interpersonal warfare, such as is happening in our state governments, cities and towns, local schools. etc. The groups who used to play the role of peacekeepers are no longer able to keep up.

Bottom line, folks: Hierarchies as the sole basic structural form of of organization for human society is no longer working. It is going away. This is a key aspect of the real ramification of the energy moving downward. Our relationship within ourselves, between each other, between groups of us, and between humans and all life on the planet are in a major, chaotic, confusing reshuffle. Some hierarchies will and must still exist to address the big picture, assuming human animals remain on Earth. . .but they are going to look very different. Many nonessential hierarchies will die a painful death. And many often more localized, nonhierarchical ways of organizing ourselves are already in the works, and will proliferate, again assuming human animals remain on Earth.

So, I’d like us all to step back now, and take a look at the spiritual picture here. Let’s do Part B of figuring out what it means that the universe has decided on our behalf, to bring the energy closer to ground level; and what it says about the violence that is accompanying these changes. Today we are needing to explore the ramifications of our lived experience within physical bodies which are increasingly feeling what is going on around and through our lower three chakras, particularly our second chakra.

The second chakra, sometimes known as the “portal of life,” gives an individual crucial information about how the physical body is experiencing the world. However, since the body, unlike spirit, exists in time and space, it cannot automatically distinguish between emotions and sensations originating from others and its own, nor pinpoint the timeframe associated with its reaction. The “job” of spirit is to step back and look at those messages, only then deciding a follow-up course of action if needed. Image of the Sacral Chakra by Brenda Erickson used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

The irony here is most of this particular community deal with emotions extensively. Many of you are highly competent social or mental health professionals, first responders, or others whose work with the public requires a high level of expertise in affect regulation. You have skills up the ying yang about things like recognizing emotions, even the so-called “negative” ones that people like to ignore or deny, and processing them in a constructive fashion. You have a big head start on many in our world who are still learning what we professionals label “basic emotional regulation skills.” Maybe though, you could stand to learn more about the interplay between our individual and collective emotional life and our spiritual journey here on Planet Earth.

As you know, emotions are a vital source of information about out interaction with the world around us and the world within us. An emotional reaction is our body’s primary means of communication, a way of telling us to pay attention to something important. Our body can tell us that there is something going on that is uncomfortable, and it can also signal through a sense of enlivenment, when things are going “right.”

“No tree, it is said, can grow to Heaven unless its roots can reach down to Hell,” said Swiss depth psychologist Carl Jung. Unfortunately, many religions have taught that the “down” position of the planet contains hell. . .and as such a lot of people trash the planet as if it is an aspect of hell. In actuality, the Earth was designed by the Creator to nurture all life upon it. “Hell” is a state of human consciousness which human minds can create and inflict upon others. In the present time frame as a species we have to reclaim hell, in order to find heaven.
Quotation and image by Lily Diamond used in conjunction with Fair Use principals.

Emotions are neither good nor bad. They are simply an opportunity to pay attention.

Emotions get sent to every other part of our amazing physical system, largely through the central nervous system. If we have not done a very good job of listening to what our body has to say, the message does not go away. It just gets stored somewhere and usually screws up the smooth functioning of our internal organs, tissues and all in that particular body, and indeed, in many or most subsequent physical incarnations. There is a big cultural conversation going on right now about trauma, and the best way to clear old messages stored various places. Folks are beginning to recognize that they have gotten stuck in “fight or flight” mode because they have ignored previous internal messages, which are now screaming at them through the “megaphone” of the adrenaline system. 

Unheard and unprocessed emotions can also make us very vulnerable to manipulation. If we are not paying sufficient attention to our body’s own emotions and sensations, we are more easily distracted by those belonging to other humans, as well as unbodied spiritual forces. The frequency of affect is in the magnetic range, so we bring the emotions of other people into our own system rather easily. To make matters worse, the more we focus on and prioritize the affective messages from outside of our body, the less we can hear what is originating from within us. All great “cult leaders,” those on top of any political, economic, religious, social or other hierarchical pyramid rely on this emotional dynamic to control their “followers.”   

We have all felt like this at times. No need for self recrimination or denial if the emotion is confined to simply giving you some information, and not acted out. Just drink your tea, laugh at yourself. . and figure out where you are triggered and what needs to be cleared for you to find your peace. Image used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

Because vast numbers of people have not done the work of listening and processing individual embodied emotions, we have also not done well at listening to and coexisting with our “collective body,” such as our human societies and Mother Earth. That’s the part that has to change. For everyone’s sake. Individuals are still welcome to be “lost,” if that is what they need for their journey. Groups, not so much.

The most forward-thinking of us, the artists, poets, musicians, prophets and others, have been trying to help us reimagine our global societies differently for some time. Many have been ridiculed or persecuted for their beliefs, which are often seen as inconsistent with social norms. Now is the time.

What is the big picture here when it comes to this downward energetic shift and its accompanying increasing emotional chaos? What does said directional shift potentially do to the quality of our lives? What is the purpose in the grand scheme of things for this cascade of emotions everywhere, which too often is accompanied by war and other forms of violence? God always has a plan.

To answer that question, I want to return us to the invocation with which we started this service, and say a bit from the many words from Jesus of Nazareth spoke about war and peace. After all, Jesus was all about war and peace. For good reason, he is often referred to as the “Prince of Peace.” He was born into a world obsessed with warfare, struggling all his life with the unyielding expectations and ardent desires of those around him that he “free” them from their sense of internal strife by taking on the occupying Roman forces. As his light grew and it became increasingly more apparent that he could “win” any such war over the “occupiers” should he choose to fight with them but that he was not going to be taking this route, the resistance and opposition to his essential message grew. Faced with the realization that Jesus would agree to embody nothing other than love, the unresolved violent energy of those in his community was turned towards him.

The invocation is from Matthew, Chapter 10, Verses 34.

Do not think that I came to send peace on Earth. I came not to send peace, but the sword.

In Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke, the word “sword” is an idiom. It does not refer to a sharp instrument with which to stab and kill. It means division. Jesus was talking about his mission of teaching people to separate their energy from others, something that needs to happen for each individual to find the divine within them. In other passages from the same time period Jesus specifically discusses the preeminent social hierarchies on which his followers relied, that of familial and religious groups. He tells them that he has come to separate sons from fathers, daughters from mothers, and so on. He also warns that in order to follow his example and adhere to his teaching of individuality as the cornerstone of a relationship to God, they must be willing to take up their own individual “cross.”

Some other time as a meditation community we might want to take up the image of the crucifixion; and depack the tremendously triggering religious symbolism of the cross. But let me just say for the purpose of today’s healing, your cross will be wherever your unresolved emotions take you. Wherever you have expressed or repressed the messages of hatred between you and others, there will be your cross. Your personal cross is created by and will be illuminated through your body, with any and all ill will coming towards you or from you. 

Projection is probably our strongest “denial system, to use a Freudian concept. Because as a species humans are so fundamentally creative and imaginative, if that creativity and imagination is not “grounded” in the physical body via the lower three charkas etc. it is easy for us to approach the world in a destructive fashion, one that does not make room for the experience of other people, life forms, or even Earth itself. Our brains would have us routinely believe that the rest of the world is as we see it. Not so. Therefore, to make sense of the world we routinely project that which we are not willing to face in ourselves onto others. Image by Puerto Rican artist Marcos Alvarado used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

Wherever in your fear or confusion or grief or discomfort, whatever is unresolved in your body and your energy system you project onto others, therein is your cross. Whatever gets projected onto you to which you are vulnerable, because of your pain, stored fear, anxiety, uncertainty, distorted sense of responsibility, whatever, therein is your cross. Emotions and other sensations are not the only clues as to what divides you from yourself and therefore from others. Unresolved shared emotions are not the only vibrations that are resulting in world-wide conflict in the present time frame. But they are a MAJOR component.

Peace is only found by those who can claw themselves back from what is in their way of greater unity with the God(dess) within, freeing themselves from past programming, emotions, and other energetic blockage. That process can be very unpeaceful. Image used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals

As to warriors and peacemakers, please know that this is a dichotomy that requires us to find that place of balance in the middle. It is always when one locates and lives in the middle of a dichotomy that one can find true peace. That is another way of talking about taking up your own cross.

Be the warrior that fiercely uncovers (with the help of messages from your body) and subdues your own inner demons, building greater peace within you as you go. The real warrior is not the person who rushes into battle or tries to save everyone based on unexamined emotional stirrings; but the person who stands back, observes, asks for wisdom and patience until it becomes clear with which battles they need to engage and in what fashion. Then, often reluctantly, with quiet determination and utmost commitment to be of service, acts irrespective of personal cost.

The real peacemaker is not the one who avoids conflict at all costs, but the person who will do anything required that they can imagine doing and that is within their power to bring about healing, moving as many as possible towards the will of the Creator-of-Us-All who is on everyone’s side, including engaging in any necessary battle. This path of peacemaking often requires immense creativity, discipline, unexpected twists and turns, great love and neutrality, and a willingness to surrender to divine guidance.

        

When you HAVE to go to war, if you are working with the universe and basing that decision on something other than your own internal warfare, something magical can happen. Image used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

At this time the downward energetic shift is important for the very survival of humans on Planet Earth. Unless we pay more attention to the surface of our shared planetary environment, we cannot remain. The planet is in a life-or-death struggle right now. We must work with the very ground beneath our feet, and the soil, the water that runs through it, and all life that stands upon it. We must recognize, nurture, and encourage these energies to flow freely through our bodies until we have a more profound level of harmony with the entire Created Order. Those who can “go with the flow,” even when it is uncomfortable or uncertain, will weather the changes that continue to present themselves to all.

I pray that each of us does the work. . . and enough of us learn to carry our crosses with grace so we can come together in new, innovative group structures to sustain our presence here on this glorious miraculous space we call Planet Earth.

Copyright by the Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven, 2024.

Love in the Time of Wars and Rumors of Wars

/ Church of the Harvest / 2 Comments

From a Sermon given at the Winter Solstice Worship Service on December 14, 2023.

This video may strike some as an odd choice for today’s topic. Keep in mind that all love songs are really an attempt on our part to understand our relationship to ourselves and the God(dess) within us. As you listen to Cher, perhaps think of her as singing from one part of herself to another.

I confess that when it was first suggested that we devote this worship service to the idea of Love, I found myself in quite a bit of resistance. It was not that the topic itself is a problem. It is a wonderful concept to explore. It’s just hard to have a conversation about something that is so profoundly important; and at the same time something that so thoroughly evades understanding by the human brain. There may not be as important of a word in human languages than “Love.”

Image used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

The temptation here when the energy of a meta concept, a gargantuan idea that cannot be reduced to a word presents itself, is to try to contain it by talking about what it is not. You all recognize some of this backward approach to the idea of Love. . .but to start us off, I offer a few reminders.

Love is not seasonal. Hallmark movies to the contrary, love is not something that occurs more at Christmas time, although the number of words that cross our lips supposedly about love during the end-of-the-year celebrations typically do increase dramatically.

Love is also not what you crave. The programming that is coming through the media and other cultural sources right now attempts to convince us that we must “prove” our love for children and others through gifts and monetary contributions. This is pervasive and destructive, and completely untrue. These messages of rampant consumerism are the result of an economic imperialism of sorts. They have nothing to do with real Love. 

Love is not connected to desire in any form. Quite the opposite. If you desire something or someone, if you are therefore attached to an outcome or a particular form of a relationship, as opposed to operating from the neutrality that exists in the center of your head, you have already lost (or rather, temporarily misplaced) your connection to Love. Love can only be present when one lets go of the need for the outside world to be or behave in a certain way. True Love only exists within the context of Freedom. When you cannot walk away from whomever or whatever you think you love, what you are experiencing is attachment, otherwise known as dependency and/or desire, not Love.

In fact, Love has nothing to do with feelings whatsoever. It does not originate in our emotional space. Love is perhaps best described as a state of being. If you are still talking about feeling love for some other person, please consider clearing your space of enough programming that you at least update your use of language. That will go a way towards helping set your intention to experiencing the real thing.  

You might be feeling a great deal of connection with another person or animal. That can be a wonderful interim experience, but it is not, in Truth, what Love is about.  

Love is also not really an idea. I started this sermon speaking of the inherent difficulty in discussing the idea of Love. But that is just the dilemma with which we naturally are confronted when our human brains try to process something that cannot be fully understood solely using the physical systems.

Love is a spiritual concept and therefore the most truthful experience of it necessarily involves both the physical and the spiritual aspects of being an embodied human.   

I’d like to switch gears now a bit. . .and talk about the “wars and rumors of wars” part of our time together. I was asked to address the topic of Love within the content of today’s reality where what one sees overwhelmingly in the world around us is hatred.

Useful words to keep in mind from Canadian philosopher and author Matshona Dhilwayo, used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

How do we dwell in Love when the collective energy does not?  Everywhere one looks there appears to be an endless ocean of hatred and strife. We have so many wars going on right now that it’s hard to keep track of them all. There are, of course, the major military and political struggles that are steadily growing in size, sucking in almost the entire global population. There is the intensifying war between human beings and Mother Nature herself that is affecting every living organism on the Planet. There is even the intense for now-somewhat invisible battle going on above our heads in regards to which group of humans will be in control of the space above us. And on the ground there are the life-sucking ever-present culture wars, over the hearts and minds of the people themselves. How does one love in a world full of such participants?

Laughing at our situation can almost always “lighten the load,” i.e. raise the vibration level. Still, the fact that human beings continue to project hatred onto each other is very sad, indeed. Image used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

As I was contemplating this question, I found myself drawn to certain words attributed to Jesus of Nazareth. He talked a bit about Love, including what it is not. He reminded us constantly that Love is not a product of the physical world, but rather that it originates from our relationship to the divine.

There is a very wise aspect to the phrase many people use of “falling in love.” Ultimately, true Love involves a kind of surrendering to the will of the universe. It is not at all dependent on where our brain thinks we are going. Just make sure you have done the prerequisite healing such that you “fall into” the “right” vibration, and not something you were programmed to accept as love. Image used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

The Christ who referred to himself both as the Son of God and the Son of Man, thereby validating both physical and spiritual aspects of being human, talked about Love carefully and sparingly. In lieu of trying to reduce our understanding of Love to words he told his disciples to follow his example. He admonished his disciples to “Love one another, just as I have loved you.” So major hint there: Love requires expressed action (or inaction as a form of movement.) And he also talked about the end times, the times we are experiencing in 2023.

You all know that in the Church of the Harvest we honor all paths to God, all spiritual seekers after the Truth, all religious organizations and cultural traditions, including those who shun references to the divine in any form. I typically use words from various spiritual traditions in these sermons, so please do not be put off if you are one of the many who squirm a little when someone references the Christian Bible out loud. If you so desire, you can read for yourself the words spoken by Jesus and quoted in Matthew of that book about the current time of famines, plagues, and earthquakes. Those words echo in the nightly news. His teaching about the many who will hate, and the many whose love will grow cold during these times, resonated deeply within in as I went through the process of creating this sermon today.   

What I primarily want to draw your attention to this morning though, is the use of the phrasing “wars and rumors of wars.” Why are rumors being mentioned here? Initially this looks to be a redundancy, two words or phrases expressing the same thing. They are not. Perhaps some of you will know what I mean when I tell you this phrasing is more an illumination of a key dichotomy.

I remind you all that Jesus was a master of energy, and fully capable of infusing into any of his words a meaning that can only be understood by those who bring more to bear to the passage than just a flat analysis. “Rumors of wars” is not just a watered-down version of the concept of wars. It is at the heart of what creates the violence of wars.

Human beings “go to war,” that is to say, we act out in a violent way towards each other and other forms of life, when we are in fear. When we have no fear, we have no motivation to behave horribly. If you are a science fiction fan what I would say to you is “fear is the mind-killer.” Except that unfortunately, fear kills more than just the mind. For those of you more comfortable with dialogue about spirituality, what I would remind you is that Hatred is not the opposite of Love. Hatred is only a byproduct of the lack of it. The true opposite of Love is Fear.

When Jesus puts “wars” and “rumors of wars” on equal status, what he is teaching us is that our path to salvation is to address our fears, individually and collectively. I think of this every day as I watch the nightly news media personalities, bless their hearts, struggle with their own fears and their convoluted versions of bringing to their viewers a mixed bag of facts, interpretations and illusions, as they try to report what they understand to be the truth of our physical world. Too often their version is distorted by their own individual fear(s) and the fear(s) that their listeners want to hear. 

 When we truly embrace our Creator in all its manifestations, there is no fear. There is only the complete understanding of the soul that it is loved and is Love. However, this often requires more “surrendering” than many are wont to do. It takes a lot of pure intention and a great deal of healing/release of the pockets of pain and fear we each have stored within before most individuals are willing and able to experience the completeness of what some might call God the father. 

Living in the vibration of love rather than fear takes extensive healing, persistence in one’s intent; as well as constant renewal. “Real Hero,” story by Brian Andreas with art by Matthew Andreas posted in accordance with Fair Use principals.

To have the lived experience of Love, the active version that The Christ modeled for us all, you have to face your fears. Only then does one reflect the state of being that is talked about when, as the Persian mystic Khalil Gibran puts it: “When you love you should not say ‘God is in my heart,’ but rather ‘I am in the heart of God.’”

Breaking through to the heart of Love requires great courage. It results from awakening to your own divinity as well as that of others, no matter what human flaws present themselves for healing journey, something that can be terrifying. Image of “Our Lady of Fierce Compassion” by Sue Boardman used in conjunction with Fair Use Principals.

I want to end by reading the truest words about Love in the face of Hatred, aka Fear that I have run across. These words, a selection from the poem entitled “On Love” by Gibran, speak eloquently about the fact that if you want to reside in the vibration of Love, you must find the courage to let yourself fall into the hands of the Divine. (p.s. Feel free to change the gender of these pronouns if it will help you hear the message).

When Love beckons to you, follow him, though his ways are hard and steep.

And when his wings enfold you yield to him, though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.

And when he speaks to you, believe in him, though his ways are hard and steep.

For even as Love crowns you, so shall he crucify you.

Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.

Like sheaves of corn, he gathers you unto himself. He threshes you to make you naked.

He sifts you to free you from your husks. He grinds you to whiteness.

He kneads you until you are pliant;

And then he assigns you to his sacred fire,

that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.

But if in your fear you would seek only Love’s peace and love’s pleasure

Then it is better for you to cover your nakedness and pass out of Love’s threshing-floor into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but all of your laughter; and weep, but not all of your tears.

And think not you can direct the course of Love, for Love if it finds you worthy, directs your course.



Allahu Akbar. Copyright by the Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven, 2023.

Transcending the Blame Game:  Responsibility in a Dying World

/ Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given at the Summer Solstice Worship Service on June 25, 2023

Today we are going to be talking about responsibility, a concept that is and always has been confusing for human beings and human civilizations. The very word itself has so much energy attached to it that there is very little consensus on what it actually means. If I tell someone that they are or should be responsible for a particular situation, depending on the person and the situation, some will puff up their chest with pride, some will roll up their shelves and go to work, some will freeze in abject terror, and others will flee in the opposite direction as quickly as they can.

               I often play with the definition of responsibility by breaking it down. In other words, one way of looking at the concept of responsibility is that it means that someone has the ability to respond. It can be useful to think in this fashion. If you cannot do anything about a bad situation, then it is not really your responsibility to fix it. If you can, then go for it. If you can solve a problem and do not, then you are not acting responsibly. Etc. But the trouble with this perspective is that it says nothing about spiritual reality.

             From a spiritual perspective, responsibility comes within the context of the Creator-of-Us-All granting us the ability to choose everything about our Earthly experience, with one exception. As you all have heard me say time and time again, there really is only one rule on Planet Earth, one aspect that is universally and absolutely a given:  Free Will. When as a spirit we sign up to be embodied in a physical form on Mother Earth, we agree to following the rule of Free Will to the best of our ability. Everything else is up for grabs. 

Practically speaking what that means is that we are responsible only for our individual self. We each have our own individual space, a space that consists of our physical body and the energetic space immediately around it. We can create whatever we want to experience within this space. The rest is not up to us, not our responsibility, at least not exclusively.

Then it gets a little tricky. Because beyond our individual reality, we share and cocreate a collective space in which certain usually small aspects are up to us, and almost all other aspects are not.

I know that those of you who have been hanging around me for a while are pretty confused about this shared space thing. Along with the rest of humanity many of you are fairly clueless but highly motivated to figure out how to address a world that needs immediate and tremendous change to even continue to be livable. You may think I don’t notice your attempts to change the world outside of yourself by applying the energy skills you’ve been learning for application in your own space to others. . .but I do.

I understand the desire. I’ve been there, done that, continue to do that at my most muddled times. And occasionally, my attempts to heal a damaged world are appropriate as well as successful. However, the problem is that when one takes responsibility for the outer world, no matter how beautiful it is and deserving of help, without first clearing the vast majority of your filters, you risk violating free will, even when that is not your intention. Because invading free will is not your intention, you will likely ultimately be forgiven. However, by trying to heal the collective space before you are in fact, ready to do so, you are only postponing the inevitable. Others will still have to deal with their problems at another time; and you will have more problems to work through in the future because of the karma you just created for yourself. 

I thought long and hard about the best way to help folks hearing my message get to the next level of genuine spiritually-driven responsibility. I decided one way might be to provide a concrete and nuanced real-life example. So, this morning I am going to present you with a case study as it were, a true story from the early days of my lived experience as a mental health professional. 

In the late 1980s I was hired on as a forensic therapist for the Mentally Ill Offenders Program at the primary hospital in Washington State for the treatment of the criminally insane. The universe sent me unexpectantly into that environment to shake up my reality and the complacency of those already there.

Most all societies create a place to house those who cannot successfully live in the predominant social world. Sometimes these are a place of refuge. Usually they are not. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

Pretty much from day one I was in trouble. Some of the inevitable conflict was for obvious reasons. Initially I did not actually realize that I was the first female professional staff who had been hired. It took a “joke” about affirmative action candidates, what we these days would call a “microaggression,” on my first elevator ride to my new work space for me to start to notice that my new colleagues were white guys, mostly crusty older ones at that.

A much more profound source of conflict was not obvious on the surface, but reared its ugly head rather quickly. At the time of my hiring, I had already been working on myself in a variety of ways for many years. I knew a thing or two about the real nature of healing. The other forensic therapists largely consisted either of staff who had transferred over from the state correctional system and were focused on management, not healing; or individuals whose work training and experience was built upon the sterile foundation of academia such as the psychiatrists, nursing staff, recreational and occupational therapists. None of these groups had been required to do any of the deep intrapsychic work we needed our patients to do. Or at least, I needed our patients to do.

Too often the programs developed to care for those that are seen as mentally ill come from a place not only of ignorance but of abuse. Autistic children strapped to a radiator in a mental hospital in Lebanon,1982. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

In actuality, the hospital who was charged with the treatment of some of the most dangerous individuals in the state was rightly described as one big “revolving door.” Patients were committed for an undetermined amount of time. They were given three meals a day, lots of opportunities to interact with others under safe conditions and a general reprieve from the stress of living in the community. Their behavior was stabilized with the chemical restraints of psychotropic medications; and they were expected to perform simply tasks like making their beds, working with staff to clean up after themselves, and otherwise follow basic social norms without loss of behavioral control. If they could do this for a period of time, they were considered ready to reengage with the outside world again.  

Psychotropic medications are one of the great success stories of modern science. They make possible a rich, rewarding life experience for those whose brain is wired towards a spiritual reality that others do not share. That said, these medications are not a cure and not a panacea. They can be a first step, allowing the patient the breathing room to meet the challenges of physical embodiment. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

I stuck out like a sore thumb. Within a few months I had told my bosses that while I was happy to support the hospital in any other way I could, I would not be participating in a limited view of what constituted real change before the courts. I was not capable of being sworn in under oath as a representative of the hospital to say that a patient was now unlikely to reoffend and therefore should be released back into the community, just because they had learned good social manners under relatively safe conditions.

Luckily by then, the patients under my care were beginning to show such unusual psychological changes that were intriguing the higher-ups that I was not fired. Instead, we were able to work out a compromise. Patient loads were shuffled and essentially, I was assigned the treatment of folks who had committed crimes like murder and arson so egregious and/or politically problematic that my superiors were OK if conditional release was a far distant or even an absent goal.  

For many years I worked very hard to help my patients move from their tortured internal world into a shared reality that was less dangerous for them and others. Many of them were used to and complacent about the mental illness with which they struggled, but a few were eager to explore new territory. In every group of humans there are lots who could care less about healing themselves, but there are also usually a few who crave the lived experience of accessing the incredible healing abilities that are the natural birthright of human animals.

“Mental illness” is perhaps more accurately viewed as a spiritual disease. It involves the individual for a myriad of possible reasons accessing parts of their energy system not usually validated by society. This can be a excruciatingly painful and sometimes dangerous process for the individual as well as the people around them if the individual does not have the skills necessary to negotiate that alternative viewpoint safely. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

One such individual with whom I had the privilege of working was a young man named Troy. Troy was smart, quiet, well-mannered and could be kind to others. Like many who suffer from a major mental illness, he had learned to do so in secrecy, preferring isolation to the humiliation of judgement by others. One day that was not all that different from any other day for him, he went out and bought a 357 Magnum. A week later he shot and killed his older brother. 

After I got to know Troy a bit, I began to sense that underneath it all, he was one of the ones that genuinely craved a new perspective on life. It was not like he expressed any remorse or anything. It was more fundamental than that. It was more like he exuded a hunger for healing. I told him that he did not have to discuss the painful memories about his family with me unless he wanted to. However, I also made clear to him that if he ever expected me to testify in a court of law that he was ready to rejoin humanity, he was going to have to talk to me about SOME real things going on inside of him, not just mouth the usual pleasing-others bullshit. He would have to give voice to genuine thoughts and feelings. He was going to have to share his internal world, whatever it might be, however crazy it might seem, with another human being.

In some important regards working with the mentally ill is essentially no different than working with any human being that needs help. It is all about communication. . .and it is at its most healing when the helper learns to appreciate the alternative language being employed by the person being assisted. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

Fast forward close to six years later. In search of ways to help my patients, I had gone back to school weekends and evenings, completing a master’s degree in counseling. It was interesting but not all that useful. I had also begun to learn about working with energy, eventually enrolling in a seminary program—again on evenings and weekends. This was a lot more rigorous and helpful than a counseling program but it was hard to figure out how to apply it to a hospital setting.

Eventually I realized that I had learned all I could learn from my hospital experience, that I had given all that I had to give, and it was time to move on with my healing journey. I let the hospital staff know I would be quitting as soon as two or three of my patients had successfully gone through the conditional release process. By the time I left, Troy was living comfortably on the unlocked transition ward, working parttime at a pizza joint, taking a few classes at a local community college. . .and much to my delight, had even had a couple of dates for the first time in his life with a woman he met in one of his classes.

Several months later, maybe a couple of years, one dark wintery evening there was a knock on my door at home. When I opened it, I found myself staring at a County Sheriff’s Deputy who was there to do a welfare check on me. He told me that Troy had ceased taking his psychotropic medications, had absconded supervision, and the fear was that Troy was coming after me. I had two immediate reactions. First of all, I felt grateful and humbled that the Deputy had taken time from his many important duties to make sure I was OK. Second of all, I was distressed and more than a little irritated that the hospital staff had initiated said check. What that said to me in no uncertain terms is that they were never able to build a solid relationship with Troy, because if they had, they would have known that there was NO WAY he would come to harm me.   

Several more months passed. Troy’s body was found in a remote, heavily-wooded area of a national park in Idaho. He had died of exposure, trying to hide from a world with which he was no longer comfortable. I was invited to his memorial which I attended to support his family. As you might imagine, they were in great anguish, entirely devastated. As I listened to his mother talk at great length about her anger towards the shop owner who had sold Troy the gun he had used to murder his brother, I was struck by how her narrative had not changed one word from what she had expressed to me so many times so many years ago. I found myself saddened as I wondered how many hundreds of times Troy had been the recipient of other one-sided conversations without any room whatsoever for him to join in the dialogue. I, of course did not tell her that Troy had spoken to me several times since his death; that he has happy he had moved on and was going to get another chance at embodied life, a fresh, clean new start. He seemed particularly ecstatic that he had figured out how to move on from his physical body without accruing any more karma by hurting anyone else in the process of leaving. 

Like mental illness, death itself is a spiritual phenomenon that defies understanding by most. It is best to approach it with humility and grace. “The Story of Death” by Brian Anderson used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

So here we are at the end of my story, and the beginning of my question to you.

WHO WAS RESPONSIBILE for this young man’s “untimely” death?  Who should be blamed that for this man with such promise, his life was full of suffering and pain, unbearable isolation and lost connections?

Was it indeed the shop keeper who supplied the weapon that destroyed his family? Was it that his family did not seem to have a place for him in their midst, and did not even notice his absence, much less events like his brother’s bullying? Is it society’s fault that these “lone wolfs”—as they are increasingly labeled by the media and law enforcement such the FBI–don’t show up on our collective radar until it is too late? Or is it our collective fault that civilizations have been around for thousands of years and still we don’t have even the basics figured out about illnesses like schizophrenia? Was it my fault as Troy’s treating therapist? Could I have prepared him a different way, or prepared the situation? I was fairly doubtful that the community supervision staff had the interest or skills that I possessed in building a bridge to this troubled young soul, but I didn’t see that I could do anything about that. Or was it simply all Troy’s fault? After all, he did and does possess free will to create whatever he as spirit wants to experience.  

My answer?  All of the above.

And. . . None of the above.

Yes, primarily, Troy’s life was and is his responsibility. He created the family into which he was born. He chose the time frame, this period where we are still collectively so lost as to the true nature of mental illness. He and I created the contract to come together to do healing work with each other, long before either of us were actually in a body this time around. He contracted with his Creator for the timing and nature of his demise. Etc. I like to think he did enough healing work with himself to “change his destiny” in the sense of leaving his body without harming others. It is possible to change details of the contract after spirit enters into the physical world. Rare, hard, but possible. I could be wrong.

Beyond Troy’s mockups though, there is the collective space in which all of us participate. We either make choices there consciously; or more commonly give up our individual energy to let them be made for us by other energies. So yes, we all have a bit of responsibility for Troy’s story, somewhere between a very tiny almost microscopic part. . .to a much more prominent role like I or the other hospital staff played. So yes—each one of us has some response-ability to shape a different reality than the one that ensued.

And the none-of-the-above part? Why do I say that? Well, because it really doesn’t matter who is found to be responsible in any situation, if the seeking of that answer comes from a place of judgment.

If you are approaching the question of responsibility in order to figure out who to blame, you are already lost. The blame-game is very big on the Planet right now, and only likely to get bigger. As the natural world rapidly deteriorates, revealing its vulnerability and damage to all, people in the social world are constantly talking about investigations, who should be held accountable, who is responsible. They think they are talking about responsibility but they aren’t even close to understanding that concept. What they are really doing is looking for scapegoats. That is not going to work. It solves no problems. It just creates others.

The blame-game is just another way of avoiding a resolution. Until you get beyond this stuck perspective, you cannot solve the problem at hand. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

So, my friends, kept working to clear those wounded healer pictures from your fourth chakra. Step back every now and then to examine what is really motivating you as you attempt to heal others. Keep looking inside yourself for your answers to life’s troubling challenges. Above all, find that center-of-your-head space where you can observe without judgement.

And know that you are not alone. You are never alone.  

Consider this a call from your Creator. 😉

Copyright by the Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven, 2023

Creating Sacred Space; The Return to Paradise

/ Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given at the Spring Equinox Worship Service on March 26, 2023.

In this community we’ve been talking a lot lately about time, about the importance of taking time into consideration to respect the body’s needs, about the importance of remembering that time as an illusion as far as spirit goes, and about the need to learn how to work with those seemingly contradictory perspectives.

I remind you that they are not in Truth, contradictory. They just appear to be so when viewed by the human brain. As human beings struggle to negotiate current events with the unfolding landscape changing far in excess for which many are prepared, what is required is a leap of faith, a commitment to not only growing beyond the glass ceiling imposed by the human central nervous system and its brain; but taking huge steps into territory previously left primarily to artists, prophets, saints, indigenous populations and others who have had the courage and/or permission to explore beyond what can be known through the five senses of the physical body.  

I have been (largely) amused by all the individuals in our society who actually think they can stem the tide of these waves of new levels of spirit-driven human consciousness. Political and religious leaders in particular seem to be convinced that they can maintain their power and prestige by blocking those who are trying to unearth—i.e., bring up from the hidden caverns of the Earth—our collective history so we can reexamine and expand it to include others who have been marginalized or misrepresented.

But this expansion of perspective that society is undergoing, this debate about whether we are going to allow larger and more truthful representations of who we are as a collective entity is not really about our history. It is about our future, our future as a species on Planet Earth.

Let us get right to the point of how we go about further growing human consciousness, and what a leap of faith will require of us as individuals and a collection of individuals.  

Leap of Faith by Lucy Campbell, Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

I want to talk about two key aspects of this subject. First of all, I want to talk about the unchangeable aspect of that leap that will continue into the future irrespective of whatever else takes place. Second of all, I want to talk about the part we CAN and must change as we recast human history in a way that will help us make the transition into an unknown future.

So first of all, what is the existing part of the game plan here that is NOT subject to change over time? By the way, we have prepared ourselves for accepting that there is an unchangeable and a changeable aspect of reality as the path to serenity, a commitment to peace, through a widely-shared mantra. You have all heard the words: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.    

What can’t we change? Simply put: God.

In our arrogance human beings have been very confused about God. We get lost to our lack of understanding of what is God and what is not God. Most or all of the evil done on the Planet has been in large part because we struggle with this question. Wars have been fought and genocide or enslavement of whole populations have been carried out by defining outside groups as “other”—the ones that are not of God or blessed by God by virtue of belonging to whatever group to which we belong. This is the “tribal thinking” human animals have done since day one. Horrific acts of injustice and other forms of persecution have occurred when policy-makers think they are speaking for or doing the will of God, when really, they are only speaking for themselves and those immediately around them.

To add insult to injury, those who have been victimized then often go through enormous further suffering as a result of their belief that if God is not “on their side,” they have been abandoned by God. Many who have witnessed these outbursts of evil played out in the world turn their back on the Creator-of-Us-All, choosing instead the desperate emptiness of atheism or harsh adherence to the misery of determinism. God is on everyone’s side, in a manner that often confounds our physical brain.  

At the heart of all of these problems is a misguided dependency on the human brain as the decision-maker about our reality. Don’t get me wrong:  the human brain is a magnificent miracle of the highest order. But it only processes what is brought to it by the body’s sensory systems. Compared to human consciousness, compared to that capacity that human beings have to access all the information in the entire universe, the brain is a tiny cog. A mere speck of dust in an endless ocean of energy.   

God does not change. So, how do we make sense of a rapidly changing world that comes from a Creator that is everything and everywhere and everyone and is unchangeable?  We don’t. Not, at least, with our brains.

When I am struggling to conceptualize everyday problems from a spiritual perspective, and I run into this perceptual dilemma, this conflict that my brain has with the world being both unchangeable and changing, I find a certain allegory useful.  I like to think of God as the frame. And I like to think of human animals as the painters of the picture within that frame.

We can’t change the frame. We can, however, pick out whatever colors we want for the picture being created in the framework. We can leave the canvas white, infuse it with rainbow hues or paint the whole damn thing black if we want. We can use acrylics or watercolors or glue weird objects to the canvas. We can use delicate brushstrokes or splash colors on willy-nilly. We can paint in the nude, or totally encased in a suit of armor. We can share our resulting masterpiece with thousands of people on social media, sell it to a museum, or destroy it on the spot. All of that is up to us.   

We can’t change the frame, though. That is why we don’t need to be much concerned most of the time with creating sacred space, not really. It’s already created. The framework that we know as Mother Earth is already sacred, every inch of it. Every person, every creature, every plant, every rock, every molecule. The Creator-of-Us-All is all and is in all in some form or another.

Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

We can’t change the frame. That is also why Mother Earth will survive, whether or not human beings remain on it. Personally I believe it is in the framework, or you might say the destiny of the very planet itself that it will eventually be returned to its original state of Paradise. Whether or not human animals are a part of that renewed state, that remains to be seen. I may be wrong.

So, second of all, what can be changed? Pretty much the whole picture of life on Mother Earth. Human beings have been changing it in destructive, unaware ways for many centuries. Many fear that it is too late for human beings to be a part of the picture of life on Earth in the future. From a scientific perspective that relies almost exclusively on that which our brain can process, that may be true. From a spiritual perspective, though my truth says otherwise. It may be and very likely is quite late in the game for human animals to “come to our senses” and we may have only just begun to look at the possibilities for restoring the Earth to its natural state as a paradise, but it’s not too late. How do we create that sacred space, that return to an everyday Paradise?   

To discuss this topic let us look a how human beings as a collective temporarily lost our sacred space. I would like to dive into our “origin story” as the cultural anthropologists call it. In anthropology each culture has a narrative of how it came to be. I want to read you the origin story that pretty much all of us in today’s service were raised on, irrespective of whatever religious tradition or lack thereof your family followed.  This is from Genesis, Chapter 2, Verses 8,9, 15-17.

            And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

            And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food; the Tree of

Life also in the midst of the garden, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

            And the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and to keep it.

            And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat.

            But the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, you shall not eat; for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.

This is what we believe, or have been told to accept as the starting point for human civilization. Most of us have been HEAVILY programmed to see this starting point in pejorative terms. In other words, there is this stupid person who is given everything beautiful, nourishing and wonderful; along with one simple instruction. That same human willfully disregards the one and only suggestion; and brings death to people forever after. BAD human! Or, as you have probably been programmed to believe—SINFUL human, worthy of disdain, guilt and shame, all of which automatically gets passed along to all descendants.  

One problem here. . .but it is a doozy. God never judges us. That is not a part of the frame. Only love is a part of the frame. Where there is judgment, there are only humans who have lost their way due to foreign energy and other forms of programming. 

I am going to read you Genesis once more. This time, though I invite you to use that simple but profound meditation technique that we teach here at the Church of the Harvest. I invite you to seek out the center of your head. . .and see if you can hear another message this time, one that is not based on condemnation. One in which God simply gives us a choice.

And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

            And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food; the Tree of Life also in the midst of the garden, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

            And the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and to keep it.

            And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat.

            But the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, you shall not eat; for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.

What I hear in this passage is the Creator-of-Us-All very lovingly and with detachment asking the human species essentially—do you want to do it the easy way. . .or do you want to do it the hard way? I personally do not hear judgment. To me, humans as a species were simply asked which trajectory we wanted to experience–one that was easy-peasy; and the other, more difficult. Each presented different kinds of challenges but also different levels of rewards. The hard way involves repeated death, as in death of the body, not the soul. The hard way also involves dealing with something called the knowledge of good and evil. 

I don’t hear God saying humans are evil, or good for that matter, only that what we wanted to experience was going to result in the frame being set up in such a way to support that experience. Essentially, God was inviting us to cocreate with him/her/it, bless its soul. And for us mere human animals, for those of his/her/its creations most closely made in his/her/its image, what choice did we make? We decided to go for broke, so to speak.

The divine takes great joy in cocreation with that which it has created. But we have to bring our full selves to the table in order for the partnership to work out well.

I could easily do a whole sermon on what the full ramifications are of this version of Paradise as our origin story. Obviously there are a lot of interesting questions about why we chose the hard way, what we stand to gain. Perhaps we’ll talk about that another day. For now, we are running out of time this morning so I need to cut to the chase somewhat.

If we want to meet those advanced challenges to which we have agreed, and continue to agree by our very presence on Planet Earth, what do humans need to do?

Face death head-on squarely, with as much compassion and as little fear as we can muster. Realize more death is coming for many, but death of the body is not real death. It is a temporary transition, a shift in consciousness.

Let Your Heart Shine Even in Death by Myron Dyal. Image used by permission of the artist.

And finally, as individuals and as cultures, we need to fully explore that thing called the Knowledge of Good and Evil—from within the framework of Love.  Recognize that dichotomies are what we signed up for. As a society we are just beginning to understand the importance of dichotomies. You can see this every day as the flurry of social media postings and mainstream media stories increasingly focus both on our “dark side” as a species; and the ability of everyday people to choose the path of light that takes us towards the loving framework around us.

Play jump rope with the dichotomies that show up in your life. Having fun with them deenergizes them. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

In the past, as a society we tended to try to hang out on one side of the dichotomy pretending everything was fine, unless the pretense was so ludicrous that we could no longer maintain it. Endorsing positions on an extreme end of a dichotomy is alluring, almost addictive. In part this is because one of the great dichotomies human animals face when they decide to incarnate on this planet is that we have to learn to give up expectations, aka perfect pictures, those deceptive thoughts and feelings that tell us the world is supposed to be a certain way.

As you have heard me say many times, the road to hell is paved with perfect pictures. Truly we cannot experience Heaven-on-Earth until we clear those pesky pictures, those expectations of self or others upon which we operate in a socially-accepted fashion. You know the ones. The rules about how we and others should live. Perfect pictures create anger, fear, disillusionment and confusion. They put us at odds with each other as we battle over the best way to judge each other. In short they cut us off from “the frame” where there is only peace and love.

A soul working to be a part of Mother Earth and thus embodied can strive for perfection or it can strive to be real. Generally it cannot do both in the long run. The latter requires experience and periodic failure. Image with words by Anna Quindlen used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

How do we clear perfect pictures? One set at a time. Any way you can. Noticing them is often the first step, (but not always). Stop being fooled by them, and start disengaging from them by ceasing foolish arguments

By partaking from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, our perspective shifted from the natural neutrality of the spirit world to a consciousness that can involve neutrality but can also exclude it. With our free will we now get to choose what we want to experience. We also opened up a universe of societal expectations with which we grapple on a daily basis. (Apologies to legal professional viewers). Comic by Dan Piaro used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

Suspect perfect pictures when you find yourself in judgement. Work on the energy behind them diligently, knowing they are what is between you and your personal sacred space. Find, that place of peace, the place of balance in-between. This is the part humans can change.

The return to Paradise awaits us in ways our brains cannot yet imagine, with the full blessing of Mother Earth.

You could say that humans are hardwired to divide the world and everything we see therein into “good” or “evil.” Our brains automatically does that for us. Finding the sweet spot in the middle of that dichotomy requires spiritual maturity, awareness and persistent choice. We are being called upon in the present time period to learn to see the bigger picture. In the eye of the divine all are important and sacred. Cartoon used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

And finally, I want to get back to that leap of faith that is possible and needed if we are going to be a part of the journey back to sacred space.

Other life created by the divine is capable of great leaps into the unknown, consistent with its evolution. So too are human animals. Do not be afraid. Take stock of where you are, set your intention for the new space, and leap my friends! Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

I want to finish today by rereading part of our invocation and adding a couple lines that were not previously included. This conversation by visionary Perdita Finn is about what Mother Earth wants to tell us right now. For now, while we wait to see how many individual humans are going to find sacred space within themselves, thereby making themselves a part of a new healthier Planet Earth as it returns to its mission of Heaven-on-Earth, keep this in the back of your mind:

         

The tapestry of the world is dyed with colors only a fraction of which you can see. There are designs you know nothing of.

So hold fast to that body and know it by the single name that I have written in your heart.  Be neither fearful or fearless,

but rather keep yourself still within and simple without. And listen for the moment when I say, “NOW!”

Copyright by Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven

Death of the Old World; Birth of the New

/ Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given Autumn Equinox Worship Service on September 25, 2022.

Here we are at the autumn equinox, a time harvesting and storing the summer’s fruits and vegetables, beginning to feel the seasonal Halloween effects as the intersection between the spiritual and the physical world gets thinner, for many of us transitioning into having more time at home when there are often longer periods of rest and recuperation from the days behind us and opportunities for dreams of the days ahead.

This year is a particularly poignant time for reflection, for the review of what we have individually harvested in our lives in 2022, as well as the hopes and the fears and the curiosity of what we may be sowing for the seasons in 2023. 

There is more to be examined and discussed because collectively there is more going on than ever before in the collective space. The ending-old-cycles and creating-of-new-ones that individuals always go through at this time of the year, is currently being massively magnified by this also being played out in the world-at-large.

Human beings may arguably be in the middle of the most important transition we have experienced for at least 2,000 years. Endless discussion and debate are happening in the astral plane right now about what we want to be creating as a whole for human animals and other life on Planet Earth.  More controversies are at play, some are at war. More of our mutual past is being reviewed, cleared or updated and/or resisted than most of us have previously experienced processing.  And of course, our weary physical bodies feel the effects of all this on top of meeting our everyday challenges.  The consensus reality these days is very busy trying to make sense of a physical world it no longer recognizes.

It is human animals who are the most at risk as a form of life, when we denigrate and destroy Mother Earth. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

In this community of healers most of you know that the tricky part of growth periods is almost always that intense final rush right before the completion of the cycle. This is the point where we start to really understand that the patterns that have carried us here no longer work and cannot and will not continue. Regrettably though, this is also the point in which we cannot see our way forward, since it’s all a new game. As Albert Einstein is said to have put it:  We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

Additionally, it’s at this point in the growth period that things can get particularly dangerous. Many human beings do not do well with fear, with uncertainty. Their resistance to change makes the changes much worse. Thus, they seek to escape a world they do not understand through substances, destructive relationships, illnesses, accidents, delusional ideation or impulsive actions. Many who are unwilling or cannot tolerate the changes human civilization is currently undergoing have already left.  Many more will do so in the coming months.

We are truly at the tipping point. But not the tipping point about which climate activists talk. The tipping point we are experiencing right now is infinitely more profound. It is a spiritual tipping point. It is being felt and experienced by every individual on the planet, recognized by few. It is a preordained shift in human consciousness, taking many forms, leading us as the species on Mother Earth that currently determines the quality of life, to a place of decisions.

Photo used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

You can frame this point in human evolution a number of different ways.  I’m fond of talking about it as the shift from the toxic male to the sacred female that has been happening in people no matter the gender of their body. Worldwide society has been rapidly transitioning from the wars and competition for greed and power and exploitation of all life on Earth that is sick version of the male aspect in every person. . .to the cooperative, creative, nurturing version of the healthy female aspect in every person.  

There are other viewpoints that are equally valid and useful in talking about this shift in human evolution.  Some of those differing perspectives were mentioned in the invocation from the Gospel of Thomas, multiple examples of which can be seen any day one tunes into the news. 

When Jesus was talking in this passage about the two being made into one, the reference here was from the shift in human consciousness of seeing others as outsiders to simultaneously seeing others as a different version of oneself.  When Jesus talked about making the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, he was validating our apocalyptic digital age environment in which everything that has been hidden becomes revealed, whether it be the genocide of indigenous populations in Canadian and North American boarding schools, or the theft aka “storage dispute” of top-secret governmental documents at Mar-A-Lago.

To understand Jesus’s reference to the upper like the lower, you need look no further than the culture wars that have blown up recently in the United States in regards to state rights versus versus federal rights; or the dictators around the world who are struggling to maintain their grip on the people beneath them as the energy moves downward.

We are tipping over into a new world.

Every quarter when it is time for another worship service, I usually tune into what this community says about what it sees as its next step, what theme people want to explore in our joint healing adventure. This equinox though, something happened that has only happened once before. The universe told me the theme:  Death of the Old World, Birth of the New.

The Old World is dying but it still can offer solace to those who are attempting spiritual rebirth. Art by Alexandria Dvornikova used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

It was a gift from the universe to this powerful group of healers. The universe wants us to prepare, not in the way of preppers who address their fears by building bomb shelters or storing dehydrated food.  Not preparation in the form of surrendering to comforting but false belief systems like QAnon or other conspiracy theorists, or even belief in the rapture like those who participated in my dissertation study, bless their hearts, who were trying to manage their fear by assuming Jesus would whisk them away from a dying planet at some final hour.

The universe wants this community to prepare as we always do, by grounding, working in our individual space with our own energy system, healing our way to more completeness, growing closer individually to the God of our Heart, one step at a time. . .and thereby helping others as we go.

We are to get even more ready for a future we cannot yet see, get stronger, clearer, more integrated within ourselves, more physically and mentally healthy, and more able to work with each other in harmony and ease.

You see, the final battle being played out, Armageddon if you will, is within each one of us, the energy of which gets magnified and radiated externally into shared space. But as always, it starts with each one of us. 

So how exactly does any one individual work through Armageddon?  What do you need to know?  What do you need to keep in mind?

The roadmap for each is different, although there will be common themes among us. I can’t tell you specifically what you are going to experience as you explore your own space, what keeps you still in conflict with yourself, unable to be aware of the dictates of the indwelling God, struggling to understand why others around you are reflecting back strife and unhappiness. But I can perhaps offer some clues by sharing one exploration of an Armageddon process that has begun to unfold in my life.

When I asked the universe how I needed to prepare, what came back was a handful of words from an obscure sentence in the Sermon of the Mount. What I mean by “obscure” is that I had personally had no interest in this teaching previously. I have had a minimum of interest in the Sermon on the Mount in general, and no interest in truly understanding this particular phrase.  However, lately this phase has been ringing in my mind like the church bells on Sunday I used to hear when I lived in Europe.  Loud, reverberating through every fiber of my body, seemingly never-ending until I heed the call. The phrase? The meek shall inherit the earth.

The thing is, Eashoa was a master of everything energetic. He knew how to transcend time and space completely, as well as how to dwell in it with others who were unaware of the spiritual realm.  And so, he knew how to encode spirit into words on so many levels that people from various levels of consciousness in wildly divergent cultures existing in different time periods could get his meaning to the extent their individual embodied life experience allowed.  It was and is of no great concern to him if a few individuals actually heard what he said at the actual occurrence of the Sermon of the Mount in real time, or if he was just planting the seeds for the people who would be able to receive his message two thousand years later.  

Time is a universal social construct only in the physical world. Even then, it can be experienced by individuals in vastly unique ways. In the spiritual realm, time is an illusion. Successfully negotiating time everywhere is an advanced skill open to all but mastered by few. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

Have you ever had those moments–we often label them epiphanies–when something you’ve heard numerous times suddenly makes sense to you? This is simply when your consciousness has grown enough that it can finally contain the meaning of the words or the event. 

Let me tell you my epiphany about how I personally need to prepare for the Armageddon of my soul. I want to read the words to which I am referencing in context.  I’m going to repeat an expanded version here from Matthew, Chapter 5, Verses 3 to 8, translated from the Aramaic by George Lamsa:

            Blessed are the unassuming, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

            Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted

            Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth

            Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice for they shall be well satisfied.

            Blessed are the merciful, for they shall have mercy.

            Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. 

I have heard many things in these words lately that I did not hear before. I hear the echoes of the Black Lives Matter, the Me-Too Movement and other waves of recent social protest.  I hear the anguished cries of Ukraine, Sandy Hook and other mass shooting events, the flooding of Pakistan and Puerto Rico, the frightening despair of those who are working through ancestral memories of the internment of Japanese citizens during World War 2, the murders of forgotten Native American women and the Holocaust. I hear The Christ advising us to look these wrongs straight on, shed the seemingly endless tears, and work diligently to make our heart space big enough to contain it all.

In regards to those pesky words that have been haunting me recently, that stuff about the meek inheriting the earth–mostly, I had to clear some energy from folks who did not want me to learn from within my body what it REALLY means to turn the other cheek.  I had to get beyond how triggered I was by the word “meek.”

Turns out meek is not about being passive. . .or silent. A translation of the concept that resonated with me that I eventually uncovered is that a meek person is one who endures injury with patience and without resentment, as in a mild-tempered child who does not respond to bullies by passing the hurt onto others but rather by taking on the hurt in their own space in a time-honoring pace. In other words, the meek are those who may respond to wrongdoing a number of ways over time from a place of neutrality, not revenge.  This is certainly an area where I have more to learn.

Finally, the inherit the earth part. The reverberations here were easier for me to discern. Jesus talked about the upper and lower becoming one. The American Franciscan priest Richard Rohr talks about our need in the present time frame to “grow down.” Rohr uses the words Yin (down) with the Yang (up). He encourages us to be more human, to be embodied in a community of others who are working with the deeper levels of pain and confusion; and embrace the paradoxes.  

Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

As Rohr tells it: “Human consciousness does not emerge at any depth except through struggling with our shadow. It is in facing our conflicts, criticisms, and contradictions that we grow. It is in the struggle with our shadow self, with failure, or with wounding that we break into higher levels of consciousness.”

We have to grow down towards Mother Earth, enveloping whatever is a necessary correlation showing up in our physical body in the process. . .and then, and only then, the world around us becomes truly ours. 

So, brethren, Happy Autumn Equinox. I am going to leave you with more words. These are from Henry David Thoreau.

Live each season as it passes. Breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the Earth.

In doing so as you work through whatever it is you are working through, you will surely inherit the Earth; and help all of us birth the New World.

Copyrighted 2022 by Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven

Freedom: The Language of Soul

/ Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given Summer Solstice Worship Service on June 26, 2022.

I have been interested in exploring the issue of freedom with this community for some time now.  Freedom was always a big topic of the conversation in my family when I was growing up. Even when we talked about little else, in my particular family there was always permission to talk about cats. And as a military family in the cultural landscape around us there was always permission to talk about the freedoms that we were told were guaranteed by membership in the United States of America which were our duty to support. We would come together for huge fourth of July celebrations complete with fireworks, marching bands and parades of uniformed soldiers strutting their stuff in formation around fields. 

Talking about freedom is as American as apple pie, as deeply symbolic as the selection of the fierce and high-soaring American Eagle as our national bird. We did not the choose the turkey as our national emblem such as it was rumored was suggested by Benjamin Franklin. (This is actually a myth, but a good story). We chose the Eagle. Every country has an energetic core, an agreement about the essence of what those who are a part of that land have come to explore. In the United States of America our collective agreement involves exploring freedom and social justice.  And so it is fitting that our greatest challenges have been and continue to be learning what it really means to be free; what justice actually looks like.

Every country has its own energy. This depiction from Christian Chinese American artist He Qi depicts the essential essence of the United States. Picture used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

In recent days all around the globe there has been a rude awakening for many who have viewed the United States as a perfect union, as the ultimate land of opportunity. You all know that energetically speaking, perfect pictures led to a great deal of disappointment, despair and other forms of suffering when the world does not live up to our flawed expectations. The American ideal still rings true for millions of people who live under greatly diminished social freedoms and horrible injustices in their own community, whether in the US or other areas. Intensifying environmental disasters mean that US borders are increasingly overrun by thousands of would-be immigrants fleeing from harsh economic and social injustice, violence, brutal repression and other terrible events in their home countries. Recently however, many who have always dreamed of partaking in the American dream are also changing their minds as the universe wakes us up to a greater version of its Truth, and it becomes more clear what is really going on in North America.

In the United States we have a citizenry whose social norms are rapidly breaking down, who are acknowledging more and more the gut-wrenching injustices of our past and present with no real understanding as to how to correct them. In their panic Americans are clinging tightly to false illusions about freedom. After all, the one thing upon which we all can agree is that freedom is a good thing theoretically. That’s part of our national identity, enshrined in our collective psyche.

But what is freedom? Really. What is it? What does it look like? What does it actually feel like? How does it work in a collective space when one person who thinks of freedom in a certain way clashes with another person who thinks their version of freedom is not only the correct version but the only one that counts?

If we require people who don’t want to wear a facemask or get a vaccine to do so are we taking away their freedom? If the government does not let people own assault weapons or do drugs, is it acting unjustly in defiance to the rights of its citizens? If the highest court in the country decides women can be subjected to involuntary pregnancies based on what state they live in, is it supporting state rights or is it attacking the rights of women? Unless a group can actually agree on a concept, it is hard to meet any challenges that arise with any integrity.    

I’ve noticed that even people in this community, or in groups of otherwise-enlightened well-intentioned individuals working on healing themselves, are often still massively confused about what freedom really is. I watch said people just substitute the word “free will” with the word “freedom” like they are interchangeable. The energy behind using these words as a synonym is usually based on dysfunctional religious programming, by the way. Which, by the way, is the opposite of freedom. Pushing “free will” or accusing another person of violating it, is a sure indication that you have more to learn about what freedom actually is. Approaching freedom as if it is a static, binary thing, in which only the vaccinators or the antivaxxers or the people supporting or opposing guns have the truth, means you surely have not found your own freedom.

So, what is freedom? For most of us, the full answer to that question can only come about when we learn to love the question over time; and have the patience to know that our personal answer to that question will arrive when we are ready for it.

“Freedom” is one of those metaconcepts like the word “love” that is so huge, so packed with possibilities that is almost not worth trying to have a conversation with it. “Freedom” is big enough that it typically eludes words altogether. No real communication occurs when individuals with wildly different takes on the word, aka definitions, throw it at each other.

Words are symbols containing anywhere from a little bit of energy to almost an endless quantity. Words describing tangible objects can be simple. Words trying to encapsulate metaconcepts are profound, and often not worth using if your intention is real communication rather than argument. The current cultural warfare puts “freedom” in the latter category for now. Cartoon by William Boyd Watterson used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

Meanwhile, there are a few people who have spent their lives in pursuit of freedom that can give us some clues on our own individual journeys towards freedom, often more through their personal stories than precise verbiage. I think the people that have the most to teach us about what freedom really looks like are often those that have survived its lack in the outer world enough to realize that freedom, ultimately, isn’t about the outside, or at least not solely.

As an example, the Austrian psychiatrist and philosopher Viktor Frankl has much wisdom to share. He discovered his freedom under the most horrific conditions possible, in a Nazi concentration camp. He led many people to a deeper understanding of how one can become free despite overwhelming political reality to the contrary.

In the United States, which is a country built upon the backs of indigenous peoples, immigrants, and African American slaves, there are many voices speaking with knowledge and grace about freedom. The thread that rings true through these sometimes widely diverse experiences is that freedom is something beyond just our bodies being constrained. True freedom needs to occur in a socially just physical world, but it does not end there. One can be free in terms of capability to make a great number of physical, economic, and social choices according to one’s own desires, and still be incredibly enslaved. One can be subjected to abject constraints in the material world and still be free in important, vital ways.

Marcus Garvey, the Jamaican-born leader of the Pan-Africanism movement had this to say to his fellow black Americans shortly before his death in 1940: “We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery, for though others may free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind.” 

The United States of America is moving towards freedom and justice. . .just maybe with baby steps when leaps are required. Lady Liberty 225th Anniversary US Mint coin

What is freedom? Freedom is communication. It is communication with the Divine within each of us. Within this communication there is only wholeness. There are no sides, no divisions that allow one person to be free at another person’s expense.

Freedom is something that we desire to the very depth of our soul, just as we all crave connection with our Creator whether we know it or not. Never let anyone stop you from seeking your personal freedom because that would be like intentionally dimming your light. Just like your true destiny is to love and be loved, to know peace and joy, you as a soul will never be fully satisfied until you are free. Especially if you live in the United States of America, because this is your collective journey as well as your individual one.

In order to fully understand freedom, you must first find your own place where there are no borders between self and other life. Art by Elsie Huther used in accordance with Fair Use Principles

That said, reveal in your desire for freedom but bring some humility to the table as you seek to understand both what it actually looks like in your life, and even more so, what it “should” look like for others. Let go of your need to find political solutions in the name of freedom as much as you can. . .less you get stuck in the endless loop of a false dichotomy.

Rather, free yourself, first and foremost. Free yourself from judgment by and of others, unaware social programming, out-of-date thinking, whatever binds you to a truncated worldview. Know that your best bet for advancing freedom in the collective space is to free yourself from that which limits your soul, which keeps you from truly knowing that your own freedom and the freedom of others as the same journey. Only then can you be present to the freedom of others.

As to the rest, trust the universe to rectify any injustices as surely it is doing increasingly these days, very rapidly.

Discerning what constitutes freedom for someone else is nearly impossible. It requires a 360 degree spiritual perspective through time and space. You will have your hands full enough just trying to figure out what makes you free! Cartoon by Man Martin used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

Other people have very little to do with our own freedom, except as they reflect what is ours to correct.

Find what brings you alive.This is where your freedom dwells. Words by Simon Gawley, posted in accordance with Fair Use Principles

Ultimately, like everything else in the created order, freedom is from God and is meant to be in service of God. Or as it says in Peter, Chapter 2, Verse 16:

Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil.

Live as God’s slaves.  

Happy Fourth of July to the United States of America and to every individual in the entire world.

Copyright by Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven, 2022

It’s all about letting go of the fear. . .allowing oneself to fall into the loving arms of the Creator.

Passion for One’s Purpose:  The Great Unfolding

/ Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given Spring Equinox Worship Service on March 20, 2022.

Last time this community came together for a worship service during the Winter Solstice, we worked together on increasing our awareness that opening up to our own power in our individual energy system is vital in that it leads to greater possibilities in our unfolding life. At the same time, this opening up of your third chakra is only the initial step. Thereafter we have to decide what to do with that power, how to take your embodied energy into the world to make your most important dreams come true.

During today’s service I want to talk about the figuring-out-what-to-do-with-your power thing.  Some people call this finding the meaning in life, discovering your life purpose or walking your path. As spiritual concepts go, this one is a doozy. Philosophers often talk about the meaning of life as if it is the same for everyone. Religious institutions are generally more than happy to tell you what your life purpose should be. New age adherents will spout lots of pithy sayings and typically offer one-size-fits-all bits of advice on how to discover and travel the pathway they think you need to traverse. And everyone is happy to sell you the books or other paraphernalia, have you listen to their podcasts or sign up for the programs they promote in placing you on a particular walkway. You can buy oracle cards or do a TED talk, hire a life coach, or I even ran into a YouTube video that offered to tell you how to know your life purpose in two minutes. (It was actually was an eleven-minute video, but clearly they were catering to the instant-gratification crowd).

Many of these folks are well-intentioned. What they often correctly understand is that for each of us, finding our path is an absolutely crucial journey. It is for this that we were born. It is why we are alive, and until we embrace our life purpose, until we are walking the path laid before us by our Creator, we are not fully alive. It is SUCH an important truth, this revealing of who you are to the depth of your soul, that only you and the God within you can locate that path.

Life purpose is sometimes addressed as an individual pursuit; and sometimes as the collective question for all humanity. This is the cartesian dualism that feeds our brain but not our soul. When one begins to acknowledge oneself as the lived experience of the Creator-of-All-That-Is you can then set out to discover your individuality within universality. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

However, notice my language here, if you will. Your life purpose is a journey. It is not a destination. In fact, when you fully arrive at said destination, some of you may discover that you no longer need to be here on Planet Earth. (That is a different story). For now, shed those perfect pictures about where or how far along you should be, or how long it should take you. Rather buckle up for the ride. Like all journeying in the physical world, you and only you get to decide ultimately if the path you take back to God is a fun adventure, the stuff of nightmares or any combination therein.

What is your life purpose? Its not a vocation, although certain tasks in the outer world may reflect it to a greater or lesser degree. Its not a relationship to a beloved or a child or an enemy that you are learning to vanquish, although any of these encounters can help you draw closer to your purpose. Its not even service to your fellow humans or other forms of life on the planet, even if surely some version of service will be a needed corollary of your purpose.

It may not even be something you can even put in words. You be not be able to find your life work using a rational thought process exactly. If your purpose is a true enough reflection of you on a soul level, it is possible that the spoken word cannot even contain it. But I am going to guess that most of you will know it when you feel it. Because the outpouring of joy from every cell in your body will be hard to miss. 

If there is truth to be had in the conversations one hears in popular culture on the subject of one’s purpose, it’s the descriptions that one can find it by doing what you love. I have often appreciated the mythologist and writer Joseph Campbell’s version of this when he advises people to “follow their bliss.” I like that phrasing, although it has a down side to it in that it can confuse people who are already too confused by sexual programming. If you want to make a habit of pursuing your bliss, just try to stay aware that bliss needs to be about real love, not bodily pleasure.

This is an image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals which encapsulates how many see life purpose. Food for thought but take it with a grain of salt. Individual pathways to purpose vary enormously.

Please do not infer that I am dissing experiences that bring pleasure on a physical level. I am just saying that those are not necessarily related to love, or directly to your path. What is the difference you might ask? Love is the quiet stuff, the embodiment of spirit. Pleasure can be that to which the body often gravitates when it is feeling unloved by spirit.

This sermon is a result of a request that I speak about passion. . .so let me throw in a few more words along those lines.  When a person has cleared a lot of limiting energy—programming, energy belonging to others, obsolete pictures etc.—from their third chakra and elsewhere, it typically frees one up to heal more deeply elsewhere.

Subsequently, it is common to move on to deep-rooted blockages in the other key areas closer to the Earth.  That is why we started this worship service with an invocation that comes from Ephesians in which St. Paul talked about Jesus of Nazareth making possible a return of Heaven on Earth by both ascending to the Heavens and descending into the very Earth itself. Every soul who would follow the path shown to us by The Christ, that eternal being that called himself at different times the Son of Man as well as the Son of God, has to choose through our individual embodiment both our spiritual perspective and our physical body which was and is miraculously designed to manifest it.

Many religious belief systems are built on a foundation of sand in that somewhere along the way in their manifestation, they have erroneously adopted the dogma that says to find God, one has to at the very least ignore, if not subjugate and punish the body. These limiting belief systems have put Mother Earth in jeopardy, something not acceptable to the Creator-of-Us-All. Mother Earth is a sacred aspect of the Created Order. Those who are not willing or at this time capable of realizing that divinity, be they individuals or individuals acting in concert with others through political or religious groups, have outstayed their welcome.

To you who are listening to my message I would say–no doubt you have already successfully navigated through oceans of emotion and other bodily sensations arising from your second chakra to even be present at this service. No doubt you have many more trickles, streams, rivers, tidal waves of emotion and sensation yet to come, in order to find yourself more solidly on your path more of the time. The second chakra is potentially where much the dialogue about how our choices affecting the body in the physical world get played out. Some other energy structures are also involved but this key center is a primary conduit. The messages can be lost in translation for many people, but for those of you who are committed to bringing together Heaven and Earth at this point they will likely be loud and clear.

The second chakra, sometimes called the Sacral chakra, is a spinning source of information about how your body experiences the world around it. Image by Brenda Erickson used in accordance with Fair Use Principals. When operating in harmony with you and the rest of your body it can generate life-affirming vibrant energy. When clogged up it can lead to all kinds of disheartening states such as pervasive self-judgment.

Here is the thing, folks. One aspect of finding your life purpose that does not get enough attention is that it is ultimately an act of cocreation. In order to find your unique pathway through the physical world known as Earth, you must find your own unique space; as well as come to terms with the fact that you are also part of a bigger reality; and it is a part of you.  In other words, you are universal spirit embodied in a physical form that belongs to you and you alone.

Co creating with the All-Mighty is a topic beyond the comprehension of many, all too often leading to erroneous and sometimes demeaning conclusions. Cartoon by Jim Benton used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

The Creator-of-Us-All provides the framework. By agreeing to birth in the human form you also agreed to a contract to provide the Creator with lived experience of consciousness that requires individuation. Whatever gets you the highest and best use of your consciousness in the service of the Creator at any one point in time gets you the next step closer to your life purpose.

Another way to think about cocreation is to think of God as the Sun who bathes Mother Earth allowing human animals to cultivate crops and other plants and animals making it possible for life to go on and even evolve. Without the sun and earth there would be nothing, but humans are still largely deciding what grows within the framework of God’s world. Image of “Grandfather Sun Medicine by Leah Marie Dorian used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

How do you know what is passion for your life purpose and what is old emotion to be released? You won’t, at least all the time. But if your intention is for healing and for finding yourself, and you stay sufficiently focused enough in order to do the day-by-day work, the real passion will grow as the left-over emotion from other adventures dissipates.

As far as emotions-to-be-acknowledged-processed-and-cleared goes, I do agree with Jungian psychoanalyst James Hollis who has offered useful words here about the key emotion we call fear.  “Ultimately, to step into the larger, we have to go through our fears. I have to emphasize go through. There is no magic, no set of five steps to dissolve the obstacles, no pill, no narcotic to make it all possible. There is only the going through.”

You have to deal with the full range of your emotions. You have to face your fears. Descend with yourself into your body, your earthly realm. Let yourself know that any old wounding for your body with which you have not yet come to terms, is going to kick up dust at the process as you descend, and try to tell you it feels at risk. Listen. Don’t act, at least initially. The fear can be a really good sign. Listen from the center of your head, assess to what extent the fear is an accurate read on what is before you. Take further steps to protect your body on whatever needs to be cleared, confronted, or otherwise changed. Keep asking the God of your Heart for guidance in finding your highest service. And then carry yourself onward, in the direction you know to be truest. 

Fear is such an important emotion requiring careful dissection. It can be the difference between life and death. If the fear is “justified” by a present time threat, ignoring or suppressing it can be deadly. However if you reside in fear associated with the past or future it can keep you from life. The trick is to learn to discern the difference. Cartoon by Dave Blazek used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

Validate the fear as you descend into unknown territory. Do not let it stop you unnecessarily.

Earth becomes Heaven to the degree in which we can let God fulfill itself in our individual corporal experience. As It says in First Corinthians Chapter 6, Verse 20: Therefore glorify God in your body.

Watch as the fire from the belly of Mother Earth grows deep within you, a few embers at a time. 

   

Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada, USA. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

Copyright by Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven, 2022

Power: Pure and Simple

/ Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given Winter Solstice Worship Service on December 26, 2021.

I’ve talked a lot about power over the years but not very directly.  With folks that are sincerely trying to understand this concept, until recently I have primarily provided some hints. This is because the very word itself is so triggering for many listeners that the conversation does not typically unfold well or easily. Particularly in bringing up the subject of power with those in a female body, the nonverbal anxiety, confusion, shame, and defensiveness can be overwhelming for a speaker like myself who is sensitive to energy. The psychic cringing when I have used the word in the past has been almost palpable.

That said, it appears that the cultural times are shifting. As a society we are more in a position to look at power directly and still maintain a spiritual perspective. Some of the human-generated power imbalances that have been in place for hundreds or thousands of years, are becoming illuminated under the merciless light of the apocalypse, our time of great revelations. The apocalypse has been bringing environmental, social and economic injustice to the surface, much to the chagrin of many.  So let us have that conversation today to whatever degree we can, shall we?

Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

Power is just another word for energy. All power comes from the Creator-Us-All and is intended to be used in service to the Created Order. Its essential nature is both pure and simple. Every gift of life from our Creator is pure. Everything in touch with its essential nature as spirit is by nature simple. Irrespective of what experiences you personally have undergone in your time here on Mother Earth, try to keep in mind that power in itself is never wrong or for that matter right. It just is. The wrong or right stuff comes into play only as a result of the choices humans make in how we use power.  

“Wonder” by visionary artist Alex Grey, used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

Because human animals have free will we are given the choice to create whatever the Hell we want within our own body and energy system. We can and do routinely subvert power and quite literally create Hell-on-Earth for ourselves and others. We have all done this, and continue to do this. If you have been around the block more than a few times, no doubt you have started to understand that this is not a particularly useful, fun, or interesting way to conduct life. But if you are still here in a body, it means that you have more learning to do about power. Give up your perfect pictures and get on with the lessons, so you can grow that much closer to Heaven-on-Earth, that place in which power is used efficiently, effortlessly, joyfully, generating great wonder.

On an individual level, power has a lot to do with the goings on of your third chakra. That magical energy center is often called the “power center” for good reason.  It contains the bulk of the information you need to operate in and through your physical body. In recent years I have been amused about all the fascination people have developed with the “gut microbiome.” Scientists have begun to validate how vital our stomach area and digestive system is to overall physical health; how much communication happens between our gut and our brain and other areas of the body. 

Society has yet to make the discovery that these tissues and organs are reflecting a deeper spiritual truth. To frame this in scientific terminology, a good gut microbiome and good physical health are correlational, not causational. The underlying piece that determines both is a functional third chakra that is balanced and free of foreign energy.

When you have a third chakra that works in concert with the other parts of your energy system, body and spirit can have a lot of communication with each other and a respectful partnership in regards to movement.  You know where to move energy around in your body and the space around it to maximum benefit; and your body knows how to move through physical space and time to accomplish that of which it is capable.

When students are first becoming aware of their energy system and learning how to regulate it, I tease people whenever and however I can to get them to kick out the energy that does not belong there and open up their third chakra.  You have all heard me make lots of jokes about the burping that often starts to happen as people start releasing the energy from others. This clearing is an important beginning. 

However, in order to address what you need to work through this lifetime, healing your third chakra enough to power your body as it moves around the physical environment is just the foundation. That is the initial step. Like a child that has to first learn to roll over, then to sit up, then to stand, we eventually are at a place to learn how to walk. Once we know how to walk, only then can we start taking concrete steps in the direction we want to go. Moreover we get to decide whether we want to saunter or hike, foxtrot, waltz or freestyle. . .or maybe simply stand still, smell the roses and admire the view.

Like everything else in your reality, how you move in the world is all up to you. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

For the folks in this community who have kicked out much of the foreign energy from your third chakra, and deenergized many of your most important pictures about working through a body, the next step looks a bit different.  As long-term meditators, if you are in a female body you are probably less terrified of the very prospect of power in your own space than you used to be. If you are in a male body, you are likely more aware than you were previously that you don’t need to fight everyone else’s battles for them.

For you, the challenge about power now is more about taking the whole concept to the higher level. Unless you are a professional athlete or dancer or some such, all the power you need to operate your body is probably already accessible to you. 

By now you probably have had enough experience with working with energy consciously to have a sense that certain choices regarding power can be counterproductive, can definitely set you back on your journey, or at least make it an uncomfortable ride.  You will have made enough decisions using your power that have arisen from a foundation of fear rather than self-love and learned that power over the outside world does not result in a sense of security. No doubt you have indulged in the need to accumulate material goods, only to discover they did not bring lasting comfort or peace. What now?

At this stage of spiritual development the question becomes: how much power do you need to harness in what ways in order to fulfill your purpose?  What do you need to power up your dreams, and which dreams reflect your truest spiritual goals? This is a qualitatively different question that extends way beyond your third chakra into the very ground beneath your feet and very heavens above your head. It is a question the successful answer of which requires a unity of purpose involving every one of your chakras, including the ones outside of your physical body. It is a question that necessitates taking into consideration your individual space as well as the collective space around you, weighing what is within you as well as outside of you. It moves the subject from what you need to survive, into the territory of what you need to thrive.

And it is a question that can be a quite tricky because the universe is infinitely abundant. Therefore the amount and kind of power that you can potential wield is similarly endless. With great power comes great response-ability. The challenges in terms of “getting it right” as well as “getting it wrong”–(not that either, in Truth, is even a possibility)–are much more profound.

You know I can’t tell you the answer(s) to these questions for you. That would be an abuse of my power. But I would like to offer this community some gentle reminders to keep in mind as you explore the question of how much power you as an individual need to wield in what manner.     

First of all, remember that what you put out in the universe, comes back to you . . .often greatly magnified. This is the essence of the “Golden Rule,” a version of which underlies every major religious tradition. “Doing onto others as you would have them do unto you” is not about judgment and retribution. It is very practical advice that validates energetic reality.

If you use your power unwisely, it will come back and bite you in the ass. Maybe not right away. Maybe not in the exact same manner.  Remember that for spirit there is no time and space.  But ultimately there is no escaping the Supreme Justice of the universe. 

Every day I watch folks get lost in their programming about this principle. In the current time frame when society is trying to root out the social injustices in which we have all participated, many well-intentioned people are massively confused about how justice really works. They frequently look at our cumbersome, flawed justice system, see the less-than-ideal sometimes horrible outcomes, and condemn everyone and everything associated with these cases. Often I feel tremendous sadness for these critics. I can validate their heartfelt desire to find justice but I also know almost exactly for what they are signing up with their judgment.  The I-want-the-things-that-I-want-instantly and the I-deserve-it programming to which many in the United States have been highly indoctrinated is not helpful on a soul level.   

One trouble with instant gratification from a spiritual perspective is that it is usually a form of magical thinking. That does not mean it is impossible to achieve or necessarily undesirable. It does mean that as a form of creativity goes, it minimally involves the body as a vehicle for that creativity. One might say that it can be ultimately unsustainable. Cartoon by Steve Moore used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

Get real, folks. Only God is perfect. The rest of us flawed individuals are just trying to figure out how to live in the highest vibration of Truth, embodying the greatest quantity of Justice that we can muster at any one point. It takes time to correct power imbalances in our individual reality, and it requires us to give each other lots of space in our collective lives. Choose just words and actions in your own life. Speak up with fiery but neutral and loving language when you encounter injustices in the world-at-large. Take whatever respectful actions you can. And then step back. Leave it at that for now. You can’t force others or even yourself onto the “right” path.

Second of all, remember that you create everything that is going on in your life.  This is the other concept about which even the smartest, most insightful folks are often incredibly confused, even those who prioritize spiritual development.

There are no villains, only people who are making bad choices who are giving you the opportunity to heal and grow. In the situations that the Supreme Justice of the Universe aka God presents to you that seem hurtful, unjust or just plain horrible, you still get to choose your reaction, including whether or not you want to energetically clear the pictures and end the cycles in order to move on in this lifetime or another.

It you want to take this concept into the time-space framework, keep in mind that you cannot change the past and sometimes certain aspects of the present; but you can change other aspects of the present, and thereby your future.  In the New Testament of the Christian Bible, this theme appears many places but these words are from First Peter, Chapter 3, Verses 8-9.

Do not repay evil with evil, or insult with insult, but rather, repay them with a blessing, because to this you were called, so that you too may inherit a blessing. 

Another World is indeed possible but you will have to give up your need to “fix” others to find it. Picture by social activist and artist RIcardo Levins Morales based upon the 19th Flammarion engraving, used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

Third of all, you can safely access and use all the energy you need to fulfill your spiritual mission, your purpose for being. You can work with a TREMENDOUS amount of power, a quantity and quality beyond your wildest dreams and not get in any trouble with the universe under one condition. You must work with that energy from within your own space. Have you noticed how obsessed the world is with images of superpowers and superheroes recently? That is us, trying to remind ourselves that we each individually have what it takes to work with a huge amount of power. The solutions are endless.

Remember that power is not good or bad. It just is. The universe has an infinite quantity of it set aside for your personal benefit. As long as you are trying your best to abide by the one law the Creator gave us, the law of free will, ultimately you do not have to be concerned about anything coming back to “haunt” you. 

Quick reminder: What is free will? Again, this is a concept most people have trouble identifying accurately through all their programming. Technically speaking though, it is actually simple. You have to create from within your own energy system. If you do not like what is happening outside of yourself, you need to change something within yourself. That is the trajectory. That is the only one the really works. The tricky part for most people is that to follow that trajectory, you have to have gotten enough in touch with yourself to sense where you end and where others begin. So back to the kicking-out-foreign-energy thing.

If you try to create your life in someone else’s space, this misuse of power at the very least will set you back, as well as the other person; and keep you spinning on the carousal of karma.    

Fourth, respecting free will means you operate from the viewpoint that you are totally and 100% responsible for you; and 100% not responsible or at least not solely responsible for anyone else. (It gets a little tricky with children). Everything that happens in the collective space between individuals requires the agreement of all involved for it to be a pure unadulterated form of power, rather than the misuse of it. You can help friends and family all you want. . .as long as they agree they want your help. However, you need to give up the habit of trying to require others to change. Sometimes even if someone else wants your help that does not mean that you should provide it, if doing so is not a good choice for you. 

People are at various stages of awareness about various aspects of the world, according to the timing of their own spiritual journey. One cannot force another to see what is true. But you can open your own eyes and thereby shine more light onto others. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

Respecting the energy space of others means YOU and all those in your sphere of influence, that is to say all embodied as well as unbodied spirit you are channeling through or through whom you are channeling, need to honor agreements. And yes, you are doing some form of channeling if you are human. This includes whatever saints, spirit guides or other heavenly buddies with whom you are working, whether or not you work with them consciously or unconsciously. The universe will eventually call you out if you are pretending to yourself that your hands are clean while an unconscious part of you is asking others to do the dirty work of forcing others to your will. You are 100% responsible for you, even in those dark places where you have given away your power. 

Many or most people are so unaware of what is going on within themselves that they are under the illusion that everything internal is themselves. In truth, we all channel the energy belonging to others, particularly family members and people with whom we otherwise share a closeness. Your body was made just for you! Reclaim it, step and step. The initial lessons for people often involve learning to be amused by how much we give away our power. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

Again, a quick reminder: You can freely ask for help for others from the divine as well as some select beings such as the ones we often label angels who are doing the bidding of the divine. These forces do not invade free will. Be prepared, however, if the Creator-of-Us-All or its helpers declines to provide the type of assistance you deem necessary.     

Finally and Fifth of all, Keep in mind that each individual soul has a different mission for their life.  Consequently, the amount of power each of us must learn to safely operate can vary hugely. . .and this has nothing whatso ever to do with worthiness. We are all equal in the eyes of God, even as we all have a unique and vital role to play, however it might appear on the surface. Some roles do not require a lot of power.

Clear your competition pictures if you find yourself envying the power of another, whether it comes in the form of wealth, social status, opportunities, amount of information, skills or talents, whatever. These pictures are not only setting you up for ongoing suffering, they are also a sure indication that you are on a detour whereby you are essentially procrastinating about finding your own path, your own joy, your own peace. 

Peace of mind and heart comes to those who learn to live within their own God-given space; and let go of any need to force others to a path created by their wishes or desires. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

As the Christ has told us in John, Chapter 14, Verse 27:

Peace I leave to you, My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

Copyright 2021 by Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven

This song is perhaps a little “darker” than necessary for many–full of Old Testament vibes. But perhaps consider it’s essential truth. Used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

Harmony in Times of Chaos

/ Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given Summer Solstice Worship Service  on June 20, 2021

Today we celebrate the beginning of summer, strawberry season, the time when Mother Earth begins to bring forth the fruits of her bounty; and we human animals who are her caretakers see what we have created in the spiritual realm the previous winter; what we have dreamed of, agreed to, and begun to manifest into the physical world in regards to some of the first major waves of new blessings. Fruits and vegetables are ripening, but in a deeper sense so too are our fears about the Great Balancing, as I like to refer to the current time in history.  

In the last three or four years I have been struck by how many people were using the word “chaos” to describe their worldview.  More recently many people have now decided that we are settling back down, we are no longer living in a pandemic, and that we can now return to “normal.” That clearly is not the case and is not going to happen. 

There is still a tremendous amount of chaos in our collective lives but I think some of us have gotten a little more acculturated to it. It’s gone underground a bit, become less apparent for some. A few of us have worked through enough resistance to the changes within us and around us to have a temporary respite.  As you know, resistance always makes changing more difficult. Global changes however, are ongoing and profound, with many more to come.

The drive to return to normal is an indication that many people still suffer from resistance to change. Get real, folks. Life on Planet Earth has irrevocably altered, thanks be to God. Image from Green Peace New Zealand used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

This morning I want to remind you that chaos has its place in the universe, some might even say a beloved place of honor. I want to impart some hints about how to not only “weather” it–(pun intended)–but maybe even begin to learn to enjoy it. Chaos is what happens when you need to make huge shifts, when you need to destroy things but have little or no permission to destroy.

Seattle-based mythologist Michael Meade embraces the deep spiritual truth that threads through the stories of all cultures. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

Chaos is a precursor to great creativity. Out of chaos arise enormous possibilities. The birth process can be smooth, joyful and full of wonder; or it can be painful and disheartening; or anything in between.  Humans still have lots of decisions to make, but the threshold upon which we are currently teetering is nothing less than miraculous. 

At one point billions of years ago our planet was poised on another foundational threshold.  Our universe was a swirling mass of gases and Mother Earth was simply water. Then the Creator brought to this chaos its abundant endless creativity, and thereby fashioned a framework that spurred a paradise of life forms.

In our ignorance and ego-driven desire, humans have largely decimated that paradise, causing a kind of retreat to a state of primordial chaos, at least emotionally-speaking.

So here we are. We get to begin anew, each one of us individually with our own free will, and decide whether we are willing to learn to co create with the divine as his/her children, to begin to access our corner of that abundant endless creativity, or continue to fight a losing battle against the inevitability of needed changes for the good of the whole.

 

I want to talk a little bit now about individual creativity. What does it mean to be a chip off the cosmic block? For those of us who are working with our own individual energy systems and trying our best to do so in junction with rather than opposition to God’s will, how do we actually go about harnessing our creativity in the service of the divine?

And what do we need to create?

Here’s a thought. How about a whole new relationship with ourselves, each other, and Mother Earth?

Let me start by reminding you that everything outside of you is a reflection of what is inside of you. It’s not the other way around. If you look at the political and economic structures around us you will see a tidal wave of people that want to convince themselves and each other that other people are the problem. The blame-game is HUGE at this time. 

Unfortunately this perspective is not only incorrect, it is dangerous. A lot of the souls that are choosing to leave their physical body right now, are doing so because they cannot see a pathway to healing themselves which will allow them to remain on the Planet.

Great spiritual leaders around the world have attempted to teach us that our true life resides within, and therefore changing anything disharmonious has to addressed from within. We engage in group creativity by interacting with others and the entire world around us but it is up to us ultimately how we experience that interaction. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

We’ve all been so tremendously programmed to believe our answers are outside of ourselves, and therefore our problems have to be solved by others.  Then there is a whole cadre of folks that understand theoretically that creating a full and rewarding life for themselves is possible and up to them. . . but they don’t know how to make the changes they seek happen. 

In this community I would say that most of us have a lot of the basics down about our individual creativity, but are maybe missing a few important pieces of the puzzle to take things into the collective world.

Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

So let me talk about putting those puzzle pieces together by talking about your individual chakra system.

You all know that there are seven major chakras in the human body, kind of like little powerful spinning hard drives that contain a humongous amount of information, all the information you need and then some. 

Many people sort of have their favorites, areas upon which they tend to focus because that is where they feel the need to do the most healing.  Other people are under the impression that certain chakras are intrinsically more important than other chakras.  For example, it’s common for people to assume that the upper chakras, the fifth, sixth and seventh, are more important than the lower chakras, the first, second and third.  That is often because they have gotten lost to the dichotomy that “up” is more important than “down.” Lots of folks have been programmed to believe the “higher” chakras are associated with “Heaven” and therefore of greater value than the “lower” chakras associated with the Earthly realm.

Actually, what is ultimately important is that your chakras work in harmony. They are a system, one designed where every cog of the machine is important for the smooth functioning of the entire machine.  When you have even one chakra that is really screwed up, really dysfunctional in terms of what you need to use in your life, the information that is supposed to be in that center will go elsewhere. It can be absorbed by other people, gumming up their energy system. It can bleed into other of your own chakras and screw those up. It can end up enervating and throwing off balance any of your body’s organs, muscles, nerves and other physical structures and systems. Like a river in a flood, information–a form of energy–simply overflows onto other pathways when dammed up at its natural flow site.

In a society where we are not taught how to work with our own energy system, and accordingly have done a rather substantial amount of damage to ourselves for many centuries, our energy system is typically hugely fragmented to the point that it is essentially at war with itself.  For example, one part of us wants things to go a certain way while other parts want to take us in a completely alternative direction. We sense or feel we should stay away from a person or a substance like alcohol or the situation that we know to be toxic; we may have second or even third thoughts as to where we are going but we still find ourselves drifting into a maladaptive universe anyway. Part of us wants to rest more, eat healthy or exercise regularly but somehow “something” gets in the way of our following our intention. Much of the time we are even unconscious or unaware of what is driving our life choices.  

This is the internalized chaos to which we are all prone. We all do this until we have cleared enough from our energy space for the different pieces of our information to be compatible rather than contradictory with each other, for our chakras to work together in the service of our higher good.

Then of course, this chaos gets projected outwards. Don’t get me started on the wars, violence, social injustice,  environmental disasters and so on that are made possible as our individual internal warfare combines with other individuals at war with themselves, increasing the conflict exponentially in the collective space.

Collective chaos can lead to places of great suffering. Art used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

So you all are on the journey towards wholeness. You have committed yourselves to cleaning up the mess inside you from years in this body and centuries of neglect in others.  You have been kicking out the energies that don’t belong to you or no longer serve your purpose to live in wholeness.  Congratulations! Mazel tov! Keep up the good work!

But how do we get the individual pieces of our life into a even more complete (although by definition, changing) picture? You all know what my answer to that is:  one step at a time. Meditate daily. Run your energy frequently. Cultivate humility and patience. Ask for help from the divine and its helpers whenever you need it or just want it. Commit yourself to God’s service including devoting yourself whenever you can to the wellbeing of others, not at your own expense but rather because all cogs of the machine are ultimately important for our world to work. . .and because what blessings you impart will return to you in kind.

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Fair Use Principles.

And here’s a little tip. . .or preview of what is to come for the members of this community, including those who participate energetically but not with their physical presence.  Every chakra is important. But if your goal is living in harmony, pay attention to your fourth. There is a reason why medieval paintings were so obsessed with portraying the burning heart of Jesus.

The Christ understood that the heart chakra was the bridge between the lower chakras that regulate more of the energy system’s responses to the Earth; and the upper chakras that regulate more of the energy system’s responses to the Heavens.  He modeled for us someone who crafted complete unity in his own space irrespective of the enormous personal cost to him, and by doing so, embodied unconditional love with all of God’s created order.

If you want to experience Heaven-on-Earth. even if for brief periods of time . .if you want to be a soul that helps bring paradise back to Mother Earth, pay attention to this important piece of your individual puzzle board.            

The fourth chakra is all about setting one’s identity in relationship to everything there is, everyone and every aspect. It is about the peace that occurs when the free will of the individual soul chooses to dwell in unity with everything inside its body and energy system and thereby extends that unity outside. 

A well-defined fourth chakra in harmony with all within and outside of an individual soul is a thing of great beauty. Image by Alpha Channel used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

In other words, learn to love all the parts inside of you, even as you change those that are no longer useful. Don’t go down the rabbit hole of thinking that your yucky parts are the responsibility of others. Others can help you but they cannot do your work for you. Don’t compound your problems by giving away your power to change. Whatever part others played in the creation of these bits of discordant energy is no longer relevant.

Also avoid the major detour of thinking you can achieve wholeness by adopting the false illusion of perfection. Stare your faults, your dark places, your sins, your shadow, your wounds/thorns, whatever you want to call it/them straight in the face. And wink back as you say goodbye.

Copyright 2021 by Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven

Justice, Mercy, Kindness and Karma, Part I

/ Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given Summer Solstice Worship Service  on June 22, 2020

Hello.  I’m glad to see you all at the 2020 Summer Solstice Service of the Church of the Harvest.  My job as Presiding Minister of this spiritual community is to tune into the energy of the group, and do whatever I can to bring it to the next higher level.  I offer my personal perspective as a way of doing that, hoping to awaken the truth that is contained within your heart and your mind.  Today my topic is broad-ranging.  Please know that each of you absolutely has my blessing to use any of these words that resonate with you, and discard the rest.  Above all in this Church we believe in free will.  By that I don’t mean freedom to act however you want to act towards others around you.  What I specifically mean is freedom to feel whatever you want to feel, believe whatever you want to believe; and act in accordance with other people in a manner that also honors their essential freedom. 

It is always a challenge for me to write and deliver these sermons.  Spiritual reality is never fully explored through the medium of words, but under the best of circumstances we can dance with words in a way that allows dancers to sense the melodies within their eardrums and feel the rhythms in their bones.  So please forgive me if I dance around our topic. . . because it is too big and too rich to be fully captured by words.  You are invited in as I try to encapsulate what I believe is true about the spiritual journey upon which we are engaged in the present moment.

Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

Let me start by talking about why I am framing this sermon as occurring in the “days of reckoning.”  Most of you present today know that I have speaking for many months, several years even, about the end times, and as well as the apocalyptic times.  If you heard me, you will also likely remember that I do not believe the end times necessarily mean the end of the physical world, only that the world as human beings have known it is ending.  The word apocalypse comes from the Greek. It translates simply as the unfolding of things not previously known.

For most people, there is a lot of scary energy on the phrase “the end times” as well as on the word “apocalypse.”  Likewise, there is a great deal of fear for many people when they hear the phrase “the days of reckoning.”  That is because for most people these three concepts are all firmly associated with religious dogma, mostly in regards to the abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  As such, these phrases are fraught with the assumption that we are sinful, about to be judged and most of us found horribly wanting, soon to be condemned to deep, endless amounts of suffering.  

In my meditations I have spent considerable time stripping away religious programming from my energy system.   For me, these ideas are no longer a source of anxiety. I am happy that the Creator-of-Us-All is dissolving our illusions through the apocalypse.  I was never very good at living the lies with which most people seem to be content. The end times for me personally seem to be bringing an end to my suffering, the completion of a journey of many lifetimes of brokenness in which my sense of living in the hell-of-my-own-choosing far outpaced those few moments of heaven-on-earth that I could manage to create for myself. 

In the world of energy there is no time. We are all going to the same place but our individual journey towards that place depends on the choices we make along the way, including our sequencing and timetable. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles

As to the days of reckoning, let me just say that it is very clear to me that our God is a loving God that does need to judge.  We humans do a more than adequate job of that all on our own.   

What happens when you put all these ideas together?  What are the days of reckoning. . .if they are not the time after death as Muslims and Christians are told in which one has to account for one’s actions before God in order to determine whether you go to heaven or hell?  Stripped of religious programming, a reckoning is simply a time when people are forced to deal with unpleasant situations which they have avoided until that day.  A reckoning is a settling of accounts.

 

 

 

 

When are the days of reckoning? Typically they occur when an entire people are forced to deal with that which previously they as a group have avoided confronting.  You know. . .like what is currently happening with a lot of white people who were previously not really required to notice that they had certain resources and opportunities largely unavailable to people of color. Or what is happening for the more economically privileged around the globe who previously could pretend that destruction and exploitation of the environment was a problem for other people until the entire climate of the planet began to crash and effect them as well.  This is the apocalypse at work, the dying of illusions.  These are the true end times, the end of centuries-long chapters of human evolution.

I want to jump now to another concept, one that is currently consuming the national conversation and saturating the energetic airwaves.  Let’s talk about justice.  If you watch any news broadcast, participate in any social media, interact with the public in almost any context, you are going to be having conversations about justice.  Suddenly everything seems to be about social justice.       

One of the things that interests me about these conversations that people are having on the streets and in the media is how closely the concept of justice is being paired with the idea of people speaking up.  Over and over you will hear people say how vital it is, how important for people to speak up.  Many times folks don’t really even know what they want to say. . .as they busily extoll each other to speak their minds. We are searching for our collective voice, even when we don’t know what we want to do with it. 

The emphasis here is on the collective part. Previously some individuals have been vocal.  Whether or not they were truly heard is another matter but they had the opportunity and/or the desire to express themselves.  But as a collective body human beings have usually only come together as a group to express themselves in opposition to another tribe. The human brain has always overwhelmingly done an us-versus-them kind of thing when expressing group norms.

This is what we are changing. What is new here and now is our coming together to express unity rather than division.  We may not know what true unity really looks like as of yet, and we’re not very good at it so far, but we’re doing our damndest to try to figure it out. The implications for this shift are enormous. The result of this task will be to create a new world order. 

Justice, aka a place in society for all. is always inclusionary. One can see from the heated debate going on in the United States right now that what is or is not every person’s right is a topic upon which we still significantly lack agreement. Our collective political, religious and other systems need to “catch up” with the “golden rule” aspect that is fundamental in all world religions. Image by Mary Engelbreit used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

Those present today will understand some of the ramifications of what I mean when I say that human beings all around the globe as a group, are attempting to bring into their physical bodies the highest vibration of energy which is founded on all of us being connected.  Last year the consensus reality, that is to say all of us on a spiritual level, made the decision to rewire the world into one based on love. Right now we are taking the first real step in bringing that commitment into the physical world, right down through our emboded individual energy systems as we talk to ourselves and each other about what that real unity will take, what that will look like.     

In recent history we had the first major wave of this new commitment to collective expression when gay men and lesbians were given the political green light to come out of the closet, the oppressive cloak of invisibility they had endured for centuries. More recently the #MeTooMovement encouraged women to explore their truth and men were told to take a back seat, listen and learn.  Those conversations involved communication. . . but they weren’t yet contextualized in the intention of unity. The latest cultural shift, this spotlighting the stories of black people and other people of color is a double whammy.  It is shifting both the message and the medium.  

Huge assemblies of people are marching together through our urban centers, often without clarity about why they are marching.  They walk under the banner of “Black Lives Matter” and articulate that they want justice in the form of an end to racism, but it is clear that there is so much more to their message. 

There is accompanying conversation about the police which is framed using a variety of filters such as police tactics, accountability, reform, brutality, etc. The police are the boots-on-the-ground highly visible reminder of the justice system.  Law enforcement serve as the tangible symbol of law and order, an order that is seen by most as overdue for an update. The interactions between police and protestors vary widely as a result not only of the personal experience of the individuals and communities involved but also the meaning those individuals and communities read into the symbol. 

Which brings us to the other aspect that fascinates me about the vibrant national dialogue we are having in the United States these days centering around justice. Journalists and other witnesses have commented upon, but I have not seen them really able to interpret the significance of the fact that the public protests are largely leaderless.  These events typically have initial organizers of sorts and periodic visible key players pop up and often disappear again but the groups are essentially coming together and going about their business with a degree of spontaneity and fluidity between huge, divergent elements not usually seen in protest movements. 

Mass movement without direction from a handful of individuals is consistent with the top-down shift of energy I’ve been talking about for awhile.  I’ve been watching the energy move downward, closer to Earth, not only in the protestors but now in the police. Even a year ago it would have been unthinkable for police officers to publicly disagree with each other. The code of silence subscribed to by those in that line of work was rock solid as a result of the perception that such group solidarity was necessary for the welfare of all, to protect members of the profession from a challenging and dangerous job.  Suddenly all over the country, individual and small local groups of police are “breaking ranks” to take differing and sometimes contradictory positions in the discussion about justice.  

The energetic shift from power being welded from the top levels to the lower levels, specifically from national and international forces to state and local forces, is the tidal wave of the future. It is consistent with and necessary for the huge shift of consciousness going on currently for human animals.  The universe is moving us from being dominated by tribal thinking to each of us finding our own individual truth as individuals within collective society. 

Many people are emotionally and cognitively devastated by this change. The anxiety and outright paranoia is enormous as people discover they can no longer rely on the religious, political and social figures and organizations they have always used to tell them what’s up. We have to break down our reliance on others to tell us what to think and feel and do. . .so we can develop the skills and abilities to manifest our own individual creativity. . .and join it with the creativity of others for common goals required to meet our present world-wide challenges.   It has been and will continue to be a really rough ride for those individuals to make sense of the changing world who do not have the experience and lack basic skills on finding their own truth.

But if you think confronting and ending systemic racism is an overwhelming task, wait until you see in the days ahead what we have to do in order to end systemic economic injustice; and what is going to be required to keep the planet from continuing to slide into a terminal tailspin.  

In human society justice is truly a concept whose time has come due. People around the world are calling for it in increasingly passionate voice. This image of Justice used in accordance with Fair Use Principles is from Palestinian artist Malak Mattar who is currently a refugee. She first started painting at age 13, during the 51-day Israeli military assault on on her homeland in Gaza in 2014.

The protests around the country are often described as “passionate” and I hear a lot of participants talking in rather vague but deeply-held language about desiring change. As a people we are trying out new abilities to speak in one voice from different life experiences.  The universe is speaking within us and through us even as few understand as of yet what is being channeled.  What is uniting those on the streets and those participating by their witnessing right now is not message or even motive as much as something much more profound and fundamental.  

To focus on what I believe is the energetic core to these demonstrations; I’d like to return to invocation used at the start of this service. Let me repeat it. This is the statement from the Christ speaking about the end times in which we are living. This is from Verse 10 of the Gospel of Thomas:

            “I have cast fire upon the world, and look, I’m guarding it until it blazes.”

Elsewhere in both Luke and Matthew of the Christian Bible, Jesus talks about a time of turbulence that would bring division to households, between father and son, mother and daughter, etc.  Jesus was all about applying the love of his father to everyone, no exceptions. He understood that this would take a burning away of social norms. He was always the social revolutionary when it came to modeling for others and urging them to follow him as he challenged tribal thinking that held tightly to the domination of the many by the few.  As he blazed a trail for us, he made clear that it would be a fiery one.  So here we are, folks. Welcome to the reckoning.     

I like the Thomas citation because to me, it also speaks to the emotional passion of the protests. Our world is on fire right now, both literally with periodic wildfires breaking out all around the natural world. . .and metaphorically.  Individuals and our society as a whole are experiencing the bonfire of the vanities, a holy fire, if you will. 

Image by Elise Huther used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

We are burning away the essential impurities that must be released it we are to survive.  The passion of these crowds that are protesting around the globe in the name of justice is a kind of collective rage built upon a foundation masking deep, deep sorrow. We have a lot of thoughts and feelings to process, an ocean of rage against the world we have created as a species.  This is the same righteous anger that had the Christ overturning the tables of the moneylenders in the temple.  We tend to think it’s about others but at its core, this anger is the natural consequence of having defiled the sacred with our profane need to exploit each other.  

For some of the protestors and many of the politicians and others commenting on them, this fire quickly loses its essential heat and illumination, and devolves into the petty squabbles of the blame-game.  Lots of folks are getting stuck on an old testament vib of guilt and shame and punishment.  At its spiritual essence though, this righteous anger is paving the way for everyone to have a seat at the table, not just the powerful, the elite, the privileged. 

Benjamin Franklin, that iconoclastic rascal of an American founding father talked about the importance of passion igniting true change  Let the outrage play out its part.

Welcome these fires of transformation, and let them burn through your life.

The world is in a 5th chakra growth period. It does not matter that most do not really understand the nitty-gritty of what they are protesting.

Spirit communicates through images. Learning to add words to the mix is an acquired taste that takes skill development. This is true both for individuals and groups of individuals. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles

The first stages to owning the upper three chakras in our collective energy system has to be with opening them, and letting whatever they contain spill out. It doesn’t matter that we don’t yet know what we want to change into. We can figure that out as we go. It’s enough for now that we are open-hearted as the universe moves us, like crucial chess pieces, into the right positions to be available for its mercy.  

 

 

 

I want to remind the people here today as well as those tuning in at a later time, that we each have a part to play here.  There are no coincidences. The protests are showing up in your life because you also have fifth chakra movement to make.  Take inventory of your communication ability and find out where you need to grow.  If you are one who has spent time in the language of emotion, help others learn to regulate theirs.  Model for others as you identify your own emotions, separate what is yours from what belongs to others, express your genuine emotions without using them to attack, and maybe even help people learn that the emotional system is simply a means of communication between the individual soul and its physical body.  On an spiritual level it is not really about other people.

Speaking One’s Truth by Myron Dyal, used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

If you are one who is cautious with your words, typically expressing your true thoughts and feelings only to a few or only to those who will agree with you, take a few calculated risks and expand your repertoire of experience. 

 

 

 

 

One of the most powerful means for healing yourself and others requires no words. The witness is an underappreciated, often incredibly profound agent of change. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

If you have no trouble speaking up, maybe you need to learn to listen more or more effectively with people from a different cultural experiences than your own. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And pretty much all of us need to learn to be more gentle, more kind. . .even as we hold feet to the fire for ourselves and any of our brethren who are resisting a more just society.        

Used in accordance with Fair Use Principles

In 1968 Martin Luther King spoke to an elite section of Detroit about nearby riots going on in the city.  He was nearly drowned out by the heckling when he dared to put into words the fact that the economic and social plight of African Americans had worsened in the previous years and promises of justice from a white culture were not being met. He told the crowd that “a riot is the language of the unheard.” He was assassinated three weeks later.  We are listening now, Martin.

As spirit we move through the natural world that includes time and space.  Our bodies, which are a physical manifestation of the natural world require time and space.  The universe has grown weary of our tendency to kill each other when we disagree with one another even if the battle being fought needs to happen.  We are being called right now to both address injustices and to do so in a way that honors life. 

For many thousands of years, human animals have equated survival with domination over other groups of humans. It is time to update our thinking. Cartoon by Man Martin used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

That is the essence of leaving behind tribal thinking in which one group tries to overpower another group. Getting to a higher plane is going to take many new experiences starting with new levels of interactive communication.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not at all saying that we stop at the communications level.  Just speaking up about racism and other forms of social injustice is a good start but is entirely insufficient by itself.  It is no more appropriate to just mouth apologies and epiphanies about systemic racism then it is to offer thoughts as prayers as a solution to gun violence. Having the necessary discussions is just the first part. Translating thoughts and feelings into action is the end game and it can’t come soon enough.

The world is in a great deal of turmoil in part because human animals keep trying to use our limited brain capacity to negotiate an increasingly complicated path. To survive we area going to need to learn new ways of processing issues, develop new epistemological strategies and cultivate humility. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

We need to fix the obvious and immediate problems as quickly as we can; but not rush to judgment about complex actions and policies that require careful dissection and extensive public discussion.  Knee-jerk reactions are not helpful.

Now is the time for a new kind of diversity, not just one of basic role equality and opportunity but diversity of thoughts and feelings.  But be careful . . .because true change does not arise from a place of judgment. The medium has to match the message.  Otherwise you are just swapping one illusion for another. If you are demanding justice, it is likely not justice you are seeking. It is revenge.    

In this assembly we will talk at a later date about developing our other collective upper chakras including folding in mercy and kindness and stepping off the carousel of karma.  But for now, let us join people all around the world in the direction gracefully captured by these words from the great poet Maya Angelou: 

If you’re not angry, you’re either a stone or you’re too sick to be angry. You should be angry. You must not be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host.  So use that anger. You write it. You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it.”      

Copyright 2020 by Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven

 

 

 

Listening to the Mountains; Honoring Mother Earth

/ Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given Spring Equinox Worship Service  March 22, 2020

In Greek mythology there is a story about how the seasons came to be created that is worth retelling this morning.  According to early Greek culture, Demeter, the Goddess of Harmony and Fertility, had a child with Zeus, God of the Sky, King of all the Gods.  Their daughter Persephone was a beautiful young woman, if somewhat naïve.  Demeter was overprotective and usually kept her daughter very close.

One of the other Gods, Hades, who ruled the underworld, fell in love with Persephone.  Zeus had promised Hades that he could wed one of Zeus’s daughters but Hades knew that Demeter would never allow the marriage. . .so one day when Persephone was in a field picking flowers by herself, Hades showed up, kidnapped her and took her to his kingdom beneath the earth.

Demeter didn’t know what had happened to her daughter and was extremely distraught. She spent all her time weeping and searching endlessly.  As the months went on, all the plants and animals on Earth withered and died because Demeter completely neglected her duty to tend to them.  In order to save humanity who depended on the plants and animals Zeus realized he had to intervene so he brokered a deal between Hades and Demeter.

In this classic 1891 painting from Frederic Leighton entitled “The Return of Persephone,” the Goddess is returned by Hades to the arms of her mother so that spring and new life can come again to the Earth. Painting used in accordance with Fair Use principals.

From then on Persephone lived with her mother six months out of the year which is when the Earth experiences spring and summer; and with the husband she eventually fell in love the other six months, which is when we experience fall and winter.

Origin stories are always rich conveyers of spiritual truth, using symbols to remind humans of what we need to understand to act as spirit in the material world.  Greek and Roman mythological tales are particularly important to those of us in the United States since they reflect the thought forms upon which Western civilization was founded.

There are many important messages imbedded in the story of Demeter and Persephone but the one I want to direct your attention to this morning is the theme of the Earth dying; and being resurrected again when fertility in the form of the Goddess of Spring returns after a period underground.

We are indeed loved by thousands. Not only do we “stand on their shoulders” in regards to any movement we make forward, we also have them always with us and accessible to us if we know how to tune into the spiritual world. Spirit knows no time or place. Image used in accordance with Fair Use principals.

Persephone spent time in Hades but Hades was not an evil place like we Westerners might assume. To the Greeks, Hades was simply a resting place for the dead.  Death itself was not resisted and rejected in the same way we approach it in the “New World.” Hades was a place for the ancestors and also for the unseen.  From a psychological perspective, one might say that Hades was the residence of the collective unconscious, a place where thoughts and feelings reside until they can be acknowledged and brought back into the light.

 

 

 

 

So here we are on Planet Earth.  In the calendar year 2020 we have just entered springtime. This isn’t the usual springtime of daffodils and baby bunnies, though, because in this calendar year we are also beginning a new phase of human consciousness.

Many are still in Hades, struggling to find their way out of the depth of unconsciousness represented by that formidable location.  Those who have been working to become aware of and heal uncomfortable aspects that in our guilt and shame we previously buried, have a heads start on emerging from the underworld into the fertility that is Gaia.

Many of us have even been focused on our healing long enough that we are beginning to effectively work more consciously with the ancestors, angels, saints and other non-embodied spiritual presences that have always lived alongside of us, been available and been waiting for our invitation to join us in the abundance that is Mother Earth. Some of us are even on the threshold of learning to bend time, a necessity for the human race to persevere.

One of the ways I find myself thinking about the world right now is that our illusions are being forcefully stripped away so we can find our way back to Mother Earth if we so choose. For many this is a violent and painful process, in part because their individual foundation for changes of the magnitude of this kind is not yet in place.

Many people are finding it very emotionally difficult to shelter-in-place, a key component of physical safety right now. It has been a wake-up call for them to discover how much they have depended on busyness to distract them. Loneliness is one of the most painful kinds of intrapsychic pain. The good news though, is that it is also one of the biggest lies on Planet Earth. You are never alone, even if you live by yourself. Loneliness is one the illusions that is being stripped from those who have been avoiding turning within.

For some the resistance to change is too entrenched, and/or the pain is too great and the choice is being made to leave the Planet altogether, in hopes for a new beginning at another time.

People who are waiting to be rescued by others are learning they must find the creativity within themselves and their immediate surrounding community to withstand the ongoing forces of hurricanes and tornadoes, fires and floods and famine and the like.  Some folks like those of us in the Pacific Northwest who have been privileged to avoid the worst of climate change are discovering that we don’t get to fail to connect the dots to other people and retreat into “life as usual” mode when things get overwhelming. We might not yet have the same level of extreme weather events, but we are increasingly impacted by what the rest of the world’s population is going through.

The “new normal” is that nowhere is there normality. Nor is there going to be when the coronavirus crisis is handled. Our old way of life is toast. Our new way of life involves a vastly different lifestyle.

People like the professionals in our health care system who are used to casting themselves in the role of rescuer are learning that to survive, we must all dig deeper into our soul to find those parts of our psyche and prioritize rescuing ourselves so we may re balance in a new place.  Additionally we must learn to serve others under the direction of the divine, rather than ego.

I guarantee you as we move forward into this year nothing substantive in our physical world is going to ever look the same again.  The corona virus pandemic is giving many a taste of what is further to come.  Don’t hold your breath waiting for vaccines or whatever to eliminate it; and then expect your world to return to the way it was previously.

Human history has had multiple times in which viruses and other smaller forms of life break down our man-made defenses when we become seriously out of balance with Nature. The Bubonic Plague that killed 200 million people in the 1300s, smallpox that disseminated 56 million in the 1500s and the Spanish flu that killed close to 50 million in 1918-1919 are just a few such episodes. These figures of “Plague Doctors” were done by Susan Reisner and are used in accordance with Fair Use principals.

This “novel” form of a biologically-based organism that has been around for years is only the tip of the iceberg. Technically it may have been named after its shape as a virus but it is no coincidence that energetically it reflects a “new crown” chakra tying together all of humanity, which in some people is attacking the part of their physicality most closely aligned with their fourth chakra—the energy center that at its best, connects us with ourselves, each other, and the God/Goddess within each of us.

Even as the virus currently isolates us, so too is it going to demand that we abandon our ways of working in isolation from each other and from the environment. Humans are no longer going to be allowed to live cut off from ourselves, from each other, from other life forms and from Mother Earth itself.

Earth is ever the planet of dichotomies and paradox. The ironical dichotomy here is that response to the pandemic is requiring us to separate ourselves from others aka “social distancing” and at the same time is bringing us into the awareness that “we are all in this together.” In the external material world we are working through a seeming conflict between the fact that we are all of one spirit and at the same time we each have a physical body that separates us from all other spirit. As embodied spirits evolve, we come to realize that these are not incompatible truths for the All-That-Is. Image by Jennifer Wagner is used in accordance with Fair Use principals.

Get real about this. The universe has just given us a cosmic slap down, a means to slow down, look around us, and smell the roses.  Use your time wisely. The corona virus will be contained eventually, but the main impact of the economic tsunami associated with it will be arriving shortly; and there are lots of other challenges laying in wait for human animals, including some much more dangerous ones in the long term, should we continue to try to bury our awareness in Hades as we have been doing for such a long time.

 

What does “use your time wisely” look like? Of course it will be different for each of us. Here are a few “practice tips” to help you brainstorm what that might look like in your life:

 

1. Ground. Persephone aka in Greek as Kore, she who became the Goddess of the Underworld, was sometimes referred to as the Goddess of Rooted Things.

Persephone is sometimes referred to as the Goddess of Rooted Things. This nomenclature not only reinforces the mythological storyline but also reflects the underlying spiritual truth of Mother Earth being a safer haven for life when we connect the spiritual and material dimensions. Image used in accordance with Fair Use principals.

Grounding to Mother Earth itself allows you as spirit to manifest yourself in the physical realm as safely as possible; and as a bonus round, gives you a relatively painless means to release what you need to release right now.  If you do know how to ground your energy system from your first chakra, do so with awareness several times a day.  If you don’t know how to ground from your first chakra, find someone who can teach you how.  If you can’t find someone, go sit among big trees and ask the universe to help you match them.

2.  Rest/Recharge. We are in a lull between storms of change. The universe answered our prayers and pulled the emergency break.  Thanks be to God.  The corona virus is not something to be battled, shunned, ignored or feared. It is something to be thanked and gently but firmly put back in its proper place in the created order.  Show as much gratitude as you can muster. Consolidate whatever gains you have made in your spiritual awareness to date and prepare for the next round of wake-up calls.  Help those who are ill and/or terrified and rest up for the next challenge. Have as much fun as you can right now not from a place of escapism but from a desire to follow the divine’s lead into the place of joy, peace and abundance that is our birthright, should we choose it.

3. Prepare for a Global Economy. Here I am not talking about prepping.  Prepping is just an extension of the same obsolete thinking that consumerism will fix everything.  It’s hoarding on steroids. What the universe has in mind for humans is not something that can be waited out with a few months or even years of dried food. By all means, stockpile some supplies for those inevitable times when our old infrastructure is not useable for while. But don’t stop there.

I’m talking about making the deep economic transitions that we can expect after a global monetary system that has been dependent on fossil fuels comes to a grinding halt abruptly and permanently, not just because of a temporary health threat.  The illusion there is value based on domination over nature has been destroyed.  The world is currently downsizing to make room for a place where nothing is real unless it is grounded in human kindness.

The “All-American buck” has no intrinsic value. It is simply a symbol of a transactional agreement containing energy from a monetary system heavily based on profits from fossil fuels and the combined experience of many to use said system for greed and domination. Like all symbols its underlying meaning can be changed but not quickly or easily. Energetically, the world-wide economy based on “dirty” energy, i.e. energy that has been so harmful to Mother Earth has been destroyed. Greed and exploitation are also on their way out, but on an individual rather than a collective basis. The most likely scenario at this point is that some paper money will be around for awhile, but in increasingly smaller quantities as societies all around the world return to more life-affirming methods of exchange.

What would you do if overnight all the money that normally comes to you and all the money that normally you pay out to others disappeared? What kinds of goods and services would you still really want to have in your life; and what kinds of activities would you engage in with others?  Figure that out and then make it happen NOW before the choices around the transactional nature of real relationships is made for you.

What I am talking about is MUCH more difficult than just buying a few extra supplies.

One critical component of the world-wide growth period that is going on right now is in regards to action versus contemplation. Many well-intentioned people have been sorely out of balance with this dichotomy. Effectively being spiritual in a material world in the present time frame requires both body and mind. Action without direction from the indwelling divine is busy work. Focusing one’s mental energy on spiritual goals is very important but not sufficient. We are being called to act in conjunction with and at the behest of Mother Earth and our fellow inhabitants. Image by Brian Andreas used in accordance with Fair Use principals.

This is the time for ACTION.  And the action involves changing your entire lifestyle to suit the new economy in which money will be stripped of its illusionary nature. Don’t misunderstand me. There is ENOUGH FOR ALL that engage in real relationships. There is just not enough of frivolous purchases based on ego.  Find out what makes the God of your heart really sing and let go of the other unnecessary temptations offered by your now-out-of-present-time materialistic urges.

4. Listen to the Mountains, the rivers, the oceans, the trees and other plants and nonhuman animals. There is a reason why people have always sought to connect to our Creator by immersing themselves in the natural world; and have often gone to the highest terrain on Mother Earth for our deepest conversations with God.  There are many other sacred areas as well.

Pablo Neruda was a Nobel-prize winning writer and diplomat who is sometimes considered the national poet of Chile. He passed away in 1973. This image used in conjunction with Fair Use principals.

You don’t have to journey to a mountaintop or anywhere else to find your truth. You can just shut your eyes where you are and find everything you need there.  All of Gaia is sacred and your body was designed to be an extension of that sacredness, a finely tuned instrument of access to everything you really need.  Find the places that have absorbed the purest intentions of the human spirit both within you and outside of you.

Human survival, both individual and collective, is now in a furious evolutionary dance that requires us to match our inward essential nature with the outward physical manifestation of Nature. This self portrait by Cuban-born surreal artist Jorge Ignacio Nazabal is used in accordance with Fair Use principals. Butterflies are a universal symbol of inner transformation

Choosing the best natural settings helps expedite the optimal outcome.  Go to the mountain or another sacred site nearby either in your physical or your astral form if you are so inclined. And then LISTEN.

Most people need to actually learn what it means to pray; and stop mistaking God for Santa Claus. It is the time to let go of the arrogance of telling God what we want done. Talk/dream if you want, but the real challenge right now is for all of us to up our skills at hearing from the Source as reflected in our gorgeous physical homeland.  Many of the planetary changes that are occurring right now are beyond our imagination.  Let the Cosmic Consciousness show us the way.

The Creator gives us the frame. We fill in the canvas. Any viewpoint that human animals have the only or the final word in the process of creating on Planet Earth is misguided hubris. Image used in accordance with Fair Use principals.

 

 

Gaia is screaming at us right now because we have forgotten how to listen to her. For all of our sakes, heed her call.

Copyright 2020 by Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven

Will the Real Reality Please Stand Up? Shifting Perceptions/Changing Consciousness

/ Church of the Harvest / 1 Comment

From a Sermon given Winter Solstice Worship Service  December 22, 2019

Years ago, when I was learning my craft as a Mental Health Professional—working with psychotic felons at our largest state hospital and going to graduate school at nights to become a licensed psychotherapist—one of my teachers taught me something that has guided my life ever since.

At the time I was struggling to find a way to reach my patients through the heavy layers of delusional thinking that surrounded them, and the rock-solid denial in which they lived to order to avoid looking at the horrible suffering they had endured and that they had carelessly passed on to others in the world.  My teacher made one of those simple statements, those statements that come from a spiritual perspective, the ones that involve few words but embody an endless supply of ramifications.  He said simply: “Resa, everything your patients tell you is true. Your job is to figure out what it is true about.”

These days I reflect on his words of wisdom frequently.  As I watch our political systems degrade into a morass of vicious squabbling; as I listen to the national conversation charged with animosity with half of the country screaming at the other half of the country about what idiots the others are, what horrible people they are for thinking the way they think; as I watch the suffering increase exponentially for those who lack the resources or refuse to participate in the cultural wars that are being played out, I am reminded of what I learned from my patients.

Those who are committed to the spiritual path of manifesting their creativity in the physical world often understand that reality is a fluid construct. Each individual has a unique consciousness and each of us creates our own unique reality based on the imagination we bring to the world. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

Everything being discussed right now is true, in part. Every position taken by the Republicans and the Democrats and the socialists and the capitalists and the anarchists and the liberals and the conservatives etc. has a kernel of truth in it.  For the healers in this room, it becomes our job to figure out what it is true about.

There are so many ways we could approach the subject we need to talk about during this absolutely critical time on Planet Earth.  You all know me, though so you probably know that I usually go for broke, at least when I am in an audience where people are listening, when what I have to say has a chance of being heard.  So let’s talk about the big picture here.

Let’s start from the premise that only God can know the whole truth.  That God IS the Truth. That the Truth actually is a synonym for the divine.  We are not the totality of God, but we are as aspect of it.  So right off the bat that tells us we need to cultivate humility, know that we cannot know it all, and bend to the Truth as it repeatedly tells us  what we do not yet know, in our pursuit of its glory.  Or, as my mother would frequently remind my egotistical childhood self, you can recognize the wise man because they are the person who knows that they do not yet know.

“The Truth Coming Out of the Well” is a 1896 painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme reportedly based on the philosopher Democritus’s aphorism that “Of truth we know nothing, for truth is in a well.” This is a visual reminder that we are naked in our understanding of the Truth. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

That we are not in touch with the sum total of Truth,  also tells us about that which my graduate school teacher reminded me.  Each one of us, even the most damaged or broken, has at least seeds of the Truth within waiting to be discovered, validated, and explored.  When one commits to cultivating that truth, that spark of the divinity, it sets out to burn away all impurities, perhaps slowly at first, but one way or the other, it eventually erupts into a blinding light that calls out all the shadows around us.

Depending on our individual choices, according to our free will and our own internal timetable, we can callibrate our energetic system to a slow burn step by step for many lifetimes or more actively nurture it until it is brought to a raging fire, seemingly overnight.  We can even ignore that spark within us until it fades away and is extinguished by the coldness of our heart.

Those among us whose minds are dark and hearts have gone cold–to use the words from today’s invocation from St. Paul–still have some kernels of the Truth for us to discover. . . however small, however buried under the weight of their ignorance and maladaptive choices.  And we risk adding to our own ignorance if we do not try and discern what part of their life is based upon Truth, not their truth or even our truth, but the Truth that is God.

Right now, the Truth-seeking that many in our society are doing is complicated for many reasons and it is terrifying for us.  Right now many people are living in the “vanity of their mind”–alienated from the divine by their lack of knowledge and the closed nature of their hearts.

Many or most of our political, economic, religious and other leaders have effectively “lost their minds” to the physical pull of the Planet, to ego in the form of desire for power and wealth. These are the people we see every day on the news that brag about how smart they are and are quick to label others as stupid and/or present themselves as holy messengers of God and portray those who disagree with them as sinners.

The spiritual darkness in which they dwell is hellish, a hell they are interested in projecting onto others.  They are caught in an endless vortex. In their fear and commitment to ignorance they condemn others and reject any other perspective than their own, thereby effectively cutting themselves off from gaining ground.  The more they reject others, the more they create a environment of rejection by others and strengthen the energy around them of isolation and hatred .

We’ve all been there. We’ve all, at various times and to various degrees gotten stuck in the games our ego plays on us. In other lifetimes or maybe even this one,  many of us might have just chosen to physically walk away from individuals who have closed their mind and hardened their hearts to an extreme degree. That is no longer an option for us. It’s the digital age; as well as the apocalyptic time foretold from the dawn of our human history in which all will be revealed. There is no physical place we can go to get away from toxic influences for very long. Our salvation lies only along the pathway of following the God of our individual hearts into an unfamiliar spiritual place that transcends the negativity, a place that has humans energetically rising above the tribal level we have operated from thus far.  We get to grow up. Praise be to God.

In the invocation we used in this service St. Paul advises us to “put on the new man” created by God in righteousness and true holiness.

In his letter to the Ephesians St. Paul advises us to “live not as others who live in the vanity of their mind. . . who are alienated from the life of God because they have no knowledge, and because of the blindness of their hearts.” Rather, “be renewed in the spirit of your mind. And put on the new man who is created by God in righteousness and true holiness.” Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

What does that mean?  What I hear in these words is validation for the idea that now is the time for a shift of consciousness.

Consciousness is not a concept that is easily understood. Another famous quotation from spiritual leader Ram Dass who just passed from his phsycial body this week provides perhaps a good clue: “We are all just walking each other home.” Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

Those of us who wish to leave behind the “vanity of our minds” must adopt a different worldview.  I hear the notion that the required shift in consciousness, in how we think about and act in the world is so profound that adopting it will make us into an entirely new type of human being.

 

 

 

 

 

Perhaps we’ll talk about what this will look like at our services next year.  For now I’d like to say a few words about some things that might help this community prepare cognitively and emotionally in the immediate time ahead as we deal with the unfolding chaos around us.  Because trust me, the chaos will not be going away anytime soon.  The death of the old systems will leave a gap for some time to come, before any new systems can be built.

 

Those of us healers who have been systematically going through one gnarly growth period after another after another after another will be called upon to share with others how to persevere in the world-wide growth period presently underway.  Each of us is going to need to recognize and work with as much of our own truth as possible.  Somewhat ironically, that will include looking for the bread crumbs of truth the universe sends us by way of the mirrors of who shows up in our life, not only those brilliant souls we enjoy but also those who have darkened their minds and let their hearts go cold.

So here are my “practice tips” on how to stay alive in a dying world, spiritually and physically.

Embrace the big picture. Learn as much as you can from and about others. Psychology has determined that there are five major aspects of what makes up our worldview. One of the most important is “openness.” An open-minded person seeks new experiences and enjoys meeting people from different backgrounds. This creates new neuronal pathways in our brains, makes empathy aka love more possible and allows us to learn from and enjoy life to a greater degree.  Most importantly to this group of listeners, it also raises your overall vibrational level and invites in a new level of consciousness.

This meme came through Facebook from a stranger on the other side of the country, just as finishing touches were happening to prepare this sermon for publication. Coincidence? Broad band telepathy is a skill to which all human animals have access but not all use with awareness. It can be very useful in connecting with people all over the globe; and is the basis for the joke we often make that “great minds think alike.” That said, if you are not in control of this ability, it can control you. Many people express ideas and emotions that are not consistent with their own experience. It behooves all of us to expand our horizons so we can find our own truths and recognize when we are acting on the basis of programming from others.

Unfortunately, many religions, societies and cultures are stuck on fear-based pictures that have them believing their worldview is more “perfect” or “pure” if their members are not exposed to alternative points of view. Don’t buy it. In apocalyptic times it no longer works that way. If you suffer from any programming that invites you to stay safe in your own small world, get rid of it. Don’t think for a moment that you can hide any longer.

"Listening is Golden" by Ilona Lantos Gold is one of the highest vibrations available to us, a source of much healing. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

“Listening is Golden” by Ilona Lantos.  Gold is one of the highest vibrations available to us, a source of much healing. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals .

LISTEN as much as you can, as deeply as you can, particularly to those with a point of view different for your own, as long as it makes sense.

 

Recognize that everyone has some of the Truth and is in your life to teach you. They might be expressing 99% bs and 1% truth, but if they are showing up in your life, you can bet that that 1% is pretty vital for you to learn.

 

 

 

On the other side of the dichotomy . . you don’t need to listen to anyone if it is a futile exercise.  When people are talking at you rather than with you or at the very least to you, it’s not about anyone learning anything.  It may be that the game is just about power and control.  In those situations it benefits noone for you to get drawn into the drama. Give them a healing by walking away; and heal yourself remotely by looking in your meditations for what they are bringing forth in you, and search out the pattern of who else with a similar message keeps showing up in your life.

Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals

If you determine that certain individuals around you are lost but are still seeking the Truth, engage with them when possible. Share those pieces of truth that are already in your possession,  firmly if you must, but do so with much kindness aka neutrality as you can.

By the way, it often helps to cultivate patience.  Be mindful of their timing and sparse with your words, as helping others up to the next level needs to be something based their needs as well as your own. If you find your body is angry or grief stricken as you observe the process, own it, run it and pay attention to these valuable clues of what in your energy system still requires healing.  Let off emotional steam in private with your friends if needs be, but don’t act on your frustration by allowing it to overwhelm and thereby embitter you; or voice slander or malice towards the other, thereby hardening your own heart.

If the person is promoting evil, call it out. This is the righteousness Paul talks about that is a requirement of the “new man.” There is a world of difference–quite literally—between those who with their words or actions express disdain for the sacredness of God’s created order because they cannot recognize it; and those who recognize the Truth but have turned their back.

The former was the case with my psychiatric patients who had perpetrated great suffering because they had never experienced love.  Their ability to cast further demons into the world as they struggled with theirs, had to be absolutely stopped in its tracks, while gently coaxing them into a higher reality.

“Melancolie” by sculpture Albert Gyorgy is a statement of the emptiness of life without soul. Image used in accorance with Fair Use Principals.

There are many in the world right now, including many among our national leadership who sincerely wish to know Truth and live in Truth but have little or no actual experience with the divine’s presence.  In most cases, the healing of these individuals is best left to the heavenly forces. . .and the election box.

On the other hand, don’t let people who know better get away with glorifying ignorance and channeling hatred because that is an affront to God.  When someone knows the truth and is not just “spinning it” because their mind is not open enough to contain the whole of it. . .but is rather consciously rejecting it in order to gain power over others or wealth, we all have to stop them any legal and moral way we can.

There is evil occuring in our world that cannot be tolerated; and must be dealt with not just by spiritual forces. It requires the action of embodied souls who must act in accordance with the indwelling divine. That said, because we cannot see into another’s heart, it is sometimes very difficult to tell what is truly motivating the actions of another person. One important foundation of effectively countering evil has to do with emotions. It takes a great deal of mastery over emotional systems before evil can be laid to rest since that level of sin can only be truly laid to rest from a place of love. Image by Horst Haitzinger used consistent with Fair Use Principals.

When individuals and groups actively work to destroy truth seeking, such as encouraging violence towards those with differing opinions; using deceit intentionally; shutting down truth-exploration  systems like higher education and rigorous science; subverting communication systems like the internet and the media; destorying watchdog agencies that exist specifically is to counterbalance the various systemic biases to which human brains are currently prone, and pathways meant to bring justice into the world; etc. it is on all of us to notice these transgressions against the Truth; and stand up to them.  Otherwise, your silence becomes a part of the rejection of the divine.  There are karmic/heavenly consequences for that you are not going to want to experience.

“Our Calling” by Ricardo Lewins Morales School for Social Justice, Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

And finally, Go for the heavens.   What I want you to hear this morning is what I understand about the tao, nirvana, the creative blueprint, God’s plan for us, evolution, the master plan, whatever you want to call it. The times we are living in, these times for which many of us have waited our entire existence on Planet Earth, are all about creating Heaven on Earth.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s the time to bring the spiritual fully into the physical. It’s a real possibility, folks.  It’s actually our destiny. . .but like any destiny, we still have to consciously choose to live it out, in order for it to manifest.

A shift of consciousness is about working from within. It requires a deep committment that few individuals have had to date. Many forces are at play in the present time frame to motivate us, support us and otherwise make possible such a tranformatival level of change. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

Recognize you can have an ever-deepening version of Heaven-on-Earth now.  In all the political debates have you noticed how two people can be in the same environment exposed to the exact same information and bring to the discussion two completely different points of view about what is going on?  Have you watched a person who defines themselves as pro-Trump and a person who defines themselves as anti-Trump talk about the Mueller report, the impeachment debate or the latest tweet but arrive at two diametrically-opposite seemingly-incompatible conclusions?

It has always been possible on Planet Earth for one individual to create a completely different reality than another individual. It’s just that right now with the light shining down on all the shadowy corners of the globe and the digital age giving all these different corners an opportunity to argue with each other in real time, we can and do live in and debate contradictory versions of our world. It is consciousness that has the last say in what we create in our reality.  You can choose to bring to your corner of the world whatever level of consciousness through which you would like to live.

Do you want to live in the peace and prosperity and love that is God’s gift to all of us? Go for it!  Don’t wait for your neighbor(s).  Give them a step up as much as you can because among other things, this helps you get more rapidly to where you are going–to the peace and love that offered to all of us. Show them the way, as the way has been shown to us by various individual souls who have tread the sacred soil beneath us,  including that humble carpenter from Nazareth who is with us on this winter occasion, as always.

Copyright 2019 by Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven

 

 

Welcoming Scarcity in the New World

/ Church of the Harvest

 

From a Sermon given Fall Equinox Worship Service  September 29, 2019

Over the years I’ve been blessed to have the opportunity to learn many things in my role preparing sermons for this Church community.  Most of the time my words have been appreciated and gracefully received by people coming to the worship services.  I have noticed however, that whenever I venture into talking about money or economics in general people often go into anxiety, resistance and on one occasion even outright hostility.

Rationalization is the norm any time the talk turns to money. Cartoon used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

I can almost see the fear pictures flying through the air for the people with less resources; and the boredom aka resistance pictures for the people with a good amount of resources who don’t want to think about that it might ever be otherwise.

 

 

 

 

So let’s get something straight from the start, shall we?  We are going to talking about the “new economic norm” that has been unfolding in stages and will now rapidly be manifesting in the United States right now.

Countries around the world have suffered from an inadequate amount of resources for day-to-day living for several decades and this inequality is exponentially increasing under climate change. This is an image of Bhatapur, Nepal after a quake. Picture used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

We are no longer living in a time of shrinking resources. The resources have shrunk and many have shriveled up and are starting to be blown away with the same earthquakes and hurricane forces that have been ravaging our landmasses and oceans.

 

 

 

 

People, we are going to be experiencing some really lean times unlike anything we have known in our country in our lifetimes.  Historically we’ve seen it before, like during the Great Depression, but not recently, not in the lived experience of the people in this room. It is going to be challenging for ALL of us, albeit in different ways. This time around, none of us will escape the consequences of our new way of living in the world, not even the rich folks.

There is no part of the planet, no underground bunker or gated community that will protect human animals from the effects of climate change, “Warming” by Shayla Maddox. Art used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

Hopefully by the end of the service and in the next few days however, you will find yourself beginning to view this time of austerity as nothing to be feared, something that is necessary and maybe even in certain ways a good thing.

So let’s put on our big boy pants and see if we can raise the level of our awareness from the physical to the spiritual in how we view one of the last and most fear-provoking of the changes our world is undergoing right now.  And when I say world I mean the whole world, but my emphasis this morning is on the United States.  What is happening economically is certainly global in character, but in some ways we in this country have the most to deal with energetically because we have had the most.

After World War 2 the United States moved into the position of being the prominent peace-keeper of the entire world on the surface; as well as the most aggressive war monger out of view through our role as the world’s premier arms dealer.

Every country has its own energy. This depiction from Christian Chinese American artist He Qi depicts the essence of the United States of America as Peace and Freedom. Picture used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

We amassed great financial wealth through participation with conflicts on every continent.  This was our national destiny so to speak, and we played it out well, with the implicit energetic support of people everywhere.  We set the energy but the world created the scenarios with us and followed our lead.

On the physical level the American dollar became “the almighty dollar.”  Our lifestyle was the envy of the world.  Everyone wanted to be a part of the American dream in which those with few resources could rapidly transverse into a higher socioeconomic class. Unfortunately, as we transformed ourselves into a country of great material wealth and political status, as a country we essentially did the collective version of getting lost to our ego, aka our perfect pictures.

In the last few decades people would occasionally engage in intellectual talk about the fact that the United States was consuming 80% of the world’s resources even though we were only 20% of its population; or the fact that we were competing with each other to waste much of this material wealth in lavish display of conspicuous consumption.  There were a few conversations now and then about the fact that this level of consumption and waste was not environmentally sustainable.  For the most part though, most Americans continued to buy stupid stuff and throw it away at the first opportunity for something better; worked very hard at not noticing the far-reaching effects of our individual and collective choices; and continued to ignore the cost of our lavish lifestyle on ourselves, each other, those in other countries and on Mother Earth.

Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

These days one of my favorite synonyms for the Creator-of-Us-All is the “Great Equalizer.”  It is the time of the Great Balancing when all will be called to task.  The United States has been on the highest rung of the economic pedestal of the world for about 70 years now, so our fall back to Earth has the potential for being the most jarring, the most painful.  Like everything else about how we create spiritually through matter however, it is up to us, up to choices we make through our free will.

To talk this morning about how we can cushion our fall and maybe even tumble in a manner that allows us to pop right back up, I’d like to switch it up and focus on spirit, and what we know about economics from a spiritual perspective.  For this I’m going to use the Christian Bible.

To me, one really interesting thing about what Jesus of Nazareth says about money as recorded in the Bible is how much he says.  As I understand it, other than the “Kingdom of God” he talked more about economics than any other subject.  Even taking into consideration the fact that he lived in a time period where almost all human beings were still dealing with basic survival, this is an extraordinary amount of attention paid by a religious leader to economic status.

Keep in mind though, that Jesus knew everything there is to know about how energy works on Planet Earth.  He certainly knew that money is just a symbol, a stand-in for power.  As the master of parables, he talked with everyday folks using stories to which they could relate, stories about food and oil for lighting and heating and other basic necessities to keep one alive. In this way he also taught people about individual and group energy and where and how to focus it.

So let’s review the overarching Truth said by Jesus as quoted in Matthew, Chapter 6, Verses 24-33:

No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. . . your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

Since the time of the Christ people have struggled to hear the messages he embedded in his stories; and in typical human fashion have frequently projected onto those words their own wishes, desires and meanings.  In my opinion biblical passages about economic matters are not only among the most prolific in terms of numbers, they are also among the most distorted in terms of interpretations.

Everyone wants to cherry pick the Bible to look for justifications for their own actions.  On the one hand, you have the people who want to dwell on the words of Jesus that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to gain eternal life.  This passage is used by many and particularly I have noticed by people who are struggling with survival or jealousy and competition pictures, to conclude that all wealthy people are wrong and maybe even evil, who need to give away or have taken from them everything they own.

On the opposite side of the dichotomy you have the political and religious folks who want to dwell on Jesus saying the poor will always be among us.  These are the people that say that all wealth is from God and interpret being wealthy is a sign that one has been rewarded or blessed by God.  If they are more political than religious they may talk about wealth coming from hard work, good values or superior family; and demonize poor people as lazy, stupid,  mentally unstable, morally corrupt, etc.

It’s all the same energy. Whether you attempt to use the words of the Christ or more secular language to rationalize economic oppression, it is all about marginalizing people without economic power.  This is the injustice, the imbalance, this is the lack of righteousness that will be disappearing shortly, one way or the other, as a result of the master plan in which we are all living.  This is the time and the place where the Great Equalizer will be doing its magic to help us come to our senses.

What do we need to keep in mind, to help this equalizing process go as smoothly as it can in our individual lives and the lives of those around us?  Let me read this again:

No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. . . your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

Please notice two things here.  Please notice that the Christ is not saying you cannot have both God and wealth. He is saying you cannot serve both God and wealth. One will invariably be the master.

Please also notice how similar this passage to what has been called the “greatest commandment,” the teaching of the Christ in Matthew 22, Verses 36-40.

Love the Lord your God will all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it:  Love your neighbor as yourself.

Image of Scrooge McDuck from Carl Banks, in conjunction with DIsney, used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

The point here is that FIRST you start with finding God, aligning yourself with God, committing yourself to God. And then you have the guidance you need to fully allow the Love that is God to flow outward to others.  You get to have as much money and other resources as you need to fulfill the divine’s purpose; but if money is your master, you are in for a rude awakening .

In the coming days, the economic oppression that was such a major talking point for Jesus of Nazareth will be the focus of a world-wide turnaround as directed by his father.  Everyone from the 1% that own the 30 trillion dollars of financial assets in the United States, as well as the bottom half of Americans who have less than nothing, in other words more debts than they have assets, will have to come to terms with what is the guiding principal in their life:  God or ego.

Money as one physical reflection of energy, needs to flow freely and not become stagnant. An informed reading of the words of the Christ reveal that the real problem for people with economic resources results when people hoard wealth, in other words accumulate wealth beyond what they individually need or need to serve others.

Usually at this point in the sermon I would be starting to talk about the need for grounding, approaching the subject of your private economics neutrally by living in the center of your head and finding your own truth by seeking direction from the God(dess) within you in your meditations.  Do that. Do all of that. But the meditators in this room know how to use these tools so I’m going to move on from here.

Because the topic of money brings up such overwhelming amount of fear and resistance for most of us, I want to share some personal cliff notes I have worked out over the years, in regards to part B, i.e. loving our neighbors as ourselves economically from a spiritual perspective.

  1. If you fear you won’t have enough. . .work on your fear. . .because that is all it has to be. . .unless you empower it with your belief.  Trust me, there is enough.
  1. If your life purpose requires a great deal of resources to accomplish, if it truly is a spiritual-based calling, that is to say that if you truly are co-creating with God, the resources will appear. But then remember that they are not yours, they belong to the divine.

Gratitude by Linnea Tobias. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

                         Give thanks for being one of the                                 few rich people that is privileged                             enough to “get it.” Continue to act                              frugally towards yourself and                                      remember you are simply                                             the caretaker of the remaining                                    wealth.  That means that you will                              be gifting the excess you don’t need                          directly to others or it means you                                will be using the resources to build                            something of more long term                                       benefit to others.  

  1. If you catch yourself using any resources beyond basic levels on yourself, ask if you are threading a camel through the needle. . .and go back to those conversations with the God(dess) within.

                        You don’t have to be a Gandhi living only with a robe, food bowl and a book of                                  sacred writings.  Recent technological advances have made it possible for all of us                         to have a higher standard of living. Sometimes “discretionary” money spent on                                  travel, beautiful objects, art supplies, even good but high-end food is needful for a                          higher purpose such as creating peace, joy, health or beauty; and sometimes it is                             done for escapist or prideful reasons.

                       We all fail prey to our ego at times.                        Only you and your creator will know                        the difference. If you find you have let                       your ego rule, no problem, just do a                         little mid course correction and renew                      your commitment to using collective                       resources for spiritual rather than                              material goals.

  1. If you see others hoarding wealth that should be given to others, speak out and otherwise do whatever you can. By his words and his example, the Christ was quite clear that loving your neighbor as yourself means advocating for the oppressed, the marginalized and the poor. Unfortunately this will put you in the cross-hairs of most of our religious, commercial, governmental and other collective forces. . .but it’s the least you can do.
  1. Understand that in the present time period things are unfolding in the manner that is needed. Do not give in to despair. We had to destroy our castles built on the sand of conditional love, no matter how painful, so that we have the means of rebuilding on the bedrock of unconditional love. 

                         For human animals to continue our experience on this magnificent planet, for us                             to return to the garden, we needed to live the experience of losing our way so we                             had the possibility of choosing a more righteous path that recognizes that all life                              is connected. 

Our bodies are experiencing a great amount of fear right now but if you tune into the spiritual reality you will know we stand to gain riches beyond our wildest imagining.  Making it through the next stage will require that we grow up and leave behind our adolescent striving.

Image by Louisa Cannell, used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

It will require more faith than most of us have ever had. It will require us to learn how to focus all our God-given spirit-driven abilities.  But the journey can be exciting, the creativity awesome, and the resulting world truly humbling in its majesty.   

It is for this reason that I entitled this sermon “Welcoming Scarcity in the New World.”  Thanks be to the Great Equalizer for this marvelous opportunity.

Copyright 2019 by Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven

 

Transcending Time and Space; An Exploration of Our Possible Future(s)

/ Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given Summer Solstice Worship Service  June 23, 2019

Lately when the Church of the Harvest has gotten together as a community for our quarterly services designed to honor the divine and to help us move ever closer in the direction most pleasing to it, many of the services have been about time. Last year’s Summer Solstice Service was about the “Code-switching of Time; Flowing Gracefully Between Past, Present and Future.” The Winter Solstice Service was called “Dreaming of Things to Come.”

This was not intentional but neither was it coincidental.  We are all here to learn how to create as spirit within the time-space continuum of this glorious Mother Earth of ours. Typically individuals who are developing themselves spiritually are first drawn to the lessons involving space.  If we are successful enough with these challenges, we then move on to focusing on lessons involving time.

To understand the true nature of space, essentially we have to clear our individual energy systems from enough of our past experiences on the Planet and enough of the programming and other forms of energy belonging to other people–to our friends and family and community and society–to understand who we really are.

Mother and Child Twins by Gustav Klimt, Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

Young ones fresh from the All-That-Is and basking in the spiritual glory of all being connected, come into this world through a physical body belonging to another human being, a mother. Even when we pass through the birth canal, even as we are born into a completely separate physical framework, and even when we take our first independent breath, we are almost completely dependent on many other human beings to maintain that breath, to prolong that life, for many, many years.

Humans are late bloomers. We take nearly twice as long as other primates to grow to physical maturity. As the species endowed by our Creator with the responsibility for life on Planet Earth, it takes a tremendous amount of experience to grow our brains such that they can encapsulate the consciousness required to make it all work. Scientists believe somewhere between 44 and 87% of the energy of our body (as measured by glucose levels) is consumed during infancy and childhood by our brain to bring us to adulthood.

Family by Diana Ong, Picture used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

Until we become grown-ups we have to lean on others for our basic survival needs. In our contemporary societies that means we take on energy designed for other people and unfortunately as of yet, are not taught how to clear it when its usefulness is over.

As we grow we have less and less of a need to depend on information and other forms of energy from others, but unfortunately old habits are hard to break, particularly when you are not aware of them. Lots of people never get out of their pattern of depending on others, as opposed to interacting with others from a position of equality.  It may be years, often decades, sometimes many lifetimes before we do.

In these faster-paced days though it is not uncommon for people to figure out that life on Earth only really works if one learns to create one’s life from one’s own space.  When you try to force others onto the path you think they should go, when you attempt to force your will on the choices others make, then life always kicks you in the teeth, if not immediately, then eventually.  It can look like a “good marriage” or a “loving family” or a “prosperous“ country for many years. Having your partner seek dissolution of your bonds, your children move out of reach, or your community no longer function can happen dramatically all at once or quietly over time but it will happen one way or the other.  The song of our soul is one of freedom, and to have authentic relationships with other life we have to give others freedom, and we have to claim it for ourselves.

We have to put the pieces of the puzzle together to form a picture of what some people call our truest self, to understand the deepest desires of our heart. We have to let go of the dreams other people had for us, and even the dreams we had for ourselves that we have outgrown; and we have to acquire the skills to protect the remaining dreams, to nurture them, and begin to bring them to fruition.

Our work can then begin. Those “lucky” few, if you want to see them as such, those privileged few or those sufficiently “blessed,” however you want to frame it, those who have acquired a sense of their spiritual purpose are then free to move into the second part of the challenge of living in time and space, making the time part congruent with your purpose.  For many, learning about time is perhaps even a trickier lesson than learning about space.  It is not uncommon for some to figure out that life on Earth only really works if one learns to create one’s life from one’s own space. It is less common for people to figure out that life on Earth only really works if one understands the real nature of time.

Why? Time takes focus.

You have to find your own energy aka power, and then you have to learn to focus it.  Scattering your energy every which way ultimately just wastes it. I usually refer to this process of focusing as learning to “manipulate time,” but I don’t mean this is in the pejorative sense that one might assume.  In this context “manipulation” just means consciously changing the vibration in situations that are yours to control. When you learn enough from a spiritual perspective about what and how you want to change the vibration of your own energy system/field, then you can concentrate on changing how your system/field interacts with the world around you. You can flow with time.

Time is not the stagnant, never-changing force that our brains as they currently function like to imagine.

Time is not static.

Everything in the universe is in motion, and so also is time.  Time is a subjective illusive quality of experience as lived in a physical human body.

 

 

In Western civilization, Albert Einstein started us thinking in a new way about time fairly recently.  It has only been in the last hundred years or so that the consciousness of most human animals has evolved to the point that it can even tolerate this more advanced understanding of God’s creative order.

Albert Einstein was not afraid to “think outside the box” in many regards. This rare photo from about 1950 shows him in his favorite fuzzy slippers.

In his explanation of relativity theory Einstein told people: “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.”  (I also have talked about my personal experience of having time “freeze” before my very eyes in order to avoid fatal injury in a major car accident.)

So why is the world needing to learn about time right now. . .and what has this got to do with transcendence?

Throughout history people have been fascinated by time, and specifically by those individuals among us who seem to be capable of seeing through the illusion that it is.  We have called them seers like Nostradamus or the Oracle of Delphi who was celebrated throughout Hellenic civilization, prophets like Moses and  John the Baptist of the Judeo-Christian Bible, saints like Hildegard of Birgen,

Many artists who turn to the collective consciousness for their inspiration are able to see the future, whether or not that is their goal. Morgan Freeman’s book Futility was published 1898 describing an “unsinkable” boat called the Titanic with 24 lifeboats for 3,000 passengers that hits an iceberg on its initial voyage. In 1912, 14 years later on its maiden voyage the Titanic sank with 20 lifeboats for 2,207 passengers.

visionary artists like Leonardo da Vinci or Aldous Huxley, mediums or psychics like Jeanne Dixon or Edgar Cayce,

These individuals excite our imagination and give us hope that the world is bigger than what we can see with our eyes. They also sometimes engender fear or false hopes that the world is predictable or controllable by other people.  The Truth is that each of us create our own individual reality including how it plays out temporally. Together we create a consensus reality that shares a common time framework. It is the latter of which I primarily speak this morning.

Right now the world is perched on a precipice, a cliff of sorts, and the only way forward for human animals remaining on Earth as its God-given caretakers involves a great leap of faith,  Changes to every aspect of our existence are required  including the time-space continuum within which we function.  As the very cosmos above us changes frequency, Mother Earth itself runs more kundalini energy throughout the surface of the Earth and the magnetic field within the Planet itself shifts directionally, so too is the basic fabric of the time-space continuum changing.  As co-creators with the divine, our job is to roll with the punches as much as possible even while we infuse those shifts as much as we can with good intentions for all and Love.

I am not going to make the mistake here of holding myself out to be the prophet of where these changes will take us in the upcoming days. What I am here to tell you is that we are all prophets, each in our own right, each over our own individual space.  Piercing the veil of illusion is a spiritual ability to which all human beings have access. It might be one of the latter stages for those who are exploring our spiritual nature, one of the more advanced steps on the path back to our Creator, but it is open to all.  Now is the time for you to explore your own abilities to “bend” time.

Yes, we are living in the apocalypse, the period that has long been predicted when all will be revealed.  One of the aspects that will be revealed to those who can receive it is the greater ability to manipulate time.  Yes, we are living in the “end times.” However in my opinion this certainly does not mean the end to all life on Earth; and it likely does not mean the end to human beings as a species of animal. Think rather of this as the end to a very long cycle of how we relate to the space-time continuum.

Some of you may remember 1999 when many people were convinced that our increasingly technological world was going to crash around us because computers could not change their Y2K code to recognize the upcoming new century? Many of you will remember when so many people were freaked out in 2012 about the Mayan calendar coming to an end because they saw this as the fulfillment of a prophecy about the physical world being destroyed? Some of you are aware of the approximately third of Americans who interpret many contemporary events as indication that we are about to experience the Rapture and/or the return of Jesus of Nazareth in his physical form? In each of these cases, there was/is a “kernel of truth” to what people were/are experiencing– hidden behind an ocean of fear. The colander of prophecy can sort the wheat from the chaff, but until people have found their own energy and are largely free from the troubling distortion of fear, partial truths can just contribute to the problem at hand.

As you explore your own version of space and time in your meditations and otherwise, I have three pieces of advice for you.

First of all as always, ground yourself as spirit to this physical planet so that whatever you create you can do so with the maximum amount of self control and safety.  Be sure the light that is you has this built-in lightening rod protection to help you weather whatever changes come your way. And a means to let go of the fear and energy that doesn’t belong to you or is obsolete, so you can be who you really are.

Second of all, continue to work to uncover your truest self.  Do the meditation and whatever other forms of healing you need to grow ever closer to the God(dess) of your own heart. This will strengthen you and help you discern your Truth and step-by-step transform you into a prophet in your own world.  It will also protect you from false prophets, those who claim to speak for God. The only God(dess) you need to listen to is the one that speaks within you.

Third of all, cultivate humility.  I’m not talking here about lack of confidence. I am talking about being slow to draw conclusions and open to the idea that by virtue of living through a body, even the best and brightest of us bring to this world a lot of distortion.

Every human being has the ability to be clairvoyant. It is part and parcel of our spiritual playbook, available to all. Clairvoyance is just a French word meaning “clear seeing.” However, if you have not already developed the skill set to separate your vision from the myriad of other sensations, biases, ego, projections, wishful thinking etc. it is best to be cautious about its usage. . .and be open to others who have enough love to challenge you. Cartoon used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

Or as it says in Second Peter, Chapter 20 and 21.

Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

Stay open to feedback from others even as, or especially as, you grow closer to your own Truth. Even as you learn over time to create a fresher more constructive version of reality for yourself, let the Holy Spirit take you to places you currently do not even know exist. In this way you will become a prophet in your own life.

Copyright 2019 by Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven

 

Dreaming of Things to Come; Bring On the New World in the New Year!

/ Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given Winter Solstice Worship Service  December 23, 2018

Almost exactly one year ago today, this meditation community had its Winter Solstice Service here.  We explored the topic of moving towards a world based on Love rather than the corruption of power. I talked about how corruption is a word that not only refers to political processes but at its essence just means something that is changed from its original intended use to something that is used incorrectly, and in doing so, is debased.

I talked about the fact that God is Love; and as the children of God we are meant to create our lives and the world around us through Love. . .but that too many of us had succumbed to the temptations of the material world, and forgotten that all true Power comes from the divine and all energy is meant to be used in the service of the divine.

So here it is a year later.  I think we can all agree that it’s been quite a year.  I imagine we could also agree that the year has been characterized by a society and a world absolutely awash in the vibration of hatred.  In our country and around the world hatred has far too often been the key driver of our interactions with each other.

Many spiritual forces are praying that we get over our need to hate each other.

Hate has always had a big presence on Planet Earth, of course.                                                                                                                                                     But people saying and doing hateful                   things towards each other has never                  been more common.

The difference lately has been that it has taken center stage in the human drama. It was looking like hatred had become acceptable as a social convention, as a way for people to engage with each other.  Acting in a hateful manner towards another person was no longer being seen as a maladjustment for a few aberrant individuals. It was increasingly being accepted as an open and unrepentant option for segments of our society to use in opposition to other segments.

This year women have moved into national leadership in a dramatic way but more importantly, the female energy that every human has, irrespective of the gender of their body has been moving into the foreground.

Fortunately, this year has also seen the rise of influences from other energy streams in human society to counterbalance the hatred, energy streams that are more prone to unification than the kind of disintegration that happens with the vibration of hatred.

Chief among these has been the amazingly rapid shift from the male to female perspective.  Each of us is capable of allowing our sacred female to lead the way, no matter what gender body we hold; and vast numbers of us decided to do so, almost overnight.

We have also seen the phenomenally sudden stepping-up-to-the-plate of younger generations who have grown up in the digital age where diversity and inclusion are more the norm.

For many centuries human animals have labored under a tribal-based paradigm that had one group in competition with and striving for domination over other groups. This corruption of power has been breaking down as the digital age makes it easier for us to understand we are all in this world together. Posted in accordance with fair use principles

Again, children have always led the way energetically.  We tend to forget our spiritual nature as we age so children have always quietly protected our rightful heritage, almost always in an invisible manner.

These children from Thailand reflect their more recent arrival from the spiritual world in many ways, but one of which is their joy in the natural world. Children everywhere are universally attracted to play which they recognize as one of the truest faces of the divine.,

This year, the younger ones among us began to step out of the shadows and told the adults to share the leadership of the material world. I can’t wait to see how this      plays out.

 

 

 

 

So where are we now that 2018 is coming to an end? I know that most of us are still feeling a kind of vertigo as the vibrations continue to transform the air around us, the Earth beneath our feet and the very molecules of our bodies. Many of us are at best uneasy, at worst sick at heart at what is happening to our world. As I have mentioned previously, just in recent memory the planet itself has begun running kundalini energy in increasing amounts to help human animals wake to our true nature.

Lately I’ve been noticing how many people are physically getting sick and experiencing confusing and often painful symptoms in their body, symptoms with which medical professionals are having trouble understanding or addressing, in part because of this massive influx of kundalini.

The powerful healing of kundalini energy has been recognized for centuries, primarily in the Eastern parts of the globe and shamanic traditions. It is often depicted as intertwining snakes, as is seen in the  caduceus symbol for Western medicine. Contrary to popular belief, one does not have to “work at” running kundalini. It runs on it’s own when one’s energy system is working well; and recently has begun to be triggered by the Earth itself as it enters the human body through the feet.

Most of the time people seem to just see their illness processes and discomfort as just their individual situation. A lot of people chalk their symptoms up to some ubiquitous process called “stress.”  Many judge themselves as having made stupid choices about their health status, or being otherwise somehow flawed.

Little do they know that the “growing pains” that they are experiencing is a requirement, a mandatory edict from Mother Earth if you will.  Kundalini energy brings to the surface all that has been contained. It’s not a judgment but it is a very high vibration that is hard for many physical beings to experience if they are not used to vibrating at such a frequency. In other words, it does require action to weather it in a way that minimizes suffering.  It’s part of the kicking-us-on-our-ass that is happening worldwide. The universe is over it, in regards to the human learning curve.  We will either be taking a huge leap forward in our consciousness, or we will be invited to go elsewhere.  We will not be remaining the caretakers of this gorgeous planet unless we can do better by it.

But here’s the rub:  many of us are indeed waking up.  This year-2018—the year I have been calling the Year of Transformation–has done its thing. The energy has indeed transformed.

I’m not talking here about the chaos of our political and economic systems falling apart.  That spectacular amount of destruction is ongoing, with plenty more to come. I’m talking about the underlying energy.  I’m talking about the fact that in just the last few days, a scant few weeks, the energy of what is called the “consensus reality” has shifted dramatically.

The “consensus reality” is not an easy concept to understand, so I thought at this point in the presentation, we should step back and take a moment to review it.

This is the “Universal Mind Lattice” as painted by visionary artist Alex Grey, the organic human aspect of universal consciousness. It is the energetic field where all that is human and all that manifests in the physical connects to itself; and as such, can be changed by any shift created by any human being. The “consensus reality” is this field made manifest in a snapshot of time. Posted in accordance with fair use principles

Each of us as an individual soul creates our own reality. Ultimately we decide everything about our life. On a spiritual level we establish a game plan before we are born, and then we get here and see if we can carry it out.  We learn lessons as we go, and may make adjustments as we need.  This is the precious gift of free will that our Creator gives us.

Sometimes challenges look really interesting to us before we incarnate, and then when we get into the body, things look very different. Sometimes those same challenges don’t look nearly as interesting.  We are like the kid who decides we want to be a doctor, a professional athlete or a famous musician when we grow up.  And then as we grow older, we discover that it actually takes hundreds of hours of tedious study, cramping body parts and boring repetitive scales before our mind or muscles or fingers will produce the desired results.  Creating as spirit in the material world requires much more effort and all-too often  body turmoil than it would seem from a purely spiritual perspective.

When the lessons we are trying to learn require interactions with other humans, as most do, then free will dictates that we have to enter into an agreement with that other person or persons with whom we are trying to create.  This process can be very complicated and take considerable time, particularly if the lessons involve large numbers of individuals. Luckily time does not exist on the spiritual level but some individual souls have to create a number of experiences in the physical world before they can sign on to a larger spiritually based group contract, and that does take time.

In the United States there were lots of individuals who knew right off the bat that we did not want to create a world based on hatred when we were encouraged to do so by certain political and religious leaders.  But there were also lots of individuals who had to create some up-close-and-personal encounters with hatred in their personal life to make a more clear decision that this was not what they wanted to experience. Many knew better “intellectually” than to support the vibration of hatred. . .but old  karmic influences or energy from traumatic childhoods still needed to be cleared before they could definitively opt out of creating a world based on hatred.  Thus, it took nearly two years for the “consensus reality” in the United States to shift to an agreement that we were not going to choose hatred as a way of life.

The good news, the very good news in my mind, is that the energy of the consensual reality has shifted. As a group of humans who have been given seniority by our Creator, or what is called in religious circles dominion over life on Earth, we’ve decided something big.  I’m not sure what it is. . .exactly. But I’m pretty sure it has to do with Love.

So congratulations, folks. Congratulations to all of us. Congratulations to those of us who were here a year ago helping the consensus reality shift by together imagining a world based on Love and not corruption of power. Congratulations to those of you who were not here a year ago but were part of getting the Church of the Harvest to that point previously or are creating a connection now to continue this critical work. (After all, spirit knows no time).

And congratulations to all the millions of other people in the world, particularly in the United States where the battle involving hatred has been at it’s most intense.  Congratulations to the many Americans who may have had sufficient resources but who have nonetheless emotionally gone through a kind of virtual hell on Earth this past couple of years, in order to work through what they had to work through for all of us to make it to this point.

We all contributed to the place we are in now.  We made a decisive, life-affirming choice. Now we just have to figure out what that choice is all about.  And begin to shape it, fine tune it so to speak.

You all are meditators so you have had the experience of going through a particularly gnarly growth period or two.  Growth periods come in all shapes and sizes. In the biggest growth periods though, the ones that involve moving to a higher level of consciousness there is often just confusion. The old ways no longer fit at all who one is, but the new ways have not yet shown up. The fabric of one’s most essential self identity changes and we become unrecognizable.

That is kind of where we’re at right now energetically in this country and in the world.  But even though we don’t really know where we are going in this new direction we are taking, it’s probably a good idea to talk with each other about what we do notice, and share our thoughts and dreams and whatever insights we have as we stumble around in the new landscape.

So along those lines I have a few insights to get the dialogue going, to hopefully help us move towards creating a world based on Love and not corruption of the power God has given us.

First of all, Keep up the dreaming.  If you run across a situation involving injustice, hatred, corruption, by all means take whatever action you can to stop it. But keep in mind that right now it is Winter.  Its the season to prioritize resting our weary bodies.

Its the time for letting our minds wander in whatever direction they happen to go.  Do puzzles. Make art and go see good movies. Build things and craft things and exercise that incredible God-given creativity of yours in everyday life.

The direction we ultimately will need to go is not going to be clear for awhile. In all of human history we’ve never been at this point before.  We will be shown by spiritual forces we cannot even imagine the best path forward when it is time.  Meanwhile, give yourself permission to give your imagination free rein.  Creativity can be like a muscle that needs to be exercised. Enjoy where the dreaming takes you and watch.

Second of all, Welcome in the New World in the New Year!  No matter what it is. Please don’t get lost to any perfect pictures.  Its not going to be clear sailing. The destruction of our world is ongoing.  Horrific pain and suffering abounds and may very well intensify. In 2019 we may feel like we just went from the pan into the fire. If humans survive at all, it will be months or years or decades before things are OK.

Unfortunately as a species, human animals are still largely addicted to suffering. However, until we reach a greater acceptance of divine love, we can draw upon other sources of strength. “The Human Spirit,” Photo by Vladsylav Musiienko. Posted in accordance with fair use principles.

But the worst thing we can do is resist. You get what you resist, in greater measure and with greater suffering. You know why we have been having so much trouble with hatred this year? Hatred is simply a particularly intense form of fear. Fear of change. Fear of death.  The world is changing faster than the present level of human consciousness can process. Fear levels have gone up exponentially, and thus, so has the hatred.  You can make a personal contribution to cutting down the hatred simply by not resisting whatever awful as well as wonderful things come our way.

As individuals and as a society first and foremost we need to learn to lean into the change. Lean into the destruction even.  Ultimately it is far easier than digging in one’s heels about what is going to change whether we want it to or not.

Third of all, along the same lines: Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. And pray for those who mistreat you.  Why? Because the energy you put out comes back to you.  Right now we are all needing to learn unconditional love. In the days ahead you’re going to want all the love and the good and the blessings that you can create; and you create them by giving them to others.

However, Fourth of all. Do not go gently into the night. I never really understood Dylan Thomas’s redemptive poem until recently.  I thought it was about resisting death. Its not. Its about celebrating life by leaning into death.  Thomas tells us to burn with life when we are near the end.

“Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light ….I will Never Give Up the Fight for Wholeness” by Myron Dyal. Used with permission of the artist.

We are near the end of human life on this planet. It still remains to be seen whether or not humans as a species will make it through the upcoming days. That part of things the consensus reality has yet to decide. Meanwhile, let us burn brightly as we decide where our Love will take us.  Burning brightly is the way of Love.

So how do we not go gently into the night on a practical level? Astrologists tell us that we just are emerging from a very long cycle dominated by the energy of the Wounded Healer. As individuals and as a society we’ve all just gone through a deep cleaning of toxic energies. We are more poised to turn away from other people who are harmful to us.  Do let’s not dirty ourselves up again with toxic people and situations. Yes, love your enemies but whenever possible from afar.

This meme is a bit on the snotty side obviously, but there is a valid point here. Maybe a few talented “jerk whisperers” can change the perspective of those who hate. . .but most of the time this is not a good use of time and energy for anyone involved

Do good for those who hate you but stop showing up for people who are indifferent about your presence.  Bless those who curse you, but you don’t have to have conversations with people who deny you respect.

 

 

Enjoy the people around you with whom you can share your dreams.  Be a willing vehicle through which the Love of the divine can operate.

Coming Alive, Words by Simon Gawley.  Posted in accordance with fair use principles

Love God and glory in all of it’s manifestations:   in nature, in plants and animals including other humans, in the rivers and oceans and most particularly in the divine dwelling within you, the God of your heart. Happy holidays everyone.

Copyright 2018 by Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven

 

Following Your Heart; Choosing Integrity in an Increasingly Fractured World

/ Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given Autumn Equinox Worship Service  September 23, 2018

Today I want to talk to you about following your heart.  It is actually much more complicated of a topic than it would seem on the surface.   We extol each other constantly to follow our hearts.   This is the go-to advice for the vast majority of human problems.  Whenever somebody is having difficulty making a decision between different life choices, they are inevitably told that the solution to their dilemma is to “follow their heart.”

We’re very good at generating perfect pictures aren’t we?  We’re not so good about actually defining what we mean when we tell ourselves to follow our heart.  In other words, when it comes to the concept of following your heart, we often don’t get the conversation translated from the spiritual realm into everyday life on Planet Earth.  My goal this morning is to provide a certain level of what I think of as “technical information.”  In doing so, I seek to bring Heaven closer to Earth.

When you think about it, it is not so surprising that we usually don’t REALLY know to what we are referring when we tell each other to follow our heart.  After all, in our country and in our world, we pay very little attention to what is going on within each individual.  We are too busy trying to handle the trillions of bits of data coming at us from all around us at every second.  What we process and understand of our world comes primarily from our physical senses.  It’s what we see and hear that gets prioritized by our minds, as well as what we smell and taste.  Even when it comes to what we often label as “feelings,” it’s those galvanic responses, those sensations that are generated by our nervous system associated with our outer skin, states like cold or hot, the comfort of a lover’s caress, the prickliness of an allergic response, the anxiety, surprise and pain if we step on a nail, that gets the most attention.

For every human being there are a whole slew of other possible internal states of being, states of consciousness if you will.  And this is where the internal landscape sometimes can get very foreign for folks.  Often people will refer to any sensation, anything going on within them as a “feeling.”  If asked to describe the sensation further, maybe they can say more about what the feeling is and maybe they have no words for it.  Maybe they can tell where it seems to be located, and maybe not.  We are simply not taught to attend to what the Christ would call the “Kingdom of God.”

At best we may have learned from a particularly mature adult role model or in a school or counseling setting how to label and appropriately express basic emotions.  We are rarely taught the finer viewpoints such as how to distinguish between emotions that are our own and those we have absorbed from others, much less what to do about the latter problem.

When we are not using our emotions for what they were designed–a communication system between the individual soul and it’s physical body, all kinds of distortions and conflicts become possible.

And emotional states themselves are really only the beginning. They are a statement of what our body is going through.  They can have little or nothing to do with who we really are, that is to say, who we are as spirit.

Some lucky few are taught to listen beyond a “feelings” level to their own internal voice.  Usually, however, they do so by revealing what is inside for the benefit of others.  A great poet or painter or musician might express their true nature as a spiritual being through their art.  But rarely do we validate the poet or painter who is dedicating unwritten poems to the universe within.  I know I am not the only one who as a child constantly sang songs to myself with no real need or desire to share them with any other person. Eventually the chaos of the external world drowned out my musical encounters that were a reflection of lived experience of the divine within.

How many of us are taught to converse with the indwelling divine, something available to any and every soul on Earth?  Anyone?

So in a world made blind to the internal, let’s define some terms, shall we?  What do we mean by following your heart?  The heart here is clearly a symbol.

Photograph of the heart muscle and the veins that support it. Posted in accordance with fair use principles

When we tell each other to follow our hearts, we are trying to tell ourselves to follow the lead of our fourth chakra.  This key energy center, also known as the “heart chakra” is in the middle of your chest occupying the same space as your aorta, the main artery of your physical heart. I don’t imagine any of you really believe that you should be following the lead of your physical muscle, the organ that pumps blood.   Certainly that part of your anatomy is an important player in allowing you to be alive, but so are many other components of the miraculous machine we know as the human body.

Just like there is an area in our head which we call the center of our head, that contains both the physical structure of certain parts of our brain as well as the energetic structure of our sixth chakra, we each also have an area in our chest that contains both the physical structure of a large part of your heart organ as well as the energetic structure of our fourth chakra.

The fourth chakra is usually one of the last to fully open because as the chakra that regulates attraction, it can become a major center for stored pain. Many of us are attracted to pain. We seek it out. It is what we have always known and we tend to recreate over and over different versions of the same pain. It takes a lot of experience in the world and spiritual majority to understand we can use the energy of our fourth chakra for an entirely different purpose.

Just as the center of your head was designed to be the main resting area, the seat if you will, of your consciousness, the area in the center of your chest was designed to be the main resting area or the seat of your connection with the All-That-Is, that aspect of the divine that is everywhere and is everything, that is all of life.  Other names for this area include the “God(dess) of your Heart,” and the “indwelling-God or Goddess.”  You can experience the Creator in a thousand different ways but it is in this sacred place of connection within your own space that should you choose this with “all of your heart” the felt presence of your Creator can be at its most pure.

So let me tell you a little about the fourth chakra, this “heart” that our instincts are telling us to follow.   In classes I don’t speak about it very much because quite frankly, it is one of the last parts of an energy system about which most of us are capable of learning.

For those of you who are meditating on a regular basis, there is a natural progression that happens in your growing mastery of internal processes and your development on a spiritual basis.  Development is unique to each soul but it follows certain common pathways.  Just like the infant needs to learn to sit before it can walk, and walk before it can run, spiritual development often comes in stages. One sort-of-gross generalization that can be made is that individuals typically learn to clear out, balance and more effectively use their lower three chakras, the ones that contain information primarily related to manifesting on Earth through matter; as well as the upper three chakras, the ones that contain information primarily related to manifesting spiritually using the resources of the Heavens. . .before they put it all together.

The fourth chakra has many important roles to play in our spiritual life including helping us transcend our fear of mortality. It connects our physical body to other energetic bodies including our own. This piece is “Let Your Heart Shine Even in Death” by Myron Dyal, used by permission of the artist.

It is in these latter stages that one typically begins to concentrate on the clearing and developing of the fourth chakra.  The fourth is the energy center that requires the most balancing of both physical and spiritual, the most about creating Heaven on Earth.  You might work on an important fourth chakra picture here and there that is keeping you from otherwise progressing in other areas; but you are not likely to be very focused on your fourth chakra until you are fairly far along with your spiritual development.  It is one of the last pieces of the puzzle.

I think it is fair to say that most of the people in this room (including myself, I hasten to add) are currently facing the challenge of learning to own their fourth chakra and employ it for that which it was designed.  In fact I would venture to say that it is really the challenge facing most of humanity in present time.   Think of it as we human animals trying to overcome a lack of integrity.  Used here, I’m not talking about lack of “integrity” as some kind of character flaw.  I’m simply talking about “integrity” as all parts working harmoniously together.

We are each of us an intricate work of art learning to create as spirit in the physical world. Sculpture is by Susan Beatrice of All Natural Arts and is posted in accordance with fair use principles.

To make something work well first one has to assemble all the parts, throw out the ones that do not function any more, sometimes manufacture new ones, get all the pieces that are going to be rubbing up against other cleaned up, greased or oiled, and assembly it all into working order.

Right now we have a civilization based on a bunch of parts, most of which are obsolete or rusted,  crucial pieces missing altogether and everything slapped together with a bunch of duct tape, pretending to ourselves that it will now run.  More to the point we have a bunch of individuals often with great intentions who are at war with the out-of-present-time parts of themselves who actually think that the war they are fighting originates from other people.   It does not.

The fully activated fourth chakra understands that all is connected. Our physical bodies are not separate from the body of the Earth.

Since everything outside of you is in one-to-one correspondence with what is inside of you, all the conflict in your world can be resolved by working from your own energy system.  (It’s not that the strife in the physical world no longer exists when you are fully integrated.  It just does not exist in YOUR reality.  You can be content, even as the world goes to Hell in the proverbial hand basket).  From this vantage point there is only peace.  The conflict of the outer world will wash over you but not be experienced by those with a different purpose in their heart.

 

Jesus of Nazareth knew all about the kind of profound peace that comes from within, the peace that comes only from true connection with God; and he knew it was not the kind of peace that many would even recognize.

The peace of the Christ arises from freely surrendering all of one’s being to Love, aka the All-That-Is. In that space there is no need for or even possibility of power games, only the realization that all of life arises from, reflects, and results in the Created Order.

In his words from John Chapter 14, Verses 27:

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither and do not be afraid.”

If you want to be at peace even as the world around us continues to deteriorate into chaos and disharmony, keep up the good work of grounding and meditating and working to clear what presents itself as obstacles to your greater growth.  Release those aspects of your past that are in your way of adapting integrity as your chosen state of being. Jesus is one of our greatest teachers here.  Follow his lead and make your heart chakra a sanctuary place for your connection with the divine.

Resting on the Heart of Jesus

There is a reason why medieval pictures of The Christ frequently show him displaying a flaming heart.  His integrity was complete, and so this Son of Man as he initially liked to refer to himself, became the Son of God, and showed us how each of us could achieve knowledge of the Kingdom of God within thorough the lived experience of the All-That-Is.

In my opinion you do not need to subscribe to what I like to call “the directional deficits” of traditional Christianity to follow the Christ. You don’t need to invite Jesus into your heart.  The Christ is already there.  You just need to turn within, pay attention and desire with all of your being the communication with and conjunction with the God of your own heart who awaits your presence.

Copyright 2018 by Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven

The Code-Switching of Time; Flowing Gracefully among Past, Present and Future

/ Church of the Harvest

 

From a Sermon given Summer Solstice Worship Service  June 24, 2018

Code-Switching is a linguistics term.  It was originally developed to describe what happens for people who speak two or more languages.   As the information age unfolds, the term “code-switching” has increasingly also been applied to the experiences people can have of moving suddenly between different parts of human society, such as what people of color sometimes experience when they go back and forth between their ethnic community and the mainstream world.

This morning I want to talk ultimately about code-switching in a different context. I want to explore switching between different parts of the time-space continuum.  It strikes me as potentially very useful if those of us who are actively developing a spiritual perspective can add to our skill set moving through time with greater awareness.

The time aspect of the time-space continuum weaves throughout all of the created order, treasures to be discovered when we are ready. “Treasures” by Maggie Vandewalle of Maggie Vandewalle Watercolors. Used with permission of the artist.

So let’s start by talking about code-switching linguistically speaking.

Language is not as cut and dried as it might seem at first glance.  Every language in the world is unique, not just in the way each sounds, but in the way each is structured. And what meaning it actually evokes. Each collection of human beings, every culture has its own energy.  Each language arises from a different shared history, an idiosyncratic set of common experiences, what we around here would call a matching set of pictures.  These create a unique set of values that guides how that culture operates in present time, and where it attempts to go in the future.  These values also shape where the group focuses its attention, how and about what the individual members think, and therefore how its members express itself when its members communicate with each other, and with the rest of the world. The very neuronal pathways of our brains adapt to that to which we are paying attention.

 

 

We connect with the physical world primarily by expanding on what we already recognize. Awareness builds in an ever-expanding spiral of experience.

New neuronal networks that are utilized grow and expand, quite literally branching out.  The parts of our brain we don’t use fall away, or to use the scientific language, the neuronal connections are pruned.  We shape our bodies to a large degree with the help of our brains by the decisions we make in attention.  Then often, too often really, our bodies shape us.  On the surface, much of this drama gets played out by language.

When one learns a “foreign” language, it is much more than a process of selecting a word from English, and then simply substituting the equivalent word from the other language.  If you want to tell a member of the Sami people of Scandinavia and Russia that it has begun to snow, you have to select between 170 words for snow.   For these people, understanding the nuances of snow is critical to their survival.  They pay a lot of attention to it.  Consequently, they have one word for ice that lasts year after year, a different word for the layers of crystals that form when the seas first begin to freeze, and another for when the ice is filled with holes like Swiss cheese but is good for polishing sled equipment and so on.

It’s not just nouns that can’t always be exchanged.  If you want to communicate with a native Japanese speaker, you are going to select between many personal pronouns that differ based on the gender, age, relative social status of the speaker and the gender, age and social status of the audience, as well as how formal the setting is where the conversation is happening.  These choices are not surprising for a collectivist society with a large population who has had to learn to live together relatively harmoniously on a relatively small island.  They have learned to pay attention to the subtleties of the social fabric in a manner that we Americans with our history of living on thousands of acres of land and our resulting “Wild West” mentality have not.

And what about nonverbal language?  When someone from India engages in head wobble, how do you know whether they are saying “yes,” “no,” “OK,” or “never mind?”  Do you know how many separate cultures, religions, castes, and other human groupings have found their way to the Indian subcontinent?  Nonverbal language that can be transmitted between people who speak different verbal languages is pretty important in that part of the globe.

Successful code-switching involves understanding energy.  You cannot become truly fluent in a second or third language until you pay attention to what is underneath the surface words.  Linguistic code-switching involves understanding that words are symbols. Words point to possible meanings but you still need to understand the larger context, still need to look at what is under the surface if you want to accurately send or receive a message with another human.  When you are exposed to the basics of the other group or person’s shared pictures your brain will then have what it needs to create enough similar neuronal pathways to become aware of the meanings beneath the words or gestures that other person or group is using.

Because we are talking here about reading energy, we are talking about a cognitive process that is VERY rapid, typically below the surface of one’s awareness.  I like the term code-switching because the switching part is quite descriptive.  It’s as if one is immersed in one worldview one second, and then suddenly a switch is thrown and you are part of an entirely different mental universe.  It’s not just the addition or subtraction of a few facts here or there.  It’s a major shift of consciousness.

God designed our bodies to be able to process a tremendous amount of information but at the present time, only a few individuals have ever mastered enough of their energy system to do what is required to create spiritually through physical matter to the degree necessry to access the broader perspective of which we are all capable.  At this point in human evolution, it is enough that some people are learning to switch back and forth between to what they are generally paying attention and perspectives based on a different set of life experiences.

Typically in order to survive, ethnic minorities in the United States have had to pay attention to the values of the dominant society.  By contrast, white people have not had to pay attention to the culture of other groups.  We can if we want but we have not had to.  Many white people have been very confused by the term “white privilege,” seeing it as some kind of intrinsic judgment.  I don’t believe it is.

Words can have very different meanings depending on life experiences.

Look underneath the surface. Remember that words are just symbols, and the meaning of any symbol can be controversial.  In my mind “white privilege” is just a way of saying that people with European ancestry have the option of not paying attention to the ways our particular history has shaped the national environment.  Folks who do not appear European in ancestry have had a different history resulting in a different perspective that requires paying attention to aspects of our society we whites “take for granted,” i.e. do not even notice.

Once you can code-switch, whether it’s from one language to another, or from one culture that shares roughly the same language to another, you can code-switch in multiple situations.  The essence of successful code-switching is looking beneath the surface at the same time as tracking what is happening in the outer world.

You all do that every time you meditate.  The more time you spend in meditation, the more you hone these essential skills. Code-switching is truly a spiritual journey.  Once you train yourself to be conscious of both the outside and the inside, you are on the way home.  As Jesus of Nazareth said in Saying 22 of the Gospel of Thomas:

“When you make the two one and make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside and the above like the below . . . then you will enter [the kingdom of Heaven].”

 What I am asking you to do now, is consider extending your developing code-switching skills to Time itself.  There is not really much of a difference between switching between your own worldview and that belonging to another person; and switching between your own history, your present and your future.  Really, you are not the person you were in the past, nor are you the person you will become.

It all comes down to making choices about paying attention.  What you seek becomes stronger; and that from which you turn away disappears temporarily or even withers.  When it comes to code-switching the time-space continuum though, there are a couple of tricks to keep in mind.

Humans have been trying to understand time for as long as we have been here on the planet. This astronomical clock from Prague is about 600 years old.

This morning I want to go over two of them.

First of all, recognize that living in the present moment is the goal, the spiritual destination if you will. Many people who speak about spiritual development will stress the importance of learning to be in present time.  There are literally hundreds of books on the topic.  Present time is a foundational teaching in many religions, particularly Buddhism but many others as well.  It is also an important concept in secular circles.  The whole mindfulness thing which has become such a huge component of contemporary mental health counseling and indeed, popular American culture, is another version of this viewpoint.  Some folks even advance the perspective that to be in the present moment is the whole point of living.

There is some truth to that perspective . . . but it’s not the whole truth.  What is vital about the present is that it is where the body lives.  Your body really only understands the present.

To the extent that you can.

Many of you in this room have had the experience that as you ground and work with your energy system, things that belong in the past and the future will often surface that need to be cleared.  It can be very confusing when one runs across intense emotions that have no basis in anything going on around you.

Experienced meditators can also feel stark sometimes excruciating physical pain for which there is no reason other than you have triggered something that has been lying dormant which the body immediately assumes is happening at the moment it is triggered.  The pain can be a trace memory from your past or a piece of energy you as spirit have put in place for future reference.  If it is important enough to surface, one must learn to address the issue in present time in one’s meditations.  One way of doing this is by recognizing that you are out of present time, then reassuring the body that the discomfort that is being felt is not real, i.e. is not really happening; and then using the meditation techniques you all know to clear what has you in the past or future.

The irony is that you have to be in present time enough to do that much. Otherwise you will just store the out-of-present-time experience in your energy system and any pain or emotion attached to it will come up a different time when you think you might be able to address it. We need to be at home with ourselves, present in our bodies, and slow down enough to notice how our physical form functions and moves around Mother Earth.   Grounding is a great tool for helping you be present in your body, as well as giving you a means to release what you have brought up for healing.

There are whole medical diagnoses that fundamentally are about someone as spirit  not being sufficiently in the body in present time, things like fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, many types of migraines, and various autoimmune disorders to name a few. These are real conditions with very uncomfortable physical symptoms, but like any underlying chronic illness or disease process they start as energy blocks when spirit is not working enough with its body, such that the body resorts to screaming at us to try and get our attention.  Pretty much all of us have a lifetime or two (or three, or six, etc)  like this.

The soul can crave the creation of “failure” in order to learn where it does not want to go and prepare for what it ultimately does want.

For spirit, it is not always a priority to notice what the body is going through in some lifetimes.  Other adventures  are more pressing. Remember that for spirit there is no time; and remember also that emotions and pain properly belong to the physical world and not the spiritual realm. Therefore, depending on what each spirit is attempting to learn, sometimes it would rather discard the body it has that round, and start with a new one rather than take the time to slow down and work with it.

 

 

I hasten to add no one should be criticized or blamed for having heath challenges and failing to recognize the energy component to them.  Human societies, particularly in the Western world routinely marginalize and persecute those who attempt to cultivate awareness of energy.  The jig is up, though.  The time-space continuum is changing. Awareness of working as spirit through matter is becoming a requirement of maintaining life.  We can’t keep trashing the bodies we are given.  Too many human animals have been doing so compulsively for too long, resulting in an increasingly trashed planet.  If we are to survive, we must all learn to be present in our bodies to a larger degree including bringing up and clearing the levels of energy we have stored in the past or the future, however painful.

This can actually be a fun exercise, if you let it.  As they say in the New Age movement, there is a reason it’s called the present.

Second of all, and this may be the new part for some of you, recognize that living in present time is the goal, but PLEASE, pretty please, don’t make a perfect picture out of it.  You know the drill.  Perfect pictures aka expectations will always slow you down from learning what you need to learn, and get in the way of you going where you actually are trying to go.  As long as you maintain the idea of being in present time as a full-time requirement for yourself, you will be beating yourself up every time you notice your mind is in the past or future, and thereby adding more garbage that eventually you have to clear from your system.

Present time is the destination but to get there, you have to make the journey. We’re not there yet, probably not even very close.  Those that are fully in present time generally don’t need to be here on Planet Earth.  We’d be learning something else in some other part of the universe; or we’re in our final resting place, having fully merged with the heart of God, like the Christ.

If any one of the amazing people in this room had even the majority of their energy in present time, the roof would probably blow off. Literally. Think about it.  Present time is where your power is.  If all that enormous amount of energy you have tied up in the past and in the future, was sitting at rest within your body as you sit there you could literally as the Christ pointed out, move mountains.

When people sleepwalk through life as most everyone does almost all the time, the experiences that you create as spirit are stored somewhere in your energy system until such time as you are able and willing to process those experiences and come to terms with them as the learning events that they are. We don’t get to just leave the past in the past and truly move on.  We can only repress our awareness and pretend to move on until such time as our eyes are open enough to see a path through the learning.

The idea that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it has truth to it for both individuals and groups of people. You can certainly outgrow your history, and at that point, let it fully go.  To do that though, you have to face it squarely, with all its pain and all its emotion, and all its glory.  You have to milk all the experience for the learning that you set out to do when you created it.  Very few people want to do this.  Even fewer know how to do this.

Much of the world that human animals have created on a physical level that is no longer useful to us has simply been abandoned. Some has been reclaimed by Nature but most is just lying in wait for us to clean up at another time.

Most people prefer to repress the parts of their individual or collective history that is painful and/or that they don’t know how to handle and fall prey to the Maya.  Unfortunately then one just recreates the essence of the experience over and over until one is forced to deal with it.

 

 

 

 

 

That is why we have so many ungrounded citizens and political figures right now acting out Imperial Rome at its most brutal, slavery of African-Americans in the early days of the United States, Nazi Germany, etc.

One of the main problems with political as well as religious leaders at this point is that most are quite out of sync with present time. When this occurs Mother Earth and its inhabitants are at great risk. Bizarro comic by Dan Piraro posted in accordance with fair use principles.

These people are caught in a horrific hate-filled purgatory of not having enough presence to actually release the past. Even as we block the spread of their hateful actions, those of us who “know better” need to bring whatever compassion we can muster to these lost souls.

Similarly living in the future can be a trap.  Dreaming about possibilities, setting goals, making plans and all is important, but if you have too much of your energy in the future, those possibilities and goals just move farther out of your reach.

Bottom line:  What’s a person to do?  Be aware of past and future, but honor to the greatest degree the present moment.  Visit the future and the past, but live there as little as you can.  When you need to dream more, plan more or otherwise be in the future, read science fiction books or listen to TED talks from visionaries, go on travel sites that talk about the places you would like to visit, and immerse yourself in the many artists who expand our viewpoint through painting or other works of art.

Great art can reach below the surfaces and awaken spiritual truth but it does this using the physical senses, thereby engaging the body as well.  This piece by Wassily Kandinsky called the “Deepened Impulse” from 1928 is thought by many to represent the Big Bang, the foundational act of creation in our universe as spirit in matter. Posted in accordance with fair use principles.

When you need to raise your vibration to the next step by pulling some energy from the past, look at old diaries or family photo albums, go to high school reunions, watch the history channel or historically-based dramas or listen to musicians that have accompanied you on your journey in life. Code-switch your perspective as much as you need step-by-step but keep in mind the goal is to be more present with yourself, your body and the indwelling God.

Be in charge of the process. You will know the difference between being a visitor and a resident of past or future if you just pay enough attention. Make conscious choices.  If you find your thoughts going to the past or the future when you don’t want them to, get some help.  Schedule a healing or a massage, see a therapist or someone else who can assist you to work through emotion, sing or draw or knit, watch a funny movie with your love or spend more time in Nature.   It is your God-given body and you can learn when to be more fully in it; and when to take a break.  

Do the sometimes-difficult work a little at a time, to find yourself and your place in the awareness of God’s miraculous universe.

Copyright 2018 by Rev. Dr. Resa Eileen Raven