Praying for Peace; A Contradiction in Terms?

August 18, 2024 / 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.

Warriors and Peacemakers

March 28, 2024March 30, 2024 / 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.

Love in the Time of Wars and Rumors of Wars

February 8, 2024February 9, 2024 / 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.

Death of the Old World; Birth of the New

December 8, 2022 / 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

Passion for One’s Purpose: The Great Unfolding

April 12, 2022April 13, 2022 / 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.

Power: Pure and Simple

March 8, 2022March 8, 2022 / 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.

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

June 30, 2021July 1, 2021 / 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.

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.

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.

The Shadows that Betray: Choosing Love in Times of Evil

June 7, 2021 / Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given Summer Equinox Worship Service on March 21, 2021

It is springtime, the point in the natural cycle of Mother Earth of regeneration and renewal. Further it is spring of 2021, a time when many people are breathing a sigh of relief as things, at least in the United States, have an air of emergence from the dark days of winter and the darkness of the past year. Most of us in this community seem to understand that we have been given temporary reprieve from the challenges set before us; and that there are more to come. For now, however, we can rejoice in our successful perseverance, give thanks for the bountiful assistance we have received along the way, and recommit to the Creator-of-Us-All in weathering the days ahead.

This morning I want to talk a lot about dichotomies, and working with them successfully. I was asked to speak about evil which certainly is a relevant topic given how it seems to be lurking at every turn in the road these days. In these apocalyptic times the heat has been turned up and the creepy crawlies have come scurrying out of their corners, and creepy they are indeed!

Many segments of the world may have come together rather quickly to take on the COVID-19 virus, but we are only beginning to even look at, much less address the energies that made its entrance into our collective lives necessary. Essentially we have ripped off the bandage that was covering the wounding of our shared world. There is going to be a period of bleeding, hopefully followed by some genuine healing of the underlying disturbances that caused the injuries in the first place. The lack of balance, the inability to negotiate dichotomies can be seen as the source of the injuries. So let’s talk about evil and its place in that imbalance.

The evil in the world has been so plentiful and profound, that many have chosen to shut down their own world in a vain attempt to avoid the pain it causes them to view it. Limiting one’s perspective in order to avoid working through what is triggered by viewing the truth may work in the short term. . .but it typically causes even more damage in the long term. This image of suitcases taken from Nazi concentration camp victims in Poland is used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

What is evil? I could easily offer an entire sermon just trying to define this term. Given that it is a hotbed of thoughts and feelings comprised of a seemingly endless myriad of social programming there are probably as many meanings to this word as there are people on Earth. All words are symbols to some degree or another, and words that have been used to contain the cognition, affect and behavior of those that use them over centuries, words that are used to convey religious concepts, words that reflect deep fears and other debilitating sensations are particularly chock full of energetic bits that snag and ensnare the matching pictures with which humans communicate.

On these fronts, the word “evil” checks all the boxes. Just about anything a human being says, does or is can be and has been labeled by another human being as “evil”.

Perhaps a commonly-held meaning upon which many could agree is what it is not. Evil. . .is not good. The concept of “evil” is often captured by its juxtaposition on the opposite end of the dichotomy of good and evil.

For some people, the word “evil” is reserved for something they see as profoundly not good, i.e. people and events that live out their experience on the extreme edge of the good-evil continuum. You will hear me on occasion talk about evil as someone who is so disconnected from themselves, so ungrounded as to cause greater suffering; or someone who is so lost that they attempt to force others to their will by violence or other horrific means. I try to bring as much neutrality and compassion as I can muster to the discussion of even these extreme attempted transgressions against God’s created order, but my analyzer sometimes has me tripping awkwardly when I am trying to talk about those playing out the extreme end of the evil side of good and evil. At those times I try to step back a bit, or maybe I should say, step up in my viewpoint.

So what exactly is “evil” from a spiritual perspective?

In the Bible, which is the foundational document for the Abrahamic religions followed by approximately four billion people on this planet there is the tale of the creation of the natural world. The Book of Genesis says our ancestors were told by the Creator that they could eat any of the abundant fruits of paradise with the exception of that which grew on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They were informed that if they ate from that particular tree, they would experience Death. And of course, you know what happened then.

Pay attention to the message there. Like any sacred text, the Bible is symbolic yet purposeful. We are being taught about one of the most, if not the most primary dichotomies with which we struggle on Planet Earth. Good and evil have been right there with us from day one. What is more, human animals were given the choice from the very start about whether or not we wanted to play out this dichotomy. Apparently we decided to go for it. We could have made a different choice. We did not. We choose to experience dichotomies.

Also take note the use of the word “knowledge” of Good and Evil. God was not advising us that there would be no good and evil if we did not partake of feasting from the Tree bearing its name. He was telling us that the choice was between “knowing” about good and evil and presumably not knowing about it. What I hear from this is that the choice was about what we were going to undergo in our lived experience, in other words in our embodied form. Because we choose the option that included experiencing good and evil with our physical bodies, subsequently we signed up to experience death.

Most organized religions and spiritual traditions recognize death as an illusion, an artifact of the physical body which has little to do with real life, aka as eternal life. This image of Life and Death by Liliflor Arte is used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

So here we are in the springtime of 2021 having just experienced a global pandemic that killed thousands. with many more to come. We are living currently in a world dying of “natural causes” so to speak, as the environment around us crashes and burns. Death is everywhere, as is life. The stories of individuals and groups of individuals rapidly coming together against all apparent odds to support each other during these times of crises are as plentiful as the stories of disaster, betrayal, and loss. Full-blown evil is clearly staring us in the face, but I would argue so is full-blown good.

We are playing out the dichotomy of good and evil accompanied by death, as we have chosen to do.

What is in store for us now? Are we stuck on a dying planet? It might feel like that at times, but that can’t be the outcome for the planet as a whole. God created the world as a whole and only God can destroy it as a whole. We can destroy pieces of it, including our own individual and collective lives, our happiness, etc. but the world in its entirety doesn’t belong to us. So what now? To answer this question I refer you back to the invocation used to start this service, a famous but pretty much universally misunderstood passage from John, Chapter 14, Verse 27.

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

I believe the Christ here is talking about a kind of peacefulness that has heretofore been absent on the planet in the lived experience of human animals. He is NOT talking about the absence of conflict, which is how most people think of peace. He IS talking about having transcended dichotomies.

He surrendered his entire being to the All-That-Is, the Father, the Mother, Allah, God/Goddess, the source, the divine, however you want to call it. As an individual soul, he made the individual choice of his own free will that allowed him to transcend the need for dividing the world into body and spirit, good and evil, or any other seeming opposites. There is a different kind of peace that awaits those who transcend dichotomies. He experienced this different kind of peace. The rest of us have yet to explore that territory.

Rumi is talking here about a very subtle but profound shift of consciousness. When spirit in body lives this Truth in every fiber of its being, there is no longer any separation from anything on Planet Earth. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles

As we work through the pictures that divide us from our true nature as spirit, as we work to deenergetize the projections onto others of these pictures, we find ourselves drawn closely and closer to the sweet spot in the center of the dichotomy. As we do so, the extreme edges, those that reflect the transgressions almost all of us would be tempted to label as evil, fall away of their own accord. But also as we do so, we have to confront the shadows. We shine our light as brightly as we know how to do at any particular point in time and space, and because we are not yet a part of the All-That-Is, our light creates a shadow of sorts. The irony is, the larger our light, the larger the shadow.

Remember though, that darkness and light is itself is an illusion, a dichotomy which our brains use to maintain domination. We are still floundering in a landscape that we cannot yet see. So we continue to project what we cannot see in ourselves onto others as a means to heal as we stand in our own way. The healing often become easier on our bodies as we retreat from the extreme edges, but our myopic vision remains until we no longer choose it.

Light and darkness is just another dichotomy, a trick of our human animal brains to try to make sense of our world by prioritizing the physical body’s viewpoint. Spirit knows no such bounds. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

Is there a reason for hope? Absolutely! The Christ and others have shown the way. As one continues to work through the pictures that divide us from our true nature as spirit, the sweet spot increases and eventually the “sides” between good and evil shrink until eventually they disappear entirely. Then there is only wholeness. This is the transcendence of dichotomies. It is herein lies our peace. Therein lies our salvation. It is here that Heaven-on-Earth awaits us.

I’d like to start wrapping up my sermon this morning by talking about the message about good and evil embedded in the Lord’s Prayer.

I want to read you from the version of the Lord’s Prayer translated by scholar and Sufi mystic Neil Douglas-Klotz from the original Aramaic text. This is the line that in the King James Version of the Bible is read as “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” I’m going to focus here on the “deliver us from evil” part, which in the Aramaic is “Ela patzan min bisha.”

Don’t let surface things delude us; but free us from what holds us back (from our true purpose).

Don’t let us enter forgetfulness, the temptation of false appearances.

Rather, break the hold of unripeness that prevents good fruit.

From the evil of injustice—the green fruit and the rotten—grant us liberty.

Deceived neither by the outer nor the inner—free us to walk your path with joy.

Keep us from hoarding false wealth, and from the inner shame of help not given in time.

What I hear here is something completely missing in the KJV of these important words. I hear Jesus talking about time. According to most abrahamic versions of Genesis, when Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil they committed an evil act and are “sinners,” perhaps particularly so on Eve’s part. This false belief system has resulted in untold pain and suffering not only for human animals but for nonhuman animals. In this translation I hear rather that the introduction of good and evil into our physical world has resulted in humans forgetting where and who we are.

From a spiritual, perspective, time is an illusion. From a body perspective it is a potent reality. Simultaneously holding both of these perspectives as truth is the work of God. . .often requiring tuning into energetic sources of information through meditation or symbolic representations. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

The solution? Heartfelt desire to get beyond the delusions . . .and time.

Remember if you would, that spirit exists outside of time and space but our bodies understand only the present moment. By talking about the importance of acting neither too soon nor too late, Jesus is talking about the embodied spirit on Mother Earth. The Christ is telling us that we are prone to deluding ourselves; and teaching us that the trick to finding wholeness again is in the knowing that we are going to be groping around in the dark for awhile, but also having the faith that we will get there entirely when we are ready to be there.

In other words, this time around, we have to take our bodies with us into salvation. We have to make all the parts of us conscious, even the ugly ones, until they are no longer needed. We have to learn to love our own shadow, as well as those who bless us by reflecting back to us the pictures about which we have remained unconscious, no matter where they are on the “bad” part of the spectrum. That’s what we signed up for when we ate that damn apple!

Do you want to know how to overcome evil? One growth period at a time.

Justice, Mercy, Kindness and Karma in the Days of Reckoning, Part II

October 25, 2020 / Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given Autumn Equinox Worship Service on September 27, 2020

Last time we met as a community for our quarterly worship service to honor the Creator-of-Us-All I was drawn to talking about Justice, a topic that has exploded onto our cultural scene. Of course the subject of Justice is not a new one for folks. It’s pretty much been a central topic of discussion in human society from day one on Planet Earth. The new element is the Universe has chimed in on the debate, telling we humans as the dominant species on Earth that if we don’t get on the right page now, another set of caretakers will be found. In my last sermon I talked about it now being the days of reckoning, the days when people are often required to deal with very unpleasant situations that they have heretofore avoided, in order to settle old accounts.

Now, as Mother Nature moves from the season of harvesting what we have sown in the past. . .into the wintertime of rest and recreation, I want to do more of a deep dive into the topic of Justice. I want us to rise above the petty squabbles of individuals and groups fighting with each other over dominance; attempting to force their energy on others. I want us to take the next steps towards looking at life from a spiritual perspective, one that acknowledges thoughts and feelings; but does not stop there.

To do that, to find that place that brings all individuals and groups together in the incredibly beautiful, intricate field of unity that is our God-given heritage, what is required is for us to try to free our imaginations from the bounds of time and space.

The people in this church know a lot about space. We’ve all been meditating, grounding, centering, learning what is us and what belongs to others, employing the basic techniques that help us operate from our own energy field rather than trying to control others, in many cases for several years. In this discussion today let’s focus more on transcending time.

As you know, spirit is eternal and operates outside of the time-space continuum. Our physical bodies on the other hand, very much live in the world of time and space. That is all they understand.

As people develop spiritually, we learn the very tricky skill of walking the tightrope between knowing that on a soul level everything in the universe is happening simultaneously. . .but that our physical form requires us to divide our experience into segments that allows the ability to heal within the framework of matter. Tricky indeed. . .and if you do not yet “get this,” give yourself time! Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

This basic dichotomy, this difference in perspective between who you really are, and what your body wants and needs, is a source of tremendous tension for most people. When an individual is not working from within their own unique physical space, they often will not take into consideration and indeed, may not even notice their body’s needs. On a soul level, they will remain unfulfilled in a certain kind of way. This conflict, this disconnect, this lack of balancing between spirit and matter can lead to a great deal of suffering, disease, and outright warfare–an imbalance that then gets projected onto everything and everyone around us.

We all do this at least occasionally. To various degrees, at various junctures, we all get thrown off balance. We all are seeking to come into harmony with ourselves, to find and live in that sweet spot, that internal state of harmony between body and spirit, whether or not we are aware of it. We’re all here on Planet Earth to learn to create as spirit through physical matter and our physical body is where the action gets played out.

Some of us are a little farther along in the learning process than others of us. That’s not a statement of inequality. It’s only recognition of the fact that what you pay attention to becomes more of an issue in the unfolding of your life. So if you have been paying more attention to working from within your own space, and taking the body’s orientation towards present time more under advisement, you will be doing more of that harmony thing, that living-from-a-place-of-balance thing.

When we talk about reckoning of accounts, the old ledgers that require a balancing act right now are the things to which you have not been paying attention, if only because you have been paying attention to other areas. Maybe some of those other areas are worthy pursuits. Maybe some have been distractions, detours, and a waste of precious time. It does not matter to the universe. Contrary to our personal beliefs based on that incredibly HUGE amount of programming we have absorbed from our friends and relatives, schools and churches, neighborhoods and communities and countries, you are not being judged by the universe. What DOES matter at this juncture in our collective story, is that you pay your dues. Some people have a LONG way to go before they will achieve an ongoing sense of internal balance. Others have been working on themselves for longer, so the reckoning process for them right now is less treacherous.

This is the time of the Great Balancing. Image from Dr. Seuss is used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

So let’s talk about karma.

Funny thing is that when I realized that Justice was the topic on our minds and that to pursue this topic, we would need to talk about karma, I was not a happy camper. Personally, I don’t like to talk about karma. For one thing, an authentic discussion about karma requires people to accept the reality of reincarnation. I know what I had to go through to release programming that had me rejecting the concept of reincarnation. I’ve never particularly wanted to ask anyone else to make that difficult journey. I’ve always opted to follow the lead of one of my early spiritual teachers. That individual found himself being cross-examined in a court of law regarding his belief in reincarnation, as a means of trying to discredit another part of his testimony. With a great deal of patience, amusement and neutrality he said to the people in the courtroom something to the effect of “It doesn’t matter what you currently believe about reincarnation. You’ll find out about it when you pass.”

The proof is in the pudding, so to speak. And I’m usually interested in leaving it at that.

Young ones are often aware that this is not their first time on the Planet, but are typically subjected to considerable pressure to see things in a more socially acceptable light. Cartoon by Dave Coverly used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

The other part of the problem with talking about karma is that the word itself has gotten corrupted by the need of human beings to judge themselves and each other. Even in parts of the world like India where karma is a widely accepted idea, the meaning behind it has gotten distorted.

So let me say this really loudly for those in the back. KARMA IS NOT ABOUT THE UNIVERSE GETTING BACK AT US for our transgressions, for our stupidities, if you will. Karma IS about a simple cause and effect movement to energy. Like a boomerang, what you put out in the world inevitably comes back to you.

Nearly all spiritual traditions acknowledge this circular movement. In Western culture karma is often labeled the “Golden Rule.” The title is no coincidence, given that gold is the color associated clairvoyantly with the divine.

In the Christian tradition Jesus of Nazareth talked about the path cause and effect energy takes with his usual simple, profound language. Many have not been able to hear his real message through their own judgment of self/others. They assume Jesus was talking about God giving us a commandment, then condemning us if we do not follow it. What they do not understand is that he was talking about the essence of Justice and Wisdom; and simply advising us that if we do not choose to act wisely in accordance with the natural flow of energy, we will be worse for the wear, all Hell could break out, so to speak.

Matthew, Chapter 7, Verse 12 of the Christian Bible:

So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

Straightforward, that. What you get is what you sow. Period. End of story. It’s not more complicated than that.

The only “complication” per se, is that from a spiritual perspective there is no set time frame to factor in. I remind you that spirit is not defined by time. You can choose to act in a certain way, and the effect of that action can practically be simultaneous. For example if a person in a heated encounter shoots a gun towards someone else who is also holding a weapon pointed at them, there is an obvious possible immediate cause-effect sequence.

Then again, you can shoot a weapon and kill someone that no one witnesses and no one finds out about in this lifetime, other than the deceased person. That encounter is magnetized and sent into the ethereal plane; and that person or someone who is similar in some key way to them, someone who is in possession what we call around here “matching pictures,” can kill you or harm you or impact you in some other related manner a hundred years or a century later.

It’s not a matter of judgment. It’s not a matter of who is right or wrong. . .or somebody being a bad person and other individual being a good person. It’s also not about being in the wrong place at a particular time, and it certainly is not an accident. It’s not even about victimizer and victim despite the fact that in any isolated event, there is typically one or more of each. It just is. What you put out into the universe with your God-given free will comes back to you.

So. . .when you read in social media that some pastor who has rallied his parishioners against wearing face masks is now in the hospital deathly ill from Covid; or a senator in Oregon who left the state in order to block passage of a bill on climate change just had his home burned down by wildfires, you can label this karma if you want. You can even be thankful that those individuals are likely distracted enough by their personal suffering to not inflict further damage and suffering on their communities. But please refrain from the I-told-you-sos, or the snarky glee at someone else’s misery, regardless of how much misery others may have generated in your world to date. And for heaven’s sake, don’t choose to respond in a revengeful manner from a place of hatred.

Another way of looking at karma without using that “loaded” phrase is through the lens provided by Swiss depth psychologist Carl Jung. He discussed the unsuccessful balance of dichotomies within individuals that occurs when the individual rejects the parts of themselves of which they are not aware. Quoted in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

For your own well being, choose your reaction wisely. Acknowledge and be careful about how you are processing any emotional reactions. Live your life from the center of your head where you can be in neutral about all that you see within and around you, and thereby not project into the airwaves that which you do not yourself want to experience. Because you will. What I am giving you here is practical advice, not a moral reckoning.

The funny thing about karma is it is correlated with intention. You can feel whatever you feel including hatred and anger and other maladaptive emotions. Left unchecked they will certainly be corrosive to your body but they will not necessarily generate “bad karma” for you. You can hold whatever opinions you want, including prejudices and delusions. Again, these can be very harmful to your well being, your relationships and your inner and outer life, but they may not kick you in the teeth in a future incarnation. However the minute you combine negative emotion and maladaptive thinking into a desire for others to be hurt strong enough to become concrete, whether or not the other person seems to “deserve it,” eventually that harm will find its way to your doorstep. What counts here are words and actions based on your intent.

All human animals feel so-called “negative emotions” at times, although many have learned to heavily repress what they are experiencing. What matters is not what you feel. . .but what you choose to do with the feeling. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

I guarantee you that all of us have done far more selfish and stupid things in our learning process here on Planet Earth.You will not find it comfortable to have the universe have to strike you down with a deadly disease, take away your residence, or destroy some other aspect of your creativity in order to try to remind you of that fact.

Right now, in the twenty-first century, we are balancing the books. We are reconciling all those unresolved karmic balance sheets, the ones with debits as well as the ones with assets. Why? Because we need a clean sheet for a new world. As a whole, human beings have made enough self-serving bad choices that Mother Earth itself is endangered. That is not acceptable to the universe and it will not be allowed to continue. Our brightest path forward involves the cultivation of mercy.

Angel of Mercy, Photo by Robin Hill. Used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

Mercy is created when someone chooses compassion and/or forgiveness towards someone else who has wronged them, even when the person wronged has the power to do harm. This breaks the cycle of karma. It is one of the highest uses of the gift of free will from our creator.

Mercy is a statement of profound strength. Our society often tries to convince us it is a weakness but it is far from that. Do you think that when Jesus of Nazareth was crucified he died because he was weak? As the anointed one, the son of God, he could have leveled all around him, indeed all of Israel, with a single breath. Rather he chose to not fight with the ugliness around him and in doing so, quite literally embodied mercy towards all of humanity.

The crucification of The Christ may be one of the biggest mysteries and least understood events in human history. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

Without mercy there is no freedom for human animals from continuing to experience ages old karmic cycles that lead nowhere useful. Before The Christ, in the collective consciousness people only understood the Old Testament tribal thinking of an-eye-for-an-eye. After Jesus, a new foundational energy as reflected in the gospels was given form for human animals: love for all, irrespective of our sins. The Christ did not dismiss sin as nonconsequential. From a place of non judgment he eschewed it. Neither did he allow his crucifixion in order to do our work for us by having our transgressions go away magically based on belief in ideology. He simply showed us under the most horrific possible circumstances that we can transcend the cycle of retribution by living fully in the energy of mercy.

More than ever right now we need to choose the path laid before us by Jesus of Nazareth and other saints and spiritual leaders. We need to actively and consciously cultivate mercy. Jesus showed us the way forward, but only we can take it. Without mercy there can be no real justice. Any choices that answer wrongful actions with further wrongful actions are simply retribution. Revenge/retribution keeps us stuck on the unending carousel of karma which as I have mentioned is really not an option much longer.

Many people are leaving the Planet right now because they don’t know how to bring mercy to the table they have set before themselves. Many, many more will be doing so before we get through our transition period. In your world, allow the compassion of The Christ to infuse your life and your choices as fully as you can.

Have compassion for African-Americans and other individuals from ethnic minority communities, indigenous cultures, etc that have suffered horrible systemic racism, including some of whom are temporarily lost to their wounding by going after those they consider to have harmed them. Do this even as you take all the tangible actions to end racism that you can imagine. Follow the lead of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the NBA’s all time leading scorer and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom who recently remarked: “What I want to see is not a rush to judgment but a rush to justice.”

Shine mercy upon both those that support and those who oppose the tyrants, dictators, lobbyists, corrupt politicians and other political figures around the world who are actively destroying the natural world in pursuit of money and power, even as you report, speak out, vote, organize counter measures and take any definitive steps to honor Mother Earth that you can.

“The Throne Within,” poster by Ricardo Levins Morales with quote from Khalil Gibran used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

Forgive the trespasses of individuals involved with civil unrest in our cities, whether they are protestors, agitators, vandals, law enforcement, or whomever else you see as contributing to the mess, at the same time you do whatever it is you can personally think to do to stop the violence and bring forth peaceful resolutions.

Correct the horrible injustice of our economic system when it shows up in your environment and choose the righteous path of nonjudgmental action towards those at the top who would steal what belongs to those below them. For example, bear strong witness against the three multi-billionaires who for no particularly valid reason own more resources than one half of all other Americans but pray for their salvation. Educate others about inhumane financial injustices like the fact that in the last forty years, compensation for the heads of corporations in the United States has increased in many cases one thousand percent in comparison to the other people who are a part of those companies. Advocate and provide for those without adequate shelter or food and confront those who would exploit or abuse workers. Do what you morally can to confront this egregious inequality without adding further to the evil forces in play here.

Above all, be kind to yourself. I’m not talking about self-indulgence. I’m certainly not talking about that weird set of rules that pass as making one a member of “polite society.” I’m talking about real kindness. Mercy towards yourself, so to speak. To whatever extent you can, acknowledge your flaws, your ignorance, all those multiple times in this lifetime and others where you have actively hurt others as well as those times you have chosen unawareness because it was more comfortable or convenient than the truth.

This statue of the Buddha contemplating a lotus blossom–the universal symbol of spirit in the Eastern part of the world–appears to reflect the peacefulness that can be achieved when one brings balance to life. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

See yourself as you really are, and choose to love yourself anyway. Forgive yourself even if you are impatient and judgmental towards yourself and not yet good at forgiveness. Maybe you don’t even yet know what I’m talking about when I talk of mercy towards yourself. You don’t have to understand me with your mind, only with your heart. Embrace mercy towards yourself and others because that will pay some karmic debts and open the right doors for your salvation.

Julian of Norwich was an English mystic born in 1342 CE who understood that Justice is another name for God. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principles.

As we are reminded in Isaiah, Verse 30, Chapter 18:

The Lord longs to be gracious to you, and exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of Justice.

Blessed are those who wait for him.

Justice, Mercy, Kindness and Karma, Part I

July 18, 2020 / 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 5^th 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.”

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

December 25, 2019December 25, 2019 / 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 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.

Welcoming Scarcity in the New World

October 10, 2019October 22, 2019 / 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

September 5, 2019 / 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.

Turning the Other Cheek in A Time of Unremitting Violence

March 29, 2019 / Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given Spring Equinox Worship Service March 24, 2019

Last year—2018—was truly a transformational point in time for all of us on Planet Earth. As spirit we human animals who share the physical world stage and who have been endowed by our Creator as the species with the right to set the energy for all life on this planet, made a MAJOR fundamental shift in our collective mind.

There are many ways to talk about the new spiritual agreement that we put into place in the consensus reality, that agreement that has dramatically shifted the consciousness of many folks almost overnight.

Hatred is a learned behavior. It is not “natural” to humans but it is common. It can and must be unlearned.

One way of talking about it is that we have decided to base our world on love, not hate, as asked of us, indeed required of us, by our Creator.

Another way of saying it is that we have decided to embrace inclusiveness, not exclusivity. Or we can talk about Truth. A “tipping point” of people decided once and for all that we are going to base our life on the Truth that all life is connected, all that is Created by God, is an aspect of God and is God and therefore worthy of respect.

One example of the emerging new way of thinking.

However you label it, in order to turn the tide, enough people in enough places all around the globe said, it ends now. I refuse to knowingly trespass against other people just because I can and because I am part of a group that thinks of people outside of our immediate selves as “the other.”

Humans have perpetrated great horror on each other as a result of our ability and willingness to divide the world into “our” social group and the “others.” The divine knows no such separation. This picture is of Australian aborigines “owned” by their enslaver under the “Flora and Fauna Act” which was finally repealed in the 1960s.

Energetically, we globalized. We made the commitment to get over the tribal thinking that has stifled us for decades. Ultimately, nothing will be the same in our world.

The ramifications of this newfound commitment to universal life is profound. The actual unfolding of our new reality though will likely take years or decades to fully manifest, if we have that kind of time.

Unfortunately, while white supremacy and other hate-mongering may be going the way of the dinosaurs, all us dinosaurs are still at risk from a meteorite strike to end it all. But now at least we have a fighting chance.

There have always been occasional individuals among us willing to reach across the divide that human political and religious structures have imposed. Graves of a Catholic woman and protestant husband, Holland, 1888. Now is the time for collective awareness

We are finally on the right road; and we ought to celebrate that fact.The truly great news is that this new human commitment to creating in the physical world from a place of Love is no longer just the pipe dream of a new advanced souls, an occasional side trip of a brave person here or there, or the intellectually-based statements of people who are willing to talk the talk but not walk the walk. It is the intent within our hearts and an intrinsic piece of the group mind that connects us with our God.

At the same time we cannot be complacent because we’re not out of woods yet. For one thing, in the immediate next period of time there will be ongoing massive amounts of suffering. The meditators in this room will recognize that periods of rapid spiritual growth can be confusing in a VERY uncomfortable way for individuals. Between the old ways that are no longer functional and the new ways that have yet to manifest there can be an ocean of chaos, disharmony, and even danger. Multiple this dynamic a hundred thousand fold and you might recognize our current society.

For another thing, there is this other little issue that has to be resolved immediately if human animals are going to survive on the Planet, if we are indeed going to avoid a meteorite, nuclear war, shifting of the poles, whatever.

Now the real work begins: Growing beyond our physically-based senses to embrace the All-That-Is

Now that the consensus is we must base our relationships on Love, we have to decide whether those Love-infused relationships extend not only to other humans but to non human animals, to plants and our waterways, and to Mother Earth itself. In some ways, this is the greater challenge in the sense that it requires the most insight and the greatest behavioral changes.

So here it is spring of 2019. The beginning of a new cycle. What can we expect from a world-wide growth period? Also, what can we do as individuals and as a community to facilitate a graceful resolution of our upcoming battles centering on the natural world. This morning I want to talk about how we might use our time effectively as we shelter in place, so to speak, as we wait for various parts of the world to catch up with the new consensus reality. And I also want to drop a few hints for this body of experienced spiritual seekers as to what we might expect in terms of the next growth cycle. (More on that at our Summer Solstice gathering.)

Let me start by talking about where we are coming from, our shared history.

Art by Dave Granlund. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

You may or may not have noticed a recent increase in the attention being paid to history. By nature human beings are story-tellers and so we often construct narratives about our past to help us make decisions about our present and our future. Individuals keep family photo albums and diaries; schools display trophies won by their sports teams and offer history classes about our culture; organizations have archives, cities have their statues and historical sites, churches have their relics, and so on.

Poem and illustration by Rupi Kaur. Shown in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

In the United States in the last few months there has been an ever-growing retelling of our history taking into account other perspectives than have previously been brought into view. I’m not talking about those who are resisting the change process of our world by trying to rewrite the existing history books in order to impose their distorted perspective, “whitewash” our collective narrative (pun intended). These are the people who say the holocaust was no big deal, the founding fathers enshrined the Christian version of God in our political structures, slaves actually liked slavery, that kind of nonsense. I’m talking about the larger majority of us who are trying to flow with the changes and expand our awareness of a greater Truth than previously contained in history books.

In the sixties, when I studied the history of African-Americans in the United States and the history of women around the world, the resources for these stories were few and far between. There were only a handful of books on the subjects, almost no sources of information in mass media. Most people would give me a blank stare when I would even mention that there was something called women’s or Chicano or African-American history. Even my most ardent friends usually believed I was being weird and eccentric in thinking it was important to know more about history from the perspective of marginalized groups.

In these digital days in the United States we just finished an entire Black History Month and in a few days will complete an entire Women’s History Month in which commercial breaks for nightly mass media programming on our screens have been awash in images of the women and ethnic minorities whose contributions to our culture were heretofore minimized or overlooked, who are now being celebrated as pioneers and heroes and reclaimed by our collective story.

For spirit we know that time is an illusion. The body, however, operates in time as well as space. So why is there this increased spotlight on history? Why now and why to this extent? And what has this got to do with spiritual growth?

My take is that in order to create a world based on love as we have decided to do, we have to bring up the energy of not-love in order to let it go. We can do this by creating more situations where we feel/think/act in a hateful manner towards ourselves and each other. We can suffer through many more experiences of what doesn’t really work and we don’t really want. I am certain many in the United States will continue to indulge in that type of painful way of healing. However, many of us are pretty sick of using this method to change the energy. So we have turned to an alternative method of healing ourselves.

When we tell each other that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it, we are reminding ourselves that by viewing the past using the perspective of Truth we can break the karmic chains and grow beyond an outdated version of ourselves. As a society we can increasingly have love be the “new normal” by looking with new eyes at the experiences we have already created individually and collectively; and use those trips down memory lane to forgive ourselves for our trespasses, and forgive others who have trespassed against us.

Looking at human history however, can be tricky and potentially very disturbing unless your goal is changing rather than perpetuating problems.

Like everything else in the human experience, our brains like to dichotomize our experience. We fill our stories with heroes and villains and repeat a lot of myths that are very far from the Truth.

To use history as a source of healing, you have to look at the times we have been cruel and unjust, as much as the times we have been kind and brave. We have to tell the stories about our family or country or other group who have been mean and spiteful and stolen things as well as the times we have been generous and kind and produced great artists and interesting civic leaders for the benefit of our communities.

The Osage murders are said to be the FBI’s first big case. This picture is of tribal leaders, FBI staff and President Calvin Coolidge. It is from the Bettmann Archives and used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

Recently there has been a rash of stories coming into the light on social media that have helped the healing of our national soul. One such is of the Osage Indians who originally were forced from their ancestral homelands in Kansas to a rocky, presumably worthless piece of land in NE Oklahoma.

When oil reserves were discovered in Oklahoma, the Osage became some of the wealthiest people in the country. Some 50 years later about 60 or so of the Osage were then systematically robbed and murdered so that their riches could be stolen from them again, this time their personal wealth rather than their real estate holdings.

The Tulsa Riot fire-bombings were also said to have been the fruit of years of resentment by whites towards the area nicknamed the “Black Wall Street.” Jim Crow laws and segregation resulted in African-Americans in this area amassing a great deal of wealth in a manner that strengthened their community bonds.

Another resurrected part of the American saga that of late is finally being talked about is the Tulsa Riot of 1921. After blacks tried to ensure that one of their community members would not be lynched, a 35 square block of an all-black-occupied section of Tulsa was actually fire bombed by private airplanes owned by white folks worried that they were seeing a “black rebellion.” Somewhere between 300 and 3000 blacks were killed, and at least 1500 homes were destroyed leaving thousands homeless, in what is now being acknowledged as the worst riot in American history. We do not know the actual body count with any precision because this event was systematically covered up by white authority figures and did not make it into the history books we use in American schools.

It bears emphasizing that this method of healing the present and future by reexamining the past is effective only if we look at stories from a place of neutrality with acceptance for all involved who played a part.

Your power to change your reality is in the present moment. View the past as needed, but do not let yourself get lost to it.

“Perfect pictures” is a term for a certain type of very common programming that we have accepted into our consciousness, often originally for very good reasons. Perfect pictures can be quite deadly as they can act like a invisible Plexiglass ceiling that interferes with our evolving spiritual growth. They are a rigid view of how the world around us is supposed to be. Since we and the world seldom measure up to these expectations, they become a source of ongoing invalidation and suffering.

You have to get beyond the false dichotomies with which we view the world, those troublesome perfect pictures to which we are so addicted.

In actuality all human society is pretty damn flawed. Evil is everywhere in our collective narrative.

I think most of us can all agree that the actions taken by National Socialism in Germany, i.e. the Nazis, during the last World War were evil. It is to our great credit in the United States that we were a big part of stopping that horror. But can we let ourselves know that we also had a role in setting up that history lesson? Why are we not talking about the fact that the Nazis recruited IBM to design the new punch-card system that allowed them to track Jewish lineages? Truth be told, the numbers tattooed on concentration camp residents were an extension of American technology.

How convenient that we have forgotten that when US soldiers invaded Europe in 1944 not only were they using tanks and jeeps produced by American Motors, they were battling an enemy also driving tanks and trucks produced by 100-percent GM-owned subsidies. The cozy relationship between US business interests and the Nazis was acknowledged by Hitler maintaining a portrait of Henry Ford on his office wall in Munich. Ford and the senior executive for the GM factories in Germany were awarded the Grand Cross of the German Eagles for “distinguished service to the Reich.” It is well accepted that Hitler would not invaded Poland and killed approximately six million people without the new synthetic fuel technology provided by GM.

You have all heard the saying that history is written by the victors. What you may not have heard is that many historians think that this saying which is usually attributed to Winston Churchill, was actually coined by Hermann Goering, one of the greatest criminals of Nazi Germany. If the Nazis and their allies had won the war, our history books would be accounts of their supposed glorious and righteous achievements.

Right now in 2019, you are seeing a lot of folks trying to reexamine the past, but too often from a place of judgment that keeps them stuck in their sense of entitlement or victimization, depending on what role they have most recently been playing. It heals nothing; it does no good to perpetrator(s) or victim(s) to continue to see their experience as one-sided. You HAVE to be in the center of your head, you HAVE to be coming from a place of detachment to benefit from healing through a historical review.

This is a humorous depiction of an all-too-familiar confusion in the religious thinking of many. We are here on Earth to learn to co-create with God. It is neither entirely up to us as some believe in their egocentric way. . .nor is it entirely up to the divine who honors our freedom to screw up as much as we need or want to learn our place in the universe.

None of us are perfect. Only God is perfect. All we can do is commit to bridling our own maladaptive impulses and approaching the world with the clarity of love, as best we understand it.

This message is conveyed in Mark, Chapter 10, Verse 18 as well as in Luke, Chapter 18, Verse 19 of the Christian Bible. A man approaches Jesus of Nazareth to ask him how to obtain eternal life, and in his approach the man addresses Jesus as “good master.” Before even answering his question, Jesus rebukes him by saying:

“Why do you call me good? Only God alone is good!”

So here we have the Christ, the embodiment of the divine on Earth, reminding us to get over our perfect pictures about human life, because the only wholeness is the All-that-This.

Sometimes one can find Truth in the most unlikely of places. Here comic artist Dan Piraro captures both the prevalence of humans dividing our world into good-and-evil; and its place in our learning curve as we seek return to the divine. Image used in accordance with Fair Use Principals.

Finally, I want to talk a bit about violence. This has to do with the road ahead, the next growth period, the next issue about which the consensus reality must come to terms.

Violence is a particularly harsh form of trespassing against life, one that promotes a great deal of suffering. Violence has always been on the planet.

We have MUCH work to do to stem the tide of violence against holy Mother Earth. In this image a man seeks to honor the Hindu god Ganesha through the incredibly polluted waters of the river Yamuna in New Delhi, India, Many of the life-giving qualities of our waters in the United States have also been destroyed by humans.

There are many forms of violence including what we are currently doing to other life on Earth, but let’s focus right now on killing and over forms of overt harm done to each other.

Human beings learn by doing for the most part, and so we have been at war in a multitudinous fashion for thousands of years. Being prone to violence is really almost a part of our DNA. Currently, the United States is the major source of direct violence around the globe, in part because of the role we assumed after World War 2 of being the peacekeepers of the world. According to a new report by Brown University since 9/11 the US has spent nearly $ 6 Trillion dollars in 76 countries or about 39% of all nations, resulting in the death of around 500,000 people. This does not include the nearly 500,000 people killed in Syria. In many regards those of us ins the United States have the most to do, the most we must change.

Because guess what? This need to kill and hurt others is going to change. It has to! Violence is not consistent with a world based on Love. Either we are going to be moving violence out of our human repertoire . . .or we are going to be moving on. The decision about which trajectory we will be using will likely be made this year by all of us on a spiritual level. Therefore, I want to mention another great teaching from the Christ. Some might argue this is greatest of Christ’s teachings, but one that is routinely misunderstood: Turning the other cheek.

In Luke Chapter 6, Verse 29; and Matthew Chapter 5, Verses 38-42 Jesus states that if someone slaps you on one cheek, you are to offer them your other cheek. If someone steals your coat, offer them your shirt. So what is that about? I’m not going to say much about this crucial piece of information that ironically, has been the subject of thousands of fierce arguments over the centuries and dozens of wars.

On the other hand, I cannot walk away without some commentary on what it means to choose nonviolence in the current time of unremitting violence. Violence is increasing exponentially in our world of overt hatred towards other groups in the world, compounded by the problem of shrinking resources as we battle over the scraps left available in our dying natural world. I think we are going to see more wars, uprisings and mass shootings before we see less. I believe that 2019 will be the year in which the consensus reality decides whether or not there will be nuclear warfare or some other form of extinction event(s) happens for human. So what Truth do each of us need to understand and build upon in our individual lives to be a part of the solution to the group problem that is violence?

The Christ is quoted as talking about turning one’s cheek and offering more clothing to someone who forcefully disrobes us, in order to not resist evil. When Jesus himself was disrobed and tortured and crucified he was largely quiet. I believe he did this not to model for us being passive. He was and is God on Earth. He chose to not fight back but he participated fully in the events surrounding him. He could have easily killed his tormentors with a single glance, a singular thought: Romans, Jews and everyone else. Instead, he chose not to even utter a harsh word. He did remind all present that the scene being played out was done at the will of Almighty God.

This Black Jesus image is from Ethiopia around the 17th or 18th century CE. Ethiopia was the site of one of the earliest and most robust of Christian communities. Jesus of Nazareth was of Mediterranean descent and not the “white guy” often depicted in Western culture.

The Christ did not model for us turning his cheek as some sort of sophisticated form of rebellion, as some religious types have argued. What he demonstrated for us is nonresistance to that which was asked of him by his Creator. In choosing to surrender to the All-That-Is even at the cost of excruciating, unimaginable pain that would have caused even the kindest of souls to act from hatred, he transcended physical boundaries, and demonstrated a spiritually-based reality that humans had to that point believed was not possible He refused to return evil with evil. Rather, he remained loyal to the word of God, which is Love.

Many of us are dealing with our personal crosses right now, and many more will be shortly. If you find yourself a part of a world awash in a sea of violence, whether you do this by coming to terms with your own past, having ongoing struggles with others in present time, or being the witness for others in various stages of working through or getting stuck in their own narratives, remember the end game is Love.

Whenever possible, view the world from the center of your head, that sweet spot of balance between dichotomies where you have the best chance of living a path of nonresistance and acceptance. Heal the blocks that keep you from knowing your truest self as much as possible. And above all, follow the ways that allow you to regularly communicate with the God of your Heart, that aspect of the divine that lives within you. Your answers for all the challenges facing you will be there.

Or as Stevie Wonder tells us in the song to which we are about to listen: “Believers keep on believing; Sleepers just stop sleeping. Don’t let nobody bring you down. God is going to show you the higher ground.”

Following Your Heart; Choosing Integrity in an Increasingly Fractured World

December 1, 2018December 2, 2018 / 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.

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

July 6, 2018November 22, 2018 / 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.

For Thine is the Power; A World Based on Love Rather Than Corruption of Power

December 31, 2017November 22, 2018 / Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given Winter Solstice Worship Service December 2017

At these services recently, I’ve been talking a lot about climate change and the extreme weather events we have been experiencing nationally and internationally. It has seemed important to look at these occurrences from a spiritual perspective so we might be prepared as much as we can as individuals, and help things move in the right direction where possible.

This morning I want to take a step backwards and look at what is even the bigger picture from a spiritual perspective. I want to talk about energy, pure and simple. I want to talk about how the energy that we work with on Planet Earth is shifting. And in some surprising ways that you may or may not have noticed.

Energy is always dynamic, always in a transformative state, whether it is transforming in shape like a butterfly from a cocoon, or an ice-cube melting into liquid. Depending on the frequencies involved, this transformation can be rapid or slow, such as the difference between an ice-cube melting in the refrigerator or that same ice-cube changing shape in the sunshine.

Nikola Tesla, the Serbian-American who Einstein once called the “smartest man in the world” is singularly responsible for many key modern inventions such as light bulbs, radio, electrical motors used in cars and other mechanical devices, laser, robotics and X-ray technologies as well as our entire electrical grid. According to Tesla: “If you wish to understand the universe, think of energy, frequency and vibration.” 1899 photo of Tesla and his transmitter in his lab.

We know things are changing rapidly right now. Many of us are feeling vertigo as the vibrations transform the air around us, the Earth beneath our feet and even the very molecules in our bodies. This can be terrifying to those who have no accurate information about energy, and even scary for those of us who do. Most of the people in this room are consciously aware of some details of these changes, such as that the Planet itself is running kundalini energy intended to help human animals wake to their nature.

This morning I want to talk to you about another way of looking at big picture energy fluctuations about which you might not have thought. I want to address the direction of those enormous shifts going on.

You all have heard me say that we are all here on this world to learn how to manifest as spirit in the material world.

We are made in the image of our Creator. Hands are a tradition symbol of human creativity as there are important energy channels that run through our arms and our hands that manifest our creativity. This prehistoric tribute to creativity is from Cueva-de-las-Manos in Argentina. Photo by Pablo Gimenez posted in accordance with fair use principles.

For most people, how that process actually works, though, is a little on the dreamy side. That is hardly surprising because creating as spirit in the material world involves a lot of dreaming. Whether you start by dreaming when you are asleep or through daydreams happening in your waking hours, the creative process almost always starts with a dream. It starts with imaging something in the world that isn’t yet there.

We all have a plethora of dreams, some of which are passing fancies, whims in a way. It’s like we do shopping in a big store in the sky, and occasionally get distracted by the overpriced and poorly made objects set at counter height near the checkout stand.

Particularly when we are hungry, we get tempted to do impulse buying. For most of us though, these passing fancies get pruned out. They are culled and they disappear over time as we cease to pay attention to them. The energy involved with them goes elsewhere, becomes a different dream, a different creation. Those dreams that more fully activate us emotionally, cognitively, spiritually may change form a bit as we gain life experience and mature, but their essence only becomes stronger as we add more and more energy to them over time.

So one thing I want you to understand from my little digression into how creativity works, is that the trajectory here for the vast majority of creative projects, is that FIRST the dream, and THEN that which is dreamed can become “real” in the material world. Or as it says in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy Will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. “

When spirit is out of the body at night, all kind of possibilities are created. Subsequently some are brought into the physical world; and some are reabsorbed in the spiritual realm. Image by Brett Jones. This artwork is posted in accordance with fair use principles.

Notice the direction here. Notice that the direction here is that first there is God’s will in Heaven, and then it is done on Earth. FIRST comes the energy. THEN comes the manifestation in matter. This is the inside-out direction of the flow of energy. It is particularly strong and getting stronger in these apocalyptic times when the divine master plan is to make all things that have been lurking underneath the surface known.

(Inside-Out) Why is this direction important? For many reasons but one big one is because once you realize where change is really made, you can become WAY more efficient at it. We change things from the inside of us, where our thoughts and feelings reside, where our dreams either originate, or are experienced in conjunction with others dreaming of the same reality. Only then, when those dreams, those thought-forms, those prayers are sufficiently strengthened, can cosmic forces bring them to fruition. If you try to change things in the material world without first changing what is within you that is contributing to the situation, at the least you will be a hypocrite who is not likely to be taken very seriously by others; and at worst you could be violating free will at some serious jeopardy to your soul. This is what Jesus was concerned about when he said in Matthew, Chapter 7, Verse 3:

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”

This morning, though I want to talk about two other directional shifts that the world’s energy is taking right now that are pivotal. Because the reality is, the huge fluctuations in weather in our physical world are really only a manifestation of the ground swelling of energetic shifts we are all making within each one of us and between all of us. The storms and hurricanes and fires and such in Mother Nature are all very dramatic. . .but they almost pale in comparison to the storms, hurricanes, fires and seismic tidal waves going on right now within human consciousness.

Bhaktapur, Nepal after the 2015 earthquake

The energy trajectories I want to talk about besides from inside-Out is Top-Down; and Sideways. These are relatively new developments in human history and ones that I would like this powerful group of mediators, through your awareness, to help shape.

Top-Down I have been watching the heated national conversation about a new tax system in the United States with, among other things, amusement, a response I typically have when people are not aware of what it is about which they are really arguing. Keep in mind that money is just a material form of energy. If you listen carefully what you will hear is that pretty much the heart of the disagreement in the national conversation is what direction the energy should move. Should the energy move upward, as in the argument that when the lower socioeconomic classes have more to spend, the people with greater economic resources reap the monetary benefits; or should the energy move downward, as in the trickle-down economic theory?

So let’s step back again to look at the big picture. We know from anthropology that the earliest human civilizations, the hunter/gatherer societies, were almost always egalitarian in structure. Everyone had a voice in some form or fashion, and when leadership roles were needed, they were usually distributed among a mix of experienced elders, guidance from the spirit/natural world through shaman and other religious figures, as well as leadership by the most skilled and/or strongest clan members.

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, familial dynasties, and theocratic/civil governments who had the authority to intervene in human life but were sometimes removed from the real consequences of those interventions. Whoever held the political reins could advance their social and economic interests to the detriment of others not in power, and they could do so without having to see, feel or hear from the people affected by their decisions.

Now don’t get me wrong. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with hierarchies. As our military and first responders can tell us, they can be very efficient and vital, particularly in times of crisis. The dangers with hierarchies are two-fold. One comes when the people at the top of the pyramid have not worked through their own issues, have lost themselves to their individual ego(s), succumbed to the temptations of the material world, and forgotten for whom they work. And the second problem with hierarchies as a standard form of government which has grown exponentially in recent years, is that as the human population has grown, hierarchies have gotten taller and the distance between those at the bottom and those at the top much more steep.

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. Governmental officials and agencies are increasingly making monumental gut-wrenching, sweeping policy changes that change people’s lives dramatically from behind closed doors, figuratively and sometimes literally.

Hierarchy. When the distance is too great between those making the decisions and those affected by them, it wreaks havoc on human relationships.

Ten days ago, we watched three people on the Federal Trade Commission impose a business model on the way Americans use the internet, an action that will affect approximately 240 million individuals, and probably every organization in America. The Commission had to stop their proceedings right before the vote for unknown “security” reasons. We know that their decision was opposed by approximately 240 million people (83-87% of 287 million users) that they will never meet.

We are also watching those officials, who are still trying to listen to the public directly, get absolutely skewered verbally and emotionally, sometimes assaulted and even occasionally shot at by those on the bottom (such as happened to Representatives Gabrielle Gifford and Steve Scalise) because folks are so frustrated at not being seen or heard.

This morning I’m here to tell you that the energy is moving downward.

And I don’t mean the manifested energy such as money trickling down. I mean the universe is increasingly “setting” the energy at a lower level. Under globalization, the world will no longer be exclusively ruled by the United States despite the fantasies of our President and his followers. The federal government in the United States is being dismantled and though I pray it will be put back together again to some degree, I believe it will never be as vital as it once was in shaping our country. Assuming the world survives, those of us in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere will have our hands full bringing into line our own region and states, who struggle with their local version of corruption of power.

And this is how it should be. Because ALL power belongs to the Almighty, and if you are not using the power you are given in the service of the divine to help all of life around you, you have corrupted it. Which has become pretty much the norm for human beings, particularly in the modern era.

The sun has often been a symbol of the divine in indigenous cultures and depth psychology. Isn’t it interesting that on Planet Earth we are now experiencing a more direct interaction with the sun’s effects as a result of greenhouse gases?

Corruption Is a word that not only refers to political processes through bribery aka in the our times as lobbying and PACs. In the larger context, corruption just means something that is changed from its original intended use to something that is used incorrectly, but by doing so, is debased.

Power is something that was given to us by the Creator-of-Us-All, the fuel for us to create a reality based on Love. Instead of Love however, we have chosen to use our power to subject others to our will, our domination. We corrupted the power available to us and used it not to live such as to become the willing instrument of the divine to manifest its Love but rather, to force others to our way of thinking, to violate other people’s freedom and require them to do the bidding of our ego(s). And because ego can never fully satisfy, only Love can do that, we became drunk with power, always craving more. At this point, when I talk to students about claiming their power, they almost always initially bristle or get very confused because all of our experience with power is such that we equate it with power over other people; and not our own power used in the service of the indwelling divine.

Obviously we are awash in a sea of corruption of our own making; and it’s time to change that. As I have told you all frequently, when one misuses our God-given energy it is taken away; not right away, but eventually it always flows to the situation that is more in keeping with God’s will. Or as Martin Luther King says it:

Recently in a Christian blog of which I am fond a writer used a different euphemism for God: The Great Equalizer. Time for the leveling, folks. The Great Equalizer is bringing us to a greater state of sharing. I know it doesn’t look like that as we watch the HUGE and growing inequality of income and wealth that is occurring in this country and the world, even as our society increasingly demonize those with less. But you all are healers, and you know how it goes. When the universe decides to change, everything that is in the way of that change has to come up for healing. FIRST the inequality surfaces, and THEN the equalizing can happen.

Sideways Between Groups So the energy shifts that I want to talk about the most this morning are the sideways ones. There are significant shifts of power between groups of people that I think have been a source of confusion for most or all of us. To mention a few—there are the suddenly daily allegations of sexual harassment, personal intimate assaults by people with power, and discussion about the true nature of consent in sexual activity. There is an intense examination of the dynamics of white supremacy, arguments about whether or not racism in America is getting better or worse, and increased dialogue about our history of slavery: what it really is, and the best way to deal with it. And let’s not forget the tidal wave of anxiety and conflict around the topic of which group of people get to be Americans aka immigration, and our national history with indigenous Native American people. All of these discussions arise from and result in rapid fluctuations not only in the energetic field around the people having the conversations, but in our bodies and the Earth itself.

To date, there has been a need of sorts for humans to engage in strife, competition for resources, warfare and the ilk, if only to rule out what does not work. No longer. Now is the time to learn to engage in “friendly disputes” when perspectives differ.

Sometimes when I look at what we have stirred up most recently in our interactions with each other, I’m just amazed there aren’t more earthquakes and hurricanes and volcanoes erupting.

Sideways Within Groups The shifts in energy that are quite possibly going to affect those in this room the most directly are those happening in our very own closely held groupings, our families. For many in the United States, these might be the most profound and potentially confusing or even painful changes we have or will experience in our lifetime. That is certainly ironical since these energetic shifts are the ones most clearly foretold by the New Testament of the Christian Bible. Sideways shifts within families are the ones I hear people talking about with such anguish on television and in social media, particularly around the holidays. There have been entire programs devoted to how to behave at Thanksgiving when some of the family voted for Trump and others for Hillary or Bernie. Everyone seems to be talking about the divisions in America as if they are something new. They are not. The energy of our apocalyptic times is just bringing them up for examination and healing.

I’d like to read you what Jesus of Nazareth had to say about the energetic shifts that we would be experiencing in our families in the end times in which we are currently living. This same message is also in two sections in the Gospel of Luke but I’m going to quote his words as recorded in Matthew, Chapter 10, Verses 34-38.

Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace but a division.

For I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother and a daughter-in-law against her mother–in-law.

And a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

And whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

So before anyone panics, feeling like you might lose your family, let me tell you what I hear in these words. Let’s contextualize them. Remember that Jesus was a master of energy and knew everything there was to know about how it works. Remember that he understood the will of the divine, that at the point when he talked about family here, he had already surrendered his own individual will to the divine and was completely his father’s son, the embodiment of God on Earth. Many of you may recall from the stories in the gospels how he took some heat, that he had been criticized for not showing his mother/family more deference. The Christ made it clear to his followers that his love was for all beings equally, and that his allegiance to family, his tribe, did not trump his connection to all humanity.

So what I hear him saying is that if you embrace him, in his manifestation as the God of your heart; or as evangelical Christians might say, through your personal relationship with Jesus, any divisions between you and others in your tribe will arise, and that is part of the process. This is your cross.

Many people have an inaccurate understanding of the concept of karma. They think it has to do with being judged. It is not about judgment. It is about consequences. What you put out into the world energetically returns to you eventually. “Unfortunately” karma is not subject to the illusion of time. We can be off-balance and suffer accordingly as a result of experiences lifetimes ago and if we are not careful, we pass that suffering onto those around us. Instead we must learn to take up the cross of our own pain.

We all must bear responsibility for our individual selves, and work through whatever we need to work though in conjunction with the divine will as guided by the indwelling God, in order to affect a more perfect union.

This teaching also appears in the New Testament in three gospels in a passage known as the Greatest Commandment. The version from Matthew, Chapter 22 is as follows:

Then one. . .asked him a question. . . Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

Do you recognize this direction? This is the inside-outside perspective. We are told to start with ourselves, experience the Love as we sync with the divine, and then extend that Love to all of our relationships.

Ultimately, you should not do what your parents want you to do, or be what your parents want you to be, unless those actions or states are what God wants for you. Nor can you necessarily do what your children want you to do, or be what they want you to be. Rather you must find yourself and be true to yourself, and follow the lead of the indwelling God.

Face of Christ, Painting by Myron Dyal, used by permission of the artist.

Listen to the words of the master again:

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

And whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

I do not believe the Christ was saying that you are intrinsically unworthy or have to live alone, cut off from others. What I hear is the Christ saying that you will be called upon to do the work on yourself you must do if you want to follow his example, and that your family cannot distract you from that work.

You may have to be alone at least some of the time, if that is a part of your cross, your individual journey. No matter how much family we have, who they are, and how close we feel to them, we all experience a sense of separation at times until we are fully reunited with God and understand to the depths of our soul that separateness is an illusion.

The sideways movement of energy is bringing us an opportunity to be more closely aligned with our Creator whether we want that or not. And if we do want it, and act upon our desires, then the love of our family, our entire human family can truly come into play. So. . .

And be prepared for the divisions. Thank the energy for moving sideways even when it feels like the tidal waves of movement through the very structure of our blood lines is terrifying. And don’t feel disheartened, because that is how it should be.

When you come up against those tensions, take up your cross. Ground. Center. Run your energy. Clear your space, a little at a time. Move the log jams of old programming out of your eyes and other parts of your energy system, so you can be less judgmental and more present with yourself, your family, your community, and all of life.

Know that what is awaiting your presence and the presence of all those around you is the enduring, endless Love of your Creator where there are no divisions.

The Art and Majesty of Co-Creating with God

August 2, 2017November 22, 2018 / Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given Summer Solstice Worship Service June 2017

Over the years in this meditation community we have had a number of worship services devoted to exploring the dichotomy of creation and destruction. The vast majority of these sessions have been primarily about the latter, the destruction side of things. For the longest time, it was important to help each other get over thinking that destruction is a bad thing. Like every dichotomy that gets played out on Planet Earth, it is simply what it is. Destruction, as well as creation, is not intrinsically bad or good. We needed to get more comfortable with the idea of things coming to an end, things dying, if you will. We needed to get more skilled at helping destruction happen with a minimal of suffering; and get ready for the times in which we now find ourselves.

And here we are. You can call where we are in the U.S and the world right now the apocalypse if you want. My preferred term for this time in our history is the Great Balancing.

Whatever you call it, we are swimming in a sea of destruction of every aspect of our natural and human world, our environment and infrastructure, our way of life, played out in our political, social, economic and religious systems to name a few.

I was very happy after I realized the implications of being drawn to doing a sermon on co-creating with the divine. Time for us to get on with reestablishing a new world order, so to speak. This order is not the kind of order that humans build when we get lost to our need for domination and power over each other. This world order has to do with the kind of order that naturally arises when we surrender ourselves to the indwelling God. Or as the Christ would say, as quoted in John 14;27:

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; I do not give it to you as the world does. Do not let your hearts be distressed or lacking in courage.

As Ghandi reminds us.

In the interest of some of those in this community making and helping others to make this miraculous transition, I thought we would explore some of the nuts and bolts of what it actually means to go about co-creating with God. Co-creation is a concept that resonates with many people but few really could put their finger on the message that those words actually contain or how to make it happen. So let me give it a shot.

We know that God is an awesome, majestic unending Creative force. Indeed, one of the most common synonyms used by various religious people for God is the Creator; or the Creator-of-Us-All.

God the Creative Spirit by Alex Grey

Most people also believe that humankind reflects the creativity of the divine, that we are made in God’s image and so we are intrinsically creative. But what does that actually mean. . .and how do we go about creating in conjunction with, as opposed to opposition to the will of the divine?

As I have been preparing this sermon, I have been watching the news about our current rash of extreme weather. In my opinion, climate change is one of the clearest reflections of how much we have gotten out of sync with the divine. Sometimes I can find a slight bit of amusement about the irony of someone like fundamentalist Christian Tony Perkins, leader of the highly influential, hate-filled Family Research Council saying that Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for homosexuality and then having his own home destroyed by a flood. More often I am filled only with sorrow, anger and on my better days, compassion.

But here’s the rub. Our extreme weather events these days are both a consequence of our inability to understand co-creation; and a call to action for us to start getting with the program. We can no longer sit on the sidelines and blame God, or attribute to God everything that is happening in our world. Humans have a LOT to do with what happens on Planet Earth. When you look closely at the political discourse around climate change, the question of who is responsible is what you see at the core. Too many individuals are trying to pretend, increasingly unsuccessfully, that humans have little or nothing to do with climate change. For decades, humans have mindlessly slaughtered animals, fouled the oceans and waterways, desecrated the Earth through drilling, mining and most recently fracking, et. al.

The North Pacific Gyre is an area of trash twice the size of Texas consisting of 30 feet deep of mostly plastics, floating in the Pacific Ocean. There are many similar human-generated “dead zones” in our waters, including the 2010 death of about 68,000 square miles in the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill.

Many indigenous cultures acknowledge Nature as God, This is an image of Pachamama, the Inca Earth Mother Goddess by Jose Garcia Chibbaro.

Destroying the Earth was and is not a God-given mandate. God is Nature and Nature is God. God cannot destroy itself.

Humans? That’s another matter. You have to be really out of touch with God if you do not see that human animals have set the stage for our own annihilation through our treatment of our physical home.

It’s hard not to get lost in the fear in regards to our extreme weather events. In actuality, they can be seen from a spiritual perspective that the tornado is right on track, forcing us to wake up.

God/Nature is not punishing us through hurricanes, fires, floods, earthquakes, droughts, etc. It is giving us our (final) warning(s).

We already have been co-creating with the divine from day one. It’s our basic nature to do so. We have just not been doing so with any degree of awareness or finesse. God creates the stars, the planets and the entire Heaven; and we decide how to invite them into our life. We decide whether to base our health care decisions on the movement of Heavenly bodies through astrology or the science of the physical Earth through biology.

The divine’s awesome creativity is everywhere in nature. Anemone Stinkhorn, (aseroe rubra), a truly beautiful fungus.

God sets forth the rivers, and we decide whether to swim them, sail vessels or construct dams on them. I’m being a bit simplistic in that all human behavior is based in part on spiritual forces so even the invention and application of technologies contain the hand print of the divine, but you get my drift.

We are in partnership with God one way or the other. Whether we experience a loving and supportive relationship or some kind of toxic soup depends on our choices.

Over the centuries many people affiliated with many religions have lost their sense of God, lost their faith because they have accepted the lie that everything in our World is up to God. In human history, loud are the periodic questions about why God allows so much suffering and the episodic conclusions that God has forsaken us. Our Creator never leaves us. The Creator loves us enough to allow us to create whatever hell or heaven on Earth we wish to experience. It waits for us to wake up to the responsibility of free will; and participates joyfully in any partnership which we offer.

So, it’s 120 degrees in Phoenix. Anyone here want to experience that? Let’s talk about what we need to not make that a reality in Washington State and elsewhere. This morning I want to talk about two aspects of co-creation and how to think about it, about which we all could stand to make some progress.

First and foremost, we need to figure out where God actually lives; or in the words often used in religious discussions, where God dwells. This is one of the great mysteries, is it not? For eons people have tried to make sense out of the idea that God is everything and everywhere. And still we have evil and ugliness and things of that ilk that seem far from God-like. People who do not understand dichotomies often try to resolve this confusion by assigning all the evil and ugliness to what I believe is a mythical creature called Satan or the devil.

Harrowing of Hell, image from England, circa 1240 CE

But then, how can you say that God is everything and everywhere?

We are not going to resolve this mystery today. After all, mysteries are meant to be mysterious. But I want to give you a way to think about it and encourage you to start training your mind, if you haven’t already started this process. Because it is a critical one. There is a reason why Jesus of Nazareth talked more about the Kingdom of God than any other topic of his ministry. He did so because this topic is at the center of human confusion. Christ was VERY CLEAR. The Kingdom of God is WITHIN. Within each one of us, without exception.

God is everywhere and everything. But God cannot be fully experienced unless we seek our Creator within us, unless we choose with our free will, to know the Father, the Mother, however you want to envision that Creative force, to acknowledge it living in our own God-given space. The Living God, the indwelling God, can only be fully known within each individual. Where does God dwell most intently? Within you, waiting for your discovery of it, your communication, your adoration. In the words of the 46^th Psalm:

Be Still and Know that I Am

There is a second part to co-creating with the divine that is critical. When people first learn to turn within, whether they do that through some form of meditation or prayer, religious practice, surrounding themselves with Nature, great works of art or music, or as my atheist Mother learned to do in the latter part of her life, sitting quietly with her own thoughts over a cup of coffee each morning—whatever the process, people generally have to contend with what in Buddhism is referred to as the “chattering monkeys.”

Buddhism emphasizes training the mind. The resulting serenity is reflected in its sacred art.

Encountering your inner world, you will probably find the chaos of the external world that you have fallen into the habit of letting have full access to your brain You may find the voices of parents and teachers and others who have shaped your reality in the absence of you knowing how to shape your own. You may even see images or run into stored emotion from periods of time long since gone, from your childhood and from other lifetimes. For most people it is a process that takes a lot of time to find yourself in all that mess of repressed and out-of-date energies.

In this voyage of self-discovery, it is what comes after finding yourself that is so crucial to the art of co- creating with God. Once you find yourself, you have to give yourself away. Not to the world, not to another person, but to your creator. You have to choose to lay down your resistance. You have to surrender.

When you think about how many centuries of warfare we have created on Planet Earth, along with its perspective that surrendering is a bad thing, it is amazing that any of us want to or are capable of doing so at all. But we need to. We need to learn to give up our ego, which is what surrendering is all about.

Ego is a tricky thing. Telling someone that they are dealing with their ego is considered an insult. However, mental health professionals like to talk about “ego strength” as an important part of healthy personalities. In psychology at least, we acknowledge that ego is not only common but also can come in handy at times. So here we have another dichotomy. Ego is neither bad nor good. It depends on what we do with it.

Ego is the band aids we put over our owies to keep them from getting infected. It allows us to put pain on hold, repress it until we are more ready to resolve it. Hurts a little when you rip it off band aids but is really no big deal except for sissies. Sometimes if the hurt has been huge, ego is like scar tissue, and then it’s a little bigger of a deal to recover from it. You might even need the help of someone with surgical skills. The point is, to move forward at some point you are going to need to get better and better at processing hurtful information, as well as resolving earlier repressed pain.

Since the universe is always moving forward, you can do the passive thing and let the universe decide when this point is and let it blindside you. Or you can ask the universe aka God to set before you that which you need to heal at the time and in the manner that is most pleasing to it. This is the essence of surrendering. That is the essence of co-creating with the divine. You find yourself and you give yourself freely into the hands of the Almighty

As I write this, I am aware that most of you are primarily focused on the finding-yourself part of spiritual development. If you want to start practicing the surrendering part of spiritual development, my suggestion is that you make this a part of your daily meditations, however brief.

For several years I ended most of my meditations with a mantra of sorts. I would maintain a strong focus inward after clearing my space using the techniques you all know how to do; and then I would say slowly and repeatedly, speaking to the God of my heart, “Make Me an Instrument of Your Love. Make Me an Instrument of Your Will.” The first statement was an acknowledgement of my individual path in this life; and my need for help finding it. The second statement was the surrendering part. After a couple of years I noticed that much to my chagrin, I was still tripping over my ego on a regular basis. But I could no longer base major decisions on my ego. When I would try, I would hit what felt like an invisible brick wall. As our Muslim brothers and sisters would say: Allah Akbar, God is greater. God was answering my prayers and protecting me from the worst of my stupidities.

We all have a lot of learn.

My Creator became a greater participant in creating my life when I, with all of my heart, invited it to play an active role.

If you want to use universal words, surrendering is also a part of the Lord’s Prayer. Repeat that sacred prayer if it has meaning for you. Thy Will be Done. Not My Will or Our Will, Thy Will.

Find your own methodology. Create your own words but give your energy to the indwelling divine. The extent to which you do this will dictate the amount of the peace talked about by the Christ you will experience. As the Tibetan meditation master Ajahn Chah says: “If you let go a little you a will have a little peace; if you let go a lot you will have a lot of peace; if you let go completely you will have complete peace.”

So back to it being 120 degrees in Phoenix this week. Can we really change our descent into global heating enough to take the human species off the endangered species list? Possibly. Probably. I don’t know yet. But what I do know is that not only is the endpoint at hand, but so is the beginning point.

This I also know as truth: We can’t do it by ourselves. We are going to need to use our collective will and enormous creativity to lay our fate in the hands of the divine.

Glory to our Creator for all of the Beauty around us. Now let us do our part!

The solutions are far beyond what human brains can envision on our own. Join me in asking for the intercession of the universe, as we learn to harness our own God-given creativity in the service of us all.

Living the Lie; Seeking the Truth in the Digital Age

March 27, 2017November 22, 2018 / Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given Spring Equinox Worship Service March 2017

Last fall we gathered for a worship service that occurred right after the United States presidential election. During that service I talked about the perfect pictures that had dominated the election process and the need for us to construct a new narrative based on greater Truth. Good example of: be careful what you pray for.

Three months later our mass media and our social media are flooded with stories of people trying to figure out what is true and what is not true. As usual, many people are trying to impose their truths on other people. There is nothing new about this. The NEW part is that we are now arguing about who has the right to define truth for our society, our collective life. Many or most of the institutions that we formally accepted as the truth-sayers are now being discredited.

Lots of folks have lots of opinions about whom to trust and whom to distrust as sources of information; as well as what we should all be paying attention to and what should be ignored. Newspapers and television shows are being blasted right and left over the choices they make either to report or ignore various issues or events, the choices within each story of what to mention, what to focus on, as well as what their comments should actually be. Academic institutions, law enforcement, medical professionals and other scientists, segments of our population that have been a go-to place for many decades, are now being scrutinized at best, vilified at worst. Depending on who you talk to, the scientific perspective is either under attack, or finally being put in its place. Educational systems from preschool to college are being gutted and their professionals viewed as having little or no value. And of course, everyone seems to think the government is lying, even people in the government.

Suddenly the deep divisions within our country are not just about governmental policies and other surface politics. Rather, they are about the very nature of our reality, our basic most understanding of the truth. In the process of figuring out who we want to trust, we’re getting inundated by new terminology like fake news, alternative facts, gas lighting, click bait headlines, and the like. What’s going on?

In my opinion, we’re right on track. What I mean by this, is that the fights that are erupting everywhere in our culture these days, from a spiritual perspective are predictable; are vital, even necessary.

We are in the midst of a HUGE epistemological cultural war. Epistemology is a word that comes from the field of philosophy. Epistemology is about investigating human knowledge. Epidemiologists try to understand how we know what we know. What methods do we use to arrive at the truth, and what are the limitations of said methods? All useful things to study, especially these days.

There are many ways of understanding that the word Truth, but the Truth that is most of interest to me, the Truth that I hope to bring us back to, the Truth I pray you will have a better understanding of when you leave here today, is something I sometimes call Truth with a Capital “T.” In other words, God.

As human beings, it seems to be our lot in life to try and make sense out of things beyond our reach. I am always amazed at the hubris of people who think they know everything, have all the answers for everyone around them. I am especially astonished by the religious leaders who think they can speak for God when they tell other people what to think or do. Humans like to imagine that we understand God; and don’t get me wrong, it’s important that we try. But in my opinion we also need to develop the humility to understand the limitations of our knowledge base. We are a part of something bigger that contains and knows the whole of the cosmos. We are part of God, but we are not God in its totality.

The Vedic religions is one of the spiritual traditions that have most clearly addressed the nature of reality. In Hinduism, the world is referred to as the “Maya.” The Māyā is a Sanskrit word that means the “magic show, the illusion where things that are before us not what they seem.” Māyā is the idea that that which exists is constantly changing and thus ultimately unreal. God is the only thing that doesn’t change, the only reality. Written in Stone Every aspect of what we think of as the physical reality is really just a snapshot in time, seen from one particular camera or lens. There are as many versions of the truth as there are forms of life in our universe, which is beyond what we can count or measure. Bottom line: Truth belongs only to our Creator.

As individuals we are but a piece of the puzzle. A chip off the cosmic block. We are not the entire puzzle; nor can we even understand the whole puzzle while incorporated in the flesh. Here at the Church of the Harvest, we acknowledge this diversity of worldviews by referring to the divine by many names: The All-That-Is, Allah, the Creator-of- Us-All, the divine, God, Goddess, the God of our Heart, Nature, the universe, etc. Some of my favorite names for the divine are metaconcepts like Justice, Love, and Truth (with a Capital T). For us puny humans, each of us have our own unique piece of the truth. And it’s incredibly important to all of us that we discover and speak that truth and live that truth to the best of our ability. Deeper Truths Some of us are closer to knowing and living and speaking the Truth with a Capital T. But none of us can claim to have the complete picture.

You are all healers, change agents in the great game of life. You no doubt know that the process of healing involves stripping off the delusions about who are, stripping off the ego that protects those delusions, piece by piece, layer by layer, like peeling an onion some people say, in order to get down to the bedrock, get down to the cornerstone distortions that are keeping us from understanding our true nature.

When enough people have stripped away enough old perspectives, sometimes there occurs in society something called a paradigm shift. A paradigm shift is when so much is changing about the basic framework that our cognitive model of how we see the world changes. Most of you will recognize what I mean when I say that a paradigm shift is to a large collection of people such as those who make up an industry or an entire country, what a growth period is to an individual meditator. The U.S. has been in a rather intense and painful stripping process for many months now. The next step, the natural progression is for us is to deal with the bedrock of how we understand our world. We are being called to adopt a more accurate perception of reality, to come closer to the Truth. Coddiwomple

We often talk about the world of energy. We offer opportunities for people to come to terms with their individual energy system. We have a meditation community so that individuals can safely learn about sharing collective space with other individuals committed to being responsible about their own energy system. But I’d like to remind you today that energy is not the only component on which you have to get a handle if you want to create the kind of world all of us desire, a world grounded in the unconditional love of the universe. It takes a lot of power to create a world based on love, and real power takes not only energy, but also truthful information.

Power equals energy and information. You can have a lot of energy like what happens for many bipolar individuals, but unless you have the information about how to ground that energy and work within your own body, it is a wasted resource. Or you can have a lot of information like, for example, what is seen in many academic and scientific settings where people have enormous amounts of information at their disposal but lack the energy to bring their insights into the world in a constructive fashion. When you are too much in your head, identifying with the brain, your energy system does not create from a spiritual perspective. Every time I’ve been around institutions of higher education, I am always astonished by how such talented, intelligent people can get so stuck in their analyzers and think that what is really important is fighting each other over academic turf, jostling over who has the most prestige.

For human beings to make it through the next period of time, we are going to need to learn to use both energy and information. We are designed for that and we can operate that way if we so choose. Think about our brains, the operating system that drives our bodies. Human brains have an average of 100 billion neurons, about the same number as the number of stars within the Milky Way galaxy.
Stars

Each single neuron has the capacity to create a synopsis or connection with 1,000 other individual neurons.

Two neurons communicating. Photo by Heiti Paves.

Current estimates are that we can handle about 2 ½ petrabytes of information. A petrabyte is a thousand terabyates. A terabyte is a million million bytes. We are walking around with bodies that can process some 100 trillion data points each second. Not bad for an animal like a human being. But then, we were made in God’s image.

You’d think that would be enough to get a lot done. Theoretically anyway. But NOPE, that’s not enough. We need both the power tools and the information about how to use them wisely. We can all attest of periods of feeling completely overwhelmed by all there is to handle in the world, particularly when we are in sensation-rich environments, around a lot of technology or a lot of people to intensify the data stream assaulting our senses. Right now we are densely packed in a world of over 7 billion people, immersed at every moment of the day by technology beyond our wildest dreams, with most of us so stressed that even the brightest of us can barely handle the basics.

When we don’t know how to handle life’s challenges, we tend to use people and organizations as shortcuts in processing information. This is where it gets tricky. We give other people the power to determine what we feel or believe about the world. Many have long since figured out that the best way to control other people is to get them to fear things they do not understand. As our world becomes increasingly complex using our current inadequate cognitive skill set, it is relatively easy for power mongers to generate fear in people; and also alarmingly easy to confuse people. Elections in the United States are now routinely “bought” by corporations and wealthy individuals with the thousands or millions of dollars it takes to spread the viewpoint they want citizens to hold. We are going to need a new cognitive skill set to make it through the next months. Thus the looming paradigm shift. Beginning is Near

Luckily the problems that we face are not exactly new, just greatly intensified, so we do have some history upon which we can draw. For centuries humans have been living in the world that overwhelms us with its vast amount of sensory data. We have dealt with our fear and confusion by giving up our power, giving our decision-making to other humans that come along and tell us that THEY know the right answers. Usually it’s religious or political figures that tell us that we should believe THEIR version of the truth.

Every once in awhile, a Buddha will come along that will remind us that everything we need to know is within us, if we just wake from our state of sleeping through life. Every once in awhile a Jesus of Nazareth teaches us to seek God within us, to desire to know its Truth and to listen to it when we find it.

The Buddha lived circa 500 to 400 BCE.

From its start the universe has been conspiring to help us recognize the Truth whenever we are open to it. Key individuals have challenged the cognitive stronghold promulgated by the religious dogma that is usually a big factor in keeping the Truth at bay. In the sixth century the man we know as the Buddha took the first major chunk out of the entrenched Hindu caste system on the Indian subcontinent. Many centuries later Mahatma Gandhi would convince the British Empire to move out of India and the caste system would be officially eliminated. But way before that it was the Buddha who set the stage of teaching hundreds of people to begin the search for themselves. He told ordinary folks, not only the “untouchables” but anyone below the highest caste, that they did not need the Brahman, the ruling priests to intervene for them in the ways of the universe. He taught them how to turn within, to meditate to find those ways for themselves.

Around the same time, another search for the truth was happening in China. Confucius revolutionized thinking in the entire Eastern part of the globe by bringing a greater sense of individual truth-seeking to how humans should process information. He was one of the first major proponents of the “Golden Rule.” He talked about the important of treating other people well by following one’s own instincts. He maintained that if society fails it is because sacred texts and teachings have been misinterpreted. He told his students that the texts contain the “Way,” but individuals must search for and find it themselves. He helped shift human consciousness of much of the civilized world that was China towards pursuit of the Truth.

Confucius lived from 551 to 479 BCE.

And then, of course we have the Christ, who preached that individuals must first and foremost find their answers within, by finding God’s kingdom within each of us. His teachings have been misunderstood and subverted over the years but periodically, the universe pulls us back closer to the possibility of discovering Truth as Jesus defined it.

Christ Underwater, Key Largo, Photo by Lawrence Cruciana

One such point was the Protestant Reformation around the end of the 15^th century early part of the 16^th century, when an obscure German pastor named Martin Luther and various of his colleagues reshaped life in Europe and beyond by challenging the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

The statement Martin Luther hand wrote and nailed to a church at Wittenburg in 1517 eventually was reproduced by the new printing presses some 250,000 times, the first such incidence of mass circulation of the written word. His stance spread throughout Europe and led to a movement by religious leaders of many countries to develop their own version of Christianity.

The Reformation is sometimes seen as just political infighting among rival Christian sects, but really it was bigger than just a religious war. At its essence it was also an epistemological cultural war, made more vicious by the advent of new technology, very much like what we are going through today. At issue was who gets to decide what is true and what is not; and how the Truth should be sought.

At the time, Catholicism had become the supreme authority on both spiritual and secular life in Europe. Typically only monks could read and write books and only monks and priests could speak Latin. This was important because Latin was the language of the Bible which was the sole basis for the moral code for society. Therefore, any person in Western society who wanted to live such that they would enjoy success in the outer world; as well as prepare for what they believed was going to happen in the after-world, had to rely on a priest to tell them what to think and feel and how to live.

It was no coincidence that Luther nailed his objections to the way the Catholic Church was doing business in the same time period that Gutenberg was perfecting the oil-based inks, non-parchment papers that could be produced by new water-powered mills, and early printing press machinery that allowed everyday people outside of the church structure to obtain reading materials. Gutenberg Bible Humans were ready for the triumph of literacy. And when we were ready for the gift of greater proximity to Truth, on a physical level the resources appeared to allow for dissemination of knowledge through the written word; and on a spiritual level the information we were getting from our religious institutions made a major shift.

The digital period in human history which started in the last few years is another such evolutionary step in human consciousness. We are right on the precipice. We have been so since the 70s when computers reached into our collective lives. We are obsessed with redefining Truth because we are right on the verge of developing the next huge leap in being able to recognize it. We don’t even know what that truth is going to look like yet.

To get through the next period enough of us human animals have to choose a truer pathway that is savvy about both energy and information. Here are a few clues about how to work with the unlimited amount of energy available to spirit within the context of a very limited physical form, as the world around us goes through an earthquake-like paradigm shift of unimaginable proportion.

Find your own truth. This is actually a little more complicated than most people think. It’s not about what feels right. That can just be a result of unresolved emotions. It’s not even necessarily about what you think is right. That can just be old programming, ways you’ve been taught to think that are unexamined and not really consistent with whom you really are. Finding your own truth requires you to look within yourself, and do so with enough regularity and courage that you learn to distinguish your own voice from that of your mother and your father and your siblings and your friends, your kids, your social models, your teachers and leaders and your country; and even from the parts of you that you have outgrown such as your inner child and your experiences in other lives.

SPOILER ALERT: Meditation greatly facilitates this process.

Listen

Obviously, for all of us finding our truth is a lifelong process. But it’s one that you have to choose. Truth won’t seek you out. Look around you at the world. Look at all the people that are choosing to stay ignorant of the truth, thinking that will somehow protect them or make it easier for them.

Animals sometimes think that they are safe when they cannot see others. Human animals no longer have that luxury.

It won’t. Not anymore. It could be argued that ignorance might have served human beings in the past. But no longer. There is no place on Earth anymore where you can hide from knowledge. All you can do, is distort it. And if you want to be one in alignment with the Truth, you have to actively look for it, no matter what the cost. Seek and you shall find; knock and the door shall open.

Second of all, in your search for your own truth avail yourself of the truly miraculous amount of help available to all seekers after the Truth, just for the asking. In the digital age nearly all of human knowledge is readily accessible, sitting quietly waiting for you to discover it, as close as the nearest smart phone or home computer. And not only is the data ever present, the ways to work with it are as well, at least in this part of the world.

If you want to use the scientific method to explore the truth contained in the natural world, you no longer have to give up everything you know, find some obscure castle where you can work in secret and isolation and hope the inquisition doesn’t find you and burn you at the stake. You just have to decide what you want to explore, and enroll in the nearest community college with a program in the subject matter of your choice. You can establish your own community of scholars to help sharpen your critical thinking skills or ability to take into consideration the viewpoint of other cultures. You can sign up for a conference calling and talk to anyone around the globe that will talk to you. Sun Supporting Diversity If you want to find truth through the more invisible world of faith, you don’t have to accept the viewpoint of just anyone who offers their perspective through a church or new age type class. You can readily find information on how to discern between legitimate truth-seeking and proselytizing or programming and follow the person and process that brings you closest to the divine. You learn how to access your own God-given talent for the Truth rather than give up power to others. And that’s just on the physical side of things.

Energetically, all true seekers after the Truth automatically receive the assistance of the entire spirit world. Insights come not from emotion but through seemingly random ah-ah moments and from the dream world. “Coincidences” hit you over and over until you pay attention to the pattern within which you are exploring. Teachers appear when you need that kind of assistance. Your ego will even trip and take a fall for you when it is too much in your way. Keep your eye on the prize, the richness of the Truth; and it will find you.

Third of all, don’t worry about other people’s versions of the truth unless it is actively interfering with your own. Let people be as deluded as they want to be, unless they are the makers of public policy. Even then you don’t need to call them liar even when they are. Incorporated into the physical, we are all living a lie. If you are fortunate enough to be living a version closer to the Truth, rejoice and fill yourself with gratitude.

Thank you God

You do not necessarily need to try and change the mind of those who are choosing the company of ignorance. Unless they are open-minded, that can be a waste of your precious time. You have better things to do. . .like finding yourself.

Trolls are generally a waste of cognitive resources. . .unless you find it a fun way to spend your time. This one is the famous Freemont Troll under a bridge in Seattle.

There are enough people who rejoice in the Truth that will can use your assistance in accessing whatever corner of it you have figured out. You just need to prevent the willingly-ignorant from harming others to whatever extent you can.

Tuck into a corner of your mind the words of the Christ from Matthew, Chapter 7, Verse 4:

How can you say to your brother: Let me take the splinter from your eye

and behold there is a beam in your own eye?

Like it or not, those who intentionally deceive others for their own economic or political gain, as appears to be the case for many or most of the U.S. Congress and the White House right now, actually deserve our compassion. They are creating their own hell and are truly losing their soul, one step at a time.

Last but most important, defer always to the greater Truth. Cultivate humility. It is your friend. Love the Questions That includes getting comfortable being confused at times and freely acknowledging when you do not understand something, or when you have been wrong about something in the past. As my atheist mother used to say, the truly wise know how ignorant they really are.

As her spiritually-minded daughter, my own version of the truth is this: We will never completely know the mind of the Goddess until we are once again fully reunited with her. But in the meantime, much is given to us when we seek her counsel with all of our heart.

The Wintering of America

December 22, 2016November 22, 2018 / Church of the Harvest

From a Sermon given Winter Solstice Worship Service 2016

Winter Solstice is the time we traditionally get together to celebrate the transition that begins at the end of the year and moves us into the beginning of the new year. Winter is such an underappreciated season, maybe because it forces us to slow down, nudges us into reflection, sets us on the path of integration and changes to come. It’s like Nature’s growth period, not in the biological sense of things growing, but in the spiritual sense of destroying old cycles with which we have been living; making room for new cycles that are not yet apparent. It is a time of bareness, of winnowing the exterior world down to basic necessities, so we can look around at a blank canvas and dream about what we want to create.

This year we have the opportunity to do this reinvention not only in our individual lives, but in our collective lives. I know of many people in America and around the world who are reeling from the shock of the election of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States. They say that even most of Trump’s followers were in shock that he actually got elected. To all who are confused, in anger or fear, or otherwise distressed, I dedicate these words. This sermon is not about politics. It is about life on Planet Earth and moving forward when we find ourselves in deep and unfamiliar winter territory. uncertainty

When I woke up the day after the Election to find we now had a President-Elect Trump, I had many thoughts and feelings, many of which were unpleasant to experience to say the least. But in the deepest part of me I found a small but very bright and very profound ribbon of gratitude. I knew exactly what it was about. I knew in my heart that Donald Trump was not “destined” to be President as of the day before the election. There are very few times that I know something beyond a “shadow of a doubt.” But I believe without a shadow of a doubt that the mockup a scant day before the election was that Clinton be elected. We can blame the media and the pollsters all we want for not preparing us better. There is certainly no end to the “soul-searching” that the media needs to do about their choices during the election, but they are not to blame for projecting defeat of Trump. On a spiritual level we had decided that Clinton was going to be the “winner” of lightening-and-lava the election.

And then we changed our collective mind.

The day before, no less.

I mention this almost in passing because perhaps it will bring some solace to individuals who are still lost in the maze of the election energy. But mainly I mention this because miracles need to be acknowledged, especially ones that are invisible to most people.

It is nothing less than a miracle that an entire nation changed its mind within 24 hours about who to let become President. The ramifications of this energetic shift are enormous.

What it said to me is that there is hope. hope-changes-everything You all know that my primary focus and concern these days is on the very real possibility that human beings will not survive on Planet Earth. In order to “weather” (pun intended) the changes we are bringing to Mother Earth in our arrogance we must make some rapid behavioral shifts in our thinking and behaving. Further, these changes require a change in human awareness that in my darkest hours has seemed light years away.

If you have any idea of how the consensus reality works, you will recognize that apparently, enough of us have made and/or are making those changes in awareness that a massive shift in the time-space continuum is now possible. Nothing else explains the fact that one day Trump was not slated to be President and the next day he was. The fact that collectively so many of us can manifest an energetic shift of that magnitude in that short of a time frame means that we stand a fighting chance of surviving climate change. And for that, my heart sings with deep gratitude to God and to all of us who are trying to learn to genuinely live consistent with its will. This was so much bigger and more important than who occupies the Oval Office (or the Trump Tower as it may be).

Here at the Church of the Harvest we have been talking for several years about the fact that humans have constructed a world on the basis of scarcity and conditional love; and in order to move to a world based on God’s endless bounty of unconditional love many of our social, economic, religious, political, and other institutions will need to be destroyed with some being rebuilt in a far different form. What we just did in our electoral process is greatly accelerate the timeline in terms of destruction. I was hoping we would not have to do the destruction phase overnight because I know all too well what a hard time people have with change. The American people decided otherwise.

Is it a good thing or a bad thing that all that we upped the stakes in terms of destruction of our world? It remains to be seen. We know that from a spiritual perspective there is no good or bad, just experience.

Death=Rebirth=Potential Wisdom. Mayan Dancer Representing an Owl, Symbol of Death in Mayan Mythology

We also know that our human brains cannot comprehend the master patterning of our Creator. History has repeatedly revealed points in which horrible things have happened to individuals and to the world within which they live, in order that even more horrible trends are stopped in their tracks. Think Pearl Harbor for example, where over 2,400 individual souls made the decision on a spiritual level to sacrifice their life, and another 1,000+ were injured so that the U.S. could wake up to what was happening in Nazi Germany and make a decision to enter the World War 2.

The attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941

If Pearl Harbor had not happened, it is very likely that not only all of Europe and Asia but probably our continent as well would be under occupation by National Socialism. The destruction acceleration we just made possible in the United States can bring those who withstand it closer to each other and to Nature and therefore, to the ultimate preservation of human life.

I have been tracking the destructive trends for many years now, but the aspect of those trends that I feel drawn to discussing this morning is the perfect pictures we all have about the United States. Most of you have heard me say that the road to Hell is paved with perfect pictures. Perfect pictures are those insidious little bits of programming on an energy level with which all old spirits struggle, that tell us that things are supposed to be or go a certain way. being-wrong

They create a great deal of grief in part because the world doesn’t oblige us by conforming to our pictures so we lose our way more readily. Additionally, they generate a ton of blame, hostility, and intense fear when the world doesn’t live up to said pictures, which actively interferes with the learning that needs to happen to get closer to the ideal. Blame and hostility: Thinking about this election, does this sound familiar?

The United States is a place rife with perfect pictures, almost like an orchard of overripe fruit that falls from the tree and makes such a big mess that it’s hard to even walk around without falling. The idea that this country is a new and better version of any other country on the Planet has been part of our national credo for over two centuries. “We the People,” our “creation myth” to use a label from anthropology, did indeed reflect a giant step forward in the evolution of humanity. Our fledgling democracy was a great achievement but contrary to the popular belief it was never a perfect one. The “New World” as we called it, afforded some of us a chance to move beyond our history, but not all of us.

Initially the constitution of the newly formed United States primarily protected the rights of wealthy white men. Right off the top, over half of the population could not actively participate by virtue of their sex–women. And then there were the Africans who were not yet called “African Americans” and who were not even acknowledged as human but rather, were each designated as 3/5s of a person for the purpose of property taxes. The over 12 million Africans who were forced into slavery by the 1900s primarily for the economic benefit of white people were missing from our national narrative of greatness. Also by the 1900s immigrants primarily of European ancestry had destroyed 80-98% of the indigenous Native American population through displacement, war, other forms of violence, a fact that we happily justified by the 19^th century doctrine of Manifest Destiny. In the United States, we have tried very hard to not notice that American dream was very hard on many; and that everybody in our country did not exactly have the same degree of a chance at reaping it’s rewards.

Nonetheless, the idea of America as the land of opportunity for all has been important to the entire world, not just those in the United States. For both spirit and body, dreaming is VITAL and America has provided a life-affirming destination for everyone. With our shiny idea of a place for all, the U.S. has provided hope for hundreds of years to people all over the Planet, allowing thousands with torturous lives to believe in something outside the drudgery of their existence. As a political institution, the U.S. may not have always lived up for our ideals, but that does not make our support of them any less important. Perfect pictures are often created for noble reasons. Eventually they always crash under their own weight unless one actually walks the walk, as well as talks the talk.

Lest you think that we worked out all our earlier quirks with constitutional amendments and changes to the law, no. Yes, women got the vote, almost 150 years late but we did get to participate. Indentured servants and slaves were eventually set free. But as to the national culture, we never really worked through our perfect pictures, our ego-based sense of importance. Even the fact that we made some laws more just for segments of our population became just more evidence in our collective mind of our moral superiority. We just kept adding to the narrative, calling ourselves the most powerful, richest, smartest and therefore, by implication the most deserving country on Earth.

We began to believe that the United States was uniquely qualified to lead the world in every respect, not just some areas. We carefully tried not to notice that the ways in which we were exercising our leadership was typically disrespectful of other cultures, sometimes aggressive and/or exploitative, and frequently self-serving. In the United States the lifestyle of not only the rich-and-famous but even the working-class-families-who-routinely-shop-at-Wal-Mart, has greatly benefited from our commitment to American superiority. In the lifetime of those in this room, United States citizens who are 20% of the world’s population at best have been owning, controlling, and in most cases using 80% of the world’s resources. We made it to the top of the heap. But at a price to our soul.

What has this got to do with the elections? The recent U.S. presidential election was essentially a cultural war between perfect pictures. That’s a war nobody can win.

change

Obviously, we all have a sense that change is needed. We just don’t agree on what the problem is or how to go about fixing it.

Trump got a lot of voter support because of his carefully chosen motto: “Make America Great Again.” Some folks recognized the cultural arrogance of such a motto; and proposed their own slogans. I enjoyed the various wordplay in such mottos as “Make America Smart Again,” “Make America Mexico Again,”and my favorite “Make America Kind Again.” But the reality is that as a whole, America has never been smart, kind, or great. Not consistently; and not as a whole. Individuals and small groups of Americans have at times done truly great things, chosen innovative, courageous and selfless words and deeds.

The Navajo code talkers were critical in helping the United States defeat the evil of WW2 Nazi Germany and Japanese imperialism. Twenty nine of these dedicated Marines were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. There are an additional 33 other tribes that have been code talkers using their incredible communication skills at other times when the United States has needed them, acts of generosity and true patriotism given what Native Americans have endured from white society.

As a nation we have often been generous and insightful, but intermittently.

Clinton’s “Stronger Together” motto was much less embraced, not only because of people’s reactions to Clinton but because it is a weaker archetype that did not spark the nation’s imagination. We don’t need to be stronger, exactly. We need to be strong in a different way. We also don’t need a false sense of togetherness. We need the real thing.

The social fabric that is the United States of America is vast, multilayered, contradictory and imperfect. We need to acknowledge that, stop trying to insist we have already got it right, and realize how much we have to learn. We need to atone for our sins/trespasses to date, move with more honesty and whole lot more humility towards the ideals to which we aspire.

Perfection. Words by Anna Quindlen

The universe just gave us a hand. It just knocked us flat on our collective ass so that we could go back to the drawing board. No more building houses on foundations of sand. We have to change the way we think. As a society, we have to create a new narrative based on Truth. In this story line I imagine us still pledging ourselves to the justice of democracy for all, while acknowledging that we don’t always achieve our goals. We have to grow beyond our tribal thinking. We have to learn to think from a spiritual perspective, one that respects the basic unity of all life and the moral superiority of no one.

That said, the landscape before us at this point is looking pretty dark. At this point when we are all swimming in the ocean of confusion, getting back to the basics may be warranted. So I have three things to say today about negotiating the Wintering of America.

First and foremost: Do what you came here to do. You choose this time. On a spiritual level you made the decision to bring yourself back to Planet Earth during this time period which may be the most fascinating and crucial years in human civilization, apart perhaps from those brief 30+ years that Jesus of Nazareth walked on Earth. You are here now for a reason. Find your path. Let your light shine brightly in these dark days. The rest of us need that; and you need that. Don’t let the chaos, anxiety and confusion of the world stop you from finding yourself. It’s more important now than ever. Your interests are of paramount importance to us all. It’s still all about individual responsibility in a time when thousands of people are wanting to dictate what direction you should take. Find your own Truth. The God of your heart will tell you where to go, what to do, and what to be, if you just take the time to listen.

Second and also very important. Do what you can with other people. If you are a part of the Church of the Harvest, you are a big giver. Most of you work with the public through your jobs in social agencies, government, private industry and the like. You are all highly social people, committed to family and country, generous to a fault. You already know what you can do FOR other people. All of you are skilled at that. Now figure out what you can do WITH other people.

Little known fact is that from a spiritual perspective, human beings are really at the very beginning stages of learning to work collectively in a genuine fashion. We have not gotten much beyond survival mode. We have learned to hunt together, necessary to bring down large mammals. We know how to band together to fight wars against other humans not a part of our immediate community whether it’s “playing politics” at a local level or waging conflicts and wars on a massive scale. Humans have been very good at uniting AGAINST things. As a species, we are still in elementary school when it comes to genuinely uniting FOR things.

inclusion

This is the time where the world must learn what it really means to be united in spirit while at the same time allowing for, even honoring and celebrating individual differences. It’s about transcending the dichotomy, living the Truth, understanding that on a soul level you ARE the other; and they ARE you; and we ALL ARE aspects of the same God. . .at the same time that each of us is an individual soul with an individual mandate to follow the dictates of the indwelling God of our individual hearts.

You have a head start with this vital learning; and you can model for others. If you are part of the Church of the Harvest, through your meditations you are committed to a process of manifesting the unity of spirit within a unique body. Figure out where you want to be giving and helping others and go for it, while never losing sight of your own path. Work together with others whenever you can do so without undermining your own integrity. Do what you can think to do but know that you can’t do it all because not everything will be on your path. Support people who have found a different vantage point for their gifts, as best you can. Speak up and lead righteously in the areas which have been given to you; and be a great witness, listener and supporter in the areas where others are on the forefront.

The model we all have for transcending the dichotomy of the individual soul living within the unity of all was given to us 2000 years ago by the Master.

mosiac-of-jesus-in-a-church-in-rome-ad530

Mosaic of Jesus from a Church in Rome 530 ACE

Listen to the words of the Christ as he discusses the idea of the individual soul living as a part of all-that-is. This is from Matthew, Chapter 23, and Verses 36-39. Remember that when he talks about God he is talking about the Kingdom of God within each of us–not some old white dude in the sky.

Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?

Jesus said to him: Love the Lord your God with all your heart

And all your soul, and with all your might and with all of your mind.

This is the greatest and the first commandment.

And the second is like to it,

Love your neighbor as yourself.

My third piece of advice is this: Don’t be afraid of the wintertime. We know that from a spiritual perspective there is no bad and good. But we all have a tendency to fall prey to the perspective that winter is the not-so-good or even bad season. Nature knows better. All plant and animal life needs an extended period of rest. In the Pacific Northwest we know that the very waters that sustain our life come predominantly from the snow that falls in the winter to recharge the aquifers. Recognize the richness of the wintertime of dreaming up new futures, reflection and prayer.

Yes, some of Nature always dies in the winter, adding its carbon and other minerals back to the Earth so that other species will have room. And with great regret I will confirm what you all know, a greater amount of life on Earth will be dying during this Winter than ever before, both human animals and nonhuman animals so that we all have a greater chance to find eternal life. But from the big picture, from the mind of our Creator, it’s all good. We need to hold that Truth in mind.

Again, words of the Master, from Matthew Chapter 24, Verses 10-13, in which he speaks about the “end times” that we are now experiencing:

Then many will stumble, and they will hate one another and betray

one another

And many false prophets will rise and will mislead a great many.

And because of the growth of iniquity the love of many will become cold.

But he who has patience to the end will be saved.

fireplace

Hunker on down. It’s going to be a long winter. Let’s keep each other warm.