June 6th was an important day for me… It was the day of my son’s birth. I was only 20 years old, almost a child myself! Did I know that we would only have 46 years together, including the time that I carried him in the womb with such anticipation?
It was also the birthday of the son of my Beloved, my first love when we were in our teens. Our experience of ‘first love’ for each of us cycled in time, both of us marrying others, both of our sons being born on June 6th, one year apart, both of them passing through the veils within weeks of each other when they were both in their 40’s.
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Could we have known that we would ‘find all of that out’ when we were in our 70’s? Did it have meaning beyond ‘the appearances’ in time? When he found me again in our 70’s, he was surprised and curious to find that I was a ‘minister’… Religion had never been a part of his life really. Spirituality was simply ‘natural’.
He asked me so many questions…deep questions. I answered in sometimes long emails, sometimes telephone conversations. He was the one who said ‘You must write.’ My response was, ‘The only reason I write is because you ask me questions.’
Four questions came with one condition, that I would promise to write on them: Who Am I? Who Are You? Who Are We? What Is Our Purpose?
I began to write long responses. The third question was just completed…
It was open on his computer, he had read it several times, on the day that I drove 100 miles to his home in the desert because he was not answering his phone. I ‘knew’ something was wrong. He had passed through the veils, I found him in his recliner. Could we have known we only had 3 years left in the physical together?
Now, let’s go back and re-read, see again, the passages from Genesis that we have been considering. We may ‘see’ things that didn’t register before. Sometimes it is not for our human minds to know or to understand the Vastness, the complexities of light and dark, or the knowing of the ‘good’. Yet, we can know Eternal Love…
Have you ever considered letting yourself ‘hear’ the Mystery? Have you even listened in the Silence? Have you ever entered the Words of sacred scripture as the ‘key to everything’? I’ve found it to be one of the great gifts of my life. It may take revisiting many times… Still, for me, it continues to unfold, even now as I write:
‘God saw the light, that it was good…’
First came the Invoking of the light, “Let there be light”. Then God saw the light, and saw that ‘it was good.’ I find it curious that in my Bible, ‘it was good’ is in italics and in the past tense. It is as if it is emphasized in a different way, perhaps indicating a different way of seeing, maybe taking time.
If events in our lives feel like ‘darkness on the face of the waters’, we can know, perhaps, that it is part of a greater process. We can open and breathe into the ‘space’ within us, even though it feels unknown, even heart-breaking, or empty.
We can call forth, invoke the light from That within us that Knows the heavens and the earth, even though it seems impossible to know in this moment in time. The Invisible is there, as well as the visible experience, we just can’t see it or perhaps even feel it.
It seems like there are three parts, a sort of Trinity… It includes saying it, invoking it, perhaps only in our thoughts if we can’t feel the way to say it out loud. Then it includes seeing it, and knowing it was good. That may be the hard one, at least it has been for me. When it feels like my ‘whiteboard’ has been erased, it’s hard to know it as good. It feels devastating sometimes when we experience the ‘dissolve’…
What I’ve noticed is that I can’t always do all three of these in the moment something is occurring. Perhaps that is one of the realities of time. Things get ‘triggered’, it just seems to happen. It’s a feeling like being ‘blind-sided’, hurt, sad, even mad.
A psychologist once told me that there are basic feelings, including sad, mad, and glad. I like the way the words rhyme, makes them easy to remember. Often I feel ‘glad’ and happy, that’s delightful and easy for me. Yet interestingly, even the ‘good’ of those kind of moments can change.
And then we can notice that there are two phases, at least, to this whole process. They are natural parts that we just take for granted as simply ‘what is’. There is day and night, light and dark, both/and, both part of a natural whole. It’s simple when we think of day and night. It’s not so simple when we think of joy and sorrow.
Yet we begin to see that there is a cosmic or other-worldly process that somehow divides the light from the darkness. Recognition can come that we are part of it, if we open into That transcendent part of ourselves, our ‘higher power’ and ask for light, see the light, even in the invisible, and know that it was good.
Sometimes I have to go to the Timelessness, to the Forever, to Love, to the Unchanging, to know ‘good’ when I am feeling so lost, alone and not knowing what to do. My hardest initiation into that kind of ‘lost-ness’ has been death. It simply has taken me time to find my new level of the unfolding good.
A significant key seems to be hidden in these few words: Invoking (asking), Seeing (even in the dark) and Knowing it was good (even as you are gentle with yourself, breathe into it and give yourself time). All three are part of the spiraling process, of the higher and deeper, of the Creation of That which is to come.
It may seem like we’ve spent a huge amount of time ‘in the beginning’, in this first piece of our potential journey, this ‘first day’, which may seem like days, this First Stage. The feeling may be that nothing is happening, that there has to be more. We may get restless and want to jump ahead, skip stuff, or even check out.
The first phases of our journey together will be in the Invisible. This was only the First Stage, there are two more stages in the Invisible for us to see if we are to Shift to Knowing the Changeless, the Eternal that is part of our Soul’s Plan, our own Unique Destiny Path that is part of the Whole.
At the Core of every cell of our Being is Light. It is in us and it is all around us. It is in people who are part of our lives, in every experience of our life. And it is in every experience of the world. Our human minds can’t wrap themselves around that… It is not meant to be understood by the human mind.
In our experience of separation, we often don’t understand it consciously. Yet we can know the cycles of light and dark as part of the Vastness that is good.
For 19 years during the time of my role as Senior Minister at Unity of Tustin, every Sunday morning started with the congregation singing “Surely the Presence of the Lord is in this place. I can feel Its Power and Its Grace.” My opening prayer always began “Oh Beloved One, Holy Spirit… Come upon us… Come…Holy Spirit.”
On the day, now nearly 12 years ago, when my son collapsed on a weekend trip, the imprint of the words “Come Holy Spirit” was what I remember speaking to him after I ran to him and held him in my arms, not realizing that he was passing through the veils. The full coffee cup that he was bringing to me had shattered as it fell onto the concrete patio. It had jolted me from looking out over a lake. Moments of serenity changed into shock and not knowing.
Yet what I know now, in the moments of surprise that seem to change everything, is that there is an ‘Always Already’ realm where there is another Way of Knowing. We can access It, even when we don’t understand it.
There’s a piece of paper sitting next to my computer that I glance at often. I don’t remember where the words came from… “I got on the wheel and went to the end… And the funny thing is…at the end, there was another beginning…”
PRACTICE: BRINGING YOUR LIFE INTO THE CURRICULUM…
If you created the ‘template’ to be filled in (from the Practice on the Void in the chapter called ‘Before Let There Be Light’), now you can begin to fill it in more…remembering this is only the First Day…
You may actually want to create a separate sheet, or even pages, for each Stage or Theme… It will be up to you how much you do, how willing you are to ‘take the deep dives’.
If you decide to do it, it will be like climbing up a ladder to the platform that will give you a profound glimpse of Awareness into your Unique Soul Destiny. You may have glimpses of Why’s that perhaps you have never understood. It may even give you glimpses into Future Time that you will begin to see and Know now…
EXPAND THE PRACTICE: DIVIDING THE LIGHT FROM THE DARKNESS:
I have found it useful as I’ve done my own exploring to simply fold a piece of paper in half vertically. Write ‘Light’ in the first column, write ‘Darkness’ in the second.
What I love doing, from the Witness State that sees with Awareness beyond judgment of right and wrong, is to just jot down words or phrases that come. They may be events, people, circumstances, settings, places, whatever comes.
I’ve found it most useful to give myself room to add to it later, leaving blank space. And the use of the template of ‘7 Year Cycles’ has been very meaningful…
Jesus taught in PARABLES. There was a profound reason for this. Using Parables, many levels of teaching are available in the form of one simple story. It will all depend on ‘having the ears to hear, the eyes to see’. So it will be with you…
I’m also aware of what one of my seminary teachers once said. His name was Ed Rabel. He was an amazing teacher of the Mysteries of the Teachings of Jesus. He said: ‘Jesus came back from the Future.’
There are Multiple Realities Existing Simultaneously. As we experience our journey, moving through States and Stages, moving into Vaster realms of living consciously, we will begin to see Future with ‘Vertical Awareness’ as a Reality that is Always Already Present.
It will be different from seeing future as part of the dimension of ‘horizontal time’ that includes past, present and future. The Now can be an intersection between these two ways of ‘seeing’…
What you do in your own PRACTICE of BRINGING YOUR LIFE INTO THE CURRICULUM will be entirely up to you. You will find its Value and its Vastness and you will begin to see that your very own life is not just a story, it is a PARABLE… It is a Sacred Love Story, perhaps being Known or told for ‘Future time’…
I invite you to get that sheet of paper, fold it in half vertically, label the columns ‘Light’ and ‘Dark’ and see what simply ‘drops in’ for you during the 7 Year Cycles of your own life.
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