“Lift your eyes and look up, to your power within.
Look up and see the richness of heaven.
What do you see?”

I come before the divine today with my prayer intact:  Having a mind imbued with the spirit of life is merely a milestone point along that journey.  The mind seems to be a crutch and a cruel master for many people in the world.  Living in the moment, living with love, means in part not reacting out of the conditioned mind.

Reactivity is evidence of dreaming, drama-based consciousness.  Drama is an energetic that is highly addictive.  Drama gets our heart rates pumping, it gets adrenaline gushing into our bloodstreams – these are very addictive substances.  It is very addictive to be in such a state for those who are not sufficiently saturated with the spirit of life.

The tree of life is centered in our spine and crown, and is our connection to all of creation. When one is sufficiently full of life, the forbidden fruit of such dramatic and reactive energies feels like death.  What we all need is life and to have it more abundantly.

As a man it used to be the two aspects of my being I was most ashamed of was the function of thought and the function of desire.  So afraid of my thoughts because I couldn’t control them and I was so ashamed of my desires and cravings.  Thus my words and my actions, which can only ride upon these two inner elements, were things that I regretted very often in my life.  My words and my actions, as a result, often became the source and the cause of drama, and the reactivity within other peoples’ drama.  If any of you have ever been a recipient of my sleeping state of consciousness, either in words or in writing, I apologize for my behavior.

Our ability to think consciously and to desire consciously are two fundamental rights that we have as divine beings.  These two functions only come into their right order when we are sufficiently full of the power of life.  The winds of life should be strong within our inner being.  These winds can be thought of as spiritual pressure.  It could be thought of as energy.  It could be thought of as love.  It could be thought of as enthusiasm – but in any case all of these words point to the same spirit of life within.  When we have life and we have it abundantly, it fills our thoughts; it fills our desires and elevates them into a state that they can fulfill their true function.

I’ll give an example:

There is a woman who I spoke to recently:  She expressed out loud the desire to “kill the voice of the victim.”  Voice is a metaphor for thought.  Her desire was to kill her thoughts that are victim-natured, in essence.  Yet our thoughts are an extension of ourselves, they are like our children.  How is our relationship with these inner children, our thoughts and our desires?  Do we want to kill them?  Do we allow them to cause havoc in the world and drag us around?  Do we repress them with firmness and judgment?  None of these!  We can energize them!

I asked permission of this woman to share my response to her desire and it was granted.  What I had to say to her was that the voice of the victim and the voice of soul – our true thought vs. our victim-natured thought are the same with only one difference!  That difference is the power of life that is inside of them.  Holy thinking is full of life, like a grape recently plucked from the vine.  It is firm and juicy, filled with the life essence of the plant and its desires to nourish humanity.  The thoughts that are victim-natured are simply lacking in life.  Compared to a grape it is like a raisin, withered, delicate and weak.

At this stage of my life, when I encounter negativity or negative thoughts, I simply energize it when it comes in to my inner sanctum.  It cannot penetrate and remain in the same state.  When any thought-forms penetrate into this being, they are energized and as such arise and ascend into true consciousness like a golden canvas within, waiting for the artistry of a master to paint whatever he likes.

The golden canvas of your true mind can only be accessed when the spirit of life is sufficiently operating within.  The awakened heart expresses through words filled with power of life, based on thoughts that are energized and golden.  When the mind is sufficiently activated by this life energy, the ability to express in writing really comes online.

When one handwrites a prayer or a longing of desire and hangs it in a place where people can see it, it becomes a living testament of that soul.  Like the prayer flags in the mountains of the Himalayas and in the temples of Nepal, our ability to express in writing accurately and powerfully is captured in our own handwriting, in our own calligraphies, in our own stroke of the brush – not necessarily by what is generated through a keyboard.

I had the recent experience of writing down a sincere prayer one morning, a sincere desire, and posting it in my office.  I left for the day forgetting about it then suddenly realizing in the evening that my prayer was coming true!  When I went back to my prayer, I realized that it was in a location that was directly in front of the work space that an assistant setup shop: my prayer, whether he agreed with it or not, was witnessed.

Do you ever wonder why the verb “to bear” is used in conjunction with “to witness?”  To bear witness has almost the same spiritual function as to bear a child.  To bear witness is to allow the birth of whatever it is that we see.  This man, although not necessarily connected with our ministry, and not necessarily in agreement with anything I had written was working in a place where I displayed my prayer.  Even if he glanced at it for a moment and it entered into his being, whether he agreed with it or not, he bore witness to my prayer in my own writing.  As he bore witness this prayer was sealed in light, began to elevate and call out to the universe and the energy of transformation that I sought was added unto me – just through the power of writing a prayer that was witnessed by another.

In this time of a new year approaching, it is natural for our desires to come fully online.  What is it that we really want in the new year?  I would encourage you, I would challenge you to write them down:  pen them, paint them, brush them, calligraphize them.  Whatever your greatest desires are for the coming year, let them resonate with every part of you and write them in detail as succinctly as possible then hang them up.  Like the prayer flags of the Himalayas, hang them up in a place that is conspicuous – perhaps in your home, maybe in your office – and let passerbys bear witness to your prayer.

Thus, our thoughts and our desires can fully resonate with the energy of who we are, be fully empowered by the spirit of life and be born witness, that they may be sealed in the book of life and come to pass.

The greatest religious advice I ever received as a child was:

Whatever you got, give it to God.

It doesn’t matter if it’s love, if its anger, if its sadness, if its even that you don’t believe in God.  Whatever you got, give it to God.

As I’m moving through my day, I’m contemplating faith.  What does it really mean to have faith in the divine?  What does it really mean to be healed by one’s faith?  What does it really mean when one’s faith is great?  Or whether it is small?

The way I’m thinking of faith in this moment is as a conduit of energy.

There are great bonds that unite friends and family.  There are great bonds that unite us to this earth – to all the creatures and all the forces of this earth.  And there are great bonds that unite us in spirit with the great divine.

Each of these bonds are conduits of energy.

A bond must be established between two people for love and friendship to exist, then we have faith, and trust in the goodwill of the other.  We believe and we magnify the greatness of each other by being together.

A bond must be established in order for any energy to move from the divine through a person into the world.

Bonds of trust and goodwill are institutionalized in our society:  Doctors are certified and licensed, professionals are certified so that a person of reasonable intellect may trust that what they have to offer is sound and they have faith in that person to perform a function in their lives and thus be open, yielded, vulnerable and welcoming of that one.

Along with our certifications comes our reputation.  Our name precedes us in the world.  A person can have faith in even just the name of someone, and receive a quote or an idea for instance, simply because of the name of the person who spoke it.

Faith is a conduit of energy, and where a bond is created, energy can move.

In order to truly find my place in this world, I must have a bond of energy to the Divine-

LOOK UP!

Look up, to the Divine!

And be fully yielded to the power that exists within,

Look up!  Look up!

Lift your eyes up to Heaven,

Create a bond with that which is greater than us,

Direct our attention upward,

Look up!

See?

What is in the Heaven for you?

Look up!

In the light of the Sun,

In the blue of the sky,

In the billowing of clouds,

In the movement of air,

Look up!

Be resonant with that which is high, in you.

Be resonant, be yielded with the Divine.  Allow the energy to come in as we look up.

We are creating great bonds of energy with the divine, and whether we believe in the presence of God or not, whether we are sad, whether we are angry, whether we are fearful, we can offer it up on the altar of the divine within – and receive something in the act of communion.

In the act of looking up, when we connect with the divine, we receive something, but it is not simply for ourselves.  It is for the purpose of moving into our world the energy of divine,  holy vibration.  It is received because God so loves the world, so loves the united body of humanity, and in order for that holy vibration to move into the heart of another there has to be deep bonds of faith: Bonds of friendship, bonds of love, bonds of trust, bonds of goodwill between us and the people in our world.

We have to have a safe place well-established in the hearts of others in order to have any effect.  Then as the fruits of the divine are born, good works are made, lives are touched – thanksgiving is received back from our world.  Praise can be received, but it is not for us.  When love and thanksgiving returns from my world to me, it is not for me.  When fame, reputation, all the goodness that comes with being well-loved in the world are received they are welcome, but not for me – I offer that back to the divine.

In some cultures, this truly open and clear way of thinking about faith, thinking about energy being given and received is fully embedded into their language.  In particular, the Ethiopian language and the Ilokano language come to mind.  Egzer Ystelen, is an Ethiopian expression, “I thank the divine for the gifts I have received from you.”  Abo Ystelen is an expression that “In the divine is the source of all blessings.”

These phrases are used as thank you and you’re welcome, and yet they thoroughly put proper place that the divine holds in our lives.

We are conduits of energy connecting the divine to the people in our world, and we need to love one another very well in order for the divine to move into this world.