The Mystical Christ

Edward Hopper

What’s up with the number 3? Why does it capture our imaginations? And why does it play such a dominant role in mystical literature?

Religious articles of faith are usually watered-down explanations of esoteric teachings—the Mysteries. The reason they are called mysteries is that no one understands what they mean. The Holy Trinity is such a mystery. So, let’s see if we can break it down into its elements and see it from a different angle.

The word “holy,” taken out of its religious context, means absolute, universal, and fundamental. Another word, for example, that is “holy” is the word “vibration.” It too is absolute, universal, and fundamental. So when we say “Holy Trinity,” we are addressing a fundamental aspect of reality, which has nothing whatsoever to do with religion, except that religion is one of the institutions that has attempted to articulate it.

Let’s think outside the institution.

The word “Trinity” is easy. It simply means the number 3. What? Okay, more specifically, it means “three-ness.” Now, don’t let your head start reeling because of the “-ness” tagged onto the “three.” This is not meant to confuse you, and it is especially not meant to mystify anything. But when you see how three-ness permeates every aspect of reality, you will wonder how you could miss something so obvious.

Let’s start with you.

Each of us is confronted with three seemingly separate realities:

• Taken together, they comprise our experience. Now, we know that they aren’t really separate. The world “out there” actually exists as a product of the way our senses interpret the vibrations that reach them. Our eyes don’t see a thing—they simply convey information to the visual cortex of our brain, which uses it to construct an image. The “me” part of us is usually thought of as a composite made up of the stored images and the ideas we have about them. But, for this conversation we are simply going to regard it as a point of awareness. This is what some spiritual writers refer to as the “I.” The I is different from the ego in that it is pure awareness. The ego, we can say, is the content or the stored images and ideas that we take personally. The deeper part of us is the unknown—a realm of possibilities and strange forces. We can feel it, but we can’t see it. We can observe its effects in our lives, but we can’t always see the cause and effect relationships.

• the world out there
• the entity we call “me”
• and the deeper part of us for which we have no name.

This is a brief summary of us, one that anyone can relate to. And it is our own personal Holy Trinity.

Sure, there are other ways to look at the Holy Trinity—Beings too vast to comprehend; the great creative law of the universe; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But these are too mental. Let’s bring it closer to home and let the theologians and metaphysicians argue about the rest.

Energy is constantly moving through these three aspects of ourselves, aspects that only seem to be separate but are actually three aspects of one thing. This is why the equilateral triangle has always been used to describe the Trinity—three essential components equal to each other. Take away any one of them and the triangle disappears.

Understanding how our thoughts affect the world we see and how the world we see affects our thoughts enables us to understand everything. Add to that the deeper part of ourselves, the unknown, and the entire mystery is revealed. But as Buddha said, “This cannot be taught.” And even Jesus said, “I am the way,” which we can take to mean, “I am how you get there, not the destination itself.” The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon—once the ferryboat reaches the farther shore, it is no longer needed.

Becoming aware of these three seemingly separate aspects of YOU and sensing the energy that passes among them will lead you into a greater experience of God’s reality, the God in Whom you live, move, and have your being.

Doesn’t this question just fill you with dread? It does me. I can feel the weight of the heavens pressing down on my shoulders when I ask it. If you are a religious person, this question is particularly onerous. There’s a reason for that: the churches have spent a lot of time thinking of ways to make you feel obligated to God and then, by extension, to themselves. What you would normally think, without the centuries of conditioning by clerics of all stripes, would be that since God loves you unconditionally, that your “duty” would be to return that love wholeheartedly. It would be strictly a matter of the heart.

We need to strip away the religiosity from this most important question.

If you were an atheist, you might ask, “What should be my response to life?” This question in many ways is far more spiritual than “what is my duty to God?” If we were to spiritualize it by framing the word “life” as the sentient, intelligent, creative power of the universe, then the question starts to get interesting. “What is my response (duty) to the sentient, intelligent, creative power of the universe?” Then “life” is no longer framed as a set of circumstances but as the continuous stream of divine energy expressing Itself as All Being through us, both individually and collectively.

Max Heindel

Max Heindel, of Rosicrucian fame, had a very interesting take on God. He elaborately identified God as a system of Beings, beginning with the Unknowable and proceeding downward through layers of consciousness, each attuned to the realms to which They were assigned. The Christ Being, he said, is only capable of reaching down as far as the life body, or the energy matrix that holds flesh and Spirit together. This is an interesting concept – that the Christ can “only” do anything. The Churches would say that Christ, being God, can do anything. But here Heindel is saying that there are realms of being to which the Christ is blind. Hmmm.

And while this notion might be theologically fraught with problems (problems for the churches, not for us) it does help to explain what our duty might be in such a situation. And it also opens up a lot of opportunities for self-expression in ways that are enormously spiritual and, dare we say, gratifying. For doesn’t it stand to reason that, if God is Love, that serving God would be pleasurable?

The churches would have you believe that earth and heaven are separate, that earthly activities are mundane at best and wicked at their worst. They say that the most you can ever hope for is happiness in the hereafter. Not here. In fact, happiness in this life is looked down upon, even shunned, as though any degree of joy in this life diminishes one’s chances for joy in the next. Terrific. Not a church I would want to belong to, that’s for sure.

So, if the Lord of Life (the Christ Being) can only experience this world insofar as the power of life expresses itself in it, then it also stands to reason that God (as Christ) needs us. Which, of course, depends on whether God wants to experience earth life. This we can safely assume is so, since after making it, God said, “Wow, that’s really good!”

Here we are, then – God’s only opportunity to explore the Creation. I say “only” because we are the best equipped to appreciate the place in its fullness. The “only” Son of God, and all that. And by “best equipped,” I mean that we are the only beings that are not entirely tethered to our instincts. We have the capacity, even the propensity, to stretch ourselves beyond our standard operational parameters, do we not? Animals are perfectly happy to be themselves. Dogs just want to be dogs. People, on the other hand, are continually looking for something more.

Whence the craving? Well…I say that it is God’s curiosity that has spoiled our blissful state of benign contentment, forcing us out of the Garden of Eden into the Land of Chaos. Apparently, God saw an opportunity there, an opportunity to synthesize, to integrate, to sanctify, if you will, raw material packed with potential. Consciousness with a capital C infusing Itself into the Void, trying to discover why it exists, what purpose that part of Itself has in the wholeness of Its own Being.

So, God created an agent and told it to go in and sort things out, to name everything and to figure out what everything is for, to plumb the depths of the Divine Potential. And since God is a living God, the only things that were of any interest were the expressions of that Life, and the ways in which the multitudes of those expressions could relate to each other. Life!

Our duty to God, therefore, is to offer ourselves up as vehicles for God’s Self-expression. It is to let the Life of God move through us in Its never-ending desire to discover Itself. And like a baby, nothing is uninteresting. Everything is totally fascinating. The possibilities are endless. Whether an Olympic gymnast, a concert pianist, an artist, a poet, a teacher, a student, a bank president, a 711 clerk, a physicist, a construction worker, a nurse, a beachcomber, a grandmother – all enable God, the Lord of Life, the Christ Being, to BE HERE. How glorious is that? That’s pretty glorious.

It’s also pretty humbling. Rainer Maria Rilke captured the essence of God’s earnestness to know Itself:

The spirit wants only that there be flying. As to who happens to do it, She has only a passing interest.

Rainer Maria Rilke

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For some reason, whenever anything moves in this universe, it starts to spin. Every galaxy, every solar system, every atom—they all have a vertical axis that runs perpendicular to their rotational disk. It’s as though the energy that generated their movement was at right-angle to the effect.

What does this have to do with us? Our energy is the energy of Being. We have a vertical focus, our own individual axis mundi—we are each the center of our own universe. The philosopher, Martin Heidegger, called this our “stand,” an appropriate term for a vertical element of being. And just as drawing all of our energy into the center of our field of awareness (as described above) causes that field to empty out and become a vacuum, so does our “stand” create a “clearing,” another term coined by Heidegger. This clearing becomes our creative field, and it will manifest according to the intention inherent in our stand. In other words, we create what we are.

This would all be nothing more than theory, until you start using it. Then you can feel it, because what we are talking about is the actual movement of power, force, and energy in our lives. This is what the saying “go within” actually means. Going within means moving from the realm of effect into the realm of cause. Spiritual geometry and its symbols are the living language that shows us how to do that.

The circle with a dot in the center can be viewed in different ways:

If we look at this from the “side,” we get:

The dot becomes the axis, and the circle becomes a cycle of activity. This is what is meant by the term “living God.” The circle with a dot, remember, represents God as Creator. The circle by itself represents God as undifferentiated creative potential. The dot, then, is the Word or the Christ, the Son/Sun of God. “All things that were made were made by Him.” The sun is the source of all life energy in this solar system, from the very highest frequencies of spiritual light to the very lowest of the longest waves of electro-magnet force.

We have to learn to speak of God in real terms. God is not an idea, is not a philosophy, and is not separate from Its creation. God is in and through everything that exists. Nothing that is not of God can exist here. This does not mean that the creation is the totality of God. We are still talking about the circle with a dot. The circle without a dot transcends all of this.

There is much more to the unseen than there is to the seen. This solar system, when viewed physically, is nothing more than a conglomeration of matter, gases, and plasma. But viewed spiritually, it is a living cell. Applying the principle of as above, so below, the same can be said about us. In our spiritual being, we are a cell in the mind of God. We have the same center, the same dynamics of cyclical energies, the same light. We are extensions of it, and it is the larger version of us. Microcosm and macrocosm.

There is only one circle with a dot. All the rest differ only in size, which in this context is completely and profoundly irrelevant.

Spiritual geometry begins with a dot—the center. It actually begins with the circle, but the dot is the first thing that manifests, so that’s where we begin. After the dot comes the straight line. It is the radius of the manifested field that will follow. The straight line is the first outward movement, and it is the first thing to master after learning concentration.

Rather than try to explain what this is, here is an exercise that will show you, in terms of your own vehicle, what this primary symbol is all about.

While sitting, place your hands on your knees about twelve inches apart.

Look at them. Feel the blood coursing through them, and feel the energy in the nerves.

See the energy as white light, as though the energy in the nerves of your hands and arms were lighting up, causing them to glow.

Now, without physically moving them, bring your hands together. See the energy forms come together in front of you and clasp together.

You have just demonstrated the second spiritual symbol with your spiritual body.

Work with this long enough, and you will be able to project energy wherever you want.

The reality is that this is how you move anyway, but you may not have known that the physical body moves as an effect of the spiritual body. Doing this exercise shows you that you can use your energy independently of your body, which will come in real handy after you leave your physical vehicle behind at the end of this lifetime. Of course, there are endless ways you can use this before you die. The fun part is exploring the opportunities on your own, perhaps with a few helpful hints along the way.

Want to go back to the circle with a dot in the center? Now that you know what this symbol business is really about, let’s look at it again.

You know that concentration is the ability to hold your attention on a single idea or object for an extended period of time without letting your mind wander to  something unrelated. Fine. But what if you concentrate without an idea or an object? In other words, what if you gather in all of your energy—you know, the stuff you normally let bleed out into the world. What if you gather all of that into the center of you, that place where you actually reside? You know from the above exercise what we’re talking about when we say energy. Now you’re going to concentrate all of it into a single dot.

You will find that when you do this that the field around you (the circle) gets emptied out. There is nothing in it. But here’s the rub: nature abhors a vacuum. Unless you establish a boundary to your field of nothingness, a lot of “stuff” is going to rush in to fill it. So, the trick (skill) is to both establish the center and simultaneously hold the boundary. You know how to do this, because you did it in the exercise. But now the straight line goes out in all directions.

This is learning to use the will. Until and unless you learn this, you can have all the good intentions in the world and still be ineffective. You can be as gentle as a dove and not know how energy works.

Give it a shot. Experiment with it and record your observations. Be methodical, but also be inventive. Remember that energy is real and that there will be results. So, be gentle.

If you’ve ever used a magnifying glass to start a fire, you know the power of concentration. Our mind works the same way. When we focus our attention on an idea, the process of creation begins. You might think that the magnifying glass in this example is a metaphor, when it is actually a symbol. What’s the difference? Symbols have power.

The circle with a dot in the center is an ancient symbol for God. But since God is beyond human conception, how can anything symbolize God? This is the problem the Greeks and Romans encountered in their ancient mystery schools. Instead of talking about God, they talked about aspects of God. They took the different aspects and assigned names and personalities to them. Thus we have the “gods,” such as Zeus, Apollo, Athena, Hera, and so on. Similarly, the circle with a dot in the center is not a symbol for God as such, but it is a symbol for God in Its creative aspect. It is a symbol for God the Creator.

Since we are co-creators with God, the circle with a dot in the center is of particular importance to us, because it is the pattern that makes this possible. First, we must realize that geometry is not simply lines drawn on paper. Geometry is a description of the movement of power, force, and energy. Hidden within the diagrams is energy in motion. The diagrams are a snapshot in toto of the action that the diagram represents, just like the depictions of the gods of old and their adventures with each other described symbolically the relationships between different natural and metaphysical laws.

So, what can we learn by analyzing this symbol? One definition for God is “a field of undifferentiated creative power.” Pure potential. This is represented by a circle without a dot. Right away we can see that the dot is the instigator of creative activity, the thing that brings undifferentiated power into specific manifestation. The symbol of the circle with a dot is therefore a universal symbol that describes the pattern by which anything is brought into being – from pure undifferentiated potential into a clear idea, which will subsequently be brought into manifested form.

How do we use this? First, we conceive of a plan, a blueprint as it were, of the thing or the condition we want to experience in our life. This can be anything from a house to good health or whatever. Then, we become conscious of the undifferentiated field of creative power (God). Next, we ask that our idea be brought into manifestation. Once we have asked, we then let go of the whole thing, knowing that what we have asked for has already been given to us. We create the feeling within ourselves of what it would be like to already have it. In other words, we become it. We develop the ability to take on the condition we want, so that every fiber of our being says, “This is so.”

We become the dot, the living pattern of what we want to (co)create, and we do that in the field of infinite potential. In spiritual terms, we perform our actions while being conscious of the creative power of God. We are in It, and It is within us. “I and the Father are one.”

How do we know if we are asking for the right thing? We don’t. But create we must, for that is the way God created us. We were created as creators. It is our divine nature. I doubt that God cares what we create, as long as it does no harm in the long run. One of the things we are here to learn is initiative. We only grow spiritually when our choices spring forth from within ourselves, unprompted and without coercion. This is the meaning of Spiritual Freedom. It’s as though we have to create good in order to become good. But our creation must come from within us, not assigned to us by someone else, for it to count. “The whole of the Law is this: do what you will.” God, like Simon Cowell, says, “Show us what YOU have. Don’t mimic someone else!” God is in a cycle of Self-discovery. How can that happen if everyone is the same? Don’t be a copy of a copy. Without the possibility for something new, there is no possibility at all. And by definition, possibility is the field of creativity. God wants to know Itself. And God loves a surprise as much as anyone.

Note: When we consider that God created us, doesn’t it make sense that it was done in the way I’ve described above? God speaking us into being is a bit like throwing a pebble into the cosmic pond. The ripples keep expanding outward in never-ending concentric circles. After all, we are radiant beings. When we know this about ourselves, we realize that who we are is an expression of God. We did not create ourselves.

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We are literally on fire with electrical nerve energy. A full-body Kirlian photograph would be truly amazing. The problem is that most of the time we are unaware of the energy vessel that we are. Those who are aware are capable of energizing everything and everyone around them. Healers, speakers, artists – they electrify us with the power of life.

Nerve energy, the actual chemical cascade that runs back and forth through the network of nerve fibers in your body, is not itself what we’re talking about here. Just as the electricity coming out of a wall socket is not that interesting, spiritually speaking, neither are the electrical impulses of the human nervous system. They are both merely mechanical phenomena. What is interesting (and real) about nerve energy is that it vibrates. It vibrates so fast that it approaches the frequency of light. And because it vibrates, it is capable of attuning itself to higher octaves of itself, those octaves that are light.

“Keyboard”

Just as striking middle C on a piano keyboard will cause all of the other C’s to resonate with sympathetic vibrations, the nerve energy in our bodies is in sympathetic  resonance with the universal life energy that fills our solar system. This is why we say that we are “created” by God. The life in us is resonant with, is a response to, the greater life of the spiritual body of the Sun. “We love because He first loved us,” says the Apostle Paul.

When we recognize that our life energy is simultaneously both our own and not our own, the possibility of manifesting God in our personal life becomes a reality. Life happens through us, but it also happens because we are there. We are life’s oppor(tune)ity – we are in tune with the greater life that shines in and through us. Making the connection between the particular and the universal is what the spiritual life is all about. As above, so below. The particular is the apparatus of our physical vehicle, our body. The universal is the radiant life force, which is the vector for the Mind of God.

Light is a force, but it is also carries information. What we call “archetypes” are discrete aspects, divine ideas, encoded within the force of life itself. Our bodies are configured the same way. The force of the electrical nerve energy is encoded with instructions from the brain. What we picture in our mind is translated in our body as specific instructions for specific reactions. Each organ has its own frequency, its own “personality,” if you will. It vibrates with a particular kind of intelligence. That particular kind of intelligence is the product of, or should we say is in sympathetic resonance with, that part of the greater body of God, which for us is this solar system. This is why in astrology different organs are related to different planets. The planets themselves, like the electricity that comes out of a wall socket, are not the generators of the intelligence but are merely the gross, visible part of the body of God. If we could take a Kirlian photograph of the solar system, that would be amazing indeed!

We literally, like fish in the ocean, swim in a sea of energy. But like the fish, we have no cognizance of the fact. When we become aware that the life in us is the Life of God, then we truly become alive.

An eye in a blue face saw an eye in a green face. That eye is like to this eye, said the first eye. But in low place, not in high place.

This is a quote from The Hobbit, a riddle. The eye in a blue face is the sun; the eye in a green face is a daisy in a grassy field. We are the mirror image of that Eye, created in Its likeness. We are a step-down transformer for the life of God. Every thought we have is in some form a reflection of the Mind of God. Without that Mind, we could not think at all.

When Jesus, in Matthew 16:13, said, “Who do men say that I, the Son (Sun) of man am?” he wasn’t referring to himself, but to all of us. We are all the Son/Sun of Man. We all get our life energy from the spiritual body of the Sun, stepped down through the physical mechanism of our nervous system into the manifest form that powers our physical body. What Jesus was actually saying was, “The life (sun) in you – is it a product of chemical energy in your body, or is it from God? Does life originate in your flesh, or is it a sympathetic resonance of the All Life?” Peter got it right when he said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God!” What he was saying was simply that life moves through us, and that that life is intelligent. That Life is the most solid thing in the universe, the Rock upon which the Christ in Jesus would “build Its church.” The energy of Life (and the intelligence that informs it) fills every cubic centimeter of space in this solar system. What could be more solid than that?

Apollo – the Sun God
All avatars are considered “Sun Gods.” Buddha’s “lion’s roar” is a reference to Leo, the astrological sign ruled by the sun.

See your body for what it is – the Temple of God. The candles on the altar symbolize the Fire of Life in you. That fire reaches all the way up to heaven and all the way down to hell, – from the most spiritual to the most material. There is no place where God is not. When you realize that the life in you is the Life of God, and by “realize” I mean FEEL it, then your whole body will be full of light. When you see that there is only One Life, that the kingdom is not divided against itself, then heaven will manifest before your very eyes.

A woman once told me that she had trouble meditating because every time she closed her eyes and went within, her body would start to sway back and forth in circular kind of way. It would get so bad that she felt as though she would fall over. The feeling was uncomfortable, so she preferred to simply sit still with her eyes open and just get quiet.

I suggested that the next time she tried to meditate, she could try a visualization I had used that might calm things down. I told her to see a straight line, perfectly vertical, running right up her spine. At the same time, she was to visualize another straight line passing through the center of her body and extending directly in front and behind, extending outward indefinitely. Along with this, she was to visualize a third straight line passing through the same center extending to the left and right.

Apis the Bull

The next time I saw her, she explained to me that by using this visualization only a few times the swaying problem had completely disappeared. She had no trouble meditating from that time forth.

We are energy beings. Energy moves through us continually. We don’t have to conjure it up or try to generate it; it is always there. Sometimes, as in the case with this woman, it can feel as though there is too much energy coursing through us, and we need to learn how to stabilize it.

End of the Taurean Age

Each astrological age has a symbol that describes the nature of the energy prevalent in that age. In the Age of Taurus, for example, divine power was symbolized as a bull. It was an agrarian era, and cattle were the “horsepower” of the day. Students were taught to cultivate a calm and steady use of spiritual power, harnessing it so that natural forces could be directed towards the arts, turning everyday, utilitarian items into lovely expressions of opulence and beauty. Out of this idea of harnessing divine energy came the practice of yoga, which in Sanskrit means yoke.

The Fisher King

Then, in the Age of Aries, spiritual energy was channeled into physical prowess, athletic skill, the martial arts, and war. The emphasis was on swift, decisive action, almost the polar opposite of the slow and steady Taurus energy. Later came the Age of Pisces, which was the discovery and deciphering of the living energies of the subconscious. The emphasis shifted away from the physical world to the kingdom of heaven, and the idea of losing one’s familiar identity to plumb the depths of the unseen worlds was out-pictured in asceticism and monastic disciplines.

The Sacrifice of Isaac

Now we are in the Age of Aquarius, where spiritual energy itself is the focus, symbolized by flowing water. The glyph for Aquarius is very similar to a cross-section of the human spinal cord, showing that the electrical nature of nerve energy is at the core of life’s expression through human activity. We hear the terms “energy blockages” and “resistance” used to describe how energy flows through us and how we can remove the restrictions we have placed in its path. In meditation, for instance, the energy flowing through our body can itself tell us the correct posture to assume. Energy and the way it moves becomes the wayshower, sometimes overturning established customs and practices of the previous ages.

Whereas in the Age of Pisces the emphasis was on the discovery of the deep currents and eddies of spiritual energies far below the surface of our awareness, now we are to bring these same energies into the light of day, to put them to use in our everyday activities, to spiritualize our lives by bringing the power of God into everything we do. This not only applies to the way we meditate, but also to the ways in which we make our living, our relationships, and our civic responsibilities – all the things that relate to us as human beings. Just as we have harnessed the power of electricity to change our lives, so too must we learn to set patterns of thought and deed, so that we give life to those things we want to see manifested in our world. Action for action’s sake is no longer enough; now our action has to be directed by reason – the rule of law for the good of all, where all are treated equally and are expected to abide by those same laws the same as everyone else.

This is the spirit of the Age of Aquarius, into which we are now entering. Our success is dependent on how well we learn how to control the spiritual energies of mind, our thoughts, and what we give life to.

It’s not uncommon to be angry all the time. Many people experience that – always on simmer, just waiting to boil, and looking for a reason. Not a good way to live. And we can always find a good reason to be angry, especially in today’s world. But if we watch closely, we can see that anger exists for its own sake and doesn’t really need a reason. All it needs is an excuse.

Like a drug, the feeling of being angry can become an addiction. And like any other addiction, we tend to take it personally. It tells us who we are. “I’m normally an okay person, but I have this problem…” The problem distinguishes us and makes us special. And we would much rather be special than be happy.

Being special means that we deserve to be loved, or at least worthy of attention. It’s an instinct – basic, primitive, deep. We need it to stay alive. But we don’t need it continually. We only need it at certain times, especially when change is needed. Anger can provide the energy to bump us out of a rut. But if we believe that anger makes us a strong personality, then anger becomes its own rut. It becomes a habit.

There are classes for business people who travel to areas where there is a high risk of being kidnapped. One way to avoid being kidnapped, they tell you, is to monitor your fear. Not control it, but to monitor it. Nature has equipped us with a highly sophisticated early warning system called fear. Danger that is detected subliminally registers first as an unnamed fear, which when noticed makes us hyper-alert to our surroundings. But if we convince ourselves that we should always be afraid, the warning signal is always on, and the highly sophisticated early warning system called fear is rendered useless.

Anger can be a catalyst for change. But if we are always angry, change becomes nearly impossible. For instance, anger can motivate a young person to leave home, to get away from overly controlling or abusive parents. But once the anger has done its job, it can be released. Its purpose has been accomplished. But if we hang onto that anger and identify it as who we are (this strong person who stood up to her parents) then we find ourselves stuck in the conflict, perpetually reliving the drama. We may have escaped physically, but emotionally we are still living at home!

It is not necessary to identify the cause of our anger. I know this runs counter to the contemporary wisdom in psychology, but it’s actually true. What we need to do is simply observe that we are getting angry. Just a little bit of self-observation is all it takes to distance ourselves from the feeling. Once we see that we are getting angry, we then have the power to choose to see it differently. The feeling will still arise and wash over us, but it will be something that is happening, not something that we are. Observing it happening causes us to become aware of our true identity, namely the one who is doing the observing. And just as we can observe our anger arise, we can watch it pass by. Where it once passed, we remain.

Thoughts are like buses – they come and they go. We get to choose which bus we get on. Feelings are different in that we usually get taken for a ride. But if we were able to observe that ride from a traffic helicopter, then the ride would not seem so personal. It would be just another ride. This would make it a lot easier to get off the bus at the next stop.

It helps to know that anger is something we have gotten used to and not some mysterious thing that wells up from the shadowlands of our soul. The soul is fine. It is always fine. Being face to face with God at all times, it knows that it is safe. Anger and fear are of the body. They have specific roles to play in our physical survival. But being on the spiritual path means that we seek to realize the entirety of our existence, not just the earthly part. Once you start recognizing the observer part, you take the first steps toward recognizing the Self –the real you.

I have seen it all, and yet I am still okay.

It’s easy to see the energy in our nerves as a complex system of electro-chemical impulses and nothing more. Our scientific predispositions tend to reduce such phenomena to their component parts so that we can understand them better. For instance, parsing the laws of nature has given us the automobile, but understanding how an engine works does not give us the experience of driving. Nor does dissecting a human body tell us what it feels like to be alive.

Our bodies glow with the energy of life. They are part and parcel of this world, a world full of energy. Look around. Every tree, every plant, every bush literally burns with the energy of life, the “green fuse that drives the flower.” And it all has its source in the Sun. Life is the froth of sunlight.

We live in a sea of light, but most of the sun’s rays we do not see – their spectral wavelengths are either above or below what our senses can detect. The earth is awash with these unseen waves. Some are so fine and of such a high vibration that they pass through solid rock as if it weren’t there, energizing its molecules from within. The macro and the micro – all one thing.

We live in this world of light, and we try to locate ourselves in it. Where are we? It has always been our dilemma that we feel separate from life as though we were floating above our circumstances seeing what’s going on but unable somehow to fully engage. It’s like a dream. But it’s only because we feel separated from our body – not the body we see in the mirror, but the part we don’t see – the energy. There is more light right inside of our physical vehicle than there is outside on a sunny day! Every nerve fiber carries it, every red blood cell is packed with it, every atom of our being is light made manifest. It is what we are.

The initiation of Illumination is a naturally occurring event. Technically, it is the activation of the Kundalini, the subtle energy of the spine, which causes light to appear in our consciousness. This can be facilitated by an initiator, but it often happens on its own, especially now when the energy of the sun is so much stronger than in previous ages. Part of this increase is due to an expanded awareness of the global community, but then it could be said that the expanded awareness of the global community is a result of the increased energy of the age. Awareness and energy are the same thing. As Dominic Indra says, “I don’t have a point of view, I AM a point of view.”

Focus on the light in your body. See it. Look for it in your spine, in your hands, in your core. It’s not an idea, so don’t look for it in your head. Thoughts about the light are not the experience of the light. Big difference! Sometimes, light will appear in the head, but not by putting it there. See it in your body. Then it will manifest naturally.

Hands of Light, by Barbara Ann Brennan

It was during a field trip for the Plants and Soils section of my Geography 101 class where we went to check out the loess deposits of eastern Nebraska, that aeolian silt or “rock flour,” the dust from thousands of square miles of rocky terrain ground into powder by the receding glaciers of the last Ice Age and then carried by the wind to form the deep, fertile farmland of the American Midwest.

The Burning Bush by Arnold Friburg

I finished taking my notes and returned to the van ahead of the others. Just sitting there, enjoying being outside of the city, my eyes settled on a sand cherry bush about six feet from my open window. I had been reading Michael Schneider’s Beginner’s Guide to Constructing the Universe wherein he talks about numbers, fractals, and sacred geometry. It turns out that as a bush grows, its stems and leaves form definite patterns, fractal in nature, as they emerge from the stalk. These patterns relate to a certain number – in this case the number 5. From ancient times, the number 5 has been the symbol for Regeneration or Life. The Greek philosophers called it the Pentad and the Quintessence. It is the whirling spiral, that which raises each succeeding cycle of manifestation to a higher level of evolution.

All at once, the sand cherry bush was transformed in front of my eyes. It was no longer just a bush. Its upward momentum, the way it filled the space around itself with geometrical precision, the growth of its cells, the inspiration and expiration of its leaves, its very intelligence, and its link to the entire universe – all of this made the bush appear as though it were on fire. Life itself was blazing, and this bush was its flame.

Now, I like Bible stories as much as anyone, and the story of Moses and the Burning Bush is one of my favorites. And one of the things I like about Bible stories is the way they have layer upon layers of meaning – they go about as deep as you can take them. And there are people like Rudolf Steiner who have the ability to see into the workings of nature, the life spirits and their intelligences. For this one brief moment, I felt like I was sharing their vision. I was seeing beneath the veneer of life into its inner workings. In that instant, the whole world was on fire – the fire of life, the Quintessence – generating and regenerating itself – the genesis of creation!