The Golden Legend

The Golden Legend

A city called Silene had a large lake, where a plague-bearing dragon who breathed fire and disease lived. The dragon poisoned all the countryside. To please the dragon, the people of Silene gave it a sheep every day, for food, and when there were no more sheep, they gave their children to the dragon. The children were chosen by a lottery.

One year the lottery chose the King's daughter. The King, sad and desperate, asked the people to take all his gold and silver, and half of his empire - but only if his daughter could be saved. The people refused. The daughter was sent out to the lake, dressed in white as a bride, to be a fine meal for the dragon.

Not knowing this, Saint George was riding past the lake on the same day. The princess, terrified and trembling, tried to send him away, but George said he would stay and protect her.

The dragon came suddenly out of the lake while they were speaking. Saint George made a gesture called the Sign of the Cross, jumped on his horse and advanced toward the dragon. He used his long spear to hurt the dragon badly. Then he asked the princess to throw her long pretty belt to him. He put the silk belt around the dragon's neck. Now, the dragon followed the girl like a humble pet follows its master.

The Princess and Saint George took the dragon back to the city of Silene, where the people were terrified to see the dragon enter. But Saint George told them not to be scared. He said that if the people became Christians and went to Church to be baptized, he would kill the dragon immediately.

The king and the people of Silene converted to Christianity, George killed the dragon with his sword, 'Ascalon', and its body was taken out of the city on carts. Fifteen thousand men were baptized, not counting women and children. On the site where the dragon died, the king built a Church for the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint George. From the altar in the church came a fountain of holy water. The water cured any disease.

Ancient sages were tellers of lore.  They wisely knew the way to the soul was through story, even as ancient prophets shared mysteries through parables.  Somehow a story stimulates the imagination where the gate to the soul provides entry into a kind of secret garden, where the holy and the human comingle.

There may have really been a Saint George who lived somewhere around 300 AD, and maybe there really was a dragon who lived in a lake, such as the lock nest monster in Scotland.  All the details of the story may have existed, but probably not.  If the story is a myth, a legend as it claims, then even if the details did exist, if you go looking for the bones of old George you're missing the point. 

There are so many layers to this beautiful old legend that it would be so much fun to write volumes about it.  It has several dimensions of meaning. 

The first layer of meaning is the spiritual myth which, like a dream, can be translated into a meaningful message.  As a Christian legend, it suggests the hidden meaning in the legend is the Christian message. This is especially interesting because that meaning has been lost to the church over the centuries and has only recently been rediscovered. 

The second layer is clearly the personal spiritual liberation story that is spirituality's real message, and is at the roots of all religious mysticism. 

And, the third, is one that England embraced, making it an English legend about an English knight, about English Catholicism. As a heroic story about a proud, yet once weak, nation it was a legend to inspire England's liberation from a foreign oppressor which (then) was the Roman occupation of England.

For us, today, the important message is the second meaning. We are living at a time when our sweet souls, our light-filled spirits, or - in Jungian and Christ language - our inner child are being threatened with extinction.  All the heroic stories, including the story of Moses and the birth of Jesus, are about the rise of a "savior" who will liberate the people.  And, in both those stories the children are being massacred.  The dragon in this legend is the anti-christ spirit of oppression, domination, control that "eats" that inner child, consuming and destroying the soul of the person, the nation and the entire world.  

Ahh ... the lake....  The lake, or any body of water in a dream, is symbolic of the unconscious and most often the emotional, watery realm of that unconscious.  For a dragon to be frothing forth from that watery realm, is clearly the power of our internalized, unconscious fears stemming from the everpresence of that opppressive power that holds us down, imprisoning our innocent souls and restraining our spiritual flight into maturity and authentic power.

So, the people give their livelihood to that power, as current day consumers give their money to bank lenders and the clever sale ads for major national and international corporations.  In short, we are giving away our money unwittingly to those who have controlled us into thinking that we need things, we just don't need. 

Finally, there's nothing more to give.  So, the people give their children.  I can't even begin to write how terrible what is happening to our children, out there, today.  There was a recent article in Portland's newspaper reporting that an incredibly high rate of high school kids are dropping out of school.  A pervasive epidemic of hopelessness, an apathy about the future, has taken hold.  With no hope for jobs, who needs an education, the high drop out rate suggests. So, even today, we're giving our children to the dragon, to feed it, to keep it silent. 

So, now, who is the princess?  Could she be the Earth herself?  Could she be the archetypal Eve, the feminine goddess who is the life-bearer of our world?  Are we to give her to the anti-christ powers that seek to consume our souls?

No.  We aren't.  We will offer her up as she has already been offered up.  But, there is also among us a heroic masculine presence, a holy liberator, who is Christ-like in his power to protect the sacred feminine, who honors and reveres life itself, enough to slay the dragon and allow the sacred life-bearer to live.  In his act, he frees us all.

In Jungian terms, that heroic masculine co-habitates within us with the heroic feminine.  It is the role of the man to protect the woman, and the child.  If we lose this, as in so many cases we have, we are lost.  If we lose the heroic male, we lose the life-giver. 

As I look around our world, it seems to me that we have lost the heroic male and the courageous life-giver which both are allowing the children to be swallowed up by the ancient foe, the dragon.  It's all in disguise, so we don't see it.  That's the beauty of a myth.  It gives us eyes to see something that is hidden. 

Just as the inner child is our authentic (as opposed to our ego) self and also within us is that divine feminine, life-giver, there is also the heroic knight, life-protector.  We have within us an inner savior, who we can summon forth to protect us, individually and collectively.  Anything that happens within the soul of a human being, is also played out on the grand world stage. 

That inner savior, that subliminal Saint George, is whom mystics would call the Christ spirit within you.  It is that inner Christ spirit that Jesus led us to.  He did not call us to look outside ourselves for his second coming, as was his first coming, but to find the same spririt that was in Him, within ourselves.  He taught us, led us and showed us where that inner eternal holy spirit was within us. 

We will know the dragon by our fear.  We will know our inner Chirst by our courage.  We will know our inner feminine goddess life-giver by our love.  All the elements of the inner golden legend are within us - if we have eyes to see. 

Sword of truth

So you know what love is?  You think you know?  I doubt any of us really know what love is.  Let me start by stating unequivocally what love is NOT!

Love is NOT patient.  Love is NOT kind....  St. Paul's beautiful, poetic description of what love is in his first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 13) is NOT what love is.  Rather, it is what love looks like, what it smells like, what it may show up being like.  But, that is not love itself. 

In fact, if you follow St. Paul's definition and attempt to follow it as you would a recipe, you will become a fool for the system.  But, if you dig deep inside yourself for the courage to face the truth hidden within your own shadow, your own denial which protects you from the truth and all the obstacles to your own integrity and creative self, you will meet authentic love. When you embrace the genuine article, which is a gift of the Divine, which is grace, then your life may look like St. Paul's definition.  But, we first need to embrace the truth of who we are and of whose we are (pardon the triteness of that statement) and then you will embark on the journey to authentic love, to your authentic Self which is one with the great Self of our Master Creator, or God. This is the way, the truth to authentic life that Jesus taught. The other way, the false love, is the way to death.

Love is not the emotions of liking, feelings of affection or sentiments of positive responses when someone meets your personal desires or attachments.  In our world, love may be another addictive feeling.  In fact, as I look around, it is THE addictive feeling.  So, what we think is love, is not love. Maybe it was for this reason that the Greek's had several words to define love, ranging from eros, to agape to koinonia.  Real love is a superhuman power to create. It is full submission to the Divine author of our lives. It is not pink.  It is not soft.  It is not pretty.  Love is courage and it comes with a srong piercing sword to break the hold the world's systems have us trapped in.  It is not a sword for the battlefield.  It is a sword for the soul, to free it from the iron traps in which it is caught.  It is often tough love.  It can be harsh sounding, but it is liberating ultimately. It is the most necessary cure for our world's terrible delusion,  of abuse, exploitation, control and destruction of life on almost every level. 

"Love is a function, a power, a purity of intent and the core honesty of all that is." *

While love is a choice, one which we can either embrace or run from, it is also at the core of your nature.  It is who you really are and the real fuel for your living and creating.  Once you run on love, which will demand all the courage you can find within yourself, you will have the power to command your dreams into life.  Love, real love, is totally foreign to our material dimension of life.  It is the substance of God and it comes only from God.  It is also eternal and with it, you will encounter your own immortal self, not the image you wear around in this life trying to please everyone, including the system's puppeteers who control you and the entire world, whomever they are.  We may not know who they are, but we know the systems that control all of us, that take our  money from us through elaborate advertising campaigns, which create needs which aren't there. 

To uncover where you need love, real love, peel away the layers of your fear.  What are you most afraid of?  If you can embrace that fear, then you can begin to pull open the curtains on the system.  And, there are - as you must be well aware - several systems that control us.  There is obviously the modern economy, there is the modern culture and then there are various religious systems that run several parts of the planet, which of course war with each over their respective sense of rightness.  There are tribal systems, familial systems, political systems, national systems.  There are, in fact, layers of systems, all of which have various holds on what we do, who we think we are - none of which we are at all.

As children we're taught early on to begin to decide what we will do when we grow up, to find an external sense of identity and then spend the rest of our lives learning the skills to master that identity and then find the best job that matches those learning skills.  Slowly, we're taught that we are somebody "out there" and we need to find that "somebody."  What if we don't?  What if we can't? 

How many of us have found ourselves in that state of limbo, that place of not fitting into the world system and so we have imposed on ourselves negative self images because of it?  Blessed are you if you can't fit in to the system because it will be a lot easier for you to detach from it. When life seems uncertain and it almost feels like the bottom is going to fall out - of our economy, even our political structure and everything is changing - we cling to what feels solid and nothing feels as solid as an ancient old system.  This is when we need to reach deep within us for the real deal and that is God's divine love, buried underneath all the layers and it's alive, radiantly, powerfully, magnetically alive, humming forever alive within you. 

It is love.  When you seek it, it will be found.  Through your own focused intention to find it, the power of your conscious mind will locate it, will listen and will hear it and love will come to you and will speak to you and be with you and help you be the creator you were always born to be.

Creating the masterpiece of your life

You are a master creator.  You are creating your life every moment of every day of you life using the power of your conscious mind. Whether or not you realize this, you are creating your life out of a blueprint embedded within your mind.  Maybe you are aware of the blueprint that you're working from or you are unaware.  I guess that's the whole point.  So the larger question is what blueprint are you working with?  Even that can be edited, redesigned, reworked completely to meet what kind of life you want to live.

If your life doesn't match what you really would like to experience, then you need to revisit that blueprint.  Did you design it?  Did you envision what you want?  Is it YOUR blueprint?  How intentional are you about creating what you see inside your mind?  Did you realize that thoughts of illness may actually lead to illness and thoughts of war make more war, poverty thoughts beget more poverty?  And, while you're thinking about what you're thinking about, double check your words.  Words are expressions of your thoughts, fears, dreams and feelings, as you know. You can listen in on your own thoughts but putting a filter on your words.  Feelings also will clue you in on what you're thinking about.  If you're feeling sad, for example, trace your thoughts back to that one thought that started the downward spiral and change it. This is where affirmations can be helpful.  Declare to your mind that you are in charge of things from now on and you'll have none of that negative thinking anymore.

Also, worry is nothing less than an obsession over what you are afraid of, of a feared disaster. You may be fueling the disaster through worry. Not only is worry a complete waste of time, it can sometimes be a self-fulfilling prophesy.  Perhaps, at best, its a kind of internal warning system. If you catch yourself worrying, try to steer your thoughts toward something beautiful, something calming and something that you would like to see show up in your life.  Try to be intentional about it and then add music and light to your dream, rather than your fear.

The more intentional, the more you focus on what you see in your mind and imagination, the quicker and more effective the results are. Can you see on the big screen in your mind pictures or images of what you would like your life to look like, what you would like to experience?  If you realize that your inner big screen has some things on it that you don't want in your life, change it immediately. 

Most of us have inherited a blueprint from a variety of different sources and never really questioned it.  First, we're working with hand-me-down blueprints from our parents who were themselves working from hand-me-down blue prints.  Then there's the overarching whole world blueprint which was designed by a bunch of old guys in the dark thousands of years ago who thought they were listening to God, but were instead listening to their fear.  They created blueprints based on fear, which kept us all safely in the cave, rather than out in the open, lifting up higher and higher on our bright, beautiful, creative balloons of insight and power, spreading our sacred wings of creation that honor our integrity as creative beings and our love of life, Earth and each other.  See the difference? 

We have all been created in the image of the master creator, and we know that the master creator is the Great Spirit of all creation.  As spirit, the master creator has also made us creative spiritual beings.  who create through our imagination. We are creators using our minds and imaginations as the paintbrush of our lives.  

If your life is full of joy and abounding in love, vitality and overflowing with friends and abundance - and only YOU can define what abundance is for you - you are using a positive blueprint.  For most of us abundance is health, energy, a sense of personal fulfillment in our work, an enriching love relationship with another and at least a couple close friends.  You could add to that an extended community of equally happy people, which could extend even further into your town, city, state, country and the entire world.  I know you would love for the children in Africa to have clean water, safe homes, loving parents and nutritious food.  Well, that's kind of a rough draft of a new blueprint.

The point here is you have to be sure that the blueprint you're working from is what you truly can claim as your own - even if it is borrowed from someone else.  Does it resonate with your own spirit and your own soul? There will be a thrill, an excitement about it, if it's yours and that excitement will add fuel to the dream, hastening its arrival. A lot of your real work will be in finding your dream, your vision for yourself - in all the large and small areas of your life.

Now, how does creation work?  First imagine on the inner canvas of your mind a picture of land for a small family farm.  That's a big dream, for sure.  But, let's just start with that because we can all see land.  In your mind, on the big screen of your mind, visualize a parcel of land.  See it.  Even paint it with some hills if you want hills, or a stream, if you want a stream, maybe add onto it some lambs, a red barn.  You get this.  Now.  Don't do anything to make it happen.  Don't call the realtor.  Just visualize it.  Now, add to the picture in your mind some light.  Like turn on the sun so the picture radiates.  Then, visualize yourself walking through the land, touch the lambs, open the barn doors.  Sit down in the grass.  Let the picture come to life and start to live in it, all in your  mind. Whenever you have some free time, go back to the painting in your mind and work on it a little more, as if you were a painter working on his canvas. 

There's one more step:  Hope and perception.  As a bright young man said to me yesterday, it's about perception.  As you live into this inner picture, you'll start to see it around you.  You may see a picture of a red barn on a sale ad or on a billboard.  You may see a picture of some land that looks just like the land you see in your mind.  Next thing you know, a friend calls and invites you to a bon fire out at his grandparents old farm.  And, there it is!  Incredible.  But, you still don't say anything.  You just marvel at this wonderful thing that's happening, but there it is!!  The next day, you return to visualizing your dream.  Now the dream is a bit more interesting because you're so excited that you actually saw it for real.  And, you're starting to believe this whole master-creator idea, which you might never have believed before.

Continue to hold the vision, see it, play with it mentally.  You could add some willow trees or a pretty house with a deck overlooking the stream.  Then, you're out driving and get a brain storm to drive through the countryside.  Your imagination is now bright with power.  You have to just see out there, what you're seeing in here.  And, then, there it is.  It's perfect.  Only this time there's a "for sale" sign on the property.

You call the realtor.  The realtor confirms the land is for sale and it's being sold by an old man who has to go into a nursing home and he's just happy that someone loves it.  You know you love it.  You know it's your place because you created it, even if it was there all along.  The realtor calls the old man, who wants to meet you.  When you meet, he looks like your grandfather who has passed away and you are awestruck at how right this all feels.

The old man says he'll hold the land contract for you.  There it is.  It's happened. 

See, that's how it works.  But that's a big example.  There are smaller ones.  Like, let's say you want to see a red rose and it's winter.  So, you do the same thing.  You visualize the red rose in your mind, see it very clearly.  Then, at some point that day, you will see a red rose.  It's a matter of perception, visualization, and faith in your own ability to create.  Sometimes, your conscious mind will actually create and sometimes your conscious mind will find.  That's not your business HOW creation occurs.  Your job is to create, believe in your creation, love it and truly focus on it with your conscious mind.  The rest is up to the Spirit who has given you this gift as your birthright.  

Once you get this idea, you can see how you could visualize peace in the world, food and clean water for the children, safe communities, peaceful conflict resolution.  It's endless what you can create if you choose the blueprint and work with it, intentionally, powerfully.  Now, you realize the importance of what's on your mind.  Are you going to mindlessly watch the news anymore and allow the painful images of war to be on your inner canvas?  Not if you don't want to see more of that.  So, be as careful about what goes into your mind as you are about what you put in your body.  Check the ingredients. 

Life is so perfectly interconnected.  Listen to your feelings because they also reflect what's going on in your blueprints.  Sometimes we have some old programming running an unseen inner blueprint that we need to highlight and delete, send to the recycle bin.  You have to listen carefully to your own programming.  Take control of your mind, your body and your life.  You are not beholden to anyone.  You are only beholden to yourself, to create the life you want and paint it in rich colors, passionate music, great friends, much laughter, as full of life as you can.  You can choose life, more of it and more of it, if you want it.  It's your choice.  Happiness is your choice.   

Powerful compassion

They were the darkest of times, streaked with blood and fear, a terrible time when children died in concentraton camps, gassed to death alongside their parents and grandparents and siblings.  Death held its grip over Poland and all of Europe during the 1930s and 40s.  

Many films have been made about the soldiers who fought to free Europe from Nazi Germany's hate-filled hold.  Young, strong mud-clad male heroes have come to represent the opposing side of that dark conflict. Yet it was a young Polish Catholic woman, Irene Sendler (1910 - 2008), who faced one of history's most heinous political regimes, to whisk little children to safety in Warsaw, Poland. 

She was not much more than a girl herself as she risked death daily to smuggle children out of Poland during the Nazi occupation.  As much as she feared the probability of torture, even death, she couldn't bear that children would be hauled off to camps where they would starve until death came in a gas chamber.  

It's too horrible to think about, even remember.  It was a living nightmare on the big screen of real life. It was hideous and unimaginable what prejudice and hatred could manage to inflict on such precious innocence.  It was a cancer of the human body, one so pernicious that it would take the power of compassion fueled by a kind of superhuman vision, courage, persistance, physical and moral strength to overcome.

Sendler was a social worker and a member of the Zegota resistance organization who worked undercover to rescue Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto.  Armed only with her strong, defiant human compassion, she slipped into a borrowed nurse's role to sneak into Warsaw's ghetto where she persuaded frightened Jewish Polish parents to let their children go to her, to save their lives.  After the children were safely in her care,  she and her resistence group provided them with false documents and sheltering in individual and group childrens homes outside of Warsaw. She is credited with helping to save more than 2500 children.  

She was caught. The Nazi's were on to her skilled smuggling of the children out of Warsaw. Even under extreme torture and certain death, she still wouldn't give up the lists of their names and whereabouts, which she kept in a jar.  She was sentenced to the gas chamber, but as she was being led to her death, she was rescued by members of the resistance organization who managed to bribe a guard for her freedom.

After the war, she attempted to rejoin the children with their parents, but found that most of their parents had died in the camps.


Her simple courage is an amazing testament to the power of one woman's depth of human compassion.  It was stronger than the fear that was everywhere then.  It was stronger than the probability of torture and death.  During her travails, she lost two unborn babies through miscarriage.  Her personal sacrifice was great - monumentally huge - and yet her heart could not have done otherwise. It was even greater.

We can only pray that we also would have hearts that strong and determined. None of us know the future, what may lay in wait for us or our world, but if we prepare our hearts, free ourselves of any ego-based prejudice, selfishness, hatred and fear, we will at the very least prepare the good soil for when heaven calls us into the sacred conflict.  What price would we pay for the children?  What price are we willing to pay right now, today, in our sick, spiritually poisoned world? The evil of this time is less obvious, but children's souls are being stolen right in front of our eyes every day, every moment of every day.  

When we wake up we will see and when we see we will act. We must all wake up and Irene Sendler is one light in this long dark night which may help us see through a new lens.

A Communion of One

We are entering a new era, a new world, in which we are realizing that we are all connected as one. We always have been.  At the center of each of us is a kind of vast spiritual oasis, which is shared identically by all of us. While this idea may seem strange at first, we are realizing that inner spiritual place is actually in harmony with the one universal life force who is an unimaginably loving, creative and intelligent being, of whom we are all part.


We are all connected on this web of life - to each other and to our Creator - all seven billion of us resonating in a beautiful love song together, a human symphony of love around the world. 


Today, that new world is emerging in this growing awareness that we are one being - all of us together - and are immersed and part of one universal Self. It is the essence - the spirit - the soul - the source of our individual truest self - and is the same spiritual substance in all of us. It is alive and magnetic, eternal and powerful and wonderfully cohesive. Through it we are united with each other and with our Creator, the Great I am. 

While many of us are in harmony with each other and the Creator, sadly some of us are discordant noisemakers, disturbing the peace in wars, exploitation, cruelty, prejudice, greed and fear-based selfishness - all symptoms of a state of ignorance.  Those who are out of sync with the love, can tune in anytime and they will - I honestly believe they will - when they feel and experience the love they so desperately need from us - each of us - all of us.

Together we can end oppression, inequity, poverty, cruelty and help each other back onto our feet and help each other into the most creative expression possible.  The world needs each voice, each heart and each and every life if we are to become a fully conscious awakened people.


Many of us think we are our thoughts. We strive to keep our minds busy, contemplating, solving complex problems, reading and watching television.  Our thoughts are not who we are, nor are our emotions, which stem from our thoughts.  The Great I am is beyond our thoughts which divide us but is in the love which unites us.

Beyond all the noise of our over active minds is a great silence and a kind of vast inner space.  If we imagine lighting a candle within that inner space, and enter into that silence, into that vastness - even for just a few minutes every day - we will feel a change, a newness, a freshness and new vitality.  And, if we can do this everyday -  ideally at the same time everyday - we will grow to love this time of no time, no space, no thing. We will experience peace and love. In that love, we will find great joy and peace.  But, the funny thing is we may not realize it until we've come out of that special time.


That's just the beginning, but an important beginning.  Eventually, we will experience whatever it is we're meant to experience personally during that time.  If we experience love, even the tiniest bit, then we have experienced God, the Beloved. We will experience Beingness as well, both aspects of God, the yin and yang of divinity, the feminine and masculine - the doing and the being of God and of ourselves, also. We may realize that we were indeed made in God's image, an image of both aspects of deity, and an image of perfection in that Love/Being.


Our Creator, the Beloved, is loving through our hearts and is in that love as well.  With that same love, the Great I am created the universe and is still creating the universe and is inviting us all to join in that love-creation, in the great communion of souls who are all One in Him. Life is sacred, more precious than we have ever realized and each one of us is cherished by God more than we can comprehend. As we honor another, we honor God who is in that other and who is also simultaneously in us. If we can love ourselves, we will love others because we are the same One.

When we can get beyond our fear and step around that wall we've built inside ourselves to separate ourselves from another, we will open our eyes and hearts to embrace each other and love each other as God loves - all of us - with no exception.

A Communion of ONE, part 2

Behold, I stand at the door, 

and knock: 

if any man hear my voice, 

and open the door, 

I will come in to him, 

and will sup with him,

and he with me.

Revelation 3:20 (KJV)

You have within you an invisible doorway, a "narrow gate," that enters into your sacred soul, your inner sanctum, that space where you commune with God and your higher self.  It is your own entrance into eternity.  Right now it may only be a closet of space.  But, your consciousness is so powerful that when you simply consider and imagine such a place, your mind can find the soft invisible entrance behind your physical heart. And, without fail, as you search, you will find it and are able to enter.  

As you enter it, you open also the door into the Christ consciousness, and enter a space which also opens into an infinity of consciousness. Unlike places in our world, you cannot bring weapons, defenses, blood feuds, anger, hatred, jealousy, fear into this space. In a sense, it has a filtering system that these negative emotions cannot enter. You will leave them at the door.

If you've ever been angry and tried to center yourself, you know that those heavy emotions are a huge distraction to entering your own inner holy of holies. If you find, by chance, that it is a clear day for you emotionally, if you are feeling good and at peace, you may attempt to enter and if you are lucky enough to enter, you will encounter total acceptance, love, peace and a sense of universal presence. It may take a few attempts and this is where discipline is important. Try to empty your thought bin, your mind racing to be successful. Those are thoughts of the external world and they are only a deterrant in this one. It is a space of just letting go and letting it be. It is a space of just being present. Just show up and watch.

It is the realm of the Christ consciousness and we can invite the graciousness of Christ to reveal himself, to speak to us. He is there and he will speak to you if you are open to his voice. You hear him whether or not you know it. You may think his voice is your voice, and in a funny way, his voice is your voice. You just don't realize it yet.

Try to recognize his voice separately from all the other voices from others in your life.  He has a distinctive message and a presence that almost feels closer to you than you are to yourself. (A quality St. Augustine mentioned also.) His voice calms you, affirms you, loves you and teaches you how to fly.  He will not restrain or restrict you.  

He will tell you that you have free will and any automated behavior of yours, any trained route or learned behavior, any automatic reactions that you have or do because you think you should, needs to be reevaluated.  He will invite you to be more authentic than you have ever been. He will invite you to think about what you think about because of the power inherent in your thought.  He will ask you to become more conscious in general about your thoughts, actions, life choices. 

He will give you permission and even the courage to be yourself, true to your own heart. He will tell you that you are free to be who you were always meant to be.  He will tell you that you are loved beyond your wildest imagination and that when you realize that, drink deeply of that cup of awareness, you will finally find that joy, that peace, that love that passes earthly standards.  

You will need a lot less from the outside world.  You may even want to return.  He will knock.  He will call.  Eventually you will find that what you experience in that sacred inner place is what we all experience.  You will also hear his voice and you may find that he is saying the same things to all of us.  We are all beloved.  We are all free.  We are all children of God, sons and daughters of God.  

In that awareness, we enter into a deeper chamber, where he is also, but it is that space that all our souls enter.  It is endless, beautiful and as spacious as the starry night sky and perhaps even more beautiful. 

Time to Wake Up

A few days ago, I ran this video on Tiger Lilies and later chose not to include it in the "Communion of One" post because it came from a quantum mechanics perspective rather than the mystical / spiritual paradign I wanted to share.  However, it is interesting and may be relevant to this topic. So, I am reposting it for your interest.  Feel free to share your thoughts.

I'd love to hear what YOU think.

The kingdom within

Inside that universe of inexplicable peace and love you encounter as you slip through the stargate, is more than your little limited life could ever grasp and yet you feel compelled to stay and explore. 

This love (for lack of a better word) is an inside job and it only asks for your courage to set sail in your imagination to find it - not out there somewhere - but within the cave, deep underwater, just below your very human, physical heart. God is found through that inner portal, that spiritual gateway. The real stargate is finally discovered at the end of your exhaustion, when you finally put down the sword defending your false self, stewing in a deeply profound sense of separateness. It was a false-life, a mask which you once donned to appease your parents or school tyrants or our society as a whole.

But, it was a false identity generated out of that initial rejection by your parents and other "gods" of your early world. In your own defense, you didn’t know it was a self-defense mechanism to allow you to survive in the beginning. Later, your authentic being railed against it in all kind of life-sabotaging ways that spun you mercilessly all of your life.

You became a slave to those who first instilled the need for you to be other than that beautiful, innocent, loving child of light who you were born to be. Later you became a slave (enabler) to others who resembled the original offenders. If those original offenders taught you to be a slave to their selfishness, then you were taught to be a slave in general. The world hates slaves in its love of pride, greed, power and control, and so it hated you.

The pain grew so intense that it finally broke open the mask's shell, allowing the child to finally step into life. This child, is the christ self born in that moment of awareness. Perhaps in a stable on a cold night, hunted by the power brokers of your life, but it is life, real life and in it is your truth, your potential and eventually, your joy and creativity.

True integrity and integration finally comes when that original self awakens and takes the helm of your life, at the birth of the child. At the revealing of your true courage and light and power, you defeat or foil the plans of all those who had required you to wear the mask of the false self. They run like rats back into the walls of their safe coffins of spiritual paralysis. But, this doesn't come easily. The birth of the real self may be like the birth of your first child. It comes after what seems like ages of spiritual labor. There is no other way into heaven, however.

It comes when you are finally sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. It finally arrives when you tire of the game played and fought among others who also have blindly sought life among the dead, when you surrender. By grace, you are defeated at that useless pursuit and in that moment of agony, as your false self lay writhing and dying on the battlefield of your life, a soft whimper arises from somewhere deep within you, yet you are too lost and forlorn to hear it or to attend to it. Then, a prayer explodes within your hope. In one last final gasp, you cry out to heaven for help.

Now the real journey begins. Blindly you surrender, you offer up your dead self in exchange for peace, for relief of the agony of searching. The false self cannot carry on the fight any longer. Even shame and pride have lost their power and appeal. If you are even dimly aware, perhaps even still a bit blind, you can see, through your tears, an inner ghost, a dim, unfocused someone holding out his hand to you.

Blinking away the tears, maybe you doubt what you just saw within, but someone even deeper within you has seen it and bows before this beautiful presence who has come to welcome you through the gate, through the portal into all that is real, all that ever was and ever will be real. He says to look for the gateway, which he has previewed for you, in that imaginal space behind your heart and slightly below it.

It's a soft place your mind sounds out. You are still blind, yet you see. You realize there is so much more than you ever knew. You gently press against it as it slowly opens like doors on Star Trek's starship Enterprise. As you slip through it into the vast starlight stretching endlessly before you, you feel electric and completely unafraid. Perhaps it's the velvety blanket of quiet into which you submerge yourself that softly wraps you in its love. You know that all our hearts open into this same universe. You know that we are all one with this Oneness.

While you know you must eventually shift your mind back into the outer dimension, the stage on which we all are stars, you will return back to this space within. You make a mental note to come back often. It is the new frontier and a very compelling and real one. You wonder if your parents, grand parents, old lovers and others, are there too, within that sea of consciousness that stretches forever. But, for now His presence is there and that is more than enough.

The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, 'here it is,' or 'there it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you.

Luke 17:21

Stargate to a dream

An ancient cosmic stargate opens, revealing a magnificent array of universal light, love, joy, power and an abounding, outpouring of potential, an opportunity unlike any other to step into authentic life and real peace. 

Open before us is the great awakening, stretching through our collective history far into the deepest reaches of time in a softly, invisible, even subtle syncopation of breath, rhythmically surging, spiraling us forward, together and individually.  We have sought this, together and individually, from the beginning.  We looked for it in the stars.  We sought it in our poetry, art, music, and in all our human relationships.  Something inside us, perhaps a kind of innate spiritual program, hummed within us throughout our time here, but we thought it was somewhere else, out there somewhere, and we built rocket ships to the moon, space probes to find that unnamed someone or something, out there.  We felt alone, very alone. 

But, we were looking in the wrong place.  It's just that simple. We are not alone.  We were never alone. We are all together on this gorgeous ride through time-space and yet the journey is not what you think.  It's not a space shuttle to another galaxy.  It's a plunge down through the inner rabbit hole of your heart, through a very real stargate within your own soul, awaiting your discovery just behind and slightly below your own physical heart. 

It lies within your spiritual (causal) body, which is one with your physical body while you are alive  It's a soft place your mind sounds out.  You are still blind, yet you see. You realize there is so much more than you ever knew. You gently press against it in your imagination and it slowly opens like doors on Star Trek's starship Enterprise. 

As you slip through this imaginal stargate, which is very real on a spiritual level, you enter a vast universe stretching endlessly before you. You feel electric and completely unafraid.  Perhaps it's the velvety blanket of quiet into which you immerse yourself that softly embraces you in its love. You know that all our hearts open into this same universe.  You know that we are all one with this Oneness. 

This inner universe, accessible through that stargate, is another kind of space, twinkling with a billion stars, in the presence of authentic being, a being in which we are all intimately woven together, yet distinct, who you sense you will come to know more with each subsequent imaginal crossing through that stargate.  While suspended in an inner sea of love, you encounter your own reality as one with the whole.  You never were alone and in that fleeting awareness, now only begun, you realize you are loved more tenderly and compassionately than you ever knew possible.  

Starlight dance

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness 

was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God 

moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, 

"Let there be light: and there was light."

Genesis 1

We all may be familiar with these stirring opening sentences to Genesis, yet there is something so profound right there pointing to the scientific veracity of these ancient words describing how life began. Yes, God, created it all, but it's how God created life here that just overwhelms me.

Ancient and modern mysticism has revealed that God's love, God's creative, powerful love is the source of light and is comprised of God's wisdom and spirit / will. Light has an energetic (creative) quality and that energy is comprised of love. In short, love has a power to it and that power radiates as light. Certainly that light is not the light of the sun, yet surely it lit the sun which continues to bring life to our earth. It penetrates every atom, every subatomic particle, creates photons and leads to photosynthesis. It makes life. That seems so simple and yet really it transcends our minds ability to comprehend something so awesome. God's creative power is a love which is even brighter than the sun. 

For us, life always was and always will be nothing short of an awesome miracle. Yet, love is even more a miracle. Love is a miracle begetting the miracle of life. In creation is both action and substance, born of spirit and power coalescing, male and female polarities each essentially co-creating, together. Love is both the means to creation and the gift of creation. It is the way, the truth and life itself. And, even if we may not really understand love or life, we can feel it, touch it, hold it, experience it and even become it. 

Despite this awesome, gorgeous life all around us that we all share on this earth, there are too many times when we don't stop to gaze up at the starry canopy in childlike awe and wonder gratefully at the miraculous cosmic light show dancing quietly above us. 

Why are we too busy, too worried about things that we miss it? Why are we unwilling and unable to enter into God's great miracle of love, the doorway through which we enter authentic life, that tangible experience of starlight? What could be so important in our lives that we would miss this light show going on both above us in the cosmos and within us in our own hearts, where the essence of life sleeps awaiting our entrance to the dance floor of life? We all seem so serious that we lose the sweetness of engaging in the experience of awe we might feel, the magic, the joy, the beauty, the sheer thrill to be alive. We don't dance wildly in love by the moonlight anymore, do we? Our ancient forebears gathered at the end of the day together, around the fire, and danced, and sang and celebrated life in love together.

It seems an epidemic of apathetic, dull seriousness has become a plaque upon our houses, all neighborhoods and nations, cultures and religions. Long, tightly drawn faces, of those would-be religious devotees, striving to follow the laws of their religions, trying to pour their magnificent beautiful fluid spirits into tiny frozen boxes formed by laws written thousands of years ago until their hearts are so hard, their minds so dim, their lives so barren, so devoid of light, too stern to smile and laugh and sing that they can no longer gasp in awe at the beauty of all this light and life and love above and around and within them. 


Since the very essence of the law flows out of God's great wise heart, out of God's love and light, to meet the requirements of the law, to even enter into the most sincere obedience, we would follow with courage, rather than with fear-based control. (However, this is of a higher school of human spiritual development and does not imply that we should fall away from those guidelines the law sets up, but rather to embrace the great creator / lover beyond the laws.) 


It's a matter of perspective.  Love is expansive, legalism is reductive and diminishing.  Love wouldn't throw away or deliberately disobey the law, yet it would reach to the source of it. St. Paul suggests that to live in love would result in obeying "the law." Even though the goal is to love, the result would include the result legalism seeks as well, only it takes the human spirit into a realm to which law - or the subservient spirit of blind obedience -  doesn't open.

Millennia ago, we learned that love was a higher, more evolved revelation, the awareness of which stemmed from a kind of "higher heaven" which trumped and cancelled out religion's stern, rigid, fear-based controlling law. Love is the substance of consciousness. All of life, right down to a single cell, is created with and by that consciousness. It is both the means and reason for life itself. The gift of love and authentic life can only be received in a state of perfect freedom at a higher consciousness, a higher frequency. Clearly perfect freedom is a result of living without fear and so it follows that the joyous experience of love requires a great deal of courage. This life of love which we all seek asks a lot of us, but most of all is an openness to facing the fear that inhibits our courage. 


Yet, even more wonderfully, it seems that love is so gratuitous, so creative, so powerful and alchemical that with only a tiny bit of it in our consciousness, perhaps only with a flickering faith in the possibility of that love, which we may only imagine right now in this moment, we would be able to sift through and slip out of the grasp of that old fear-based religiosity and world view that holds the world frozen and lifeless in spiritual / psychological / economic poverty, slavery and war.


The letter of 1 John (4:18) says, "There is no fear in love but perfect love casts out fear because fear has torment. He that fears is not made perfect in love." 

Simply, fear stems from the idea that one will be punished, tortured, killed if he follows his heart that might challenge the status quo, enforced ruthlessly by the world's power brokers.  Which is a worse death: to live bound and shackled in a living death or to walk head up, courageously to the tune of your own heart?  You decide.  As long as we live oppressed and kept low by those who we allow to control and enslave us by our fear of their reaction to us, we are never going to grow up into the full stature of our inborn, innate divinity that is begging to be born in us and across the planet today.

If we could live by the light of God's awesome love, which he has given to us out of his great cosmic heart, poured into our human hearts to share with each other - heart to heart - arm in arm - in a smile, in a handshake, from a kiss to passionate love making, we just might taste heaven on earth. It's all there and it's all love. Pure joy. What a magnificent gift this love is that makes us want to sing in the rain and laugh in the sun. Just to feel life coming and going, to hold an elderly man's hand as he passes out of this life and to caress a newborn entering it, is a cosmic honor, a gift of God whose love has given us the light of consciousness along with the promise that this is all unending, the light cannot be extinguished, nor can the light of our souls.

The new year waxing in today is rich with promise, abounding in hope for a greater abundance of authentic living with more joy for every stage of our lives, for all of us, equally. Although just an imaginary time line, this sense of new beginning is deeply embedded in our collective awareness. Here - now - is the opportunity to look forward to a newborn opportunity to live more joyously, more abundantly, less materialistically, more authentically in love with all of life, large and small, macro and micro cosmically.

Maybe we could laugh more, sing often, tell our children nursery rhymes again and sing them to sleep with lullabies. We could turn off our televisions and cut back on our time on the computer. We could play games, go for walks, talk to each other, play with each other and love each other. We could do with a lot less guilt and fear and with a lot more free abandon. 

Maybe this year we could all take a deep breath, exhale all the heavy stuff that drags our spirits down, turns smiles into frowns, replaces the buoyancy of a happy day with a grievous burden. 

It's a choice. Joy is a choice. Laughter, play, happiness and love are all choices. We can each choose our thoughts. We are not victims. We can free ourselves of those heavy thoughts and replace them with beautiful hopes and dreams. We are all free - no matter where we live or under what conditions. We are all free to choose our thoughts and in that choice, in that very simple one-second choice, we choose life or death. I know that we all know this, but today as we embrace the hope a new beginning offers us all, a little reminding is always welcome. We can embrace the awe, receive the light and allow more creation into our lives. 

Today and everyday, we can choose joy and freedom and love and light. And for that choice, I am most grateful, most joyfully, radiantly grateful to our creator for this grand adventure, this poetic, romantic, beautiful journey of life through time on this radiant earth and this graced opportunity to love with all my heart even as I sing in the rain amid the wild quacking of ducks in the creek where I walk. My only hope is that we all would choose to be less serious and just a little bit more lavish with our laughter and joy.