Our Eternal Source and Destination

If we were to ask anyone just ‘off the cuff’ what they most want, they might spontaneously express it as, say, to get to the end of the working day, or to own something which they feel would bring a release into a freer, less constrained way of living, or even ‘world peace’ for which we all long. For a child, we might find that they look forward to the Easter holidays and anticipate freedom to enjoy family fun. For any of us, what underlies the surface thought of the moment is usually a longing for release from some current constraint of time and space that restricts our freedom of thought and action. And always there is a sense of something more just out of reach. Our awareness, even while absorbed in the daily humdrum, is touched at its edges by something not quite imagined that we know is there if only we could be freed to enter more fully into it.

How do we deeply know it is there even when we interpret it in terms of immediate worldly terms? Are we remembering something towards which our compass constantly swings? Are we remembering the future towards which our deepest self is ever navigating? Is it the magnetic ‘Home’ that calls through the dimensions of life like the cote to which the homing bird flies no matter what storms and tempests must be endured, forcing us to discover all our inherent resources of strength, commitment and knowing? This call ever seems to demand more and still more, stretching us beyond each personal limit and requiring the dropping of ‘ballast’ until, pure and simplified, honed and perfected, we enter the remembered, and so beloved future realm which has ever been the Home toward which we tend.

Love’s magnetic waves call through time and dimension and one of the signposts on the journey of return is Beauty – recognising the beautiful in anything is to enter beyond it into the homing path. John O’Donohue speaks of this with words to take us beyond words:

There is profound nobility in beauty that can elevate a life, bring it into harmony with the artistry of its eternal source and destination. Perhaps Beauty does not linger because she wishes to whet our appetite and refine our longing so that we enter more fully into the limitless harvest of our inner inheritance.”John O’Donohue, from Divine Beauty, the Invisible Embrace

And yet while our soul soars onwards on its inner journey, we may observe events around the world through the news media and feel aghast and overwhelmed at the excesses of acquisitive ambition for wealth, material resources, land and all that inhabit it, or for power over those who may facilitate its appropriation. Our hearts may shrink to watch the poison of fear spread and distort what we know as reality. But if we are sailing finer airs and navigating to a larger map, the surface events are revealed as the backdrop for something far more momentous which is growing and rising, Phoenix-like, from all that civilisation has delivered to date.

The evolutionary process of ‘make and discard’ driving the creation of new and better-adapted material forms has expanded through human agency to embrace the globe and the space surrounding it. And yet, through all the misinterpretations of this process in purely material terms and the resultant consumerism, slavery and climate degradation, a new human consciousness is being born from the realisations it has enabled – expanding and creating a new civilisation more truly reflective of its inner being. For it is also through human agency that material forms are being seen in a new light – are becoming transparent – as forms to clothe the inner soul, essence of the one spirit, so that it may have material presence in the world of diversity. The poet Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī reminds us:

Sorrow sweeps clean the house so joy may move in.”Rumi

A new civilisation is taking shape through the culture of the Soul as it reflects more brightly through the growing millions of “ordinary” human beings transforming their relationships into loving understanding of one another, of the animals, plants, soils and oceans with whom they share the life of the world. No longer do we look solely to the institutions of authority to take care of us and the planet, to give us place and purpose in the world. Gradually, and oh so surely, we are realising, one by one, group by group, that we are responsible for directing the journey to our future world home – and it cannot be at the expense of anyone else or any other kingdom in nature as we realise that all are valuable, contributing parts of the One Home of the Heart.

The beautiful balance of life provided through divine intention is not disturbed without dire cost. And all we need is already provided for us to create a beautiful living within that exquisite equilibrium – if we are tuned to its harmonising song, sounding through the chaos of illusory separation and the ‘mind-forged manacles’ of material rationality and self-serving logic. The human mind has developed to its peak through the Law of Cleavages. Discrimination is evolving through (often painful) experience into the true discernment of the Soul – which sees the real from the unreal, thus evoking the outcome of the ancient prayer:

Lead me from darkness to light,
From the unreal to the real,
From death to immortality.

And Rumi points the way of progress:

I said ‘show me the ladder, that I may climb up to heaven.’
He said ‘your head is the ladder, bring your head down under your feet.’”Rumi

Up until now the human mind has been understood in terms of its operation through the physical brain. We have thought we were our bodies. But the doors in consciousness are now opening beyond the physical vehicle into what stimulates and even reactivates it. Examples abound such as the experiences of Dr Eben Alexander and the neuroanatomist, Jill Bolte Taylor. Amongst the inspiring researchers opening these doors are those looking at the power of music to reactivate brain function for people with dementia or brain impairment affecting physical movement – as revealed in a recent Catalyst program Episode 6 ‘Music on the Brain’ on ABC TV. See http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/catalyst

We are now entering a realm of knowing and being that expresses through the material form but operates with the dynamics of the Heart. It has a universal rhythm, it brings life to all forms and holds them in loving relationship. And as we expand trust into this new realm, new inspirations and living ideas begin to permeate our hearts and minds and find expression in living form. This time has been foretold in many ways and most beautifully in the ancient scripture quoted in A Treatise on White Magic:

When the sun progresses into the mansion of the serving man, the way of life takes the place of the way of work. Then the tree of life grows until its branches shelter all the sons of men. The building of the Temple and the carrying of the stones cease. The growing trees are seen; the buildings disappear. Let the sun pass into its appointed place, and in this day and generation attend ye to the roots of growth.” A Treatise on White Magic, page 426

The Tibetan Master has shown that this new living consciousness is already entering the world:

The Kingdom of God or of Souls, distinguished by the potency and therefore by the aura and radiatory emanation of love, is definitely anchored on Earth, and is penetrating ever more fully and successfully into the three worlds of strictly human endeavour. There have always been outposts of this kingdom among men; there have ever been individuals in all parts of the world—in the world religions or in other constructive groups—who were linked consciously to their souls, and consequently linked to the Hierarchy. There have always been those in every land who developed and expressed the Christ consciousness; this is loving understanding and intelligent, living service, no matter by what words or terminology they expressed the tremendous spiritual event of which they were aware….
Today…the radiation from the world of souls has greatly intensified and the Kingdom of God is becoming a corporate part of the outer world expression, and this for the first time in the long, long history of humanity. …The effect of this radiation or magnetic aura is now so extensive that we need no longer talk in terms of bringing in the kingdom or of its manifestation on Earth. It is already manifesting, and its aura is co-mingled with the mental, astral and etheric auras of mankind. Recognition only is required…”Discipleship in the New Age II, page 406

The new dispensation of divine Love is emerging if we have the heart to see:

The functioning of the Law of Loving Understanding will be much facilitated and speeded up during the Aquarian age, and it will eventuate later in the development of the international spirit, in the recognition of one world faith in God and in humanity as the major expression of divinity in this world period, and in the transfer of the human consciousness from the world of material things to that of the more purely psychic, leading in time to the spiritual.” Esoteric Psychology I, page 380

And so we remember Christ’s living demonstration and travel the way Home with renewed heart:

And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” ~ John 12:32