Courtesy Alexandra Barbu - dreamstime.com
by John Gray
I long ago came to understand that true greatness is absolute, not relative. You’ve probably realized this as well. To illustrate, though, think of an important leader or mentor you’ve known personally, someone whose greatness you admire, even love. Did his or her greatness make you somehow lesser? No, not if your mentor is or was the genuine article. In my experience, my spiritual mentor’s manifestation of greatness inspired me to know mySelf—his example helped evoke the transcendent Me in my experience. To be sure, I perceived him as greater, but at the same time I was and am not lesser. This is a mentally impossible yet true condition! I see and I love others’ greatness—in fact, I feel in awe of your spiritual stature! Seeing You doesn’t make me less Me, however—we are each absolute. Mutually seen and acknowledged true greatness is the foundation that makes possible immutable trust and friendship, something that is then known to simply be. We don’t need to profess and talk about it.
An old word referring to someone of especially significant greatness is messiah. The root of messiah means “anointed,” which itself literally means “smeared with oil.” In symbol, smeared with oil means commissioned by love. We were and are commissioned by love to express the character of true being in and through our human forms, so we are each messiahs! Individual messiahs acting in accord compose the conscious body of the collective Messiah. Our ultimate work is to manifest the full spirit of this Supreme Great One, together.
We each know many other people—friends, family, acquaintances, neighbors, whatever—and of those, we know some with whom we share distinct and conscious spiritual resonance. For each of us, these are our fellow messiahs. There are lots of other anointed ones around, many of them not aware of this fact themselves, but I’m thinking at the moment of the relative few we each personally know. Some of us are on this teleconference right now—just look at the digital images in the rectangles on your Zoom screen!
Humanly speaking, we’re a motley crew with all manner of foibles and shortcomings and odd histories. Notwithstanding, just above all that is the evidence of the presence of the individual Eminent One. Each one’s greatness shines round about. Let us see one another truly this way! When we know ourselves, we know one another. Actually, only when we know our true selves do we recognize true greatness in each other. Our shining lights make human histories and petty flaws vanish. A vital responsibility of all the anointed is to internally maintain an all-inclusive, judgement-free sphere in which the unstoppable creative flow of life works its wonders in us, in all, and in the world.
As the years have passed, many of us have become more sensitive to the movement of unseen spirit in personal experience and so we have a sharpened perception of our unique responsibilities within the much larger spiritual processes that are at work. Naturally, the responsibilities we each most clearly perceive are those that are uniquely our own; others have their own awareness of what is most in focus for them. How vital it is that we not extrapolate what we deem most important for others based on our understanding of what’s most important for us. We each have personal responsibilities within the whole, and it takes us all to get the job done. All this is easy when we see and know one another’s actual greatness.
In a phone call not long ago a friend and I spoke of murmuration, a phenomenon occasionally occurring in large flocks of birds, most commonly starlings. Known as starling murmurations due to the sound produced by the multiple wingbeats involved, this sky dance sees flocks gather together, swooping and twisting across the sky in one spectacular swarm. I read that these formations have been known to feature as many as a million birds. Here is a video example: Starling Murmuration Video
While it’s a beautifully impressive phenomenon among a flock of starlings, I am more impressed with the metaphor it presents. Murmurations behave and appear as if a single entity—one body of many birds. It is composed of numerous individual birds all moving as one. What causes this coordination isn’t visible, but the birds are flying in a complex pattern, each playing a harmonious part in the murmuration and producing a “sound of many wingbeats,” which is what the term murmuration refers to. Murmuration shares roots with murmur, “a low, continuous sound, as of a brook, the wind, or trees, or of low, indistinct voices.”
We may recall the phrase, “The sound of many waters” from the first chapter of the Book of Revelation. It is one detail included in the author’s description of his vision of the supreme Eminent One. The vast body of the Eminent One functions as a single conscious entity, speaking the creative Word with a “voice as the sound of many waters.” (Rev. 1:15) The sound of this voice is far, far more than a murmuration, a sound of many wingbeats, but even avian friends may provide a symbolic reminder of something we know in our heart of hearts. Remember that the one who wrote the book first heard “a great voice, as of a trumpet” (Rev. 1:10) and then “…turned to see the voice that spake…” (Rev. 1:12). There follows a description—mostly using similes—of what he saw in the midst of it all: the Eminent One.
I’m finding eminent to be a wonderful word. We need new ways to say things, especially the ineffable. Many words commonly used to refer to spiritual reality can be full of wonder too, but they’re also often weighted down with human concept—too heavy to fly freely! Looking at synonyms for eminent we find such words as highest, predominant, transcendent, prepotent, and further, great, authentic, glorious, honorable, powerful. The Eminent One, as I’m using the term, is capitalized, referring to the One who is all.
The Eminent One within each human being may murmur for years before finally getting the conscious attention of heart and mind. We know something about that! The evidence of the Presence may seem low and indistinct, but it is sooner or later heard and it is known to be undeniably real. At some point along the way, heart and mind “turn to see the voice” and find it not a vague murmur but “a great voice, as of a trumpet.” It is the voice of the Eminent One I AM.
The presence of the Eminent One may make itself known in feeling and thought as a kind of pressure, something pressing to come forth from within. People commonly think of pressures as coming from outside, impinging on “little me.” The usual tendency is to relate them to external causes, like, for example, time demands or financial pressures—“I’m just so busy,” or “It’s hard to make ends meet these days,” and such. Circumstances beyond ourselves have their effects, to be sure, and those can often be negative. For many years, however, I, and I bet you, too, have known of this other sort of pressure, an internal pressure, the origin of which is within. In stillness we know it is the presence of our divine self, the Eminent One, pressing out from within our minds and hearts, seeking expression into the world through them. I call it “expressure”—the pressure to express! Those who yield to this true pressure eventually find themselves to be the very source of it.
We are together in this moment, right now, a collection of people who know at least something of this experience. We are called and drawn by the Eminent One to be together in an upper room “of one accord in one place,” as it’s put in the Book of Acts.
I’m not going to rehearse that familiar story. Suffice to say that the portal, the way into that high place together is recognizing and knowing the greatness of our fellow messiahs. Old baggage doesn’t fit through the door!
“Out beyond ideas of right doing and wrong doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.” This quote from the Persian poet Rumi is a favorite of many. Rumi’s field is the place of accord, an equivalent of the upper room of the Bible’s New Testament and the Holy Place of the Old. The terms all refer to the place where what messiahs have come to do is done. It’s said the Great Eminent One spoke, “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Matt. 18:20) “…my name” is the same place.
Many of us have for most of our lives been getting ourselves ready for these times, right now. I’ve been sensing the gathering of the elect is sufficiently complete and it’s coming time for the action that is now possible. Being together of one accord in the name, in the radiance, of the Eminent One, invites and allows the power that makes all things new to manifest.
To actually be of one accord in one place: this is the cosmic power formula. It’s how the will of the Eminent One is fulfilled and the world is restored to true order and beauty. We remember in that story of the followers of Jesus in the upper room, that after they’d been there a sufficient time, “…suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.” (Acts 2:2) That’s a lot more than a murmur! It’s the sound of the Word being spoken in harmony by many messiahs.
The One who sent us in the beginning now says the time is ripe to let our full greatness manifest, in his name, and to truly recognize and embrace our fellows. These are the days of fulfillment, and the hour approaches. Let’s not waste a minute. Together collectively in the abode of the Eminent, we discover what true power can do. But we have to be here and stay here, first and always.
Following Comments
John Gray: The Eminent is imminent, ever poised to appear. This will not be denied. We welcome the coming! We live our daily lives never leaving this place of accord, the place of the Eminent One. How absolutely vital it is that there be a group of individuals sharing a consciousness of identity and acknowledging it in one another. Nothing matters more.