Courtesy of David Barnes
by John Gray
Today is the first Sunday of 2020. May this be a year of clear vision.
Light seeds germinate in the heart and then are recognized by the mind. Aha! An idea, an inspiration is born. Many people like to take credit for their intuitive insights and good ideas, as though creativity originates in the human mind. However, one of the brighter minds of the 20th century, Albert Einstein, is said to have said, “When the solution is simple God is answering.” That may have been his way of acknowledging that something transcendent is at work in the process of creativity; I don’t know, and Albert isn’t around to ask. We’ll have to ask ourselves.
Where do the initiating sparks of illumination come from? Known or not, a sower of light seed is present in every human being. Animating every living person is a source of life providing an individual focus of life current. Let’s say that since we’re alive we’ll accept this as empirically true. A Bible verse mysterious to many says, “…the light [is] the life of men.” (John 1:4) The next line in the Book of John states that the light shines in the darkness and the dark does not, indeed, cannot, comprehend it. Comprehension begins to be experienced by coming out of the dark, by waking up to the light sower’s presence.
The sower of light seed, the source of life, is the individual incarnate angel or god being. He or she has been, and is, with and in the human being, present from the beginning. But this isn’t experienced and known until and unless the person comes around, regains consciousness. Until then the sleeper sleeps, dreaming that he or she is awake. Some dreams are pleasant, many are nightmares, but they are all just dreams.
If you’ve ever read any spy thrillers, you know that in the jargon of espionage fiction a “sleeper agent” or “deep cover agent” or “mole” refers to a spy sent to penetrate an intelligence organization or a government in order to access secret information. In some novels the mole may be recruited early in life and doesn’t even know he or she is a spy until activated by the spymaster through some prearranged means.
Ever think of yourself as a mole? I did. I don’t want to stretch this analogy beyond its limited capacity, but we each began our lives unheralded, unnoticed, just one among billions, and important to only our parents and maybe a few others. The majority of people, it seems to me, pass their whole lifetimes without much or maybe any awareness of their inner magnificence that’s there, just waiting to be released. Some discover aspects of it and channel that brilliant light through narrow apertures we call talent or genius of one kind or another. We admire the resulting positive contributions to the human condition. Wherever anything creative and innovative and beautiful appears, the wiser among us see it as “God answering”— something manifesting from an invisible divine source. Within the body of humanity is a small minority however, who come to have an altogether different experience.
Stretching our mole metaphor a little, the time comes for some when an individual’s heart and mind begin to become aware that the “spymaster” is present and activating them. These first glimpses might even come in childhood and become more a knowing than a wondering: “There is purpose to life. There is a purpose to my life.” Words like these might touch essences of what is perceived. “I feel I have a calling” may be a way it occurs to some. Wonderful! These are signs of stirring and are familiar in past experience, I’m sure, to people now hearing or later reading these words. People who feel they have a calling may believe themselves special or superior to others, but if it stops there, the spymaster’s message isn’t getting through much. Having a calling is great, but what about hearing and acting?
Permit me another spy novel reference to this mole or sleeper agent analogy. We remember the spymaster activates the agent by some prearranged means and then the agent wakes up to his or her mission and acts to fulfill it. Well, the real activating call from the real master has been sounding within us and without us all our earthly lives. The prearranged means to awaken in consciousness is for heart and mind to respond in openness and love to the presence of the sower of light seed. For some of us maybe it took a while to sense this, to hear the call and begin to heed it and move with its compulsion. Maybe later we got a little distracted here or there along the way. None of that matters. What matters is being awake to play our parts in fulfilling the mission while we have the means on earth to do so.
According to the dictionary, the word agent commonly means “representative” or “deputy.” We might add “emissary.” The Latin origin of agent means, simply, “to do.” I’m reminded of the biblical admonition, “But be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.” (James 1:22)
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” This insight and quote is attributed to Anaïs Nin, a 20th century French-Cuban American writer, actor, and feminist. “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” How very true!
How the world looks to us depends completely on the personal identity we experience. I don’t mean how we see facts themselves, though most facts we see and hear about are supplied to us second- and third-hand by various news media and by other people. I’m thinking more about how we interpret what we see and hear, what meaning we ascribe to it.
Human habit dictates that people form opinions—this is good, that is bad; she is good, he is evil; I like this, I don’t like that. This habit runs deep, but if we see the world through our angelic eyes, we know how futile and even destructive it is to judge things good and bad. Things are just as they are. “But wait! There is so much injustice in the world. We have to do something about it all!”
Hold on. Where is what we see in the world? Everything we are aware of is in our own consciousness, right? There may be objective reality, but how do we know it? The nature and quality of our consciousness determines how the world looks to us, and people are thoroughly convinced it really is the way they see it. “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
The judgment habit prevents clear vision. Judging, condemning, criticizing, and blaming produce a make-believe world that exists only in our own heads. If we’re awake and really serving the mission as emissaries of divine light, we don’t, for one thing, indulge ourselves in “us” and “them.” A very small false identity is revealed by the “it’s me against the world” perspective or maybe a “you and me versus everybody else” micro-expansion of that. The smaller the identity the smaller the us and the larger the them. The darker reverse side of this duality is the narcissistic, “I’m more powerful and more important than all of you.” But let’s consider: How large is my “us?” With spiritual 20/20 vision there is no “them” at all; it’s just us. Let’s try assuming this perspective the next time somebody we think we don’t like does something we think we don’t like. It keeps our hearts from being troubled and our ears from ringing!
Even if other members of the big “us” have hardly an inkling of the magnificence of their in-dwelling god being, we do. If we are who we really are, we see them as they really are. We can listen and they feel heard. This alone can extend a powerful activating force to an awakening one. Remember the first time feeling really seen and heard by another? It’s a life-changing experience, a stirring, uplifting experience.
The world is re-created in consciousness, not out there. I can’t change anything out there, but I can uplift, inspire and bless everything in my consciousness. And guess what? This is the mission!
Being in the world this way we discover that we’re not of it. We’re in the world to shine our light, to sow light seeds in the heart of humankind and in the planetary body. We are not products of the world, we’re not subject to it, not controlled by it. The world is however it is, and I love it anyway.
Much of the Earth’s surface is hard and rocky or frozen or covered in saltwater. Even a lot of the land inhabited by humans is pretty harsh. This is how Planet Earth is now. I don’t see it as wrong that it is. Is the Earth in need of healing? Is humanity? “Yes!” I think most would readily answer. But how does it happen?
Let’s consider the little example of a small cut or burn on our skin. We’ve all had a few of those. You can clean the wound and treat it to prevent infection while it heals, but the healing itself comes from inside. It’s a marvelous life process of regenerating tissue and restoring the skin’s design and function. It’s a miracle not under the conscious mind’s control, but there obviously is control present through which the healing life energy works. In principle, why would life work any differently for the body of humanity, and for the body of the Earth?
Living in our real identity we’re immediately, intimately acquainted with the spirit and character of the One whose world this is. It is not just a nice-sounding theory that “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and that they that dwell therein.” (Psalm 24:1) This is the truth. You and I are each one of the many lords who together compose God for this world.
We’re here to inspire the world and they that dwell therein. The Latin root of inspire means “to breathe.” To inspire is to breathe upon, to breathe into, to fill with an animating, quickening, exalting influence—the breath of life. The spirit-infused Earth itself expands and softens as we live our mission. This is what is really happening now. What an inspiring vision! We are aware of what is behind the happening and we are aligned with and part of what is behind the happening. We are creator beings.
All things are made new when we see them new. New vision, new world!