by Sanford Baran, John Gray, Linda Bahan, Bill Bahan, Larry Krantz
Sanford Baran: Good morning, everyone. Nine of us have been gathering for our Tone of Life coordinators’ weekend here in the desert at Larry and Joyce’s home in beautiful Oro Valley, Arizona. Our gathering began on Friday evening and we’ve been engaged in some interesting and substantial discussions, enjoying lovely meals together and appreciating each other’s company. I thought you might enjoy a few photographs that capture the flavor and spirit of the rich and substantial time we’ve been sharing together. Watch the photo slide show
So, without further ado I’ll hand it over to John.
John Gray: Thank you, Sanford, for that introduction and for the photographs you displayed for us. We all could see in one or two of those pictures that the Tone of Life coordinating group rocked out this weekend! Today I am the opening act, preceding other rock stars.
Recently I came across a Hopi prophecy. It’s undated, but it could well have been written today:
Here is a river now running very
fast.
It is so great and swift that there
are those
who will be afraid, who will try
to hold on to the shore.
They are being torn apart and
will suffer greatly.
The elders say we must let go of
the shore,
push off into the river, and keep
our heads above water.
This describes the current state of world events, no? The river suggests the creative process. There are those who resist moving with it, holding onto the shore; maybe some of us have experienced certain results of that. The elders, whom we know, and now are, recommend letting go of the shore and pushing off into the river. Let go into the moving currents of the creative process.
So many people are moved by the flow below the water’s surface, where there’s little light and almost no vision. There, one seems to be in the throes of something well beyond one’s own control, being swept along. This is indeed a fearful experience. But there also are those who keep their heads above water. This symbolizes having consciousness in the air above the surface of the flowing river, in the firmament which connects the subconscious waters below with the waters above. As angelic beings in human form on earth we reside in this heavenly place consistently.
Metaphors have their limitations, but we know the experience of living and breathing and speaking in the air of the spirit, in the light. The Hopi elders and we understand the river to be the “waters below” which represent the unconscious. To be angelically conscious in form on earth is to live at the crossover point. As we are indeed fully present here, we’ve no fear at all of whatever may go on externally.
There may seem an awful lot of noise and bluster and chaos, depending on what you’re listening to. You decide what that is, but regardless there’s no cause to be alarmed and certainly not to be fearful. We share transcendent awareness of what is transpiring and know it is all happening because divine men and women are present on earth today. In this identity we understand what’s going on. We look around in the free air and the light, see our fellows, and love one another.
Linda Bahan: Thank you, John. This has been a wonderful opportunity here in Arizona to have the experience of loving one another in the flow of life. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening to all of you who are gathered with us today. I greet you as brothers and sisters in a large family. I invite you into the experience of the ceremony that I had the privilege to lead yesterday.
Let me say thank you to Christine Jonas because you were the inspiration for this ceremony when you spoke about a candle ceremony a couple of weeks ago. If any of you don’t know about cairns, they are constructed from stones. In prehistoric times they were raised as markers, as memorials and as burial monuments. In more modern times cairns are typically built for navigational purposes to safely guide a person in a specific direction on a trail. Cairns are also created to remember sacred and important events. I viewed our gathering as both sacred and important.
As I tell this story please imagine yourselves as a stone. Joyce was very kind to help me prepare for the ceremony. First, we went into the backyard and selected nine stones to represent each of us attending our gathering. The way I envisioned the ceremony was that each of the nine stones we found dispersed throughout the backyard would symbolize each one of us when we incarnated into the earth. Like the stones scattered about, in the beginning we found ourselves in different geographic locations around the world. As we started to awaken to our angelic identity, we began to be drawn closer together and later into more specific configurations.
To expedite the process, so that we didn’t roast out in the hot Arizona sun, Joyce and I took the nine stones that we had selected and assembled them into the cairn that you saw in the picture. Then we disassembled it and numbered the stones with the number hidden under the stone. The ceremony began with us standing in a circle around the stones that were laying on the ground in front of us in no particular pattern. I invited each person to look at the stones and then select the one they felt they had an affinity with. Going around the circle each person first selected their stone as I wrote down the number. Then the person who had selected stone #1 picked it up and handed it to me to place it in its position before they offered a verbal blessing. Stone #2 was positioned, repeating the same ritual, until the cairn was completed. At the conclusion of the ceremony Pamela reminded us of the symbolism of the number 9—the circle of the number 9 represents something completed in heaven which then emerges into the earth through the stem.
As any of us come together, we create a living cairn. The beauty of it is how, in different configurations, we find our perfect place and fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. I enjoy being with all of you, loving the different patterns we create.
Bill Bahan: It’s lovely to be with all of you today and to share some of the essences of what the nine of us have been experiencing the past couple of days. I’ve enjoyed spending this precious time with these eight other “stones”—perhaps The Rolling Stones because we’re always moving together with the tone of life and nothing ever remains static.
I found the ceremony with the cairn that Linda described to be quite significant because it represents the way we have come together in Arizona to let something be built in a cohesive way. We are of different shapes and sizes with various backgrounds and unique ways of expressing ourselves which is no hindrance when we have a shared sense of purpose that binds us all together.
All of our conversations developed very naturally as we were sensitive to the flow of spirit at work through each of us. It’s always a matter of building upon that which is offered through others. This is a process we’re all very familiar with in our services and group dialogues.
When you look at the cairn that we built during our ceremony it has a very specific design. Each stone has its proper place and if one stone was missing or out of place it would disrupt the whole design. On the surface it may appear that no single stone has all that much value by itself but when all the stones come together it reveals the fact that each stone is essential to the whole design. We each have our own spiritual responsibility and are not dependent on anyone else to carry that for us; we are each part of a greater design. We are interdependent like the stones in the cairn; it takes all of us working together to fulfill our collective purpose.
I’ve been reading the second chapter of the Book of Daniel about King Nebuchadnezzar and the dream he had that troubled his spirit. As you may recall, he couldn’t remember his dream so he called together the magicians and the astrologers and the sorcerers to tell him what his dream was and then interpret it for him. The wise men asked the king how in the world they were supposed to tell him what the dream was when it was his dream. The king didn’t like that response and threatened to slay all the wise men of Babylon. Fortunately, the secret of the dream was revealed to Daniel in a night vision and he was able to describe the king’s dream to him.
Daniel said the dream was of something that would come to pass in the latter days. The king saw a great image standing before him, a man whose head was made of fine gold, and his breast and his arms of silver. It was an impressive image. His legs were made of iron, and his feet were a mixture of part iron and part clay which indicates weakness and limitation. Here is a representation of the supposedly magnificent world that man has created. The king also dreamed about a stone cut out of the mountain without hands which smote the image upon his feet and broke them into pieces so that the whole image disintegrated. We see a great deal of disintegration occurring in man’s world these days. The stone became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. This is a representation of those who compose the rock of truth to let a new state unfold on earth.
We are working together in agreement to let a new state take form, the kingdom of heaven which is at hand. We don’t know ahead of time how everything is going to unfold in the earthly sense but we are assured that what needs to happen will happen as we let the Tone of Life be revealed in our living. As John mentioned, we rise up above the water which is swirling down below to live in the air of the spirit.
It’s been a pleasure to spend these past couple days with these eight beautiful angels and to spend this time with all of you today as we acknowledge our collective purpose to bring a new state on earth.
Larry Krantz: We had the experience in our Coordinators’ Group of deep friendship and love, of oneness, moving together easily, with much laughter and enjoyment. Eternal friendships already exists for everyone, even though most people do not know it; their true Selves are hidden behind false personalities, which leads to separation, estrangement, and pain. Yet, in reality, we are one family, friends always.
The cairn we built had to be balanced to be stable. Once constructed, the top stone happened to point to true north, an apt symbol of right direction. Another building of stone—much bigger—but also balanced and in right orientation is the Great Pyramid in Egypt, which reminds us of a former time of greatness. I suspect it once had a living function beyond a massive, cleverly-designed set of stones. Life assembles us into groupings that are useful for its purposes—living cairns. Spirit must work through material forms to reveal what is invisible, to be made visible.
We gather today under the banner of the Tone of Life, a label that is useful for now. All forms are transient and should not be sustained beyond their usefulness. There are natural cycles to all things. The word, “tone,” describes a feeling, a sensing of something. It is applied to the tone of a conversation, or of music, or of color. For us, it refers to the character of Life, which reveals Truth and Love. The human world is chaotic and destructive, unpredictable and rudderless, built upon feet of clay. If unchecked, disasters could lead to the elimination of humanity. A new tone must be sounded if there is to be any salvation.
Clear spiritual expression is very powerful. The tone of life must be heard by some for there to be a starting point. Of course, many do not hear that tone and go on blindly, blundering along with their lives. Hearing the tone is not enough. That is passive and sets a ceiling on understanding. It relies on the radiant living of someone else. The tone must be applied to one’s own living expression, to let the heart be purified, that in time the fullness of heaven may be revealed through our human facilities. Those who merely hear the tone but do not give it living expression, leech substance from others. Our job, our divine commission, is to be doers of the tone, not hearers only, which is spiritual immaturity.
There has always been someone on earth who has provided a focus of the tone, to some extent. I doubt the world would exist if this was not so. In the past, there were those who heard the tone sounding through Moses. Later, others heard it revealed by the Master. More recently, there was a clear sounding of the tone through the ones we knew as Uranda and Martin Exeter.
Now, we are the ones to sound that same tone in our living, each in our own way. It is our spiritual legacy. What is occurring these days is unprecedented, at least since the fathers fell asleep, as it is put. True spiritual leadership is needed now, to point a new direction.
The tone of life pierces the noise and static of this human-made world; it reveals the presence of the clear sky above turbulent waters and is how peace and order and beauty may be restored to our earthly home.
What begins as a deer trail in a forest, after some use, may become a path, and eventually a road. It takes repetition and consistency. What we do in our moments throughout the day, if they are clear expressions of the truth, widen vibratory deer paths, that others may follow more easily, enlarging the path, opening the byways to let heavenly things be known on earth through the simple actions of our days.This world in which we live is very unstable. Institutions and long-held customs may collapse. Great change is on the way. Let us be doers of the tone, not hearers only. Things need to fall apart if they are to are to be re-integrated according to the heavenly design. Only what is false will disintegrate. So, fear not. Let it all go, that something new and accurate to spirit may appear. What could give greater meaning to our lives than that?