CHAPTER 1
Manifesto of Love
Where do I begin ... to tell the story of a love that never ends? To give words to our double spiral of life ... where every ending is a new beginning? How does it weave together, all of it, the joy and the sorrow, the love and the loss, the peace and the unknowing that is beyond our understanding?
How do the perfect souls simply show up in our lives in the ways that our own learning and growing, our dissolving and becoming, can unfold in our pathless path with both choice and destiny?
I've come to trust, radically trust, the many colors, the many dimensions of love in this love story without end. Timelessness has given me time, it seems, in which to decipher and see facets of light and darkness, at least in my own life, that are beyond my understanding.
What I know is that there are codes in the mystery. And they are codes that, if we are willing to see higher and deeper into our lives, we can begin to understand and know their ways. We will all begin to find our own ways of entering the vastness of our unique and individual mysteries that are part of the one.
It's like there are many paths that lead to the mountaintop. And when we reach the top, if we are above the clouds, we can look into the vastness and see that there are many mountaintops.
We will also find moments in time when we recognize that we are, or were, on or off the path. Points of new beginnings emerge, sometimes out of what has seemed to be darkness. Such a moment occurred in my life ... now more than thirty years ago. It came as a surprise; I didn't plan it. For me, it was when what I've come to call the "Codes of Co-Creation" penetrated my very being.
I knew that my life had changed. It was like a flash of lightning in the night. There was a living f lame of love that was beyond understanding. It took me into the journey without distance. My body tingled even as my mind dissolved.
I somehow knew there was a territory and there was mystery. There were veiled clues related to this territory that has seldom been seen and only rarely mapped by human minds. Somehow I knew my life's work would be about this. And the awareness of the details was not there, only a knowing that was as a glimpse.
Each of us has our own gifts of such moments in time. Sometimes we recognize them; other times we don't. Sometimes we say yes to the invitation; other times we ignore it, discount it, or even run.
Yet these glimpses are numinous, coming from dimensions beyond our human understanding. If we are willing, we may perhaps come to know them as our soul's calling, our destiny, calling us to a greater, higher, and deeper plan.
You are invited to an odyssey, one in which you participate, where you bring your own life, your soul's yearnings, into the journey. In some ways, it will be a memoir seen through the eyes of the soul. In other ways, it may involve glimpses of a future that exists, always already. If you say yes, you will participate at whatever level your heart tells you. It will be up to you ...
There is a map that has imprinted itself in my heart and mind. It has become, for me, an invisible guide. It is an ancient map, based in ancient scripture in part. It has been and is sacred in the hearts and minds of millions of people around the world.
There are other parts of maps that have become deeply imprinted in my being. Some of them may weave their way into our unfolding tapestry. You will find your own maps from your own imprints weaving themselves in your experience.
Some of the weavings and wanderings on this unusual quest will be part of what I call Codes of Co-Creation. My deepest desire is that we not get caught in our human minds and that we follow where our hearts lead.
I've found significant pointers in this mystery. They have revealed themselves over my lifetime in different stages and ways. If you are willing to say yes to the exploration, it will happen for you also.
In that ancient scripture, they have been called the seven days of creation. The simple understandings have taken on deeper meaning as revelations have come in this play between the visible and the invisible. Stages or even mystical awareness now seem a vaster way to describe and glimpse their essence.
The number seven has vast meaning in itself as part of the mystery. There are seven days in a week, seven-year cycles and seven colors in the rainbow. There are seven chakras, or seven notes in a musical scale. Seven is mentioned 735 times in the Bible, it is a number of completion. It will be a magical and powerful guide to us as we begin our exploration of mystery and vastness beyond.
Let's begin with how it works, how we will explore these stages that represent treasure beyond measure.
1. Let there be light: recognizing the faces of love in your life
2. Knowing in the unknowing: knowing faith and radical trust in your own gifts of genius
3. Glimpses of the soul: downloads from beyond the rational mind, from creative imagination and Source
4. Timelessness coming into time: will and understanding that is greater than us, yet we are uniquely a part of it; knowing the bridge between human love and cosmic soul love
5. Choice or no choice: sea changes, upheavals, angels and sea monsters
6. Mystical marriage and the union of heaven and earth: love and wisdom; seeing with vertical awareness; multiple realities existing simultaneously
7. Realization and return: love without an opposite, joy and a peace that passes understanding; embodying your true voice — I Am That I am; returning to the marketplace with gift-bestowing hands: your soul's plan leads and guides
It will be in simple language for ordinary and extraordinary people. I don't know where the path will lead us. I do know some of the places it has taken me in my own life. They will be part of what I align with as we begin ...
CHAPTER 2
Moments in Time
How does one describe a moment in time that descends into your life? It seemed simple and even ordinary at first, and then it wasn't ... Do I talk about sitting in a classroom that I had not expected to be in? Do I write about feeling lost in the world? Do I move to following the dots to find an unknown way?
The ship of my second marriage seemed to be crashing on the rocks. It was a marriage that I did not want to end. I had an imprint from my childhood that marriage was supposed to last. I had already been through the end of my first marriage even though it was my own choice. Or was it?
Sitting in the prayer chapel at Unity Village, Missouri, I was waiting for an appointment with someone who had called me to talk about the problem. My second husband was a minister, and dissolving marriages can be difficult for the churches they serve. I felt embarrassed, even some shame, yet most of all, just plain lost.
I clenched my hands into fists, struggling with the feelings, wanting to pray to somehow fix it all. A memory verse from my fundamentalist childhood of learning about Bible stories, by creating the stories in a sandbox tray with my great-aunt Lydia teaching us, dropped into my awareness. The verses were always short and simple ... for a child to learn. "Ask in my Name and you will receive ..." came into my heart.
My heart felt like it was breaking open, even while pleading. "Show me what to do" formed as a response in my awareness to the invitation to "Ask ..." And then, as if time had returned, I remembered that I was at Unity Village for an appointment, and if I didn't get there, I would be late.
A short time later, in another room, I was sitting with the person who had asked me to come. I knew him from a time when my husband had tried out in a church in the Northwest, and he had since come to work with the Association of Unity Churches at the world headquarters. We briefly talked before diving into what we both knew to be the question.
And then ... the numinous simply descended. That's one way that I would describe it now, even though I wouldn't have known that then. Now, I recognize it as a very rare Voice and Light experience. Suddenly the light began to change in the room. I heard a voice ... I thought, with my human mind, that it must be the person with whom I was sitting in the room. He later told me it wasn't. The voice simply asked: "If you could do anything in the world, what would you do?" Tears began filling my now closed eyes and then flowing down my cheek as I heard myself say the words, "I would be a minister."
And then the light changed again. I heard the voice of the person with whom I was meeting. He said in a somewhat excited voice, "If you really mean that ..." as he explained that deadlines were approaching for applications to ministerial school. He simply started directing me as to what to do, the next immediate steps that would redirect my life.
My human mind had never ever even thought about being a minister. That was what my husband did. Maybe we would do something together where my background and doctoral degree in education would be complementary. Yet all of my plans seemed to just simply dissolve into a greater knowing that came from beyond my rational mind.
I simply followed — moment by moment at times. I waited for and then followed the next points of light that came. I asked for them when I needed them. I followed them when they came. It became my spiritual practice, one that I still follow and teach. It was one of my first connections with radical trust and ultimately radical love.
Love has many faces in our lives. It shows up in so many ways, often with interesting and strange disguises. What has emerged, for me, is a radical surrender. It does, however, seem to take different lengths of time as it morphs into its expressions of "sometimes love, sometimes sorrow" in its exquisite journey of love without an opposite.
Ultimately, two or three years later, the marriage ended. Yet, for me, the love never ended. The dissolve of the breaking heart became the heart that was broken open, opening me to the next platforms, still then invisible, in this amazing journey of love.
Practice: Bringing Your Life into the Curriculum
What have been moments in time that changed your life? How have they surprised you? How have they shifted and morphed? Can you see them now in new ways, through the eyes of love without an opposite?
Write for ten minutes maybe, perhaps for an hour. I love writing for one hour. For me it represents the Power of One, an other-worldly kind of connection.
Practice listening for the whispers, the knowing that comes from beyond our rational minds. Yours will be different from mine. Go beyond expectations ...
Scribe what comes, without judging it, without editing it. If only silence comes, just sit. It will seem, perhaps, to come as a thought. Just scribe it. Let it come.
CHAPTER 3
The Key to Everything
We sit in various classrooms in our lives; some of them even look like classrooms. Others look like ordinary other kinds of places. We hear voices in those settings. Sometimes we recognize, even honor and delight in, the voices we hear. Other times we don't. Occasionally, we call them teachers. Some have had formal roles; others have had informal roles.
Remembering clearly what we learned and who the teacher was may be more rare. Then, maybe once or perhaps a few times in a lifetime, time may stand still. Timelessness seems to penetrate into time. Words are spoken that imprint upon our hearts and minds. Sometimes they take us to new levels of recognition, perhaps of love or knowing that brings wonder, even awe.
Such a moment came in the first six weeks of my being in seminary at Unity School of Christianity. The class was Metaphysics I, and the day's topic was the story of creation found in the first chapter of Genesis in the Bible. Marvin Anderson was the teacher, a sort of radical revolutionary among Unity ministers.
"This is the key to everything," he said, "and we don't understand it yet." He then began to elaborate on the difference between what he called involution found in Genesis 1 and evolution, which he said was found in the rest of the Bible. He was taking us into the mystery, and he forewarned us ... it was not about our necessarily understanding. I was fascinated with his charisma, with his passion.
And then I felt a shift. I felt myself transfixed, pierced by the words, held motionless in time. I knew, somehow, that this would be the work of the rest of my life. It was as if I was being given a life assignment. It was known that I could not understand it ... yet. I told no one — not Marvin, not anyone. Who would I tell? It would sound crazy. Yet ... there was a total knowing.
The pieces of that moment in time, the revelations of that knowing, have come over the three decades since. They still continue.
Involution is the descent of the Holy Spirit, the descent of the dove that artists have depicted. It is the living flame of love, the always already present known by mystics and poets. It is timeless, changeless, transcendent. And yet, it comes upon us, penetrating our souls, our hearts, our minds, our physical being. It ignites within us a yearning to know, to remember.
The ascent of the soul is felt in our heart as love. It is beyond human knowing. It doesn't make sense to us always, yet we want to know it more. It knows the impulse of its own becoming. It yearns for oneness, for union. Even though the world knows it not, we search for it, we seek it, yearn to find it.
At that moment in time in 1985, I could not have written these words. I had no way of even understanding them. I knew the creation story from my childhood. This was not that. My family, most of my friends, would not understand it. Somehow I had shifted out of a paradigm of awareness that included even a lot of my education. I was in between ... the unknowing would reveal itself in time.
What I know now is that my mind was dissolving into my heart, into a heart mind that would emerge in cosmic vastness. Mystics and map makers of consciousness have tried at times to describe the mysteries that are beyond the rational mind. Often the words are veiled; there is somehow a knowing that this can only be understood by "those who have the ears to hear, those who have the eyes to see ..."
And yet when the lightning bolt happens. When the thunder sounds, there is a knowing that does not require understanding. It begins with a love that changes everything and is forever.
Practice: Bringing Your Life into the Curriculum
Give yourself the gift of just sitting in the silence, just being in your heart ... Feel your breath, breathing in with the awareness of "I Am," breathing out with the Awareness of "that" ... I Am That I am ...
Let the words dissolve as your heart feels them and then gives them out into the world ... Feel the pause points where awareness simply drops in from beyond the human mind. Open to revelation. Scribe it perhaps, or you may not remember it ...
What settings have been your classrooms? What voices did you hear? Who were the teachers in their formal or informal roles? What words imprinted in your awareness?
Have you felt shifts, moments when you felt transfixed, pierced by words? Have you experienced a glimpse, an awareness of a life assignment? How have you searched for it, yearned for it? How has it revealed itself over time?
What have you had no way of understanding? Have you known the in-between times, between the known and the unknowing?
Choose whatever questions light up or attract you and see if some of the mystery will come into words from beyond your human mind.
