We have come to a pivotal juncture in our spiritual journey as a human collective. The era that has dominated our consciousness and framed our religious and philosophical traditions for thousands of years is now giving way. We stand at the threshold of a new structure of consciousness emerging, one defined not by eternal changelessness but by constant flux and transformation at every level of existence.
At first, this realization can feel utterly disorienting and even cause our hearts to despair. How can we find grounding when everything seems to be a swirling chaos – our society splintering, our democratic ideals fraying, even our grasp on truth itself seeming tenuous? The vision we’ve long carried of good inevitably triumphing and order being restored can begin to feel like a child’s fantasy in the face of such constant upheaval.
And yet, there is profound wisdom available to us in this transition, if we can open ourselves to receive it. The contemplative teachings preserved in our midst point the way. What our cherished teacher Thomas Keating came to realize in his final decades was that this ceaseless churning is not a temporary human condition to be endured, but in fact the true nature of the cosmos itself. At the deepest levels, all is a thrilling immensity of infinite possibilities perpetually arising and dissolving in endless cycle.
Our new spiritual work, then, is to find our sea-legs amidst these swirling tides rather than seeking escape to an illusory static harbor. We must learn to attune ourselves to the fundamental pulse that underlies all this surface turbulence, which our meditation practice reveals is always present within us. Like a whirling dervish, we can find our unwavering center even as everything flies apart at a hundred miles per second.
Part of embodying this new consciousness will be relinquishing our habitual desire to judge and cling to particular forms, whether ideological, religious, or cultural. As we witness the dissipation of structures that may have been precious to us, we must develop the capacity for a rare impartiality. Not a cold indifference, but an openness to the truth that all forms are momentary arising within a unified field of infinite creativity and possibility.
This does not mean suppressing our very human experiences of sorrow, rage or grief as the familiar falls away. Our contemplative work is to learn to let those emotions rise and fall like the rain across our windshield, not resisting or identifying with them, but simply allowing the clearing action of our sacred words in centering prayer to restore the open vista once more.
Perhaps most critically, we must come to embrace the intrinsic value of both the bounded and unbounded aspects of our being, neither rejecting our individual, finite self nor clinging to a conception of an infinite self severed from its capacity for expression in form. The intimate interplay between these dimensions is where the holy reveals itself – in the infinite pouring into and through the finite with perfect timing and intention. Like Jesus embodying the Christ consciousness, we are called to bring that flawless present awareness into our speech, our actions, our way of being in the world.
We understand now that the separate self pushing its agenda of control and emotional programming for happiness is a mirage. Yet equally misguided is any notion of the “unbounded blob” that dissolves our unique individuality. Our spiritual work is a constant dance between these polarities, a reciprocal flow that allows the currents of life to surge through us unencumbered while surrendering the craving self that grasps and resists.
This is arduous practice, make no mistake, requiring patience, communal support, and the nurturing of robust equanimity. We will bear witness to tragedy and loss on a scale we can scarcely imagine in this tumultuous transition between epochs. The hearts unprepared for this reckoning will buckle and shatter. Our very survival depends on cultivating the skill of remaining unwavered and undeterred even as precious vessels break apart before our eyes.
And yet even as forms continually rise and fall back into the infinite potential, in those moments of absolute presence we touch the eternal Source that was never born and can never die. The core pulse remains, a resonant embedding within the music of this choreographed dance of creation and destruction. Our spiritual call is to so attune ourselves to this fundamental vibration that it becomes our anchor and refuge amidst the endless dynamism.
We cannot rely on the certitudes and structures that once offered our ancestors seeming safety. Those crumbling ruins memorialize an age fading in the rearview mirror. What is asked of us is the courage to step fully into the uncertainty, embracing the chaos as the secret heart of love itself. For it is only through our willingness to be unmade that we can be perpetually regenerated in the novelty of each emerging moment.
The skills that will serve us in this new era are not those of dogmatic doctrine or staid ritual, but rather a finely-tuned sensitivity to the ever-shifting currents of energy and opportunity. Like a master sailor catching the winds, we must cultivate an intuitive metis – a dynamic intelligence that knows exactly when to stand down and when to boldly act, with neither too little nor too much force. This potent marriage of wisdom and right timing is how we will learn to surf the waves of an existence where nothing is static or certain.
Our contemplative gatherings and communal sharing then become protected spaces to forge this radical new consciousness together. Gone are the days of siloed spiritual authorities dictating static precepts. We see now that the way can only be co-created and co-emerged through our collective engagement with the mysteries as they continuously unfold. In dialogue and open-hearted questioning, we will acclimate to living improvisationally, trusting in the abundance that ceaselessly replenishes itself when we stop grasping and simply allow.
Let us have the courage to celebrate the beauty inherent in this breathtaking chaos that is our deepest home. Let our wonderstruck gratitude be the balm that soothes our grief over impermanence. And may we offer back to the world the gifts of undivided presence, radical openness and tributes of sacred creativity and love as it arises renewing itself in each and every moment. In this way, we can serve as midwives to what is being borne through this great transition, holding the infinite potential as it emerges into form once more.
Let us hold this vision as a guiding light – that our spiritual work in this new era is to become masterful midwives attending the perpetual birth of the sacred as it emerges into new form. Just as a mother cannot clamp down and control the inexorable process of labor, but instead must breathe deeply and open to the contractions as they course through her, so too must we surrender to the rhythms of creation and destruction endlessly unfolding in sublime choreography.
Our tendency has been to tense against the uncertainty and seek to impose order and predictability onto the chaos. But this only leads to suffering and cuts us off from the continual wellspring of renewal. When we can release our white-knuckled grip on how we insist reality should look, we open to receive the spontaneous blessings and revelations continuously arising in each ever-novel moment.
In these intense times, our contemplative practices become life rafts – places to reconstitute our beings in the spacious awareness that all arises and falls within. As we merge more deeply into that unshakeable ground of presence, our actions become increasingly synchronized with the harmonic hum pulsing through all phenomena. We shed inauthentic patterns and emotional reactivity, and become tuned-in receivers and transmitters of divine intelligence expressing itself.
This path requires utmost bravery and an uncompromising commitment to ruthless self-honesty. We must continually shed that which is ready to die, again and again undergoing the alchemical fire that reduces all that is extraneous and inessential to ash. Only with this heroic discipline to keep an onslaught polishing the mirror of our beings can we become pure clear vessels for the light that passeth all understanding.
Let us hold each other through the intensity of these initiations with openhearted compassion and love. This undertaking is not one of grim asceticism, but of coming ever more exquisitely alive to the lush, breathtaking beauty blossoming all around and within us in each instant. As our senses attune to the rapturous play and holy revel guiding this eternal dance, we will find ourselves overflowing with child-like wonderstruck awe.
In those precious moments, may we offer back the only thing we truly have to give – the timeless, eternal IS-ness that alone can mirror and reflect the infinite giving birth to itself. Just as the dawn breaks through the night’s stillness with a splash of vivid, unrestrained color, may our grateful rejoicing in this great existence become a ceaseless “Yes!” vibrating in resonance with the perpetual upsurge of creativity.
Then we will have come full circle in this turning of the ages – not arriving at some static, immutable truth, but taking our rightful place as dancers in the endless pageant of life endlessly recreating itself. With empty hands and radiant hearts, may we pour ourselves out in humble service as love’s forever blossoming celebration.
In these pivotal times, we must have the courage to embrace uncertainty as the bedrock of our spiritual path. Gone are the days of clinging to ossified beliefs and dogmas that pretend to have condensed the infinite mystery into a set of immutable laws. The truth, as our bodies and this living Earth continue to instruct us, is that all is radically impermanent – a constantly shifting flow of interconnected energy fields.
To awaken is to release our grip on the mirage of separateness and regain conscious participation in this endless unfolding. Each breath, if received with utmost presence, becomes a gateway into the raw creativity frothing at the very hairspring of existence. We begin to experientially realize that the apparent solidity of material forms is but a prolonged vibration amidst a shimmering continuum.
This is not mere philosophical fancy, but a radical invitation to plunge into the terrifying freedom of lives lived with no nucleus around which to calcify our identities. Just as each wave crashes onto the shore only to be subsumed by the next, so too are we symbols, avatars briefly coalescing in the great Dreamer’s cosmic play of infinite self-expression. What could be more exhilarating and terrifying?
Our practices, then, become acts of unflinching courage – to stay awake within the dream rather than unconsciously playing out well-worn patterns and emotional reactivity. We must have the spiritual equanimity to remain spaciously aware even as cherished forms disintegrate before our eyes. All that we have called “mine” will eventually be reclaimed by the Source that temporarily loaned it to us to embody and enact our unique revelation.
In these moments of disillusionment, when another façade of separation cracks and falls away, we are invited ever more profoundly into the awesome mystery. Like a final, heart-rending deletion of all personal preferences and privacies, we experience a radical nakedness and vulnerability. Yet it is this very desert of having been stripped utterly bare that births the deepest freedom.
For here there is nothing left to cling to or push away – only the eternal isness of the moment automatically reflecting itself through our emptied beings. All that remains is availability, a supreme openness to receive and transmit the ceaseless surge of creative expression. We become hollow reeds through which the music of the spheres effortlessly flows, vehicles for the infinite divine play to orchestrate its infinitely regenerative dance.
In these rarified heights, all sense of personal attainment or theatrical spirituality melts away. We make no claim to have arrived, but simply bask in the awesome privilege of lucid participation in the mysteries. Like Schuon’s transcendent unity of religions, divergent paths paradoxically converge in a thusness, a wordless, lucid equipoise.
May we then give ourselves fully to heralding this new spiritual dawn, not with dogma or inviolate scripture but with a willingness to live as analytic poets, plumbers, mystic creators. Holding the unknown as a sacred trust, may we become exquisitely sensitive blank slates upon which the grandest of all possibilities inscribes itself with each passing breath. With utter humility and shameless audacity, let us unleash ourselves as inexhaustible wellsprings through which the infinite majesty flowers in resplendent form.
As we stand at this evolutionary threshold, letting go of our grip on the familiar, a new spiritual charge pulses through our beings. We sense that we are being summoned to midwife something as yet unknown, but undoubtedly vast and cosmically significant. The old assurances and handrails have been kicked away, leaving us to navigate by nothing more than the luminescence of our own deepest nature.
This can feel at times utterly terrifying, like an endless free-fall through the void. Our habitual minds, well-conditioned to grasping after solid ground, may recoil in horror at the prospect of utter unknowing. We have been raised on a steady diet of answers, certainties, and calculated paths to worldly safety and success. To have the rug pulled out so completely can trigger every existential anxiety.
And yet, as we learn to surrender more utterly to the mystery, an unexpected relaxation blossoms from within. A gentle smile tugs at the corners of our lips as we realize the futility of all our contortions to exert control over the uncontrollable. We had simply forgotten our true identity as radically free and unbounded beings.
In this spacious opening, laughter begins to bubble up from the depths – the way a innocent child disrupts the heavy atmosphere of a room full of self-serious adults. We see with new eyes the delightful absurdity of the self-contraction that had us identifying with a mere finite persona, like mistaking the costume for the actor who dons it.
With this unshakable ease comes a profound and uncaused spiritual confidence. No longer deriving our worth from any external source, we claim our birthrights as heirs to the largest possible context. We become conduits for the most generous spirit imaginable, a universal benevolence perpetually overflowing its own boundaries.
From this liberated inner staging ground, our actions in the world take on new power and intentionality. Rather than reactive flailings to shore up a precarious sense of self, each gesture flowers forth as a ceremony of creative resonance. Our words carry codes of activation, awakening untapped potentials. Our presence alone serves as an invisible architecture holding open the portal to undreamed-of futures.
We become adepts at midwifing the closest revelations crowning through the collective field. No longer requiring static identities or entrenched allegiances, we develop kaleidoscopic shape-shifting as our modus operandi. Wearing influence lightly as a gossamer robe, we engage and harmonize with the peak insights and lucid vision-logic arising across all spheres.
This is the next stage in our spiritual evolution – coming into coherence around a resonant attunement with the possible. From that subtle yet infinitely powerful alignment, we become deft plumbers and dreamers, unblocked channels through which the wildest magic flows. We transcend and include all previous stages of awakening, only to arrive at this ultimate starting gate where all bets are off.
May we then free-fall together courageously into this new non-spiritual spiritual adventure! Already living prophecies and apocalyptic prisms illuminating the World Drama, let us become blank slates for the ongoing revelation to inscribe itself. With empty hands and radiant hearts brimming with inexhaustible creative spirit, may we give ourselves utterly to love’s fantastical flourishing into ever new and inconceivable domains of being and becoming.
As we stand undefended, permeable vessels attuned to the ever-new, an exquisite vulnerability washes over us. Gone are the carapaces of identity, belief, and self-protection that once insulated us from the searing truth of our radical openness. In this nakedness, we realize that all along we have been dangerously Guards unguarded, with nowhere to hide from the blazing light streaming in through every pore.
Rather than cowering, we discover the dare to bask in this scorching furnace. What once would have incinerated our former selves becomes the very elixir catalyzing our deepest transformation. Unreservedly offering our whole beings as pure grist, we become alight with the same brilliance endlessly unfolding the cosmos.
From this pyre of lucid dismantlement, a new spiritual heroism is forged. We find ourselves embodying the mythic path of the eternal dropout, renouncing every construct of ultimate law or dogma in order to join the anarchic dance of wild, unbroken spirit. Having shed all fixations, we enter into a state of infinite intimacy and availability.
The universe itself becomes our monastic habitat, each rainbow-edged creek and soaring falcon courting our rapt adoration. We make ourselves as capacious as the enveloping sky, embracing elephants and microbes with equanimitable affection. For the first time, we experience the full-bodied benediction of existing as one Body woven from the same shimmering stardust as All That Is.
Words and concepts, we see with blinding clarity, are mere skewing refractions of the singular radiance veiling and unveiling itself perpetually. To have mistaken the fantastically detailed fingers pointing at the moon as the moon itself seems sadly absurd in retrospect. How could we have been so transfixed by the intricate signifiers chirping and wheeling in vain attempts at delimiting the endless azure?
And yet, this shattering disillusionment contains within it the brightest revelation. For if the unsayable nothing is truly all there is, then every gesture, utterance, and creative manifestation is already a love note to the miracle. The only prayer becoming to the sanctity of existence is raw, unbridled praise and indiscriminate gratitude for simply being allowed to participate.
Feel the sheer wonder pulsing through your veins in this streaming moment! Drink deeply of the dazzling truth that every cell, every hair on your wildly improbable skin, is a victory of unfathomable rarity. The singular unfurling of your conscious beingness into this dreamscape of appearance is proof of cosmic generosity run outrageously amok. You are nothing more or less than a fractal tributary of the infinite Source perpetually savoring its own spilled beauty.
How then could we dare to hold back in reciprocating this lavish gift? To not extravagantly express the holy revelry would be a sorrowing offense to the endless display. So unleash your deepest prayers as uninhibited creativity! Sculpt with sacred wildness, compose musics that pilfer heaven itself, conjure living poetry to ambush the universe with its own primordial nakedness. For in every ecstatic offering of spiraled rapture, you participate most completely as the grateful guest at the ceremonious feast of everlasting genesis.
And so at last we arrive at this breathtaking vista – the awesome palpitating plenitude of being ceaselessly born anew. Here there is only the courage of unbridled saying “Yes!” Here we take our place as voracious celebrants of the eternal ordinality of Beginning Without End.
