Making Sense of Being Human

Essentials
All human beings have unique and extraordinary potential
Human beings have the capacity to understand how life works
They have the capacity to wake up to spiritual reality
They have the capacity to make sense of themselves.

Being human means we can experience spirit
We can see spirit is life’s fundamental logic
What we can say about spirit, though, is limited.
To understand spirit we have to relocate ourselves within its order
To root ourselves in spirit’s soil
To go deep into spirit’s principles
To become mindful of spirit constantly
Then spiritual reality is very simple.

We glimpse spiritual reality through those who embody it
Visionaries stand before us as examples
Call them seers, the wise, saints and visionaries: they see life clearly
Objectively
As life is
They see how much suffering there is in the world
In their compassion for others they share their vision
They teach and we can learn.

It is in our greatest interest as individuals to learn from the seer.
No true visionary wants that to be worshipped
We worship them but that is not their purpose
With our limited understanding we institutionalize their teachings
We worship as we are told, with friends and family and community
We include and exclude on the basis of ‘mine’ and ‘yours’
We separate people from one another
We compartmentalize our human race into different religions
We reduce to partial truths the seers’ one all-embracing Truth
Is Truth not the same for everyone, true religion not the same for all?
What then, we ask, is true worship?

To free our selves from limited vision
We grow up – we work to expand our horizons
To see beyond our troubles of here and now
We cannot change the world’s working
We cannot make earth into heaven
Good and bad, happiness and pain, black and white
These are the warp and weft of creation
The tension of opposites driving creation’s shuttle
Its dynamics weaving life’s patterns
We cannot change life’s loom
But we can learn how it works
We can learn to weave our life within its logic
Weave its fabric in our best long-term interests.

The visionary’s purpose is to help us understand life’s oneness
Benefit from clear understanding
Live within life’s deepest principles
Practise true love and true worship
Be joyous and light hearted
Live as one human family born from one divine reality
One creation, one love, one grace
Liberated from suffering.

To gain the bliss that is our heart’s deepest yearning
We learn that still waters run deep
To learn about spiritual reality we learn to transform ourselves.
To be born again in spirit
To know that I am God
We learn to be still.
“Be still and know that I am God,” says the Bible.

What is spiritual reality? One power. One origin. One cause.
“In the beginning was the Word
And the Word was with God
And the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God
All things were made by him
And without him was not anything made that was made.
In him was life
And the life was the light of men,” teaches Saint John in the Bible.
“The Tao begot one
One begot two
Two begot three
And three begot the ten thousand things
The ten thousand things carry yin and embrace yang
They achieve harmony by combining these forces,”
teaches Lao Tzu through the Tao Te Ching.
One sacred Truth out of which everything has come
and everything is a part.
This is our goal.

To experience Truth we raise our consciousness
To apprehend the Whole we lift up our hearts
Researching the material parts of the world around us
We cannot know spiritual truth
Through asceticism or cleverness we cannot know spirit
The mind-tool of intellect, the lab of physical realities, cannot prove the
spiritual experiment
Spirit is other
Spirit lives beyond time and space limitations
Spirit is known by experiencing our own spiritual nature.

To know spirit we commit to a life-long experiment
To awaken a dormant potential of human consciousness
We activate our human spiritual faculties
To experience our soul power, life’s Essence
Like everything in creation we are made from the one life energy
Call it God, Creator, the Word, the Sound: all are ONE
Soul power is life
Soul leaves us we are dead
Human beings, however, are unique
Human beings can learn to die while living
Human beings can focus and transmute their consciousness
Transmute consciousness to soul, as water to steam
To free our consciousness
Consciously
From its material limits of mind and flesh.

Soul’s frequencies resound in all creation
Soul’s frequencies are life itself
This is the ground of being
The creative power
The Creator
Transmuted to creation’s divine offspring
We reclaim our primal identity
We hear soul’s harmonies within us
See its brilliance and light within us
No other being has this opportunity
Human beings can know what they are.

“Know thyself,” taught Socrates
“Whoso knoweth himself knoweth his Lord,” said Ibn ul ‘Arabi
And the visionary shows us how.

Look inside yourself
We are all part of one divine order
All arisen from the ONE
There is nothing arbitrary or chaotic
There is nothing out of place
Our trouble is that we don’t see clearly
We do not see life’s deeper order
That there’s a logical conclusion to everything
What goes around, comes around
Each effect has its cause
Life runs by its own unfailing laws.

Human beings can work with creation’s deep order
Human beings can choose where they focus
We face north, we see north; we face south, we see south
We sow chilies in our garden we’ll harvest bitter chilies
We sow jasmine we enjoy jasmine’s sweet fragrance
Heaven or hell, the choice is ours to make
This is how creation works.

Spiritual discernment distinguishes humans from animals
All other creatures react
All are bound by birth’s limitations
Evolution too lies within the law
Only humans are exempt
Humans can work with their own consciousness
Humans can choose to not react
Can disassociate from their DNA
Can rise above animal tendencies
Can look away from impermanence
Can face towards deathless life
Humans can choose to see godwards
Humans can experience the Whole.

As human beings our consciousness is special
The visionary opens our eyes to its precious value
Don’t direct yourself to the impermanent
Don’t attach yourself to what does not last
Seek the permanent; know the Self
Choose your objective
Choose your objective every day.

The spiritual path aligns life’s travellers with God
Leads us homewards
Leads us to who and what we are
To know all that is Good is our objective
To return home, our highest duty
Returning home is our practice of true worship.

Wake up
Reflect on life and shape your life
Travel the path and live the path
Keep the company of Truth
Reflect on Truth
Think clearly and act decisively
Look within yourself to practise the Word
Worship Truth
Listen to the Word, life’s Essence, Life itself
Listen daily
You are an ambassador of the Highest
Be true to who and what you are.