by Norman Paulsen, Sunburst Founder
O Divine Comforter,
No matter how difficult the path,
I know You have blessed me with the faculties
By which I am able to bear what comes to pass.
As I journey homeward,
Please hear my soul calling.
I will pursue You every moment of my conscious life.
I will forever persevere, O Spirit Divine,
To develop the willpower to never give up!
I must meet You face to face.
I must hold You in my arms,
If You will allow.
You are my Father;
You are my Birth Mother,
The Creator of my soul.
From You have I come forth into this world,
Into this sea of faces.
I look for You in every face, O Beloved.
Will You please come forth
And reveal Yourself to me
Somehow, somewhere, someday?
I will continue to pursue You
In every image and in every place,
Until I find You hiding
In the mirror image of my own face.
by Jake Collier • When we contemplate honesty, we might think of George Washington telling the truth. “Oh yes, I chopped down that cherry tree.”
Deeper levels of honesty, being honest with ourselves, have been documented through interviews with people who’ve had near death experiences. Many of them share a common occurrence: entering a tunnel, and seeing at the end of the tunnel a wondrous white light, which was a living being radiating infinite love and grace. They found themselves being drawn to the Light.
In the tunnel they encountered relatives, and pets, and reviewed experiences of the past. Each received a life review before the Light. There was no judgment, no right or wrong; it was simply a review of their life.
When I meditate on honesty, I reflect on: Am I achieving goals that I have set? If my goal is to meditate for twenty minutes, Did I do that? And if I did, Did I set a new goal of twenty-five minutes? Was I able to focus, to concentrate and see the tunnel in my meditation? Did I try to be a better person, to help somebody? Do I see God’s face behind each of the faces that I encounter—even faces that show anger or resentment towards me?
We all need honest reflection on thoughts we just had, the action we did yesterday that we can’t undo. Through the fires of meditation, we burn up seeds of karma from past deeds, and past thoughts. And while doing so, we seed the future with positive images, positive thoughts, positive actions. Then, as we walk into that future, we want to be honest with ourselves. Did I do what I projected that I would do? Did I achieve what I projected I would achieve?
Imagine being in a room filled with people, and you are the only one who has ever tasted an orange. You have to describe to the other people what an orange tastes like. That is what it’s like to be an enlightened being on this Earth. You can talk about how it’s sweet and wet, and everybody says, “Okay, I know what that is.” But the taste is nothing that you can convey.
Being a good teacher, you come with boxes of orange seedlings, and you pass them out with instructions: How to water, care for, and fertilize your orange tree. Your parting words are, “Be diligent with these instructions and you, too, will taste an orange.”
If we could watch, we’d find that some of these people neglect the fertilizer, some neglect the watering. Only a few would end up with the sweetest, luscious, and most delicious oranges—grown by them. The successful ones can now experience the taste of an orange, and be able to share that with others. They can grow more seedlings, and pass on the sweetness.
So through meditation and virtuous living, we are watering and fertilizing the seed of sweet God-realization within us, that it may grow and overwhelm us, opening us to new understandings, true happiness and contentment, true joy and love.
I Am That I Am, you are our Mother and our Father, and you sustain us every second. We are so thankful that we can feel you today, moving within us and all around us. Strengthen our bodies and focus our minds, that we may keep our feet on the path home to you. Amen
In honor of Summer Solstice:
Breath of Fire
by Sibylle Custer • When we sit together to sing to God and to meditate at Sunburst Sanctuary, something very special is going on. We disengage ourselves from the world we live in. Our daily jobs fall behind us; our relationships fall away—they are not that important now. The skills that we have learned or that we were born with are not important, they are not with us right now. Our personality falls away, too. If we are assertive or gentle, have a short fuse or can endure a lot, it doesn’t matter at all. What is left of us, when we let go of this ego? Who are we, if none of that counts?
If we put our fingers on the pulse of our wrist, we feel something moving in there. It is life energy inside of us, life that we have not created, life that we receive. This doesn’t come from anything that we are doing. While we are living our daily lives, we are sustained by divine energy every day, and in this very moment. We are created beings. We would not exist if it was withdrawn. None of us!
Meditation is making the effort to get in contact with our Creator, to reach out to the energy that feeds us, that is our true being. There is a way to see God right now, right here, and we have the chance to make that contact. We are thankful, created beings that want to get in touch with our Creator. We are thankful we know how to do it. It doesn’t matter how much we have meditated before. It doesn’t matter if we are new at trying to do it or we have practiced a long time. Here and now is our unique effort, our unique chance.
Dearest Spirit, help us to be still.
Give us ears to hear you now.
Give us eyes to perceive you.
Give us abundant love that we let flow back to you.
Amen
by Valerie Joy King • My husband Jonathan and I were getting ready to leave Flagstaff for the ten hour drive home. We had been visiting for a week, helping to get our natural foods store on track after its move to a new, larger location. I had really enjoyed our stay. I have always loved Flagstaff!
It is nestled against the foot of the San Francisco peaks, Arizona’s tallest mountains. The whole town is covered with ponderosa pine forests. The sky is crystal clear blue because of the high elevation. The Hopi people state that the Kachinas, guardian spirits and teachers of humankind, make their home in the sacred San Francisco mountains.
While we visited, every day would start out sunny and clear, then storm clouds would roll in amidst thunder and lightning, pour down buckets of rain, and then the sun would return again. I loved the exciting weather!
This particular morning I was sad to be leaving because during our visit I had been working at our store every day, and hadn’t a chance to walk in the pine forests and greet my friends, the trees and rocks, and wild animals. This is one of my favorite things to do.
I sat down on a curb beside our car and looked out across the valley to a rolling foothill adorned with pines. Suddenly I felt the soft yet powerful embrace of Divine Spirit spinning all around me, expanding outward, stretching to encompass my gaze. The hill now also became embraced by the spinning cocoon. I could feel all the trees, the rich, red earth, and the lichen-covered boulders, all living within me. How joyous was our communion! “Hello, dear trees,” I whispered. “Thank you for your life in I Am That I Am.”
I noticed that everything I looked at seemed to be composed of tiny, shimmering orbs of divine life and consciousness. Even things I ordinarily consider ugly, like exhaust from a tractor, now was filled with the secret Presence.
As I breathed in and out, I felt the dancing, shimmering lights enter in and out of my body. I felt completely clean and renewed, as a favorite poem rang through my consciousness: In Joy I live. In Joy I breathe. In sacred Joy I melt. Thank you, Creator Spirit, I Am That I Am.
by Norman Paulsen, Sunburst Founder • God never told me anything about religions. God never said to me that there are Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, or Hindus. God never uttered a word to me regarding mankind’s religions, and I can understand why.
Religion is what man has produced, and the Light that all religions seek is what God has produced. Ultimately all religions, all spiritual practices, have but one goal: to meet this living Light, our Divine Mother and Father, face to face.
How can any one of us be satisfied without knowing God? I couldn’t. As a young man, I cried and prayed and worked in every way I could, that God might look upon me and let me know he was there and that he loved me. There isn’t any one of us that can accept anything short of personal realization in every fiber of our being, knowing that God is alive and is the creator of our bodies, minds and spirits. The truth behind all great religions is knowledge of the Divine Creator of all.
In all the religions I have studied, I found that those brothers and sisters who have experienced God described an ineffable, infinitely loving Light. They were engulfed in the brilliance of a divine inner Sun. They knew in a matter of seconds more than they had gathered in all the years of their lives—in one effulgence. They have been persecuted, nailed to the cross, condemned and done away with by the ignorant and those who do not understand.
Let us pray for the protection of those brothers and sisters, wherever they are, who have had the good fortune to meet God face to face within themselves and who try to describe that Being in their different ways. I pray that they be given protection for their uniqueness, that they might be able to bring through to their brothers and sisters what they have seen, known and felt.
Let us not condemn each other. Let us encourage each other towards God’s inner Sun. Let us pray that God blesses us all, each and every one. No matter who you are, what you have done or where you come from, each and every one can experience full divine illumination. If that vision of Light calls, may you find your way. In the end, there is no doctrine, no belief other than this Light of God. This has been my only desire: to bear witness that God is alive and can be seen, can be known right within you.
Think upon your freedom in God’s Light. Like the wind in the trees,
Like the light from the sun,
Can you catch it? Can you hold it?
God is life, sweet love within each and every one, throbbing in our hearts.
