by Jake Collier • Our founder and teacher, Norm Paulsen, used to refer to everyone as soul travelers. Truly we are spiritual beings traveling at this point in time, in these bodies, at this place. How precious is this process of spiritual evolvement. We must try to live our lives in a way that creates an environment around us which stimulates our higher selves, a way that motivates us to continue with our inward journey of discovery.
Years ago, in the late 70s, I was working at Sunburst’s organic wholesale produce warehouse in Los Angeles. One of the guys there had season tickets to the Dodger’s Stadium. I’m not that into baseball, but in the midst of L.A. and far away from the rural lifestyle I was used to, it sounded like fun, so I went with a good friend.
One of the first things we noticed was that we were surrounded by very boisterous people. But while looking out at all the thousands upon thousands of people in that stadium, I found myself talking to Spirit, saying, “Wouldn’t this be incredible if all these people had a common focus on you? What if all these people were chanting AUM together, if they were all meditating at this moment? How powerful that would be!”
It will happen. There will come a time when the majority of the brothers and sisters walking this earth will know God, and will realize that God is alive in them. We all hope that we are there to experience it, to feel it, to be a part of it.
As we do our spiritual work each morning and evening, as we sit down and meditate, we create future opportunities for more meditations, for more spiritual understanding. We take that vibration with us. When we look into someone’s eyes, or we hug someone, we pass on a little bit of that vibration, that awareness. Hopefully it falls on fertile soil and others will begin to awaken and begin the process of peeling back the petals, so that we may all find out who we really are, why we are here, and where we are going when we leave.
I Am That I Am
Please help us on our journey here,
That we may discover our true selves In our relationship with you,
That we may walk this Earth With you living through us,
You experiencing this life
And all that you have created.
You are our divine companion,
Our true friend,
And we love you.
Amen
by Norman Paulsen • In our world, sometimes it seems like a madhouse of thoughts and afflictions thrown together with all these personalities, weaknesses and conflicts. However, an old saying reminds us: “What paineth you in another probably has its origins in yourself.” If you can withstand the seeming chaos and pursue spiritual maturity until the day when you see every face like you’re looking into a mirror at yourself, then you’re beginning to arrive.
And when that day comes that the vision is bright and clear, and every face is your own, then you know our world is all an illusion. It is only a dream that we are separate. There is only one face; each was God’s face all the time. All spirits are one in God’s Light.
What a wonderful privilege it is to have these bodies, these eyes, hands and hearts. To love one another, to look upon one another, these are the things of life that we all forget about in our mad quest to fulfill our desires. A world gone mad has forgotten God’s blessings of life.
Look upon the globe of this Earth…the mountains, the seas, the wind, the blue skies, the sun, the song of the birds, the laughter on friend’s faces, the love you feel in each other’s hearts, the creation of things that are beautiful for each other…imagine a world without argument, a world without divisions. This is truly an empire within Divine Consciousness. It is upon us now, if we embrace it.
You can live upon this Earth under this simple truth. You can see and know your Creator. You can hear and walk in Divine consciousness every day. Yes so be it, dear friends, for the land that is nowhere [consciousness] is our true home. You can sit in that Divine Presence today. You can inherit it as long as you see fit to live by its simple truths. As long as you live the truth, nothing can take it away from you.
In every way possible, the Creator has seen fit to show us through our third dimensional world how it is in the eternal world. The blazing light of our sun outside today can be seen within in another way. Every person who seeks that inner Light is going in the right direction. It is the blazing light of illumination, of Christ consciousness.
I pray that God blesses you all, each and every one. God is Life…sweet love. It is already in each and every one of us, throbbing in our hearts. Imagine the world in which everyone knows and experiences this!
So many times when I feel or see Spirit, whether in form or simply pure light, it is so filled with intense joy and laughter, waves upon waves of laughter. I am reminded of a video I once saw called Life After Life, which showed interviews of people who’d had near-death experiences. They all mentioned that the Being of Light they encountered during these experiences had a really good sense humor. I thought about how our sense of humor is truly as spiritual gift, one of the things we can carry with us beyond this life.
I remembered a story from my own life. I hope this won’t sound sad, because to me it’s very joyful. I had the opportunity to help care for my beloved sister Susan just a couple days before she died. She was very sick and had a lot of intense pain. Her husband and I took turns every couple of hours giving her a shot of strong pain killer. She seemed to be almost in a coma. She would wake up slightly when it was time for her medicine and reach a trembling hand to her forehead to let us know she needed it, but she couldn’t speak.
At one point when it was time for her shot I began reading the label on the medicine bottle. It said, “Warning, do not drive after taking this medicine.” Somehow this struck me as funny because this medicine seemed to totally knock Susan out. I couldn’t imagine someone driving after taking it.
I said to her husband. “Paul, look, it says do not take this medicine and drive!” Paul chuckled too. Then we heard a sound from Susan. Looking down, we realized that she was laughing. It was so amazing to me that here she was in such pain, at death’s door, and she still had her sense of humor. I knew that Susan was going to be able to take that sense of humor with her beyond this life.
As it turned out, a couple of years after she died, Spirit blessed me with an incredible visitation in which Susan came back to me as a blazing, brilliant light. At first it was just the pure light to me, my divine Beloved. I was swimming in that ecstasy, and then at the very end of the experience, I noticed that there were two blue eyes inside the light, and I recognized them as Susan’s eyes. I recognized them from her unique vibration and from the sense of humor coming out of those eyes, and the laughter and the joy.
She said, “See how incredible, how joyful, how blissful it is to be One again with the Father of all fathers, and the Mother of all mothers?” And she laughed in pure delight.
I was reminded of a beautiful vision that came to me years ago during a Sunday service. I found myself standing out in space, looking upon a gigantic galaxy with huge rings and a shining center. An angelic being next to me was holding its hand out toward the sight, as if to show me. Then the being began to laugh deep within so joyously, so infectiously, that I almost laughed aloud.
The cosmic joke was this: Look upon the beauty, wonder and majesty of this creation. The secret is: It’s all you! You think that you are all these separate images and faces, but in truth there’s only one Spirit. It’s all God, the most beloved, the most high. There’s no separation between you and this gigantic galaxy, and all the stars.
In Christ consciousness there can be no desires, for everything that exists is already ours. So let us be joyful, thankful, and light-hearted!
My teacher, Norman Paulsen, always stressed that Sunburst’s teachings were not a religion, but a way of life. I recall that Paramhansa Yogananda also stressed that one did not have to give up or change his religion to use the path of Kriya Yoga to help himself grow in his relationship with his Creator.
It continually occurs to me that I’m much less concerned with which religion a person practices than I am with their integrity, and fairness. Jesus was asked by a Pharisee lawyer, “Which is the greatest commandment in the law?”
Jesus answered, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”
To me this should be of primary importance in one’s religion and in one’s life. The dogmas that have come into being are the ossification of teachings that were once fresh and alive. These teachings were given to people to help them live better lives, live together in virtue, and grow closer to their Creator. Members of different religions and sects would do well to realize that there is only one God, though there are many paths to Him. His ways of reaching out to people are as infinite as He is. God is unlimited in his methods of expression. Religions should help men to understand and love one another, rather than serve as rallying points for confrontations.
When I reflect on the vastness of God, it seems natural that God would accept and enjoy a wide variety of methods of worship. Norm has long encouraged us to strive to see the Spirit in every person with whom we have contact. And hopefully, we realize every face is a reflection of our own.
God is all around us, in every animate and inanimate object, as well as in every person we meet. If we want to be with God, we must learn to find Him in all we see around us, and in every person we see. All men and women are sons and daughters of God and God is in each one of us, waiting for us to recognize Him and love Him.
Seeing God in others will help us learn the action of Love. Christ Consciousness is the embodiment of Love. As we express our love to the Spirit we see in others, so will the Love rain upon us from Spirit.
Contemplate the fact that in whatever direction you may gaze into space, there is an end to the visible expanding sphere of creation. Reaching the outer limits of the expanding sphere, one would be confronted with the unmanifested, primordial sea of life and consciousness. Our self-conscious; minds cannot conceive of an endless eternity. The forces of speculation and meditation lead us on to this realization eventually, that eternity does indeed exist. The soul, the center of our consciousness, is able to contemplate eternity. Why? Because it is our true home.
True meditation is direct contact with the eternal, living, Divine Spirit; the experience of being one with life; of Spirit’s dual forces, entering into us, embracing us, circulating freely; of Divine Mother and Father encountering one another in the stillness of our heart, bringing the conception of the Christ deep within—the ignition of birth and light.
Each day, a tremendous amount of life force exits outward through the five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. This is necessary in order to experience the phenomena of our physical world. Very often our conception of a living, Divine Spirit, in time and space, consists of only the limited perceptions of our five senses. If one can succeed, in deep meditation, to still the parade of images before the conscious mind and senses, the life and vision of Divine Spirit, I Am That I Am may be experienced. We then see into the great, boundless immensity of inner space.
The form of meditation we practice at Sunburst was present within the forces which generated the first ignition and birth of the expanding sphere of creation. Many ancient civilizations in the remote past have used this technique. If practiced with devotion, along with a life of service, it can lead to a face-to-face encounter with the Great Being, the Christ Light, I Am That I AM.
I had seen visions,
gazed across celestial panoramas,
encountered spheres of light
and sat beneath brilliant rainbows of color in inner space.
I had conversed with saints and adepts from the remote past,
and visited ancient and future civilizations.
I thought my progress on the spiritual path was good,
until my first encounter with I Am That I Am, the Christ.
My body, mind and spirit were so shocked,
that all I had experienced in the past
was nothing before the incandescent brilliance of His gaze.
