by Valerie King • In meditation as we close our eyes and focus on the third eye, let us place our gaze on that screen in front of us upon which the star of Christ first appears. Let our eyelids gently close as we become conscious of our breathing.
Let us become conscious of our thoughts slowing as we move our awareness behind our thoughts. Let us look intently, as if we are diving deep into a beautiful ocean, diving as deep as we can to find that precious pearl that lies at the bottom in the depthless sea of Spirit. The quieter our minds become, the deeper we can dive.
That precious pearl, that star of light is our real Self. This body that we wear, this personality that we wear, with all its thoughts and emotions and desires, is just like a piece of clothing that we are wearing. It is not our true Self. I Am That I Am exists at the very center, the very core of our being. This is what meditation is for: to rediscover who I Am really is.
by Norman Paulsen, Sunburst Founder • We are all looking for love. Not just love that flares up and lasts a short time, but love that is enduring and ever new. It can only be found in knowing God. God’s love for us and our love for God is eternal and enduring. The most important thing we can do in our lives is to seek God. to feel that great love that God has for each one of us, to feel it take fire in our hearts and grow.
by Valerie King •
When the Creator set out to make this creation, divine Mother and Father filled it with beautiful sustaining law, the law of love and virtue. This virtue, or Life itself, has twelve universal facets. One of those virtues, continence, has many meanings, but one of them can be described as self-control. Paramahansa Yogananda once said, “Self-control is the key to a happy life.”
Sometimes self-control can bring to mind holding tight, but that’s not really what it means. Meditating more deeply upon it, I found that it means growing a finer and finer awareness of the energies that we exist in.
We each come forth from the one Pure Self, pure consciousness, existence, and pure joy. In venturing into this creation, we have been given a soul with an ego, a mind, a body, and a personality. Norm Paulsen, founder of Sunburst, used to liken these aspects of ourselves to having a horse that we need to learn how to ride, and hopefully not have it riding us.
There’s a word in Sanskrit, pranayama, that means life force control; or caring for life force. Our life force constantly flows outward through the five senses. Continence is our ability to become aware of that outward flow of our precious natural energy and then begin to conserve it. We begin by offering it up to the Divine for the purpose of our soul illumination, and awakening into divine consciousness.
Pranayama, in yoga, is often referred to as working with our breath. There is a simple exercise of paying attention to your breath without trying to change it in any way, to just notice what it’s doing for a moment. The magic of paying attention to it, of putting our consciousness on it, is that it changes.
Scientists of quantum physics discovered several decades ago that subatomic particles change if someone is looking at them. The same thing occurs when we observe our breath. We notice that the quality of it also changes. So conscious awareness is the key to awakening, to transformation. Consciousness is the Divine within us.
We can apply consciousness to our actions, our speech, emotions, our thoughts. Simply by becoming aware, we begin taking care of our energy. This is continence, true self-control. The more we apply it, the greater the space we find in between stimulus and our response. If some energy comes at us that’s hard, we can take a moment and observe it. And by that very observation, we transform the energy.
Norm Paulsen, in his book “Life, Love, God,” said that eventually we come to realize that continence is the caretaker of all the other virtues in creation. Continence, the simple act of paying attention, is the gift of life force riding upon the breath. From this practice, we gain great treasures which we can then bring out into our daily life—great treasures of love and peace, unutterable joy, and happiness.
O Great Spirit, You who shines forth from the very center of every particle of creation,
You who shines forth from the endless sea of eternity,
Filled with thy light, pouring into creation,
Pouring into our bodies, minds and souls at this very moment,
We offer our life force, our love, our desire, back to you, back to the source of all life.
Touching you, we find the power of love; we find the power of virtue.
We find the power of joy unending, and we bring it back to spread it across the Earth,
To transform the Earth in the way that you created it to be in this very moment.
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!
Valerie Joy King
by Valerie King
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!
