The Wisdom of Owls •by Sunburst Founder, Normal Paulsen•
In my evening meditation, I prayed that divine Mother and Father inspire me anew, to put me on my feet and let me move forward. I was awakened in my sleep by that brilliant light of Christ that I have beheld for so long.
Just outside my room I heard the hoot of an owl three times. Divine Spirit whispered, “Do you hear?”
“Yes,” I replied.
The voice of Spirit continued, “The wisdom of the owl is with you.”
I was then made aware, as the owl hooted again three times, that it was a male. I asked “Where is his mate?”
No sooner had I said this than I heard further off the hoot of his mate, three times. I realized that divine Spirit Mother and Father were using the owls to communicate their presence and love to me.
These wonderful manifestations come to each of us from Spirit as we persist in our meditations. The kingdom of heaven is spread upon the face of the Earth if we can pause long enough to observe it.
Why This World•by Paramahansa Yogananda•
Don’t depend on death to liberate you from your imperfections. You are exactly the same after death as you were before. Nothing changes; you only give up the body.
If you are a thief or a liar or a cheater before death, you don’t become an angel merely by dying. If such were possible, then let us all go and jump in the ocean now and become angels at once! Whatever you have made of yourself thus far, so will you be hereafter. And when you reincarnate, you will bring that same nature with you.
To change, you have to make the effort. This world is the place to do it.
•by Norman Paulsen, Founder of Sunburst (photo shown)•In your deep meditations, you can sometimes see your body as a shadowy form filled with scintillating tiny stars. When you see this, your consciousness is beginning to merge with cosmic mind, God’s mind. These spinning, darting lights that look like distant stars at night are subatomic particles; highly intelligent beings of light. These beings are the building blocks of the creation, and are responsible for the appearance of all images, including our bodies. They are the pure visible manifestation of life as a force, which is God!
This force is unidentifiable until it appears around, and in visible thought-produced images. Yes, the Spirit of God is the force of life which in our words is “a great unknown”. Life, as we call it, cannot be seen or defined. Yet, it manifests miraculously before our eyes in nature as an endless variety of forms, from minerals to plants, animals, and people.
Divine imagination, moving as thought-forms, creates subatomic particles. These in turn spin atoms into existence and direct lifeforms into the density projected by divine mind. We are, after all, a swarm of divine thought-forms projected by cosmic mind, God, each one with a different face.
In the silence of my being, I hear the pulsating hum of all creation moving through every atom of my body. This sound, Oh Lord, is the divine comforter. If we but listen, we can hear you; we can feel you; we can see you. I know I am a being of consciousness without form, beyond light. I am eternal. I am a part of you, Mighty Spirit.
•by Trish Dunham•Millions of people all over the world have had experiences with the Light in the form of near-death experiences, due to serious illness or accident. Often the person sees and enters a tunnel, leading to a brilliant Being of Light, who loves them unconditionally. An intensely personal encounter with divinity ensues, and then, the patient finds himself back in the hospital room, or at the scene of the accident.
We all long for that kind of love. We unconsciously long to reunite with the most brilliant, radiant Light, personal and sweet. You can have this experience without the pain and trauma of nearly dying.
I had an experience of the inner-dimensional tunnel without going through near-death. I was meditating while facing the morning sun, sitting above a gently gurgling creek. After some time, I blasted myself with effort and briefly lost normal consciousness.
My head seemed transparent, not there. Where it should have been, there was a glowing sun. I watched it in awe. The cells of my body began rising into the sun. In pairs they came to the center line of my body and rose upward in the joy of expectation. Although it sounds odd, they were gaily shouting and laughing their extreme joy at making this journey at last, of going home, of regaining that which they had lost—their brightness, their birthright. Like children in line, they were ribbing each other, carousing in playful delight.
Shortly after I had this experience, I found myself gazing at a painting done by the late Hopi chief, White Bear. It was the Hopi symbol for the sun. My eye was attracted to small black lines, like dashes, that ran up the center line of the painting. With a jolt, I understood what they meant. They are the cells moving up the center of the being. How many times had I heard Sunburst’s founder Norm say, “The spine is like a hollow tube.…Inner-dimensionally, it’s the tunnel seen in near-death experiences.”
It’s one big hologram! Seek and you shall find. You can fly through the tunnel to eternity by your own effort, and to the eternal delight of the universe of yourself.
Has this experience somehow miraculously transformed me into a perfect vessel of virtue? Far from it. It gave me hope. It told me my path is a true one. It refreshed my soul.
•by Norman Paulsen, Sunburst Founder•I Am That I Am, Mother-Father Divine, will create us anew while yet we live, if we will allow, if we will remain steadfast, if we seek. The ego is afraid to let go of its grasp, but in seeing through the eyes of Spirit, you become fearless; in dying to the ego, you become immortal. This gift is what we seek; this is the gift to be administered.
Speak God’s name; chant it. Think of your Divine Mother-Father the livelong day. One drop of that Light will change your life forever. The great bliss and ecstasy is here before you! He alights on your head. He walks with you; he makes the air to move. He touches the secret places in you—the body starts. At his touch, one dies to ego and is reborn free.
To gaze upon the past is to look upon shadows. One thinks of reincarnation; it is comforting that another chance might be given. But reincarnation is itself an illusion. If one can see, feel, and taste immortality, one does not need reincarnation. If one dreams of other lifetimes, are we sure that they are true? Can we prove it?
All those who have seen I Am That I Am stress the fact that this very moment and this very life of which you have possession should be deemed extraordinary. It’s extraordinary to be alive here and now, in these wonderful bodies; it’s more extraordinary to become aware of eternal life, and the fact that it can be attained.
Earthly life is short. Having gained all you may desire in this world, it will not fulfill you. It will never fill the great emptiness that can only be occupied by I Am That I Am, that one most sought after by all beings, whose face blazes forth as the eternal Sun. One feels transformed by a mere glance at it. Do we dare to look upon his face? We dare if we seek our true home. She is the wellspring of all worlds, all images; each one of us is the inmost Self of I Am That I Am. Seek it diligently.
By using our willpower we can tune into divine grace and accept the opportunities it provides us. This is not an instant thing. We have to persevere and have patience. It’s a lifelong pursuit, much like the following story in which Tibetan monks meditate as they build a monastery floor.
[Excerpt from the book “Tibetan Voices”] We built the floors of the monastery from scratch. Since there was no cement in Tibet, we used a material called arka, which is similar to crushed stone or gravel. It made very beautiful floors. We pounded this material with a tool consisting of a long pole and a heavy stone attached to the bottom end. The monks would form a line and sing as they pummeled the many stones into a solid floor, working to the rhythm of the song.
This was hard work; the big stones were broken up to make smaller ones, and then layers of these stones were pounded into the floor, slowly going from bigger stones to smaller and smaller. Remaining holes were filled by pounding in the finest material. Then a powdery form of the stone was put on top and this was also hammered into the floor, using water to help the binding.
Once the floor was pounded so it was smooth and level, we would get down on our knees and use big flat slabs of stone to polish the surface. Water was sprinkled onto the floor as we polished and worked our way from one end of the room to the other. The muddy result of all this effort was wiped away with cloths. Slowly, the beauty of the floor would begin to come out. Finally, a mixture of boiled oil and tree resin, the type used in making incense offerings, was applied. Cement was never used in the construction of Tibetan monasteries, and the finished quality of the buildings was far superior to any that could have been made of cement.
Slowly, the beauty of the Pure Self, the Christ light within each of us can shine forth, after lifetimes of desire and effort. This is the power of patience.
•by Emily Wirtz• Paramahansa Yogananda used to talk about how a wave is the same as the ocean, but it is not the whole ocean, just as we are each a wave of creation in the eternal ocean of Spirit. The ocean can exist without the waves, but the waves cannot exist without the ocean. There’s a still, deep part of the ocean, which is the substance of our very existence in this ocean of Spirit. You can call it whatever you want: God, Source, or any other name.
What happens for me is the thought that I’m separate from other people. I’m thinking I’m separate from those trees over there and I’m separate from other people. We forget that we are all connected and come from the same Source. And, as human beings, we get to choose whether to listen to the voice of Spirit, the voice of oursoul, or to listen to the ego voice that thinks we’re separate from each other.
When I went to college, it was about seven hours from home. I didn’t know anyone there, and had the sense that I was going to try to get life figured out. I wanted to find out who I really was, what I wanted to do, and to expand my horizons.
I took lots of different classes, some philosophy and religion courses, and there were a lot of ideas going around in my head. But I noticed that none of the things I read or learned about were helping me figure out what to think about my future.
I didn’t find the answer right away. In fact, I didn’t find the answer in college, although I really enjoyed all the ideas I learned about. It wasn’t until many years later when I learned to meditate that I discovered that there’s a space beyond thought. This helped me to feel that there’s something greater than the thoughts we’re thinking, symbolized in that image of the wave and the ocean.
So if my mind is the wave, calculating things and examining how the past went and how the future might go, and doing it’s best to be helpful, the most satisfying thing to me is knowing that there’s something beyond that, knowing that this ocean of Spirit is my very nature, is all of our very nature.
Where is that ocean of Spirit? What is that ocean of Spirit? Who am I beyond the personality that I know? It’s only as far away as our breath, and an open heart, and a practice of being present so that awareness can fill us.
Now when I walk around, I still think of the past, I still think of the future, I still think of ideas, I still make judgements about myself or other people. But now I know there’s more to life than that. I can turn to my breath, and to the present moment. To open up to an awareness of Spirit, to learn from direct experience with that Presence, is a practice. Keep practicing it and over time it will develop, and help you immensely.
There’s a beautiful word that’s used a lot. It’s an ancient word: Namaste. It roughly translates to: “The Divine in me bows to the Divine in you.” It’s a remembering that our substance is that divine Source, and remembering that who we’re interacting with is that source also.
If we’re walking around in nature, the substance of nature is divine also. Even when we’re in something that we consider “manmade” like our cars, there’s nothing that isn’t made up of that Source, made up of God. So as we go through our days, may we each remember that idea in our hearts: the Divine in us recognizing the Divine outside of us, and in each other. Namaste!
