I stand at the podium, officially opening this conference where
at last, at last, our worlds touch. Like a great
collective lightning rod, surely we draw to this glorious and
joyous unity the Light of many dimensions, of many beings who
celebrate with us the potential and promise we are in the
growing collective awareness of our Unitive Being .
This is also a very personal coming home to a moment, a
monumental fulfillment, where
two of my worlds touch. One is the past so filled with
dreams and uncertainties, and the other is the thrill of the
fulfillment of a Vision that has owned me for
more than 20 years and which has finally brought us together to
live it. I remember the relentless self
questioning and self doubt in and around the edges of all my
days, like a hungry ghost, a nearly constant companion,
sometimes overwhelming and other times with lips that groused
but blessedly was unable to reach me with its noisy judgments and
dire prophecies.
In the meantime, I was also companioned by this Shining
Vision. Its beauty and promise grew ever stronger and more
richly
complex over time. Countless times I felt visited by this
Glory and imagined and visioned and tried to capture the living,
thrilling essence of so many of its Ideas before they escaped
back into the void unacknowledged and unloved. What kept
me going was the feeling that despite the rough passage any new
and naked idea must traverse initially, this Envisioning, my devoted friend, simply would not
leave, would not diminish; it was like a great Hearth Fire that
continually warmed me, no matter all the other discomfiting
rattlings about the dark edges of the life that sheltered
me.
I remember the loneliness, because I somehow managed never to
have friends or family who could with me SEE and LOVE this
not-yet-manifest Glory that owned my heart and mind and
soul. Like an initiation, that is the way we must
live with any fresh idea that begins to burn within
us.
Also, what I am describing many or most of you undoubtedly recognize as
integral to your own spiritual experiences that on the one hand
set you apart from most or all others whom you knew. Yet
inwardly you may have felt the thrill of having experienced that
we all share a Oneness that cannot be divided. That was
what came to own and guide you -- that Vision, that Knowing.
In any case, this is an archetypal experience of so many, many EHEers, especially before
Raymond Moody, Jr. empowered us with a greater shared
understanding, experiencers and nonexperiencers alike, with the
concept of 'near-death experience'. Through
words, ideas we can share out here in the physical world, he
became one of the bridge-builders across the abyss of lack of
understanding that has been the singlemost cause of our unholy
divisiveness in this world.
Throughout the ages up to the present, countless EHEers have
suffered in silence with the Glory of their Knowing and with the
relentless howling of self doubt and worse; they were many times
exposed to the haunting thought they may be crazy. And if
not from within, from those about them who may have thought they
were. Like me with this vision, they hugged to themselves
and were warmed by their Awakening moments and growing awareness
of the Larger-Life Reality that embraced them and would not let
them go.
There
are moments, situations daily in which we choose to be believers,
like, for example, those who followed the orthodox theologies of
the first bishops of early Christianity, and since; we choose or
are convinced to follow the consensus societal rules so we can blend
in, achieve a kind of societal unity. There are moments when we choose or even dare to trust
and go with our inner experiences instead, where we have
discovered the Great Irony of the Oneness of all life out of
which every individuating consciousness is born. We every
one of us make choices about believing and blending on the one
hand and trusting and finding our own way to live out of our
innate oneness of being throughout our
lives.
