I have always felt that I had a spiritual mission to accomplish; that somehow I was brought to Earth to accomplish this mission, whatever it was. Maybe it’s not true that I always believed this, but I know that I recognized it as a personal truth after learning about Edgar Cayce’s trance-induced psychic “readings” of the people who were brought before him. The problem was, I never knew what my mission was, I just knew I had a purpose and I needed to find it. Even after consulting with two psychotherapists and a psychic in San Francisco in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, I still didn’t uncover my mission. Then gradually, over time, I began to write a journal of spiritual insights which has evolved into “Bird of Spirit.” Now at last I feel I have discovered my personal mission in life.
This autobiographical background now brings me to an insight I’ve finally begun to feel in my core, although it is a truth so obvious that it’s a wonder it’s taken me more than 58 years to unearth it. My insight is that whatever individual spiritual gift each one of us can and does contribute, we all share one general mission that is universal to all mankind, regardless of whether we are aware of it or not. That mission is to bring divinity to Earth.
Divinity is already here on Earth. It infuses everything and it is present everywhere. The problem is that most of the time we don’t bother to sit up and take notice. We dwell on the physical plane, in what has sometimes been referred to as “a lower realm.” Is our physical realm ruled by bears and wolves baying at the moon, or does it hum with the divine nature of its Creator? It is up to each one of us to help the creatures of planet Earth, most notably man, to evolve upwards toward the divine; to reach toward God’s embrace. How do we do that? By bringing the divine principle down to our lower realm with every small act of kindness and compassion we commit. As the bumper sticker says, “practice random acts of kindness.”
At every moment in life, we are presented with a choice between a kind and loving response and an angry, embittered one. With every choice we make goes a small victory for God or for our wolf-nature. This does not mean that we should go through life with tight, sanctimonious smiles pressed on our lips, or that we should ask, “what would Jesus do?” at every moment. True kindness and compassion come from a well-spring of natural, un-self-conscious behavior. They are no more forced than you can force water out of a dry well. The dualism of our world, which the Hindus call “maya” and the Christians call the battle between good and evil, God and Satan, is not really best seen as a permanent war of opposites. Instead, it is more useful to regard our dualistic world as presenting an infinite web of choice between a transcendent response and an animal reaction. Every moment represents an opportunity either to elevate our world toward the Divine or to keep it mired in animalistic self-interest. Earth can be as godly or satanic a place as we wish it to be, through the aggregate of all our daily choices.
Bird of Spirit 