If you look up

If you look up, there are no limits.

Japanese Proverb

Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life

from the highest point of view.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

April 4, 2000

Essay on the Path

This vision of The Path was my first experience of seeing the possibility of living in Heaven on Earth. It taught me the life we are leading is designed to be a loving adventure of light beings, at play in a world of peace, prosperity, and joy. I began to understand life very differently than I had previously. Wherever my life seems other than beauty, joy, and health, I am casting a shadow on the garden unnecessarily. This shadow is not real in a cosmic sense, but certainly is very real from my human perspective when I am living in its shade.

The vision I saw of the world as a beautiful and abundant garden has stayed with me all these years. I believe it is a higher truth of our experience. Spirit has provided for us a perfect garden in which to live, play, and experience life. This garden is an environment of endless prosperity and joy. My job is to trust, to know it is here, and to relax into this knowing. Then, when I am secure myself in this knowing, I may help another to remember the light, the joy, and the playfulness of our purpose here on earth. This vision was my calling as a Religious Science Practitioner. My mission is to help other people, who are ready to see the light, relaxing into this trust and knowing themselves.

In the years since I first saw the vision The Path describes, I have come to see in it many points of guidance and understanding. The most important, of course, is that any time I feel lost, confused, or disconnected, my instructions are to stop, relax, and look up. These are perfect instructions for a visual mystic like me, one who receives information via symbols and images. They apply to many other people as well. Research has shown, when visual people in the general population look up, they are accessing the cerebral cortex of their brain. In accessing memory in an altered state of consciousness, generated by stopping and relaxing, we begin to remember the eternal state of our being, our light being state, and our higher selves.

At first, I believed the instruction to look up was metaphorical - to look up to Spirit. This turned out to be a misinterpretation of the Presence of Spirit as above us. Spirit exists everywhere and always, within us, around us, and through us. However, I now understand the act of looking up influences brain wave patterns, even if the eyes are closed. The message is literal. Looking up encourages the brain to produce the kind of waves accessed in higher states of consciousness. Also, looking up tends to stimulate the pineal gland.

The message is literal in another way as well. As the Japanese proverb states, "If you look up, there are no limits." Looking at the sky, day or night, tends to expand our conception of the infinite. This, in turn, tends to connect us with the Universal in a much more powerful way than looking just to the next horizon, building, or tree on earth.

Another important instruction I received from The Path is to choose my students and clients wisely. All people are not my students. The ones who are not able to hear my instructions draw my attention back into the shadow. Since my reality follows the focus of my attention, I choose carefully those who are ready and able to hear me, and focus my energy where it is most productive of good for all concerned.

I think it is also valuable to focus on the lifestyle of the light beings in thinking about The Path. They are certainly teachers, of great service to others. The vast majority of their time, though, is spent playing and celebrating the joys of life. They help when the timing is right. It is an important part of their purpose. Yet, mostly they relax, enjoy, and laugh. Only a fraction of their time was spent helping others to relax, and only when those folks had chosen themselves to stop and rest. Well chosen helping is not supposed to be hard work. It is simply the preliminary step necessary to be poised for the next great celebration of light.

The Path is one of the prime examples in my experience of a multidimensional vision. This story has been speaking to me on various levels for a dozen years. Every time I come back to it, I find something else buried in the parable. It continues to teach me, uplift me, and comfort me. In a very powerful way, I know the world it depicts is as real as, perhaps even more real than, the pain-filled world most people inhabit daily.

Other people have been touched by this parable, too. One woman heard me tell the story shortly after I first saw the vision. Several years later, she came to me and said the message had changed her life. Inspired by the vision, she had gone back to college to finish her degree. She had received a promotion at work as a result, and her life was substantially more prosperous. I asked her what it was about the story that inspired her. She said, "It was that phrase you kept repeating, Stop, relax, and get up!"

She heard in the story what she needed to hear. Spirit speaks through these visions and my desire is for people to find in them the message just perfect for them. No one else has to hear it just as I do. My highest intention, for sharing these experiences of connecting with Spirit within me, is to inspire others to find their own inner experiences of divine guidance.

I have had many wonderful teachers to whom I am grateful. Nevertheless, no other may ever show the way as clearly and precisely as the Divine Teacher we each have within us. I believe we are all mystics, capable of receiving guidance as clearly as I have in these visions. As we practice, I expect we will all become much clearer than this in the future.

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