The veil between worlds is very thin. We say this on occasion, but what do we mean? Is there an actual veil of fabric that separates us from the unseen world? Yes, and that veil of fabric is our own belief in duality. It is our belief in what we see as reality that keep us separated from the unseen. Our seeing separates us from what we do not see. We think there is two things, but there is one.

Ernest Holmes, teacher, author and Founder of the Science of Mind, once wrote that if we want to know a certain thing, we should state that we already know it. Our Word has power to fulfil itself.

Not at first, but this week I claimed that I knew already what this Sacred Journey #7 was for me. I claimed the wisdom it brought. It was the Journey of the Visionary, after all. I would go beyond what appeared to be the heaviest and most surprising Journey of our seven thus far.

By appearances, yes, this was the most surprising Sacred Journeys in all seven. We had cancellations at the last moment due to illness. People were pulled away in family emergencies. A death sent someone to rush to another country after only attending one event. Two left in a medical emergency. The Lydgate Celebration took place in storm, wind and rain. The whole journey was pulled apart in all directions almost every day.

I finally grew past my trying to control everything and everyone’s journey to realizing that although I faced the worst, the journey still unfolded. We met every challenge. I believe it was because our vision for the Journey was stronger than what appeared in the world of conditions. We already knew it would be perfect. Yes, we faltered a few times, but we found that nothing can change a mind that is fixed on Truth or threaten us when we are willing to surrender to the highest good.

We forged the wind, hills and mud of Maha`ulepu  with Sabra Kauka’s wisdom with and the rain following us and sometimes drenching us along the way. We shifted our opening ceremony to encompass the storm that was brewing outside. We were willing to allow each person to have their own journey even when it didn’t fit our journey. A workshop of dreams became a healing circle. What now looks like an orange tree in someone’s garden is really symbol for the intentions buried beneath its roots. We found something new in a squirrel’s magic and something we needed to release like porcupine’s quills. There was magic and messages behind everything if we were willing to look beyond the seeming ordinary.

On our last day, this past Friday, we had our yearly meeting with Sadasivanathaswami at the Hindu Monastery. He took us on a tour through the monastery and to the temple. We went beyond sightseeing. There was so much to look at and take in that I wanted to slow everything down and go moment by moment. I couldn’t. We were on a limited time schedule. He told us that before going into the temple, one is to walk around it and admire it. There is more to a piece of chiseled stone that holds a wall together then the stone itself. The life of the temple builder is behind each stone.

At one point in our journey I asked the Swami about the Hindu form of healing. He looked at me in his steady and clear way and simply said, “The time is short and the subject is vast.” Yes, so much of life is that way. Our time is short and life is so vast. In his next breath the Swami said, “I believe that Love heals.” He went on to explain that he simply loved the person with their illness, with everything. But, if I looked behind his actions as we progressed through the journey, I would have seen that he had already answered my question in regards to a person on the journey that was suffering from a physical ailment. He took her under his wing and spoke to her personally, affirmed her in conversation and without coddling her, nurtured her, drew her out of herself, and by the end of our time with him, she was kneeling on the ground next to him pulling weeds. Beyond the appearance of weed pulling a healing had taken place.

What in our life do we want to understand on a deeper level? Are we going beyond what we see with our eyes? Are we pulling the veil of our beliefs back and seeing with new eyes? Things that are not as they appear. “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” Then can be now.

I think we receive messages from the other side of the veil all the time. A book falls from a shelf and the title answers a question. A conversation gives us an answer we’ve been searching for. And on our Sacred Journey, an immense metal instrument when played by a master became a vibration of healing in our very cells. A game of mini golf exposed our personalities to us so that we could laugh at ourselves. A simple sing-a-long deepened friendships that were sprouting and solidified old ones. When our heads were bowed together in prayer and reverence, I know the earth could hear us. And then finally a simple walk through the vision of one Gurudeva fulfilled by his lineage gave us all the more to feast on then what we could see in its stones and plants.

Life is more than what we see and do. It is the subtext behind the pictures like the subtext behind the dialogue in a play. A multi-faceted stone that changes as we look at it from different angles. We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are. Tell your Mind that you already know the answer and the answer will appear in the simple things.

Ernest Holmes wrote, “It is a beautiful and true thought to realize that every person stands in the shadow of a Mighty Mind, a pure Intelligence, and a Divine givingness. Not alone unto the great comes the soft tread of the Unseen Guest. The arrogant have not perceived the simplicity of faith, but the pure in heart see God. The farmers have seen the Heavenly Host in their fields. The child has frolicked with God at play. The mother has clasped the Divine Presence to her breast and the fond lover has seen It in the eyes of his beloved. We look too far away for Reality.

The Intelligence by and through which we perceive that there is a Spiritual Presence and an Infinite Mind in the Universe, constitutes our receptivity to it, and decides its flow through us. We have made a riddle out of simplicity; therefore, we have not read the sermons written in stones, nor interpreted the light of love running through life. …All men receive some light, and this light is always the same light. There is one nature defused through all nature. One God incarnated in all peoples.”

Where have you seen God today? Look at the person next to you. Check out the cashier in the supermarket. Look to the person you say you despise. God is there, too. Tell yourself you already know this Truth and then go beyond sightseeing and trust what you find, what you hear, what you feel.

Love and Aloha,

Rev. Rita