Never Underestimate the Power of Spiritual Expression

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Never Underestimate the Power of
Spiritual Expression

    Volker Brendel:  There is an admonition that will be familiar to most of us: Never underestimate the power of spiritual expression.

    I wonder how often we have heard that admonition. Well, you've heard it now at least once: I just said it! But probably there are many on the phone lines who have heard these words many times over. Hearing such words is a first step in making them meaningful to us. We need to become aware of some insight in order to see its potential relative to our experience.

    We may also ask, how often have you repeated that admonition? Never underestimate the power of spiritual expression. I just repeated this, and silently each one of you right now can repeat the words quite easily. Repeating such words is a first step in assuming ownership of what is being expressed. We shall explore our ownership of these words in a little bit more depth this morning.

    Maybe we should ask, how often did you wish these words were true? Certainly these few words have a ring to them that is very comforting. If we are like most people, then we have the experience of being buffeted by many powers at times. It could be the powers of our personal living situations, maybe the bosses at work that we have to deal with, the forces of finance, maybe the politics that affect our lives, or the powers of what we call natural forces that can mess up our travel schedules and worse in many ways.

    In many of these situations I am sure the thought comes up, wouldn't it be nice if there were some other power that could be called upon. And thus we may ask further, how often have you believed in that statement? Never underestimate the power of spiritual expression. How often do we think, yes-that makes sense, that could be true, in fact it should be true. Well, these thoughts are still a little bit theoretical, aren't they, but they are a vital step towards complete ownership of what is being hinted at in this simple admonition. Ultimately we must ask, how often have you experienced the validity of that statement? As we gain the experience, we assume ownership.

    Now let us explore the admonition in a bit more depth-the power of spiritual expression. Well, how shall we measure "power"? It's not so clear, is it? If we were to compare automobiles instead, then a popular measure of power is horsepower. We could look at a particular car and say, well I guess this car has a 100-horsepower engine. And somebody else may come by and say, well I think you are underestimating that car; I think it has a 150-horsepower engine. Well that simple illustration should give us pause for thought because in our admonition we hear: NEVER underestimate the power of spiritual expression. Thus, for our car example, even if we were looking at a very expensive luxury sedan that now come with 500-horsepower engines, we would have to say that there should still be something yet more powerful. To never underestimate means there is no ceiling to the power. Hence, we are being admonished to consider that spiritual expression is a power without limit.

    Okay, so far we've had a nice theoretical consideration, but how does it apply to us? How does it apply to me? We can easily focus our thoughts on personal situations. I'm sure some things will come to mind for all of you, even in this very moment. As a caveat, often when we use the words personal situations our mind jumps to the conclusion that we're talking about some difficult situation, some problem, or some crisis. But I want to make sure that we're talking about any circumstances, including those mentioned qualifying as difficult and situations that are simply great, even blissful. In any situation, how does the statement "never underestimate the power of spiritual expression" apply?

    Well, a first look might be towards our personal attitudes. If it is a difficult situation, do we have an attitude of well, nothing can be done about this, this is just something that I have to endure-this is something that simply is handed to me and I as one person have very little influence in that situation. That would be one possible attitude. In the same way, if it is a marvelous situation that came to our minds, what is our vision for that situation? How much creative potential is in that situation? How far could we take it? The attitude of the Creator in any situation is that Life will prevail, born out of Love and Truth, and achieve the purposes of the Creator. Now here of course is the catch. This limitless power of spiritual expression is certainly not for our personal gain. If we have some infantile hopes of accessing some magic power to gain personally in the circumstances of our lives, then we may well find ourselves disappointed. No, this spiritual expression power is the power of the Creator and only in our identification with that, with the Creator, does what we are discussing here become meaningful.

    We all have different situations arising at times, including the difficult ones, and admonitions, spiritual teaching, and so forth are wonderful, comforting help in those situations, and I appreciate our bi-weekly hour in offering reminders and comfort in that sense. But even more so, I appreciate how our hours provide the means to stretch our awareness in many ways. I see these hours as an opportunity to stretch my thinking, my feeling, my expression, and to explore more fully where I'm, you might say, stuck, and where there are opportunities to grow to greater potential.

    In this context it may be worth our while to explore further our sphere of influence. This is the fine concept, one that suggests the image of a bubble around us, and within that bubble we are fairly confident that we have the power to move things. Our sphere of influence and our conception thereof are largely determined by experiences in our upbringing. For example, from babyhood onwards we explore our physical world. A baby, maybe in the range of 6 to 15 months let's say, begins to get up and crawl around and touch everything in sight and put things in the mouth, explore things-and certainly learn that by individual pushing and shoving they can move things around in their world-maybe bring structures made of building blocks crumbling down. We are also learning at an early age the power of emotional expression. A baby learns that a smile brings about certain reaction (certainly crying does), and in some cases babies learn that emotional tantrums have large effects in their world. Thus we learn early on about our sphere of influence in the physical sense and in the emotional sense. And later we learn our about our sphere of influence in the mental realm-we learn how to plan ahead, how to move other people by making suggestions or issuing commands. Some learn that the pen is more powerful than the sword. And so naturally our sphere of influence is seen to be much expanded.

    Spiritual expression is not per se in the curriculum for many people and remains a largely untapped source of influence in our world, at least in a conscious sense. For the most part people have still a very mechanistic view of their own creative power and their sphere of influence. In our conversations here we again have the opportunity to explore the limits of these views and to go beyond.

    Let's think of something very simple. Let's explore the limits of our sphere of influence. A few weeks ago Larry reviewed different dimensions in our world, including going beyond Earth into outer space, and going deep within ourselves to molecular and atomic structure. I'm sure we all followed his storytelling and envisioned these dimensions. As I recall, Larry also mentioned the Hubble telescope and its ability to take pictures of faraway galaxies. Well, that may still seem somewhat esoteric, but we all have also seen pictures of the Earth from outer space. How is it possible to take those pictures? And how is it possible for the telescope to take pictures from faraway galaxies?

    In our current scientific framework we know this is related to the radiation of light, to photons traveling that distance. The sunlight is reflected by the Earth and bounced back to outer space where a camera can capture the light and produce a picture of the Earth in space. So if you want to gain some appreciation of the vastness of your own personal sphere of influence, then by nightfall do the following: Go outside and light a candle, or switch on an electric light, or even just open your cell phone, and what are you doing? You are releasing photons that will travel as far as they can. Now okay, they may be absorbed somewhere along the way, but clearly some of these photons keep going, and going, and going…. If it weren't so, we would not see a picture of the Earth taken from outer space.

    So, in our imaginary scenario there's the Hubble telescope absorbing photons from galaxies far away. Well is it such far-fetched imagination then that some of these photons were actually released by some sentient being on that galaxy having a consideration like ours? And if we don't want to be that fanciful, you yourself release that photon and imagine where it goes, on and on… and what will that photon do, you do not know-but your sphere of influence is vast, even with our ordinary limited mechanistic view of the world.

    In the same way, your thinking has an influence that clearly reaches far beyond your skull, if you will. It reaches into the future, for one thing. Because we all have memory, we remember an insight that we articulated years ago, or an experience that impressed us sometime in the past; thus, whatever it was then made an impact well into what then was the future. And we can all relate stories about something we said that somebody picked up and did something with in their life-hopefully something creative. That's included in our sphere of influence, which therefore, I would say, is really as large as our imagination will allow.

    Now as a society we have developed a number of frameworks of thought that we conveniently label-for example, the framework of science, or the framework of religion, or the framework of poetry, just to mention a few. Each of these frameworks has certain rules and certain realms of creative applicability.

    For example, if you want to express your love for another person-let's say I'm a man, I fall in love with a woman, and I want to say, "I love you." Well, how would I go about it if she tells me, "Well, prove it."? Would I say, "No problem. We'll hook me up to a bunch of wires, and we measure my brain activity, and maybe we measure my heartbeat, and we'll take some blood and measure chemicals, and so on. And if these all fall in certain range that science has accepted, well, then that's my proof that I love you." Well how successful would I be with that? It's ridiculous! No, the language of love is poetry, for sake of a word. But if I then take my lover out on a road trip and the car brakes down, whom do I call up-a poet, or a car mechanic? Clearly, a car mechanic. So there are different frameworks appropriate for different experiences and creative action.

    For some reason we have a malaise in human consciousness that tends to elevate certain frameworks to God-like stature, as if that particular framework was a solution to everything. Certainly the framework of religion is doing that. "You believe in these doctrines of my church, my religion, and that will explain everything in the world." Or the framework of science-everything can be explained by science. "You better show me the experiment. If you can't show me the experiment, it's not relevant." Well, how foolish that is. Every framework of thought has a certain range where it's useful, and beyond that range it's simply limiting. When we talk about spiritual expression and the power of spiritual expression, we clearly do not have scientific measurements such as horsepower to estimate spiritual expression. The framework of science is simply not applicable in this context.

    Jesus, when asked about His teachings once said something to the effect that no sign will be given, in a situation where dishonest skeptics doubted His authority and the validity of His teachings. No sign. Never underestimate the power of spiritual expression is a true statement, but the truth of it must be experienced, must be known individually, and does not fit in limiting frameworks of current human mental construction.

    Who is it who has the ability to switch from one framework of thinking to the next? Who is it who says, well, for this framework, for this particular situation, let me use a scientific approach because that is the most creative approach to be taken in this situation. Or, in this circumstance I should rely on poetry to be creative. Or in this circumstance a little faith is what is what is appropriate and most creative. We have called that who our Divine and Cosmic Identity-the Angel incarnate, or simply the one I Am. It is who we are at the core. And as we are so identified, we learn to a greater and greater extent how to use our human facilities of thinking, feeling, and physical action to the creative purpose of the one Creator.

    So we explore every situation that we encounter and find ourselves in. From that vantage point and with great ease we find the appropriate tools at our disposal to work creatively with that particular circumstance-not for our personal gain, but for the benefit of the whole, to serve the Creator.

    We all have our own limitations currently in that pursuit, but that is just part of what our creative activity works with. It's our own consciousness to start with, and beyond that a virtually unlimited sphere of influence. As we take it seriously, to never underestimate the power of spiritual expression, we can be sure that any thought inducing us to feel powerless, limited, incapable, overwhelmed-any such thought is simply a subject of action for our true Identity, which is perfectly capable of blowing through that sense of limitation.

    So these are my thoughts going from the small to the large, covering a wide range I realize, but it's really a kaleidoscope of all kinds of applications. It's wonderful to explore, and so let us do it.