My dear friends...

As you know if you are a regular reader of The Weekly Bulletin, we have been exploring now for many months an encounter with Life that I have called The Holy Experience. Through the years many people have written to me asking about how they might have such an experience.

This week I want to share with you that I seem to have stumbled upon Ten Instruments or tools with which one might build a platform, or an environment, for the Holy Experience. That’s the best way I can answer the question, “How can I have the Holy Experience?” I’ve thought about this a lot, looking at my own journey and the journey of others with whom I am acquainted, and here is what I have come up with:

THE TEN INSTRUMENTS OF THE HOLY EXPERIENCE

1. Yearning
2. Willing
3. Exploring
4. Embracing
5. Explaining
6. Resonance
7. Visualization
8. Movement
9. Ritual
10. Service & Discipline

These instruments seem to me to be divided into two types: Physical Tools (1-5 above) and Spiritual Tools (6-10 above). I have called these The Five Tools of Awareness and The Five Tools of Non-Awareness of the world.

I believe that the combination of Complete Awareness-plus-Complete Non-Awareness equals Realization.

It seems to me that when one is Aware and Non-Aware at the same time (that is, when one is Physical and Spiritual simultaneously), one is Fully Realized. This is what I would call the Holy Experience.

Do not worry if you do not understand this. All of this will be explained here. For now, be willing to notice that you are “aware” that you are “not aware” of exactly what this means.

I have discovered that the Ten Instruments above may be taken sequentially or in any order that one chooses. And...the use of these Instruments may also be skipped altogether. The Holy Experience may be had without any of the tools being utilized.

The Instruments are just that. Merely tools. One can travel the terrain of enlightenment without using them, and many people have.

On the other hand, using the tools should in no way indicate a lack of spiritual clarity or power. There are many paths to awakening, and using the Ten Instruments is simply one that I have discovered through my lifelong search for a Way to Higher Consciousness, or Self-Realization. It is neither a superior path, nor an inferior one.

On the path described here, the Physical Tools (steps 1-5) can be used to build an experience or an Awareness of your individual life and all that is around you in the exterior world, while the Spiritual Tools produce the knowing of larger realities, resulting in Non-Awareness of—or detachment from—what is around you in the world. It’s almost as if, for you, the world around you is in many ways simply “not there.”

Used together, these Ten Instruments can produce a combined state that I would call Awareness/Non-Awareness. This is sometimes termed “higher consciousness” or “full self-realization.” You will remember that there is a statement in the Bible about being “in the world, but not of it.” This is what the statement means. It is when you realize Who You Really Are, and who you are choosing to experience your Self as during this particular incarnation.

All of the Ten Instruments of the Holy Experience build a path to this destination: the Ultimate Expression of Who You Really Are, demonstrated through the individualized identity you are living right now. This is the moving through you of you as you.

I really want to get into this deeply, and we will as we continue on our exploration of The Holy Experience in this space next week.

With Hugs & Pure Love,