Message from Rick Ulfik, Founder of We, The World and the WE Campaign at WE.net

It is an honor and an inspiration for We, The World to collaborate with Kosmos Journal for 11 Days of Global Unity this year! I was deeply moved by all the submissions that Kosmos collected based on one or more of our 11 Global Unity Themes.

By Donna D’Ingillo and John Otranto

Humanity’s Final Frontier: the Inner Realm of Spirit

The final frontier of human exploration is the inner realm of Spirit. As science investigates the fabric of the material universe, looking deeper into the immensity of creation, the question naturally arises: “What is life, and what does it all mean?” To the scientist, this query raises many interesting and challenging concepts, because, as one peers into the universe and views its enormity, one has to wonder, “Where did this come from? Who made it? How does this function?” This is an understandable natural expression of human curiosity.

It is the realm of Spirit that will provide answers to these longstanding questions, because the Spirit is the level of the Divine where the patterns (or template) and energies of life originate. It is the level where we find the true meanings and values of relationships of Spirit to humanity and of humanity to the greater context of life and how we as human beings interact within it. We humans have an innate composition of Spirit. Yet our awareness of it can be shielded or blocked if we only look at life through the eyes at the material level of the physical world.

The realm of spirituality is a vast realm of discovery. The world is opening up to a more majestic view of who and what God is, what Deity is, and what the divine level of reality is. Each one of us has a part to play by exploring these questions for himself or herself. They can be answered through the realm of what we call consciousness or Mind. Mind acts as the bridge between the higher spiritual frequencies of the divine levels of life and the lower frequencies of material or human life-realms we inhabit. Mind is the medium of consciousness. It is a connecting link hardwired into our physical bodies through our brain to convey a seamless flow of information when the human mind is attuned to the spiritual frequencies in the higher realms of our consciousness. Human consciousness—a divine gift—is causative: every thought, feeling, word, and act adds to the collective or planetary consciousness and co-creates material reality.

Harmonize Intellect and Intuition for a Balanced Perspective

When asking questions such as: “Who am I? Who is God? What is the meaning of life?” we can arrive at the answers by two principal means. One is through the intellect: a reasoned analysis of various forms of evolved and amassed theological and even scientific thought. The second approach is by way of intuition: experiential perception of what can be intuitively felt or known. Both are faculties of mind, but intuition is also a way of perceiving the information through our emotions—our feelings conveyed through the circuitry of the heart.

These two ways of capturing information are sometimes antagonistic; however, they can be combined into a unified whole to provide us with a conceptual frame of reference for a higher level of reality. Modern science is now exploring the realm of this heart-mind circuit and arriving at new conclusions based on experiences of people who have used their heart connections to perceive higher truths contained within the circuits of mind streaming in from the divine levels of reality. 

The challenge for each of us is to achieve a synergism of logic and intuition by using both the mind of the intellect and the mind of the heart.  We can learn from experience and amass wisdom and insight through both the conceptual rendering within our minds and the feeling components of the heart to give us a more expanded perspective on life.

A first step would be to recognize which mindal approach to knowledge tends to be dominant in our approach to perceiving reality. As you read this article, are you perhaps aware of whether you are naturally inclined to be intuitive rather than reasoning? Vice versa? Some of our cultural conditionings tend to exaggerate the importance of the intellect over intuition; other societies may stress the intuitive. Neither emphasis precludes or limits our ability to expand the less developed mode of knowing.

 Meeting Our Spirit 

Just as we need material elements such as air, water, and food to nourish our bodies, we need spiritual sustenance to nourish our souls—the evolving, spiritual part of our human mechanism. It develops with spiritual insights and reflection upon what is divine and what is Deity. This includes how we apply our insights in our interactions with others and in the relationship we establish with what many refer to as our Inner Spirit.

Our world is now outworking many ideas, theologies, and doctrines about the nature of Deity. We are now moving into a time when the forces of religious thought are battling with the social aspects of religion. Over time, the struggle will yield the awareness that each person has an Indwelling Spirit through which they can perceive the higher emanations of the divine levels of reality where Deity relationships exist. Every individual has the right and the innate ability within their being to perceive who and what Deity is for them. This happens best by reaching inward to the Indwelling Spirit and developing a personal relationship with that inner divine guide, our Spirit helpmate.

Human beings innately resonate with several attributes of the divine and Deity levels—for example, the concepts of peace, unity, and love. We are all innately predisposed for love—the value of doing good to another person. We are wired for truth—what is real, what is true now, what is of everlasting value and importance. And we all have an innate tendency for goodness—an internal moral compass that helps us convey our thoughts, feelings, and actions with love, compassion, and tolerance for others. The Inner Deity Presence also guides and encourages us to develop our human spiritual and creative potential.

Human perception of the Deity Presence is relative. It is up to each individual whether or not to take this opportunity to perceive information via a journey to one’s inner dimensions. We can, if we choose, move beyond the realms of institutionalized, socialized religious thought into the realm where we have a direct, personal relationship to Deity and divine levels of knowledge. This is the challenge of our age.

Fraternity of Humanity and the Parenthood of the Divine

Intellectual posturing of theological concepts can lead to debate and antagonisms between individuals because they pit belief system against belief system. But this need not be. The Sufi saint, mystic, and scholar Inayat Rehmat Khan set forth ten principles, common to all religions, which formed the foundational principles of his Universal Sufism. One of them states:

“There is one brotherhood: the human brotherhood which unites the children of earth indiscriminately in the fatherhood of God.”

This was later stated as: “There is one Family, the Human Family, which unites the Children of Earth indiscriminately in the Parenthood of God.”

In The Spiritual Message of Inayat Khan, Volume I – The Way of Illumination, 2011 and at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/monkeymind/2017/07/noting-birth-universalist-sufi-saint-hazrat-inayat-khan.html

What Inayat Rehmat Khan discovered about the common foundations of all God-seeking religions mirrors what William James (in The Varieties of Religious Experience), Leo Tolstoy (in The Wisdom of Humankind), Aldous Huxley (in The Perennial Philosophy) and others have determined: that we all have an Indwelling Spirit, in effect, a fragment of the our Creator, and are thus all children of the same Spirit Parent; we are all brothers and sisters in one spiritual family. This is the underlying foundation of the fraternity of all humanity within the overarching Parenthood of Deity.

Living the New Paradigm: Open Hearts and Minds

When we combine the intellectual with the heart-centered and meditative approaches to apprehending and comprehending knowledge and appreciate that each person has a right to their own Deity relationships, then we come into that harmonized realm of mind and heart, or intellect and heart. We live from that place where the individual recognizes the innate right of a fellow human being to develop his or her own Deity relationship. And speaking from that place means that we can share and discuss feelings of love and compassion for one another, tolerance for ideas different from our own, and equality of relationships. It is here, within the ever-expanding realm of openness and trust, that we can explore, in-depth, our relationship to our brothers and sisters and to Deity itself.

This, we suggest, is the new and future paradigm. The opening of human hearts and minds to a Deity perspective adds our intentional energy to the unstoppable transformation now underway. We participate as heralds in the enlightenment now in the process of unfolding.  

About the Authors

Donna D’Ingillo is the founder of the Center for Christ Consciousness, a spiritual healing and transformational center.  She has authored several books, including “Teach Us to Love—Finding Unconditional Love through Communion with God.” She facilitates healing sessions with Deity to assist individuals into their higher selves and expanded consciousness, commonly called “Christ Consciousness.”  She can be reached at www.centerforchristconsciousness.org.

John Otranto: Born May 1938, received a BS in Engineering from USCG Academy, a MS in Systems Analysis from American U., Washington, DC; is a Ret. USCG Commander; has co-founded a peace group and an anti-nuclear organization, adviser to several international organizations: is a jury member, at the Nuclear Free Future Award, Munich; has been involved in the evolution of human consciousness and spirituality for over 40 years.