I wrote my first manuscript when I was a neophyte on the spiritual path, probably about 1980, and called it One Voice in Many. I have just found it again, surprisingly, in a beat-up file folder among records of long-ago classes I taught. It was typed on an old portable Olivetti typewriter, before the day of computers! Wow! What a surprise to meet myself again as I was perceiving the world back then. Some of it is naive, but some is quite fresh and simple. So I've decided to put bits of it here and short quotes on Twitter.
"We are like each other in at least one respect: each of us, in our own way, is on a quest for spirit—the experience of completion and wholeness. In some, the quest is a conscious endeavor. In others, it is a quiet way of life, a subliminal search for that quality of grace that satisfies so well. I believe that all people yearn for something better and more beautiful, wiser and more loving, than we mortals in our present state manage to be. We want to know at a deep and still place why we are here, what life is for, and we want to feel our lives are not lived in vain. No matter how hopeless and cynical we may become at times, or how insane the world situation grows, every one of us retains a spark of hope and idealism tucked away in some secret corner of our heart.
"These sparks of spirit are like tiny seeds of love and truth, eternal lights that never go out. They burn in the center of the heart and when we're ready for revelation and love, they grow. It's important to know and have faith that though the mind forgets this quite often, the heart always remembers its precious gift.
"We frequently look to children as our teachers because these are the people among us who live in the utmost simplicity, closest to love and truth. Their primary concern is with the miraculous, with things of spirit, and they have the most direct and open curiosity about the workings of nature. Where does God live? Why is the sky blue? Why do people laugh? If we, like the children, follow our sense of wonder, we will fan our sparks and our light will grow.
"But even if we forget to be wondrous, our light will find its way out. To each of our lives come moments of vague dissatisfaction, often focused by frustrating or inharmonious events—even by accidents or disasters. We stop to contemplate, guided by an aching longing, a pervading knowledge of a deep-down incompletion that can't be remedied by person or thing. Even periods of depression can be nature's way of redirecting our attention to the inner need for spiritual nourishment. The recognition of this need is the revelation that starts us on what is often called "The Path," the conscious quest to regain memory of our original state."
