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John Morton Cleansing the Temple

Cleansing the Temple

 

One of the ways you play in this level is making a choice on what you focus upon, what your reference point is. It’s just a constant game. We can move so we’re more adept at placing our focus where it most serves us. We can do it now and hold a more positive, loving focus wherever we want to place it, more with the Spirit.
– John Morton

This article is taken from a seminar John gave in March 1992 in Santa Fe, New Mexico.


A lot of what being on a spiritual path is about is building and discovering what our support system is. It’s a process of learning, growing and relating to how that works. My prayer is that whatever emanates from me comes from a place of truth that I am connected to in a place of loving. Then we get as much joy as we can as well as peace and goodness.

When we come into a spiritual focus there is a special opportunity to leave things behind that would normally bother or disturb us. If you have a disagreement with somebody or some situation, in a spiritual focus there is agreement. If there’s a place where you have hurt, in a spiritual focus there is healing. If you experience separation or a longing for somebody, in this spiritual focus they are with you.

Are you getting the idea?

That’s very much how I relate to a holy place. It’s where what’s missing comes present and what we want in our heart is here. What I do is prepare a place where I give over to what’s present. The teachings are disseminated from inside. We talk about Soul Transcendence and doing spiritual exercises saying that part of it really has nothing to do with the physical world. What you are doing when you focus on the name of God takes place in the Spirit.

One of the signs of the Spirit we are working with is that it doesn’t inflict. It’s invited. It’s not very far away. It’s very close, closer than your breath. Nonetheless, there is a level of Spirit you must invite in and keep inviting in.

Do you ever wonder how you are doing in the level of inviting the Spirit in and holding it present? Are you getting good grades or being held back in remedial school? In my experience we are all in a remedial school called Earth. If you look at that idea of remedial, it also has a remedy in it. That means something must be off. I must not be feeling very good, and I’m perhaps a little sick, and I’m looking for a remedy. Something to balance the situation out or clear it up. Do you ever feel that way towards your life in this world?

I’ve got a clue for you. The way our consciousness works in this level is that it has a very narrow focus. Has it ever occurred to you that it’s very particular? If you had to know everything about the level of consciousness you are on in order to graduate to the next level, it could take a while and seem like a very futile process. There’s a point to futility, and one of the points is desperation.

When you start getting into a consciousness of, “Whatever it is I want and I desire, I don’t seem to achieve or experience,” there’s something in there that can move you to a point of desperation. Desperation isn’t something to avoid if you run into it, if it’s occurring because of your experience. You may have what’s referred to as “a quiet sense of desperation”. Sometimes it’s not so quiet, at times getting quite loud, so you become angry. I’d be willing to bet that if you took a personal inventory you’d find some desperation. You’d find some anger, some disturbance, some upset, some disappointment, or hurt feelings.

Is that what you really want or need as you work through this level? Do you have other preferences that you are aware of? In a sense, if you aren’t aware of other preferences, that may be even worse.

If you aren’t considering what you are doing, if you have no rudder, no aim, no chart to set your course, you better take a look at your life. Your life does have meaning and purpose even in this very narrow, small existence relative to all of what is. It’s very important that we take a look and see what’s going on.

What I want to point out is that regardless of the negativity in your experience, my experience is this level is full of negativity. There just seems to be an unlimited amount of negativity around. I never found a shortage. In my greatest moments, my biggest celebrations, I was aware of some negativity. There was some doubt, fear, jealousy or envy around. And it wasn’t just outside. I experienced some inside of myself.

One of the ways you play in this level is making a choice on what you focus upon, what your reference point is. It’s just a constant game. We can move so we’re more adept at placing our focus where it most serves us. We can do it now and hold a more positive, loving focus wherever we want to place it, more with the Spirit.

As we determine what this process is, positive or negative, the game on this level is where we are going to place our focus. Part of what we are doing here – part of the whole – is this thing we call Soul Transcendence. It means we’re going to locate the Soul and move into the level of the Soul. We move beyond this level. We transcend this level.

The focus of the Traveler is upon God. That is the consciousness that moves in a beeline to God. No excuses, no “two hundred dollars passing go,” just direct. I know there’s One who delivers and that One is here with you.

Are you stopping the delivery? How are you doing with what’s been delivered to you up to now? Are you handling yourself in a way that’s open and expansive? Are you doing those things that identify a spiritual consciousness? Are you remaining accepting? Or are you getting caught up, tripped up and focusing on things of the material nature that are magnetic, fascinating, easy to focus on and very popular?

Thank God there’s this thing called Spiritual Exercise. Thank God the temple is inside of you and nobody can take it away. Thank God you have the keys to the temple. What have you allowed to enter the temple?

The temple is set up as the dwelling place of the Lord. Guess who designed it? Guess who built it as you? And in taking you in as a co-creator, as a brother and sister of the Lord, as one of the Lord, you get to decide the nature of the temple. And it is you. You are the temple.

Your temple can be clean. That’s its natural state. Or it can be allowed to take on the material elements – dust, dirt and decay. Do you suppose the temple is this very precious thing that can be allowed to be covered or become tarnished by the way you conduct your life?

If you want to realize the magnificence and holiness of you as the temple, you have to do those things that cleanse the temple and keep it cleansed. As a Spiritual Warrior, one of the qualities you must be willing to enter into is ruthlessness. Not in the negative sense, but in the commitment that will not swerve or compromise. And you hold yourself to that.

The beauty of these things that are most precious is they hold their preciousness. Do you think that all the things that go wrong on this level can really destroy those elements inside of you that are precious and of the Spirit and Soul? No, they hold their nature.

In actuality, we are all Saints. Only Saints get to hold the consciousness you hold. You’ve been noble, good, loving, and pure and sometimes you haven’t. Which do you want to identify with? Are you willing to identify with yourself as a Saint? Let it be declared by God and the Glory of God in you.

I’m speaking to you as a Saint, as a Holy One. I would sit at your feet; wash your feet, do whatever it is to be close to you. It’s important to keep yourself in that place of looking for the Lord, looking for that presence in each one that greets you and meets you in the day.

Once, a woman who was assisting at a teen Insight Seminar asked if she could read a poem she’d written. And the Lord spoke to me through her. Perhaps we can consider she wrote it to all of us:

“You are the most beautiful being.
You show me my heart.
You deliver the truth, the joy that is God.
You show me the way that I’ve looked for all my life.
You prepare the path that I walk on.
You wash me.
You cleanse me.
You make my Soul shine.
I look into your face and I see the Light.
I hear the Glory of God singing in a chorus.
You are the beauty of God.”

Baruch Bashan


WATCH A BLESSING WITH JOHN MORTON
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