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The Soul has a being level. Like a person is a human being, the Soul is a spiritual being. When we come into a relationship with that presence of our spiritual being, our Soul, something quite magnificent goes on so that we take on our mastership. We take on the level of the master within who knows, understands, and loves all. That is the practice of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness — to learn to love all as God loves all which we call unconditional loving. – John Morton, DSS

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This article was first published in the New Day Herald in December, 2012.

In the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, we are opening up to the One within who knows us very intimately. We don’t create or promote some hierarchy like, “Our master’s better than yours,” or “Our line is better than your line,” or anything like that. We’re just working with what it is. It’s a line of the Christ that we’re working through. It’s an anointing of the Spirit.

Jesus the Christ is the head of MSIA and directs this Movement spiritually. It’s not something that’s caught up in religious institutions or beliefs. In MSIA, we embrace Mohammed, Buddha and whoever else has been a friend to the Soul and who awakens us to the Soul. There have been many people on the planet who held great spiritual powers.

In MSIA, we embrace the truth where we find it. So whoever speaks in truth is one we would listen to. Often, we end up listening to one another. We hear witnessing and testifying to God through one another. In that way, each one of us becomes a witness as a friend of God, as one who in that moment of our living truth can speak and act for God in the flesh. That’s how we practice the movement of spiritual inner awareness. We each have our own divine leadership within. We are our own minister, and we can minister to one another through Light and love.

I often get invited to speak from my own experience, and I do that because I’m asked. It’s a primary aspect of my ministry. Spiritually, I have that willingness inside of me like a bird that knows it needs to sing. I need to express what I know about the Spirit. My life is dedicated to that. It’s my first and primary dedication.

There have been various people on the planet who have taken on a spiritual mantle. By that I mean they’ve taken on an ability and a blessing that was divinely inspired and ordained so that they were able to impart to others a spiritual teaching. Perhaps they demonstrated spiritual gifts like healings or doing miracles of various kinds. However, it might not necessarily have looked like a ministry or that they were the ones in our midst who were doing the religious practice. They may have appeared rather ordinary, such as writers or carpenters.

It isn’t necessarily that when we are anointed of God’s power and blessing that we go out and do things that are well-known and bring us great popularity or anything like that. It can be that our service becomes rather quiet, perhaps silent and even mysterious. At times, very few, maybe only God, may realize that someone is anointed of this spiritual power and blessing. I look at that power and that blessing, when it takes place in the fullness of what it is, as a christening. That’s a literalness of the meaning of the Christ.

Sometimes people ask, “This name MSIA, it sounds kind of like messiah. Are you trying to say this organization has something to do with the messiah?” I say, “Yes.” What we’re doing is about the messiah.

What is the messiah? It’s something that is of the Spirit in a particular way that we become lifted and anointed in that power. The messiah is our destiny. We’re all destined to become saints and to become holy. That’s really our true nature already. We’re already holy. We’re already sanctified because we are of God.

Somebody once said, “God doesn’t make junk.” That’s a clear true way of expressing the movement of spiritual inner awareness. When we’re dealing with what it is, the messiah or the Christ within, we’re not dealing with junk. We’re not dealing with waste or something that’s bad or negative. We’re dealing with something that’s ultimately and eternally true and inherently good.

In MSIA, we don’t have any issues about where you worship, how you worship or what you claim as your religion or your faith. We don’t have a particular denomination that in some way is exclusive to other denominations. Our approach works so that people who are practicing as Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Buddhists, or any other religion, including atheists can participate.

I remember early on when John-Roger would speak to MSIA gatherings that he would talk about the brotherhood of mankind and the fatherhood of God. We all have a relationship as human beings to our divine nature that is a very simple one. It runs across all the conditions that are in the world, including religious, geographic, cultural, gender or any other condition or circumstance. What we’re doing in MSIA has a way of transcending those conditions. We are to honor each person’s own conditions as best we can so that where you come from and what you’re dealing with are honored.

One of the ways we honor you is when we say, “Take care of yourself so you can help take care of others.” That second part, “help take care of others,” is really tied to the first part. They go together. If you want to help take care of others, you need to first take care of yourself.

We find that when we participate and practice who we are spiritually, we become more caring. In truth, we’re always caring beings. It’s when we lose sight of our divinity that we would step out of caring. At those times, we might forget that we’re caring or how to care for others. So we put that message there as a precept. It’s a guideline that means that as you live your life, make sure you take care of yourself always. Taking care of yourself has a way of allowing and giving you the ability to help take care of others.

We’re also saying that if you don’t take care of yourself, you really have no business even attempting to take care of somebody else. When someone who’s sick or disturbed is not caring for themselves and they’re attempting to care for somebody else, they tend to give whatever is disturbed or diseased over to somebody else. So it’s very important for us to take care of ourselves so that we can help care for others in a manner that is for the highest good of all concerned.

It’s also important that we don’t hurt ourselves and we don’t hurt others. You might think that when we say, “Take care of yourself so you can help take care of others,” it would be understood that you wouldn’t hurt yourself or others. However, I find that at times we need to be reminded about that too. We need to remember that we are not to be hurtful to ourselves or anyone else.

You might wonder, “Why do things happen where people hurt one another? Why is there suffering? If God is a really good and loving, then what’s going on in this world that there is pain and suffering?”

My experience is that the inherent nature of our creator is good. So all things and all of us in God’s creation are good. What does pain and suffering have to do with good? It has to do with learning. Realizing our divine nature sometimes has to do with going through certain kinds of experiences that are difficult and challenging, including that they might be painful. Yet, in every experience we will always find something we can learn and for our greater good.

In this world, we as co-creators with God are allowed to create lesser good for the purpose of demonstrating how the psychic-material law of cause and effect works completely for our upliftment, learning and growth. It works reflectively such that for every action there is an equal and opposite or opposing reflecting action that demonstrates by results what has been created, promoted and allowed. When the action is of the highest good, then the highest good is the resulting action in reverse and reflection. By law, what is of higher good comes as the ultimate result. And what is of the lesser good comes as the temporary result that cannot last or endure to the end.

Grace is loving God and thereby loving all of God’s creation. When loving God is the intention, then it follows that in the end God’s mercy and restoration of the highest good is the result. Whatever is less than good is rendered to the nothingness from which it came, and only good going to highest good remains.

There are three ground rules in MSIA that John-Roger defined, two of which I already noted: 1) Take care of yourself so you can help take care of others, and 2) Don’t hurt yourself and don’t hurt others. The third ground rule is, “Use everything for your upliftment, learning and growth.” I add, “Because we CAN.” Everything we experience can be used for our upliftment, learning and growth. It’s our choice in each moment to shift our attitude to look for the greater good, the learning and how we can grow.

Even when we don’t think that something could possibly be of any value, that there’s nothing we could learn or gain, that’s not ever true. If you think that, or someone else thinks that, you might invite yourself or them to ask, “Is there a value in this? Is there something we can learn from this?” I find the answer always is, “Yes.” We can grow and shift through every experience so that we gain.

There is a sacred aspect to what we’re doing here that calls upon us to render ourself nothing. So we have a discipline that I consider asks for all. It calls upon us to give up everything but not to any outer form. Our discipline is not about giving up everything to me, John-Roger or MSIA the organization. It’s about giving up everything to God. We say, “Let go and let God.” Your commitment ends up being focused within you. Your commitment is between you and God. That’s how this movement is done.

There isn’t a way for any one of us to demonstrate in an outer way how we’re sanctified and holy. Our sanctification is done inwardly. So our worship and our practice take place inwardly. That’s where that word inner comes in. Instead of calling this movement the movement of spiritual awareness, there’s the inner part that gives us direction. So we are the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness.

Not too many things having to do with MSIA are of the outer material world. We don’t have great edifices. We don’t have a lot of rituals. We do have some practices, but they’re more or less what work to bring us together in fellowship to God. Coming together in worship works for the greater good. There is a purpose in being together as two or more who are gathered. When we do, a presence comes in that’s very holy and sacred.

In the process of gathering and sharing together in that holy presence, it can be very humbling to reveal ourselves. Sometimes people look upon that process as terrifying. Some folks fear revealing themselves completely of all the things they’ve done, thought, felt or had happen to them. Yet that can be a very healing and strengthening process. So we encourage it.

We have a PTS course that we call the Master of Spiritual Science. It’s not just about a graduate level education, which it is. It’s a class from our seminary, Peace Theological Seminary and College of Philosophy. Along with the formality of homework, there’s a practice taught in the class of how to work with the teachings that we have. But the class is really about how we’re opening ourself up to the Spiritual Master within.

I call it the Spiritual Master because eventually there’s something about the Spirit that becomes singular. Great teachers have spoken about the singularity of Spirit. When we make our eyes single, the road becomes straight and narrow. When we bring ourself to God, there’s one eye, not a pair of eyes. There’s one reality, not a dual reality.

Although we can perceive the psychic-material world with a sense of duality, with contrasts and opposites, the reality of Spirit is there is no opposition. In Spirit, all things are balanced and integrated in harmonious relationship. God is not opposed to itself. When we realize our true nature, we realize that we no longer have opposition. We no longer have againstness or separation.

In the Master’s class, we use a process for moving through those things that we have held against ourself, the things that we practiced or conditioned ourselves as separation. The process is a reintegration with the Soul, which is that aspect of God that individualizes itself in each person.

The Soul has a being level. Like a person is a human being, the Soul is a spiritual being. When we come into a relationship with that presence of our spiritual being, our Soul, something quite magnificent goes on so that we take on our Mastership. We take on the level of the master within who knows, understands, and loves all. That is the practice of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness — to learn to love all as God loves all which we call unconditional loving.

Jesus the Christ is a great demonstration of unconditional loving. Babies are too because we come into this world in a very innocent state. Babies have a way of expressing to us that original innocence and purity. They demonstrate a powerful presence of our spiritual nature.

When we are born, we come into a body as a Soul. What makes a body alive is the divine spark within it. The presence of the Soul is an individualized aspect of that divine spark. It is a great blessing to have that contact, to be in the same room with someone who’s wide open to their Soul the way a baby is.

God creates us in His image which is not the same thing as the divine source. A human being is not God in the fullness and absoluteness of God. A human being is an image, the way a photo, painting or reflection in a pond can be an image. The image can give us a good sense of who we are as God, but the image is not the true source that is God.

What we’re working with in MSIA reflects a range of being connected to our Soul. We really don’t ever do it entirely in the body. What we teach is how to move out of the body consciously to that place in Spirit where we can be fully aware of ourselves as a Soul. We call that Soul Awareness. We also call it Soul Travel. It is something we teach in particular that is rather unique to MSIA, not that it isn’t taught elsewhere in some form. However, our focus on Soul Awareness is very direct.

How do we contact the Soul? How do we bring Soul Awareness present? Very little of it do we do in the body. For the most part we do it out of the body. That process we often refer to as Spiritual Exercise. That’s the primary practice in the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness. It’s an exercise that is toward the Spirit into the Soul Consciousness.

We have a particular way that we do Spiritual Exercise where we refer to the names of God that we’re focusing upon. We call the names, sometimes outwardly as with the Ani Hu chant. More often, we chant the names of God inwardly because that contact, when it’s done in its fullness, is an inner contact. It’s an inner directed awareness to the Soul. Spiritual Exercises are a way of calling to God. In MSIA, we’re learning how to do it in a very direct way.

It’s not just that we learn to call to God. We also learn to pay attention when God answers. The more powerfully we can call to God, the more powerfully God can answer our calls. Some people who have been involved in MSIA for a while still don’t realize that the greater part of Spiritual Exercise is listening to God’s answers. So in case you need to be reminded, it’s very important that you pay attention to what God is revealing to you through your Spiritual Exercise.

To know more fully the truth about MSIA and the messiah within, ask God. Ask that One who lives and dwells within you, who is your personal, eternally and unconditionally loving guide. You don’t need me or anyone else in a body to do that for you. Ask God to reveal it for you, to reveal the truth of your being as a Soul who is one with God.

Baruch Bashan