This article is taken from a seminar John Morton gave in Los Angeles on May 16, 2017 titled “Blessings with the Divine Presence.” At the end of the article is a video of the blessing he led that night that you may watch if you would like.
“Become aware of the Divine presence that lives within you, as you, and you use this awareness as your springboard into higher consciousness.”
– John-Roger, D.S.S.
Welcome to the Blessings with the Divine Presence. It’s good to think of this presence as always with us, no matter what the conditionality is of our life.
What I experience in my life is a calling. I consider it may be similar to what Ulysses related to when the sirens were calling, and there’s an irresistible quality to the sound. But it’s not just the sound. It’s going to be what you experience as a vision inside, that we often seek outside.
We often seek it in ways in the world where we are looking for what would satisfy us, what would bring us what we want and what we desire. If your life is anything like mine, and I have a distinct experience in my independent survey that it is, we don’t really find it out here, but we can in some way extend it out here.
It can be in a beautiful reflection in a place like right here where we are doing this seminar at Peace Awareness Labyrinth and Gardens that we can have one amongst us. My experience is it just takes one who is in the experience of the Divine presence, and vibrating, and also allowing that expression to come in to their being, however that happens.
In my experience with the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, and also with Insight Seminars, and a number of works that John-Roger brought forward in the world, it is something that when it gets ahold of us, control is not necessarily involved.
Sometimes we can be invited or led into a greater experience of the Divine. Part of it is by responding in our conscious self, in the conscious awareness that we want that, we intend to have a greater experience of the Divine.
Would you like more Divine presence? If the one hundred percent absolute presence of the Divine is here, and you can get your hands on it and touch it, what would you be willing to do? Would you be willing to move? Sometimes that’s how we gain access into the experience.
Years ago on a trip with John-Roger and some friends in Aleppo, Syria, we saw whirling dervishes. Do you know what a whirling dervish is? If you don’t, would you be willing to admit it and ask? Because if your ignorance is in the way of your Divine presence – and I said that in a particular way – your Divine presence, the Divine presence assigned to you, sent to you, present with you – would you be willing to do something about that? If I said, “The Divine presence is in the whirling dervishes,” would you be interested?
You might wonder if I am speaking the truth. In MSIA, the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, we remind you often, “Don’t believe this. That’s not what’s being asked of any of us.” We’re the check-it-out group. We’re actually called into the direct experience.
If someone who was in some way transmitting the Divine presence with you whispered into your ear that it’s in the whirling dervishes, then maybe you might want to inquire, “Well, what is that?” if you don’t know what that is. Or, “Where is that?” Or, “How is that?”
We have a responsibility to seek it. Then in the world it can come into a reflection so that there can be a great reflection of the divinity in the world. The source of what the Divine presence is, is inside.
Let’s consider that we are all here at this seminar (or reading this article) at the invitation of the Divine presence. I agreed to do this work when John-Roger and friends in the Divine presence extended the invitation to come into the Divine presence in the Traveler Consciousness.
And we are all in that. Even if there are those who say, “Well I think I know more about the whirling dervishes than the Traveler Consciousness.”
If I extend that transmission so that my experience of the Divine presence in the Traveler Consciousness can be transmitted to you, and the presence within you is a Divine presence that can be awakened, can be stirred, so that you can have the experience, do you have an idea about how we would have the experience or know the experience of the Divine presence?
Let’s consider that the Divine presence transcends the world, that it’s in the world but not of it. Have you ever heard that phrase before? Yes, we heard about those who come in the holy nature, and let’s consider when we are talking about the holy nature, we are talking about a Divine nature. Those words don’t mean anything if we don’t have the experience, if we don’t relate to it as a direct way of knowing in some way.
Have you considered that the Divine presence has a name? In this Movement we call out that name. It’s a consciousness that when we begin to experience it more fully can be spoken through a voice and is something that transcends the sense experience though it is in the senses. One of the things we do is we let go of our attachment to the sense experience or the outer experience in order to have that experience within.
Let’s consider the story of Jacob’s Ladder in the Old Testament of the Bible, where they were ascending and descending. What is involved in that story is an allegory. You could consider it is an allegory or something that is told to us as a way for greater understanding. So it is not something that we would understand takes place in the world, but it would be a way for us to understand that we could expand how we think, so that we would allow our imagination to consider how that would work.
Even if you said, “Well, I prefer Jack and the Bean Stalk as a way to go up and down,” that could work too, because it is the idea of going higher and then coming back down, and going higher and coming back down.
At some point we are learning how to sustain the awareness so that we are doing all of what that is as an awareness. We want to have the experience.
It can be like you are no longer in your body. How does that work? There is a caretaker that will come in through the Traveler Consciousness and hold your body so that the silver cord is not severed. That is technical information if you are following that. In other words, you don’t die.
There have been those who would go out of the body and they don’t come back. If they have a big smile on their face, that might be a hint that they died on the way to a better place. The body wasn’t designed to handle it, but the Traveler has a business – so this is kind of like a commercial advertisement moment, word from our sponsor, the Traveler – for those of you who would like to do it for the last time so you don’t have to come back down the beanstalk, then we would want to do it so it is complete.
The Traveler is allowed, with your allowance that you give your authority – it’s your authority. It does not inflict. It cannot inflict. With your authority, the Traveler can take you out of the body and does that. And as J-R has said, it happens to everyone on the planet every night, and it’s okay.
“Well what if I get my sleep during the day because I do a graveyard shift or something like that?”
It can actually do it all the time. But the more important opportunity is that we go into a state where we are unconscious in the body – we call “sleep”. The scientists have studied that and we need to go into a deep enough state – alpha state – whatever you call it – I don’t care what you call it, but it is a deep enough state so that we are brought into the source of our life. We commune with the Divine presence and are restored, rejuvenated, so when we come back consciously into the body, we have more energy.
What we are doing in the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness through the Traveler Consciousness, and the assistance of the Divine presence that we also call the Christ, and what that is in the whole Spirit, is we are being allowed to do it more powerfully. We are also being allowed to shift up what we need to learn, so we complete our learning.
The Divine presence has this ability that we would know we are Beloved of God. The Lord is walking in our midst. It is in our breath wherever we go.
As we come to understand the Divine presence we understand we would seek it, not out in the world, but wherever we are. If you consider, “Well, God couldn’t be in this unholy place,” then you had better find it. Find it wherever you are as God is with you, so God is in the unholy place because the presence is with you and in the loving of all. That is something that we all have as a responsibility – to realize before we leave this world, that it is all a holy presence. And if we understood it consciously, we wouldn’t do anything to harm anyone or anything.
Then you may wonder how would we eat and that kind of thing? Let’s just consider that we would start to transform and transcend into ways that are of a higher nature. You have had experiences – and I will claim this for you even if you say, “Well I don’t remember,” but it is something like telepathy. Or you have had dreams. Or you have had visions and you realize they are not speaking. It is not a voice, but I know exactly what they are telling me. And they know what I am thinking, and it is a beautiful communication, but it doesn’t require the mouth or a tongue.
As we understand this is our nature, that we are going to go into a higher state where we don’t have stomachs. Why? Because, well, we don’t need them. We have energy. We have a need to take in the energy and then give it back. And then increase the capacity to take in – Father Mother God – and call on God’s name in that presence.
There are beautiful ways to do that silently and in the stillness of what that is. If you become still and you become silent, that is a beautiful receptacle, with the intention that you are open to the Divine nature, that it comes in your breath as you bring conscious awareness to the breathing in and the breathing out. And what is going on when that is taking place? That is something that is God’s miracle.
Just consider, “How could I do anything where these molecules come into my lungs, and then I pick the important molecules like the oxygen, and then I pass them through a membrane, and that membrane allows them to be placed into the blood, and the blood carries it into where the cells are in the body, and every cell needs oxygen. Then the cell is transmuted or something like that so it becomes carbon dioxide, and then it has a necessity to go back to the lungs and be breathed out?” That’s the Divine presence. It doesn’t need an explanation. It doesn’t need a definition. It doesn’t need a dictionary. It doesn’t need a scientist.
Innocence is one of the ways that we know the Divine presence. It has an openness that is pure. It hasn’t been tainted by the negativity in the creation.
Even if you say, “Well, I am too late for that. I have been tainted. I have been off. I have been transgressing here. I am a sinner. What can we do?”
You can let it go.
And to the degree you let it go, to the degree you also forgive another, then that is brought to you as a gift of the Divine presence. It just took place.
“You mean I was forgiven?”
Yes, but see, all I did was bring consciousness to it.
And you could say, “I was already conscious of it.”
Good. Then let that be more available so that you radiate in grace, that you don’t take what we call judgment and hold it, that if it comes to you, you transmute it to this consciousness that is the Divine love.
Do you know what John-Roger’s affirmation is? “I communicate living love.”
The experience of the Divine that is the presence in the “I AM”. When we say, “I AM,” we open up a field of awareness into the Divine, just those words in the purity of what they are.
In the scripture we can hear, “I am that I am.” That is one of those that if it got into a round it would start becoming a spiral that is expanding and lifting. Then it becomes like a bhajan or a song. Then some people start dancing and then, “Oh look, the whirling dervishes are up and moving.” It can be in that energy field, but it can also be in the energy field of changing diapers. Or doing something one more time to make it right. Or the intention is it can be better so I am going to apply what is here in the Divine presence into the better.
I am going to take the Divine presence that is in visitation with who I am, and I am going to extend it into what I do, what I say, and what I see through my eyes. Then we open up the senses. Then we can transmit this.
It often is something that if you go through the cultures and those who have been anointed of the spirit, and this is not a religious statement that I am making. I am talking about a fact, a truth, a living truth, that we can take on this higher presence that is God, and put it in to our beingness in the human condition. And then we become something on the order of miraculous. As we go through the cultures where this has taken place, we see it is of a universal nature, that God has been in all the corners, however many there are.
We have the stories and we have the lore, the beliefs, what is passed on generation to generation. Sometimes that is a lot of generations. The Divine presence has been shared and is often found in the music, in the stories that are told to the children. Sharing from generation to generation is important for the children’s development as a way to hear where we come from and who we are.
When we become who we are, when we grow to be who we are, what does it look like? What does it act like? Some of that can be the contrast. The negativity can be in the dark, but as a way to discover the Divine, that it is in all situations and circumstances as a presence. It becomes something that doesn’t need to be rational. It doesn’t need proof. It doesn’t need evidence. It doesn’t actually need a witness, but it has one. It’s in the Holy Spirit in that presence.
And that presence can be in any consciousness. None can be refused who seek it.
Baruch Bashan
You may find of interest the following items that are available through the MSIA website store: Practice the Divine Presence by John-Roger available in CD and MP3 formats, Calling Forward the Beloved by John-Roger, available in MP3 and MP4 formats and two books by John Morton: The Blessings Already Are and You Are the Blessings.
I am thinking of this as my 72nd birthday Blessing 6/23/1945