This text is the first chapter of the now completed book, A Conspiracy of Love; Revealing the Heart of the Universe. I hope it give you some sense of the content and sentiment of the book. Please feel free to email me comments or questions. To order this book just email me for a PDF file of the full manuscript. The price for the full manuscript is $22.
A Conspiracy of Love: Revealing the Heart of the Universe
by
John J. Burton, EdD
Acknowledgments
First, I want to recognize and appreciate the opportunity and privilege I have had to work with clients over the years in this Sacred Work. Though referred to as clients, each person is just that: a person in search of greater well-being. In our unique ways, we all seek the same experience. I am honored to assist. Next, I would like to thank friends who have read and given feedback on the manuscript: Irene, Madeline, Ashley, Joe, and Larry. I also want to thank my editor, Michelle Turner, for her skillful assistance and thoughtful suggestions. I want to thank my wife Irene for her ceaseless support and contributions to my efforts in so many ways. Thank you for the encouragement, nurturing, and love, as these are the most valuable offerings I could receive. Thank you! Lastly, I want to thank the One, who, as always, makes all things possible. Your infinite generosity is endlessly appreciated.
To the Reader
I appreciate your willingness to accept this journey into unknown territory. Expect to discover new perspectives and new methods of dealing with ancient elements. I ask that you read with an open mind, with a receptivity to explore and try on the ideas and methods presented here. Decide what works for you and what you want to keep from this book to illuminate your journey toward wholeness. My wish for you is that this work stirs new awareness, that you find more of your Sacred Self and, thus, greater fulfillment.
Contents
Chapter 1 – The Heart of the Matter 3
Chapter 2 – Three Trinities. 11
Chapter 3 – The Ego as Hero. 19
Chapter 4 – General Overview of Levels of Consciousness. 37
Chapter 5 – The Point of Assembly: Making “Meaning”. 52
Chapter 6 – The Heart of the Universe in All 74
Chapter 7 – At the Center of Everything. 92
Chapter ∞ – Life from Here. 114
Chapter 1
The Heart of the Matter
“Christian, Jew, Muslim, shaman, Zoroastrian, stone, ground, mountain, river, each has a secret way of being with the mystery, unique and not to be judged.”
―Jalal ad-Din Rumi
Expanding our awareness beyond the confines of the human mind, we find the abiding Truth that gracefully awaits our homecoming. Sensing our way through the observable surface of this life, the Universe reveals itself to us. In this revealing, we discover that everything, everyone, and every event is either a direct expression of Love or an invitation to re-experience the eternally present Absolute Love. All is a form of Love, either overtly declaring itself or residing in disguise, eternally patient until we realize the Truth. Our journey is plumbing the depths of consciousness to rediscover this abiding Truth.
The perspective presented in this work is that the Spiritual Universe, rather than individuals or society, is continuously communicating with us at direct and meta levels. Roger Walsh, MD, PhD, refers to this perspective in his book Essential Spirituality, calling it “transnoia.” It’s not just that all is of the Source, but that the Source is the all, and all is here for our growth toward spiritual Unity with God.
Direct communication of Love from God is pretty easy to recognize as we experience enjoyable events and emotions like love, joy, peace, or other uplifting emotions. The indirect invitations often take the form of some kind of adversity. This apparent adversity provides a rich opportunity to find and experience God once again. By decoding the reflexive meaning given to adversity by our ego, we gain access to the combination to the Sacred Safe.
Adversity is simply a kind of unfilled vessel, but not the empty vessel of the Spirit realm. Then again, yes, it is like this empty vessel, and we participate by drawing on God to fill the void. This earthly empty vessel, known as adversity, is lacking and in need. Human self wants to fight it as a threat. Higher-self recognizes the lack and then infuses Sacred Energy into this circumstance. Our response to adversity determines how it affects us and how events play out in the future. Ego’s response to adversity often includes withholding love. I ask, whether it is in a relationship or a circumstance, how will withholding love from where it is missing solve the problem which was created by withholding love?
To understand the emotions that activate in response to adversity, we must go within our self. In the process, we discover the one aspect of our inner world possessing the most potent, untapped energy. The ego! Wait, what did I just say? Yes, our ego, devoted to us, performs a thankless job and gets a bad rap as the culprit in our distress and suffering. It is our fundamental misunderstanding of the language and intention of ego that is the source of our distress and suffering. Ego is somewhat of a gatekeeper, the doorkeeper between the outside world and our inner experiences. I’ll explain.
Ego serves as our protector, though it is often overzealous. In response to threats that ego perceives, it activates, giving birth to what we call negative emotions such as anxiety, sadness, anger, and their variations. Each of these emotions is designed by our primitive self to protect us from harm. The emotions we consider to be negative serve as an urgent call for us to remember and reconnect with God who resides within us.
While we know about our survival brain, this part of us is dedicated and in constant service to us. Our ego-self places protective layers, known as painful emotions, over the internal presence of God as a way of protecting us in response to emotional trauma. These coatings are intended to preserve our Sacred gifts until we are out of danger.
What else do we know so devoted, so determined to keep us safe? Though often misguided in its efforts, this is a form of Love. Understanding the nature and language of ego allows us to radically change our relationship with this part of our self. We begin recognizing and expressing heartfelt gratitude through utilizing ego’s life-changing offerings. We then experience the all-inclusive Unity by reclaiming the gift of Love residing at the core of these painful emotions.
These so-called negative emotions are actually inviting us to find more of our self, more of our inner being, before we go forward in life. The gift intended by our ego includes recovering parts of self and utilizing these reclaimed parts of self as the boat to navigate the river. This perspective, along with the exercises described in a later chapter, not only changes our relationship with ego but also, more importantly, changes our understanding of ego’s intention at a fundamental level.
The expressions and invitations emanate from the One God, One Source, so regardless of the form an experience takes, each one is loving. Our opportunity is to discover and manifest this Truth. I have come to believe that if it’s not Love, it is an illusion, and the only illusion is that anything is not Love.
Nothing can come into existence without Love as its Source, its inception point. And this Love does not, cannot, abandon its creation, as God is both the creator and the creation, all One. Does the original appearance of God’s Love morph in this 3D world? Yes, when ego bends the original Light, a refraction of a sort occurs. We’ll call it “egocentric refraction.” This Light-bending of egocentricity leads to misunderstandings about self, painful emotions, limiting beliefs, and detrimental behaviors overlaid on the original arrangement by God’s Love.
Drawing on the deeply rich, liberating awareness of transnoia, the material here presents insights, tools, and guiding principles that will assist you in finding and experiencing the Love that is the All within, between, and around. The perspective presented here integrates the wisdom of the ages, from mystics and sages along with numerous other more contemporary sources, laying out the Truth of the Universe, that God only intends and provides Love for us all.
More practically, methods will be presented for translating the symbolic communication of Spirit and for performing your own alchemy to access and receive the Love provided by God. Of an especially profound nature, we will discover how the ego is actually a Sacred presence devoted to our survival.
It bears repeating: it’s not just that all is of the Source, but that the Source is the all, and all is here for our growth toward spiritual communion with God. As Paul Tillich declares, “God does not exist, He is being itself, beyond essence and existence.” Richard Rohr, in his book The Universal Christ, shares the following: “People would call me a pantheist (the universe is God), whereas I am really a panentheist (God lies within all things, but also transcends them).”
While this current work is not about religion, Christianity, or transnoia, it is about experiencing the mystical realm that echoes the panentheist’s creed as a foundation for discovering, revealing, and embodying this omnipresent Love for our sustenance and evolution in this life. It will guide you through the catharsis of accessing and converting the rich, Sacred Energy that is stored within ego’s protective emotions.
We’ll identify specific steps involved in the alchemical process and ways to know that we have effectively converted the initially unwelcome “teacher emotion” that shows up when we most need to Remember all that is God. These negative emotions, initially unwelcome, lovingly teach us about the omnipresence of God once we learn to sense beneath the surface. As Pema Chödrön proclaims, “Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.”
In keeping with the theme that God is everything, not just in everything, we are enabled to recognize and commune with God at all times and places. You are likely familiar with the idea that everyone is our teacher. I want to expand this to say that everything is our teacher—every flower, blade of grass, bush, tree, every animal, and every emotion—a grand conspiracy.
Yes, every emotion, even our ego-self, along with all we observe is present to assist us in growing closer to the One Source, revealing the Heart of the Universe. These words of Jesus were found in Nag Hamadi in 1945: “The Kingdom of God is inside you and all around you. Not in a mansion of wood and stone. Split a piece of wood and I am there. Lift a stone and you will find me.”
I’ll describe a brief example that I experienced with the ever-present available teachers that make up this world. Many years ago, I spent several hours with a shaman. I wanted to understand his view of the world and of life in general. We met at a large state park with numerous trails through the woods, many following alongside a vigorous river flowing through the park. Various wildlife could be seen from deer to blue herons, squirrels, and turtles.
While walking, we talked, paused, and looked around our environment with particular notice of how the universe lives by its own rhythm and style with effortless grace. We observed how the universe communicates with us, as well as our interaction with the universe. This shaman encouraged me to interact with the entity we call nature. At one point, he asked me to stop walking and step into this bush, a horsetail bush, as I later found out. He asked me to step slightly into the space of this bush and just be present.
My first response was to draw on my past experiences and observations of nature. Ego spoke up and said I will again notice that this bush is so trusting. It just grows and doesn’t wonder how well it is growing or how it looks or if it will grow. Once I could silence my ego, I received an amazing lesson from this horsetail bush. The bush guided my consciousness to a “place” before trust.
Yes, the place before trust. I was shown how trust is a human-made bridge that provides passage back to the One, the All, where trust is moot. In full union, we just exist within the Whole. Trust is what we use when we feel we are out of connection with God in order to re-establish the connection. This place before trust is our Truth, our awareness of our infinite-eternal Love-worthiness. This extension of God, known as a horsetail bush, escorted me to reunion with the Divine, as this bush is simply, yet exquisitely, one of the endless arrays of escorts through the Sacred Portal to Oneness.
The principles of this dynamic play out in social systems when adversity strikes, in general interpersonal relationships when conflict occurs, and in the struggles of family systems, as well as within our self, when we experience painful emotions. We’ll look inside each of these systems to find the God that resides within the strife, so that we can accept the invitation and accept the intended Love from God.
Ultimately understanding the Heart of the Universe results in a “namaste” to all levels, thanking the teacher and acknowledging the Divine essence residing in all. Realizing what resides beneath the observable surface of any event or any emotion allows us to convert the potential deception into Truth. Every deception brings a teacher, and every Truth is a teacher.
The overriding process is that when you effectively access the core of the teacher emotion, you will find and activate the opposite emotion of the surface. Our ego takes its creations of uncomfortable emotions literally, as this is the only way it can perceive. The rule of thumb about our relationship with emotions is something like this: if the emotion is “negative,” then it requires translating.
Treating “dialectics” as a process of reconciling apparent opposites through discussion, we can apply this to the seeming opposites of ego and Spirit. The process of reconciling the negative surface presentation of our ego and the proposed opposite, Love embedded within lower-self, becomes available. Since all exists as an extension of God, a form of God, our lower self embodies this Truth as well. In the 3D world, it takes a form opposite that of the higher realm but shares a common purpose.
Ego is totally dedicated to our survival. Our lower self offers the most potent learning and growth through uncomfortable emotions. What other than Love performs with this kind of devotion? The confirming of this Love comes when we find the invitation from ego to use its negative emotions as a catalyst for reunion with God, availing us to the transforming resources provided. We come to find that everything serves as a pathway back to God. All roads lead home. As Rumi suggests, “Live life as if everything is rigged in your favor.”
Ego’s understanding is very limited, meaning it takes communication from within literally. We must decode the message for it to be of benefit. We accomplish this by listening with our “third ear,” our wise ear. This translating of survival brain’s communicating invokes our higher self and our abstract, meta perceiving ability. We are now free to recognize the essential message. As an example of some ego translations, self-pressuring yields to reveal self-acceptance as the original core. Oppression becomes empowerment. Worry becomes reassurance and then peace. Anger becomes satisfaction or fulfilment. We gain, receive, and experience the originally intended Love in the forms of acceptance, empowerment, and peace, for instance.
We’ll go through multiple examples of translations in a later chapter to illustrate how this process unfolds and how to transmute this multilayered presentation for yourself. Revealing the Sacred center leads you to reconnect with, experience, and integrate the form of Love at the epicenter of any uncomfortable emotion.
Realizing the Sacred that embodies in our ego, and integrating this within our self, allows us to manifest the Divine, fulfilling our deepest desires. We then engage with Spirit to co-create. The power of participating in our own life is beyond measure. As I was told by Spirit in the past, “Our deepest dreams never die. We are either planning, pursuing, or attempting to resist their incessant beckoning.”