Joining the God-Driven Adventure Into Transfiguration
A few years ago when I was living with my cats, Topaz and Jade, in a ramshackle cabin in the forgotten depths of the Arkansas Ozarks, I wrote this prayer:
In this age when history itself is on fire
In this time of the convulsion of the beast
Of the final dance of the enraged demons
May I keep faith, Lord, in Your sublime alchemy
That has ordained the mystery
That from deepest darkness births the Highest Light.
(from Light the Flame: 365 Days of Prayer, 2013.)
As you know, tonight I begin a class that I am honored to teach for the Shift Network, Embrace the Dark Night to Become the Phoenix Rising, which outlines the birth of the Divine Human.
I have known for the last 20 years two interlinked truths that have kept me awake night after night, and wildly and exhaustingly on the road. These truths are that humanity was heading for a terrifying global dark night and that this global dark night was potentially not at all the end but the shattering, amazing and terrible beginning of the birth of an embodied humanity.
I knew these two truths because I lived them and because I had been instructed in their evolutionary truth by my heart’s beloved, Father Bede Griffiths, the greatest Christian mystic of the 20th century who told me just before he died that we are in the hour of God.
What is going to happen is that the world is going to be plunged into unimaginable and all comprehensive crisis. But this is not the end; rather it is the beginning of a wholly new way of being and doing everything. So stay steady, surrender yourself to truth and allow grace to reveal to you the astounding destiny that you and all of humanity have before them through the alchemy of divine grace.
I think all of you now know that there will never be a return to normal, that any return to any fake normal would be a disaster because it would mean a return to all the rotten habits of denial, hubris, greed, and narcissism on crack that have led the whole human race to the multiple ordeals that are now exploding together.
What you may not know is that this terrifying time has been prophesied by all the great evolutionary mystics of humanity who have understood viscerally that such a time would come and be necessary in its horrific rigor as a purification and preparation for the revealing of the ultimate secret. This secret is expressed in the words of the great Hindu mystic, Chandidas, who sang, “God is Man’s secret, and Man is God’s secret.” What he meant is that humanity is on a God-driven adventure into an unimaginable flowering of transfiguration, a birth of divine consciousness in mind, heart, soul and body.
This is the time for the revealing of this ultimate secret. Those who align with its truths will be fed with joy, peace, strength, courage and passion beyond their wildest imaginings, and will receive revelation after revelation directly from the Godhead and be able to accept, endure and surrender to any ordeal, however searing and bewildering. They will be the Special Forces of evolution, not in any elitist sense but in their determination to remain lovers of God and humanity whatever the dark forces do, in their resolution to align their whole beings with the great birth and with being warrior midwives for that birth. For this they will need these qualities and virtues:
- Radical humility
- Radical capacity for unknowing knowing
- Radical passion for compassionate service
- A blazing authenticity of courage
If you look carefully, you will see beings like this already on the earth. You will see young activists like Greta Thunberg, holy beings like the Dalai Lama, great journalists like Rachel Maddow, indefatigable doctors of truth like Dr. Anthony Fauci. You will see in your own life people who know the terrible score but have reacted not with paralysis but with wilder and sweeter kindness to everyone they know.
I have experienced these divine beings myself as I recently went through the grueling initiation of having my right hip replaced, blessed by the unbelievable pragmatic goodness of at least 20 doctors, nurses and therapists, each one of whom I could see quite clearly were living jewels of this kind of spirit. So do not be fooled by the enraged demons, do not be paralyzed by the convulsion of the beast, do not be taken in by the messages of hopelessness and despair. They are all illusions. The final truth is always love and joy and service all together in one noble humble flame of persistence and fidelity to truth.
I have been waiting to reach this Shift Network class all my life but now for the first time feel fully able to do so with real radical passion and faith. And I am asking you to join with me and thousands of others in becoming part of the Special Forces of evolution, aligned with the evolutionary truth of the highest light being born from the deepest darkness.
I have constructed a 7-part transmission which will begin by giving you an overall vision of this evolutionary ordeal we are in and then take you into the lives and testimonies of the four greatest modern evolutionary mystics who have been my most important illuminating heart teachers who know the skinny because they have lived it.
I am going to crystalize for you the essential teachings of these tremendous pioneers of the heart and the laws of transfiguration that their work exposes and explores. I will distill for you forty years of my own journey and exploration of their work, so that as far as I am able and with the grace of the beloved, at the end of the seven weeks we spend together, you will have four essential tools.
The first is the clearest possible vision of the dark night and how it could prepare the birth of a new humanity. The second is living testimony from those who have been born into this new humanity. The third will be radiant maps of what to expect and endure and celebrate at different twists and turns of the journey. The fourth will be practices from the heart of the great mystical traditions to enable you to taste viscerally the reality of this astonishing process.
I would be deeply honored if as many of you as possible would join me in what I know to be the most sublime imaginable adventure. I cannot promise you an easy journey and there are no slick formulas for the transformation into the Divine Human.
What I can promise you is that if you allow yourself to catch flame from the fire of those who know that this reality is possible, everything you live in this terrifying time will be utterly changed and you will know order in the middle of chaos, hope in the middle of despair, peace in the middle of madness, courage in the middle of paralysis and joy in the middle of an agonizing ordeal of birth.
Let me end with an epigram with the great master of transfiguration the 17th century German mystic, Angelus Silesius:
God is my spirit
God is my blood
And flesh and bones—
How could I not be
Completely
Deified in Him?
This is the message that can resurrect the human race. I love you and hope to be with you very soon.
Andrew
P.S. Join me starting today, October 14, and let’s dive into this alchemical furnace together.
