Behind the Scenes

BEHIND THE SCENES

by David Spangler

To start off for 2008, I've been asked by several readers if I'd write a David's Desk letter about current events. What might be happening behind the scenes of the world, so to speak, from the point of view of my inner colleagues?

Back in the Seventies and Eighties, my inner mentor—the being whom I called "John"—used to give a New Year's message every year in which he would talk about exactly such things, a kind of "State of the World" message from his perspective. They were insightful, sometimes prophetic (and usually accurately so), and always interesting. Unfortunately, he left to move on to other places and other work nearly twenty years ago, and the colleagues I have now on the inner are interested in different things.

When people ask me to tune in and see what's happening behind the scenes, sometimes there seems to me to be an unspoken assumption that one single directing consciousness is at work orchestrating events or that somewhere on the inner there's a blueprint that events are following the way the submarine follows the tracks through a series of preprogrammed adventures in Disneyland's Submarine ride. The assumption is that while we humans may not know what's happening, someone on the inner does. If you can pull back the curtain and see "backstage," then you should be able to see what that someone sees and know what's really going on.

Frankly, I haven't found this to be true.

Now this may simply be due to a deficiency in my ability to tune in and pull the curtain back sufficiently in order to see the hidden mechanisms and patterns at work. In fact, I'm sure there's some truth to that. I'm talented but not omniscient! But what I actually do see when the curtain pulls back is not a single backstage with a Director holding a script that everyone is following but many "backstages" each offering a different perspective, along with different scripts and directors.

Like on the physical realm, there are factions in the non-physical world with greater or lesser degrees of knowledge, insight, awareness, and even interest. Some beings I've encountered are very optimistic about humanity and how we're doing; others are decidedly less so, and for some, humanity is hardly a blip on the radar! If we prosper, fine, if we disappear, fine; it makes little difference to them. They bear us no ill will, but our fate is as real to them as the fate of the characters is to me in one of the movies I won't see at my local Cineplex for lack of time or interest.

Here's an example of what I mean by different perspectives. After President Bush invaded Iraq, I wanted very much to find out what was going on "behind the scenes." My motive wasn't curiosity. I've found that curiosity alone is a key that opens very few doors for me on the inner. I wanted to know how to help energetically. Personally, I felt the invasion was a bad idea and would have serious consequences for the United States. But I knew from past experience that things aren't always what they seem on the surface. So I tried to find out more.

The first encounter I had was with beings who were upset with the invasion. These were not, by the way, human entities but something more akin to "national elementals," a kind of "nature spirit" or "civilizational spirit" attuned to and working with the energy field and folk soul of the United States. From their point of view, this invasion would have terrible repercussions on the energetic wellbeing of our country and our connections with the rest of the world.

I felt my personal opinions affirmed by what they had to say. But one thing I've learned in over fifty years of communicating with a variety of inner beings is not to rest with one point of view. These beings represented one kind of "backstage." There were others.

I subsequently found myself in contact with a quite different being, this one human but one who had not been physically incarnated for at least a hundred years or more. This person wasn't anyone I knew historically; he didn't carry any kind of a "famous" vibe or identity, but he definitely was a being with long associations with the Soul of the United States. From one perspective, he was one step up from the previous beings I'd talked with, but as I'm not particularly hierarchically inclined, I saw him instead as coming from a different "department" or ecological "niche" on the inner, one with a very different perspective. His take was that by invading Iraq, Bush was doing what his soul was directing him to do in order to prevent a much larger and worse conflict from erupting. In a sense he was re-channeling energies of violence and war that had been building up. Yes, there would be negative consequences, this being said, but nowhere near as bad as might have happened ! had the invasion not taken place.

Well, this was an interesting perspective. It certainly wasn't something I had thought of, and I couldn't say I was hearing what I wanted to hear. But it made me think more deeply about what was going on.

Then about two or three weeks later, a third being contacted me, apparently attracted by my ongoing desire to know more deeply how to help. This being was not human and was not directly connected in any way to the United States but rather to humanity as a whole. It didn't say much, but it showed me patterns of energy like tangled balls of twine extending back in time, certainly being twisted and entangled by the Crusades but going back much earlier than that into the very beginnings of civilization itself in the Mesopotamian valley. The message was very clear: there were ancient patterns of bondage and conflict being worked out in the hope that the knots could be untangled and bound energies released. This being was quite detailed in sketching out some of the karmic patterns involved, making the point that we were witnessing on the outer the convulsive outworking of centuries, even millennia, of stuck energies. I had the sense that from its point of view, though regret! table, the war was melting frozen and binding energies from the past and at least getting this energy moving again. "Once it's moving," it said, "it can be dealt with. Healing and transmutation are possible, where before they were not." I should say that from this being's perspective, a hundred years was like an hour or a day for us and it's view of human suffering was impersonal to say the least.

But this was not the final word. Some time after this, I found myself in the presence of another being, this time a human again, though again one who had not been incarnated for a very long time, much longer than the person I had spoken to earlier who had given me the second perspective on the war.

This being, again as far as I know unknown to history, was radiant with love. He said, "There is healing possible here as you were told, but there are other ways this could have been accomplished as war has a way of creating further tangles. As a species we are still learning how to hold and transmute the energies of conflict without embodying the conflict itself. It is a matter of will and imagination, an issue of what you who are in embodiment can conceive of as possible and what you are willing and able to do to make that possibility a reality. And it is a matter of love, a power which embodied humans as a whole have yet to fully understand or explore. There may be karma, but there is also grace. Not everything that needs healing or liberation must be worked out in physical suffering or action for transmutation to take place. If you want to know what to do, hold all concerned in love and let none be banished from the circle of your blessings."

Here are four different perspectives from four different sources. Which one truly represents what's happening "behind the scenes"? Which one is the most accurate? Certainly, the warnings and concerns of the national elementals would appear to have been born out over the past five years. I have no way of proving or disproving the karmic issues, but I can understand what these sources were saying. My heart goes with the final perspective, though. I'm a sucker for messages about love! They call us to our highest nature and hold out possibilities that could certainly transform our world. It is the most true perspective for me as an individual.

Trying to see what's backstage depends a lot on who's doing the looking, which stage one is looking at, and how far "back" one wants to go. But do these differences mean that no one's in charge, that no one really is monitoring what's happening and directing the planetary drama towards a happy ending? Is it all just up for grabs? Is it all random? The answer is a clear, unequivocal, unambiguous…yes and no.

Maybe.

Here's why I say this.

If we accept the Gaia Hypothesis first proposed in the 1960s by British scientist James Lovelock that the earth as a whole is a living organism (and as an aside, there is enough scientific evidence supporting this hypothesis that it has now graduated to being properly called the "Gaia Theory"), then by being part of the biosphere and living on this world, we are all part of the complex connections and interactions that make up this organism. Some scientists have even referred to humanity as the developing nervous system of the planet.

This idea can be extended into the subtle realms as well. In effect, what we call the "inner worlds" are levels and domains of consciousness within Gaia, the World Soul. This is how I experience them, not as much as places—though they can certainly appear and act as such—but as parts of a great organism.

My body, like yours, is made up of trillions of cells, each of which is an individual life, and these cells are organized into tissues and organs. In a way, what I think of as an inner dimension or an inner world might be understood as an "organ" or "tissue" within the subtle body or consciousness body of the Earth. Each of my cells has its own life and purpose, yet they are all connected through a common impulse of life and by a shared genetic heritage. They share an identity. This identity, held in part by my DNA, acts as an organizing principle or matrix around which my physical body shapes and develops. In effect, my DNA is like a "plan" within me which my cells seek to follow. This genetic plan is what makes me human and not a pig or a cow or even a fruit fly. Yet within that plan are near-infinite variations and possibilities, as demonstrated by the uniqueness and difference of each human being.

When I make contact with the inner worlds, I definitely am aware of an Intentionality at work, an organizing force that shapes chaos into order and possibilities into realizations. I don't think of this Intentionality as akin to a human organizational plan, with goals and benchmarks, but more like the genetic plan within an organism: an expression of fundamental identity that determines what the organism will be and what it can become. For that matter, I'm aware of several such great Intentionalities at work, linked in an ecology of love and coherency, much as the identities and intentionality of my various organs are linked in the integrity of my body as expressions of my wholeness.

Thus there is an Intentionality I feel within humanity, and Intentionalities within other species of plants and animals, and of ecosystems and of the planet itself, all connected within the wholeness of Gaia, the World Soul, which itself is contained in that fundamental Intentionality I think of as the Sacred or the Generative Mystery.

These Intentionalities really do seek, though love, the wellbeing of the collective Identities they represent, the particular individuals who make up those collectives, and the larger wholeness they share and in which they participate. And this overall intentionality shapes the world and the probabilities of events, in the same way that my genetic intentionality shapes me as a human.

But each of these Intentionalities sets an overall pattern within which a great deal of variation and freedom is possible. So, for instance, while I find a definite intent "behind the scenes" that humanity prosper and unfold and that each human being be honored and blessed, how this may come about is wide open. In effect, it's up to us, to the collective of all human beings, both physical and non-physical.

Having said that, there are definitely human agencies, both here on the physical and on the inner, that have as their task "playing the odds," so to speak, and increasing the probabilities that our collective fostering and unfoldment will occur in peaceful, loving, blessingful ways as much as possible and whenever possible. To switch from a biological metaphor, think of the great Intentionalities, such as the World Soul or the sacredness within humanity, as rivers. It's quite possible to dig canals from them to irrigate soil that otherwise would be parched. In ancient Egypt, the Nile flooded its banks every year, enriching the surrounding soil, but irrigation ditches and canals were also built to enhance this effect.

Love, blessing, creativity, and other spiritual goodies may flow to us from the Intentionalities of which we are a part, but we can also enhance this flow in a multitude of ways, through our thinking, our feeling, our acting, our relationships, and so on. One can look "behind the scenes" and see these great rivers flowing and say, "Yes, there is a spiritual destiny for humanity," and feel optimistic. But one might not see where individuals are digging irrigation ditches that bring water where it might not otherwise be, or where a canal collapses or becomes filled and obstructed with the silt of violence or fear, karma and habit. The world is like a delta, a vast interplay of "waterways" and currents that are constantly shifting, filling up, opening up, flooding, irrigating, and responding to the flow of the river behind it.

So there is randomness and unpredictability. There can be different perceptions on what is happening, and different levels of participation. And at the same time there is a flow of life and purpose that creates context and organization, wholeness and integrity. There are Intentionalities whose love and caring are very real and very present. And there are individuals working on the inner and on the outer who transform this flow of power and presence from these Intentionalities into specific actions of creativity, service and blessing through their "ditch-digging" and "irrigation."

No matter what we may see "behind the scenes," we always have the power to wield a shovel.

Blessings,

David Spangler

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