Introduction

They are like trees along a river bank bearing luscious fruit each season without fail. Their leaves shall never wither, and all they do shall prosper.

Psalms 1

September 9, 1995 a dream message

Today’s world makes it very difficult to be a spiritual person. Values seem to constantly change as family, community, planet, perhaps the whole universe, appears to be in a state of constant flux. Roles are changing dramatically for women and men both as regards to relationships and as regards to self-expression. In a simpler time it was easier to follow the flow of the culture and the standard for religious expression whether one were Moslem, Christian, Buddhist, and so forth. But today, the standards for everything are changing. Individuation has become a prized attribute for personal expression while there are still norms that one must conform to in order to survive within the culture.

Up till this date, the common method for spiritual understanding and guidance was other directed. Buddha would sit under a tree until enlightened and then take the message to the community. However, Buds message of impermanence is reaching critical mass and individual spirituality is permutating into a new form. A form of spiritual self-development. And, for most of us, this change is very frightening. The old laws that governed our behaviors in our day-to-day relationships with man and God have fallen by the roadside and we re being forced to find new paths of spirituality.

In essence, the modern person in order to have a fulfilling life in all dimensions and aspects must create the skills and processes for a personal vision quest. We have found that when we follow the cues from the external world which speaks of material success several things happen. First, we become so caught up in the process of work that we lose touch with our natural spiritual teachers. In the past, the farmers and hunters and gathers could feel the earth beneath their feet, look at the changing cycles of the moon, hide in a cave to protect themselves from a raging storm and know the power of God and infinite patterns and continuity from a tangible primitive experience. Now we experience the weather from climate controlled cars and houses and work places. We see all the disasters on CNN and our shamans forecast the storms of the earth via satellite. Women’s reproductive cycles are controlled by little pills and not the moon. Children are deliver by C-section at the convenience of the doctor in expensive suites not by the rhythms of the mother’s body and a circle of loving family women.

However, God is not dead. He is just lost in the constant clutter of today’s technological world. Unfortunately, he does not have a night news show on cable or an email address. He exists where he always did in the souls and minds of man whispering in our dreams. Yet the soma of technology has deadened our ability to hear the message. But it is not because we do not have the need and desire to experience oneness with God. It is just that we now have the ability to communicate with God in a new way that we never had in the history of mankind except for an enlightened few. Each of us has the ability to become our own Guru... our own Master... our own Shaman.

Many today are seeking to rediscover that closer walk with God. We are flocking in record numbers to discover the ancient arts of our indigenous spiritual experience. We are paying exorbitant prices for the herbs that our great-grandmothers gathered in the near-by woods and brewed to heal the sick. We are listening to tapes of channelers and self-help teachers. We call our friends on toll free numbers looking for hope and messages from spirit. Many are trying to recapture the old walk by following the fundamentalists in all religions from Christianity to Wicca. But each of us in reality is seeking a way to hear the quiet voice of God within us which was there before the first fish swam in the waters of earth and before the next electron impulse flies along the fiber optics of our telephone.

As for me, I have known for thirty years or more that I was to be a missionary in the vernacular of the fundamentalist culture in which I was raised. My father used to dream of me going to the darkest continents of primitives and spreading the gospel. However, I have know that the gospel and he knew it and taught it was being reborn in a new and dynamic way – A way that was to light the way for the world to enter a new realm of spiritual discovery. I still see my work as a mission to the darkest realms of mankind which I now realize is that lonely place in the human heart where the flame of spiritual connection has dimmed and in thousands of cases has died out. I am here to help you, if you choose to do it, to rekindle the fires of hope and spiritual connection that is our heritage as humans. It is time to evolve our spiritual quest into this new century... a century of enlightenment.

On September 9, 1995 after more than five years of searching for the sign that I was ready to begin my mission and that the message would be revealed I had a dream. In the dream my husband, Mark, and his father, Tonio, had gone on a trip. Mark returned to me with a gift that he had bought at Value City Department Store. It was in the shape of a church window with an arch and it was edged in gold. As I opened the card, I knew that it was a card celebrating death and rebirth. At the bottom was written in gold: Psalms 1: I AM. I thought about this for several days. The dream imagery and message kept returning to me. On September 11, 1995 I looked up Psalms 1:

Oh the Joys of those who do not follow evil men’s advice, who do not hang around with sinners, scoffing at the things of God. But they shall delight in doing everything God wants them to do, and day and night area always meditating on his laws and thinking about way to follow him more closely.

They are like trees along a river bank, bearing luscious fruit each season with out fail. Their leaves shall never wither, and all they do shall prosper.

But for sinners, what a different story. They blow away like chaff before the wind. They are not safe on Judgement Day; they shall not stand among the Godly.

For the Lord watches over the plans and paths of the godly men, but the path of the godless lead to doom.

I knew that this was a message from God that it was time for me to begin my work. How was I a going to be able to interpret this message and what it means to me and those that I am here to serve by sharing the message of spiritual self-development?

Simply the interpretation and meaning came to me as I quieted myself and listened to the voice of God.

First, the evil men’s advice is to listen to the message of the material world to guide our activities and direct our lives. We must learn to listen to the inner voice of divine spirit. We are to meditate upon spiritual laws and to follow the voice of God within us. If we learn to listen to this inner guidance and apply it to our daily life we will have fulfillment and joy in our lives. We will not feel that cold emptiness that happens when we have gained the world but lost our soul. We will prosper in all that we do and our lives will bear fruit season after season. Sinners are those who miss the mark in life. They aim only for the material world and ignore the spiritual. And even before we die, when we are spiritually impoverished, we are never happy, content or satisfied with our lives. The judgment day is the moment that one looks at one’s life and is alone. One recognizes that one is spiritually isolated from those who have connected with the divine which resides within and connects all beings in infinite oneness. God is within and our awareness and connection allows us to grow and prosper. If we refuse to listen to this small but infinite voice of God that lives within we are doomed forever to roam the material world which can become the path of the godless leading to depression, isolation, and emptiness – truly a hell on earth.

The good news is here. God is waiting for you to rediscover him and to experience the wonder, joy, and prosperity that is awaiting those who wish to experience their divine right to be the chosen ones. All are chosen, but few respond to the call. The spirit of God is now trying to speak to you and has led you to read this book and to re-learn the way of divine communication.

This book is based upon the way that I discovered the direct link with the infinite within myself. In many ways, you will be able to use the insights that I experienced to jump-start your own vision quest. For many of you, there will be techniques that you are already aware of but have not been using. For all of you, interaction with my writings will be a form of meditation upon the message that awaits within you – your special calling, insight, message from the divine.

Very importantly you must be aware that each of us interprets the messages from the inner voice through the filters of our own consciousness and symbols created by our own experience. Therefore, read, absorb, analyze and come to your own understanding. The old ways of laws and spiritual understanding being a ritual of blindly following doctrine written down in stone. The spiritual experience today is dynamic and changing. It is a flow of seasons and experiences. While God is infinite and every changing, the message of God has evolved as man has evolved to understand it. A thousand years from now as man continues his evolution so will the level of his understanding of the divine infinite. Let your spirit, mind, and body be filled with the light. It is the time of your personal illumination. An illumination that comes from your personal inner knowing and relationship with spirit. As you begin your journey maintain an open mind and remember God is too big for anyone religion.

For you are like trees along a river bank bearing luscious fruit each season without fail. Your leaves shall never wither and all that you do shall prosper.

Addendum

From September 9 to November 22, 1995 I was in a state of total emotion and chaos and as I worked and studied these ideas more deeply. I dug deep into the library looking at the works fo spiritual leaders, theologians and philosophers from both east and west. Always dancing underneath this search was a growing awareness that death was growing closer and closer and I could not shake the feeling of impending crisis. However, about November 18, I realized that the only way out of a storm is through it and I resolved myself to what was coming. On November 22, 1995 my father-in-law, Manuel Antonio Serna-Maytorena died quickly and, to everyone else, unexpectedly. But in the days following I realized how prophetic my dream had been and how important it is to live life fully. Rather than being in a crisis of disbelief, this became an opportunity to experience even more the value of belief in the face of the reality of man’s ultimate fate – death. The echo of death in our hearts, surrounds the call to life. And like the card in my dream that my husband and father-in-law brought to me, it is even more obvious than ever, that in this moment of life, we can each truly say: I AM. That is the ultimate reality for each of us. Tomorrow, we may not be but for now we exist and we must exist in joy and love and the expression of the total creative potential of being. In our hunger, our search for God, we can only quench it in our relationships and connection with the divine which can only be discovered within ourselves and in those that we love.