by Marshall Vian Summers
November, 2003

from GreaterCommunity Website

We are now in the “Holy Days” of the year. This is a time when we have the opportunity to rekindle our spiritual awareness and the remembrance of the Divine Presence within our lives and within our collective history. In the Holy Days, several spiritual traditions converge, each with a commemoration of their own: Christmas for Christians, Hanukkah for Jews, Ramadan for Muslims, and so forth. In each of our traditions, the Holy Days are meant to be a time of personal reflection, thanksgiving and communion with the Divine. Yet for so many people, this opportunity for personal retreat is overwhelmed by either war and deprivation or family obligations and overbearing consumerism. As a result, the spirit of the Holy Days is lost. Here the fortunate few press on with massive shopping and family holiday preparations, while others are left to face and ponder their loneliness and isolation. Strangely, this is a time of extremes, where both our wealth and our poverty become exaggerated.

The teaching in Greater Community Spirituality offers us an important New Message at this paradoxical time of year. This New Message comes from the Creator. It emphasizes our common spiritual origin and reality and our destiny within a Greater Community of intelligent life in the universe around us. The meaning of this is far deeper than it might seem at first. Within the New Message we find:

• We are all born of one God.

• We have all come into the world for a purpose to serve our world in unique ways which we may or may not discover in the course of our lifetime here.

• We will all eventually return to our Ancient Home with our work in the world either done or undone.

• Within this world, we are all one family called humanity.

• The differences between us are small compared to our common spiritual heritage and reality.

• All divisions between people are self created, not God created.

• All religions are journeys to one destiny, given in different forms for different cultures and for different temperaments.

• All the true prophets have emphasized our essential relationship with the Divine.

• There is really only one spirituality.

• Religions seek to define and direct human ability and morality. This is natural and occurs until each person is able to embrace the one spirituality of humanity.

• Conflicts between religions are based upon ignorance and are created by individuals for selfish reasons.

• Rare spiritual teachers are imbued with holiness, but there are no gods amongst us. We are all equal parts of the Creation.

• We find our real strength in experiencing our common spirituality. In the Greater Community this common spirituality is called Knowledge.

These unifying ideas are part of the New Message for our time. You may have heard some of these ideas before because they are already imbedded in the spiritual traditions that are a product and fabric of our collective life. Yet the New Message brings these key ideas together and makes them the center point, instead of an afterthought, of our spiritual and worldly awareness. Our individual success and happiness depend on building this greater awareness. Our future survival and freedom in the Greater Community require this.

The Holy Days are holy because they are testaments to our common spirituality, origin and destiny. However, as our religions continue to compete with one another, this testament becomes harder to find. Yet it is there if you look for it. As long as our religious interpretations compete, our ideologies compete and our cultures compete, we are lost to the Knowledge of our one spirituality, our Greater Community Spirituality.

The world now stands at the brink of escalating war, competition and conflict, leaving more and more people homeless and destitute. Our cultural diversity is being used against us, both by selfish individuals and, though recognized by only a few, by intervening extraterrestrial forces who seek profit and power from generating conflict in the human family. These are the forces of dissonance amongst us. Therefore, our real choice now is to recognize and emphasize our one human spirituality (Knowledge) and upon it and to build a new Greater Community understanding. This is the key to our ability and our commitment to generate the greater cooperation that people and nations will need to meet our global needs and to prepare for our future within a Greater Community of intelligent life.

This unity cannot come from forced religious belief, government propaganda or social, economic or political oppression. It must come from a fundamental reevaluation of our spiritual reality and collective destiny. This will be driven by necessity as more and more people crowd a world of shrinking resources and as Greater Community forces gain greater control within the world. Remember the motto: United we stand and divided we fall. This motto is not just for one country. It is now for the entire world. To make this possible, a New Message from God is being sent into the world to show the way. The essence of this Message is one spirituality, one people, one world and one destiny.

We can begin within the sphere of our relationships. We are different but the same. We already know the many ways in which we are unique and different from one another. Yet do we know how we are the same? What makes real relationship possible between people? It is what we have in common and what we can do together. This is what produces the core resonance that unites people at a deeper level. Our uniqueness may enrich and expand such a relationship, but at its core, the relationship is built upon a resonance that transcends our ideas and distinctions. This is the quality of relationship that people everywhere in the world are either experiencing at this moment or are seeking, because it is our natural inclination to be in real relationship with one another. In this way, returning to God begins with returning to the one spirituality that we share and that is the core of our being. This is the most powerful form of praise that we can offer to our Creator.

In the New Message, there are no heroes to worship, for worship is reserved only for God. Respect and admiration may be due to virtuous people, but not worship. Worshiping a person is the ultimate form of separating them from everyone else. In the New Message, this is discouraged. Finding what you share with God and with another person is the key to finding the bond and the unity that can change the world and avert disaster in the future. Recognize the humanity that you share with another person, and it is very difficult to attack or hurt them for any reason.

Perhaps this is a very different Holiday message from the ones you might hear around you. The New Message is not about saviors, miracles or holy wars. It is far more simple than this. It is about people being real and honest with themselves and one another. It is about embracing the Knowledge of our one spirituality. It is about recognizing our common fate and responsibility to one another and to the entire human family. This holds the key to finding the “Holiness” and the natural happiness that seem to be especially missing in the Holy Days. It is time to let this Knowledge out. Any time that this can happen will be remembered as a Holy Day.