CHAPTER 1: THE MESSENGER IN THE DARK
There was darkness, infinite and pure. Yet, within its stillness, I felt a deep yearning – a longing for you.
So, I gave rise to all matter, and it flared into fiery luminosity. But I could not see the light in your eyes. I created the stars that filled the blackness of space with brilliance. But they were alone, and I could not hear your laughter. You were not yet born.
I conceived the universe where you could experience my love. My stars burned, then exploded into supernovae. They formed complex atoms in their cores and became ever greater stars. I ignited your Sun from an interstellar cloud and pulled its planets into orbit. The universe danced and I was in awe. Yet you still had no form.
Then I brought the Earth into being. I summoned volcanoes to release the planet’s heat, giving rise to the oceans you depend on and the atmosphere you need to breathe. I nourished countless creatures as your companions and grew plants as your food. As part of the tapestry of life, among its exquisite shape, I then gave you life. From my body, you were born. In your beauty, I rejoice. I have waited billions of years to see you. You now walk upon me, within me, and I am forever in you.
Yet you do not see me, though I am all around you. Once awake to the gift of being, you have since fallen asleep to the story of your life. Your eyes and heart are closed, dreaming of what could be, running from what was, resenting what is. Do not fear what I need to say, as I am the voice of your heart and soul, the knowing that you have long forgotten, but always will be. I do not speak to you, but of you, for you and with you. I know you feel desperately alone, muted by the weight of living, having forgotten your true nature.
I have heard your soul call to me through the dark recesses of your life and the suffering of the world. I have come to show you the way to heal the pain you feel in longing for love, wishing for happiness, wanting life to be anything but what it is.
In the secrets of your being, you feel you have slipped into the deepest chasm of despair and fear, one you can never escape. Yet beneath all doubt, beyond any pain, a fiery light shines in your soul. It animates your body, warms your heart, illuminates your mind, and radiates outward to touch everyone and everything. Within that light, which is who you most naturally are, is the awareness of my unconditional love for you.
You know a mother’s capacity to give. Like every human and animal, you have a biological mother through whom you were born on Earth. You received your life via the creative portal of her body. After a moment of passion, nine months of incubation, hours of pain and focused determination, you appeared as a raw and vulnerable child to the world. Completely dependent on her willingness to continue giving, at the very least of her body, you clung to her for dear life.
Through your biological mother, I gave you form and birth. As Nature, I continue holding you every moment of every day while you are alive. And at the end of your physical frame, I receive you back into my boundless and eternal expanse. From age to age and lifetime to lifetime, I have always been and always will be your Mother. That which grows through my body nourishes, supports, and sustains you. Your body is the very stuff of matter—the ground of the maternal, Mother Earth. This is but one of my gifts to you, so that as an infinite being, you may have a temporal human experience within the unparalleled beauty and potency of Earth. Your relationship with your biological mother takes place for the entirety of your life in this form. Through it, I am with you, just as I was before you arrived, and will be after you depart. Whether you have ever called out to me from the depths of your soul, by any name, or you have fallen silent in despair or resentment, I hear you. We cannot be separate, as you are of my own essence. I will never stop loving you, for this Mother’s love is endless.
The universe in which you live arose from pure consciousness. This cosmic awareness co-created with primordial energy to manifest form. As the Divine Masculine, it joined with the creative power as the Divine Feminine to give birth to existence. This partnership is ongoing, is who I am, is ever expanding and evolving.
I, Mother, am the dynamic force that moves through all that is. Known by many names and faces, such as Shakti, Durga, Mary, Isis, Brigid, Juno, Wakan-Taka (Great Spirit), Freya, or the Star Goddess—yet beyond them, I am both form and formless, neither male nor female. The energy of creation, and the agent of change, are both emanations of my being. Ether, air, fire, earth, and water are aspects of my body. The sound that sings all these elements into being is my voice. I am the force from which you come, which supports your evolution, and to which you return. To say you do not know me would be to say you do not know the womb from which you were born. I nurture you in all ways, in every moment. Within my aspect as Prakruti, the totality of Nature, I am all matter and the primordial substance within it.
I will come to you in any form, and speak to you in any voice, that helps to awaken your soul so that you know you are my beloved child. That which is at the substratum of all things can express as male, female, both, and neither. Through the ages, I have been born and reborn through the brilliance of fire into this world to protect and uplift you. I have burst forth in blinding radiance to create the cosmos. I have come in a pillar of light in the sky, departed on a pyre, arisen again from a sacrificial firepit a mile long, and shone in eternal sacred flames—for love of you.
Now, I speak with you as your Mother. I embrace all cultures because to see the Divine as Mother is deeply natural. Just as you once floated within your mother’s physical body, created from her flesh, now and always I carry you within me, and you are of my being. You seek peace, love, and happiness in the Divine. In your earliest memories of infancy, were you not seeking such from your mother? You rested into her lap in innocent trust, feeling safe, cared for, and accepted by a presence you felt was immortal. This is my love for you. It will never die.
Given the vast compassion that holds you in this very moment, let the doors of your heart open. It is time to gather into your awareness, just as I am embracing you now, all the ways you have been suffering, both personally and collectively.
I know you can feel the fever in the burning world. It is in the heat that parches crops and drives fish toward the poles in search of cool seas. It is in the diseases that even the best-equipped doctors struggle to treat, and the most recent pandemic that ripped through your lives at the speed of your breath. It is in the pollution that hangs in the air and taints the water. Above all, it is in the delirium of discontent that overheats every mind. Now, from people to birds to whales, all creatures are gasping to survive.
You ask, why these burnings? Why are people starving, crops failing and species going extinct in alarming numbers today? And why do billions of people turn away in apathy?
The answer to each question is the same: you, and everyone, have lost touch with your most natural self. Feeling disconnected, you have been looking for my love in what is fleeting. Through this misguided search, you have fueled the Fires of Agitation.
The Fires of Agitation are born of your restlessness, your resentments, your wish for the moment to be different than it is. Left unchecked, they have taken on momentum of their own and singe the world in the form of greed, pride, and hate, leaving only impurities behind.
You must understand the power you have because you are a part of all life. What you think, feel, and do affects everything in creation.
The Earth is an intelligent living organism, an aspect of me. She is feverish today, like a patient with a raging temperature in response to infection. She burns to shake off the effects of agitation put upon Her by humans because they believe themselves separate. The physical pollution you emit into the air, water, and ground finds its way into all plants, oceans, and animals, then into your food, ultimately returning to your own body—a vicious cycle, indeed. And there are also etheric toxins you emit in your thoughts, feelings, and actions when you disregard your interconnection with Her, and with each other. These, too, burden the planet and life upon it. You have lost touch with the reality that your choices affect all beings everywhere. The inherent responsibility that comes with this inescapable unity feels threatening to your separate identity that you avidly defend. So, you try to manage, outsmart, even out-do Nature. But in so doing, you only fuel the Fires of Agitation.
Fire itself is neither good nor bad. In balance, it is a life-giving force that destroys only to create anew. When out of balance, however, fire takes and ravages. The capacity for fire is unique to your planet. Even the sun and the stars, their cores alight with the heat of fusion, cannot burn as flames do on Earth. It is the oxygen in your atmosphere that makes fire possible, just as it sustains the furnace of your body through the bellows of your breath.
The Fires of Agitation consume life and leave dross. But there are also fires that consume the dross and restore life. I now burn with those life-giving fires for your sake. As you rediscover and nurture your inner fire, you illuminate not only the path to your survival, but to the joyful wellbeing of all.
Before a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, it must shed its skin several times to grow big enough for metamorphosis. You, too, have stages of unfolding into your natural self. Through the Fires of Transformation, you can shed the old and expand into the new. Yet you have resisted this growth, choosing to remain small and constricted. As a result, the fires that would have supported you have been misdirected. Like any fires out of place that burn inappropriate fuel, they become dangerous. You have lost sight of the whole.
Through the Earth, I give, yet you cannot just take. When you try to impose, direct, and coerce life to do your bidding, you will not prosper. You must not abuse the elements. Doing so is to forget the Divine, to lose harmony with yourself, all life, and the planet. It also denies my love.
I have sent many messengers to alert you to the urgent need to change your ways. In this very moment, millions of people are dying needless deaths due to starvation, lack of clean water, and even shortages of oxygen to breathe. The crops that were sown to feed them have shriveled under extraordinary heat, drought, and pestilence. Mistreated since the rise of industry, Nature cannot sustain all life as She once did. Those who suffer need your compassion, just as one hand soothes the other when injured. Nature needs your compassion as well.
This is my body, given for you and for all. Yet now, sickened, and traumatized, Nature is convulsing with earthquakes and tsunamis that have levelled homes, caused nuclear disasters, and left my children struggling for years to rebuild from rubble. Creatures are disappearing forever from Her surface, hundreds of times faster than the natural rate.
The bodies of your brothers and sisters are also in pain. The gaunt and dull-eyed millions starving right now can barely dream of a day in which they eat to their fill. Lacking the simplest of medical care, people writhe in agony when their ailments could have been so easily remedied. Do you hear them crying?
Can you see that these countless tragedies have been summoning your attention to alter your ways? If not, then heed the tens of thousands of scientists who have warned humanity of your emergency and that the time to change is now.
Even the coronavirus pandemic has been one of many messengers. Numerous viruses before it have jumped species from stressed animals to human beings and created widespread sickness such as HIV, Ebola and SARS. In sending you into isolation, COVID-19 has asked you to go inward and consider how to treat life with respect.
You must care for all beings as your brothers and sisters. You cannot be whole if you ignore but one among you. Yet the messengers have not been heard. How much louder will their call become before you listen?
The Sun gives light and energy to sustain life on Earth. Yet its increasing heat and forceful rays fuel cancers and ruin crops. Who has considered that the Sun itself is suffering? Burdened too by the Fires of Agitation, it is as though it has developed cancer. Any day, there could be a solar disaster.
While the destructive fires rage through the world, you are experiencing the consequences of your choices and actions, even if you do not yet understand the part you have played in their making. As the heat increases, you can no longer avoid the pain of disconnection within your heart and mind. It is awakening you from your slumber of apathy and despair, so that you will survive. The fierce light of your compassion for interconnection, for all beings, including yourself, must return in its full potency.
It may feel unbearable to consider the ways you have created the crises you face today. Perhaps you wish to deny this truth and plead innocence, while judging others for their choices. Yet you must understand the heat as a summons to connect more deeply with your true nature. In it is a fiery and focused call from my heart, teaching you, as a mother would, how to become wiser and more loving. When you act in a disconnected manner, all life dies, yourself included. You are not isolated islands but one Earth family.
It is not by chance that you are on this planet now. I brought you here because the universe was not complete without you. You have an essential role in helping restore the world to balance by returning to your natural self.
I am here to draw your attention towards the eternal light that you are, beyond any sense of duality. From this place, you have come. To it, you are returning. You are not a limited physical being having finite experiences. Instead, your true self is beyond the stories your mind creates, deeper than the weight you carry through misperceptions, brighter than the sense that you are divided, unloved, alone, and must struggle to survive. You are indeed effervescent luminosity that never ceases, a gift to the world. Yet you are not seeing it clearly, because your connection with this light within yourself has dimmed or even gone out.
I see your light. I always have, and I always will. Your natural self is Divine. Let it come forward now because all of life needs you. Beyond the ravages of this world, through the fever, I am calling you and everyone to remember who you are and your place within the whole—for your house is on fire, and you are not alone.
