The poet Yeats once said, "Life is not a problem to be
solved, but a mystery to be lived and a source of revelation." So I want to use poetic imagery to explore what
life would be like if we truly listened to the wisdom of rhythm and opened to direct
experience of the living flow of eternity. In ancient cultures a mystic was a person who
sought that direct communion with eternal being through a life of spiritual contemplation.
And it usually involved a journey to Egypt the so-called Land of Mystery. Actually, the
Hebrew word for Egypt is "Mitsuri." So in those days you could just get up and
go to the mystery. But the people who sought to be initiates of the eternal mystery in
Egypt found out that the place only symbolized the opening and awakening to the divine
mystery. And they also found that you had to go through a kind of death and rebirth to
experience the Mystery of God in everyday life.
Many contemplative traditions arose from their experiences of divine
union, which taught that the Way or path of living the mystery was an inward path through
the spiritual heart. Jesus said that "the Kingdom of Heaven is within," and that
"in order to enter it, you had to become like a child." In other words you had
to regain your innocence and fuse it with your worldly experience. You had to remember
that the world is alive and breathing as the mystery.
Across the Arabian Desert in ancient Chaldea another culture
contemplated the mystery of life and its cycles and rhythms through listening to the music
of the spheres. They were called the Magi, and they were masters of interpreting the
rhythms of eternity as reflected in the heavens. The sky has always been a source of
inspiration over the ages with its wonders and the sun, moon, and stars. Because
astrology, the art of understanding the celestial language of cycles in the sky, has
always been part of civilizations.
The Psalms say that "The heavens declare the glory of God, the
celestial firmament shows his handiwork. Day after day they pour forth speech. Night after
night they reveal knowledge. There is no speech and no words that do not contain their
voice."
In the opening verses of Genesis it says that "The Eternal One
created the sun, moon, and stars to give illumination to the world, to divide the light
from the darkness, to govern season, days, and years, and to read the signs."
So it was the voice of the eternal reflected in the heavens that
inspired the three wise men to pack their camels and head west across the dunes to Judea
in search of the incoming spiritual master of the rising Age of Spiritual Unity, the
long-awaited Age of Pisces. This was to be the Age of universal love through devotion and
service to mankind. The symbol for Pisces depicts two fish connected by a line, the early
Christian holy symbol. It stood for the unification of heaven and Earth.
The first piece of Living the Mystery is about the Magi and their epic
journey to deliver their symbolic gifts. This was a very special moment in the history of
the world because it was the interface between the Age of Aries, the first sign of the
zodiac, and Pisces the last sign. So it wasn’t just the beginning of a new age, but
the start of a whole new cycle of twelve ages; it was the bridge point in history between
the Alpha and Omega, beginning and end.
Throughout the ages enlightened teachers appeared to introduce the
spiritual lessons of the zodiac at the appropriate times. They were called
"Melchizedek" in Hebrew, which means "righteous one." The New
Testament says that Jesus came as the High Priest of the Order of the Melchizedek, the
master of the righteous ones who come periodically to demonstrate living the mystery.
During Job’s spiritual crisis God asks him, "Can you loose
the bonds of Orion, or bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades; can you bring forth the
mazzaroth in their seasons; do you know the principles of the heavens and how they have
dominion over the earth?" In most versions of the Bible you’ll never see this
Hebrew word mazzaroth translated because it literally means the twelve signs of the
zodiac. So God says to Job, "Can you bring forth the twelve signs of the zodiac in
their seasons." The Magi saw that a new dispensation, a new teaching was looming
large on the horizon and they stepped out to embrace it boldly, making history.
Quest of the Magi
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