Receiving a Spiritual Compass
After Brad returns to his childhood church, one longtime Guild member receives seiki transmission and is granted a new compass to guide his life.
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Edgar Cayce, the famous seer from Kentucky, came to us in the visionary realm. He stared into our eyes and spoke: “God is a vibration.” As he said the word “vibration,” he lifted his tone and gave it a long-lasting vibrato that was viscerally felt as something truly other worldly. He kept repeating the phrase, and each time he expressed the word “vibration” with a different vibrato, tone, pulse, duration, and musicality.
Soon multiple expressions of that word lingered in the air as they blended and changed in and out of dissonance and harmony. We felt dizzy and began to lose consciousness. Then, without warning, the vision shifted and Brad found himself in the country church of his childhood.
Brad was at the back of the church building with four men from the Sacred Ecstatics Guild. He was giving them a tour of the place in which he was spiritually raised and where his father had served as the pastor. Their walk began near the nursery where infants were cared for during church events. Next they passed by the classrooms that had been used for Sunday School teaching. Brad opened one door to find it was empty without any chairs, looking deserted. They went on to the large space that was the original main sanctuary before his father built a larger one. It, too, was empty, missing its pews, altar, and musical instruments.
The tour made Brad feel uncomfortable—the site of his early spiritual life was now literally empty. He remembered that as a child he carried a mixed bag of emotions about religion. It brought an occasional sense of uplifting mystery as well as a weary feeling. It was missing the soulful vitality more readily found in the performing arts.
Back then religion seemed way too serious and some of the church members emitted an existential stink. They could be overly pious or morally incongruent, speaking of so-called Christian love while backbiting with malicious gossip and double standards of conduct.
As a child, it was hard for Brad to tell whether the “dark side” of small town life came from the church or from the rural population whose aesthetic sterility made sure there would never, ever be a bohemia. This deadly mix of God and bad taste (we sometimes call this an “Orrin Hatch” performance flavor) made Brad count the days until he could escape small town stuffy, stinky, cornball, hardball provincialism.
The tour continued as they walked down the corridor connecting the old with the new church buildings. Brad stopped at the pastor’s office, but when he looked in it appeared some kind of strange treatment was being applied to his father’s feet. He decided that this sight might be too much of a shock for the men to comprehend, so he closed the door and kept on moving. At first Brad himself wasn’t sure what was happening to his father, the preacher. Later he realized that a spiritual leader must both talk and walk their teaching and therefore extra care, unusual practices, and mysterious treatments must be applied to this person’s feet.
Receiving a Song
As they approached the main big room sanctuary in the new building, it became obvious that there was an overflowing crowd with a lot of celebratory music going on. Walking through the entrance, they felt they had entered an energized music festival. Brad made sure the four men stayed together. He kept his eye especially focused on Dominic who stood next to him. They walked across the sanctuary, headed for seats just to the right of the center aisle where Brad prefers to sit.
Suddenly a song exploded in the air. It was the old hymn, “There’s Power in the Blood.” Each of the young men instantly knew they had all received the same sacred song. Together they felt the joy and ecstasy of this simultaneous musical transmission.
Brad looked around and saw that the majority of people in the congregation were professional musicians of different kinds, including the jazz pianist, Chick Corea, along with some well-known gospel singers. There were a few small town folks in the audience, but their presence was dissolved in the large crowd and rendered unnoticeable by the musicians who’d come to make an exhilarating joyful noise. Brad and the young men all sat down and absorbed the sacred atmosphere.
A Mysterious Object
Within minutes, Dominic stood up and Brad followed him. He mentioned that he had to check on something outside. Realizing that this was an important moment, Brad guided him out the door. Dominic added, “I need to find my bearings. I left a vital part behind and I think it is behind the church.” To his surprise Brad found a door on the right side of the church that had never existed before. They went through it together.
He went to a spot hidden by shrubs where the main water line was attached to the building. Digging underneath the pipes, Dominic found some tools wrapped in cloth. It seemed he had left them there long ago. He took them out and set them aside. Then, for no reason other than curiosity, he dug a little deeper and was surprised to find a very unusual and mysterious object. It was the size of a large telephone book, but it was made of metal. It had a single ball-like object on its cover, centered at the top. Neither of them knew what it was. Their first thought was that it was a ball bearing, but it wouldn’t move so they thought perhaps the tools were there to repair the ball bearing.
Brad noticed that the word, “Toyota” was etched on the back side of the object. Immediately, he knew this meant that they now had a means of transportation that was waiting to take them elsewhere. Brad instinctively knew what must be done. “Follow me, Dominic.”
They walked around the entire block before returning to the backside of the church property where the tour had started in the dream. They stood next to the outdoor cans where trash was discarded and burned when Brad was a child. Brad lit the fire and a heavenly choir started to sing, “I Need Thee.” Brad woke up but remained suspended inside the dreamtime, absorbing its musically conveyed emotion as he repeated the three lines that began this year’s Guild adventure: “communing with Thee, climbing the ladder, and sacred ecstasy.”
Seiki is a Wind
Soon falling asleep again, Brad was sent to another visionary classroom. Now Hillary was with him and we faced another person who was not Edgar Cayce, like before. It was Osumi Sensei and she stared into our eyes as she spoke, “Seiki is a wind.” When she said the word “wind” we felt seiki circulating around us. It was felt as moving air and heard as a low hum, pulsing like the heavens and the earth were both breathing in unison.
Sensei repeated her declaration and the word “wind” varied each time, launching waves upon waves of energetic intensity. Osumi Sensei then handed us a book from the mystical library. It was open to a particular place in the table of contents. She pointed to the middle of the page. There we saw eight separate entries all with the same title: “Seiki.” Though we read what preceded and followed those entries, we no longer remember the other names or themes.
We opened the book to read what it had to say about seiki and instead of finding words, a primal force leapt from the page and filled us with overflowing currents of seiki. Our bodies jolted so strongly that it woke us up. We only woke up in the dream, however. Still inside the vision, we kept on trembling from the intervention that came from the land of Toyota, the Japanese place where we had been transported.
Seiki Transmission
We then noticed that Dominic was sitting in the room and seemed unsure of what was taking place. Brad went over to him, assured him that all was well, and finally laid his hands on the crown of his head. As he did this, the Brazilian healer, João Fernandes de Carvalho, mysteriously floated into the room. He told Brad what to say: The Lord’s Prayer. This is what João did when he helped others.
When Brad spoke the words, “Our father which art in heaven,” he said “heaven” in a way that felt like the “vibration” vibrato of Edgar Cayce and the seiki “wind” of Osumi Sensei. This happened with each line of the prayer—certain words doubly conveyed the divine vibration and the seiki wind. Through this multi-dimensional manner, Dominic received a seiki transmission.
A Spiritual Compass
We then noticed that Dominic was still holding the mystery gift he had received in Brad’s childhood church, found near the main water pipeline. The gift had changed after he received seiki in First Creation Japan. The round part was no longer a ball bearing. It was now an old-fashioned compass, the kind of bulb that held a liquid with a floating pointer inside it. Brad’s grandfather, Reverend W. L. Keeney, had one of these on his dashboard to make sure he never got lost. It always fascinated him as child. Brad would sit in the middle of his father and grandfather and stare at that bobbing compass rather than look at either side of the road.
We celebrated that Dominic had been given a spiritual compass. Of course, this means that his reception of mystery is meant to be shared with everyone. Each Guild member now has a ball bearing that becomes a compass whenever the seiki wind blows. In its original form, it is a ball bearing that enables movement from earthly emptiness to heavenly reception. When your empty bowl is filled with ecstatic seiki movement, it becomes the compass for everyday spirited guidance.
Stairway to the Kalahari
As we marveled at what had mystically happened, a huge staircase dropped from the sky. It was the broadest and highest stairs we had ever seen. Immediately a huge moving object walked to the center at the top of the stairs. We could barely see it at first, but then a light shined upon it and brought the mysterious presence into focus. It was an African elephant and other wild animals were close behind it.
The elephant (and its corresponding dance) is also a trickster form to Bushman elders—it can be wise or foolish, and it is musically equipped with a trumpet horn. When used wisely, trickster mind can help lead you to the stairway or ladder, but sacred emotion and ecstatic expression are what enable you to climb it. That’s when the hare is no longer chased. Instead the lark’s song opens the heart to soar to the higher floor.
This mysterious night flight began with the discovery that Brad’s childhood church community had been emptied of former small-minded debris so there was now only room for music, the ecstatic means of climbing the ladder. This change brought the tools for spiritual travel and opened the way for the seiki wind to blow straight in. Once this holy gift was received, it instantly brought a new kind of compass whose true north is the ineffable vibration, which Edgar Cayce called “God.” Follow its direction and it will take you home to the original song-and-dance way of stirring up the holy wind and igniting the fire that cooks your soul.
Enjoy the song all four men in the Guild received at the same time:
-The Keeneys, December 24, 2020. This is the second story of seiki transmission we have shared this Guild season. Here is the first.