When we contemplate the task of building a Temple from a leadership perspective, it may conjure up images of carefully planned labor and directed diligent construction over many years to raise a religious edifice consecrated to worship.
Temples come in all shapes and sizes – from the universal to the individual – and yet their purpose is one and the same: namely, to create an outer representation of an inner pattern of harmony and sacred geometry that resonates with the Essential Note of the Creator.
A Temple is a place of homecoming – a blessed space where consciousness can expand so that the ‘many’ may find their way back into the One. As Plato stated, “God geometrizes continually” and temples, mosques, churches and holy places of worship and communion with the Infinite have, throughout the ages, been built in concordance with sacred geometry to be the House of God on Earth.
We might even postulate that the first act of Temple Building was in fact, the Creation of the Universe itself. Utilizing the language of the Ageless Wisdom teaching, the One Life about Whom Naught Can be Said, created from out of its own substance intelligent and responsive matter that could be fashioned into an outer projection and expression of the Divine Dream and Promise of Love that lives eternally in Its Heart.
The original intent of Freemasonry – the ancient art and science of Temple Building – was to create a terrestrial body that can evolve in consciousness, become self-aware and self-realized and thus serve as a fit dwelling place for the Soul on Earth. The Soul is the Master Builder and Mason. In the words of Foster Bailey, “Masonry is an allegorical portrayal of a divine process whereby the Will of God works out in relation to humanity and the wisdom, strength and beauty of the Creator within His Universe stands revealed.”
When we realize that our incarnated self and personhood is a temple being built over lifetimes to house the Soul on Earth, the relationship with ourself, others and the greater eco-system in which we live, fundamentally shifts. We build our earthly temple not simply to find shelter and safety but as an intentional act of housing the Soul. At the heart of the Temple is the ‘sanctum sanctorum’, the Holy of Holies, in which the Eternal Fire of Life is housed. This is the Living Fire which suffuses and inspires all acts of true leadership.
What does it mean to build this ‘lighted house’? Individually, it is the daily spiritual work of building the Temple of Self in which the sacred fire of the soul can reside on Earth. The blocks of our temple must be hewn in accordance with the inner blueprints, architecture and design of the soul and need to be made out of the purest and most refined matter. Cleansing and purifying these building materials so they contain no blemishes is the initial painstaking phase of the construction process.
As we work on upgrading and bringing our lives into greater integrity as leaders, we fashion our own individual lighted houses so that as we work and lead, our communities may also be transformed into ‘lighted houses’ – micro-climates of heart-lighted caring and sharing upon the planet. We might venture to say the Magnum Opus of our times is the building of the great Temple of the New Humanity. Together, our leadership task is to construct a ‘lighted house’ in which our one human family can reside and live in harmony, flourish and fulfill its destined role as a light-bringer and a bridge of beauty between heaven and Earth.
In the Community of Living Ethics, we earnestly believe that the Temple needs to stand firmly on the solid foundation of spiritual Principles. This unshakeable base is built stone-by-stone as we recognize and live into the Principle of Essential Divinity that affirms the Fire of the Creator is present in each person and we are fractals of the One Life; as we learn to embody the Principle of Goodwill that proclaims Love as the reason and substance of Life and the true glue that connects all beings and as we experience the Principle of Unanimity in our bones and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we are part of a limitless, loving and interwoven Matrix of Life.
The actual building of the Temple always takes place from the inside-out and for this deep work we employ the practice of Creative Meditation. In the same way that a completed bricks-and-mortar house started life as a dream and an architectural drawing, so the promise of a brighter and more soul-inspired future on Earth begins with a potent thoughtform – a magnetic meme – impressed upon the receptive field of the collective intuition by the compelling note of planetary purpose which is subsequently clothed with mental, emotional and etheric substance through the focused power of the higher mind in cooperation with the compassionate heart. This is the potent formula for the magical ritual of daily manifestation and revelation of the Dream of the Creator on Earth.
Our designated leadership task as incarnated souls at this critical time, is to precipitate the future into the present – to densify and deliver on the Divine Promise and “to make the Word flesh” by all that we think, say and do. In this work, it is helpful to remind ourselves of the spiritual axiom, “Energy follows thought” – it is the golden key that unlocks the doors of creativity.
The question hanging in the ethers at this pivotal time in human history is whether you and I choose to show up as leaders and dare to embrace the reality of the Soul as the Master Mason and co-creative agent of the One Life and act accordingly?
Do we truly comprehend that for the Temple of the New Humanity to have structural integrity and translucent beauty, the leader and Master Builder needs to live in full integrity with the soul, with others and with all creatures on Earth every moment of every single day? In the name of all that is sacred, I sincerely hope so.
Michael Lindfield – Board President, Meditation Mount