Being your typical imperfect, ordinary person like most of us here, this life has been a strange, mysterious unfolding that makes me no better, but very determined to DO better than my tendency!
I have been fed, led, nourished, housed, helped, protected, graced, taught and uplifted. I have also struggled, suffered and abhorred my ego patterning. My whole adult life I have sought to grow and change, seeing agonizingly slow conversion. But the difficulties of my life seems minor in the extreme compared to terrible possibilities here on earth. I have been given SO MUCH!
My response? Make my life a gift of gratitude, my particular abilities a gift of help. Dedicate all I have and can do to higher purposes. At this pivotal point in world history, I feel compelled to do my part for the highest good of all, to DO the change I pray for in the world. May all feel and respond to the urgent need to give of themselves deeply at this critical time on earth!
Signs of Impending Crisis
Looking back on my life, it appears clearly to me I had been drawn through much needed growth and preparation as an artist, as a human being, with intention to serve and as a heart able to love and submit to higher callings. I had been in preparation for what was to come.
By 2002 I felt my life was nearing its end. There were signs in my psyche I was nearing death for some nights. I was in a free fall, letting go of everything, of life itself while holding on to the Light. I felt deeply connected to all of humanity, and It seemed there was much darkness in that vast shared space. There was a form of communication taking place, that no matter what happened I had to always stand with and for the Light, to always serve Its benign Force wherever I might be, in the face of whatever darkness might be encroaching there.
On one particular evening, when at the end of my capacity to continue and feeling death near, I prayed, that should I survive that night, If there was yet an important lesson I had to learn or something more I had to accomplish for the Light and for Adi Da, that these be made clear to me.
In the next moment I was swept away and lost in sleep for the first time in days on an unknown drug a friend had given Loren to help me. It gave me 3 desperately needed hours of sleep. Upon awakening, I again felt connected at heart to all of humanity. I felt the depths of suffering and a spectrum of higher possibilities on into selfless Love and boundless Living Light. Feeling such starkly painful, dark human possibilities as well as happy potentials, to those joyous beyond words, I understood I must always serve the higher possibilities for all. There was no question about this! It was an absolute higher demand pressed deep into my consciousness.
With the integration of this lesson, a beatific vision unfolded before my internal eye of a dome structure adorned exquisitely with intricate metal arches and high elaborate spires, shimmering gloriously beyond anything I had ever seen. The words “Peace…Cathedral” were spoken very, very slowly, along with the vision that lingered resplendent before my mind’s eye for long moments, piercing my being with overwhelming ecstasy. It was the Divine Itself arrayed in extreme Beauty beckoning me to give myself in Its service far beyond what I could have ever dreamed or chosen.
Along with the vision and spoken words also pressed into my consciousness was the understanding that World Peace was to be served by bringing this sublime vision into form. How this was to happen was beyond my capacity to imagine. It was a calling that I simply had to trust, do my best to serve and allow to unfold.
The vision revealed an imminent, monumental undertaking in my life to come, indicating I would live and had a great deal of work ahead. I hoped I would have help!
The vision calling guaranteed countless more tests of every kind for years to come. It was both a huge demand and a mighty Leap of Faith beyond anything I could have imagined before. But that exalted Beauty hovering before me had its own profound alluring. Perceived challenges were vaporized in the face of that beckoning exquisiteness.
I named It Great Swan Peace Cathedral and began the metal art for it as soon as I was able to work again and a good start was made.
But there was so much that had already been Given that had to be completed. And strive as we did many times, many hours with an architect friend to engineer the required cathedral dome, no workable plan for construction was found.
— by Candace Turkatte
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