Becoming Your 'Own Priest' by Stephen Victor Business Consultant, Writer, Visionary, Mystic, Poet and Pioneer Of course we look to poets for prescient wisdom. Here too, it is present in Walt Whitman’s lines: “Soon there will be no more priests, their time is done. Everyone will be [her] his own priest.” This is the imperative of our time; this time, not tomorrow but now. We can no longer defer the embodiment of our own sovereign authority. We can no longer refuse our stature and the gentle and generous beauty of Grace. We must let go of our unwitting preferences for Life’s fierceness. We must leave the unwitting complicity of our smallness for now is the time to become your “own priest.” We can only speak of our becoming in metaphorical terms for this initiation, this sacred crossing is, in the words of the North American poet Theodore Roethke “something wholly other.” The agency impelling your transformation lies beyond your local self; it is beyond words and our ability to apprehend and articulate directly. This change, this becoming your “own priest” is a courageous and ardent undertaking. It is tantamount to turning yourself inside out. To cease being at effect of the collective biographical angst of all those who came before us is now achievable. To release the grip of our heartbreak ensuing from earlier psychic, physical and emotional trauma is now available. This freedom ensues from becoming your “own priest” and is also the process of becoming your “own priest.” This is humanity’s mandate. This involves making a figure/ground switch. Reversing the foreground and background of your life: Changing your relationship with yourself, others, your work, the Earth, Life and Love: The Mystery. This is all. Nothing more. The purpose of this change lies in bringing your true nature to the foreground of your daily life. For your true nature is that of a consort to the Mystery, a lover of All. In this you may live your own life rather than another’s. You may let go of the prosaic and live the poetics of a life that fosters the perceptions, expression and experience befitting your Presence, talents and gifts. You are free to live well in your own way. Universal intelligence informs that everything, even war, is Grace. In this context the Grace of war is in fostering compassion and love: turning away from hate. The contemporary Seer and spiritual teacher Paul Richards reminds us that the Mystery is at once lovingly, compassionately, generous and concomitantly aggressive. This is the case. Yet, I invite you to remember a distinction between aggression and hostility. Aggression is a natural archetype. Dictionaries confuse us as to aggression’s energy. Hostility is the personality - the local self - reacting from the pain and indignity of a wound or injury. The energy of contempt. Hostile energy is without compassion, without love. Instead, the energy of aggression is imbued with love and compassion while abruptly creating a change in circumstance. Aggression is born of and borne on love whether a parent protecting the life of a child or the explosive character of a great rain and wind storm. The time of the intercessor has past. The honorable intent of the intercessor, whether the intent was served or not; whether by priest, teacher, consultant, counselor, poet, journalist, boss, leader, governor, etc., was to serve a catalytic function in opening one, consciously, with awareness, to creative collaboration with Life’s fields of universal and organizational intelligence and Wisdom. You do not need to be in life alone. Fields of generous loving support and collaboration await this change. Your true nature is that of a collaborator, co-creator, lover. We each are to become Wisdom’s Consort; her collaborator; her co-creator. In these last few days of transitioning from our unwitting capitulation to other’s ideologies and dogmas, to a self that freely stands in your sovereign authority as the Mystery’s creative mate, you may well want assistance from others. The helper you choose can no longer be intercessor! Whitman is right. Their time is done, whether you have evolved into your “own priest” or not. Intercessors, aware or not, perpetuate humanity’s weaknesses rather than foster and punctuate individual sovereign strengths. Should you believe you need or want assistance, ensure that you select a helper who is well on her or his way to becoming one’s “own priest,” a consort and collaborator to Wisdom and the Mystery. You will know when you see, hear or read your helper’s materials. You may or not know that you know, yet you will know. Trust your heart and the intellectually indefensible direction you receive; your knowing will surface. Your informing will not come from your intellect or head. It will issue from your heart or body… itself coming to you from the unseen universal intelligence. Be well in your transfiguration. © 2009 Stephen Victor, Inc. Stephen Victor is a business consultant, writer, visionary, mystic, poet and pioneer in the fields of human possibility and consciousness. For the twenty eight years Stephen has been a guide and catalyst for change in human systems; individual, familial and organizational. In his late twenties he began to dedicate his life to transfiguring individual and organizational relationships with the Mystery's field of intelligence and wisdom; to leave the banal and prosaic and enter the creative and poetic aspects of living and working. He works in Europe, the Middle East as well as the United States. His practice has included providing counsel, teaching and training to individuals, businesses, the film industry, NGOs and governmental agencies focusing on ecological interpersonal business communications, interactions and transactions, resolving personal, structural and process generated conflict, and reconciling unseen impediments to flow and creativity within human systems and organizational intelligence. See his website at stephenvictor.com. RETURN TO OMPLACE HOME