 Now our forebears in all these different tribes understood that there was another element in spiritual transformation And I say our forebears because modern folk have gone real sort of brain dead on this one and begun to act this out unconsciously and that is sacrifice Sacrifice is always a part Of authentic spiritual transformation now, what was it that our ancestors knew and I don't mean Just the Degara Although they knew it If you've studied with Martin, you know that the Mayans knew it well the Jews knew it and And the Zoroastrians knew it and so on What is it that they knew well? There is something great It wants something from me If I want The resources I need for life I'm going to have to offer it what it wants and If I offer it something worthy Maybe it will return something back to me That will enable me to live Me and my family me in my community me in my village me in my world you follow that now so that that is I just recently did a seminar on the archetype of sacrifice and In the course of studying this doing cross-cultural studies of sacrifice Those those are the elements this sacrifice element We've now learned you know It can be either conscious or unconscious so in other words Here's the situation You will sacrifice period. I may know I may feel deeply in my bones that that there needs to be a sacrifice and I may well decide it's you that needs to be sacrificed Human beings have had a long history of that But we're going to sacrifice you In order that the world continue to work There's always sacrifice It's whether you know you're sacrificing or not you're going to sacrifice Okay, so that's number six now if sacrifice is done consciously it is possible to enter into an ongoing communion with the great primal other in which the flow between you and It gets to be a sort of beneficent flow When that flow is established if you can get into this communion consciously Then a lot of things are possible That is to say you will not have an energy shortage and Your courage will be better and your susceptibility to despair will go way down and That is when you you you actually can it is actually possible for you to experience radiance This is when what has been called indwelling occurs This is when what has been called illumination occurs Some of you have told me that you're very serious about your own Realization of the God within you Our ancestors witnessed that it's usually accompanied by by a kind of a new kind a new level of love a new level of peace You and I could say that then you can have passion and you can have the kind of passion that you would need it to really Care about justice in the world so Those seven elements I think are the last two Conscious sacrifice conscious offering the power of conscious offering And entering into communion with the primal other the great other however your tribe Those take you to sort of the farther reaches of spiritual realization and But there are all of these elements are present if you you study any any Tradition of spirituality and you look closely These elements are present Well, this is a story in the New Testament and and it's about the feeding of the five thousand and And all these folks he's hungry tired folks that have been following Jesus It's getting toward nightfall and they're they're really tired and they're hungry and there's not anything for them You all know this story in the most of you do and when they kind of Asked well, what do we got? Well, we got five loaves and two fishes and so Jesus asked that they be brought to him and he took them and He blessed them these very imperfect Resources and lo and behold Suddenly there was enough to feed All of these people and after everyone dined they picked up all these baskets of things left over and That's about offering. That's about what happens when you bring an imperfect fragmentary offering authentically To the great one That is, you know, I'm not Roman Catholic, but that's acted out every time the mass is celebrated That's why Jung was so fascinated by the transformation symbolism in the mass and That's why Jung believed that if you look deeply into the heart of alchemy, you will see a inner sacrifice That is modeled on the mass In the heart of alchemy so in any case Offering and it's not that that's true in Christianity But it's not just true in Christianity it is that Bringing see some traditions thought you had to bring the perfect offering, but you know That's a little grandiose You have to bring authentically your fragmented offering But if you bring it authentically The great one can Multiply and give it back to you in a form you can receive and use to fuel your life