It is surprising how personal spirituality is. It can’t be proven because it exists in the heart of the seeker. During our lives, we collect odd moments of heightened experience that seem to exist outside of normal time. The Fourth Way indicates that these moments collect to form a magnetic center, a spiritual center of interests. And that it is from this magnetic center that we develop our certainties about the existence of spirituality. 

Our magnetic center acts as a compass for us to find higher forces. When we are lucky, we find spiritual influences and perhaps a school led by a teacher who is in contact with C Influence. Conscious influence.

Thus it is at this point that our direct experience with higher forces begins. The teacher emanates the energy of the higher world. With his guidance, we learn how to recognize our mechanics and how to balance our inner world. Through exercises and inspiration, the teacher continually reminds us of the direction.  

In our search for meaning, every day becomes a lesson. We begin perceiving the world above ours and its influence on us.  As we develop our will, our own mechanical habits can become a continual reminder to us. They remind us to let go and to live in the world of a higher light. 

But if our mechanics are so watertight, where is the opening in us that can open to let in the nourishment of C Influence? It has to be a part of us that operates with the finest and fastest energy. 

The intellectual parts of the instinctive, intellectual, moving, and emotional centers work with the most refined energies. And the intellectual part of the emotional center (the king of hearts) operates with the fastest and most refined energy. This part captures the heart of music and poetry and our sense of the divine. Emotions are so much faster (and harder to control) than the other centers. The emotional center is often symbolized as a lion or a horse. “Hold your horses” is a wonderful reminder for us to control our emotions.

So higher forces, our outside help, come in through the sensitivity and receptivity of the king of hearts. We learn to see shocks and coincidences as personal messages that only have meaning in that moment and for our own personal work. Engaging with life neutrally, without identification, lowers the interference and we begin to receive a new influence connected with our aims. We want to be more than our mechanical selves; we want to awaken. We desire nothing more than to pursue and contribute to this higher influence that reaches out to us through so much resistance.  

The more help we receive, the more grateful we are for the miracle of reception. Unexpected opportunities of spiritual growth come to us. As a dear friend said, “My life has meaning now.”

William Galvin has been a student of the Fourth Way for four decades and lives in Northern California.