Several months ago, I was doing a Sunday morning talk at a Unity Church, and I had an epiphany. As I looked out at the life-loving, inspired people in the pews, and as I heard the energizing music, I came right out and said what was in my heart, “This is the healing edge of Christianity.”

At a time when so many Americans are experiencing spiritual hunger—and all they know about are the spiritual fast-food outlets that appeal mainly to fear and separation—Unity offers a transformational path to the world we know is possible. Unity has been quietly doing its healing work for well over a century (what could be “quieter” than Silent Unity, after all?) but perhaps now is the time for Unity to step out from under its sheltering “bushel” and boldly lay claim to this position. I’m not necessarily suggesting recruiting “Fillmore’s Witnesses” to go door-to-door, but I do suggest more visibility is in order.

We have arrived at a point in so-called “Western civilization” where we have two inadequate and limiting belief systems battling it out for our hearts and minds: dogmatic religious fundamentalism and dispirited scientific materialism. As Riane Eisler suggests, the former burdens us with “original sin,” the latter with “the selfish gene.” Both positions—that we are victims either of a judgmental God or a random and uncaring universe—are less than who we are, and less than who we need to be in these challenging times.

Unity understands simultaneously the essential loving teachings of Jesus, and our destiny to evolve as a species. As my comic alter ego Swami Beyondananda has said in response to the evolutionist/creationist dichotomy, “We were created to evolve—otherwise Jesus would have said, ‘Now don’t do a thing till I get back!’”

This awareness that we are conscious cocreators in life, that there are many paths and but One Loving Presence, is precisely what we humans need to achieve “humanifest destiny”—achieving our destiny as a humanity. Unity has the power to make the bridge between the old Christianity where we are “sinners” to the new where we are “learners.”

So here comes the challenge. Until now Unity has enjoyed the relative comfort of being a self-contained nurturing community of those who largely share similar beliefs. Now, however, we are called upon to test our faith in creative thought, and “only love prevails” in a world in desperate need of a healing, loving paradigm. This is not a mission to “change the world,” but as Swami suggests, to “toilet train the world—and that way we’ll never have to change it again.”

In other words, the healing of the world is not implemented from the top down, but rather involves a mass awakening—and maturing—from the bottom up. It is in this evolution from children of God to “adults of God” that Unity can be most helpful. However, in venturing beyond the friendly confines of the “om field,” we have to bring that “om field advantage” with us, not only through our peace and our faith but in our willingness to walk the talk ourselves. Think of it this way: You are dedicated to working for peace on earth—but you haven’t spoken with your brother or sister for fifteen years.

This is spiritual warriorship we’re talking about here, and as with the original meaning of “jihad,” that battle is an internal one. Do we risk expanding into love, or do we contract back into fear? There’s some serious stuff going on out there, and we can no longer protect ourselves from our own fears by ignoring it. However, through individual and communal healing practice, I believe we can generate enough light to face the darkness—which is not the opposite of light, but the absence of light.

In the subtitle of this piece, I state that it’s time for the meek to boldly claim their inheritance. In a world where the dominator still predominates, there is a huge spiritual and moral vacuum that is contributing to the destruction of our planet. With the peoples of the Ten Commandments fighting an oxymoronic Holy War in the Holy Land, something else is needed. Maybe instead of Ten Commandments, we need One Suggestion: “We’re all in it together.”

This is a challenging contention, but it seems to be supported not just by our spiritual understanding but by quantum physics and cell biology. More and more, science offers evidence that humanity itself is an “organism,” and each one of us a self-aware cell. With that understanding, perhaps it’s time to revisit the One Suggestion that just about every religion has at its core: some version of the Golden Rule. This is the moral operating system we have been offered at many times throughout history; perhaps now, with our species’ survival at stake, we’re finally willing to take the suggestion.

We energize the emerging “we’re all in it together” field through our “bold meekness.” Paradoxically, both Gandhi and Martin Luther King were “meek,” but they were bold in their pursuits of the meek values of justice, equality, and applied love and kindness.

In this season we celebrate the lives of these fallen martyrs, carefully sidestepping the “reality” that caused their martyrdom. For example, I bet not one in a thousand Americans knows that in a civil suit brought before a Tennessee court in 1999, a jury agreed with the family of Martin Luther King that it wasn’t James Earl Ray who killed the civil rights leader, but a conspiracy including the FBI, the Mafia, the U.S. Army Special Forces, and the Memphis police. As the old baseball character Casey Stengel used to say, “You could look it up.” It’s in the book An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King, written by William Pepper, the attorney who brought the suit.

If you’ve never heard of such a book, that shouldn’t be surprising. It’s part of the same problem—collective denial of the shadow and collective willingness to accept a lie because it’s too uncomfortable to face the truth. Part of the comfort zone that new thought has created for itself up until now has involved avoiding “politics” because “we don’t want to go there.” However, as it becomes clear to us that “there” has already come “here,” we are challenged to live our faith.

So what does this mean on a practical level? Here are five suggestions for generating the inner peace and outer courage needed to awaken a new field of dreams:

1. The Buddhists have a practice called tonglen—Tibetan for “taking and giving”—that involves visualizing taking in the suffering of others and releasing into the world one’s own peace, love, and happiness. As we do this, we gain a visceral realization that only love prevails—because we are strengthening and broadcasting that field.
2. Gather with others who have similar intent, not just in person but in the worldwide “playing field.” There are two ongoing projects to test the power of coherent intention in the world: The Intention Experiment (www.theintentionexperiment.com) and Common Passion (www.commonpassion.org).
3. Gather with friends locally to envision, share, and affirm (as in “firming up”) a positive future. Swami calls this “tell-a-vision.” Frankly discuss and process the dominant cultural belief systems that stand in the way. The more real this positive future feels to you, the greater the likelihood it will become reality.
4. Have the courage to step across political lines to find common ground. Americans have been conveniently divided into opposing “tribes” who are supposed to dislike and distrust each other. Breaking this pattern is the key to a new American evolution.
5. Remember that the Civil Rights movement in Martin Luther King’s day was a church-based movement, as was the movement for abolition of slavery a century earlier. Boldly yet meekly challenge other churches in your area to take a stand by asking, “What would Jesus really do?”

Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King did what they did so that we could build a new world on their work. We are now at a time when there is a new field of awakening, love, and understanding emerging. It’s time to take the field.

Steve Bhaerman is an author and workshop leader who has spent the past twenty years writing and performing comedy as Swami Beyondananda. His latest project is a book with cellular biologist Bruce Lipton, Spontaneous Evolution: Our Positive Future and a Way to Get There From Here, to be published in spring 2008.