our past

Miranda Macpherson is a contemporary spiritual teacher and author of The Way of Grace: The Transforming Power of Ego Relaxation. Miranda has been teaching internationally since 1995, and is known for her depth of presence, clarity, and refined capacity to guide people into direct experience of the sacred.

Miranda’s work is a synthesis of self-inquiry, spiritual psychology, devotion, and meditation practice offered with feminine grace that embraces our everyday human experience as a gateway into the depths of our true nature. Through a blend of silent transmission and articulate teaching, she leads ongoing programs oriented to guiding people into direct spiritual experience while providing a practical map for actualizing our realization into daily life.

Drawing from the ancient lineages of Advaita and mystical Christianity, as well as from more recent wisdom teachings such as A Course In Miracles, Miranda leads from the ground of unconditional love and compassion for our humanity, emphasizing receptivity, discrimination, and surrender.

Miranda was the founder of OneSpirit Interfaith Foundation in London where she trained and ordained over 600 ministers. Today, Miranda leads the Living Grace Global Sangha and holds retreats internationally.

Miranda’s books include The Way of Grace: the Transforming Power of Ego Relaxation (Sounds True), Boundless Love (Rider) and Meditations on Boundless Love (Sounds True). She is a kirtan musician with 2 mantra albums – Streams of Grace and The Heart of Being. Miranda is also the author/creator of the Cultivating Grace Card Deck.  She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, Bob Duchmann, a teacher of the Diamond Approach.

“Ordination: On Whose Authority?”

I was in Dublin on that extremely strange day after Brexit, grateful to have a creative purpose leading an event to introduce our training to potential applicants. These events are attended by amazing people who are seriously seeking ‘something’. Some have words for it; some have eyes that shine with it; some bring tears for a desire that words don’t express; some come terrified that they either will or won’t find the elusive possibility within the experience.

A pandora’s box of questions healthily animates the circle. One of the big ones is something along the lines of ‘on whose authority does ordination take place?’ On 23 July this month, at a public ceremony in London, our community will affirm the class of 2016 at their Ordination and Graduation, as they bring their two year contract to fulfilment. In so doing they cross the threshold to begin the new pilgrimage of anchoring their purpose – expressed in a vow unique to each person– into the fulltime practice of Life.

This class crosses this courageous portal when questions of authority, leadership, and the responsibility of power are truly in our face on the world stage. Who leads, who determines who leads, who ‘wins’, who picks up what those stepping out of leadership leave in their wake? It’s a deeply unsettled landscape locally and internationally. I don’t know anyone who is not affected by the speed and confusion of the politics here and abroad, and the trauma and shock of violence erupting and lives shattering.

So back to the question of authority and ordination. A radical shift evolved about ten years ago in OneSpirit: our ordinands stepped forward towards the altar in silence, and stood alone to receive their ordination. They then stepped back into the circle to have this experience, their ordination, blessed, anointed and affirmed by those present. This change emerged as we shifted to a new vision of the expression of spiritual leadership in that time.

So what is the big deal? It is the shift away from another person, an outer authority, being the conductor for the energy of ordination. No-one ‘does’ the ordaining ‘to’ the ordinand, and this is a massive break from tradition, both in our own organisation, and way beyond this too. The ordinand opens within themselves instead. And in this is the shift towards the awakening of inner authority. The awakening of inner authority is the need to be able to receive ordination having forged its meaning in the inner language of the ordinand, 100% in choice, and in communion with their own alignment within Grace.

This is a seriously demanding requirement. Religion and much spirituality is steeped in hierarchies of power and permission, which have largely and devastatingly reflected the gross biases of the day, often excluding at least half the world from having access to the table. So this apparently simple act of stepping forward on one’s own terms challenges our much-absorbed patterns of looking outwardly to have our place in the world affirmed, our love received, our safety given, and our work blessed and rewarded. It requires an unsettlingjourney into the inner world of our identity, and our relationship to the past and the present, and the untangling of these complex strands.

It invites – and takes as a given – that we are able to communicate with our own sovereign nature, and it requires that that inner connection is established.

One whose authority? On the natural, pre-ordained, ordinary, sacred, original, essential Authority of who we each truly are. On the self-affirmed authority of the Divine Self, the Inner Teacher, the God Within, the Great Silence, the Source, the Call It What You Will – it is within, as it is above, below and between too. We have chosen to be on this planet at this time. The presence of women, men and children who are in contact with and know how to act from their internal compass, aligned with a respect for life and interconnection, is a deeply valuable gift and calling.

May we hear the call.
May we anchor our inner connection.
May we help each other in this life-affirming work.
Set your phone for 11.58. We’ll be there together.

Nicola Coombe,
OneSpirit Head/Focaliser
Written for “Focaliser’s Blog”
11 July 2016