Sutphen’s last book, his memoir of 80 years, was in fact a summation of every important lesson that he learned in his highly adventurous and creative life. He helped millions of people and certainly earned more good karma than bad. That said, the one thing notably missing from his impressive collection of “lessons learned,” was the concept of “partnership with the divine and Creator.” There were hints here and there of prayer practice, but it appeared more hit and miss, and certainly did not rise to any kind of prominence in his many decades as a noted spiritual teacher and role model. How could he, and so many other advanced souls like him, have not been able to embrace this most important insight?

This illustrates beautifully the dilemma faced by humanity wanting to express its divinity by nature, having a deep soul connection, as being an extension of Creator's consciousness to begin with. But when God is out of sight and out of mind, being in the physical and given the challenge of living on your own and being responsible for all that happens, this reduces the idea of the divine to more of an idea than a reality as experienced through the ordinary senses. Those who are exposed to religion, take it seriously, and come away with a deep faith in the Almighty, have a tremendous advantage to stay the course and avoid corruption. That is not a guarantee, but they at least have the ability to call upon the divine realm and its power to assist them and the world. As such, they are the best spokespersons for their fellow humans still in the dark. Most people believe a secular perspective, that each person has opportunities they can take advantage of but are doing so under their own steam, so to speak, and do not look for solutions beyond the level of the mind. If they reach out to something beyond, it is more to a human-level consciousness in spirit form, at least in terms of expectations and how the information might be interpreted. Because that is the nature of any such perceptions, it is a modest furthering of understanding, but only providing insight, not something more concrete such as providing a rescue for someone in trouble. Sutphen was not seeing the deeper connection because, like most people, the rules of engagement that keep the divine on the sidelines, waiting to be called on, did not seem a promising avenue of exploration. To be sure, the complexities of human behavior, emotion, and the workings of the mind are a plenty rich challenge for the creative thinker to tackle in trying to understand the human makeup and solve the many problems that arise that are complicated when people are out of alignment mentally, emotionally, or physically. So, unfortunately, spirituality was viewed more as a kind of positive ideal than a nuts-and-bolts reality that could be partnered with and exploited directly to make strides and add to knowledge and, as such, this was a missed opportunity of major proportions. But his work certainly pointed again and again to important fundamental truths, more about what was missing than what was possible, but that is where one needs to start because it better defines the nature of the problem, and eventually any vacuum will get filled—the challenge is to fill it with the right things and this you are doing with the present discussion.