People go about their lives. When we reach a state of desperation, we exercise our faith; otherwise, spirit is a distant dream. Faith works more often than not, depending on the intensity and surrounding circumstances. The result is even impacted by the yearning and status of our evolving soul.
The other way we relate to the Divine is through death. When someone we know passes from this earth, we imagine a heaven where they reside in a bodiless state, but similar to life as we know it. Who can say what the truth is. On the other hand, we rarely consider the possibility of a Divine life on earth.
For millennia, we related to spirit as something "up there", or "out there", or beyond the beyond; a release into an eternity, or as the ancient Rishis experienced, a merging into the transcendence. The possibility that it is "right here" was rarely considered. In addition, there was no compulsion to bring that spiritual power down into the details of our lives, because life was considered if anything a barrier to connecting to spirit.
Now that is no longer the case, as every individual can find fulfillment in his or her work, indicating that there is less time to commune with the divine apart from life. Now if we want to experience the Grace and Power, we have ample opportunity to practice it while fully engaging in the details of our lives. It is right here now; all we have to do is open to it. In fact, more and more we are compelled to do so because the human mind alone can no longer resolve the ever more complex problems of the world. Spirit can however because it is capable of moving in multiple directions simultaneously attracting instantaneous positive results -- abridging space and time, and defying normal causality and possibility. In that way, it is the ultimate Problem Solver.
The end result of this movement is that we are all moving to a new stage of human development and consciousness. First, we have arrived at the first great point in our ascent: to mentality and rationality, which is an enormous development and sign of human progress. This has particularly been the case in the last 50 years. Then we move higher to the next pinnacle of consciousness and discover and utilize the power of the spiritual Force that is there in the atmosphere -- especially so in recent decades. We then apply that Power to the details of life, perfecting and divinizing it. As more and more individuals take to this approach, we see the first signs of a new type of existence emerging; a first glimmer of a new spirit-influenced and oriented society. It is the ultimate destination in our ascent to the Heights as a species.
This is indeed a radical departure in spiritual history. It is no longer a life of spirit apart from life, or a Death Divine of eternal comfort in the afterlife, but the emerging of Divine Life right here on earth. In the interim, we are taking intermediary steps to raise our consciousness. Higher attitudes, purifying and perfecting our behavior, emerging higher personal values, a mind that embraces all sides of an issue, and the ability to open to the spiritual Force are several of the bridging steps to the collective emergence of the spirit. They are not movements apart from life, but taken here in preparation for something new and unique in human history -- a Divine Life; but here -- on earth.