Exploring Subtle Energies, Translating the Earth

Exploring subtle energy feels like a kind of listening curiosity that helps me to create a quiet spaciousness around me. I can rest there and allow myself to become aware of the subtle signals in my energy field as it touches the world around me–a tree, a body of water, a building, an event, a person. I can feel the wonder and magic of a discovery process beginning in me. I am holding whatever is in my attention and waiting for a translation to emerge into my awareness–the world speaking to me.

Musing about how a good translator works….They hear and feel into what the other person is saying, not just the literal words but the felt sense of meaning in the communication. They must somehow stand in the words and presence of the person whose words and intention they are translating. They pause briefly within. The inner feeling of meaning shapes itself into a message in words that the other person can hear, feel, and understand. 

Sign language is an even more interesting example of translation. Our bodies are a bridge for information to flow across, into, and through, transforming as we come to our senses.

We live in a sea of communication from everything around us all the time. I love the growing awareness of my body opening to this constant flow of information. First, I am feeling the physical sensations that I am receiving through my senses. Then I am dropping down inside and inviting a flow into a sense of meaning.

In this quiet spaciousness inside, I feel myself standing on my inner land. I can feel the sensations of the language of the world in my subtle field before it becomes a sensory impression in my consciousness.

Recently I heard someone describe her friend’s supportive comment as 'a warm gentle open hand on my upper back.' So nice! When I feel into this sensation, I sense that it brings me to a deep, stable sense of inner awareness that I have come to know as my “inner land.” It feels inclusive, acknowledging, and welcoming, encouraging me to move forward at my own pace. These are the words that come to me to translate that lovely feeling.

Subtle perception is like having an internal GPS. The more conscious I can become of how my subtle perception works and what it is noticing, the better I will be in making life choices, choosing directions, and meeting the world from a place of standing in what I care about. 

Our Working With Subtle Energies class here is an invitation, a permission, an encouragement to each of us to find our own subtle perception style.

We are learning to understand how the world speaks to us through the “We Space” of our subtle energy field.

This is surely the message of the earth to us: Gaia placing a warm gentle open hand on our backs.

Click here for more info and to register

David's Desk #203

David's Desk is my opportunity to share thoughts and tools for the spiritual journey. These letters are my personal insights and opinions and do not necessarily reflect the sentiments or thoughts of any other person in Lorian or of Lorian as a whole. If you wish to share this letter with others, please feel free to do so; however, the material is ©2024 by David Spangler.

April’s Fool

No one quite knows the origin of April Fool’s Day, a day of pranks and jokes played on unsuspecting people. However it started, the custom of having such a day, whether on the first of April or not, is widespread now, found in North America, Europe, and even in the Middle East. And since its origins are shrouded in the mists of history, it leaves me free to speculate.

We think of a fool as someone who is easily tricked or misled, someone with little discernment or wisdom and ignorant of worldly affairs. “A fool and his money are soon parted,” so the old saying goes, and this susceptibility to loss can apply in other areas of human affairs as well.

However, there is another interpretation of the fool that one finds in esoteric traditions. Here, the fool represents a state of “Beginner’s Mind” or innocence (but not necessarily naiveté). It’s the openness to the new and to what can be discovered that marks the beginning of a journey of exploration. It is, in fact, a state of wisdom that understands there is much more to the world that we do not know than what we know and, therefore, is ready and willing to learn. This is the Holy Fool, the Wise Fool.

In a way, the fool is a symbol of rebirth and regeneration. Whatever our past has been and whatever knowledge we have gained, as in the Tarot card of the Fool, in front of us, we stand on the cliff edge of…who knows what? Unlike the person who has to have every forward step carefully mapped out, the fool steps forward into the unknown in faith and trust. Whatever happened yesterday, today is a new day. Who knows what it will bring?

As I write this, I am looking out the big window in our living room at a flowering tree across the street, its branches covered with white flowers, each blossom a testament to hope and new beginnings. This is the tree starting over after its winter dormancy. It’s a sign of Spring, the season of rebirth. (Interestingly, April 1 is in the middle of the zodiac sign of Aires, which marks the beginning of the astrological year.)

Is it a coincidence that April Fool’s Day and Spring coincide, or that it’s April’s Fool, not, say, November’s Fool or August’s Fool? The uprising life and joy of Spring certainly can lead to feeling jolly and inspiring laughter and pranks, but that’s on the surface of things. Underneath, there’s hope and trust and openness to emergence. There’s a wise foolishness that affirms Beginner’s Mind, the start of a new season of possibility.

No one should be blind to the dangers of the world. There are cliffs we do not want to stumble over. But neither should we be blind to those moments of trusting openness to the possibilities of life, moments that show us that our past need not dictate nor define our future. Change is possible. New directions may be available to us if the wise fool in us can see them and take them.

The knowledge and habits of the world have brought us to a dire place. Our planet is threatened, our species and many others are threatened. We are pranking ourselves into non-existence, and it’s no joke. Perhaps it’s well past time to discover our Fool and choose a different way.

Incarnational Spirituality and the Healing of Trauma

Over the years, I have often been asked, “How does Incarnational Spirituality address the problems of trauma and suffering? How can we be sacred individuals, beings of Light, when it’s obvious there’s so much darkness and brokenness within humanity—and within each of us?”

I have always felt this is a vitally important question, one not to be taken lightly or ignored. But at the same time, I have not felt ready to answer it. To understand why, I need to explain something of the origin of Incarnational Spirituality and the vision that has guided my work for more than sixty years.

Before I do, however, let me say that I have never felt that IS in its current form is a finished or complete package. It is an evolving approach to human wholeness, individually and collectively. A human being is a synergy of body, psyche, subtle energies, and spirit. Ultimately, wholeness depends on the coherence and integration of all these parts, which means that, when and where necessary, healing must take place at each of these levels. A full expression of Incarnational Spirituality would, in order to support an individual’s unique incarnation, address the healing of suffering and trauma through a holistic blend of somatic, psychological, energetic, and spiritual modalities.  

This is the future I see for Incarnational Spirituality, and it will require people trained in all these modalities working together to blend their wisdom and skills in service to the individual as a wholeness. Fortunately, IS is already attracting such people.

Before Incarnational Spirituality can unfold its future, though, I’d like you to understand why it has evolved the way it has up to this point.

I have always been aware of a subtle energy dimension in which the physical world is embedded. Occasionally, I would encounter a place that held uncomfortable and even scary energies, but for the most part, I experienced this energetic world as a place of vitality and joy. It was as if behind the surface of the world the most beautiful music was playing, with disharmonious chords occurring here and there.

When I was seven, I experienced a vaster and even more joyous and harmonious realm, a spiritual realm, a realm of Light. During that experience, I touched into my soul and even went on to witness the process of my own incarnation from those realms of Light into the physical world. What was most striking about this experience was how beautiful and radiant the physical world looked to my soul and the joy and love that I felt for the Earth as I took incarnation. I describe this experience in more detail in my memoir, Apprenticed to Spirit.

From that time onward, I was aware of an overlay of joy that was present in the subtle energy fields of the world around me, areas of disharmony and negativity notwithstanding. The fundamental underpinnings of the world were those of love and Light, and as an incarnate soul, I was part of that Light.

When I was seventeen and about to enter college, I was granted a vision of my future. In it, I saw a human figure, genderless like a department store mannequin, that was translucent and radiating Light from within itself. A voice accompanied this vision and said in effect, “Incarnation is a sacred act, and the incarnate individual is a being of Light. A new spirituality is emerging that will honor and celebrate this, empowering individuals to bring their love and their Light into the world. Your life and work is to take part in this emergence.”

This was my first introduction to the core ideas behind Incarnational Spirituality, even though I didn’t know it at the time. To my surprise, it was only three years later that I began this work and entered into a co-creative partnership with a non-physical spiritual mentor I called “John,” as well as with other subtle and spiritual allies. However, thirty-five years passed before I gave the name “Incarnational Spirituality” to what I was doing and teaching.

Working with John and with the subtle and spiritual worlds was, without question, an experience of working with joy and Light and love. However, early on in my training with John (most of which is detailed in Apprenticed to Spirit for anyone who is interested), he had me experience a layer of woundedness and suffering within the collective energy field of humanity. It contained the results of millennia of trauma and was a presence of habit, anger, pain, and negativity that exerted a powerful and distorting effect upon the course of human development. I called it “the Scream,” because it was like an unending scream of pain and a cry for help within humanity—and within each of us as part of humanity.

When John first introduced this “Scream” or energetic layer of collective trauma to me, I wanted very much to engage with it and to bring healing to it. But John was very clear. “It’s important that you know this condition exists within humanity,” he said, “but it’s not your work to deal with it, at least not directly. There are others for whom this is their soul’s work and service to humanity. You have a different calling, which is to represent the joy of incarnation and the sacredness of being part of the physical world.”

John, as it turned out, was the spokesperson for—and my liaison with—a group of spiritual beings who were engaging in an experiment. The overall objective was to heal the collective trauma of humanity and to liberate individuals from the negative habits of the unconscious and often malign influence of “the Scream.” 

However, rather than engaging this negative energy and the trauma and suffering it causes directly, their experiment was to find and empower people who could realize the sacredness of their incarnation and consequently shift their sense of identity into one of being a generative source of Light and love in the world.

As one of my subtle colleagues said many years later, long after Incarnational Spirituality had become a coherent teaching, “our objective has been to focus on the healthy energies within humanity as a foundation from which to heal what is unhealthy.”

Representing this “healthy energy” or Light within humanity and the sacredness of the incarnate individual turned out to be a challenging task, and I made mistakes. The joy and vitality of the subtle realms was so real to me, so much a part of the subtle energy structure of the everyday world, that I often overstressed its reality in contrast with the negativity and darkness that people actually experienced. I remember one of the first lectures I gave was about the “illusion of suffering” and the “reality of joy.” I was speaking out of experience, but I was also asking a huge shift of awareness on the part of my audience (most of whom were at least thirty to forty years older than me at the time). These people had known suffering and trauma in their lives, and there had been nothing illusory about it for them. One woman, incensed by what I was saying, rose up in the audience, called me the “Anti-Christ” (the first (though not the last) time that name has been thrown at me!) and walked out.

It had not been my intent to demean or lessen anyone’s experiences of suffering, or the strengths and wisdom they may have gained from them. I simply wanted them to align with a different identity, one resonant with the joy and Light of the spiritual realms. I learned quickly that what I experienced as a natural fact of life was only a theological theory for many others and seemingly difficult to attain. Metaphorically, like Marie Antoinette, I was asking people to “eat cake” when they were actually struggling just to find bread.

However, my inexperience in presenting my message was not the primary challenge, and it was one I improved through practice and training. More disconcertingly, I discovered there were strong habits of mind when it came to defining who we are as incarnate individuals. One of the most powerful was the religious and cultural idea that incarnation itself was a “fallen” state, one that had to be redeemed. Even in the metaphysical and esoteric circles where most of my early work took place, incarnation was seen as a kind of exile from our true home, something to be endured for the lessons we might learn or the karma we might expunge. Messages through channels and mediums from the post-mortem realms often spoke of how happy souls were to be rid of the physical world and its limitations and to finally be back in the realms of Light. Asking people to see the world itself as a realm of Light and themselves as generative sources of Light within it was a big ask. As I say, it flew against habits of mind.

Another challenge was the understandable need to address the suffering and trauma in the world. There were those who felt Incarnational Spirituality was failing in this need. Putting emphasis on realizing one’s sacredness and Light seemed like a “spiritual bypass,” a denial of the need of the world and a retreat into a personal nirvana. And the sad thing is that it could be. I knew people who used spiritual teaching and attunement as a way of escaping or denying the negativity and darkness in the world. But what my spiritual colleagues were offering wasn’t escape; rather, it was being in the world from an unfamiliar and (in our culture) relatively new place, a place of Light and joy and the knowledge of one’s innate sacredness and acting from that place to be a presence of healing and wholeness.

The Greek philosopher Archimedes is reported to have said, “Give me a lever and a place to stand, and I will move the world!” This is the outlook of the spiritual colleagues with whom I have been working. The “lever” in this case is a sense of joyous, generative, sacred identity, and the “place to stand” is the ordinary, everyday physical world with all its beauty and its ugliness, its light and its dark, its health and its illness. A person who can stand in their sovereignty and presence as a person of Light can indeed begin to move the world—at least the part of it with which they are in contact. They become a source of blessing in a world that all too often seems cursed.

Let me be very clear. My intent, and certainly that of my subtle and spiritual colleagues in the non-physical realms, has been and is the liberation of individuals and humanity as a whole from the effects and compulsions of the “Scream.” Their approach, and mine, has been to stand in and draw power from the healthy, sacred, Light-infused energy that is innate in each of us and that itself is untouched by the Scream. This is not a matter of years of spiritual development or attainment; it is a shift of identification. It is a shift from identifying oneself with one’s wounds and trauma, using them to say who one is, to identifying oneself with the soul’s Light that is always present and permeating one’s life. This shift doesn’t deny the presence of trauma, but it gives us a different perspective from which to address it.

Sometimes I’ve seen people make this shift of identity in a very short span of time; other times, it can take years of moving past limiting habits of mind (which themselves can arise from our collective human trauma). But I and all the other IS Lorian faculty have seen it happen and the changes this can make in a person’s life—and the consequent positive effects they can have in bringing Light into the world.

Over the years, I have felt the need–sometimes through overemphasis or focus–to keep the message and vision of Incarnational Spirituality clear and strong in spite of the habits of mind and the very real presence of suffering that would move it in a different direction and turn it into something else. As IS was developing and finding definition and coherency, I felt that to focus on the negative aspects of ourselves, our trauma and our “shadow,” would dilute, if not actually distort, what Incarnational Spirituality was about and what it was trying to accomplish. 

IS is about healing our sense of spiritual identity, which is every bit as important as healing ourselves psychologically or physically. It’s part of our wholeness, as is the healing and wholeness of our subtle energy “body” or field, which is also a focus of Incarnational Spirituality.

I am no longer as concerned that the essential message and purpose of IS can be lost, though care must always be taken. Over the years, Incarnational Spirituality has clarified and strengthened its work and its contribution to human wholeness. Increasingly, it takes its place as offering a powerful set of tools to bring our innate spiritual resources into play. But other tools are possible and needed as well, which is why, looking ahead, I am delighted that steps are being made to add to the IS toolbox psychological and somatic forms of healing and empowerment. This recognizes and honors the many levels that make up our incarnation.  

Such a holistic approach is necessary if we are to fully engage, neutralize, heal, and dissolve the “Scream” that continues to haunt humanity. This is the promise of the future, one to which Incarnational Spirituality has a unique and important contribution to make.

2024 Equinox Festival: Celebrating the Element of Air

[Editor’s note: the transcript has been edited for clarity. The music used in the audio is called “Music for Coherent Breathing by Sound Coherence and can be found here.]

Freya Secrest: Welcome! This is the Lorian Community Blog for March of 2024. We are offering an auditory blog this month with Ara Swanney and Freya Secrest, two of us who are part of the festival team. Coming up on March 17th is our Equinox festival and we wanted to share with you some of the way we work on developing these festival celebrations. We're going to start by sharing some music of coherent breathing and sound. Let yourself flow and let this be the invocation for our time together.

[Music 0:44-2:06]

Ara Swanney: That music goes with coherent breathing. There’s an equality of the in-breath and the out-breath of five counts that fits with the rhythm of Gaia and the sun. I first came across it recently when I attended a storytelling session and Retta, the woman telling the story, began with this breathing. It got me in the solar plexus and I just felt myself totally relax. I also thought it would be great to have this music in case I wake up in the middle of the night and can't go back to sleep. We wanted to share this experience with you, and there will be a link for it at the end of this blog.

Freya Secrest: I’d like to give a little bit more context for why we'd be drawn to this coherent breathing and how that fits in with our festivals. We see the solstices of summer and winter and the equinoxes of spring and fall as the breath of the earth. As we’ve been exploring this and looking at the rhythm of the seasons, we’ve come to see it as the rhythm of the Earth breathing in and out, and so this coherent breath really struck a chord with all of us.

We've connected each of these four seasonal festivals with different elements of the earth. Last solstice–summer in the Northern Hemisphere and winter in the Southern Hemisphere, we created a connection to earth and took pictures of our feet on the ground celebrating our links to our immediate points of on the planet. In the fall/spring equinox–fall in the north and spring in the south–we honored water and its life-giving refreshment and its qualities of flow. We're wanted that as a part of our celebrations in our festival time. And then as we came back around to the solstice of winter in the north and summer in the south, we highlighted fire and the warmth of heart and hearth. And now this spring/fall equinox celebration is completing the cycle and we're recognizing the element of air and the way it supports communication and connection.

In  each of these festivals, we've brought in story and song as a way of sharing how the qualities of these elements enrich and expand our relationship with the planet in each season. That's what we will be doing again, but we think the element of air has been one of the least talked about–at least in my experience. It's been a bit of an exploration to deepen into what it means and what is air in relationship to the festivals of Earth. As we said, it's a medium of communication and connection. But like a fish in water, we don't see the medium in which we are moving and having our life–it’s unseen but so very vital. So this festival we want to draw attention to and highlight our connection through air.

Ara Swanney: As far as air is concerned (or any of the elements), I always like to check in and see how it's viewed by the Maori, the indigenous people of Aotearoa or New Zealand. To the Maori, air is a taonga or a treasure. And it is viewed as one that's derived from Ranginui, the sky father, and Maori legend tells that following the separation of Ranginui, and Papatūānuku, the Earth Mother, their child Tāwhirimātea fled with Ranginui to his new home in the sky, and from there Tāwhirimātea controls the wind and the elements. I live in Wellington, New Zealand, and it's known as a windy city. We always celebrate that– we have Tāwhirimātea on our side and it keeps our air clean, we don't have to worry about pollution. I do feel concerned about that because we talk about the pollution of the land and waters, but in areas like where I am, we don't really consider it the same way and I think that's an important thing. And the thing about Tāwhirimātea makes me feel connected to the wind; It’s an entity that I can be part of.

Freya Secrest: You bring a picture to my mind, I can feel myself in times when it's been very, very windy. I'm living right now close to Chicago, which is also called the Windy City, so that’s really fun to hear. [Freya and Ara laugh] I have been in the downtown area where it's so windy, I honestly did have to hold onto a pole not to get blown over. Some of that is structure of the buildings and how the streets and such channel the air, but it’s also that Chicago is right on Lake Michigan, which is a huge lake. Because you can’t see the other side, it's hard to differentiate it from the ocean, and the wind there is potent. As you were talking about the wind and the elements, I could feel my body remembering leaning against the wind; it's supporting. It's quite magical when I stop and begin to think of air as an ally, as something I can connect to as a partner. I think of the role that it plays on earth and it moves from powerful and strong–like getting blown over, to a gentle breeze that comes along and touches my cheek–it’s a little whisper, which is a different kind of friendship, isn't it?

Ara Swanney: Yes. And it can be cooling on a hot day. We've had some very hot days and it's lovely having a breeze come along and cool us.

Freya Secrest: That’s one of the things that I enjoy about the festival work–it brings my attention to the earth; not only the the rhythms of it and the seasons, but now this year in particular with the elements looking at the forms and how much each element adds to my experience. It's really quite touching to realize how neglected air has been. [laughs] We breathe it in, we breathe it out, there's not much thought about it. Part of what our festival work does for me is it brings a little more consciousness back to our relations, which is from the Native traditions here in the U.S.–to be aware of all our relations.

[To Ara]: How does air speak to you? You had the story, the bit of the myth of…I can't pronounce the names like you do–they wonderfully roll off your tongue. But where does that touch and live in you in your life?

Ara Swanney: Well, when I walk out the door and breathe in the air, I don't think about it consciously. But when I go outside, I breathe in the air, I look at the trees, air is part of it. There have been times when air has been very scary, like in a storm when a window was blown out by a strong wind. And other times when I just really love the softness of the air on a quiet summer's evening. The air quality does come to mind, but I'm not totally conscious of it. Talking about it, I realize it’s a really a big thing. Being on the ferry going between the North and South Islands, and being out on the deck and feeling the salty air out there…all the different qualities that you can have…or up in the mountains where it’s icy.

Freya Secrest: One of the phrases we used when we were talking about our planning for this festival was a “healing breath” or the sense of the rhythm of the earth and having that be healing. That's when I think you brought up the coherent breathing as a way to tap into some of our capacity to bring a healing energy.

Ara Swanney: Yeah, and to be healed. Because that was my immediate thought when I started that breathing. The feeling in my body of the breathing and that rhythm supported by the music rather than counting in my head, the five seconds in and five seconds out–the balance of it and going into that rhythm in my body made a huge difference. And it was the breath. Over the years, many of us have used the breath for different healing things like Rebirthing, or Holotropic breathing–all those different modalities.

Freya Secrest: When we chose the elements, when we started putting them together with a festival, I didn't have any particular planning of which one went with which, but with just what you've said with regard to air and the balance, to have it end up here at the equinox seems a very appropriate partnering between the energies of air and the energies happening with the planet right now with the the equinox–the equal day and equal night, and your sharing that this breathing is sort of equal in-breath and equal out. Funny how those synchronicities seem to work! [laughs]

Ara Swanney: It happens all the time! [laughs]

Freya Secrest: We haven’t really focused our festival work specifically around healing up to now; it’s really been celebratory. It's celebrating the Earth, it’s celebrating Gaia and its rhythms. I'm touched that in this festival the element of healing comes out. With fire, there's that sense of clearing and cleansing. Breath after all that cleansing of fire and light and the warmth of winter and summer, and the cold, clarity of winter…having the healing breath of that rhythm and balance with air is, as you say, very restful and calming. The Earth is doing a really intense piece of work coming down into seed, doing that all that preparation deep in the earth, sending down roots really moving into identity and its beingness in order to come out in the spring. And then in summer, that full flowering, that outreach of energy and life. The balance here of of spring and the equinox…a moment of balancing…I don’t have a lot of other words for it.

Ara Swanney: We have the seeds being blown in the autumn or the fall to be ready for the spring. I love the way we talk about it from both sides of the earth and just hold the wholeness of it all; It’s all happening at once.

Freya Secrest: It is, isn't it? Yes, it's thinking in spheres, rather than in lines. Thinking in a rhythmical, spherical way is very much what makes a Gaian orientation to festival. Some of that's been our own changing thought process, from point and line to spherical to rounded, which is what our earth is.

Ara Swanney: Wholeness.

Freya Secrest: Yes. It’s one of the gifts of our exploration, of what we're sharing. I think it's a healing relationship not just for ourselves, but also for the earth. That's what the festivals are for me. They're celebration, and I love the idea that healing comes out of celebration as much or more than it does fixing.

Ara Swanney: It goes beyond boundaries.

Freya Secrest: Yes. Well, I thank you, my friend, for this little bit of exploration. It's been fun to to try and put more frame and focus into what we're working with in our festival times. We invite any of you hearing this to come and join us on March 17. Our festival time is at 1pm Pacific. You just need to write into Lorian if you're not part of our Commons where the link goes out automatically. If you’d like to participate, please write me, Freya, at freyas@lorian.org

We will end this blog with another minute of Music for Coherent Breathing by Sound Coherence.

David's Desk #202

David's Desk is my opportunity to share thoughts and tools for the spiritual journey. These letters are my personal insights and opinions and do not necessarily reflect the sentiments or thoughts of any other person in Lorian or of Lorian as a whole. If you wish to share this letter with others, please feel free to do so; however, the material is ©2024 by David Spangler.

To See the World with Love

When I attune to the angelic realms of Light, I have often received the following message:

If you could see the world as we see it, we would be better able to work with you.

It has to do with resonance. The greater the resonance between two beings, the deeper and more effective the partnership or collaboration can be between them. This is true for us in the physical world. It’s even more true for beings in the subtle dimensions. Put in human terms, if you and I share the same perspective on the world, we can work more closely and easily together than if our perspectives are different or even in opposition. If I say the world is a good place and you say it is a fallen, evil place, then at some point our ways of understanding and engaging the world are going to diverge.

It also has to do with love. In the angelic realms, love is an essential mode of being and doing.  They bring love to the world. But this is not true for us. We can love the world, but for many of us, the world is not a lovable place. It is a place of challenge, of difficulty, of suffering, even of darkness. We look out at the world and see conflict and violence; we see injustice and oppression; we see damage and destruction. We see a world that is imperfect and at times, broken, particularly in its human aspects. The angels can see this, too; they are not blind to human dysfunctions and suffering. But this is not the nature of the world they see. The world they see is one of Light.

Is the angelic perspective more real than the one that we have? Do they have a truer grasp on the nature of things than we do? A mystic would likely say yes. But in my experience, the angelic realms are not denying the reality of the world as we see it; at least, they are not denying that it is real to us and therefore the world with which we are dealing. As I said, they are not oblivious to human suffering nor the challenges that face us. But—and this is a subtle point—they aresaying that they could work more closely and in greater resonance with us if we also saw the world as they do. They are inviting us to participate in a shared awareness of the world as a manifestation of Light. By sharing in this perception, a resonance is created between us that strengthens the bonds through which they can partner and work with us.          

When I am in touch with the angelic layer of consciousness, I am aware of the sacredness, the beauty, the wonder of the world, and I am filled with love for the earth and all within it. As a result, my life becomes a clearer conduit for their blessing. Put simply, an angel can work more closely with someone who loves and rejoices in the world as they do, seeing it as a manifestation of the sacred.

One does not have to have psychic or subtle perceptions to see the world with eyes of love.  Partnership with angels is not limited to a select few. Also, one doesn’t have to deny or ignore the suffering and broken aspects of our world. These things call out to our compassion and our efforts towards wholeness and healing, just as they do for the angels. But it is a powerful act of resonance with the spiritual worlds to open our hearts and minds to choose to hold love for the world and to see the beauty of life within it. From such a choice, blessings can flow and the presence of angels made closer than before.

The world calls for a partnership between human and angels that can bring healing to the Earth. It is within our ability to expand our vision and our love to make it so.

The Soul's Laboratory

Imagination is not just about creating images or “making things up.” I think of imagination as our soul’s personal laboratory for the study of the life and responsiveness of matter. We are learning how to master the relationships that draw this life of matter into partnership and harmony with the earth and a Gaian imagination. Here is an example from my life:

In the last few years I have been providing nesting spaces for pollinator bees. This is not “bee keeping” in the traditional sense. Pollinators like the Blue Orchard Mason bee and the leaf cutter bee that I have been working with don’t live in hives and don’t produce honey. They aren’t even very social, though they like to work and nest side by side.

My part is a small but engaging way to learn how to harvest the cocoons and add more housing in the most appropriate ways, while managing my role in the process, AND while trusting that Nature knows better than I. This has involved a more intimate, more complex relationship with Gaia than I had known would happen when I began. I am always learning to keep up my end of the conversation—without inadvertently interrupting it, or talking too much. That is harder than it might seem, when I care so much!

Each autumn I collect the cocoons from the two different kinds of nesting sites that I have mounted on an east facing (warmth of the rising sun) wall of our house. Now, yikes, each summer I feel partly responsible for 100s of bee babies, who began their journey the summer before as eggs laid by incredibly hard working bee mothers. Life birthing itself…

Because of the growing plight of bees, providing safe protected places for them to create their larva cocoons is a wonderful way to be part of Gaia’s conversation about the Spirit of Renewal. I like framing this work with the bees through the four foundations, or Hallows, of Incarnational Spirituality. The four foundations are Standing, Holding, Energizing, Co-creating. They come alive for me when I feel into how I use them in any thing I do.

Standing  

I sense how taking up this project is a way for me to stand in and experience my life and intention directly in the work of the earth.  

Standing in the Spirit of Renewal is a concept that I can experience directly in my body. It is not just a beautiful concept (though of course it is that too!). I have the capacity to affect the flow of Life. The more strongly I hold my intention, the more likely I will be able to be helpful to Gaia, and the more alive I will feel. This is what I was surprised by in working with pollinator bees. Surprised by joy, in CS Lewis’ words.

Holding

In David Spangler’s words: Holding is the capacity to support an action, to persist as necessary, to maintain integrity, and to love. Where my bee endeavor of earlier years was done kind of lightly, with interest and curiosity, now I really feel the power of my intent to hold this process together. I can literally feel how my contribution can support the earth.

I need to create and hold space in my life to study what is needed. I need to learn, for instance, how to cut open the 20 or so cardboard tubes that last year’s bee mothers faithfully laid their eggs in, and harvest each cocoon (about 6-7 in each tube) without causing too much damage. I also need to make sure that there aren’t pests and parasites in there. I don’t want to release any bee-damaging pestilence into the world, no matter how much part of the divine order it is!

Energizing

In a way, bees are made out of the sun. I am a sun in my own way. I have the power to be a source, be generative, to supply energy, empower and to nourish.  

I spend a lot of time each summer watching the mother bees (there is no Queen… each working woman bee is a queen mother, and isn’t that the truth!!) fly home, over and over again, painstakingly creating individual cocoons like little rooms, one for each egg, bringing a tiny (to me, huge to her) load of pollen to place in each cocoon for each hatched larva to be nourished by. And surely I am creating a field of blessing for them too.

Co-Creating

This project is a wonderful opportunity to experience partnership. As a human I have the capacity, the *power* to collaborate with the bees, and with Gaia itself, and with the spirit that keeps the flowers and vegetables growing to feed life on earth. I get to feel my personal identity and power supporting creation at its source. What a wonderful privilege.

Looking toward our exploration of Imagination.

---

To deepen into the art of Imagination, Rue is offering a free webinar and a class:
February 22: Free Webinar, The Heart of Imagination
March 7-27 The Living Art of Your Imagination

David's Desk #201

David's Desk is my opportunity to share thoughts and tools for the spiritual journey. These letters are my personal insights and opinions and do not necessarily reflect the sentiments or thoughts of any other person in Lorian or of Lorian as a whole. If you wish to share this letter with others, please feel free to do so; however, the material is ©2024 by David Spangler.

Honoring the Light in Each of Us

Illness and a stay in the hospital over Christmas has kept me away from the computer and writing my David’s Desk. I missed the opportunity to wish each of you a Happy New Year, so I am doing this now. May 2024 bring you joy, light, love, and blessings in abundance! 

As the days lengthen into the New Year, my own energy grows as well. I am hopeful for a good prognosis and healthier times ahead with my own medical situation. At the same time, I’m all too aware of the turmoil that a Presidential election year is bringing in this country. A heightening of polarization in an already divided nation is nothing to look forward to! This is on top of foreign crises and the prospects of even greater climate disruptions. 

Our world is in a challenging state. This makes it all the more important for people to resist the tides of separation and conflict and take a stand on the side of civility and respect for each other, as well as for the natural world around us.

In the end, what divides us is an unwillingness to see the other in ourselves, or ourselves in the other. We are threatened by attitudes and beliefs that highlight our differences and fail to see what unites us.

For those who are seriously following and striving to embody a spiritual path, it is more than time for us to recognize the Light within us each and to honor this common bond. How can we help each other live out from this Light, not as a set of beliefs or dogmas but as a presence of love waiting to emerge in mutual respect, partnership, and blessing?

This, I feel, is the challenge of this year and all the years to come. We can shape the future. If we feel inconsequential or powerless, the Light within us is not. Our attitudes, our choices, our actions do make a difference, however ordinary they may seem to us. This is especially true when we are inspired by the Light within us and within each other.

In an election year, in any year, may we elect to honor the Light in each of us.  

Blessings, 
David

The Light Is Always There

New Year’s Eve is weeks past, but the images from the fireworks show in Seattle remain in my mind. It was a beautiful clear night, unusual for this time of year, and as usual the celebration in Seattle was at the Space Needle. There is no ball drop as there is in Time Square, but rather a huge display of fireworks being launched from the top of the “Needle” and all up and down the stem of this iconic building. We always look forward to watching this spectacular display every year (albeit from the comfort of our living room). But this year was somewhat different. This year, the air was so still that the smoke from the fireworks lingered and built up so that all that could be seen was a thick cloud of smoke enveloping the Space Needle and all above and around it.

At first we were dismayed and disappointed. There was a lot going on, but it was all completely obscured by this cloud of gray smoke. As it went on, though, our family found it to be hilarious and then rather wonderful. Out of the eye of this dark smoky cloud came surprises – flashes of sparkles, colors, golden streams out of the top, tails out of the bottom at the foot of the Needle. 

I found it wonderfully emblematic of this point in time. Here we are at a time in our world when there seems to be disaster around every corner. War and famine, ecological destruction and uncertainty, neighbors enacting violence – it seems that any order or peaceful coexistence is at risk of disintegrating before our eyes – a cloud of darkness where it takes effort to find light.

But as we watched the fireworks hidden behind the cloud, we could see flickers of a great deal of bright light activity. Every now and then bright sparkles flew above the cloud or snuck out beneath, reminding us that there was splendor hidden in the darkness. Our daughter declared that this was her favorite fireworks display ever. While we couldn’t appreciate the artistry that had gone into the show (and I felt so sorry for the fire artists whose work was so hidden) we could cheer for every sparkle that emerged from the gloom.

This imagery has lingered for me, for it is a reminder that in the midst of the darkness we may feel is enveloping our world, the light, though hidden, is very active underneath it all, with flashes of bright reminders that the light and joy that is our birthright remains as bedrock and will emerge more visibly as the cloud begins to disperse.

These are trying times, and our hearts may be full of grief for those who are suffering. In such times, it is important to look for and celebrate those bright, shining sparks of bright light we each bring forth in our world that illuminate the cloud.

Using Felt Sense to Create a Good New Year

A few days into 2024, someone asked me what my New Year’s resolution was. It took me aback a bit, because I realized I don’t think in terms of “New Year’s Resolutions” any more!

What I found myself saying to her was that I try to live my life in a way that makes me happy every day. And if there are challenges to meet, I’ve learned I need to take time to re-imagine the situation in a way that begins to reveal its possibilities, instead of any doom and gloom that seem to be settling on me.

Recently I was trying to pick my way through a difficult and painful situation, feeling kind of trapped, held in a small place surrounded by a large heavy darkness. I couldn’t see what to do.

Prayer helped. Not prayer to some outside-of-me entity to come in and make it all better, although that is where we (I) tend to go first with prayer! Our work with Incarnational Spirituality invites us to pause, open new doors, throw open different windows, become curious, let new light in, see with new eyes and new visions, and explore different versions of what might be possible.

So, in that moment, I found myself asking for help to see the situation differently. Could there be a new angle, a different perspective that might light up? In my prayerful holding of this painful set-up in me, I became aware of an evocative image.

In my inner vision, down at the bottom of that heavy darkness, I began to notice a small light. I felt I wanted to cup my hands around it, and shield it from the wind, so it could grow. As I did that, the light began to be brighter. I began slowly to be aware of different ways I could frame the situation. I began asking myself questions, like —Hmmm… if I could create something here that would be satisfying and generative and fun for me to work on and with, what would that look like? What might it feel like? What are the possibilities here?

Framing what was going on this way began to turn me in a more fluid, lighter direction, away from the darkness that had been settling in. Best of all, it felt so much better to hold the issue in this generative way, in my body, mind and spirit. It gave me a sense of agency. Creative ideas began to come to me. I could focus on the emerging chick, instead of the terrible threatening crack in the egg. I continued to check back with this feeling of possibility as new ideas came to me. I realized that I felt the sense of possibility in my body as lightening, as expanding, really like a quiet inner Yes. It felt good.

Using this “Yes feeling” as a guide, I could see how to make changes and shifts in my current situation that would feel better. The situation itself didn’t change, but I found more empowering ways of responding within it. This felt sense became a kind of shepherd for considering new choices, prospects, directions. As I got an idea or felt drawn in a direction, I could measure it against this feeling of Yes in my body, and know if it was right, even if I didn’t quite understand it yet.

This was an important shift for me. It didn’t “fix" anything, but gave me a new, generative frame to hold it all in. It feels so much better to think and feel this way. I want to choose this.

The world as it is right now needs for us to know how to do this! Let’s explore and practice this process together in the Felt Sense class that is coming up soon, starting on January 25th. Learn how to restore your creative power to guide you “through the night” with your felt sense.

Click here for more info and to register

David's Desk #200

David's Desk is my opportunity to share thoughts and tools for the spiritual journey. These letters are my personal insights and opinions and do not necessarily reflect the sentiments or thoughts of any other person in Lorian or of Lorian as a whole. If you wish to share this letter with others, please feel free to do so; however, the material is ©2024 by David Spangler.

Editor’s Note: David’s Desk is on hiatus this month. This essay originally appeared in 2011.

Happy Mobile New Year!

A new year begins. As our solar system journeys through space, making its own millennia-long spin around the center of our galaxy, our own world has now completed a cycle of its own, returning after three hundred and sixty five nights and days to a position relative to the sun equivalent to where it was last January. Now it starts that same cycle again.

There is no law that says a new year has to be measured from this time of year. Any place along the circle of the year could be designated as the beginning of a new cycle. That we celebrate New Year’s Day at this time of year is a result of a combination of factors unique to the Northern Hemisphere of our world. There is the cycle of the moon’s phases which gives rise to the lunar calendar, the phenomenon of the solstice in which the longest night gives way to the return of the light in the increasingly lengthening day, and the nature of winter itself in which the world seems to take a creative in-breath in the silence and the cold prior to all the creativity activity of spring and summer. These and other elements conspire to give us a feeling of renewal and newness at this time in the earth’s journey around the sun.

But whatever the reason we celebrate New Year’s now, the fact is that we do so. The birth of a new year was heralded around the world with a succession of spectacular fireworks displays in humanity’s major cities beginning with New Zealand. Watching it on television, I could only marvel at the extent of this planetary event celebrated even in countries like China whose native calendar marks the New Year at a different time of the year. For one twenty four hour moment, humanity is united in its hope for a better future.

However, looking out the window of my living room at the snow-covered street and houses of our neighborhood, I see no evidence that a New Year has begun, though the day itself is dawning gloriously. The pine and maple trees that surround our house pay no attention to human calendars. The mountains on the horizon looked the same on January 1st as they did on December 31st. If I wanted to see the arrival of New Year displayed in my environment, I would look and wait in vain.

So where do I see this New Year? In the light in my wife’s eyes. In the sense of new possibilities in my own heart and mind. In the wishes of “Happy New Year” from our children. In the emails of good wishes coming from friends. The inner environment is alive with the spirit of new beginnings. I know from experience that there are always subtle beings—potential spiritual allies—who, though uncaring and even unknowing about human calendars, are more than willing to respond positively and supportively to our intimations of possibility and renewal.

Similarly, where do I locate New Year’s in time? Well, obviously it’s on the first day of the year, January 1st. That’s New Year’s Day, But when on January 1st is it New Year’s? Is it only during the first hour? Is it during the first minute? Is it the first second or even the first nanosecond after the clock strikes 12 pm midnight? By convention, it’s the whole day. January 1st is twenty-four hours long. But what about January 2nd? Does the sense of newness, of possibility and potential, suddenly stop one minute after 11:59 pm on January 1st? Is a new year like a new car, depreciating in value the moment you sign the contract and drive it out of the dealership? Does 2024 become a Used Year when January 2nd dawns?

How long does the energy of renewal and hope last? At what point in our lives does the New Year become just “the year?”

This is not a silly question. One of our most powerful human attributes is our ability to envision possibility and to act on that vision. We are creators of newness and transformation, honoring the past but not enslaved to it when change is important and necessary. What enables us to use this attribute? What gives us the energy to press forward to bring something new into being when faced with the inertia of the familiar and the habitual? We have unfortunately turned the idea of New Year Resolutions into something of a joke, making them with a sense of wink-wink, nod-nod that they will never be fulfilled once we settle back into the routines of our lives. Possibility then becomes a contact high that doesn’t survive long after January 1st becomes one of our yesterdays. This is a shame, for our ability to make a resolution and keep it is one of the bedrocks on which human civilization is based. But resolutions do require energy if we are to keep them alive and maintain our commitment to them. We feel this energy in the joyous and exciting spirit of potential that fills us on New Year’s Eve and Day, but how do we maintain it?

In this process, we are not served by identifying this spirit with a minute, an hour or a day on a calendar, that is, with something that has a beginning and an ending. Though it has outer points of reference in the environment, New Year’s is primarily an inner festival, a festival of the imagination. It is spiritual software which is as portable within our hearts as physical software is now increasingly a mobile part of our lives through our smartphones and I-pads. Any point on a circle can be its beginning. The spirit of New Year’s is as real and available at 4 pm on April 4th or 7 am on September 18th as it is at midnight on January 1st

So, what you want to do now is to “download” the joy and promise of New Year’s (which I hope you’re still feeling when you read this). You want to put this energy into your personal, inner “I-Pad” (where the “I” can stand for “Identity” or “Incarnation”). Here’s one way to do this:

If you saw the New Year in with celebration on New Year’s Eve, then remember the happiness and sense of promise and new beginnings that you felt. If you were with friends and family, remember the joy of those associations. Pay attention to how this joy, expectation, promise, and sense of newness and possibility feel in your body. Your body doesn’t know a calendar from a colander; it lives in the moment. The date doesn’t mean anything but what you’re feeling does, and your body will remember this felt sense.

Call this felt sense of the promise of new beginnings and the spirit of New Year’s your “New Year’s Self.”

Now go to your calendar and pick a day in every month. It doesn’t have to be the same day. It might be a Tuesday one month and a Thursday the next. It can be anytime during the month. On your calendar, write yourself a note that says, in effect, “Remember! Today you will be visited by your New Year’s Self.” Then when that day comes, take a moment to recapture the felt sense within your body of this New Year’s Self and welcome it into your life. If you want, say “Happy New Year!” to yourself! But whatever else you do, feel into the spirit of possibility and new beginnings and know that spirit is as much a part of you, as present in your life, on this day as it may have felt on January 1st.

This exercise lets you know that the spirit of New Year’s is not lost as the year goes on but is always accessible. And if ever we needed to know that we can access a spirit of change and potential as we face the challenges of our world, it’s now!

I’ve used this technique with participants in workshops to help them recapture later on the uplifting spirit they felt during the workshop itself. It’s always worked well, and I expect it will work well in recapturing the spirit of New Year’s, too. It’s just a fun thing to do, but behind it is a very real principle. New Year’s is one day out of three hundred and sixty five but the spirit it celebrates is timeless. It is mobile, not static, and is as available to us at any time in our lives as it is on January 1st. We can choose when we will open to new possibilities and invoke our powers to imagine, to envision and to change. There is no reason that any day you choose cannot become the beginning of a new cycle of possibility and accomplishment for you.

With that in mind, I wish you a very HAPPY MOBILE NEW YEAR! May its spirit no longer be confined to January 1st, but be alive and well and filled with blessing in the I-Pad of your daily life.

Sharing the Gift of Fire and Warmth at Solstice Time

Lucinda:

When the Festival Team were contemplating how best to celebrate Solstice this year, we came across a message from Mariel, a Sidhe star priestess who has worked with many Lorians to foster connection and collaboration between the Sidhe and Humanity for this time. Mariel’s message to Humanity, found in the book Conversations with the Sidhe, is compelling:

“We bring Starlight. You bring Fire.” 

 What does she mean by this? She goes on to say:

 “The fire you bring to the world is that of love. For you to find your loving place, the center within from which you love, not just as an emotion but as a force of wholeness and nourishment, can be a more difficult process for you than for us, as more stands in your way. A diamond found lying on the ground is beautiful and a joy to find, but a diamond dug out from deep within the earth has the same beauty, but reflects as well the power and effort that went into the digging. Our world is strewn with diamonds; the Light of the Lover is plain to us. But in your world you must dig, which makes the presence of love in you so much more potent. We are attracted to your power of love and are warmed by it. Think of us when you go to your loving place and invite us to share it with you.” 

At Solstice time this year, human beings are mired in the darkness of wars and suffering. We are having to dig very deeply to find a shared love and respect for one another on this planet. To many people, this task seems hopeless, and a futile, even unwanted endeavor, if it means letting go of fervent, cherished beliefs, opinions and personal wounding. 

Honoring Fire–the Fire of Human Love–and lighting candles of hope, even joy, in the midst of so much suffering and pain–this is what we wish to share together this Solstice time. We also want to focus on the gift of Warmth, that strong presence and way of being that human beings naturally have and can offer the world.

Linda, who will be celebrating the Summer Solstice in Australia when we gather, was inspired to write about Fire and the gift of Warmth for this festival blog. Here is her offering:  

Linda:

The element of fire.
The glow of a candle flame.
Warmth of the hearth.
Burning heat of the desert.
Incandescence of the sun. 

Rudolf Steiner wrote:

 “The spirits of flames are called Salamanders. After the plant has passed through the sphere of the sylphs, the plant comes into the sphere of the elemental fire spirit. These fire spirits are the inhabitants of the warmth light element, when the warmth of the earth is at its height, they gather the warmth together. Just as the sylphs gather up the light, so do the fire spirits gather up the warmth and carry it into the blossoms of the plants.”

I relate this back to the fire within me–the creative flow, the warmth, the passion and love which I can bestow on those around me–spreading my love, my warmth, my fire, and passion outwards.

One way I do this is through my love of food, of cooking and sharing meals with friends and family. I love to create healthy, delicious meals. There is this nurturing part of me that knows that the love and passion that goes into the cooking process is passed into the meals.

 At the moment, I have my daughter and family living with me. My grandchildren love me to cook their favorite dishes–chicken soup, tofu burgers, apple cake.

 It is not necessarily the food itself (well, yes, the love of the dish is important), but it is the love, the nurturing, the warmth that is filling them up. Comfort food. When we think of comfort food–it is just that–the loving fire that has been transmitted from one being to another through the food. It makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. It brings that sense of feeling safe, sitting by the hearth, being part of community.

I can extend that fiery element into my garden–to gardening, singing, dancing, with my inner fire being part of the commons of Gaia.

In these troubled times, I do feel far away from the conflicts (even though it is felt strongly here) One way I can counter this is to stand in my loving Presence, extending my love and fiery hope to my community. ‘Being a sun’. Light expanding.

I would like to share a story about how the fires of love and warmth can transcend the veil between life and death. The story was shared with me by an acquaintance, who has just written a book about her mother’s life.

My acquaintance’s mother was a young girl in Poland in the Second World War. She was separated from her family and incarcerated in a concentration camp. She had been in the camp for about eight months, and she was alone, tired, starving and didn’t want to fight anymore. She did not know if her family was alive, and she had given up. She was very close to death.

That night the young girl had a dream.

The dream was distinctive, vivid, very realistic. She was back at her childhood home. Her mother appeared by her side, holding in her hand a warm bowl of soup. Her mother fed the young girl the broth, spoonful by spoonful.

Then she held her daughter tightly, telling her that everything would be all right. She urged her daughter to try and stay alive until her birthday, which was four days away. When the young girl awoke, she was amazed that she did not feel hungry; in fact, she felt somehow revived.  She had sufficient faith in the dream and so she vowed to hang on for another four days. On the young girl’s birthday, the camp was liberated. She believed that her mother had crossed the threshold between life and death to be with her and to help her survive.

This is an amazing story–of love crossing time and space–the love of a mother for her child, feeding her broth, full of love, warmth, and nurturing–and filling her with hope even in the darkest of places.

So as we approach the Solstice, the sun reaching its zenith in the Southern hemisphere, the days long, and getting hotter, I reflect on that fiery element within me, flowing into my cooking, into my garden which is full of flowers and fire spirits dancing in the blooms, expressing their love, passion and beauty for our world.

Lucinda:

Linda’s sharing and the beautiful story she tells captures completely what we hope to honor and celebrate at our December Solstice Gaian festival. For those of you joining us, or wishing to contribute something on the Commons site, we invite you to bring stories, poems, songs, artistic creations that capture the power of Human Love and Warmth to enliven even the most barren of places, to ease the most painful of circumstances, to bring hope and wholeness to a broken world. Perhaps you know a story about having to dig deeply for Love, or you experience Warmth in unique and interesting ways that you can share with us all.

We look forward to building Fires of Love and sharing our Warmth together at Solstice time!

Blessings,

The Festival Team 
Freya Secrest, Lucinda Herring, Linda Engel and Ara Swanney

Solstice Gaian Festival
Northern Hemisphere: Friday December 22nd - 1 pm PST
Southern Hemisphere: Saturday December 23rd - Varying times depending on where you are
All are invited. If you’re not a member of the Gaian commons community, email freyas@lorian.org for the Zoom link to join in.

David's Desk #199

David's Desk is my opportunity to share thoughts and tools for the spiritual journey. These letters are my personal insights and opinions and do not necessarily reflect the sentiments or thoughts of any other person in Lorian or of Lorian as a whole. If you wish to share this letter with others, please feel free to do so; however, the material is ©2023 by David Spangler.

Editor’s Note: David’s Desk is on hiatus this month. This essay originally appeared in 2014

Gifting

Ever since our distant ancestors dropped out of the trees and stood upright on the vast plains of Africa, we have been oriented around a vertical axis. In the beginning, I’m sure those ancient proto-humans thought of safety as up, in the trees, and danger as down, on the ground where predators roamed. Out of this very practical assessment of their environment, early humans laid the foundation for our mythic imagination. Is it too far-fetched to suppose that the reason we see heaven as above us and hell as below may be rooted in this primeval exploration of standing upright on the ground? Do we think of Light as descending from higher levels of being because of the sunlight that comes from the sky above us?

Whatever the reason, there is no doubt that we privilege vertical thinking. We think of higher and lower ranks in society and try to be “upwardly mobile.” We speak of a “higher self” wherein our spiritual nature is located as contrasted with a “lower self” that can obstruct that spirituality with its earthly needs and characteristics. When we’re happy, we speak of being “up” while when we’re sad or depressed, we complain that we’re “down.”

Humanity is now engaged in a struggle to learn to think in new ways. The world and the times demand it. At the very least, we need to learn the language of ecology so that we can properly engage the environmental challenges such as climate change that threaten us.

The problem is that ecology involves thinking horizontally. A rain forest is not “higher” than a desert in value; there is no hierarchy of ecosystems, no rank that says goodness comes from meadows but not from swamps. All manner of ecosystems are needed for the benefit of life and the health of the planet, not just one or two. As systems, they interact as collaborators. Vertical thinking can lead us to visualize the world in terms of dominance and submission, the “higher” controlling the “lower.” But this is not the way to see the interconnectedness and interdependency of the world. We need to think horizontally, partner to partner, not master to servant.

It’s not that “vertical spirituality” is incorrect and must now be abandoned. Rather it’s that we need to complement it with a horizontal perspective as well, one that sees Light and Spirit in the world about us, in the bodies we wear, in the nature around us, even in the very fabric of matter. We need to think in a way that has neither up nor down, right nor left, back nor forward. Spirit is all around, and Light flows in all directions.

Vertical spirituality is aspirational (a reaching up) and invocational (a drawing down), but what is a horizontal spirituality? Surely it is a reaching out, a spirituality of connection, collaboration, and blessing. It discerns the Light within the world and within others and adds to that Light from the gifts of one’s own being.

In fact, the act of giving provides a wonderful image of horizontal spirituality at work, an image in keeping with the spirit of the Holiday Season now upon us. However, for this image to work, we need to understand giving as something more than just the exchange of objects, however delightful such exchanges can be.

Giving is not simply the satisfying of a need or a desire, nor only an act of generosity, again however important and worthy such an act may be. Giving is an act of perception. It is the opening of the heart to see another both in their uniqueness and sovereignty and in their connectedness to oneself as part of a greater whole. When such a perception arises, love flows, and the gift is a celebration and recognition of mutual participation in the life of the world. In other words, the gift is an affirmation of another’s identity and individuality and of the value of that identity to the community of being we all share.

If I think of giving (and of gifts) in this way, I realize that it’s an act of meeting a deep need we each have to be seen and appreciated for who we are. In this context, the gift doesn’t have to be an object. It could be something as simple as a smile, an appreciative nod, a friendly word, a helping hand, a loving embrace. What makes it a gift is that it comes from a part of me that takes the time and energy to truly see the other in his or her individuality, looking beyond whatever labels and categories I may have mentally attached to this person. It comes from a part of me that honors the other and acknowledges that in their unique nature, they are a gift to the world. It comes from a part of me that loves and blesses and wants to support the other in the miracle of their being.

We all want to be recognized and honored for who we are as persons, not just for our roles or our titles, our activities or our contributions. We want to know we mean something, that we are not just random collections of atoms spinning in space. The act of giving as an act of horizontal spirituality says “You are meaningful. You are valuable just as you are. I appreciate and honor your presence in the world with me. Thank you for being!”

As the holiday season comes upon us, we’re going to hear a lot about giving (television shows are already filling up with ads for Christmas presents). We will all feel the pressure to buy this or that, and the emphasis often will be on the nature of the gift, not necessarily on the nature of the person to whom it is going. Caught up in the swirl of advertisements, we will feel the commercialism of the holidays and the tendency to turn the act of giving into a social necessity, a ritual of exchange and transaction that is more about getting than it is about being.

But it is well within our power to pause and recover the deeper meaning of gifting as an act of horizontal spirituality. We just need to stop and see the Light that is in each soul, each person, and in the world around us. We need simply to remember that we are each gifts. We are each a soul giving itself to be part of the life and Light of the world. To recognize this in each other is itself a powerful act of blessing. Then, when we give, whatever we give, we do so saying in our hearts, “I give this to you, my friend, in loving recognition and honor of the gift you are.”

A Thanksgiving Presencing Meditation

Editor’s note: scroll down to the bottom of the blog post for an audio version of the meditation.

Thanksgiving time here in the USA comes in late November and is one of the last harvest festivals each fall season to celebrate and give thanks for the bounty and blessings of the year. Along with the traditional turkey, harvest pies, and mashed potatoes, it is a moment to celebrate family and friends and the warmth of community coming together. But sitting down to write a blog this year has been hard. This year it doesn’t feel enough to just “give thanks.” I want to root my thankfulness in a way that goes deeply into the world to connect, include, and nourish others who are struggling in lives upended by drought or fire, pain, or warring dissension. I would like to feel I can help to make a difference.

Reflecting on how that might unfold from an incarnational perspective, it seems that it would be most accurate to say I want to know myself to be a source of blessing, contributing as an engaged and regenerative resource. And the energies of Thanksgiving seem to be a perfect partner. So, I am taking the challenge of writing a blog for Lorian as an opportunity to draw on our community field and explore a way to deepen my thank-full-ness as an active resource and blessing that makes a difference in life.

My friend and colleague, David Spangler recently spoke of three areas that help us take action from an incarnational perspective. Starting there seems a useful beginning. His first and most evident area of action was physical. Working with this area we take specific actions organic to us that allow us to connect our love and care with our own local environment. For me, that includes making regular contributions to a local food bank and gifting to areas of environmental crisis around the world. In a wider but still specific way, it includes my composting, growing native plants, and moderating my environmental impacts through simplified life choices.

A second area David spoke about in which we have the power to influence and take action is a subtle or energetic one. We can sound a note of love, peace, joy, and collaboration in our own life relationships. For me, that means attending to my own family interactions in ways that enhance our joyful and loving connection. It means attending to my irritation with traffic jams or long lines at the grocery store with some equanimity and patience. It means catching my resentful or negative thoughts, being honest about what I must do to change them, and then acting on that understanding. My energetic state adds its unique note to the harmony of the world, and I can make sure it is as clear and true as possible.

It is the third area David mentioned that opens a less defined and explored territory for me. It is the action of Presencing. Though I can feel and point to the power of Presence, it is not really the result of direct individual actions. It is a relational unfoldment and as such, I experience it emerging from within a different field of exchange. Like a tuning fork, I notice that Presence communicates through resonance. It is not the back-and-forth exchange that fuels many physical initiatives or the centering alignment that draws our energetic intention into a sympathetic field of activity. Presence does draw from these, but it seems to me that it reveals and renews itself by finding a wholeness that honors difference. It shapes a regenerative relationship with the world that blooms and thrives in love and diversity.

Presencing draws me from doing into being and back again in new ways. It is an active engagement, focused yet open in its listening. It is not at all a passive state. I feel it starts in my feet more than anywhere else and it unfolds a fullness of self that opens a new space for my soul to connect to the world. There is an unexplored doorway here for me, a space where impact and energy, commitment and freedom weave a new matrix that shapes “a wholeness greater than the sum of its parts,” both for ourselves and for the world.

And this is as far as I can talk about Presencing with just words. Why? Because it is still new and something about understanding it cannot be just talked about, it must be lived into. My fingers on the keyboard notice an invitation emerging, an urge to bring the spirit of Thanksgiving, this season of harvest and community to mind, heart, feet, and hands, and let Presence emerge.

So, I invite you to take a moment with me to settle into your own place of center and ease. Take a few breaths. Let your feet rest easy on the floor, enjoying the connection and support of the earth beneath you. Let your breath bring your torso upright, spacious, proudly acknowledging yourself as a partner in Life. Let your imagination include the possibility that others in your wide network of connectedness are joining in, linked through love and learning. Let your eyes and body be soft yet alert, present in time and place.

As in the Presence exercise itself, face any direction to begin. In this direction, we breathe in the gift of the personal in this Thanksgiving season. Think of the things you celebrate in your life, the people, the beauty and joys of your family and friends. Feel into the aspects of your life that you are proud of, accomplishments and challenges that you have met, some with success, some maybe not. Both can help us to stand true in ourselves. Draw the quality of standing into your core center be present with honor for who you are to the world. Let your breath become a hum in your body expressing thanks for this personal aspect of Thanksgiving.

Now turn in a new direction. In this direction, we meet the planetary in this Thanksgiving time. As a seasonal event celebrated around the globe, harvest honors energies of both expansive abundance and focused gathering. Nature’s rhythms begin to quiet in this season, drawing in to rest and renew. There is a moment of pause and reflection inherent in giving thanks that allows the fullness and activity of growth to transform into essence, seed, and new possibility. Draw this quality of transformation into your individual sphere and awareness with honor for the gift of renewal in the world. Let your breath hum in a pulse of life as you.

Turn again 90 degrees to imagine and embrace Thanksgiving’s roots in the communal chord of humanity. In this direction, we celebrate the strength of our creativity that reaches out to touch, interweave, and shape. Think of the ways you connect and contribute through your ability to imagine, engage, and serve. Draw all these qualities into your interweaving field with honor for the gifts our humanity brings to the world. Let your breath be your unique song of loving entanglement.

And again, turn and shift your attention 90 degrees. Imagine the essential note, the soul-beat, inspiring this Thanksgiving season. Let yourself resonate within a felt sense of Thank-full-ness, recognizing and celebrating the equanimity, love, and blessing that is your essential note of beingness and that upholds you as a part of the living world. Let yourself breathe in this fullness as a resonant prayer of love.

Now, turn again to the direction you first began and let your fullness and vitality overflow as you embrace the gifts and challenges of your own life, the miracle of nature's life around you, and the creativity, strengths, and challenges of humanity that impact this moment in the world’s incarnation. Feel the loving Presence that weaves it all together in a dance of wholeness. Keep an awareness of your feet on the ground, your breath open and free, and allow your awareness, your Presence to resonate down into the earth and flow out into the world around you. Let it settle into your heart and very beingness.

Your Presence is not a rarified state, it is rooted through the daily notes of your life. You hum it into action with your love, your creativity, your laughter, your tears, and your acts of daily kindness. It is there at any time you choose to focus on it. Each of us in our Presencing makes a difference that resonates throughout the world.

Bring your attention back to this moment in your day, energized, connected, and perhaps humming.

Thank you.

David's Desk #198

David's Desk is my opportunity to share thoughts and tools for the spiritual journey. These letters are my personal insights and opinions and do not necessarily reflect the sentiments or thoughts of any other person in Lorian or of Lorian as a whole. If you wish to share this letter with others, please feel free to do so; however, the material is ©2023 by David Spangler.

Responding in kindness

As I have written in the past, with David’s Desk, I try not to “follow the news,” shaping the content of a month’s essay to the events happening in the world. There are other people doing that and often far more knowledgeably and skillfully than I can. My objective, as I say above, is to “share thoughts and tools for the spiritual journey.”

Nevertheless, we journey through a world that is suffering from an inflammation of fear, anger, and violence. This inflammation is constantly erupting in individual acts that cause suffering, but occasionally it manifests in ways that affect thousands—and perhaps the whole world itself.

Such an eruption occurred this past month in Palestine and Israel with consequences that are spreading. As is usually the case in such situations, the innocent suffer.

At times like these, the question arises, “What can I do? How can I make a difference?” For many of us, there is no obvious answer. We can protest, we can write checks to agencies of relief and help, we can donate our time and energy if opportunities arise to do so, but most of us remain far removed from where the bombs are falling, the bullets are flying, and the screams of the wounded ring through the air.

For many of us, prayer is a powerful option, but in our materialistic time, it is not apparent that prayer makes any difference. It can be seen as spiritual bypassing, a way of helping us to feel better. But skilled prayer is not hopeful petitioning but an art and science of mindful and deliberate working with subtle and spiritual energies and presence. It can be a powerful response, but like any action in the human realm—physical or subtle—its success is not guaranteed as human will, inflamed with fear and hate, can interfere, like noise that obscures a clear transmission.

However, there is something any of us can do in response to these eruptions of violence, and that is to respond in kindness. If the images on the news distress me, then rather than stew in my emotions, I can go out into my world and look for acts of kindness that I can perform. These don’t have to be major acts; something as simple as a smile, a thoughtful word of encouragement, a helping hand, a listening ear can enhance the level of goodwill in the moment.

Thus, when the news of the world lies heavy on my heart, I go out to where there are people. It may be to a grocery store where I have an opportunity to interact smilingly, kindly, thoughtfully, appreciatively with a clerk or another shopper, seeking to make their day, their work, happier.

The principle here is simple: am I adding to the inflammation bedeviling humanity or am I counteracting it by adding, in however small amount, to the level of goodwill and love in the world? This may not make things easier for the people suffering in Palestine or Israel, the Ukraine, or elsewhere where there is conflict, but it addresses the long-term problem of the inflammation itself.

If I were a doctor treating a patient who was suffering from a painful disease caused by inflammation, I would have two tasks. The first is to address the immediate suffering of the disease itself, and the second is to deal with the underlying inflammatory cause. Healing the former without healing the latter only means that that inflammation will resurface in some other way.

The spiritual forces of humanity definitely respond to the outbursts and eruptions of violence, seeking to enhance healing and peace, but over the long term, they work to reduce the inflammation itself. It’s a long-term plan of replacing hatred with love, fear with safety, and intolerance with respect, but in the end, it’s what will finally lead humanity into wholeness.

Each of us can be a response of kindness wherever we are, whatever we are doing. If we have a chance to do more, then we can take it, but at the least (and from the standpoint of spirit, it’s NOT the least), we can perform everyday acts of kindness that increase the temperature of goodwill.

A good friend of many years, Andy Smallman, is an excellent teacher of performing small acts of transformative kindness. He has a wonderful website, https://kindliving.net/. I thoroughly recommend it. Andy’s an inflammation healer of the best kind! Then, if the news leaves you upset and wondering what to do, you know how to respond in kindness.

An Experiment

One of the advantages of David’s Desk being digital is that I can do things I couldn’t if it were printed. My Lorian colleague and friend, James Tousignant, and I do podcasts together. He thought it might be interesting to you, my Reader, if he and I were to have a discussion around the theme of that month’s essay and then add the audio at the end. That way, you could both read my thoughts for that month and also listen to me talk about them with James. So, without further ado, here is this month’s conversation. I hope you enjoy it and the added dimension it brings to David’s Desk.

Bringing Light Into Darkness: The Path of Creative Expression

We are born naturally artful. The ability to make, design, and find beauty is baked into us before we emit our first yowl, lie in a crib fascinated by a shadow, or take a first step. If we are encouraged, or at least not discouraged, to follow our creative instincts, a yowl can develop into a song, the pattern of a shadow can lead us to draw, and our steps can lead into a dance.

Unfortunately, many of us as children received a different set of messages, such as “You can’t carry a tune,” “You have no artistic talent,” or “You’re clumsy.” We might have believed them, but they were never true. Gather a group of adults together and ask the question, “When did you stop …?” and you may be saddened by what you hear. The inner creative Light that encourages our play often starts dimming by third grade, if not earlier.

In other parts of the world, it would be unimaginable to tell a child that she couldn’t sing—it would be like telling her she couldn’t breathe. When I attended a conference of corporate executives in India, I was amazed at their willingness to share songs in a large circle of participants. With my American business buddies, singing freely to each other in a group would have been unimaginable.

The good news? We can recover as adults what we never really lost: our creative spirit, ability to play, and the possibility of singing, dancing, making art, or doing whatever we feel most called to do. (Creative expression can extend into any aspect of our lives.) Sure, we may never solo at the Metropolitan Opera, but our lives will be brighter as we express our spirits.

Creative expression as a spiritual path

Storyteller and mythologist Michael Meade writes that spiritual practice has two great roads: creative expression and contemplation or meditation. 

In the Lorian community, we embrace both. Creative expression is a path that embraces our wholeness.

This past August, the Gaian Community hosted the 6th annual Artisan Walk. The offerings were as unique as the contributors—showcasing painting, jewelry, found objects, sewn creations, poetry, and photographs. The artisans (and I was proud to be one of them) described how Incarnational Spirituality influenced their practices. Then, in October, the conversations continued through an online “Creativity and Artistic Expression” salon. 

Moving beyond my story of who gets to make art

During the Artisan Walk, I shared my “coming of age” story about discovering, in my sixties, how the message that I could not create visual art was outdated and wrong. I had lived since age ten, third grade, with the belief that I had no talent to make visual art. I knew that the “real artists” in grade school were the ones whose art hung on the walls; mine never did. Rather than risk mediocrity or failure, I focused on academics, where I displayed some talent. Then, in my career, I focused on teaching leaders, allowing “achieving and accomplishing” to override “play and wonder.” 
 
Until, one day, my soul objected. Full stop. 
 
My father had been an amateur artist and had filled his retirement days painting watercolors. After he died, I received a message to keep his box of art supplies “just in case.” Years later, as I was nearing seventy, the Muse guiding my creative efforts dared me to step away from the story of my non-visual artistry and take a beginning watercolor class. “Use those supplies or let go of them,” she insisted one winter night in an uncharacteristically pushy way.
 
I signed up to take a class at the local senior center, and as I did, the icicles holding my frozen, self-limiting narrative about art started crashing to the ground. Creating my first watercolor, mesmerized by the cobalt blue paint spreading across my paper, I knew I had lost the right to say, “I am not an artist.”
 
I chronicle my story of meeting the Muse and traveling into the land of art and creative expression in my just-released memoir Meeting the Muse After Midlife: A Journey to Meaning, Creativity, and Joy. 

A quest for joy and meaning in our later years

My path emerged out of a quest in my fifties to discover what would bring heart and meaning to the second half of my life. 
 
“Retirement” wasn’t it. Retirement was about leaving—a job or career, yet as I entered my sixties, I felt more engaged with life than ever. The other stories I was being offered about the years ahead sounded either overly optimistic (like “you, too, can climb Kilimanjaro if you want to”), deluded (as in “you don’t have to age”), or depressing (“as in you’re going to deteriorate until you die.”) None of these spoke to my soul or provided a spiritual perspective that could carry me through years of possible physical decline. I needed a narrative that could offer hope without sugarcoating the losses and challenges of aging.
 
I discovered that hope through a path of creative expression. The imagination never dies, nor does our capacity to see the world with wonder. By viewing the world through the lens of beauty, wonder, and artfulness, I found a way to stay out of despair, even when the world felt dark, and I was uncertain about the future. 
 
I tested this idea last summer when I lost seven friends, including my sister and sister-in-law. I meditated, prayed, and retreated to my art studio with each loss. Playing with paint and collage, I found a sanctuary space big enough to hold my sorrow and reconnect me with my generativity.
 
When I sang or vocalized, I could let my feelings be there. I could wail, mourn, rage, or make silly animal songs. As vibrations filled my body, I found joy and remembered that I was not alone. 

An incarnational process

Each of us has our own forms of creative expression and mine have come through singing, sounding, dancing, improvising, painting, and noticing nature. Through my artful experiments, I invite Spirit, or energy, to manifest through me; I become a collaborative partner. To create, I must stay anchored in my body and tuned into my senses, yet open to intuition and the subtle guidance that might be there for me. 
 
Part of the hunger that drew me to creative expression was a desire for Beauty—to make my life about more than succeeding professionally and constantly striving to achieve. Once I changed direction and started noticing more, Beauty opened her doors to me. The more I looked, the more she revealed herself in the most ordinary aspects of life. 
 
I found Her in places least expected - in my mother’s wrinkles of the elderly, in the faces of the marginalized, in a discarded roll of chicken wire, in a spiral heap of cow dung baking in the sun. The more I open to the Beauty around me - the more I find.

Light into Darkness

For me, Love lives at the core of my work. When I love what I am creating, I am filled—no matter what the output looks or sounds like. My creations, in turn, love me back, or at least so it seems. My love for and with the world expands.
 
The world is dark with war, terrorism, climate change, and crazy politics—we hardly need reminders. We do need ways and practices to keep us reaching toward the light or, as David recently wrote, “to be the Light.” My brain latches oh-too-easily on what is wrong in the world or my life—usually, these things are very tangible. It takes an intention or an act of will to open and allow the Light to come through me, no matter what is happening around me.
 
When I create, I find that Light and a way of transforming the darkness, at least within me.
 
Artistic expression gives me a way to stand in a world that can be dark while still bending toward the Light.