“Sanctuaries of Stillness” at Solstice

The word Solstice means “Sun Standing Still” in Latin, marking the time in Gaia’s year where there is a pregnant pause of stillness and fullness in both northern and southern lands. Our festival team was inspired this year to explore the gifts and wonder possible when we can consciously create “Sanctuaries of Stillness” for ourselves and others. Times when we intentionally pause, becoming fully present to ourselves and to our surroundings, finding rest and refreshment in busy hectic days. What can we discover in those moments of ‘standing still’ with Gaia? What mystery and magic can arise in those times? What allies, seen and unseen, will join us as we accompany Gaia toward her greatest in-breath (Winter Solstice) and greatest out-breath (Summer Solstice) in the year?

We are sharing some of the treasures we have experienced in “Sanctuary of Stillness” moments in our lives. Lucinda’s captures the mystery of a winter’s night, and Linda’s the gift of a summer’s day. Freya’s offers us a rich reflection on the quality of “Stillness.”

May these bring blessings to you, wherever you find yourself at Solstice time!

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Twelfth Night – A Winter’s Tale

by Lucinda Herring

On the eve of January 5th, forty years ago, I was sitting on the front porch of my family’s old log cabin in Alabama. It was nearing midnight, and the air was frigidly cold – only 10 degrees F. Unable to sleep, I had wrapped myself in warm blankets and come out into the night, seeking a peace I had not found the entire Christmas season. I was rocking back and forth on our wooden swing, but stopped, afraid that the creaking of the chains would wake my sleeping family. In the ensuing silence, I fell into a “Sanctuary of Stillness,” so deep and transformative, I have never been the same since.

The forest around me was utterly still. No wind stirred the bare winter branches or rustled the fallen leaves. No bird called; no animal crept through the shadows. I gazed out into the woods surrounding the cabin and was startled to see that the forest was beginning to glow with an unearthly light. I searched for the moon above the treetops, as the logical source of the sylvan glow, but then remembered that the moon was new and dark. I could see a myriad of stars through the trees – sparkling like diamonds in the crystal-clear sky, but their radiance could not account for the growing light around me.

I got up and walked with wonder into the forest, my boots crunching on the frozen ground. I didn’t go far, longing for the deep stillness once again, feeling I was trespassing on something sacred and holy by moving and making noise. Pausing, I stood with my feet planted among the moss and stones, so I could enter a “Sanctuary of Stillness” once again. To my amazement, I realized the luminous glow I was experiencing was not coming from the skies above, but seeping out of the earth beneath me, swelling up from the dark damp ground, and flowing in filaments of shining light through every living thing around me.

I was not seeing with my physical eyes so much, but from a deep inner felt sense that my whole body and soul recognized. I knew, without knowing how, that I was witnessing the “Return of the Light” to the land. I was “seeing” Gaia’s Breath as light and life force – that which had been held in a liminal pause of deepest inhalation at Winter Solstice time – rising up now as a shining promise of new life to come, even though the ground was hard as iron, and it was the depths of winter. I did not think these thoughts then. I simply basked in the beauty and joy of being part of something so much bigger than my winter woes. It was only later that I was able to more fully understand the magic and mystery of my experience.  

A few weeks passed, and I was back in England, where I was living at the time. I found a small leather book in an antique shop and was drawn to open its pages. The words I read created another “Sanctuary of Stillness” moment, taking me back immediately to the one I was blessed to have on my land in Alabama, far away. I read of the ancient legend of a sacred hawthorn tree planted by Joseph of Arimathea on Wearyall Hill in Glastonbury, when he went there after Christ’s crucifixion. This sacred thorn tree (and its descendants) blooms every year at midnight on the eve of January 5th – old Christmas or Twelfth Night, heralding the birth of the Divine Child in the dark womb of Gaia’s year. According to the legend, on that holy night, light and life pour up and out of the land, and “the stars and the elements all tremble with glee” (to quote the ancient Cherry Tree Carol). New birth wakening in a dark and sleeping land. Just like my time of stillness with Gaia long ago.

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My Dragonfly – A Summer’s Tale

by Linda Engel

As we approach the Summer Solstice in Australia, when the earth pauses, releasing her longest outbreath, I reflect on how natures inspires and guides me to slow down, to pause, to become more aligned with her timing.

One of my ways of finding stillness is to step into nature, most often my garden, either putting my hands in the soil, snipping a plant here or there, feeling the warm breeze on my skin, or listening to the deafening sounds of cicadas at dusk. These experiences, and more, slow me down - help me to find my center in my busy world.

I have a beautiful memory of one “Sanctuary of Stillness” moment, when I encountered a little insect being, who showed me how much we are all connected. It was true love.

It was summer, and I was swimming in a beautiful lake in northern N.S.W. This lake is very close to the ocean and is called The Ti-Tree lakes. It was at one time an Aboriginal sacred waterhole for women. The water is red from the sap of the Ti-Trees. I was standing in the water and noticed a little electric blue dragon fly floating on the surface. I thought it was dead and picked it up and placed it on the palm of my hand. It was no more than an inch in length. It was not dead; its wings had become waterlogged. So, it lay on my hand and slowly it recovered. It then stood on its tiny legs and started shaking and preening itself. It was so sweet to watch. Then it stopped and looked at me with those bulbous extra-terrestrial eyes.

That is when the magic happened. We just stared into each other’s eyes, connecting, with a deep sense of honoring one another. I don’t know how long we stared at each other, but it felt like time stopped and we became one. Then the little electric blue dragonfly flew away, skimming across the surface of the water.

I have never forgotten the experience. Since that time, I see dragonflies everywhere and sense they know how much I love them. I feel a dragonfly being is part of my pit crew now. I call him Dragonfly person. Since that experience I have felt this love and protection of the insect world (except for mosquitoes and blow flies, though they are also part of Gaia). That encounter opened something up in me, to protect them or to be a custodian, as insects do need protection from so many obstacles -mainly we human beings.

So, as I step into the Sanctuary of Stillness this Solstice, I will invite into my field the beings of nature – insect, animal and subtle – who always bring me back to my own center of stillness.

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Stillness

by Freya Secrest

This solstice time of year draws me into the quality of stillness – when sounds and activity quiet and I settle, calm, and come into an expansive peacefulness. I treasure this moment in Gaia’s rhythms and try to weave its qualities often into my life. What comes foremost to mind in trying to describe my experience of stillness though is not a physical silence or quiet peacefulness, but a vibrant sense of holding a powerful stem cell moment of possibility.

As I was reflecting on co-creativity in preparing to offer a class on Manifestation recently, I had an image of myself in a woodland meadow. I saw a deer at the meadow's edge looking at me, ready to bolt if I moved. I wanted to meet it. I held out my hand with an offering of food. I knew I needed to be quiet and still, not only outwardly, but within myself so that the deer would come to take what I was offering. I could feel the busyness of my normal thinking preventing it from coming closer – all the thoughts of past events and the future ones to come, even those needed to become quiet. I had to create a new spaciousness in thought and heart so the deer could step forward and accept the food. Knowing I could bring them forward again, I consciously put my busyness “behind “me to open the space and give room for the deer and myself to make a connection. I stood quiet as myself, letting go and staying present in stillness. The deer came forward and within the vital stillness of our connection, something new emerged.

The wonder of that moment was its stem cell nature. Contained in stillness there was aliveness and possibility. It was dynamic, but also quiet in attention through a listening presence.

So, at its essence, stillness is connected to co-creativity for me. It is a shared relationship. Co-creativity and stillness have a physical connection in my imagination to an open hand, respectfully available, inviting and willing to partner, ready to be transformed. When I take that position, physically or in my imagination, I am softened, hopeful, strongly present to myself, and attentive to the world around me. 

When considering stillness, I go back to this personal experience. Stillness now has a shape in mind, energy, and heart. It opens and grounds me in its roots in possibility, its stem cell fullness. It is a moment of pause that is both full and empty. It is active in Gaia’s solstice shift, winter to spring and summer to fall, as each season “rounds” the corner and moves into its new trajectory. It is here too for me, for each of us, to draw upon as we turn to meet and engage new possibilities in our lives.

Blessing: An Art to Practice

Sunsets over Lake Michigan were an unexpected bonus of moving to the west shore of Michigan. Not unexpected in that having access to a wide and expansive vista overlooking the lake is an obvious opportunity to view them, but unexpected in how natural it was to begin to orient around them, to include them as part of the frame of my life. Watching the sunset is a blessing in my day. Calling me out of my old “keeping up with what’s next on the schedule” perspective, this regular, easy access to a sunset has transformed the rhythm and measure of my evening and highlighted a new interest to discover more about the nature of blessings in life.

Blessings, I find, are like sunsets in that they are often unexpected, are a source of wonder, and offer a touch of beauty that can draw forth both a quiet sigh or a sudden gasp. They call us to breathe and integrate them with our lives. They come with connection – carried by events or relationships in which we are called to come present to meet the world, in which we and the world are both touched and refreshed through our engagement, in which we are sometimes stretched and made new, but always invited to become more whole in ourselves.

Now, more than being special events, both sunsets and blessings are becoming touchstones for navigating my days. I want to make more room for both of them in my life.

Let me carry this comparison a bit further. Just like snowflakes, no two sunsets are alike and neither are our experiences of blessing. The louder the sunset’s color, the more likely I am to notice it anywhere, but when I choose to walk to the lakeshore and intentionally quiet and come present, I can pay attention to and appreciate what is less obvious – the subtleties and radiant soft tones that emerge as the light dims. So too, many blessings invite me to notice and stay present to faint nuances in relationships that set the stage for their emergence, challenging me to add my own heart and presence and amplify the opportunities they offer.

The Oxford online dictionary defines a blessing as a favor or protection bestowed by God, or a prayer that is offered before a meal is eaten. So the idea of a blessing carries a spiritual or outside-of-the-ordinary connection. Vocabulary.com also defines it to be an act of approval, like when your roommate wants to move out and you give her your blessings. David Spangler suggests in his book, Blessing: The Art and Practice, that “Blessing is not a technique or a recipe to follow, but a creative and loving act of standing in the blessing of our own life and configuring ourselves to the moment.” Blessing from this perspective emphasizes an act of relationship that is, “a sharing of life/blood and breath that allows a deeper part of us to flow. It affirms the circulation of life and spirit within the world.” By this definition, we too can become an agent of blessing and be the hands and feet that bring it to action.

Given the wide variations of experiences that characterize blessings in our lives, perhaps the best way to identify a blessing is by how it influences us. Though we each might identify what is a blessing event differently, I am noticing there is a common, shared function they accomplish. A blessing is something that liberates us, it helps us to become more of who we are or who we can be. It energizes the release of unexpected potential, catalyzing newness and growth and resetting the conditions in which we function.

I wonder, what do you think of when you hear the word ‘Blessing’? What experiences have you had that affirmed and refreshed the “circulation of life and spirit within your world,” and perhaps catalyzed a new possibility or reset conditions for you?

It was a blessing in my life when my aunts and uncles stepped forward and opened their homes and hearts to include me in their lives after my mother died. More than just a random act of kindness, their commitment to living their values of family and loving connection gave me a safe place to finish high school and earn a scholarship to college. This offering opened new directions and possibilities for me and widened my imagination and experience of what love looked and felt like. They offered a blessing that transformed my life path and trajectory.

I think of another time when going through a divorce and I was sitting on my porch, alone and feeling deeply sad. Uninvited, my dog came out and sat down next to me. It was a blessing moment for me because I could sense she was very conscious of what I was feeling and came specifically to be with me. She wasn’t asking to be petted, she was offering her presence so that I no longer felt alone. She stayed until my sadness shifted. With that touch of loving friendship and caring, I could again breathe with openness toward my life. She extended a small gift of loving attention that had a transformative, restorative, and blessing effect.

These were two of my big “B” blessings which marked major turns of direction or significant gifts of support, but I also recognize many small ‘b’ blessings that fuel my day-to-day interactions. These things often arise unexpectedly and are rooted in our ability to welcome and incorporate unplanned relationships. Like the moment in the fall when the sun lights up the golden maple leaves of the tree outside my house and I stop to link with and appreciate both the tree and the sunlight. Or the sense of community that comes in a smile exchanged with another parent at the park as our children play together and we share in the delight of the moment. Such gifted moments warm me, they filled my life with more joy and vitality, with love and possibility. They are no less transformative than capital “B” blessings because through them I am also transformed, gaining new capacity to meet my day with resilience and appreciation, participating in a shared moment of belonging in the world together.

There is no common look or outcome for a blessing; each blessing situation is unique unto itself in form and result. But every blessing has a shared source in the energy of Love and connectedness, a shared attention to what is needed in the moment, and a shared willingness to stand in and flow with that moment of life and spirit in action. It is in the free, clear gift of loving that a blessing flows to transform, refresh, and make new. We open that possibility by inviting and making the choices to find and nurture the spark of love in ourselves and the world around us.

Blessings, like sunsets, happen regularly; they are not as rare as we might imagine. Stopping to notice their touch in my life, I find they sometimes came as a gracious gift, and other times they included difficult bumps and frictions. All opened wider perspectives and brought courage to flow with the newness of the moment. Blessing is an art we are all naturally practicing whenever we appreciate, honor, respect, and love the sacredness of life within ourselves, within others, and in our living universe. In acting to recognize and bring this spirit of love forward, we are an artist of blessing in the world.

Standing in Light: A Call to Our Power

For years now there has been a gathering of energies within the spiritual realms to stimulate humanity’s evolution towards greater planetary awareness and wholeness. The purpose of this energy is not to make change happen but to enable humanity to find within itself the power to partner with spirit and with Gaia to respond positively and effectively to the changes that are already unfolding. Anyone who chooses to embody this power of partnership and bring Light into the world will find allies in the subtle and spiritual worlds.

Even on our own (and we are never wholly on our own, for we are always embedded in a larger reality of Light), there are clear things we can do.

For one, we can be aware that we are in the midst of a process of redefining the reality in which we live—is it one of wonder, of joy, of compassion, of love, of Light, of hope? Or is it one of fear, of hatred, of contempt, of separation, of isolation?

For another, we can avoid characterizing this process as a battle between light and dark; to do so is to trivialize and distort it, it is more complex than that. It is not a battle but a metamorphosis, a growing up and leaving behind childish ways. It is an organic process involving humanity, Gaia, the spiritual and subtle realms, and the Sacred in a wondrous alchemy of transformation and emergence.

The third important thing to do is to bring to both our personal and global situations our love, compassion, and forgiveness on the one hand, and on the other, the courage to stand in our sovereignty and refuse to be shaped and defined by fear, anger, or hatred. We need to stand our ground and not let those who are shaped in the moment by fear and anger define the nature of reality. We embrace them as lovingly as we can, but we do not give ground. We don’t need to. When we stand in our Light, we do not stand alone. The universe of Spirit stands with us.

Think of it this way: a battle implies adversaries, winners and losers, conquerors and victims. Those are the categories humanity has lived with for millennia, and they are more than outworn now. They are dangerous. Instead, we need to think the way a caterpillar thinks as it transforms into a butterfly. The cells that formed the old structure of its body are not enemies to be defeated and cast out by the new shape; they contain the very life force and substance from which the new will be built once they surrender to the alchemical miracle of metamorphosis. In this time through which we are living, we may and do have opponents, but we do not have enemies. Everyone potentially has something vital to contribute to the new body that seeks emergence.

This process is a soul-size challenge worthy of everything we can bring to it. We are not without tools in doing this. We not only have the rich traditions of compassion, forgiveness, loving, and communion found in all the world’s spiritual traditions, but we have new insights and tools such as non-violent communication, conflict resolution techniques, new insights into self and sovereignty, and the tools of subtle activism or intentional work upon the energies of the adjacent subtle realms. What we need are the knowledge and willingness to use these tools and to reach for them first before grabbing the more familiar responses of anger and fear. When we do this, even if only in the context of our personal lives, we nourish a calming field of collaboration with spiritual forces that can spread out into the subtle worlds, becoming part of humanity’s overall response. The simple fact is that we do not act alone; in the power of our individual sovereignty, we are in resonance and connection with the whole of humanity.

When we refuse to entertain fear, hatred or anger towards those different from ourselves and refuse to participate in the spreading of such hurtful thoughts and emotions, we create an energetic habit that makes a similar response easier for everyone else. We support each other energetically, pulling each other towards the Light. We can provide a powerful intentionality to move in more loving directions, towards peace and compassion, listening and respect. We can intentionally promote the Light, and when we do, we find we have powerful allies, for that intentionality puts us, as they say, on the side of the angels who are pulling in that direction with us.

This moment in our history calls to us to stand in our power, the power of our love, our hope, our joy, and our Light. It’s up to each of us to determine how we do so in order to bring energies of peace, compassion, and courage to meet the needs of the world. As I say, there are many tools available to us to bring love to our world. We simply need to use them.

Here is an example of a simple subtle activism exercise:

The key to all subtle activism is to find and stand in an inner presence of calm, peace, sovereignty, spaciousness, and love. The power underlying subtle activism lies in our ability to feel connected through this presence to the Sacred, to the well-being of humanity, to spiritual allies, and to Gaia—the spirit and life force of the earth. From this presence and this connectedness comes a power of blessing, what I think of as a “Grail Field.” Just as the mythic Holy Grail held sacredness in a way that was healing and transformative, so our personal Grail Field holds our sacredness on behalf of humanity and the world.

So the first step is to enter your own Grail Field. How you do this is up to you, but here is a simple suggestion:

– Find a place in your heart and mind in which you feel stable, calm, peaceful, and loving. Use whatever spiritual, psychological, energetic, and physical tools or techniques to help you accomplish this.

– Imagine (contemplate or reflect on) as clearly and lovingly as you can, your connections to the rest of humanity, to the world of nature and the land, and to whatever spiritual forces and images of sacredness are meaningful to you. Feel those connections enhance your presence by enabling you to be part of a larger wholeness, one graced with compassion, love and an intelligent, wise awareness.

– Hold your sense of yourself within that enhanced presence and feel its energy go out to your immediate environment, connecting in loving ways with the specific world around you. Once you have a sense of your own Grail Field, then focus on a quality of constructive and peaceful collaboration. Imagine people who otherwise are split apart by differences of race, politics, ethnicity, religion, geography, and who may experience those differences in fearful ways leading to anger and violence, now held in the spirit of this collaboration.

– Feel and see them held in the grace of a loving, peaceful spirit in which non-violent communication is possible. Your task is not to impose anything but to hold a condition in which this clear, constructive non-violent communication is possible. See the people in your vision able to overcome the emotions of fear, anger, hatred, suspicion and the like and able to listen to and hear one another. Your task is not to get them to agree but to enable them to listen without fear and with mutual respect. Use this visualization with any situation of conflict that you’ve seen, heard or read about in the media.

– Finally, imagine that you are a lighthouse. You radiate all around you a light of stability, peace, calm, forgiveness, love, and compassion. Imagine the subtle fields surrounding you calming and becoming clear and stable, able to receive and hold an outpouring of Light from spiritual levels. 

Visualize this clarity and stability spreading far and wide, linking up with the light of other similar lighthouses, other people who are reaching to express peace, compassion and love. As these beams connect, a web of light is woven over the land that empowers all of us everywhere and makes the fear less fearful, the anger and hatred less persuasive.

– Do this as long as it feels comfortable. Then give thanks for any and all help you may feel you received in doing this bit of inner work; carrying this presence of Light in your heart and mind, go about your day. As you go through your day, when you encounter either the presence of fear and its offshoots of anger and hate or you see it reflected in the media, reaffirm that you are a beacon of courage, strength, calm, love, the creator of a space in which clear communication may take place.

Like Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings when confronting the Balrog, stand in your sovereignty and say to the spirit and energy of fear, “You shall not pass!” And let it be so!

The Beauty of Human Energy

As I write this, I am sitting in a small hospital room receiving my first chemotherapy treatment. My cancerous bladder was removed but the cancer itself survived to migrate to other organs, including my lungs. Hence, the chemo!

To make this a memorable week, yesterday I had surgery to create a fistula in my left arm. This is a joining of an artery and a vein to make a “docking port” in case I need to have dialysis. My kidneys are now one of the targets of the cancer.

After the vascular surgery, I got to marveling on the skill and knowledge it took to make the fistula. Who thought of this in the first place? So, I did some research. Fistulas, it turns out, occur naturally when two hollow organs that should remain separate somehow get connected. Normally, this is a pathology. But hemodialysis fistulas such as I now have were created deliberately out of many attempts to help people with kidney failure. The research goes back to the turn of the last century. But the kind of fistula I have wasn’t developed until the 1960s.

As I lay in bed last night, filling my arm with Light and welcoming the new joining of one of my arteries and veins, I couldn’t help but appreciate the amount of human energy, creativity, skill, and caring that went into this medical procedure. So many unknown heroes whose efforts made this possible, of which I am now a beneficiary.

This is true for the chemo now entering my body. It, too, is the product of many lives, many intelligences, many souls working to find and improve ways of dealing with cancer. Whatever one may think of “Big Pharma,” behind all these endeavors is love and caring, and for many, a call to service. This is what I tuned into last night.

As I lay in bed, preparing my body energetically for the therapy I’m undergoing today, I had this deep sense of peace and of love and appreciation for all the human energy that has gone into the whole field of healing, allopathic and otherwise.

We see the destructiveness of human thought, feeling, and action displayed daily on the news. What we may not see, or see as clearly, is our human creativity, or the love and caring we bring to discovering ways of helping each other. We rightly decry the state of the world with its brutality and suffering, but we also need to celebrate the beauty we bring into the world as well.

I have always had a hard time adjusting to my physical body. It has been a consequence of the particular attunement to the subtle and spiritual worlds that I’ve had all my life. Not that a spiritual focus necessarily means a lack of physical focus or vice versa, but I teach Incarnational Spirituality in part because incarnation has been a challenge and something I’ve had to learn. The world often seems strange to me in ways that it doesn’t appear to be to others. This has never prevented me from loving the world and taking joy at being part of it. But it has meant physical challenges as my soul works to adapt to physical life. This latest struggle with cancer seems to be a part of that.

I certainly would rather it be otherwise; I have no desire to be ill. But what my latest illness has done is given me a portal into this arena of human endeavor on behalf of humanity. It has made me even more aware of the beauty of our human energy and creativity as we seek to make the world a better, safer, healthier place. Now, I take into my body not poison, not chemicals, but Light flowing from this human energy.

It makes me love our strange and struggling species even more.

Maramataka

There are times when I feel half a world away, living as I do in Aotearoa/NZ, in a different time zone and season cycle, given the bias is toward the Northern Hemisphere for seasonal celebrations. The thing I appreciate about our Lorian seasonal celebrations is that I feel included, we honor the whole of Gaia, both hemispheres together.

As we approach this September Equinox, I was preparing by focussing on the time of balance and the equality of day and night time, on that moment between the shifting of light and seasons. Then with the super full Moon we have just experienced here, I realized we all have the same moon cycle wherever we are on Gaia. Our planetary rhythms dance in and out of wholeness itself!

In my small town of Pukerua Bay on the Southwest coast of the North Island here in Aotearoa/NZ (that sentence just reminded me of the way I composed my address as a child, ending with New Zealand, Southern Hemisphere, The World :), I have been involved in a community garden/food forest on a local council reserve for the past six years. Recently I was asked if I would be willing to lead the development of  a Rongoa Maori garden (medicinal). Since I am not Maori myself, I feel the need to fully understand Tikanga Maori (cultural practice) as we proceed. I realise it is a perfect opportunity to align my personal Incarnational Spirituality practice with Tikanga Maori and introduce it in that form with the others involved in this new development.

For years I have planted and harvested according to the phases of the Moon and have quite recently expanded my awareness of Maramataka, a way of tracking the influences of the Moon each month not only for gardening and fishing but also for awareness of our physical energies for self-care and interactions with nature. Maramataka is far more than a calendar, it is a holistic way of life for Maori people. It demonstrates their respect for the land, sea, and sky, as well as their dedication to living in harmony with nature. Through Maramataka, Maori comprehend the interconnectedness of all life, and the importance of preserving and safeguarding the environment.

Looking forward to our Equinox celebration in September, we too will focus on planting and harvesting. This is where our hemispheric intentions differ and balance each other. What did you plant in the spring that is emerging now in the Fall? In the South we are preparing for the sowing of our seeds, looking toward that which we wish to harvest.

The energy of the Equinox connects the planting and the harvest. I invite you to consider how you draw upon and nurture the Equinox energies in your planting and harvesting to keep the connection between hopes and vision and what emerges, that connection that continues to revitalize both vision and the result.

Me, I am now off to a crop swap in our local community to enjoy and share the seeds of our harvest. See you soon for the Equinox.

Arohanui,
Ara

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For the last three years, each season at the equinox or solstice point we have been gathering in our online Commons to celebrate Gaian Festivals of Wholeness and honor the rhythms that guide Earth's life. We call them Gaian Festivals of Wholeness because with a community spread around the world, we feel it important to not only honor the seasonal energies in our own locations, but to celebrate the balance of influences between summer and winter, spring and autumn that flow through our planet. You are invited to join on September 22 at 1 pm PT when we will come together to celebrate the Spring and Fall Equinox. All members of the Commons receive the link to join in, but If you are not a member of the Commons please email freyas@lorian.org to receive the Zoom link and join us, you are welcome! Come join the celebrations.

A Time of Balance

Here in Southern Australia, it is late winter. It has been one of the coldest winters in 15 years or so, but in the past week the season has changed. There is a touch of spring in the air. The chill has gone, the days are getting longer, beautiful sunny days with a feeling of warmth in the sunlight. The buds are starting to bloom, the birds becoming more active. Time to watch out for those magpies who are probably sharpening their beaks in preparation for an attack on some unsuspecting human, as they guard their nests.

But what really stirs my heart is the night sky, so clear, so full of stars. The Southern Cross is the smallest constellation in the night sky. Mainly visible in the southern hemisphere, looks like a diamond on its side. The Crux as it is called holds special meaning in Australia and New Zealand where it is visible above the horizon throughout the year. There is an Aboriginal myth that uses the Southern Cross to tell the time. Paying attention to which way its tail is facing, they ask someone to, “wake me up when the Cross turns over.”

And then there is the moon, our beautiful moon. I love to watch the moon waxing to full. I always get excited when I first see that tiny crescent moon again. I miss the moon when I don’t see her at night. That glow – that mystical light that calms me, that makes my garden look magical, invites me to stand outside under its gentle light and dance. I imagine, or do I actually feel, the nature kingdom and faeries dancing with me? I love that whatever phase the moon is in - wherever you stand anywhere in the world, we will all see exactly the same moon reminding us of our connection to each other and Gaia, reminding us as humans of our planetary connections.

When I think about the approaching Equinox - that time of balance between the hemispheres, I consider the different ways I try to bring balance into my world.

The first thing that comes to mind is connecting to nature. When I wake in the morning, I try to avoid looking at my devices and go straight outside and stand on my little patch of Gaia. I breathe in with the garden, and breathe out, sensing, feeling, touching, and smelling the violets that are now in bloom, expanding my field to connect with my subtle environment. I feel a welcoming, an invitation to expand my field into a shared felt sense of sacred connection, a Grail Space, feeling a communion with the trees, grasses, the soil, my worm farm, insects, and animals. Everything. Presence to Presence. Wandering around the garden, pulling a weed out here or there. Just feeling at one with the landscape. Then I go inside and look at my devices.

In this busy, technical, information-obsessed world we now live in, it is so easy to fall out of balance. Just listening to the news will do it to me. But if I reconnect and bring nature into whatever I am doing, I am helped to slow down, to feel more at peace. Whether it is looking at the sky ….how blue is the blue today?..., or looking at cloud formations…I see a horse!.., watching a dragonfly skimming across the surface of a pond, or smiling at a stranger as I walk around a park, all these moments can bring me back to my centre.

We had a storm last night - I was so absorbed in a series I was watching that when I heard this very loud clap of thunder I nearly jumped off my seat. I immediately turned off the TV and went outside to be with the storm - feeling that build-up of energy, the lightning, the wild winds. The elements brought me back to my surroundings, reminding me of where I stand on my little patch of Gaia.

In what ways do you bring the natural world into your day? What brings you back into balance?

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For the last three years, each season at the equinox or solstice point we have been gathering in our online Commons to celebrate Gaian Festivals of Wholeness and honor the rhythms that guide Earth's life. We call them Gaian Festivals of Wholeness because with a community spread around the world, we feel it important to not only honor the seasonal energies in our own locations, but to celebrate the balance of influences between summer and winter, spring and autumn that flow through our planet. You are invited to join on September 22 at 1 pm PT when we will come together to celebrate the Spring and Fall Equinox. All members of the Commons receive the link to join in, but If you are not a member of the Commons please email freyas@lorian.org to receive the Zoom link and join us, you are welcome! Come join the celebrations.

Becoming the Asking

I had an interesting conversation recently with someone who has taken many of our Incarnational Spirituality classes. Responding to something I had said about puzzling my own way into understanding subtle energies, she asked:

How do you know what to write when responding to your students in the Core classes? That, my dear, is your intuition and your greatest gift. You may think you do not see things, or hear things, but you KNOW things. I can go on and on but I think you know my point.

I responded:

Great question, thank you!!!  Um, yes, I agree, I KNOW things. 

And – I have found that how I discover what I know is to hold the person or the question or the issue or the tangle in my heart, in my body, and pause in stillness, to notice what comes to my awareness.  

Here's the key, for me: I feel I am **becoming** the person or the animal or the tree or the idea, in my Deep Imagination. And then, I hold the intention to notice what I know.  

A current example: I do this with my cat, and my new cat – I just adopted another rescue cat! In fact I am doing a *lot* of this with my two cats because my original witch’s-familiar power-cat Onyx is aghast that I have brought another cat into his midst. And Sophie, the new cat, is just a sweet little love-everybody shy presence. But she can hold her own. This is not an easy transition! It has been a little noisy…I have kept them separate, and I will continue to tune into the timing that the situation requires.

So I am *becoming* each of them often, to see how they are with this huge shift in their lives, and what they need, and I am learning how to be in response.

When I am responding to someone in my class, it is somewhat similar. I feel that I become the question, I become the asking. And then in a way I become the person asking the question. Somewhere in my deep imagination then, the space around the issue deepens and expands, and the answering seems to flow from that space. I feel this as a sensation in my chest. I can feel the rightness, or almost-rightness, in it. And I am guided a lot then by the other person's response.  

Or, it is sort of like the “words for the answering” light up, and now I can see them and feel them. I know when something is true. And when it is not, or not quite.  

So when a class participant asks a question, I don't KNOW what to write in a response, but in this becoming of the question or person, and feeling that in my body, a lot of times I *discover* what I know, or discover how to say what I know *as it comes alive* in me. 

I am just tending to the feeling of the asker and the asking, and trusting that the knowing or the answering will rise in me. Something always comes. Often it is a hint of a direction to turn my attention toward.

I have a lot of faith in the knowing that comes that way for me. Whether it is "true," (beyond being true for me), is another question.  

It would be a lot easier (but maybe not as much fun!) if there was a large Presence inside giving me the answers that I would just repeat!

Editor’s note: Rue’s Subtle Energies II class begins September 5. Click here for more info. 

Incarnational Spirituality and Knowledge

Embodied Prayer, by Jeremy Berg

Incarnational Spirituality (IS) accepts all methods of assembling truth as valuable contributions to a larger understanding. This is not because IS would like to be nice to all the other systems and non-confrontational. It is because this system of thought requires it. IS is interested in knitting together wholes not deconstructing self or world. The question for incarnational theory is not so much what is true as when is something true and from what vantage point. Take, for instance, the understanding of the life and function of another species on the planet, say a bat.

One way of learning about a bat is to observe it in the wild. Another is to catch one and observe it in the laboratory. Or we could wait until it dies and dissect it learning all about its structure, biomechanics and the like. In short we could approach it as physical scientists using all the tools of physics, chemistry, evolutionary biology, and the like. Note that however we approach the bat from a scientific angle we ourselves have introduced a new, subjective element – ourselves!

We could also take a shamanistic approach and try to communicate with the bat or a bat spirit. This assumes it is a conscious, sentient being with rights and power. This could be done through ceremony or could happen spontaneously through visions or dreams. How might this information be different or complementary to what we had learned earlier? What are the indigenous legends of the bat? What taboos have they inspired?

We might also consult Holy Scriptures to see what they say about animals, mammals, bats and man’s relationship to the natural world. This might give us insight into the ethics of our scientific methods. We could pray to be given insight into the life of the bat.

We could take a mystical view and appreciate the bat as one of God’s creatures and an expression of creative love. What is it saying about the nature of life on planet earth and God? What would deep contemplation of a bat as divine expression reveal?

We could see the bat as an ephemeral arising of itself in relationship to my perception of it. What does it say to me about us, about permanence, about life? Does compassion arise from our sharing of a moment of temporary existence? What would we learn from a lifetime of meditation on a creature like the bat?

Perhaps I take it upon myself to draw or paint or sculpt a bat. What will I learn from the process that I could not gain from any other method? Many a scientist has done just that. What music is inspired? To love the form of a bat is knowledge that cannot be gained in any other way.

And what psychological processes are stirred from seeing a bat? What fears, what joys, what thoughts? What do I learn about myself from seeing a bat on the wing at dusk hunting insects?  

Does the bat teach me anything about manifesting a life, catching my dreams, hunting in the dark, or about adaptability in the pursuit of goals?

Is there a way to see the bat with deeper vision? What does a Clairvoyant see or hear around a bat? Did you know that a single bat mother can find her child upon returning from a hunt in a cave crammed with millions of bats? This was once though impossible but has been proven to be true. How do they do that in the dark amidst the cacophony on radar? What sight are they actually using?

What are the magical correspondences that a bat might conjure? Is it the moon or a planet? Is it one of the vital elements; earth, air water or fire? What is its role in the transformation of consciousness and of matter?

I hope the above stimulates some new feelings for the bat because I want to describe an experience I once had with a bat that changed my view substantially. I do this to illustrate one more way of knowing that to me has powerful implications for creating a more human and sustainable world.

When I was a boy, about 10 years old, I would go out at dusk sometimes in the field in back of our house in Grand Rapids, Michigan and throw a boomerang. When I did so frequently the bats in the area would dive at it, perhaps attracted by the whooshing sound it made as it went through its arced return flight pattern. Anyway, much later, not so many years ago, I found myself in a visionary state first in the fields back of my old house and then following a bat on the wing. Rather quickly I found myself sharing the chase of insects in the air from within the sensorium and consciousness of a bat! This was quite wonderful as the air was like a gel in which I could sense the movement of the insect as if they were connected to me by a string. I remember the moment of catching one of the insects (but not tasting it – probably a good thing as I might have developed a taste for mosquitoes). We landed and I stepped out of the body of the bat and looked back. There stood the “real” bat; as tall as me and constructed of living silver light, like moonlight or starlight. We were in a primeval forest, his mate was nearby and he was giving homage to the giant breathing trees. His life was like a living prayer, a reverent supplication and benediction to the deep spirit of the land, the forest, nature, the earth, and life itself.

Needless to say, this changed my feelings and understanding of bats. I love them to this day even to the point of accidentally bringing one into a cottage at night riding in my hair a couple of years ago in the Canadian northeast woods.

I relate all this to illustrate the possibility of another kind of knowing; that of shared being. 

This experience of shared life and perception is not unique to me. I have several friends, including my wife Freya Secrest, who relate similar experiences. And incidentally, this was one of the many ways in which R. Ogilvy Crombie and Dorothy Maclean communicated with the intelligences of nature around the beginnings of the Findhorn community in Scotland.

Arthur Zajonc PhD an optical physicist in the physics department of Amherst College recommends that we change, “from an Epistemology of Violence to an Epistemology of Love” and lists several key elements as necessary to achieve that end.

•  Respect
•  Gentleness
•  Intimacy
•  Vulnerability
•  Participation
•  Transformation
•  Building – education as formation
•  Insight

He is in the tradition of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who said, in his book Maximen und Reflextionen,

There is a delicate empiricism that makes itself utterly identical with the object, thereby becoming true theory. But this enhancement of our mental powers belongs to a highly evolved age.

Here is Rudolph Steiner, a Goethe scholar, making a similar point:

Goethe’s thinking was mobile. It followed the whole growth process of the plant and followed how one plant form is a modification of the other. Goethe’s thinking was not rigid with inflexible contours; it was a thinking in which the concepts continually metamorphose. Thereby his concepts became, if I may put it this way, intimately adapted to the process that plant nature itself goes through.
–Lecture from August 30, Rudolph Steiner, 1921, trans. Craig Holdrege

And one final reference to this identification way of knowing from someone we all have heard about from the Arthurian legends; the 6th century poet Taliesin:

I have been a blue salmon,
I have been a dog, I have been a deer.
I have been a goat on the mountain,
I have been the trunk of a beech tree.
I have been an axe in the hand,
I have been a pin in the tongs...”
–A Constant Search for Wisdom. John Matthews, Lorian Press LLC, 2007

Let me end with the American educator and author, Parker Palmer who suggests that,

We are driven to unethical acts by an epistemology that has fundamentally deformed our relation to each other and our relation to the world.” And that science’s “mythology of objectivism is more about control over the world, or over each other, more a mythology of power than a real epistemology that reflects how real knowing proceeds.

The point is that from an incarnational perspective, all of the methods of appropriating truth can be employed BUT it is important to know when to use what tool! It is important to recognize the consciousness, potential for partnerships, sentiency and moral rights of those fellow beings that are the subject of our study. How different the world would be if we simply followed this suggestion.

America and the Election

With President Biden’s halting performance in the Presidential debate with former President Trump, followed less than a week later by the Supreme Court decision to grant complete immunity to a President for crimes committed while executing “core Constitutional functions,” the Presidential race has taken on even greater drama and urgency. Depending on who you are, both the fear and the expectation of a Trump Presidency and its consequences have risen.

For most of my life, I have been able, by observing flows of energy within the subtle realms, to know, sometimes weeks in advance, who the winner of a Presidential campaign would be. This time, however, when I tune in, all I see is the subtle equivalent of a fog, a swirling turmoil that does not resolve itself. It’s as if the question of the future of the United States—that is, what kind of country will it be moving forward—is still unresolved and being debated.

It’s important to understand that, at least in my experience, the subtle realms are not monolithic, possessing a single vision and perspective on everything, but they are diverse and pluralistic, with many agendas about the future. I often sense unanimity about the overall spiritual objectives in a given area while being aware that different “factions” or soul groups have different ideas on how to achieve those objectives.

To put this into a larger context, Gaia itself is undergoing profound spiritual changes—a topic I shall write about in a later essay—with a particularly intense inflow of spiritual energies over the next two or three years. One effect of these energies is to stimulate the Light within individuals, which will be liberating and empowering for some and disorienting and discombobulating for others, depending in part on how open a person is to change. Again, I’ll write more about this later, as it’s an important topic all on its own. My point right now, though, is that established institutions and structures of all kinds will be challenged by this and by a need to adapt to provide more openness and freedom for individual expression.

In other words, these new spiritual energies are not being channeled into and through organizations but into people within organizations, which may lead to pressure being put on the organizations to change. Obviously, many organizations and their leadership will resist.

This can be a scary situation, both for established institutions and for individuals whose sense of safety and power is invested in those institutions. It’s important to understand that these new energies, as I understand them, are not antiestablishmentarian or against institutions and organized structures per se. They are for embodiment and expression within individuals. This can certainly take place within organizations but only if the organizational culture and structure is open enough, and courageous and flexible enough, to allow it.

What we will likely see—and are already seeing—is a growth in conflict and turmoil between new vision and ideas and older institutions and structures, especially if those new ideas arise from a pluralistic view of humanity—one that honors all people, nationalities, religions, genders, and so forth—and the institutions are the kind that include some but exclude others through arbitrary distinctions.

When I attune to all this in the subtle realms, I’m often aware of two influential groups, each of which has a different vision of how the United States as a nation may meet the changes occurring in Gaia. Interestingly, both groups share an overall vision that America’s destiny is to be a “planetary nation,” but they are very different in how they seek to achieve that vision. One group sees America as a place where many different types of people representing all of humanity can come together to create a pluralistic and holistic nation, thus demonstrating a unity in diversity: E pluribus unum, as it says on the Great Seal of the United States: “out of many, one.” It sees America as an inclusive place, part of a global community. It is the nation as a brother and sister to other nations. It is more “people-minded,” viewing power as residing in individuals.

The other group sees power as focused through organization and structure. It honors American exceptionalism and sees America as a “nation on a hill,” an “apex nation” that stands alone in its spiritual destiny and greatness and by its accomplishments inspires (or imposes upon) other nations to be like it or to follow its values, to do what it says (whether it fully embodies those values or not). It is the nation as a parent to other nations, telling them what is for their own good.

It’s important to understand that neither group can force anyone to believe or do anything. They can inspire, and they can offer energy to those who resonate with their perspective, but the choice rests with us. We who are incarnated as citizens of the country are the responsible parties, the ones who must decide the country in which we wish to live—for we are the ones who must then live in it and experience the consequences of our choices.

The group with whom I identify and with whom I have worked for many years is one that honors the individual as a source of sacredness in the world. The persons within it see the spiritual power and destiny of America as focused within and arising from its people. Their philosophy is summed up in the Declaration of Independence, that all people are created equal and endowed by the creator the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Indeed, some in this group were involved in creating this document in the first place. For them, America’s destiny as a planetary nation is grounded in its ability to be a pluralistic society, not dominated by any one group. It follows what I call a “galactic model,” a system made up of equal stars, each and all shining bright.

The second group—and some of these were involved in the creation of our country as well—sees safety and the protection and continuation of American society as rooted in organization and hierarchy. It sees America as having important gifts to offer the world but in a paternalistic way. This group is really responding to an ancient impulse, one that has always championed the importance of structure and leadership, which usually is hierarchical in nature. It follows what I call a “sun-satellite model,” a system made up of a central sun or source around which everyone else orbits like a planet and receives illumination and energy.

Structure is important. But structure can take many forms and can, where there is love, be fluid and dynamic in its nature, rather than rigid and dogmatic. The future is not an either/or between what these two groups represent but most likely a blend of the best of each. In the subtle worlds, dialog and cooperation takes place between the two, something we have yet to achieve here.

I should also say that these two are not the only forces at work from the subtle realms, and we need to be careful about reducing the complexity of the situation to a simple polarity. There are also those in the shadowy dimensions of human energy whose motives have little to do with spirit and much to do with division, separation, and destruction. They have no interest in any form of spiritual destiny for America—or for any other nation. They work to tear down, to manipulate, and to control, and they feed off anger, hatred, fear, and suffering. They have little or no interest in the good of any larger whole but only in meeting their own selfish needs and hungers. This group, if I may call it such, is an expression of humanity’s karma and its shadow and is not particular to any single nation, Party, or people. Its influence is international and seeks only to diminish or extinguish the Light. It can work through tyranny and structure and through anarchy and the mob. Its identity is Chaos, and its influence can be seen in our history in acts such as slavery and the decimation of the Native Americans, an influence that has acted regardless of which governmental philosophy or Party was in control.

Here is what one of my subtle colleagues, a member of the first group I mentioned, had to say:

Our “faction,” if you wish to call us such, seeks to support those individuals who are attuned to the spirit of America and the Declaration of Independence, regardless of their partisan affiliation. We are attuned to those who have hope, not fear, love and not hate or discrimination. But our soul brothers and sisters in the other “faction” are not necessarily acting out of fear or hate but out of an honest sense that, in the midst of turmoil, what will save America is a strong and clear structure, led by a strong leader. Hierarchy has served and saved people in the past, and they believe it will do so again. These differences in approach and methodology can be found in both your political Parties, although at any given moment in your history, one Party may embody one vision more than another. But the new energies emerging present humanity with a different challenge than anything you have met before, something beyond your familiar and habitual ways of doing things. They challenge you to become a creative and flexible part of the planetary community of all beings, a conscious part of Gaia, and to participate in wholeness, which is not a structure, not a political position, but a process of life itself.

In my opinion, neither the Republican nor the Democratic Party understand or embody the vision of new kind of “galactic” polity that is an embodiment of wholeness; both are still beholden to “sun-satellite” ideas of hierarchy and structure. However, the Republican Party at this time is more caught in the glamor of hierarchy and the imposition of a structure and leadership that is fundamentally separative, inclusive of some and exclusive of others. It looks to what worked in the past rather than to what will work in a more holistic and pluralistic future. This gives it a rigidity at the moment that will make it less capable of responding gracefully or effectively to the changes that are happening in the world. Light is emerging in and through the people, and this will challenge structures, no matter who controls the Presidency and the government.

Turmoil is ahead—indeed, has already started—but one approach to government and structure will be able to respond with less fear and with more adaptability than another. Attempts to impose and protect a hierarchy will only increase the turmoil, as suppression will prove incapable of creating obedience and order and will only aggravate the situation. Love and trust, not fear and coercion, hold the solutions we will need. This is particularly true when it comes to resisting the influence and encroachment of those beings who interest is primarily or only in conflict, division, and destruction.

This election is a crucial point for America, a moment of profound choice between two visions of who and what America is and can become, much like what we faced in our Civil War. The reason there is a fog in the inner that obscures the outcome of the election—at least as far as my capabilities of inner vision go—is that it’s not clear what we, as a people, will decide. Which America do we want?

To dispel this fog, we must choose the way we wish to go and those who can inspire us in that direction. For myself, I look for those candidates able to articulate a vision of the positive future, who do not look to the past, either in nostalgia or in listing accomplishments, but who speak of hope and call forth to the creative possibilities within us. I look for the candidate who does not claim that safety and hope lies in him or her, or the structure he or she will provide, or who demonizes and diminishes his or her opponents. I look for the candidate who sees the future of America alive and powerful in each of us, whoever we are, whatever our gender, our race, or our religion, and who knows that the life and power of America emerges best when we reach out to support and trust and work with each other as Americans, whatever our surface differences may be. I look for the candidate who does not manipulate me but respects and uplifts me as a citizen and thus as essential to the fulfillment of this country’s destiny. I look for the candidate who offers a vision and practical steps to take us beyond conflict and division and towards unity. I look for the candidate who, though love and largeness of soul, can diminish the power of hatred and shadow amongst us and open us to the wholeness.

My subtle colleagues had a final word to say:

Fear has a momentum. If you wish to halt and change its influence in this election, then you must do the work to provide a counter-momentum, one based on a positive vision of what is possible and a vision of trust and collaboration. To base all your efforts on eliciting fear of what will happen if the other Party wins is ultimately to serve fear itself, which in the end will only serve the turmoil in your lives and those who wish to destroy all that you have gained.

©️2024 David Spangler

David's Desk #205: Finale

The time has come for me to write my final David’s Desk. You may have noticed that the most recent David Desk essays were reruns from the archives of past issues. I was ill most of last fall and this spring dealing with bladder cancer. The pain made working difficult, and I was unable to write a new essay every month. This culminated in a recent eleven-hour surgery to remove the damaged organ and reconstruct my urinary tract. All is very much better now—I’m pain-free for the first time in months—but I have a road of recovery ahead of me which will require much of my energy and focus.

So, I have decided to bring David’s Desk to a close. It’s been a good 16-year run, far beyond anything I expected when I started. Its success has been due to your continued interest and support, for which I am most grateful. It’s been a privilege to share my ideas with you.

This will not be the last you’ll hear from me. When I have something to say in the future, I’ll find a way to say it through Lorian’s mailing list, perhaps in a blog or a newsletter article. I’m just setting aside the expectation of having to come up with something new to write every month while I concentrate on healing.

If there has been a theme running through David’s Desk all these years, it has been an affirmation and celebration of the spirituality of ordinary physical life and the fact that each of us is an expression of a sacred spirit. Incarnation is not exile from a “true home” but an expansion of our spirit to embrace and engage the wholeness of the world. 

Each of us has a capacity to bring Light into the world. Sometimes this can have a dramatic effect, and we can see the difference it makes. But usually the effect of our Light is cumulative, the result of uncounted moments of grace, of joy, of appreciation, of courage, and of love. It is these simple everyday blessings of kindness that fill the world with Light and over time and space, make a difference.

I like to think that David’s Desk has been a celebration of YOU and a reminder of your identity as a source of Light in the world. In these challenging times, it’s easy to forget this, but when we do remember, we bring wholeness to our lives and to our world. This, to me, is what spirituality is all about. It is the essence of fiery hope.

Thank you again for sharing this journey with me.

Blessings,
David

Celebrating the Fires of Creativity Together: A Gaian Festival of Wholeness

At the Gaian Equinox Festival in March 2024, we gathered to honor the element of Air and the creativity that can come from our relationship to wind, to sylphs, to inspirations within. We had so much fun being creative and sharing our creations together during our festival time online that we decided to continue our celebration in the same way at our Solstice gathering on June 2lst, by honoring the “Fires of Creativity” together.

Solstice celebrations invoke the element of Fire so naturally. In June, in the Northern Hemisphere, we honor the Sun Fire at its highest and greatest expression of Light at Summer Solstice. We build bonfires outside and bask in the warmth and levity of long hot summer days, blossoms and fruit, the abundance of life. In the Southern Hemisphere we honor the Sun Fire within, burning at the heart of the close and holy darkness of Winter Solstice time. We build fires in our woodstoves and hearths and bask in the warmth of family and friends gathering together, short days, stars bright in the long cold nights of rest and renewal.

It will be a joy to see how our Fires of Creativity will manifest on June 21st, weaving Summer and Winter Solstice expressions together in Gaian Wholeness. Come prepared with art supplies, musical instruments, your voice, your pen, your stories and songs. Come prepared to invoke the Sidhe, our cousins in festival fun, the Fire elementals–the Salamanders, and beings of nature–seen and unseen, who help bring warmth, light and transformation to our lives at Solstice time.     

I include here a taste of creative projects for the Summer Solstice–activities I have done with children and families in my community over the years. 

• Celebrate the Sun as much as possible. Go to the beach, be in the sun in the garden, feel the warmth of the sun on bare skin and bodies. Tell stories about the sun. Sing sun songs. Make a sun cake out of golden corn meal and calendula petals for rays. Get golden things: glitter, gold paper, gold crowns to be Sun Kings and Queens. Wear fiery colored clothes in reds, oranges and golds to honor the Sun.

• Cut spirals out of thick gold paper and let them hang in branches of trees to dance in the wind and the sun. The way the spirals turn mimics the way the energy is spiraling up out of the earth at Summer Solstice time. These are very magical.

• Spend a lot of time with the faeries. Go to special places on Midsummer or Solstice Eve. Read tales of faery, and faery poetry. Make faery houses out of sticks and moss and stones. Leave food and drink out for the faeries on Midsummer’s Eve, milk and honey, and lovely treats.

• Sing songs about faeries, make up dances for the Four Kingdoms. How would a gnome tromp? A watery undine slip and slide? How would a sylph flitter and fly? A fire salamander flicker and flame? Let your imagination soar.

For those in the Southern hemisphere, I include a glimpse of the star festival of Matariki, (the Māori name for the Pleiades star cluster) celebrated near the Winter Solstice. Matariki honors the time when the Pleiades are visible once again in the night sky, and is, in its own way, a Fire festival, celebrating the importance of Star Fire in our lives. The festival is being honored once again in New Zealand as a vital cultural treasure and important threshold in the earth’s year. Matariki was made an official public holiday in 2009, which is a beautiful tribute to the Maori people of that land.  

Here's a taste of creative projects for Matariki: Ara Swanney from New Zealand will be sharing more with us in our festival time. These projects reflect the traditional ways that the Maori people celebrated Matariki.

• Go out and view the stars and celebrate the return of the Pleiades in the night sky.

• Make an offering of food to the stars.

• Do divinations with the stars. When Matariki reappeared, Māori would look to its stars for a forecast of the coming season's prosperity: if they shone clear and bright, the remaining winter would be warm, but hazy or twinkling stars predicted bad weather in the season ahead.

• Honor loved ones who have died in the past year. After the forecasts for the year were read from the stars, the deceased were invoked with tears and song in a ceremony called te taki mōteatea ("the reciting of laments"). On the rising of Matariki at the start of the year, the deceased of the past year were carried up from the underworld and cast up into the night sky to become stars, accompanied by prayers and the recitation of their names. 

• String garlands of stars in the trees as a festival of returning Light.

We look forward to celebrating our Fires of Creativity together.  Please join us:

Solstice Gaian Festival
Northern Hemisphere Friday June 21st, 1 pm Pacific Standard Time
Southern Hemisphere Saturday June 22nd,  Varying times depending on where you are 
If you're not a member of the Gaian Commons Community, email Freya Secrest for the link to join us.

Blessings,

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

Why Do Humans Exist?

Sarah Bush, in our Gaian Commons community, posed this powerful question:

“I was thinking the other day about the fact that insects can live without humans and thrive, but humans can't even survive without insects. That fact doesn't seem to stop the insect apocalypse. And that made me think about how, if humans weren't on the earth at all, all other life would thrive. 

I love being incarnate on planet earth as a human, but that's a hard thing to reconcile. Why are we here as a species, really, when we seem to be doing more harm than good? What is the spiritual logic or experiment? 

As the species with the most (seemingly, anyway) agency on the planet, is the rest of the planet forced to suffer for some sort of spiritual struggle that humans must work through?”

I love this question. I would say yes. But I would reframe the sentence about “the rest of the planet being forced to suffer for some sort of spiritual struggle that humans must work through.”

I think the setup needs to be a bigger picture, one that holds the problem but can see it from a much broader deeper perspective. I am looking for possibility, a perspective of wholeness here, that might be more tolerant and accepting of humanity’s foibles. And — is there a way to explain this differently that leads to new vistas and new action?

Here is one example of an answer that gives a bigger picture, from one of David Spangler’s subtle realm colleagues. (It doesn’t exactly address the insect question though…)

The Earth is unfolding its inherent sacredness, becoming a planet of Light. This is not happening suddenly nor will it happen overnight. It is a process long anticipated, and now we are in the beginning stages. To you it may seem as if the world is plunging into darkness, but to us, it is becoming more radiant.   

To abide this increase in Light, all life on earth must begin to manifest greater love, greater wholeness, greater interconnectedness. This is particularly true for humanity, whose more developed consciousness bears a larger responsibility and need for change.  

This could be seen as the development of a new etheric body for the planet, and a new subtle body for human beings.

When you incarnate, you enter a field of connections as surely as you enter a physical body. This field of connections—the subtle part of your incarnation–is what is changing. 

It must be more finely woven into the other fields of life that make up your world, and the division between the subtle and physical worlds must become lessened, for this, too, is part of this field of relationship.  

In other words, you must become more whole with your world, (meaning more connected and interconnected) with all parts of your world—with the Whole Earth.

The need for this is clear and has been clear for centuries, even millennia. The Christ came in part to set this process into motion.  

Now you have reached another stage in this great work. You can build on what has gone before—the traditions of Light, Love and Compassion that have brought you this far, as well as the tradition of Knowledge embodied, albeit imperfectly as yet, in your science.  

With these as a foundation, you can now reach into the world in new ways to draw forth newer insights to shape how you inhabit the world. 

Incarnational Spirituality is a design project, an exploration into how to make the shift into a body of wholeness capable of incarnating into a sacred world.  

It seems to me that answering Sarah’s great question above is about coming to appreciate how our loud crashing through the cosmic underbrush is actually creating our contribution to this design project. This is a living cosmic experiment that we are part of. Our experimenting to find better ways, awkward and bumpy though it is, is serving this design project. This is what it is for.

I love the challenge posed – to see the bigger perspective of how, what, and why we Humans are learning. And how our learning itself is generating content, redesigning the possibilities of an unknown future, revealing the path of a vast mind-blowing cosmic experiment.

Another window into this cosmic experiment and our place in it comes from David’s subtle realm colleague Sarah (another Sarah of good questions and wisdom!):  

For millennia, Gaia has been a crèche for humanity. It has been like a stage on which you could discover yourselves and try out different combinations of being human, but always you have held yourselves apart. 

But now, it’s time for humanity to become a crèche for Gaia and to hold Gaia within yourselves in a way that allows a fuller nature to unfold for her.  

To do this, you cannot be only human. You must find in yourselves the capacities to be angelic, to be elemental, to be stellar, to be Sidhe, to hold in yourselves the elements that are part of or that contribute to the whole earth. This is what you are calling the new subtle body. It is our task to fashion and to enable this blending to come into being.

….We are exploring how to give birth to a new kind of human, a Gaian human—but also new energies of angelhood, new kinds of Sidhe, new forms of elementals. This is not a project limited just to humanity. All parts of Gaia are seeking how to be birth channels for a new world.

At the same time, Gaia continues in her accustomed ways, for there are many lives that still require the “old” Gaia that can simply hold and nurture.  The new doesn’t eliminate the old, at least not immediately. But the old can prevent the new, if only by its inertia.

This is a profound shift that is occurring, though different, perhaps, from what many have expected. It is asking us to revision much of what has become habitual and familiar. 

We incarnated humans are asked to see the terrible problems that are emerging — and to still go beyond blaming to ask, “What is possible instead? And how can I contribute?”

I believe that guiding our lives with this question will help this profound cosmic re-design to unfold. We are all in this together. Even the insects.

David's Desk #204

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 essay originally appeared in 2006.

Spirituality in Everyday Life

At a lecture recently, I was asked “What is the use of spirituality in everyday life? How can it help us address the problems of the world? We need action, not meditation.”

This is not an unusual question. I imagine most, if not all, spiritual teachers are asked it from time to time. Nor is it an unfair question. We are a practical species, after all, and we want to know not only how things work but how they will work for us and what benefit we will derive. And while the question as stated perpetuates a common misunderstanding that spirituality is other-worldly (and that meditation is what spirituality is all about), it carries a genuine caring of the questioner for the well-being of others and the world.

It also expresses the perplexity of a person raised in an industrial, technological, strongly materialistic culture faced with problems such as climate change, nuclear proliferation, the widening of the economic and social disparity between rich and poor nations, and terrorism that are themselves the by-products of such a culture and which are resistant to purely industrial, technological, or materialistic solutions.

The times we are in create stress, and we naturally want to relieve that stress, preferably as soon as possible, which means a desire for quick fixes. Like a magical spell, the speed of technological processes has entranced us and turned us into impatient, short-term thinkers who want our solutions and gratifications now. Consider the irritation we may feel if our computers take thirty seconds to access a website instead of five. And when it comes to spirituality, if I can’t learn it and do it after a weekend course, then what use is it?

But spirituality has never been about short-term experiences or solutions. It is part of the “long wave” of human experience and growth. It some ways it’s not even about solutions but about the process of arriving at solutions, about how we think, how we feel, how we see, how we engage.

It is common to say that spirituality is about being rather than about doing. But this is a largely artificial and rhetorical distinction. When I act, I act from my being, and that I can act at all is because I have beingness. But we can also say that we come into being through our actions, that being itself is an action.

I think of incarnation as an ongoing act of will in relationship and engagement with the world. So, spirituality is as much about doing as it is about being. Indeed, I would say that spirituality and spiritual practice are about uniting the apparent dichotomies of being and doing into a unity, a wholeness of active presence.

Imagine a group of people in a room engaging in a craft project. Some are knitting, some are crocheting, some are doing needlepoint, and some are sewing. Each of these is a separate and distinct art requiring specific skills; they are different ways of doing. But all of them require and use hand and eye coordination and the fine motor skills of finger work. If I am “all thumbs,” it doesn’t matter which craft I’m doing, the results will be mediocre at best. I may even fail completely. With practice, though, I can master the coordination and muscle movements necessary to skillfully manipulate the knitting needles or the crochet hook or the needle and thread. As I do, I can concentrate more and more on the pattern I’m trying to create—the sweater, the picture, the dress, the quilt—and less and less on just getting my fingers to do the right thing.

In this example, spirituality should be seen not as a technique, such as knitting or sewing, but as the skill of hand-eye coordination and the fine motor skills that make all these arts and crafts possible. In other words, spirituality is metaphorically the underlying skill that enables the doing of these crafts, not the crafts themselves. Spirituality is the equivalent of good coordination. It is the ability of my fingers to do the right thing in the moment. It is the “muscle knowing” of the appropriate action that honors the stitch or the knit I’m making, the larger pattern I’m working with, the spirit of the craft itself, and the joy I have in participating in this craft.

What does this mean in our everyday world? Well, think about those qualities or actions that we call “spiritual.” What might they have in common? Think about love, compassion, caring, forgiveness, peacefulness, integrity, coherency. What do they do?

Think of them in terms of “I/hand” coordination, that is, how I blend, connect, and engage with my world. Being loving or compassionate doesn’t make me otherworldly. Rather it gives me the “fine motor skills” of human relationship that can enhance communication, cooperation, understanding, effectiveness. Any of the spiritual qualities enable me to “stitch” or “knit” the human fabric together more closely. And if I have cultivated an inner peace, I’m more able to focus on the larger patterns of humanity and the sacred, on the wholeness of things around me and the wholeness of the world, rather than focusing on the fumbling of my fingers as I try to master a particular technique.

It could be said we face so many planetary problems precisely because we have become “all thumbs” where the world, where nature, and where our fellow human beings are concerned. We are not coordinated. We are dropping stitches, losing threads, missing connections, and breaking patterns all over the place. We are fumbling through life.

Spiritual practice and techniques, from meditation and prayer to ritual and reflection, are our finger exercises to develop the skills of coordination. Love coordinates. Peacefulness coordinates. Compassion and forgiveness coordinate. They are the fine motor skills of good human relationships. Attunement to nature coordinates and is the fine motor skill of good environmental relationships. Yes, a person can get lost in just doing the finger exercises and never picking up a needle and thread. But simply trying to act—to sew more, knit more, crochet more—without being more coordinated is not going to solve the problem. It’s only going to give us more of the tangle we already have.

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.