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.

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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.

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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

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.

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