Community Views

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

  

2024 Equinox Festival: Celebrating the Element of Air

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

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

[Music 0:44-2:06]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ara Swanney: Wholeness.

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

Ara Swanney: It goes beyond boundaries.

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

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

Sharing the Gift of Fire and Warmth at Solstice Time

Lucinda:

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

“We bring Starlight. You bring Fire.” 

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

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

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

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

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

Linda:

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

Rudolf Steiner wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That night the young girl had a dream.

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

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

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

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

Lucinda:

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

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

Blessings,

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

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

 

 

A Thanksgiving Presencing Meditation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you.

Bringing Light Into Darkness: The Path of Creative Expression

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

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

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

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

Creative expression as a spiritual path

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

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

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

Moving beyond my story of who gets to make art

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

A quest for joy and meaning in our later years

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

An incarnational process

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

Light into Darkness

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

Reflections on Equinox as a Time of Balance

In considering the energies of the Equinox and the environmental conditions active in our world, the Festival team wanted to explore how resources inherent in the world and in our own loving intention can offer a blessing in ways that can help strengthen and support the life of Gaia.

Through our interest in making our festival celebrations relevant to these times, we co-created a practice for this Equinox season from our conversations together. We share both conversation and practice here in the hope that you will join us in the Commons Equinox Festival online on the 24th of  September at 1pm PT or that you will try the practice yourself at home during this Equinox season and beyond. We welcome your blessing partnership!

–Freya, Linda, Ara, and Lucinda.

Our Conversation begins with Linda and Freya

Linda: On this Equinox–as Australia seems to be moving again into another El Nino period–it is already dry and unseasonably warm here and I see the United States and Canada fighting fires and hurricanes storms. I am looking to find Balance within myself so that I can bring the blessing of Presence to our precious world.

Australia, where I live, is the driest inhabited continent in the world. 70 percent is either arid or semi-arid. Drought, bush fires, and floods have been a constant occurrence on this ancient land. Learning to live in balance with these two extremes is essential for the survival of its people, its creatures, and its plant life.

I have always tried to conserve our precious water, especially after experiencing a long drought in 2009 when we had to live with severe water restrictions. I became so conscious of the fragility of this element, how the bush and my own garden were so parched, the air hot and dry, the fire element so dominant. Then, how quickly it all changed when it began to rain, and we were suddenly in flood conditions.

Freya: I am touched by the connection to land and water you speak about here, Linda. I can remember the water restrictions put in place in the past in California, where I was living at the time. Please say more about your experiences

Linda: These cycles reflect what I experience within me. The fire/solar element represents what I am passionate about–what drives me–and the water/lunar element brings perspective to my emotions and helps me to find equilibrium and inner calm. When I look at how I balance these elements of fire and water within me, I touch a sacred relationship in life that brings me to reflect on the relationship the First Nation’s people of Australia have always had with water. I have traveled many times to central Australia to attend Aboriginal desert ceremonies. They were gatherings to celebrate and to honor Aboriginal women and their connection to their sacred lands and rituals.

We would sit in the desert and watch and participate in their dances and ceremonies. Sometimes, they would take us to their own lands, further inland in the middle of the desert, to places that were very remote and pulsating with energy. They would take us to their water holes–underwater springs. The knowledge of the locations of the springs has been passed down from mothers to daughters. Their ancestors passed this knowledge through the Dreamtime and by the ancient routes called the Songlines.

I remember one water hole where the setting was so beautiful, and the colors of desert, sky, and water so complementary.  I felt at one with the landscape–a sense of peace, joy, and balance, almost a remembrance of being there before. I often return to this magical place in meditation to connect and feel at one with my landscape.

Freya: Could you say more about Dreamtime and Songlines?

Linda: For thousands of years, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have navigated their way across the lands and seas of Australia using paths called Songlines or Dreaming tracks. A Songline is based around the creator beings and their formation of the land and waters during the Dreamtime (creation of the earth). It explains the landmarks, rock formations, watering holes, rivers, sky and sea. Clan groups could demonstrate their knowledge of place in the songs and dances passed down from generation to generation, in turn creating dreaming tracks for people to travel vast distances, highlighting their deep connection to land and sea. The Songlines are maintained through ceremony and record important knowledge encoded as memory texts–such as places to find water, food, and shelter.

Let me share one of the many Dreamtime Aboriginal Creation stories that relate to water, the story of Tiddalik.

Tiddalik, the largest frog ever known, awoke one morning with a huge thirst. He started to drink and drink until there was no fresh water left in the world. Soon, creatures everywhere were dying and trees were wilting because of lack of moisture.

All the animals pondered about their terrible plight until a wise old wombat suggested that if Tiddalik could be made to laugh, then maybe all the water would flow out of his mouth. This was a good idea, and the animals agreed.

The animals gathered by Tiddalik’s resting place and tried for a long time to make him laugh, but it was in vain. The kookaburra told his funniest story. The kangaroo jousted over the emu and the lizard waddled up and down on two legs, making his stomach stick out. But Tiddalik was not amused.

Then, when the animals were in despair, Nabunum the eel who was driven from his favorite creek by the trough drought slid up to the unresponsive frog and began to dance. As the dance got faster, Nabunum wriggled and twisted himself into all sorts of knots and shapes–to the amusement of Tiddalik. Tiddalik’s eyes lit up and he burst out laughing. As he laughed, the water gushed out from his mouth and flowed to replenish the lakes, swamps, and rivers again.

Freya: What a delightful story! It makes me laugh too! What stands out for me in this story, which relates to current times, is that it shows a way to step back from the pressure of solving the many issues we are experiencing in our lives right now. We can draw upon the freeing and connecting energy of laughter and create a new frame to meet polarizing forces around us. It seems so obvious, but maybe not so easy.

In this story, the animals couldn't force or logic Tiddalik into releasing the water, but Nabunum was willing to step out of his norms, let go of control, and twist into odd shapes. The resulting laughter because of this “foolishness” opened up and released the nourishing water that was so needed. What a creative, not-to-be-expected ending! It is a gift to step out of control, let go, and bring a lighter spirit of being to an issue.

It is also a spherical resolution because laughter holds the possibility to touch and transform all involved. Using humor brings in perspective and lightness of spirit. It is not control but joy, laughter, and delight that opens us up to the energies of balance–freedom in oneself to move in many different directions and the possibility of new relationships in the world.

The Conversation develops as Ara and Lucinda join in with thoughts about the Gifts of Laughter and Water

Ara: Laughter involves breath and breath brings you into the present moment. You have to breathe to laugh. You can’t keep fighting with someone when you laugh together.

Perhaps one way out of this environmental mess is to come into the present moment with the spirit of shared laughter. When we are present, we can make a difference.

Lucinda: Water can be a natural equalizing force and an agent of balance, so I am glad that we are exploring the element of water at this Equinox time. The flow of water is a connecting force as well, bringing seemingly separate things together so easily. Our human bodies are made up of roughly 60% water or more, and when we are dehydrated, we need the healing agent of water to bring us back into balance. I love linking the healing force of laughter with water, as Linda’s story offers us. The practice we came up with is a wonderful way to weave water and laughter together as agents of healing and balance for our world.

The Practice

Capture some water in a cup or bowl. It can be water that is pure and clean from a local stream, tap water from your faucet, or even water local to you that is polluted in some way and needs cleansing and renewal. Hold the container in both hands in front of you.

Now, begin to laugh. Perhaps at first, it will feel silly, but keep going! Like Nabunum the eel, let go into the moment and allow laughter to carry you deeper until you reach a belly laugh, and the whole of you is laughing. Let your laughter be a gift and blessing to the water you hold. Let it open you to joy and delight, a moment of shared blessing with the life of the world.

The balance of water and the lightness of laughter are an interwoven Songline highlighting the trail we can walk through these turbulent times.

In honoring the power of stories in our lives and how storytelling is a wonderful way to celebrate our Equinox festival, we also invite you to bring forward stories of the power of water in your life, stories of bodies of water you love and care for, and also stories of the power of joy and laughter to transform and heal.

The Conversation continues with you and our Festival Celebration

Linda’s Australian Dreamtime story can be a parable for each of us and a source of inspiration to work with laughter and water as our allies and agents of healing, balance, and blessing.

We invite you to join us with your own contributions and attention to the energies of water, laughter, and balance in this Equinox season. Take up our practice as described above or choose other actions natural to you that can help to bless and extend the balancing energies of the Equinox into our world and lives. We will invite laughter to serve as an ally through this practice in our shared festival time online. However, if you feel drawn to add other balancing and blessing energies to strengthen the energies of this season, please do!

And consider joining us online on September 24th at 1pm PST as a part of our Festival Celebration in the Commons.

Nature Notices

Recently walking along the footpaths of our land in the foothills of the Oregon Cascades, a naturalist friend marveled at the species diversity along the way. It wasn’t always like that. Continually mowed before our purchase, much of the land was blackberries and canary grass. In the twenty years since then, we have ceased mowing. With help from the local watershed council, my wife has planted over five-hundred trees. Now I look out my window at Hemlock, Douglas Fir, Redwood, Western Red Cedar, and a Cottonwood over seventy feet tall.

I recalled earlier walks this past spring and remembered the Trilliums that popped up along the wooded paths. They led the way. Then their cousins, the Fairybells and Twisted Stalk, followed. Along came the Bleeding Hearts, Pacific Waterleaf, Fringe Cups, Candy Flower, and many more to fill in all the gaps of the forest floor. Though many of these species were here twenty years ago, their profusion was not. What changed? The wooded areas were unmowed and untended before we came. We left them that way, just creating narrow pathways for walking. Why is the understory so verdant now? My only activity was walking these paths with attention, appreciation, and sometimes joy for what I saw growing along them.

Several weeks later, my wife and I strolled through the newly seeded village park near our home. We admired the Yarrow and California Poppies scattered about in a bed of Red Clover. The next day I attended my Tai Chi class at the local library overlooking the park. During class, I spotted several men carrying string trimmers. Knowing they planned to shear off the wildflowers and civilize the park, I was dismayed. I felt helpless.

Yes, I was physically helpless. I’m not in charge of the municipal park's landscape management. However, I could turn my appreciation of the wildflowers into a subtle alert, calling out subvocally, “There’s a storm coming; be prepared.” Reaching out to Pan, I asked this universal Gaian being to pass along the alarm. Immediately, I sensed the maple trees adjacent to the Tai Chi space become startled by a human in their midst. Then I felt the wildflowers beyond them acknowledge the warning and respond with gratitude. This response took place in the blink of an eye, but I knew the natural
world had noticed me.

Reflecting on my two experiences, I sensed how nature weaves together matter and spirit. My experiences enhanced my appreciation of the natural world and strengthened my sense of wholeness. These events triggered an inner dialogue that stimulated three questions as I prepared for the course I’m facilitating this fall. They centered around the mutual awareness between ourselves and nature when we immerse ourselves in it.

These questions are:

–When I observe the natural world, is Nature aware of me?
–When I enhance my sensory appreciation of my natural surroundings, do I create a deeper connection to nature beings?
–And, when I expand my perception of the natural environment, does Nature benefit?

Framing the questions differently, I might ask. What emerges when you merge science and sensitivity? Are both beneficial?

A friend of mine said to me recently,

“I hear the call of nature, but she asks me not to see her with my eyes nor hear her with my ears. Rather she asks me to build alliances with her within my heart. She wishes me to be with her as a partner, not as an object of study.”

I agree. If our minds and hearts are not one, we fall into the mental trap of identification and classification. We short-circuit our capacity for a more profound connection with the natural world. What if our minds and hearts are one when we hear Her call and observe Her with the whole of our presence?

Unable to answer this question myself, I thought of a much older friend who might be able to. We have become acquainted over the past couple of years. I don't know how old he is, but judging by his girth, I estimate his age to be over three hundred but less than five hundred years. As a Douglas Fir in a nearby remnant old-growth forest, he (my sense of his presence) stands along a path I frequent weekly. I seldom ask him a direct question. However, who else in nature could I turn to? So, coming to him with a clear mind and open heart, I placed my palm upon his bark and asked, “When humans notice you or other plants and animals, does this aid Nature?”

There was an unequivocal "Yes" from him and the surrounding forest. They continued,

"When you perceive and acknowledge us, you create a connection between the two of us. We sense this as love. With love, we thrive. The more you focus your awareness on us, the deeper this loving connection becomes. Love for us is the energy for life. We manifest more fully in this loving connection."

After this, the forest voice fell silent. The songs of birds and the buzzing of insects returned. Gratitude and joy filled me. Overflowing with lightheartedness, I walked to my car. The grandfather tree and the forest answered my questions. Yes, our appreciation supports and benefits the natural world. Even the simple act of noticing creates beneficial loving relationships. By deepening our awareness, we foster the possibility of communication and cooperation between ourselves and nature.


Ron Hays will be co-leading a 9-week class called "Deepening Into Nature and Oneself" along with Deb Scrivens and Mindy Springer. Click here for more info and to register.

The Grail, The Wasteland, and the Chalice of the Heart

I have been thinking about the Grail traditions and the present world situation holding together in my awareness a sense of T S Eliot's wasteland, The High History of the Holy Graal, the experience of the world wars and the sense of being alive here and now.

I am reading what I might call my local Grail text, The High History, which was said to have been written in Glastonbury Abbey. I am reading it in the Sebastian Evans translation, which while not the most accurate, is in wonderful English.

This text draws on potent ancient welsh traditions as well as drawing in Templar imagery. It shares with the Master Blihis text, The Elucidation, the experience of the Wells of Joy having dried up and that all cups and chalices have vanished. It is a remarkable work deeply interwoven with the fate of the Land.

We learn that there are no chalices to be found in all of Arthur's land until Arthur experiences the Grail mass. We are told that in the Mass, the Grail appears in 5 forms that are not named but are concealed in other places in the text–the Lance, the Sword, the Stone, the Child and finally the Chalice.

At this mass, the grail priest rings a magical bell cast by Solomon long ago and this becomes the prototype for all church bells in Arthur's realm. He brings the chalice back to his land and magically every church now has a chalice and the bells ring from each church tower. The incorporation and the embodiment of the chalice is the key and pivot point of the grail story and the answer to the wasteland.

The drying up of things in the wasteland is wonderfully described by Eliot:

"What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock)
And I will show you something different from either
|Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust."

It is this situation, we find the Grail seekers addressing in the High History of the Holy Graal. Each has to find a way to deal with their personal wasteland: Lancelot has to address his fixation with Guinevere and find a way to look beyond her, Arthur must renew vision and bring this vision back to Logres, Gawain must resolve the tension of the opposites, while Perceval must remain true to his innocent nature like the Fool of the Tarot–it is by simple being that he prevails.

Another great description of the Wasteland is given by David Jones in his 1974 poem A,a, a Domine Deus, in which he addresses the robotic mechanical nature of modern life:

I said, Ah! what shall I write?
I enquired up and down.
(He's tricked me before
with his manifold lurking-places.)
I looked for His symbol at the door.
I have looked for a long while
at the textures and contours.
I have run a hand over the trivial intersections.
I have journeyed among the dead forms
causation projects from pillar to pylon.
I have tired the eyes of the mind
regarding the colours and lights.
I have felt for His wounds
in nozzles and containers.
I have wondered for the automatic devices.
I have tested the inane patterns
without prejudice.
I have been on my guard
not to condemn the unfamiliar.
For it is easy to miss Him
at the turn of a civilisation.
I have watched the wheels go round in case I
might see the living creatures like the appearance
of lamps, in case I might see the Living God projected
from the Machine. I have said to the perfected steel,
be my sister and for the glassy towers I thought I felt
some beginnings of His creature, but A,a,a Domine Deus,
my hands found the glazed work unrefined and the terrible
crystal a stage-paste ...Eia, Domine Deus.

In his great poem The Anathemata, he gives us his sense of the grail Mass:

We already and first of all discern him making this thing other. His broken syntax, if we attend, already shapes:
ADSCRIPTAM, RATAM, RATIONABILEM. . . and by preapplication, and for them, under modes and patterns altogether theirs, the holy and venerable hands lift up an efficacious sign….

The cult-man stands alone in Pellam’s land: more precariously than he knows he guards the signa: the pontifex among his house-treasures, (the twin-urbes his house is) he can fetch things new and old: the tokens, the matrices, the institutes, the ancilia, the fertile ashes —the palladic foreshadowings: the things come down from heaven together with the kept memorials, the things lifted up and the venerated trinkets…

Within the railed tumulus
he sings high and he sings low.
In a low voice
as one who speaks
where a few are, gathered in high room
and one, gone out…

In the prepared high-room
he implements inside time and late in time under forms
indelibly marked by locale and incidence, deliberations made
out of time, before all oreogenesis
on this hill
at a time's turn
not on any hill
but on this hill."

Here we see the preparation for the rite the gathering together of the heap of broken images and the stepping into the sacred enclosure. This is followed by the gathering of all who need to enter into the communion with the healing presence of Christ. Jones makes reference in one of the notes that in the rite of the fourth century Egyptian Bishop, Serapion, the Eucharist is regarded as a recalling of all the dead so that as the Mass is made it touches all space, all time, and all the living and the dead. The manifestation of the chalice is the great moment of recollection and redemption. In the words of Sarojini Naidu the 20th century Indian writer and political activist:

“The Divine Chalice
The hearts of true worshippers,
emptied of self,
form a perfect chalice,
wherein Divine power can be outpoured.
A group of souls meeting together in some holy sanctuary of God can, week by week, form a nucleus whereby the Divine power may be captured in the empty cup of their hearts,
From this Divine Chalice can go forth a mighty power, or spiritual ray, to help this suffering world.
First the empty cup, then the divine outpouring, and then the absorbing whereby the body of
Christ may be strengthened to give out to others from this Divine Chalice.”

In a sense the absence of the chalice that the High History of the Holy Grail speaks of is the fundamental reason that the wasteland comes to be for without the capacity to make space, resonate and create communion we find ourselves in a world without colloquy and conversation–a dead and deadening world.

The IS gestures of awareness in which we enter into Sovereignty, connect with Self-Light, and practice Grail Space brings the chalice of communion into operation. My Sidhe companion Melusine uses a phrase that sums up the heart of this practice, ”The one Tree that is a thousand Trees, the thousand Trees that are one Tree” or, to put it another way, the relationship of the All with the Small. This speaks of the way in which we exist within a series of nested interconnected fields. As we enter sovereignty in an act of conscious incarnation we become present and we experience ourselves at centre and edge, giving us an experience of both our own unique generativity and our connection of the field of all life. As we bring this sense of uniqueness (the small) into relationship with the universe (the All), we align with the presence of the Christ–here experienced as a living force that promotes development and coherence. This alignment deepens our connection with the Generative Mystery at the heart of our being and our capacity to embrace all that we touch.

As we move outwards in response to the intention of incarnation the ability of the body to map and include (which is a reflection of the incarnational impulse) comes into play and there is a meeting between our vector and the vectors of  the manifest and subtle worlds that are closest to us. In that meeting a conjoined field is formed which is in itself a creative beginning, a star of life, which as in the fertilised egg creates a new being with a new DNA (to use that metaphor)  configuration formed from the inter-twining of the incarnational fields.

My own practice of Grail Space always begins with entering into Sovereignty and acknowledging whatever I am sitting on. There is a sensation of taking my seat in a way that is much more than physical; the sense of being supported and of there being a sense of space for me to rest in operates at so many levels physically of course but also psychologically and spiritually. There is also a sense of me receiving the seat’s capacity to hold space and offer support which assists me as I acknowledge the other forms around me such as the candle on my shrine, a wall hanging etc.

To give another example as I hold my tea cup in my hands, allow myself to become present and enter the felt sense of Ian holding the cup and invite the cup to be present with me, there is a moment of meeting and vibration which includes the sense of "this is my cup, which I like.” I am aware of the history of the cup and the potter who made  it etc. Then I start to feel its cupness, the sense of clay and fired earth that is its substance, I feel its energetic form also so as well as its solidity I feel its vibratory nature meeting it as both particle and wave.

At the same time, I sense it responding to me and I have a sense of my cup-ness in response, as this becomes more vivid I have a wider and deeper sense of myself and the cup as aspects of both Gaia and the sacred and as  this happens there is an intensity of life and presence that appears which becomes a wave of expression moving in all directions.

At the heart of this expression is a non-sentimental love and care that is both the root of the experience and its currency, a mutual mirroring that enables a star of blessing to appear. As the experience dissipates the intensity goes away but I, and the cup are changed subtly. My colleague Melusine comments,

“It is the meeting of two standing waves in which the standing wave that is my constancy makes room for and is enriched by the standing wave of the other–when you spoke of the exercise with the cup you showed the process in which the cup receives Ian-ness and Ian receives cup-ness. There is a transmission and augmentation that arises and a bond that is created that is permanent. The creation of such bonds of connection is a creative art with the Sidhe, a setting up of webs of union which enables new life to flower in new ways–it is a meeting beyond time and space in which the all is enfolded and made visible in the small.”

Grail Person, by Jeremy Berg

The Lorian image of the Grail Person shown above visually sums up the whole process we have been looking at. As we embrace our human form we become rooted in the green and golden universe like a tree and like King Arthur in the High History of the Holy Grail, bring the radiance and blessing of the chalice back into the world causing the Wasteland to be irrigated and to flower. In this way we enter our deeper more complex form as the mediating presence and as the living Grail but the doorway for me at least is always through the apparently simple act of becoming present to my 68 year old body just as it is and being able to listen to its music even when seemingly out of tune or creaky.

The Qabalah, Incarnational Spirituality and Gestures of Awareness

My Beginnings

I was born in 1955 in a small, very traditional Welsh village in a family environment that was both rich and very difficult. I was born with an innate sensitivity to inner experience and I remember a sense of the aliveness of the world and of a deep stillness that would enfold me and would convey a sense of all time and space being present just here and now. Within this stillness there would be experiences of beings who seemed concerned about me and the direction of my life. I had no way of contexting this experience as I was brought up in an orthodox Christian household that had no sense of inner experience. The Christian traditions of my childhood were very much concerned with the sense of sin and evil and the wish to eradicate or drive out anyone or anything that exhibited these qualities.

I was fortunate when I was 15 to come across the tradition of the Qabalah which we might describe as the inner tradition of both Judaism and Christianity. This takes a different view to orthodoxy and points our attention to the other tree found in the centre of the garden—the Tree of Life. This tradition appears in Europe in the twelfth century CE and gives us a way of working with self and world so that what is perceived as evil or wrong, instead of being driven away or slain, is brought into the heart and there undergoes an alchemical transformation in which the disturbed feelings, thoughts, and beliefs undergo a process of death and resurrection which, instead of dividing the energies of life, unites and magnifies them. The Qabalah is a practice of prayer, contemplation, and way of life that has its heart in this way of being and is organized around this image of the Tree of Life, simultaneously the image of the true human being and the universe in which we find ourselves. One of its central practices is the alchemical practice of bringing all that is lost and disturbed back into the heart and returning it into what might be called the great bundle of the living.

I have worked with this tradition for nearly fifty years. It has demanded that I be continually attentive to the ways in which I either act in the service of light or become an obstacle to it. It has asked me to take seriously the reality of the inner worlds and subtle beings and the ways in which the outer and inner worlds affect each other. I have stood in old churches that have become dormant or despoiled; in older sacred sites that have somehow become detached from their original purpose; on old battlefields; in the back streets and alleys of Jerusalem and the Drakensberg mountains of South Africa. I have also worked with it in the middle of cities, on trains and buses, in council estates and cottages, in gatherings of powerful people, in great cities and with powerless and despairing people in small towns. In all these places and occasions, the choice has been whether to find a way to affirm unity and the mystery of the indivisible nature of love and will, or to divide will and refuse love; to align with the tselem, the true human image, or to set up an idol in its place.

I was taught this art by two remarkable people, Walter Ernest Butler and Tom Oloman, both, in my view, tsaddikim or adept qabalists in their capacity to enhance life and transform disturbance.

Walter Ernest Butler (1898-1978) was taught the Qabalah by Dion Fortune, and was part of the Society of the Inner Light that she founded. He was also a priest of the Liberal Catholic Church. I encountered him in 1973 when I joined the Helios Course on the Practical Qabalah. His training was focused on the development of the will and imagination while retaining the capacity to be grounded and embodied. A particular feature of his work was the development of the image or tselem of the true human being; this he called “the magical personality” and he worked with it so as to enable a sense of ourselves as centres of light and life through which the practice of effective prayer and blessing manifested. This work involves descent into and emergence from what he described as “the inner sea at the foundation of our psyche.” In the act of dissolving into the inner waters he would be receptive to the deep prompting of his own soul and inner guidance, letting go of his customary self-image and, as he emerged, would take whatever form was needed to meet the conditions of the moment. He continues to be one of my major influences and as I write this, what I most remember is his clarity, kindness, and no-nonsense simplicity—no frills or elaboration.

I worked with Ernest Butler for only a short time, but I went on to work with his disciple Tom Oloman (1914-1995) for over twenty years. His work too was centred in a practice of blessing and prayer and, like Ernest, he used a process of dissolving and arising, but his approach was less precise and more mystical than Ernest’s. Like Ernest he followed the same process of aligning with light and embracing disturbance. Tom had great clarity and stillness, a similar sense of ground and embodiment to Ernest, and a capacity to go beyond form to identify the heart of whatever he was confronted by.

For both of these teachers working with disturbance and evil was an everyday matter; the quiet rebalancing of the universe.

Tom had an abstract, zen-like approach to this work based upon the unity of light and silence, seeing himself as a contemplative monk in a white habit whose task it was to bring the deep, silent music of heaven into the cacophony of the disturbance. He aligned with the sense of the divine as the Christ, which he would symbolise  by the image of an equal-armed cross of gold with a red rose blooming at its centre; experiencing the balance and radiance of the golden cross and the fragrance and beauty of the flowering red rose. This he linked with the healing and harmonising quality of the Name YHShVH, יהשוהּ, which is called in Qabalah the Healing Name. He would bring the sense of discordance and lack of balance into relationship with the harmony of the Name and would simply sit with the disturbance until the inner cacophony subsided, leaving behind a stillness that would hover in the air like the fragrance of the rose.

Over many years I have learned the theory and practice of this tradition and have taught it both in the UK, Israel and South Africa. I recently wrote a book about it and remembered one of my early experiences.

Some thirty-five years ago  my wife and I visited a small church in the depths of the English countryside. It was a sunny day; the village was a classic English village with a duckpond—a haven of peace and tranquillity—and an eleventh-century Norman church that looked beautiful in the afternoon sun.

We anticipated a pleasant visit, looking at stained glass windows, tombs, and learning a little about the history of the church. When we entered, we found what we would have expected to find: a plain, well-proportioned country church, but the psychic atmosphere hit us between the eyes. There was a sense of coldness, airlessness, and what I can only describe as fouled air. I recall stumbling in shock and surprise. I was near to the baptismal font, so I reached out in order to stabilise myself. As I did so I was suddenly aware of the presence of a medieval priest. holding me up and overshadowing me. I was given a strong impression that this place had been desecrated and rather than a place of peace was now a fountain of despair and anti-life. I found myself repeating the Healing Name, and as I did so, it was as if a fountain of pure water burst out of the font and flowed through the church.

My wife stood with me and repeated the Name with me. I don’t know how long we stood there, as I was not in an ordinary state of mind, but gradually the sense of oppression lessened. However, rather than the experience fading away it intensified; it was as if the priest stepped more deeply into me, and I leaned back into him and into the Name. I found myself walking up the nave to a twelfth century tomb in the north chancel and, as I did so, there was a sense of another presence as if rising out of the tomb. There was a different quality in the church now, an active will which engaged with and resisted the will that was coming through me. I found myself laying hands upon the tomb in a gesture of contact and blessing even though what was coming from the tomb was what I can only describe as pure antagonism.

Again, I do not know how long I stood there; it was like standing in the epicentre of a great storm as the light and presence of the Healing Name, coming from the priest and what seemed to be a great line of figures behind him, moved through me to be met by a dark shape of resistance. Gradually the resistance seemed to fade and, for a moment, I caught a glimpse of a human being. Something gave way and the figure and I came together, were embraced by the light, and it was as if he passed through me into the light. In the aftermath I was exhausted, although at peace, and certainly the church was an easier place to be in. The experience, although challenging and tiring was, in a strange way, a profound demonstration of the nature of love and embracing even that which rejects love.

Other later examples would be:

In my wanderings around Jerusalem I would sometimes be aware of the history of that place or might be aware of presences or feelings particular to that place that need attention. On one occasion I was near an old church in the Greek Orthodox quarter and was suddenly aware of the crusades, a graphic experience of slaughter and feelings of pain and rage that seemed to repeat itself on a loop. My response was to align myself with the Name YHShVH יהשּׁוהּ, to repeat the Name and to bring the pain and rage and images into the presence of the Name within my heart.

On another occasion I was in the Armenian cathedral and was aware of many Armenian dead, and of grieving, which linked me to the sense of Armenian genocide in the early twentieth century. Again, I aligned with the Name and brought the sense of grief and lostness into the Name within my heart.

In these meetings, there is an immediacy as we are physically present to whatever is manifesting, and in that immediacy we find ourselves responding to the perceived need. This is normally an essentialised practice in which we relate to the root of our own spirituality and bring that into relationship with whatever is manifesting.

In all these cases the work that is carried out is a collaboration between myself and inner colleagues whose work it is to help the lost and imprisoned. In the experience of the country church I was overshadowed by an inner-place helper who assisted me, first of all, to work with the corrupted energy atmosphere of the church itself, and then to engage with the lost soul that was the source of the disturbance. This involved the capacity to link with the light and with the pain, rage, and fear of the lost one, and to hold the link long enough for something new to happen.

This tradition has and continues to be at the heart of my life as practitioner and teacher. The practice of a tradition for a considerable time, however, means that the work becomes simpler and more essentialised and of course as my life has evolved I have investigated other traditions and disciplines.

My outer work began as a young man when I became first a psychologist and then worked with the Probation Service working with very disturbed people, some of whom had done terrible things and often as children had themselves been treated in awful and horrible ways. This outer day-to-day experience paralleled the inner practices I was learning.

Later I trained as a psychotherapist in a school that taught body-centred psychotherapy informed by Buddhist psychology and I learned the practice of paying sustained attention to the body and the sense of the body as the container of awareness. Gradually I came to feel that our societal sense of disconnection from and objectifying of the body was a major problem and that embodiment needed to be at the heart of spiritual practice. In particular I had learned from the psychotherapist Eugene Gendlin about the centrality of the felt sense in healing. The practice of a Tibetan buddhist discipline called Kum Nye, which involves deeply sensing into the body and working with very slow movements, also fed into my understanding of the importance of embodied experience. This understanding of incarnation is referred to in the Qabalah but as my explorations continued I became aware that it was and is much more central than I had understood.

Encountering David Spangler and IS

About 13 years ago I was taking part in an online course given by Catherine MacCoun called The Gospel Initiation and one of the people present offering her support was David Spangler. I was not very familiar with David’s work though I was aware that he was one of the key group that created Findhorn. I enjoyed the course but I was very struck both by what David said and perhaps more so by his approach and tone. I understood that he taught Incarnational Spirituality—a phrase that spoke to me and drew me to find out more about David and his work.

Shortly afterwards I took one of Lorian’s courses and was bowled over by the quality and direction of Incarnational Spirituality. The sense of IS as a contemporary Mystery School based around the principles of the incarnation of the spirit and being connected to engagement with Gaia and the problems of our time spoke deeply to me. David’s approach drew on his own inner experience and his engagement with science.

David’s approach and his use of what he called “exercises”—which I experienced not so much as things we do but as gestures of awareness—took me right into the heart of my experience of life and spirituality. As part of this new and developing inquiry, I took part in Lorian’s Ordination process which took the ancient archetype of the priest and interpreted in a new way for a new age. Many of the themes were familiar to me but were addressed in a much more essentialised way with freshness and with the felt sense and felt embodied experience right at their heart. One important theme that I was familiar with from my earlier experience was working with the Sidhe so as to enable a deeper sense of the human archetype to manifest, and another was working as an esoteric priest. The practice of Grail Space became fundamental to this work and this remains at the heart of my inner work.

Over the last year a new aspect of this work has been catching my attention. This recent focus began with the appearance of a new subtle companion who presented himself as an archaeologist and said he could be called Archie and that his work was to renew and restore old archetypes much as archaeologists do. He also said he was a Michaeline, a colleague of the Archangel Michael and that his task was to help me work with Intention and Imagination in the service of love.
He went on to say that love is not an emotion; rather it is the primary power of metaphysical gravity which shapes space/time, and in its expression as light it makes possible wave and particle reality. Intent and imagination are the servants of love and light as they enable incarnation: intent providing a spine or vector within which the shaping of love can operate and the imagination providing a matrix for the expression of the manifestation of light. In each moment we draw on these fundamental forces meeting the universe and co-creating its appearance.

Archie then drew my attention to a principle, described by the poet and writer Charles Williams, as “co-inherence,” saying that this principle—deeply related to holopoiesis, the principle of holistic emergence—describes the mirroring of the universe in which the all and the small meet in creative conversation. This is the basis of Grail Space and of life itself at the sub-atomic level, at the cellular and organ level, and at the macro level of planets and stars. As we creatively co-inhere, so all is in balance; as that balance is disturbed, so things start to go wrong—from cancer to social unrest to climate change etc.
The beginning point is found in the manifestation of love and light which reflect into intent and imagination, which in turn create incarnate forms and shapes of what Sheldrake calls morphic resonance and what Plato would have called the Forms or matrices that create the local conditions of the universe. These reflections of the Generative Source are themselves generative and acquire particular expressions of love and intent and, most importantly, history and memory.
Memory places a new layer of shaping which makes the expression of light easier if it runs in familiar grooves. This runs the risk, however, of these matrices becoming distorted or only partly expressed. Most of the god images have this problem—rather than being a direct reflection of the Generative Source applied to local conditions, there is a tribal element that attaches itself. For example, the root idea behind Islam for example is the direct encounter with the Generative Source and through surrendering to that source being a messenger of its light and love. This then gets translated into the worship of the messenger and his cultural form. This is true of Jesus and also the Buddha and many others.

Archie’s work therefore has been to realign these archetypes by engaging with them through intent and imagination so that the original vector is found and that distorted imaginal forms are dissolved and through an act of creative imagination new more aligned forms created which enable new possibilities to come into being.

The imagination is a much misunderstood faculty and Archie presented it as a fundamental aspect of our incarnation; it is linked to the capacity to make connections and relationship and the capacity to envisage those links enabling new fields of possibility—in effect, it is generative and a reflection of the Generative Source. 

Working with Presence

If we consider for a moment the IS Presence exercise, it asks us to align with our personal sovereignty, with our Soul, with our Gaian identity and our Human identity. This is a profoundly visionary act and the incarnate sense of presence that arises from this is the growing tip of a new gesture of being-in-relation with self and world. From that gesture new actions and experiences arise and hence a new world—a new age—comes into being.

This practice begins by inviting our sense of uprightness and capacity to hold and opens into awareness of inner and outer senses, creating an anchoring field which becomes the container for the presence of our soul, the presence of Gaia and the sense of the archetypal human. Here we create a star of incarnation, a co-inherent radiant presence of life which generates new possibilities.

The anchoring of the imagination within the senses creates a presence that operates like a strange attractor holding together the opposites of solidity and fluidity, newness and future, this world and many worlds.  There is an expansion both of our capacity to align to the generative mystery at the centre of all things and embrace the thousand things; we come to experience their fundamental union.

From this sense of union, we can consider the nature of nested experience and the idea of the fractal in which the scale or dimension can differ wildly yet there is a perfect replication of symmetry of pattern without distortion. We see this in the development of the body from the single cell but it is true also of inner development—the incarnation of the soul as it enfolds itself into the incarnate world and then unfolds into expression and participation is both particular to our own sense of identity and bearing also the more universal imprints of the Human, of the Gaian, and the Sacred.

The felt sense of dynamic presence expressing itself is the tip of an iceberg of nested or fractal patterns of intention to be and participate. As we move outwards in response to the intention of incarnation, the ability of the body to map and include (which is a reflection of the incarnational impulse) comes into play and there is a meeting between our vector and the vectors of the manifest and subtle worlds that are closest to us. In that meeting, a conjoined field is formed which is in itself a creative beginning, a star of life, just as a metaphorical fertilised egg creates new being with a new DNA configuration formed from the intertwining of the incarnational fields.

This is the basis of an organic praxis of magic—not as something I do or as just as a practice of healing and blessing, but more profoundly it’s the basis for the intertwining of multiple fields and the fractal expression of our incarnation and the incarnation of the universe.
For example, as I hold my tea cup in my hands, I allow myself to become present and enter the felt sense of Ian holding the cup. I invite the cup to be present with me and there is a moment of meeting and vibration which includes the sense of “this is my cup which I like. I am aware of the history of the cup and the potter who made it,” etc. Then I start to feel its cupness, the sense of clay and fired earth that is its substance; I feel its energetic form as well as its solidity; I feel its vibratory nature, meeting it as both particle and wave.

At the same time, I sense it responding to me and I have a sense of my cupness in response. As this becomes more vivid, I have a wider and deeper sense of myself and the cup as aspects of both Gaia and the Sacred, and as this happens there is an intensity of life and presence that appears. This becomes a bit overwhelming and has to scale itself down and as it does so it becomes a wave of expression moving in all directions.

At the heart of this expression is a non-sentimental love and care that is both the root of the experience and its currency, a mutual mirroring that enables a star of blessing to appear.

As the experience dissipates the intensity goes away but I and the cup are changed subtly. This practice of incarnation can involve the deep, mid-, and surface subtle—I'm not sure it matters where you begin as the fractal nature of the enfolded possibilities brings all of the wavelengths into activity, though we may not be aware of the full spectrum at any one time.

This repeated practice of conscious incarnation creates a field of presence and solidity in which we become more visible and accessible to subtle beings of different kinds. This visibility and accessibility of course  heightens the necessity for energy hygiene but also heightens the  capacity for cooperative action between ourselves and subtle beings. This can and does involve teachers and helpers but also involves the direct sense of Gaia and of the Generative Mystery which certainly can't be handled by the surface aspects of me but can be met 'Eye to Eye' by the aspects of my deeper soul that fractally correspond to them.

Central to this work is what we might call the image of the Ideal Human in dialogue with the image of the Ideal Earth and the development of a new etheric body of both humanity and Gaia, which in turn is linked to a deeper understanding of the imagination.

Archie went on to describe a way in which the presence exercise applied in a more concentrated sense to our body and energetic field can help in this emergence:

1. Establish the spine of intent—the vector of deepening incarnation and open into the field of the senses, inviting the creative imagination to function so that we enter into creative communion.

2. Pay attention to our body as an expression of Gaia contemplating the ecology of the body, immersing ourselves in the presence of Gaia as expressed through our body’s life.

3. Turn attention to the energetic life of Gaia that is all around us, noticing the green-gold life of Gaia mixing with us in a constant interchange and flow, and open to the deeper emergence of that life.

4. Sense our being as Human and embrace the catalytic, bridging, synthesising capacity of the human archetype and feeling, and open to a new expression of this deep form,

5. Turn to our sense of personal life, our thoughts and feelings in response to this emergence

6. Open to the Soul’s intent and invite its presence.

7. Invite in the quality of fiery hope and the coming together of the Generative Star formed by this conjunction.

It is this fiery Star that is at the heart of the Michaeline endeavour, for as we bring this into being, we strengthen our sense of presence and our involvement in the unfolding conversation. As I have pursued this process, Archie has encouraged me to think of myself as a Michaeline in order to include a sense of the Archangel within the work. I have reason to believe that Archie might be a projection of Michael scaled down so that I can come into conversation.

Becoming a Michaeline

One image he has asked me to contemplate is the Chapter House of Wells Cathedral as an inner temple. This is an octagonal space with a central pillar.

In inner vision, it presents as an interlocking shape of light and within the spine or central pillar is the altar, which is a unworked block of black, white, rainbow-shot granite stone rising up from the centre of earth where we find the green star of Gaia. Upon the altar is a blue sapphire chalice, and standing upright in the chalice and going through the chalice into the stone is a sword of gold. The floor is of a shining marble so that this above-ground shape is reflected in it, the whole forming a faceted sphere of constantly moving waves of light and sound which is the activity of the archangel. The felt sense of this place is of entering into a field of alignment where we are embraced by the divine life and presence and become spiritually oxygenated and are taken into the heart of the archangel. At other times when the archangelic presence is more muted, there is a gathering of presences.

A key element of this work has been the notion of priesthood and Michael as the archetypal priest; in Welsh, the word for priest is Offeiriad—the one who makes the offering. Now this refers to the Christian Mass, which is seen as the recapitulation of the offering that Jesus makes of himself upon the cross for the healing of all and the mass being both a remembrance and a re-enactment of that act, which is in itself a reflection of the primal offering made by the Generative Source in creating the universe and entering into it.

In Christian mysticism, this is called “The Lamb slain at the Foundation of the World” and holds the intention of moving from simplicity to complexity, from aloneness  to unity/multiplicity. In re-enacting this the priest or offeiriad stands in the position of Christ the mediator and presence of blessing.

In the IS presence exercise, in creating Grail Space we are taking a stance of offering, becoming in that moment an anchor point and generative point which enhances the expression of life.

This stance brings into being a new etheric body and enables us to operate within the new etheric conditions of Gaia. One aspect of Michael’s work is to help us make this step and having made it we then function as an anchor point or tuning fork that sends out a call or invitation for others to join in this new wave form that arises.

We enter then into a new form of perception in which the direct and ordinary sense of other is joined to what we might call their immortal root. This act of united imaginative perception summons into being newness, vision, new combinations of thought, feeling, and substance that deepens the capacity of love to operate within our locality. The revelation of quantum physics about the observer effect which causes the waveform of probability to collapse into actuality is at the centre of this art. We can summon visions of heaven and hell and this is both the glory and terror of being a human being; but if we cooperate with the presence of light and love that is the Generative Mystery, then what moves through us is the capacity to see, to be grateful and to praise.

Then we act as and are a Michaeline. IS has brought me to this ongoing contemplation and I will be forever grateful to David and Lorian for helping me to a deeper understanding of the world and my own self than I would have dreamed possible and which includes my understanding and practice of the Qabalah but takes it into a new dimension

For me IS and my practice of the Qabalah go hand in hand—they are both spiritual dialects that I am comfortable in and in some ways are interchangeable for me. When I take my stance as the Living Tree I am also performing the IS standing exercise. The prayer of the heart and the contemplation of YHShVhיהשוהּ is deeply connected to the practice of Grail Space and the Touch of Love. I could go on as the parallels are numerous. The Qabalah roots me in the spiritual tradition I spring from and its history whilst IS takes me into the emergent frontier—perhaps a suitable image for an American system of spirituality.

When I completed my ordination process with Lorian we gathered together in a ritual which called on us to ordain each other. This meant that David blessed the first person and ordained them as priest and they then as a Lorian priest blessed the next one and so on. I was not able to be physically present but due to the magic of techno-elementals and through the good offices of Maryn, David’s daughter, I was virtually present in that I effectively sat in her laptop and she carried me around.

The moment of ordination required me to come up to the altar where James Tousignant was standing as priest so Maryn duly carried me up and put me on the altar facing James. This meant that he and everybody else was in Seattle while I was in Glastonbury UK. At the moment of ordination it was as if the ancient energies of Glastonbury and the traditions of the Qabalah came together with the energies of IS in a deep fusion. It was very emotional and brought me to tears and it is this fusion that I now work with as a servant of the Healing Name, a Lorian Priest and perhaps even as a Michaeline.

Gratefulness

It is impossible for me to see the moon and not rejoice in its beauty. I am so grateful that we have a moon that sails through the dark night skies, never the same, always changing, but always an ethereal beauty that makes me pause to inhale joy. What a treasure it is, and what a gift to the life of the planet, as the seas roll in and out from the shore with its irresistible pull, like lungs breathing for the planet. Would life have emerged from the birthing seas without the oceanic dance with the moon?

This photo above was shared by Heather Cox Richardson in one of her blogs this month, and I had to pause and take in this beauty. No matter what is going on in the world, there is always a chance to pause and feel grateful for the beauty and life around us. 

In his book Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer, our dear friend and brother, David Steindl-Rast, writes, “Most of us, if not all, have moments in which we are overwhelmed by a sense of belonging, of universal wholeness and holiness, in which everything makes sense…Gratefulness pervades every aspect of these experiences.” Gratefulness is the heart of our deepest experiences of the sacred.

For me, gratefulness is a full-body experience. When I focus my attention on gratefulness, my heart opens and breathes in the sacredness that is rooted in all the manifest life around me, and it is a breath rich with joy. And with that enriched breath, my boundaries both expand and thin so that my body is also the body of nature. All the life around me, seen and unseen, breathes with me, and all that shared communion sings with joy and the ‘gratefulness of prayer’. It is as though life sings hosannas to the Great Mystery, all together in harmony. Every life form is a prayer to the Sacred, and my gratefulness opens my heart to this chorus of life. Joy and love overflow into blessing.

Gratefulness is not the same as gratitude. It seems to me that gratitude is more about giving thanks for something given to me. It is transactional. But gratefulness is a state of being, a presence of love within the heart. It is a universal quality of being much like Joy and Love. It has no reason for being other than that it simply is part of the song of our souls.

This time of year in the north is the time of harvest, a time of gathering the fruits of the season’s labors and celebrating by sharing food and warmth and community.  In the US and Canada, we have Thanksgiving–a traditional time set aside to gather together and share a feast. In other countries’ traditions, there are Harvest Festivals of various kinds with similar intent. Having a special time set aside to honor and to give thanks for the abundance in our lives and for gifts given is important. In my family, it was a treasured time for the scattered uncles, aunts, and cousins to come together in the joy of just being together, sharing food, playing soccer, and laughing a lot. It was a celebration of joy and love and was always looked forward to. I can’t say enough about how important it was to us all. 

But gratefulness is an everyday state of being, an attitude of heart intentionally and mindfully open to the beauty of the world and the gifts of the sacred. Gratefulness, for life, for a body that breathes and feels, for the joy of being in a world that is so rich with beauty and vitality, is a whole-body experience. Even during pain, we can be surprised by joy and a flood of gratefulness that fills the heart to overflowing. And it is that overflowing that offers the blessing that Brother David speaks of, casting its light all around the world, joining with other lights in their blessings, for no other reason than simply because that is what we are made for as human beings. In this overflow, the whole is gifted.

I watch the moon shrink back to disappearance and rejoice again in its thin sliver of beauty, giving the stars more stage for their light to shine. This also is part of the breath of my heart’s joy–the distant twinkling beauty of the stars! And the dance goes on, the fullness of that bright full moon night light will again illuminate the dark skies…and again…and again…

Brother David also says,“To bless whatever there is, and for no other reason but simply because it is, that is what we are made for as human beings.”

Gratefulness opens me to love, and love is the blessing the heart gives the world. May your heart be filled with gratefulness and your eyes be surprised by joy in the world around you.   


A Generational Perspective on Healing and the Energy of Social Media

Editor’s Note: The following is a conversation between David Spangler and his daughter Maryn Spangler, hosted by James Tousignant for Lorian’s Uncommon Conversations podcast. This transcript has been edited for clarity and the introductory and ending material in the audio version of the podcast has been omitted. You can learn more about the Uncommon Conversations podcast and subscribe here.

David Spangler: This conversation arose out of an earlier conversation that Maryn and I had just comparing different worldviews between her generation and mine, seeing both where they were congruent, where there were similarities, and where they differ. Maryn, how would you like to go with this? Would you like to start and speak for the whole of your generation [chuckles] while I speak for the old fuddy duddies?

Maryn Spangler: I feel like I can I can speak first.

David: Okay

Maryn: I’ll jump in on that.

David: Thank you.

Maryn: The things that I see and feel and experience going on in my generation is, there's this big focus on personal development, self development–deep healing on our psyche, inner child, how we show up in the world. There’s this intense focus on personal healing, but there's this huge disconnection from the world as a whole. And sometimes, I wonder, just from my own experience of being in a body, I wonder how much of this is just that with the rise of the Internet and intense globalization, it’s just overwhelming to think in that large of a scale. It's overwhelming to be so interconnected. And so I see a lot of people that are more intensely focused on smaller individual issues–because if I can advocate for myself, then I know that at least my world, my small world is safe. There’s this almost wall, this almost block, this resistance to experiencing that we are all so deeply interconnected. A lot of the circles that I personally run in are with people that are trying to help people. I know a lot of healers, I know a lot of personal development people. And even there, the focus is so on the individual that when I see someone who is talking about how does this affect the whole, it's so different, and they usually don't get that much response. It's not in mode right now. That’s what I'm seeing right now.

David: Of course, we're talking in abstractions here in a way, because any given generation is a complex critter that has people have all kinds of persuasions. But because I remember back in the 60s, I was working at the time in the San Francisco Bay Area and that was at the time that Humanistic Psychology and Transpersonal Psychology were coming to the forefront, particularly there in the Palo Alto, Menlo Park area, which was basically where I was living. I knew a number of the people who were pioneers in that area. There was this interesting kind of controversy because, on the one hand, with the development of humanistic and transpersonal psychologies, there was a lot of focus on the individual, on individual development on self-actualization–the Maslow book on peak experiences and self-actualization was very popular, and it was also a fairly new idea. People were interested in the hierarchy of needs and getting your needs met in order to provide the foundation for greater and greater levels of awareness and engagement.

And on the other hand, there was the anti-war movement and there was the Civil Rights movement, which were very oriented towards larger collectives and larger social responsibility. The Bay Area at that time was interesting because on one side of the Bay you had the San Francisco Peninsula, where all the psychological and, to some extent, spiritual stuff was going on and it was very much oriented toward individual development. And then on the other side of the Bay was Berkeley, where you had the student sit-ins and the attempts to take over the university and the anti-war riots and all of that.

There was this kind of splitting of my generation, between those who were dropping in and those who were taking part in larger social things. And during that time, as you say, there was this movement towards communities. Kids began forming intentional communities. And of course, the one that I became involved with Findhorn, became one of the most famous at the time.

There was a sense that a new world was was possible. Something new was emerging. You could engage politically and socially and civilly and you could make radical changes. Things were changing, change was possible. And that drew out a lot of idealism and energy towards acting in relationship to the whole and the sense of ecological awareness was dawning around that time with Rachel Carson's Silent Spring book and awareness of the damage of pesticides and other chemicals and just a dawning realization of how interconnected and interdependent we were with the natural environment around us.

In essence, it was an exciting time in terms of feeling that things were changing and transformation was happening. And of course, the New Age movement sort of surfed on that and gave that a particular language and a particular form.

I think part of the challenge today is that the status quo seems very set even though there's obviously change going on, particularly with climate. Yet at a political and social level, things seem more frozen and people feel disempowered rather than empowered. That was the one thing that we felt in the 60s, was a deep sense of empowerment, however illusory it might have been. But in many cases, it wasn't. I mean, you look back, and you see the changes that people made in civil rights and in politics and so on.

It's a different wave, isn't it, it’s a different need, that the world has. In my own case, that whole period from 1970 until about 1990, that's 20 years when I was involved with the New Age movement and that was very much oriented towards taking care of the whole but it also had that individual aspect of self development. In fact, that was the thing that took me out of the New Age movement in the 90s–it shifted gears from being a movement towards cultural change and became a movement toward individual psychic development, in particular psychological development. But then, in the 90s, my own work changed to focus more on individual development. In a way Incarnational Spirituality is an attempt to blend both of those–to have that strong individual foundation and yet to have that in service to a larger whole. This whole idea of synergy in which the part and the whole are both benefited, they’re mutually beneficial–it’s a very important part of I.S.

Maryn:  So you got to really experience eyes wide open that shift into individual focus.

David: Yes, yes, I did. And just like anything, the pendulum swings in ways that it goes from one extreme to another extreme. And like you were saying, there was this extreme that said the individual doesn't really matter, what matters is the community or the larger whole. And then the other extreme is saying, well, no, it's my way or the highway, never mind what's happening in the world.

Maryn: I am always hearing stories from that time–not necessarily from you, but from different students that you've had and different people that I meet from that generation of growing up in the the hippie age, the hippie times where you have these intentional communities, as you were saying, that then became a little cult-like, and a little damaging on the individual level for a lot of people. Amazing aspirations that maybe couldn't be played out perfectly, if that's even a thing, just because of this disconnection from the individual as well.

David: That’s exactly right. There were certainly instances of what I would think of as community trauma, or I should say, the individual experienced trauma in community.

James Tousignant: It also sounds like there was a time when individuals felt empowered enough to say that we can make a difference in the world, and we can make a difference in this way. And then they went through this period of yes, they could make a difference, and they made a difference in some very significant ways, and then it looked like there wasn't enough foundation for that to hold in the individual, there wasn’t a strong sense of what in I.S. we call Sovereignty–your place in the world and that strength of being able to be here and then to act out from that place, to act in a way that’s supportive of the world, from that sense of that inner land or inner strength.

Maryn, you speak about the individuals who are in your circles and how they have a sense of there's something that I need to unfold within me (which is a way of saying healing within me), so that I am able to be in this really intensely interconnected world at the moment. And it's like, well, do I feel that I have that ability? At this time, we take it for granted, right? My grandchildren are connected–they can do things on their phone that I could never do unless they sit down and teach me in terms of gathering information. It's like everything's at your fingertips, and it's like a fire hose. How can I manage without losing myself in that? If I focus on myself, in my neighborhood, at least I have a place to stand and a place to make a difference, as you were saying in the beginning.

So it's swinging back and forth, but it's also leveling up. In that sense, I feel it's a stronger position to come from–the strength of your individuality, your sovereignty, in the relationship with your neighborhood, in places where you can literally see the difference that you're making with the activism or the actions that you can take. And then when those neighborhoods join together with other neighborhoods around the world, that becomes a very interesting way of making a difference in a societal cultural way. But you're working at the level of this little group talks to this little group, and they become something more through their ability now to communicate across the world with the Internet.

Maryn: What I see a lot, because this is such an age of information, is so much more awareness of what internal wounding actually looks like and how it plays out. Things like communication issues, things like what did I inherit from my parents, and from my community and culture and society. What are the things that I've inherited, that I don't even realize that I'm inheriting, but that I'm playing out in real time? It's this focus and information on how to shift that and actually create healthy personal relationships, create a healthy relationship to self and to heal what has come before, to heal these unconscious patterns that have come before. I see it a lot as there's just this kind of wave of energy coming in to clean everything up. Let's clean up all this baggage that we've been holding on to, let's clean up the fields that we've been incarnating into, and then we can move forward and build something on that that's stronger, that's clearer, that has a foundation of really good communication, not being as triggered by each other, not as much anger and reactivity. This is the dream.

David: That’s absolutely right. One of the experiences that your mom and I had all through the 70s and 80s being aware of communities that had high aspirations, particularly spiritual ones, but foundered on the inability to resolve personal issues and emotional issues. The baggage that people brought into the community ended up sabotaging it. I think you're absolutely right, that the work you're doing and people like you to help clear up a lot of that baggage is vitally important. Would you like to say more about personal empowerment in your work as a coach?

Maryn: This is happening on such an individual level. Yes, there are people that are stepping up to help facilitate it. One of the greatest things that I've ever felt is having someone hold space and having someone provide you with direction and support as you're going through that. This is why therapy has become so mainstream now when it used to be something that people were ashamed to admit that they went to therapy, it was a taboo kind of thing. And now you're seeing people get into relationships and immediately sign up for couples therapy, not waiting five years down the road when they're having issues, but they're starting at the beginning. So it's definitely amazing to have support. And it's something that everybody is doing themselves as well. I don't want to say that it's something that you have to have a coach to do. That's what I don't want to say, because it's just an individual journey. Support is amazing, and guidance and help, and it will get you there a lot faster, in many cases. But most of the work that I did was pretty individual, getting to where I am now. I think that that is also empowering to know–that we are our own healers, and we are our own leaders. We’re the ones leading the way for ourselves and for the generation to come after us and the world as a whole. We're leading every single moment.

David: I understand that your role as a coach is to really help the person discover, as you say, the leadership and healing qualities that are always there. That's basically what we do in Incarnational Spirituality too–it’s an affirmation of what the individual already possesses in the way of resources. But the work tool needs to be done and that's where we can help each other in doing that. Sometimes it's hard on your own to get a reasonable grasp of what needs to be done and how to do it.

Maryn: There are times in our lives that we go through where it's almost this desperate call for someone–please help me through this, I am putting everything into it and can't seem to figure out this one piece. That’s when it's so helpful to have another pair of eyes, or a mirror someone to provide support. There are specific times when it's so helpful.

James: To just go back a moment, when you were talking about this impulse stirring up and bringing to the surface a lot more stuff for individuals to see easier than it was in the 60s and the 70s. It seems like the wave that's moving through now is bringing to the surface opportunities to deal with the baggage. It's like the flood came in and cleaned out everyone's houses basically, and now you've got this stuff floating down the street that you can see “Oh, that's mine. Okay, I'll deal with that.” Or “That's yours. You deal with that one.” It seems like there are more opportunities to see things, to see the truth. It's like things are moving in a way that it's hard to avoid.

Maryn: Ain't that the truth?

James: And it is a time for I.S. as well to provide that because there's significant tools that we have to do that.

Maryn: This is something that I love. I see so many people my age, in the current spiritual generation who are talking about concepts that I've seen you guys teach for years. You guys have been helping people do this for decades. And now the next generation is coming in saying, “Hey! I’ve figured stuff out!” And that's perfect. Every every generation will have its own flair on it, but I am always very proud to see that influence. Good job, guys!

David: Yay!

Maryn: Yay! Exactly.

David: We began talking about different generational perspectives. And I really do believe that that is a reality. Every generation, as James says, is responsible for carrying through a certain impulse. Some impulses are more dramatic and change insistent than others may be. But at the same time, there's a consistency because we're all human beings operating in a continuum of our humanity. It doesn't matter what generation it is–a lot of the challenges remain exactly the same, and the solutions remain the same. But I do believe that new possibilities and new ways of using old tools that in effect, make them new tools are always there as well.

One of the things that puzzled me a few years was the fact that I didn't see young people–people in their late teens and 20s and early 30s–I didn't see them agitating for change in the way they did in our generation. I didn't see them moving out into the world in the same way. And actually, that was why your discussion with me was very enlightening. I came to the point of saying, well, this is a different generation, and the needs are different and the approach is different. It's just as valid as what we were doing back in the 60s and 70s. It's valid, because it's still part of that same wholeness, it's still the human collective struggling to know who it is, and how to make sense of this being here in the world, and how to engage with the world in creative ways. And now the emphasis seems to be very much on individual empowerment and healing–particularly healing. How to deal with a legacy of trauma that all human beings experience in one way or another from all this millennia of human struggle.

I see what you're doing, I’ve seen you over the years, follow your calling, of wanting to be an energy healer, somebody who works to heal the wholeness of the individual, treats the individual as a whole being–not just a body, not just a mind, and not just feelings. You've been exploring different modalities for doing that, but in the end, what it comes down to is you bring your presence to them. The different tools you've developed through your training help you to do that, but still, in the end, it is your presence that is the x factor, the healing factor, just like the devas were the x factor in Findhorn that got the garden going. That really is an Incarnational Spirituality approach as well.

But it's in that level of presence that we find the connection. We about the firehose of information and engagement that happens because of social media–we’re all vulnerable and exposed in ways that we never used to be to social media, especially young people. Learning to handle that, to stand in sovereignty and find their individual wholeness in the midst of all that–I think that is such a valuable skill for moving ahead in the future.

Maryn: Because it's not going away.

David: No. From my point of view, looking at the subtle dimension as an important ingredient here–in a way, social media is a kind of a crude, physicalization of what the subtle dimension is like. It’s infinitely more connected than what we experience here, and yet individuals exist–you’re not subsumed, you're not engulfed in some amorphous wholeness. But you are exposed to immense amounts of…not exactly information, but presences. How do you blend that and hold that without shattering in yourself is, I think, what your generation is learning to do through the phenomenon of social media, developing some skills in that direction.

Maryn: Emphasis on “developing” because it has been such a trial and error. I see that with so many people, so many areas of it. There are people that really struggle in it and there are people that really thrive in it. I find that fascinating. I think that a lot of it comes down to, if we can actually think of social media as an energy web that we're stepping into when we engage in it, a lot of the same energy practices that we take with all the rest of our personal relationships come into play. Like we have to have strong boundaries. Energy hygiene is so important. If I go too long without a good cleanse, a good cutting of cords when being on social media, I find myself angrier and more fearful and experiencing a lot of self doubt. All it takes is just like a cutting of cords and I'm back to center. I think that if more people did that, it would be easier to engage with social media.

But as it is, people are using it unconsciously. They come on and they put all sorts of energy out there that they might not have an outlet for in their everyday life. It becomes this melting pot of wildness. It's the Wild West. And then you're unconsciously signing into it and you're opting into all of that energy. So it really takes intentionality and sovereignty and awareness to be able to use it in a way that's helpful and actually opening and empowering instead of something that's a detriment to yourself.

I see people that don't even have a framework of how to work with it from that perspective and it ruins their lives. I see teenagers who have terrible eating disorders and terrible body dysmorphia, because of filters on TikTok and Instagram, and suicides and depression and anxiety and just terrible stuff just because they don't have the tools to be able to differentiate in that way and they don't have that strong establishment of sovereignty. A lot of them don't.

David: This is really interesting, Maryn. It just got me realizing that what you're describing, what the environment of social media these days is uncoordinated information, just as James said. It’s a firehose, which is actually not true in the subtle dimensions, even though you are exposed to a great deal more information or a great deal more experience or presence. In the subtle dimensions, it’s coordinated, it’s not just all dumped out there. This brings up this interesting idea, which we've been saying in different ways, that the same tools that help you to navigate subtle realms successfully are the tools that would help you navigate the social media environments successfully.

Maryn: I was just going to say, from the same perspective, you can bring that intentionality and those tools to create something really beautiful on social media. Creating it as art, creating it as a gift to the world. There’s so much potential there, it doesn't just have to be a melting pot of terribleness. It can be something really beautiful.

David: It seems to me that this is an experience that's allowing us as incarnate human beings to gain skills that we need in order to take advantage of our engagement with the subtle dimension in the future.

James: It actually sounds as well that here's an opportunity for Lorian to reach out with a very specific program of study. Literally a program of study taught by Maryn, supported by David and James,  to actually do this because it's needed. As you were describing it, I was seeing the pieces come together for this program of study. So we're with you!

Maryn: Excellent!

James: Thank you very much for this opportunity to get together and have this not only stimulating, but also advancing conversation.

Maryn: We hit on some good things.

David: So that just means we need to do it again.

James: Yeah, we need to do it again. So thank you very much for this morning.

David: Thank you, James.

Maryn: Thank you so much. Thank you to you both

Embody Your Magic

We are going through a time of massive transformation. Identities are shifting and crumbling. Energetic structures are more malleable and flexible than they have been. Old structures that were built on greed, separation, hierarchy, competition, and scarcity are crumbling. And yet, amidst the turmoil lie profound opportunities for positive change.

I want you to take a moment to imagine exactly where we could end up. Imagine the future that we could create. It is a future based on cooperation, abundance, safety, sovereignty, respect, deep love for our Selves, each other, and our World: a world based on divine union energetics, held in balance. A “Golden Age.”

This future doesn’t just happen, it is created. WE create this world, through our conduct, through healing our wounds of separation, through unbecoming everything that a toxic society has taught us to be, and through the embodiment of our own soul essence here on earth. Our natural state truly is already in alignment with Golden Age energetics. We are already whole. We are already an embodiment of light and love. All we have to do is heal and integrate that which is in the way of our full embodiment.

This is what I work with. I am a coach. I help people to embody their wholeness here on earth, through somatic integration, rewiring neural pathways, somato-emotional release and healing their relationship to Self, and to Other. I help people create a life that is in alignment with the future they desire. A life of abundant love and resources. A life that is in partnership with Soul, with Spirit, with the cyclical flow of nature. A life that is inherently oriented towards safety and connection in the body.

I see there being two parts to this. First, there is the deep healing that we engage in because our wounds and hurts desire healing. The body seeks to be whole but doesn’t always know how to do that.  

The second part arises naturally from the first. As we heal ourselves, we heal the collective. As we shift somatically and discharge stuck energy, we become an anchor point of light that lifts the collective. We have removed ourselves from the energetic gravity that the wounds of the collective hold. As more and more people do the same, the collective wounds lose critical mass. The gravitational pull starts to move in the other direction. Suddenly more and more people are healing, embodying wholeness, and stepping forward in harmony. And the more people who do, the easier it gets. The energetic pathway towards wholeness becomes well worn, and healing begins to happen exponentially faster as the balance shifts.

Understandably, choosing to partake in this work is daunting. We are creating the foundation for a world that none of us have experienced. We intimately know what it feels like to be scared, to feel like we will never have enough, that we are unsupported and have to fight our way to the top. We know what it feels like to struggle. So how do we create a world that is different, one that we have no context for?

This is where leadership comes in. 

We are the ones creating the world we live in. Not only through our actions, but through our energetic embodiment. Through being what we believe. Being the change we wish to see in the world, regardless of what we see around us. Regardless of the violence and greed and distrust. Regardless of how unsafe it feels. 

If we wait for the world to change first, we’re going to be waiting forever. 

But if we become the version of us that lives in the Golden Age, then we create the Golden Age. Our embodied transmission changes the world around us and weaves an energetic web of information for others to follow. 

Not just through action, although that is a necessary step, but through our beingness. 

For instance, I have always had difficulty connecting to my age group. I felt that the vast majority of people in the world don’t speak the same language as I do and are draining to spend time with. A few months ago, I realized that because of this belief, I was creating a world based on scarcity and judgment. This was not the world I wanted to live in. I wanted to live in a world where I found deep soul connections easily and effortlessly. So, I chose to restructure my experience. I decided that I was “a woman who was surrounded by the most magical people in the world”. I went through my day, not only repeating this mantra, but embodying the energy of it as well. If I truly were surrounded by the most magical people in the world, what would it feel like? How would I move, or speak, or act? What else would I believe?

I continued this embodiment for a few days, mildly expecting that I might stumble upon new soul connections or be invited to a gathering of like-minded individuals, but something else happened that I wasn’t expecting. One day, I looked around at the people I worked with, and I saw magic. I saw that I was indeed surrounded by the most magical people on the planet, and they had always been there. There was magic alive in all of us. And with this awakened vision, I invested my energy into connecting to them. Their energy responded to my openness, and suddenly I was having deep conversations and meetings of the heart with people that I had previously discounted. 

This is how we lead ourselves. I choose to believe that I am surrounded by magical people, and therefore I do the work to embody it in my being, no matter what. When I feel the energy of judgment, contempt, or separation come up, I listen to it, feel it fully, and do the somatic work necessary to move it through my body, something I teach my clients to do. Then I choose to experience a different reality. Again and again and again. 

We lead ourselves to the Golden Age, through creating an internal ecology of thriving, through choosing to experience and create the world of our dreams, not in the future, but in this moment. We choose to believe that our wholeness matters. We choose to believe we are infinitely supported. We choose to embody more and more of our soul here on earth, even the parts of our being that we have been taught are shameful or unwelcome. We choose to lead, and the world follows.

We know that our magic lies in our wholeness, and we know that our magic is exactly what the world needs right now. Our voice matters. Our actions matter. Our being matters.

And by choosing how we “Be”, we become.

We become one who leads the way. We create a new paradigm.

We do not embody our magic or our leadership by welcoming one part of ourselves while cutting off another. That has been the theme for thousands of years. Now, we are creating an age where all of us, in our wholeness, are not only welcome but required. 

Sovereignty Walking

Sometime last year there was a question posted in the Gaian Commons, “How can I possibly be a presence for peace?” This intrigued me. After all, it seems like a lofty and worthy aspiration. It reminds me of an experience I had when I lived in Oregon. There was a monastery I would go to when I needed a retreat–when my work life became difficult, when I needed a place to be quiet and still. It was a beautiful environment with an ambience of calm, love, serenity, and peace. I discovered a little hidden garden that became a favorite spot to sit and reflect. There I found a sweet homemade ceramic plaque attached to a tree which read:

Keep your heart open and free.
Make time to dwell in silence.
Become a peaceful presence in the world.

I loved this. Every time I read it, I felt a wash of joy flow through my body. My muscles relaxed, my heart expanded, and I could sense a rightness, a meaning to life, a raison d’être. I took this saying back to work with me and posted it above my desk. And I wondered how I could become this peaceful presence. How could I bring the calm and serenity from the monastery back? How could I find that space inside myself separate from that physical place? How could I remember the feeling I had when I was in the hidden garden?

Fast forward a few years to my discovery of Lorian and Incarnational Spirituality. I began taking classes and practicing the exercises. Sovereignty is a fundamental principle in IS; by diving into this concept and with practice I began to get a sense of the core of my Self. I found that if I became off balance, or if situations and forces outside of me exerted their pressures, if I remembered my Sovereignty, I was able to find my center again. Sovereignty is an integral part of my morning practice now.

I still wanted to find this presence outside of my sanctuary, however. I wanted a way to remember it always. One day, on my walk, as I was noticing the beauty of the trees, gardens, and waters that surround my town, I suddenly remembered Sovereignty. As soon as the word entered my mind, I noticed my spine straighten, my stride becoming more fluid, and my perception of what was around me gently shifting. Things became more clear, crisp and bright. I thought to myself, “this is Sovereignty Walking”. It was more than my body walking, or even my consciousness walking. It was Sovereignty walking. I felt equal with the plants, houses, and birds. I realized that we all share Sovereignty and we are all part of a unified Wholeness. So when I entered my own Sovereignty, I entered the Sovereignty of all. And in this way, I became a presence for peace.

Celebrating a Gaian Festival of Light, A Festival of Wholeness

It has been six months since we celebrated our first Gaian Festival of Light and Wholeness together in December of 2021. Lorian members of the Gaian Commons Community from both northern and southern hemispheres gathered on Zoom to honor the Winter and Summer Solstice together. We created Spirals of Light, either out in our gardens, or inside our homes on floors, tables or altars. In the northern hemisphere, our spirals were the traditional evergreens or beautiful stones, beads–whatever we wished to create. Our gesture was to spiral inward to light our candles from a single source at the center,  honoring Gaia’s greatest in-breath, the cold and darkness of winter, and the longest night. At the same time, in the southern hemisphere, we created spirals from blossom and flowers and summer greenery, walking out of the spirals with our candles already burning, to honor Gaia’s greatest out-breath and the longest day of heat and summer light. At our December gathering, we walked our spirals meditatively together, pausing at the end to honor the sacred stillness of Gaia’s breath uniting us.

In March 2022, we gathered once again on Zoom to celebrate the Vernal and Autumnal Equinox together. For this festival, we created a lemniscate pattern for the time of equal day and equal night. It was inspiring to discover that walking this figure eight pattern created a natural embracing and widening gesture, with a potent pause of sovereignty and balance in the center of the lemniscate loops. We experienced together a moment of peace and stillness that echoed the Solstice stillness, but held a deep equilibrium unique to the Equinox time–one that embraced and united us throughout the Gaian world in its strength and potency and power.

Now we find ourselves once more at Solstice–the Gateways of greatest Light and greatest Darkness. It is June, 2022, and at this turn in the Earth’s wheel, we are celebrating Summer Solstice in the northern hemisphere, and Winter Solstice in the southern hemisphere. It will be interesting to experience the opposite mirroring gestures of what we initiated and celebrated in December of 2021. We have the opportunity to contemplate all that has happened to us and in our world since we last walked a spiral, and we can discover who we are now in the present moment. We can breathe with Gaia, be Gaian, as we pause once again in sacred stillness and celebration of life together across the globe.

We will be celebrating Summer and Winter Solstice together via Zoom on Sunday, June 19th, 2022 at 1 pm PST. All are warmly invited (membership in the Gaian Commons Community required).

Whether you join us that day or not, we invite you to create your own Spiral of Light wherever you are, to honor this Solstice time, and to cultivate a new Gaian Festival of Light and Wholeness in your lives.

A Shared Spiral Ritual

Creating a spiral, whether for yourself, or together with family and friends, can be a creative, fun and meaningful ritual in the days or weeks leading up to Solstice. In the Southern hemisphere, creating a spiral of winter greens can be beautiful, as it invokes the age old meaning of bringing green life back to the barren land of Midwinter. For the Northern hemisphere, creating a spiral from all the beauty and life of summer’s bounty–flowers, blossoms, herbs - would be a wonderful thing to do with family, grandchildren and friends. Use your imagination to create what works for you. If making a large spiral to walk is too much, create one from sand on the beach, or stones from a river. The possibilities are endless!

Have fun with this. Perhaps the spirals you create could honor the four kingdoms of nature–Earth, Water, Air and Fire, and the elementals representing these kingdoms – Gnomes, Undines, Sylphs and Salamanders. Midsummer’s Eve/Day June 23/24th in the Northern hemisphere is a traditional time (linked to Summer Solstice) to commune and make merry with the faeries and elementals of the land where you live. Lucinda Herring will share about this at our June 19th gathering. Ara Swanney will share about the traditional Maori festival of Matariki (meaning Pleiades) a new year’s celebration held in New Zealand near the Winter Solstice. This year, Matariki coincides with Midsummer’s Day, June 24th in the Northern hemisphere, which is a special alignment.

Festivals are living gateways in the Earth’s year, liminal times where we can connect more deeply with our selves, and with the seen and unseen realms of Gaian life. The spirals we create can be gifts to our homes, land and place. They can serve as focal points and an invitation for our local nature spirits, house angels, genius loci of land, unseen allies and Sidhe companions to join us in our preparations and celebrations.  Such co-creation is a Gaian work–reweaving the web of life as the wheel of the seasons turn, and cultivating joy and lightness of being for troubled times.

You might wish to wear something festive or representative of the Solstice season you are honoring. Please bring a candle, as we will be using these in our ritual time together, and, if you wish, something seasonal and festive to drink and eat. You might also want to bring a spiral you can trace with your finger, if you want to include a bodily gesture, or you might create a spiral in the room where you will be, to actually walk during our shared meditation.   

Our Solstice gathering will be the third exploration of what it means to create new Gaian Festivals for this time of great transformation and change on our planet.   We welcome your presence,  either at the Sunday gathering, or in your feedback and sharing online, for each of us holds a unique and valuable perspective and understanding of these questions:

What does it mean to celebrate the Solstices and the Equinoxes in a Gaian way?

How can we “think like, breathe like, be like our beloved planet,” not only at festival times, but in every moment of our lives?

How can we cultivate joy and sacred wholeness, in service to life and to our world?

Download How to Create a Festival of Lights Spiral Ritual  below for more specific instructions and inspiration.

Surfing On the Edge of the Unknown

I work as an intuitive mentor. I combine my training and perspective as a Lorian priest with newly emerging energy healing methods and coaching techniques. My intention is to help people learn how to stand tall within themselves, to thrive and be of service to the future. Especially in a present that appears increasingly dysfunctional.

My “practice specialty” is working with what psychology calls the highly sensitive temperament. A sensitive person has probably had a lifetime of being told or thinking about themselves that they are just too sensitive, cry too easily, take things in too deeply. “What is wrong with you?” they hear from others, or ask themselves. They are fed up with themselves, tired of feeling victimized, tired of trying so hard to be perfect, tired of trying to save the world to make it a safe place for themselves to be, tired of trying to avoid the shadows and pain they feel inside.

Often I am asked this question: “How can I get rid of this awful sensitivity?” The asker wants me to tell them how to make their sensitivity go away so that she or he can just “be normal.”

I believe that we sometimes try to use our self-help techniques, and even religion, to “beat up” what we think we don’t like about ourselves in the hope that whatever it is will go away, and then we will be a better person. But in my experience, no one, including me, has ever been convinced to think more highly of themselves by a beating. Surely the best use of “self-help” and spiritual awareness is to open ourselves to discovering the goodness that is already inside us, and allowing it to bloom.

I suspect that exceptional sensitivity is pointing towards a deeper capacity for being human than we have been aware of. Our sensitivity can open access for us into deeper senses that go beyond seeing, hearing and touch into a more subtle realm. I think that many sensitive people have been given a gift that we haven’t been receiving.

How can Incarnational Spirituality help us to understand and utilize exceptional sensitivity for our own good, and for the good of the world?

I come to this question from being sensitive myself. I also come to it from a lifelong exploration of what it means to receive spiritual insight. It has taken me forever to understand that spiritual insight comes to me through my body as subtle perception…not as visions, not by hearing the voice of God or the angels in my head, like I thought I was “supposed to.”

Hearing and seeing seemed to be the accepted channels for how “everyone else” did it. That way of receiving guidance has been honored and revered and respected over human history, and I thought there must be something wrong with me that this never happened for me.

But through Incarnational Spirituality I have come to see how it works for me. And without IS I would not know this!

I continue to learn how to extend my sensitive awareness, my subtle perception, just beyond my body, and then feel into and translate into a felt sense the awareness and information that comes to me.   

The very first time I did this was when I lived in the Findhorn Community in the 1970s. I was in my thirties. I had been at Findhorn for about four or five years when I had this experience, which really, looking back, changed my life. I was the focalizer of a three-month program called the Essence of Findhorn that was meant to introduce about 30 people from all over the world to a new way of thinking about a living, loving, embodied spirituality. It was a very practical program. There was some study of esoteric principles, but mostly we were involved in coming to understand how to put those principles into practice in our daily lives as individuals, as a group, and as we participated in the life of the community itself.

At some point in the last month of the program, a participant who was a therapist from Canada, seemingly quite healthy physically and spiritually, somehow came to the determination that she could now best serve her life purpose by dying. She took to her bed and began to refuse all food. She didn’t share her intention with anyone, and people just assumed that she was ill.

Some days later, a friend of hers came to ask me to visit with her. I went to see her and learned for the first time about her intention. I had never been confronted with a situation like this and didn’t know what to do. On the one hand, I wanted to honor her sovereign presence and right to choose for herself. On the other hand, I didn’t want her to die!

She was open to talking with me, but I felt her life seeming to hang in the balance in this one moment. Rightly or wrongly, I sensed that what I said and how she responded would determine whether she chose life or death. But I had no clue what to say, or even how to evaluate a situation like this.

Interestingly, because I had never experienced voices or visions, much of my time at Findhorn (and now my whole life!) had been about learning how spirituality worked for me. Early on, surrounded as I was by people who heard the voice of God and spoke to the fairies, I felt that I had to decide whether I was “spiritually slow,” in which case I should hang it up and just try to live a “normal” life. OR, did spirituality work in a different way for me? If this, then my job was to figure out how it worked for me. I had determined that I was going to explore this latter option.

Over time I had learned how to do what I thought of as following the road signs of my life, and humanity’s life, including having an eye on the rearview mirror, for clues about how Life and Spirit worked. I realize now that this was great training in learning to trust my inner intuition rather than depending on God or some other Wise Authority who would Tell Me What To Do. But if ever I had needed some wise authority to tell me what to do, sitting at the bedside of this weak lady watching the very life force ebb from her, right now was it.

I really wasn’t in the habit of praying, because I just wasn’t sure anyone was listening to me. But now I sent out a quick, mostly wordless but deeply heartfelt inner request for help. If I had been able to put it into words, it would have been something like: “If I can offer any help for this woman here, please help me to do this.”

Nothing happened, of course.

However, I thought of a question to ask her. I don’t remember what it was now, but it was something very simple, something about what she liked to do, what brought her joy. I knew I didn’t want to be judging her or telling her what she should do or not do. We just talked for a long time about simple joys and pleasures. I didn’t have a plan. I would just find what felt like a good next thing to say to her coming into my mind literally a split second before I said it.  Whatever was there, I would say. It didn’t really feel different from how I talked normally.

Over time though, there was a progression, and at one point we were talking about the beauty of the woods that surrounded the building where the Essence Program was being held and where the participants and I were also living. It was a big old stone Scottish hotel, built as a healing spa in the 1800s, on land that had been held long ago by the Druids as sacred. It came to me to ask her if she would like to walk there in the woods with me. I didn’t frame the question with a purpose, like trying to get her out of bed or on a path to change her mind about dying. At the same time, of course,  it seemed to me that attending to the beauty and vitality of the living world was a pretty good life-generating prescription. I understood intuitively that this was a tiny step in the direction of living, and that I could only offer it, exceptionally delicately, and gently. It was for her to take it, or not. I knew that living, or not, was her decision. After a time she said she would like to do that.

We made a date for the next day. We did take that very short, very slow walk into the beautiful powerful healing trees. I learned later that she had decided on her own to eat a little bit of soup beforehand, so she would have enough energy to stand and move. And as far as I know, she is still standing and moving on down the road of life…

As for me, I continue to explore how spirituality and guidance work for me. And they do! I am still learning how to translate the wisdom in my body’s sensitive awareness, my subtle perception, into conscious understanding. I work with clients now in much the same way as I did in this story. I still completely trust the thought that comes to me the split second before I need it. Always it leads unpredictably into the next one, which might be even better. I still focus on what is the smallest thing that can bring joy. If this moment can unfold from joy and delight, it creates a good foundation for the next moment to do the same. I still always feel like I am surfing on the edge of the unknown, trusting my instincts to keep me upright and moving forward. So far so good!

Another way that my spirituality works for me now: I will have a deep question (I am chronically curious). I will be holding myself in the field of this question as it radiates deeply inside me. Often I will find myself awakened in the night, not with the answer, but with a kind of doorway... a feeling into...the imagination...of a pathway...toward an answer. I will be in a kind of sleepish awakeness for several hours as the question opens out in me.  

I am holding this question deeply, there in the night, not asleep but not exactly awake, but also not in some mystic trance state either. I often feel like I am sitting in the center of the Sidhe stone circle, and I will find myself utilizing the card deck structure to find practical answers to the question. Lorian’s Sidhe card deck is a very powerful imagination/intuition stimulator here. I sense I am partnered with the Sidhe in some way. Not in direct "guidance" (as in "this is the answer to your question") but in a kind of perpetual invitation to explore.  

I am always translating the concepts of Incarnational Spirituality into my own felt experience.

Still no voices or visions, and I don’t know if I have ever experienced an actual “subtle being” in the way others have described. I haven’t ever consciously seen the nature spirit of the tree it is serving, or an elemental , or beings of other realms. I trust that they are there, and I communicate with and to them. (Though there was that one time when I was feeling deeply sad, and I leaned up against a tree in our front yard. I felt the tree reach out and put its “arms” around me, to comfort me. I don’t know whose arms those were!)

I have learned the most from being aware of the living presence that flows throughout nature. My primary way of connecting with the world is through “becoming the presence of the thing.” For me, the subtle environment is how I experience the environment, as alive with presence and meaning.

The tree is a tree is a Tree. Or a sheep is Sheep. Or a landscape is the Landscape Deva. Or a dog, or the weather, or my house, or a machine, or an idea, or a plan, or a person’s behavior. My ‘way in’ is by becoming the presence of the thing…going inside it, feeling and sensing how it is who it is, how it is the information space that is its presence, how it co-exists in its environment, where there is movement in it, and maybe how it wants to move on or change.

When I do this, I feel like I “become” a whole other realm of information and awareness. I am still me, intact, but I now have more awareness and information available. It is an instant, deep, layered awareness, that holds itself open to my deeper exploration. I do my coaching mentoring work this way too, and my parenting, and now my grandparenting—my life, really.

The sheep. The neighbor’s new flock is 30 ewes who are all pregnant. I have been walking our dogs near and through them every day, getting to know Sheep up close and personal for the first time. Becoming Sheep. Who are you as a presence in the world, Sheep? I am surprised to find them so alert yet quiet inside, a certain kindness and peace there, and very curious. Who knew sheep were so curious?

It is interesting that the word for “one sheep” and for a “group consciousness of sheep” is the same word. I am surprised to find a depth there that I hadn’t expected, given the metaphors that people use about sheep. Recently when I walked to them, they felt different. The whole flock felt somehow more expansive, quieter, there was a stillness there that I hadn’t felt before. Then I learned that the day before, the first two lambs had been born. So these ewes are becoming Mother. I recognize the field of mother, Gaia mother. I have volunteered to help with the lambing if the need for help arises. I know birthing and mothering.

Knowing these sheep also challenges my sensitivity to the powerful reality of the real-life environment, of wholeness, and of predation. The sheep are being raised very humanely. They are good neighbors for me. As I get to know them I love them. But the lambs will be sold for slaughter as organic lamb chops. How can I bear that? I will need all my subtle awareness to deal with this reality as it unfolds, because I experience these sheep as co-walkers, as presence, as relationship, and as a communion of mind and heart with an Intelligence and Presence. It is also here that I will find the understandings that will help me to hold this experience, and maintain flow within it.

Another example:

One early summer day I noticed a huge bumblebee in our kitchen window above the sink. Huge! Maybe it was a queen bee. Nearly two inches long. I have never seen such a large bee. I turned away to get a jar to catch and release her, but when I turned back, she had disappeared. Not to be seen or heard anywhere. I was baffled.

My looking away had taken only a few seconds. Where could she have gone? I looked and looked. I wanted to release her, and I really didn’t want to step on her, or discover that one of our dogs had engaged with her.

No luck. So I carried on with my day, deciding that she must have somehow flown back out the open door in those few seconds.

The next day, I had just finished my lunch and was settling into work at the computer again, when I heard a loud buzzing near the sink. I thought of the bee. Again, I looked and looked, but there was no bee on the windows or walls or flying around. I even picked up the small lidded compost bin to carry outside because it sounded like there might be a bee trapped inside.

But no—there she was—crawling out of the drain in the sink, from the cavity down where the incinerator is!! Wet, bedraggled, bemused, and very irritated, but miraculously alive! How did she survive two days of sink use??

Quickly I put a dishcloth near her and she climbed right up on it, so I took her outside and deposited her, still on her cloth, in the big tomato pot.

Then I set about doing an energy work process that utilized my sensitive awareness in a new way.

I imagined into connecting with my own sacred humanness, Sovereignty and Self Light. I sent appreciation to the “holding spaces” of the dishcloth and the tomato plant and the deck, even the depths of the sink. I invited a connection in myself with the earth, and with the spirit of bees.

I felt into what I wanted for this bee...I wanted the feeling of radiant vital energy moving in her body, if that was right for her, and the feeling of flying. I called on the sun.

The image of a butterfly came into my imagination to represent flying (part of my mind argued with the butterfly image, but I let it bee there...). The Forest Pansy Tree growing next to the deck suggested itself as an ally, too.

I focussed on the bee, imagining myself bee-ing her, drawing the healing and vitalizing energy of the sun into her body, feeding her internally, drying her on the outside. I just held her in this blessing field, wishing her well.

The bee began to groom herself, her front legs moving rhythmically back to front, from her midsection and up and over her face. She rested at intervals, sometimes leaving one leg up in the air above her head for a few minutes as she sat motionless. She turned herself to the sun in different directions. It was fascinating to watch.

Suddenly, she was gone.

I spent some time looking into what a visitation from Bee as a totem animal might mean at this time in my life. I know that she brought her own gifts and blessing to me. And she gave me the opportunity to reconnect her with her own Bee-ing and life Presence. Be…

But I also thought a lot about how I had utilized my sensitivity in a positive, generative way that made a difference for a tiny piece of the world.

I realized that my sensitivity was somehow giving me access to an inner awareness in myself that was definitely spiritual, sacred, and powerful in a lightly-held way.

I considered more deeply what I had done almost instinctively. I was wondering, what did it actually feel Iike to use the deeper subtle senses that my sensitivity gave me access to? I sat with each image that had come to me, trying to open my awareness to the information being offered by these subtle senses.

The sun felt like the sun would—warm vital, energetic, expansive, powerful, inviting of growth, and willing.

The spirit of Bee felt somehow like it was made out of the brightness of sun, fierce and mighty, a generative force. The feeling of what the sun would sound like if you could hear a piece of it. (Just a little synaesthesia to spice things up a bit!)

The soul of the earth felt like a large loving holding space, an embrace of Presence. It looked like a female being with a vast flowing garment that held all the living beings on the earth in its folds. The bee was there.

The butterfly was not actually a butterfly, but as an image, it represented for me a kind of light, lifting, dancing shape of flying, not the way an actual bee flies, but a sense that I felt the bee needed in order to imagine herself taking flight again.

The Forest Pansy tree was an interesting surprise. When we were landscaping our yard the summer before, and picking out trees to plant, the landscape designer asked me to go to the tree farm to look at a Forest Pansy that she had selected. When I went, I saw that it was lovely. But to my astonishment this other tree next to it just sort of reached out and enfolded me. So that was the one we planted in our garden near the deck…who partnered with me in rescuing the bee.

This tree is beautiful and has a very wise, graceful air about it. It seemed to be offering a kind of radiance, maybe a kind of life force. But very subtle. I don’t quite have words to describe what its presence felt like. Cool, expansive, like hearing and feeling a “light breeze of light” through leaves. Also a kindly Presence of partnership.

As a sensitive person, I am always going around thanking and blessing and loving and appreciating the world, talking to and “saving” bits of it as I can.

I realized that each of my images was a collection of impressions that was carrying information, meaning, and awareness before my brain knew exactly how to translate it into words and understanding. In a way, these subtle perceptions were registered in my whole body, not just in my mind.

I am learning that I am utilizing subtle sensory organs, beyond my physical sensory organs, which have their own unique way of delivering information. This could be spiritual information that is every bit as valid as visions and voices. Even though I have never experienced visions and voices, it seems second nature to me to have knowing through these subtle senses.

In order to translate subtle perception into words, I hold the multi-layered image, or awareness, in my mind, also in my body and heart, until words begin to come to me that carry the sense that the image does. The words come slowly, but I know when they “feel” right. And after I write them or speak them, I can feel the goodness of them in my body, a wonderful feeling.

The actual sensation contains everything as a wholeness, and I know its meaning right away without words, even though there is a much deeper richness there that continually opens to my exploration. Finding words helps to make what I know conscious to me.

Working with subtle perception is also a way of being in the world that can create change. One of the characteristics of being “so sensitive” is feeling overwhelmed by the pain, drama and dysfunction that is always unfolding around us, and wanting to hide away from it to protect a sensitive spirit.

Learning how to stay present in an overwhelming situation, sensing what is needed, calling upon allies that can help, and then tapping for and radiating a calming, healing presence—this gives us a way to use our sensitivity to make a difference, without having to tough it out and soldier on like we usually do.

This was just one bee that I worked with. But in a way she represented the world! I would guess that you have done many similar acts.

The next time you have an opportunity to make a difference, whether it is with a single bee or a difficult situation, try this:

Ground yourself, use your subtle senses to feel into what is needed, invite inner help. Feel their presence inside you, whether you can see them with your physical eyes or not (knowing that you have the right to refuse or deny any energy that doesn’t feel right). You become a portal through which helpful energy can flow.

David Spangler says:

The premise is that we are continually immersed in a living field of creative energy which configures to the patterns formed by our subtle energy field (or subtle bodies) much like a flowing river configures to the shape of a boulder lying in the river bed. This configuring can affect the probability of synchronistic events occurring as the world’s energy seeks to replicate the information, the connections, and the patterns formed in our own personal subtle field.

The second premise is that all subtle energy is malleable and susceptible to being shaped by thought and feeling. This gives us a tool to use in doing the art of manifestation. By shaping our subtle field, we have a way of shaping the world field that surrounds us.

As spiritually sensitive people we are learning how to navigate the world in greater wholeness. Using our subtle perception helps us to contribute in positive ways to conditions and areas of the world that need help or healing. This includes increasing our ability to affect and shape the future, our own included. Working with the subtle aspect of the world enhances the wholeness of all incarnations, including that of the earth itself.

The best reason of all to explore subtle perception is that it feels so good! It is so comforting and delicious to be at home: at home in the community of Humanity, at home in the earth, at home in our bodies, at home in our incarnation.