An Encounter with Stones

Essay and Photos by Akiko Mizutani

“Wow... I know this.”

It was a breathtaking moment, looking at the "Howe”, the first card that came out of the box of “Card Deck of the Sidhe”. And each time I placed a new stone card in front of me, I felt unique energy flowing. Holding the "Altar” card, I understood this was what I had been waiting for.

Some years ago, I encountered hidden “iwakura” stones at a privately owned land on the top of Mt. Rokko, a highest mountain in Kobe, Japan, where I live. “Iwakura” is a general Japanese term for megalithic structures such as pyramids, dolmens and stone circles like Stonehenge in England, which were probably made or arranged in ancient time based on some sacred intention and purpose. Some iwakuras are mythologized; others are hidden and forgotten.

I instantly fell under the enchantment of these megaliths seemingly without reason and  became a member of the conservation group protecting them. Every weekend for over two years I participated in activities like tree thinning, mowing, removing soil from the stones and measuring them. During this time I met many iwakura researchers and enthusiasts and heard a lot stories based on their research in archaeology, animism, mythology, and shamanism.

Some say these stones might be over ten thousand year old; others says these megalithic structures might be only a part of wide spread stone structures in these “sacred” mountains. Nobody knows the ancient truth but everybody has their own inspiration and sense of awe towards iwakuras and their hidden history.

 There are many iwakuras around Kobe. As I became more familiar with them, I felt like I was one of the people who first designed and built them with inspiration and guidance.

Gradually my inner voice started asking, “What were they trying to do? What kind of wisdom and power did they use? What kind of contacts might they have been trying to make? What can I do in order to reactivate that now, in this materialistic world?”

These internal conversations and fascination for iwakura led me to other preserved megalithic structures scattered over other regions in Japan. Generally speaking, they are usually hidden deep in a mountain, erected on the tip of a cape or enshrined behind old temples; therefore visiting iwakuras means to travel countrysides and walk around in sanctuary areas. This search naturally refined my sensitivity and connection with nature, with the subtle realm, and with the spirit of Gaia.

Two years later, in 2015,I quit my full-time job and shortly thereafter I got a “call” to create flower essences in Mt. Rokko. During the year I created 13 bottles of essences — 9 from wild flowers and 4 from the field of iwakuras — following my inner guidance and inspiration. I named them “Coming Home Essences” because I felt that they would offer energies to people that would help them remember their own Self-Light and Sovereignty.

As a “mere” housewife, however, I struggled to find words to theoretically describe the energy of these essences. Even though I needed to talk  about them as they gradually became popular among my friends, I couldn’t find suitable explanations or descriptions in the field of the more traditional flower essences. This struggle propelled me to dive deeper into my own spiritual journey and led to an encounter with the Transformation Game from Findhorn Foundation and my dear teacher Mary Inglis. In turn this led me to Incarnational Spirituality and “The Cards of the Sidhe”. 

Now I am exploring an alchemical way of using these Cards in combination with my essences — now the series has 22 bottles — and am excitingly awaiting what comes next.  Thanks to the Lorian Association for this wonderful opportunity to share my personal encounter with Stones and the Sidhe.

Akiko Mizutani will be attending Co-Creative Spirituality: Shaping Our Future with Unseen Worlds starting on September 22. This collaboration between Findhorn Foundation and Lorian Association serves as an invitation to step toward a new human identity which fully recognizes and honors our partnership with the subtle world. If you'd like more information about this upcoming event taking place at Findhorn, please click here.

The Evolution of Incarnational Spirituality

By David Spangler Editor’s Note: The Lorian Blog is currently featuring posts on the topic, “Lorian: Who We Are, What We Stand For.” Blog contributors are regular writers and also newer voices who have been exploring Incarnational Spirituality in their own unique ways.  The development of Incarnational Spirituality has been in every respect a collaborative adventure. It never has been the product of just one mind. Over the years, it has been a collaboration between me, a variety of non-physical individuals in the “subtle” worlds, and my fellow Lorian colleagues and associates. Incarnational Spirituality has also been enriched and broadened by contributions made from many of the hundreds of people who have studied it in Lorian classes. Incarnational Spirituality, or IS, began with a challenge. One day, around the turn of the century, I was out for a walk and was reflecting on the many challenges that humanity was facing. As sometimes happens on such occasions, I was joined by a subtle being who kept pace with me for a while, obviously listening to my thoughts. I said something to him about the problems we faced as incarnate persons. I no longer remember precisely what I said. But I remember his response very clearly. He said, “The challenge of humanity is not that you are too incarnated. It’s that you’re not incarnated enough.” Then, apparently feeling he had planted a seed, he disappeared. This statement was wholly unexpected and surprising. I remember standing by the side of the road, trying to make sense of what my invisible companion had said. How could we not be incarnated enough? How could we be more physical than we are? Upon reflection, though, I realized he didn’t mean that we needed to take on more physical matter. He meant that humanity wasn’t properly or sufficiently connected with its world in energy and in consciousness. In some manner, our incarnational process, whatever it might be, wasn’t as complete as it could be or needed to be. This idea so intrigued me that I wanted to understand more. I felt that this being was challenging me to look more deeply into the incarnational process—the dynamics of energy and consciousness by means of which a soul takes embodiment in the physical world—in order to find insights that would be helpful to people seeking to make contributions to human spiritual advancement. So, I began using my connections with the subtle worlds to research the nature of incarnation. I already had some information with which to start this research. I had known of the principles of Sovereignty, Self-Light, and Generative Identity since 1965 when, as described in my book, Apprenticed to Spirit, I began working with a partner from the subtle realms, a being I called “John.” He also introduced me to the realization that we did not simply incarnate into a body but into a field of energy that embraced the body but much else besides. I called this our “Incarnational System.” At the time, these ideas were not presented as elements of the incarnational process. Rather they were important parts of my training to work from a position of wholeness and integration with a variety of beings from the non-physical dimensions. However, I realized when I began researching incarnation itself that these ideas and principles were integral to that process as well. I also had had an experience when I was seven of remembering the steps my own soul had taken to become embodied in the physical world; I awoke to and re-experienced my own incarnational process. Although each person’s incarnation is unique, there are patterns we all share in common. Therefore, this memory gave me a place to start. The research process largely consisted of turning my mind’s eye clairvoyantly upon some stage or aspect of the incarnational process and then working to interpret and articulate what I was seeing. In this, I had help from my subtle colleagues, who would from time to time make their own suggestions or offer helpful information. I felt that we were exploring the topic together, each of us coming up with insights. I’m sure they could have simply said, “This is how incarnation works, David,” but that was not their way. They were not interested in transmitting information—revelations from on high—but in fostering understanding. That understanding was more than a collection of mental concepts; it was a lived experience. One of the principle tools of this research was through my classes and workshops.  I used these events as opportunities to test what I was experiencing about the incarnational process, seeing if the way I was understanding and articulating it was helpful or even understandable to anyone else. At the same time, almost every time I held a class, one or more of my subtle colleagues would take it as an opportunity to suggest an exercise or two to see what the results would be. I was upfront about this process, even whimsically and affectionately calling the group of people who regularly worked with me in road-testing these concepts and exercises as the “Guinea Pigs of Light.”  Their insights and reports contributed much to the shaping and deepening of IS. Likewise, my Lorian colleagues, using the basic principles of Incarnational Spirituality, began teaching their own classes and bringing their own life experiences and expertise to further expanding the development of IS. This has been vital to the growth of IS. After all, I see things from a certain perspective and bring my own history, biases, and experience to the way I describe and explain Incarnational Spirituality. Others bring different perspectives, often seeing things I do not or going more deeply in areas where I have no training or experience. This enriches the whole body of IS knowledge and practice, giving greater dimension to insights I have had while offering new insights I could never have produced. My subtle colleagues have been very clear over the past fifty years of the objectives of this work. Fundamentally, it is a work of fostering wholeness within both the person and the planet. Their primary goal is to contribute to the many ways humanity must learn and is learning how to live and work in harmony with the Earth. The wholeness and well-being of Gaia and of the community of Life that shares this world is the goal. This wholeness cannot be manifested by physical means alone since the planet is more than just a physical entity. There is a vast subtle ecology at work as well, one in which humanity participates even if unconsciously. Further, many of the connections that need to be made for us to be “more incarnated,” as my contact said years ago, are made using subtle energies and tools operating within the subtle dimensions, as well as in the physical world. Being able to partner and work collaboratively with the subtle worlds is a critical element both in bringing wholeness to the Earth and in bringing wholeness to our own incarnations. But working with the subtle dimensions requires being able to stand in one’s integrated and balanced identity, in one’s sovereignty and personal wholeness. It’s at this level that there is work that each of us can do, and it is the nature of this work—and how to do it—that is the focus of Incarnational Spirituality. Ultimately, we are asked to be “Gaianeers,” able to work in harmony with Gaia to bring wholeness into the world, but we begin this task by fostering that wholeness within ourselves and in our connections with each other.  That is the immediate work of Incarnational Spirituality. The nature of this work is that it cannot be done—nor even defined—by a single person. It arises out of a collaborative, collective effort. It’s a bit like farming. A person might start the process by providing some seeds, but then it is up to all the farmers, working in the unique conditions of their own land with their own climate and soil, to plant and nurture these seeds in their own way. And as they do so, more seeds are created and more new knowledge is generated on how best to plant and grow them. I have been privileged in working with my subtle colleagues to produce a few seeds, but now everyone who plants them in their lives, who begins living and experimenting with the ideas and principles of Incarnational Spirituality and finds new applications for those principles in their own environments and work, is a vital part of IS’s development and evolution. It’s this that makes IS alive, dynamic and relevant as a calling to be the generative and radiant individual we truly are. If you have a story you’d like to share of your personal experience with Lorian and Incarnational Spirituality, please email drenag@lorian.org.

Finding Sanctuary in the Subtle World

By Karen Johannsen

Editor’s Note: The Lorian Blog is currently featuring posts on the topic, “Lorian: Who We Are, What We Stand For.” Blog contributors are regular writers and also newer voices who have been exploring Incarnational Spirituality in their own unique ways. Today's blog writer, Karen Johannsen, is a Lorian colleague and author of Full Moon Magic: Invoking Spiritual Energies for Personal and Planetary Transformation, available in the Lorian Bookstore.

In the mid-eighties I think the universe must have conspired to catapult me into a whole new level of consciousness. Several life altering circumstances converged to expand my concept of the world. The first thing that happened was I came across the material put out by Machaelle Wright and her research center in Virginia, called Perelandra. I began using her flower essences and reading about the deva kingdom. She introduced me to the concept of co-creating with nature. That nature is a living intelligence and that we are hardwired to work in cooperation with these living beings. That they hold the blueprint for our evolution and they desire to work with us to assist us in our own processes of expansion. This was a completely new idea to me. At first, I have to admit, I resisted it because I suddenly felt overwhelmed that I now had to consider nature in making decisions…about my garden, about how I treated the earth, about my life. It seemed like just too much to take in.

About the same time I came across the Findhorn experiment and started reading Dorothy Maclean and David Spangler’s work. It reinforced this idea that the subtle worlds were real and accessible. My resistance vanished and I realized that I carried a deep longing to be more in sync with nature and her cycles.

About this same time I decided to go to graduate school to get my Masters in Transpersonal Psychology. I wasn’t at all clear about what I would do with an MA degree, but I felt compelled to begin this study. With young children at home I studied part time and it took me five years to complete my work. During that time there was another huge expansion of consciousness for me as I began processing and looking clearly at my own life. I emerged committed to begin a practice as a psychotherapist. But as I unraveled some of my own issues I began to see the dysfunction in my own life and my marriage.  

Three years after graduating, in 1990, I ended my 33 year marriage. Terrified and uncertain, I began to use some of the tools elucidated in the Perelandra work. I connected with a MAP team, beings in the subtle realms, who worked specifically with me and whatever issues were coming up for me. I would enter these sessions full of fear, doubt and uncertainty and would emerge 40 minutes later in a complete state of calm. Nothing external had changed. Internally my whole perspective was transformed. With the understanding that I had learned from David’s work and the Perelandra material, I was even more convinced of this field of subtle energy. And connecting with these special beings several times a week strengthened my belief and washed away any lingering resistance.

During this transitional time another practice I incorporated into my life was connecting to trees. I had always loved walking in the woods and now that I understood the true nature of that world I began walking in a different state of consciousness, really noticing the trees, asking to be connected to them, asking to be blessed by them. I decided to pick a tree that was along my walking route and just sit with my back against its trunk. Every day I would go there in so much anguish and fear and would feel the energy of the tree filling me with strength and solidity. I would visualize the roots of the tree supporting and grounding me. That earth energy was palpable and healing and sustained me through this life transition I was experiencing.  

Each of these practices helped me to deepen my faith in this unseen world. I began to long to be in sync with nature, to somehow honor and participate in her changing seasons. I began a practice of going out each morning to sit with my bare feet on the earth, giving thanks and sending gratitude to the overlighting deva of the land and blessing the angel of my hearth, feeling my connection to the subtle worlds deepen. I could then begin my day from a place of peace and alignment.  

My longing also led me to begin holding full moon meditations in my home as I was drawn to a practice that would align me more deeply with all of nature’s cycles. I have been holding these ceremonies now since 2002.

It is through these monthly gatherings and the practices inspired by my work with the subtle realms that I am strengthened and empowered. Each month I feel the qualities of the astrological signs pouring into me. Consciously receiving them, I strive to express them from my highest nature.

Before every full moon gathering I invoke the four directions, the astrological energies, my MAP team, the deva of the land and the angel of my hearth and other beings of light I work with, giving thanks for their participation. I ask that they bless each person who enters my home, that they may feel welcome and safe and receive whatever they might need. I have heard from so many people that entering my home feels like being in a sanctuary. One day my daughter came to visit and I was not home. She sat in my meditation chair and as she meditated this is what came to her.

May all who enter this house feel truly welcome, just as they are.

May all who enter this house dwell in ease of body and mind.

May all who enter this house feel the comfort of belonging to family.

May all who enter this house receive that which truly nourishes.

May all who enter this house be inspired to communicate that which is honest and true.

May all who enter this house know that in this place they may rest, free of judgment, scorn or expectation.

May all who enter this house feel the trees, the sky, the light and the birds surrounding and supporting them.

May we all take the strength and goodness we receive here and

Share it with the world.

This is my prayer to those unseen beings every month when we meet and I am forever grateful for their presence in my life and in my home.

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If you have a story you’d like to share of your personal experience with Lorian and Incarnational Spirituality, please email drenag@lorian.org.

What is Lorian to Me?

By Greg Dinunzi

Editor’s Note: For the next several weeks the Lorian Blog will feature posts on the topic, “Lorian: Who We Are, What We Stand For.” Blogs will be written by regular contributors and also newer voices who have been exploring Incarnational Spirituality in their own unique ways. If you have a story you’d like to share of personal experiences with Lorian and Incarnational Spirituality, please email drenag@lorian.org

I am a relative newcomer to Lorian, but a relatively talkative one, which has earned the me honor of being asked in different times, ways and places: “What Lorian is to me?” It is a challenging question if we are to take it seriously and give it the service it is due, and especially so if we are to avoid describing Lorians in the vocabulary one only gains with exposure to their ideas and practices. So with that disclaimer, my first attempt would be:

Lorian is an emergent association which nurtures and offers practices on how to come into relationship with our own sacred individuality within the context of a living and sentient universe. And further, this sentient universe has great interest in having a deeper, more loving relationship with us in return. At least, that's what it says.

Simple enough. Now that I have cleared that up, I can move onto bigger things.

I had been exposed to David Spangler's early work some 25 years ago. I went out to Findhorn following the wake of his life and had important experiences there, but I was curious as to what had developed more recently with him. So I decided to open myself to learning the newer landscape. I can now report that after a few years of engagement through books and online classes, I have a crude map of Lorian, and I have found it the experience both meaningful and surprising.

What Lorian is not, firstly, is a factory intent in replicating some 'brand' of dogma. They seem quite serious about cheerfully nurturing the loving sacred spark within each of us, regardless how that may choose expression from person to person. No easy task, I imagine, but I agree in the end no one can know better how our gifts can express the sacred than we ourselves. I learned that I was to come to peace with myself as a sacred expression of the divine, and there followed a number of simple exercises which presented me the opportunity to allow this self-image to gain foothold within me. This is embodied in what is called Incarnational Spirituality, which is at the core of Lorian, and is better thought of as a practice than a collection of ideas. What drew me in personally was that the content of the exercises was not emphasized, but my experiences while practicing the exercises were. Incarnational Spirituality is experiential, not dogmatic. And I was to bring all of me into the arena, even the parts I was uncomfortable with, because one must be present and open to allow full body experiences to happen.

Another important idea offered is that Spirit and Matter need not to be thought of as opponents, as so often portrayed. I came away with the experience that a Human Being is one of the things that happen when these two "lovers" marry. One can learn to honor the physical, material world as a partner in selfhood, not bear it as a punishment, nor mistake it for the totality of what we are. I am not suggesting that I was required to believe this, I am saying that as I worked with the exercises and ideas that became my experience of being human. This is a great gift in my eyes, and one for which I am thankful.

So this idea of a living, sentient universe—Not only are we alive, but the entire jungle is, as is the ground beneath us, and sky above, and the stars above that. How does a modern person of the west begin with that? The sky lives? In the west we have been presented a world view where the earth is more or less a dead stage, to use David's analogy, and we are the living players on it, free to use the stage as we see fit. But if we take the time to allow an actual experience of it, which is the essence of the practice of Incarnational Spirituality, is that what we experience? Again personally, I found it hard to maintain the 'dead stage' view of the world.

Now, first I admit, I was drawn the beauty and poetry of the idea of a living world, not the logic of it. Then I practiced allowing it to become a full body experience, not a mere thought exercise, something called “felt-sense” in Lorian terminology, and I found that I not only liked the idea, but it granted me access to an emotional experience of being connected with a living world. I was shocked to note, I had not really had that experience before. I found myself beginning to fall in love with the world again. There was no particular Lorian class in this, it is interwoven in much of Lorian's work, but the class Journey Into Fire was my first exposure to it. “Fire” in this case being the loving, sacred spark of one's own self. So the world became more alive to me in my own eyes, and I found it beautiful. But was it sentient? At this point it was still unclear to me personally, but the idea of “breaking up” with the world to return to the dead stage view was not only depressing, it actually felt somewhat dark and unnatural. Why withdraw a beautiful emotional connection— out of habit? For logic? Did logic even speak for a dead stage world view? If we examine that idea we find it does not- not well, if at all. So, okay then, I'm a sacred expression of the divine, and I'm in love with the physical world. Better than being king of a dead rock, don't you think? For me, anyway, it was enough to move forward. Small bites.

So I also said that the sacred universe has expressed a great interest in having a deeper, more loving relationship with us. How do I know that? Well, should you decide to delve into the swirling fields of intelligence which hold themselves together under the name Lorian, you will not be long before you begin to hear terms like "Subtle Worlds" and "Subtle Beings" and you may want to know what these things are. Well, at the start of my exposure to Lorian, I had some knowledge of David's writings and the personal experiences he has shared about his interactions with Subtle Worlds and Subtle Beings. (I'd recommend his book Apprenticed To Spirit if you have no exposure to any of this.) I always found them both beautiful and intriguing, and I indeed was drawn to Lorian with this interest. But it was never only that there was contact between David and these beings, the issue for me was the content of the communications between David and these beings. It was simply captivating, deeply intelligent and compassionate. It would have been equally captivating had David received this information it from a Yogi or a Scottish taxi driver. David refers to the subtle worlds as a second ecology of earth, and if we allow this two-tiered living planet to come alive in our imaginations, we might call it Gaia.

Lorian offers many courses, including “Working with Subtle Energies” and workshops with “The Sidhe”, a race of beings which are known to many cultures other than ours, who live mostly invisibly and someplace parallel to us. All quite mystical and glamorous, indeed. In order for me to allow myself the experience, I chose to file it all temporarily in the “Neither-Believe, Nor-Disbelieve-File” and see how close to the “elephant in the room” (the Subtle realms) I could come before fleeing for the hills (Which is, of course, an Old Irish Elephant tradition). So after a few courses, and reading a number of works on the topics, I came to breathe with the idea that imagination, like logic, is a powerful tool and it can be used to deliver us to places which are, for lack of a better word, quite real. Imagination moves a part us which we might not realize we have. What I personally discovered in the exercising of these new muscles is that it is not so much where we end up which is the meat of the issue, but it is how we prepare to engage what we find: that is where the work is. Here Lorian teaches that the way to relationship again is with love, honor and respect of other. Fair enough. Lorian does not directly teach how to get to the other world as much as they teach you what you can do if you happen to find yourself in one. The great and magical irony is: if you know what to do when you find yourself there, there's a surprisingly good chance that you might actually get to go. (I'll admit the mechanism of that is a bit beyond my pay grade, but so is, say, Gravitational Theory, yet I utilize gravity fairly well in daily life.) In this way Lorian is more about the practicalities, than the theories. The connection to my own sacred individuality is that all of this is a part of “me”, which I may not have ever recognized without doing the work. Working with Subtle Energies and the Sidhe work have taught me that there is a part of me that Imagination can move, some aspect of myself can ride imagination to new places, and that part of me is part of the wholeness of our sacred and living universe. No small lesson there, in my opinion.

And so, have I come to the conclusion that the universe is sentient? Well, because as I have began to approach our living universe with love, honor and respect, and honor my own experiences in this practice, I can say, “Yes” without reservation, for I have found as I keep nudging it with my primitive stick made of Love and Imagination, the universe is not passive, it is clearly responsive. The more love I bring to it, the more responsive I have found it, which is even logical, if you think about it, and even works with much smaller forms of life than a living universe. The more imagination, honor and love I offer the universe, the more living, loving beings have come to populate it. So I have indeed come to believe there is a great, beautiful sentient universe seeking a deeper relationship with me, because as I hold that to my heart, the universe responds in ways I can not overlook, if I am going to bother honestly looking at all.

So this is my story, and again, certainly no promise that your path will be like mine. Yours may be far more wonderful, and will certainly be personal for you. I venture to say that if you are willing to imagine this as an personal invitation to deepen your experience of being yourself in a sacred and living universe, then let me suggest that you allow yourself the luxury of a peaceful openness as to what sort of felt responses you may receive. They could be soft as a feather, gentle as a whisper, or bold as a hurricane. Importantly: don't hurry, and have the courage to trust your own experiences.

So for me, in Lorian, I have found a safe, wise and caring community to support on my journey towards myself- a welcome new way of being me. I wish for you that your path, whatever it may be, also be wondrous and full of light.

Views from the Lorian Community publishes essays from a team of volunteer writers expressing individual experiences of a long term, committed practice of Incarnational Spirituality (and the general principles shaping such a practice.) Views expressed do not necessarily reflect the sentiments or thoughts of any other person in Lorian or of Lorian as a whole. If you would like to subscribe, please visit our website and click on Follow Our Blog Via Email. Or email the editor:drenag@lorian.org.

I Am Only Human

By Freya Secrest

Editor's Note: For the next several weeks the Lorian Blog will feature posts on the topic, "Lorian: Who We Are, What We Stand For." Blogs will be written by regular contributors and also newer voices who have been exploring Incarnational Spirituality in their own unique ways. If you have a story you'd like to share of personal experiences with Lorian and Incarnational Spirituality, please email drenag@lorian.org

Incarnational Spirituality honors life on earth, human life and consciousness, nature’s life and sentiency, and the life of other subtle realms and qualities. I am drawn to the way it celebrates the wonder and diversity of daily life on earth, the way it looks to understand and affirm the sacredness and beauty in incarnate form. Working with the principles of this worldview has supported me in coming to stand simply and honestly in my life and discover my value as a human being here on earth. It speaks to an internal impulse that has called me to look for the sacredness of all life, my own and that of the world around me.

My quest to learn to embrace myself and the world in this way began when I was a teenager. I can remember a friend in high school using the phrase, “I am only human”, when grumbling about something he was expected to do. Somehow that phrase set me on edge, like fingernails squeaking across a blackboard. I realized I had heard it used in this same way before as an excuse for a mistake. It suggested to me that our humanness was not a useful resource to be proud of. Something inside me felt that to be human was something to celebrate, but this phrase undercut that idea. After that, any time I heard it used I would launch into a heated defense of that person’s value. Unfortunately, that did not seem to move the person I was lecturing away from apologizing for their humanness.

As I see it now, it is this phrase and my reaction to it that set me looking for my place as a human in the world and brought me to my work with Lorian. What was an unclear impulse back then has gradually become a more focused backdrop to my life. I want to be able to affirm myself as a person and not apologize for my humanness. I want to uphold others in their pride-of-self and what they contribute in the world. I want to know the whole of my experience, including my mistakes, as integral and valuable.

I am reminded of this poem by Fernando Pesso,

“To be great, be whole;
Exclude nothing, exaggerate nothing that is not you.
Be whole in everything. Put all you are
Into the smallest thing you do.

So, in each lake, the moon shines with splendor
Because it blooms up above.”

I’ve “put my all” into my search for the value of being human in various ways over the years. In high school I explored more traditional avenues of “good works” and social service such as becoming a Big Sister and participating in local humanitarian projects. As a young adult in the 60’s and 70’s, I engaged ecological actions, feeling the need to integrate the value of all life, not just my human life. I saw it important to extend the same generosity and recognition I wanted for myself to the interconnected ecology of our planet.

All this in turn led me into an exploration of different spiritual understandings - Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Earth-based, Esoteric. Each of the disciplines I looked into had something to offer. But none of these perspectives held a full picture of the value of being human. The future they imagined did not portray time on earth itself as a cherished or valued part of human life. It was only a school which prepared one for a “real” or meaningful life elsewhere. Something inside me still needed to know how to say a wholehearted “yes!” to the value of my personal incarnation as more than a means to an end.

In the spring of 1971 I arrived at the Findhorn Foundation in Scotland and met David Spangler and others who became my colleagues in Lorian. Findhorn’s demonstration of collaboration with nature provided a rich field for exploring the value of human expression because it seated me in a view of a community of life that honored all elements of its diversity. Awakening to embrace the truly infinite variations in life, my quest found its center. I was no longer isolated in order to define my humanness; as a being who is human, I was one contributing part of life discovering itself.

I have helped to foster Incarnational Spirituality ever since that time because its approach to the value of humanness celebrates a person as a part of the rich web of life. It honors the gifts of human curiosity and creativity that can literally generate new space. It invites us into the connectedness of belonging, where we bring the spirit of hospitality to the diversity of the world. Instead of the lecture about being human I gave in my teens, I have found questions to share that connect and activate my humanness as an asset. “What joy does this bring me and others in the world?” Am I creating a space that invites others? Does this celebrate the sacred in life?” Questions such as these help deepen my ability to choose, invite and create a space of potential. They let me celebrate my humanness in the large and small acts of daily life that weave my unique perspective into the world. An incarnational focus holds that a human life is to be celebrated in its everyday activity of being and doing. With this perspective “I am only human” becomes “I am human” and apology is changed into a statement of honor, intention and new possibility.

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On Saturday, February 17 at 10 AM, join Lorian Colleague and Subtle Activist facilitator David T. Nicol for Sacred Destiny: A Revolutionary Method for Serving OUR Collective Liberation through YOUR Personal Healing. This free online event introduces an upcoming online program starting in March that will feature David Spangler as a guest teacher. Learn more and register here: http://sacred-destiny.net. (Click here to read an interview with David Nicol and Lorian blog writer Susan Beal.)

The Gift of Darkness

Essay and Watercolor by Mary Reddy

Someone I loved once gave me

a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand

that this, too, was a gift.”

--Mary Oliver

“Darkness rises and Light to meet it,” says Snoke, the Supreme Leader and super villain in The Last Jedi. This Star Wars tale and a thousand other legends are steeped in the eternal battle between good and evil. And the ultimate goal is eradication of evil, right? Oh boy, do we human beings struggle with that one. “Good has to win!” we worry, “but will we see that in our lifetimes? Or can evil actually prevail?” We must stay in the Light we think, but what good does it do if we armor ourselves in it and depart from the world? Throughout the ages, countless folk tales and magical legends have obliquely touched on this difficult conundrum of life on earth.

I’ve been considering the ways the Star Wars movies have satisfied (or failed) my craving for a good magical story. One thing I love, that repeatedly happens, is that the good guy goes to meet the bad guy. He goes into the very bowels of hell, into the Death Star to stand face to face with evil. In other stories, say, a classic Western shoot-em-up, the hero goes to meet the villain in order to stop him and destroy him. But a different ethic comes into play in the Star Wars stories. Though stopping the bad guy is desirable, going to meet him is first and foremost a crucial step along the way of the hero becoming fully himself. Standing in the power of the Force, the good guy must confront and acknowledge how much he has in common with the evil one. Fearful of what will ensue, the good guy nevertheless musters his courage to go and face himself.

In this latest Star Wars episode, the classic struggle of good against evil morphs into a different kind of story. No longer requiring exclusively male pronouns (hurray!) to describe the hero’s tale—the story pluralizes into a number of tales of diverse heroes. As I watched, I followed two new threads with growing fascination: the overturning of beloved icons and the waves of ambiguity washing over the dichotomy of good and evil.  

That we live in time and experience change over time almost ensures that inevitably some beloved person, truth, manner of expression, cultural practice, or favorite way of seeing ourselves must pass away. What feels different about this time on earth is a growing sense of urgency around that necessity. We almost need to take apart and recreate what we love best (democracy, community, our place in nature) in order to avoid losing it (and ourselves) entirely.

We all instinctively understand the hero’s journey. What’s more difficult is how to see the path in the midst of the storm and fog of daily life.

I was privileged, in my life, to experience a complete breakdown. It was hard to go through, it was hard on my family, and at times it was hard to see a light at the end of the tunnel. But having emerged from it more whole, more balanced, I have a deep appreciation of the prize at the end of a descent into the shadows. I met myself. I now have an increased appreciation of all the elements that came together to form my life. And I feel deep gratitude for the love and assistance of the ones who stood by me as I fell apart. And even now, years later, I am better able to love and appreciate people who appear to be acting from a place of darkness.

My life is no longer about a dramatic descent and upward climb and it’s trickier to see the path toward dramatic growth. These days, I find my growth pushing me toward more engagement with others, with community wherever I find it. I see so many of us (and our communities) living with uncertainty. We watch as the world wildly careens from one threat to another. Understandably, we may find ourselves instinctively holding fast to old icons.

I’ve been trying instead to entertain that uncertainty. How can I pause before rushing to judgment? I wonder if the unquestioned duality of the moral universe needs re-examining. Polarization, the duality, the either/or, the extremes, they overwhelmingly claim our public discourse and infect our ability to imagine solutions. What once worked as a dialectic (thesis, antithesis, synthesis) never proceeds to the synthesis. Maybe it’s because we need more than just two sides?

What if I were to go into the bowels of the earth to find myself by confronting the dark? Maybe my shadow is not so extremely dark; what if I am so many shades of grey? Instead of struggling to surface The Shadow, what if I discover a collective of lights and shadows that spin kaleidoscopically into consciousness and out. What if our imagined victory over the present crises cannot take shape until we crush the iconic opposition of two sides—why only two?

“Good has to win! Or can evil actually prevail?” Erase that blackboard. Let’s start with a clean sheet and the first thing we write on it is Love. Inhabiting a cellular, systems-drawn, neuron-firing, sometimes wave/sometimes particle-based, complex Gaian being such as ours, how many “sides” will Love call forth?

On Saturday, February 17, join Lorian Colleague and Subtle Activist leader David T. Nicol for Sacred Destiny: A Revolutionary Method for Serving OUR Collective Liberation through YOUR Personal Healing. During this free online event, David will guide participants through a sacred process of group healing for the purposes of collective liberation. David will also share about the power of unified group consciousness to bring next-level personal and ancestral healing, while also being a genuine force for change in our world. This call will involve a potent group practice to transform our personal and ancestral timelines. Learn more and register for this free online event here:http://sacred-destiny.net.(Click here to read an interview with David Nicol and Lorian blog writer Susan Beal.)

The Purpose of Light

By Drena Griffith

“People are absolutely worthless,” the young man said with fierce eyes. “Total f--ng scum. Nearly everyone in this world if given the choice would willfully inflict pain upon others for their own selfish gain.”

Surprised by this high school senior’s opinion of humanity? He is the best friend of a student I teach, a very likable, intelligent young adult with definitive and surprising opinions about topics ranging from net neutrality to politics (he’s a Libertarian) to the best way for the US to handle the situation in the Middle East. He grew up on the west coast attending parties with the well-known and wealthy. And he attends a private religious high school, though he’s definitely not a believer--thinks religion is a Ponzi scheme, actually. Once he shared his strong views on humanity with a teacher at his school and she, alarmed and suspicious,made him take an implicit bias test online. His responses showed no bias, he told me (hers, however, did--which brought him great validation.) His belief is pure and untainted by selective disregard--he holds all of humanity equally, on the bottom rung.

I share these details to paint a picture of this nameless eighteen year old walking around in our world. On the outside, he jokes and smiles. He’s not dripping with evangelical guilt and shame. From an upper middle class family, he has seen the best and the worst that life has to offer--and somehow the worst has stuck. And sadly, he is not alone in believing that humans are worthless.

He could be driving the car passing us in the left lane. He could be our son or grandson. He is helping to create our future.

In some ways, his dissatisfaction amplifies a moral dilemma: at its core, Incarnational Spirituality holds that to be a human being on Earth is a sacred calling. At our core we have an ability to shape and transform experience--to birth dreams as powerful and transforming as stars. An orientation to our potential, rather than to our myriad failures, can in and of itself reveal much about our inherent sacredness. Yet it’s one thing to believe in the potential of human life in a meditative stance and quite another to communicate that message to others in the world, especially when the machinery of the world diminishes people in general in order to sell us products and services to help us cope with our imperfection.

For many at Lorian, that challenge itself seems existential: Self light, sovereignty, holopoiesis (wholeness)…these are not simple concepts. They are terms embodying a lived experience that lies beyond the realm of the language entrusted to convey them. For many of the founders of Lorian especially, the subtle reality, a world that all terminology mirrors darkly, is the only reality they know and have ever known. Disenchantment and other trappings of worthlessness perhaps visited but never quite made a cave in their consciousness. It’s not that they take for granted that human life has intrinsic value. Of course it does--that’s the reality. May it be so for all--but it clearly isn’t so for many.

Even in my administrative role at Lorian I hear from those for whom human life seems a prison, as they seek teachers in order to overcome their limitations. Or they look toward alliances in the subtle world  (or gurus who can more easily move through those realms) because they believe that ascended masters and otherworldly beings have something that we humans do not. That other world--with its faeries, disembodied spirits and other glamorized beings-- holds the beauty, the mystery. At its worst, our world is a penal colony located a short walking distance from hell; at its best, it’s an alternative school with a lifetime of lessons and opportunities to “evolve” so that, when we finally “graduate”, we get to go somewhere else next time!

These are, of course, extreme examples. More commonly found on this path are the gently detached, ones who’ve endured varying degrees of isolation and ostracism to be their real selves (because belief in subtle reality in general seems so far afield by mainstream standards). It took so much energy to break the mold in the first place--what’s left to remold what’s been lost? Compared to skeptical relatives and polite acquaintanceships, subtle colleagues are much easier to work with. Even metaphysics is not immune to the disenfranchisement of humanity.

For those who come to Incarnational Spirituality to affirm their belief in subtle realms, they often desire to advocate for unseen voices unable to directly speak to the impact our day to day human decisions have on all sentient beings who call this Earth home. But as advocates overall of an approach to life, an awareness, that values the individual as we do, I wonder how much easier it would be to support a shift in consciousness toward the subtle worlds if we also simultaneously fostered dialogue that encouraged people to reconsider the way they feel about their ordinary lives.

How does that self-light inherently within sustain itself and become bright enough to see oneself by in the day by day reality of life in a harsh world? How does that inner light become bright enough to guide those walking on conflict-torn streets or wrestling with the paradoxes of life on Earth and finding themselves drifting to extremes to cope?

Which leads me back to the face of the broken hearted young man--who would no doubt object to being called broken hearted. He strongly believes that he has a firm grasp on the way life really is. Is he right?

If anyone has been paying attention--as I’m sure we all are--there are not enough words to describe how right he seems. An understatement—things are really bad! We’re fighting openly on all fronts now--ecological, political, social, ideological…Reminding the world who she inherently is--reminding human beings who we really are--it’s not a task for subtle beings. It is a task for wounded healers, for those that life has broken completely open who will say yes to loving the world anyway. And ground that love into actions that both mirror and sustain the worlds without and within. It’s a task for those who have truly connected with and embraced this most basic human truth--human life is divine life--and who can remember this and hold fast to their own inner truth while also loving their feet in the soot.

As the leader of the Native Lodge I attend recently told me, it’s the people in the darkness that most need to see others’ light. Those called must trust their own light enough to enter the dark. They must have focus and patience--they must remember the purpose of light.

In 1972, speaking at the Toronto Youth Corps in 1972, world renowned psychiatrist and author Viktor Frankl vividly shared his philosophy on the value of humanity that still resonates for me today: “If we take man as he really is, we make him worse. But if we overestimate him …you know what happens? We promote him to what he really can be. So we have to be idealists, in a way, because then we wind up as the true, the real realists…”

Imprisoned in Nazi death camps during World War II, losing most of his family and nearly his own life there, Viktor Frankl’s work in the world afterward truly embodied the spirit of remembering our highest selves in spite of--perhaps even because of--the odds against us. He endured an atrocity exposing the worst humanity was capable of at that time--and walked away believing that the spark of light he called “meaning” could redeem and help us reclaim our sanity, wholeness and basic goodness.  

Perhaps the spark within the young student whose story introduces this piece will yet emerge through the circumstances influencing his perspective. (For those who may be curious, he and I may soon sit down to discuss and share our different views on humanity. I’ll let you know how it goes.)

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Views from the Lorian Community publishes essays from a team of volunteer writers expressing individual experiences of a long term, committed practice of Incarnational Spirituality (and the general principles shaping such a practice.) Views expressed do not necessarily reflect the sentiments or thoughts of any other person in Lorian or of Lorian as a whole. If you would like to subscribe, please visit our website and click on Follow Our Blog Via Email. Or email the editor:drenag@lorian.org.

Journey Into Fire

By Julie Spangler

I was recently asked about my spiritual journey: where did it start and what led me into the work I now do with Lorian?  I don't usually like to talk about myself... my journey into fire.  These things are so personal and internal, and to me, seem pretty ordinary. Unlike many I know, I had no great shattering opening, revelation or transcendent, out-of-body experience.

My birthplace, New England, is covered with old colonial churches, one small version of which stood up the path and across the road from my family’s converted barn.  Its wooden pews were made a little more comfortable by the long, wine-red velveteen cushions, but for me, the soft southern voice of Reverend Greene did not soften the harsh tones of the words he used. To my young heart, God was a loving Presence, but this was not the God that our church presented to me. During my confirmation class, I asked the assistant pastor, "If God is a loving God, how could He condemn anyone to eternal damnation? This is not an act of love." He basically patted me on the head and told me I was too young to understand. Not a good answer to give a teenager.  I was stubborn enough to trust my inner knowing, and truthfully, I suspected he didn't know how to answer my question.

Around this time, when I was fifteen, I had an insight. I was sitting at the kitchen counter listening to my older sister and my mother discuss various ideas — in particular they were wondering about the possibility of reincarnation. To me the answer seemed an obvious yes, this is possible. Living more than one life made perfect sense to me and I couldn’t quite figure out why they were questioning the issue.

Sitting there listening with a strong affinity to the question, I nevertheless wasn't inclined to join their exploration, and as I wondered why I heard a voice inside clearly say, "It is not time". With that came an understanding that my work at that time was to continue growing up, to stabilize my personality, and that I would know when it was time to explore further spiritually. There was no doubt that this was truth for me. I neither questioned it nor thought to tell anyone about it. It was simply an unshakeable foundation of knowing coming from deep inside my core. Looking back, I can't say why hearing an inner voice did not shake my world. Why didn't I shout it out? I just felt so completely at home with it.  The whole experience seemed somehow normal and trustworthy and deeply part of who I am.  I went on about my life without questioning the source of this voice or its message. I knew that one day I would look for spiritual insight, and that I would know when it was  time to start. What is noteworthy, looking back, is that sense of ordinariness this experience had. This was not remarkable. It was normal. And it led to the next time I experienced an irrefutable knowing.

In February of my sophomore year at the University of Washington, I learned about a place called the Findhorn Foundation, a spiritual community in Northern Scotland.  My sister, who was visiting there with her husband, had sent me some booklets by two of the community’s founders, Dorothy Maclean and Eileen Caddy. I was curious, but Findhorn had little connection to my busy university life, so I only gave this reading material a quick glance. Even so, in the core of my being it felt that when the time came this was where I would go to begin my spiritual explorations.  No question - just a sense in my body of an open flow toward Findhorn which my mind translated into a "knowing".

That time came on my 20th birthday. After my sophomore year at the University of Washington in Seattle, I took a summer job with Seattle Parks and Recreation. Each week I led a group of inner city kids backpacking in the mountains, which also fed a deep need in me to be surrounded by the peace and beauty of the natural world (accented though it was by the loud, boisterous enthusiasm of a bunch of young teens).  On my day off, to celebrate my birthday, one of my friends took me sailing on Lake Washington and again, I had that sense of directed flow. It felt like an inner door had opened, and I knew the time had come. Instead of continuing my studies at the University,  I would head out to Findhorn, and I had a feeling I would not be coming back.  This is not something I could tell my friends or family — how can one explain such a sense? But like the initial insight at 15, I just knew it deep in my inner self,  in my bones.  It is like the flow of a river that knows its banks, natural and directed and home.

When I arrived at Findhorn a few months later, I found it to be a spiritual home that spoke deeply to me. It was partly the everyday, joyous acceptance of the living spirit in ourselves and in everything we do - an affirmation of the fact that each one of us has a personal relationship to the God within - and partly the wise and mind-expanding words of David Spangler who was living at the community then and gave a talk every week during the summer. In Findhorn I found a way of being in the world that was founded on Love, Light and Wisdom, as one of Findhorn's  three Founders, Peter Caddy, would say. In David's lectures and writings, I recognized a description of my own inner experience, and  I found myself empowered to continue trusting my own spiritual connections. I heard the words of Christ unencumbered by impositions of guilt or exclusionary judgments. There was an affirmation of the potential in each soul to be an expression of the Sacred in the world, a creative source of service in partnership with Spirit. We were not perceived to be children who needed to be punished, but rather sparks of the divine walking on the land and learning how to integrate into the limitations of an earthly embodiment. This called forth a sense of responsibility and creativity for how I expressed that living spirit through my everyday choices.

David’s talks often focused on our wholeness, integrating the transcendent parts of ourselves with our personalities. In fact, he did his best to avoid using hierarchical terms like higher and lower when speaking of spirit and the self.  Yes, our personalities need conscious direction, but they are not less valuable than our soul. Our personalities are expressions of our soul's intent and the emphasis on our wholeness and capacity to be a source of light in the world spoke deeply to me.

Peter Caddy, one of Findhorn’s founders, used to say, “Love where you are; love who you’re with; love what you’re doing”— and live a life of service.  The two years I lived in Scotland anchored this practice in my mind and heart and into the activities of everyday life. As I returned to  America, I joined some colleagues I had worked with at Findhorn to help found the Lorian Association with the intent of bringing a recognition of these same values out of the purview of intentional community and into normal mainstream life.

My sense of inner flow has become an everyday experience, which has drawn me to lead a class called Journey Into Fire: Awakening to the Light of Self.  It offers experiential practices which invite us to redefine ourselves as expansive beings rather than as limited ones. These exercises help me know how better to stand in the core of my being and hold a stable center. I then have a greater capacity to hold love and to act out of that love even as I may feel buffeted by disturbances around me. I have noticed a difference in my engagement with the world when I stand in my core, an inner stance which is both in my body and also expansive. It allows for both an acknowledgement of oneness and also an appreciation for my individuality. There is more capacity for love and a sense of empowerment and generativity. There is a sense that I can feel the transcendent, and it can walk in my feet on the land. The Sacred is not separate from me, far out of reach and unknowable. It is within and all around me. It is my home and from this home my life flows.

This, I think, is what I was looking to understand all those years ago in my youth. It is the gift of human incarnation to the planet. Incarnation is not easy. There are experiences which traumatize us and can shatter our identity. But the world is unbelievably rich with so many different cultural traditions supporting healing and wholeness, leading us into light, each one offering tools to support individuals in expanding their sense of identity — each one potentially leading to freedom.  If we are attentive, our whole life becomes a path toward a greater capacity to hold the sacred. The particular gift that Lorian offers to this mixing pot is one of expansiveness, breaking out of the constrictions of dogma, and each finding our way of connecting to the living spirit, the mystery of the world we live in and the beings we share the world with – our unique way of connecting to the sacredness within it all.  This is what the journey into fire is all about.

Everything that Incarnational Spirituality has to offer stems from the recognition that there's a light within each individual life. As the new year begins, consider exploring your inner light by joining us for Journey Into Fire: Awakening to the Light of Self. From January 10-February 13,  Lorian Faculty Member Julia Spangler will gently guide you through practices and processes to understand and attune to the power of being yourself in this world.

Imagining the Future

By Freya Secrest

This sign appeared in my neighborhood recently. It immediately struck and resonated for me and I notice that whenever I go out riding now I turn my bike in the sign's direction just to pass by it again. In considering why, I see that I find the sign strengthening and uplifting; it connects me in a small but specific way to what I can do as one individual. It brings my individual actions into a wider community that is envisioning a quality of future that I too want to imagine for the world.

We live in a world shaped by imagination. My car was a thought that began as a twinkle in someone’s imagination for a different kind of transportation, a vehicle that could travel quickly and directly to a destination. My shower was someone’s imaginative idea to bring a waterfall indoors and warm it up. Air travel, for example, has been a glimmer in human imagination since Icarus tried to fly his father's wings, but not until the Wright brothers did we succeeded in giving flight a viable form for collective movement. There were many small steps, lots of trial and error, and many brave choices that lead to these new ideas becoming an accepted everyday reality. In seeing this in the long view, it is individual, step by step contributions that carried the possibility forward into today’s reality.

Imagining possibilities begins in our relationships with the world around us. From the balance of our known connections, we focus our curiosity and creativity and invite possibility. As we step toward these new possibilities, our relationship to what is known shifts, expands, grows. New forms emerge. What results needs a new set of organizing principles that recognize a new balance so that these imaginations can bloom and grow. As an example, before any new form of travel emerged, there was the imagination of a new relationship to distance and speed and our understanding of where we belong in the world. We did not need to be limited to where our clan lived, how far our own legs could carry us or the speed of a horse and buggy; we could move further and find shelter and connections far away from a familiar environment. Our predecessors imagined new technologies to help them travel through physical space more quickly and build relationships with new people and places. In so doing our center of balance moved from possibilities centered in place into those centered in ideas and human creativity.

Our world today is shaped by the relationships and possibilities imagined by those who came before us. Perhaps it was assumed that human connection and caring and a verdant earth could not be lost. But, given the social, environmental and political turbulence in the world today, I am brought to consider the need for an expanded imagination, one that makes a technology of wholeness the focus of its attention.

“Hate has no home here.” My neighbor's sign points me to a way that I can add my energy to widening an imagination of the world of the future. I want to imagine a future in which hate and fear do not isolate us from each other. Where my idea of “right” does not justify acts that separate and undermine others. I want to imagine a world where hospitality and respect are the foundation for connection, interaction and growth. Where my respect for the living earth gives it space to grow and nourish all its residents.

The sign brings me back to the small but valuable personal shifts in my own time and attention that are a necessary foundation for hospitality and respect. It helps me to bring weight and substance to my commitment to the future. It reminds me to embody my imagined world through deed as well as word.

This is a life-long project, not one that will necessarily be completed in my remaining time on earth. But it is one to which I am very committed to contribute. I greatly appreciate the family who posted that sign in their yard. Even though I do not know them, they remind me I am not alone. The steps I can take to bridge and connect are part of a wave that is transforming the world through imagination put into daily action.

The Lorian Blog will be taking a break until January, 2018. Thank you for your ongoing support.

Views from the Lorian Community publishes essays from a team of volunteer writers expressing individual experiences of a long term, committed practice of Incarnational Spirituality (and the general principles shaping such a practice.) Views expressed do not necessarily reflect the sentiments or thoughts of any other person in Lorian or of Lorian as a whole. If you would like to subscribe, please visit our website and click on Follow Our Blog Via Email. Or email the editor:drenag@lorian.org.

Thinking Like a Planet

By Freya Secrest

“Think like a planet.” What does it mean to think like a planet? David Spangler has used this idea to introduce a way to access the stance of partnership and participation that will help us create a more whole future.  But I can be so immersed in my own daily events that I cannot even begin to imagine the thoughts that a planet might use to organize itself. How can I develop the capacity to hold such a wide perspective?

On a recent plane flight looking out the window with a vista from 30,000 feet up, I found at least a partial answer to that question. I found myself marveling at the folds, patterns and shapes of the land we were crossing over. I could see the movement of time and relationship as mountain evolved into foothill and from there into valleys with fields and towns.

My felt experience in nature often allows me to find the vocabulary that helps to navigate more conceptual understanding. Most often that wider, more expansive understanding comes when marveling at a detail like the pattern of bark or the color of a sunset.  But the view of our world from 30,000 feet up brought me to see and feel a wider range of our evolving planet from a new and very accessible viewpoint. It brought me from an image of a planet as a neutral hunk of rock to a more intimate experience of its relationship to aliveness and joy.  

Let me try to invite you into the picture as it engaged me.

First, imagine yourself gazing out the window of an airplane. The sky is cloudless and you can see clearly the mountains and foothills below. You are moving fast enough to recognize the progression in the landscape below but not so fast as to miss the relationship between its elements.

So close that they feel touchable, notice first the jutting peaks of mountains. Rock – just the weight of the word communicates its to-the-point honesty.  The word brings a satisfying felt description of the base layer of our planet.  It is solid; it will not be pushed aside. Rock can be cold and slippery and hard but it also upholds. And with time, rock gives way to water and wind, allowing itself to be rounded and softened.

Flying on, your view softens into foothills where the flows and patterns of rock become more entwined. The word Earth comes to mind. It brings a different quality, varied and not so singular.  Earth has learned to be collective and interactive. There are more shades of light in the ground below.

And now between the hills you see spaces of green – valleys where earth has softened into a seedbed. By honoring its relationships it has become Soil, nourishing, sustaining fertile ground for other lives. Soil blends and integrates to form a physical field of emerging life, an energetic field of invitation.

The scope of this awareness is wide. Rock speaks of identity and being.  Earth speaks of relationship and Soil to renewal. They speak to thinking like a planet.

[Come back to an awareness of yourself. Do you notice a deeper sense of the life of our world?]  

I am moved to be both a witness and a part of this majestic progression of life. I wonder what I can possibly contribute to the breadth of this planet-scaled experience.  A response comes up in me. I have an image of Seeds and a thought that says, “You add seeds, seeds of possibility that offer new harmonies to the song. New seeds to grow and shape new stories of life and your attention to the husbandry that will integrate that life into the joy of our planetary aliveness.”

Thinking like a planet needs me to accept the invitation to become part of the progression of emergence on this planet, embrace the connections that shape the field of life, and welcome the changes that time and relationship bring.

Views from the Lorian Community publishes essays from a team of volunteer writers expressing individual experiences of a long term, committed practice of Incarnational Spirituality (and the general principles shaping such a practice.) Views expressed do not necessarily reflect the sentiments or thoughts of any other person in Lorian or of Lorian as a whole. If you would like to subscribe, please visit our website and click on Follow Our Blog Via Email. Or email the editor:drenag@lorian.org.

Readers Respond to Rock Talk

Several weeks ago The Lorian Blog published a post by Mary Reddy entitled "Rock Talk." (Click here to read it.) We received a number of responses from readers and would like to share some of their delightful experiences with rocks:

"Mary Reddy's "Rock Talk" essay struck a chord with me. I came to an appreciation for rocks through my practice of geomancy using Israel Regardie's "bowl-of-stones" method. I spent a couple of years gathering just the right set of stones along our dirt road during daily walks. New Hampshire is known for its quartz and granite, so I also collected semi-matching examples of that at the same time. I set them on a window sill as a kind of "altar" overseeing my working library of tarot books. I also created a rather Freudian piece of art with them. Here are some pictures."— Wayne Limberger (Ed. Note: All photos below are from Wayne's collection.)                                             

"My own experience with rocks has been a mystery but delightful nonetheless. About 8 years ago I felt a strong connection some acreage of land in Western Australia. The pull was very strong and I eventually purchased this land. Over time I noticed that certain rocks had 'arrived' on the land, noticing the way they sat on the land, I knew they had perhaps 'arrived' within the last 24 hours. I noticed if rocks had been there for a long time, they sat in the ground and underneath them was soil and perhaps some insects. Those that arrived more recently still had live green grass underneath which bounced back when I picked up the rock. There seems to be a certain magnetism on this land. For a very long time I have loved rocks and have travelled to many places where there are ancient rocks, eg England, Scotland, Ireland, Egypt, Bosnia, Africa and of course my own beloved Australia. What messages do they have for me I wonder?"— SF

"I began "communicating" w/stones, stone-persons, in the '90s, but had always been drawn to stone, especially the feel of sculptured stone; the intuitive me knew clearly that as artists & others have said--the piece to be revealed IS w/in the stone, awaiting the hands to assist in its being shown. when walking I was drawn to certain stones, then taught to hold them & meditate on them, their energy, what messages or teachings they had to offer. As a result, I have a collection of stones from various places over 30+ years.

 

While i've never had the joy of engaging standing stones, i have no doubt whatsoever that I'd be flying, too! what joy that must've been! I believe the stone persons want to engage with us, want to be understood for the gifts they are, bring, such as the waterfall. I've felt such support at times when leaning on stones (after asking if it's ok) and so enjoy their beauty." — LVM

 

 

“It was a delight to read of (Mary’s) delight to connect with stone sentience! My book Awakening to Home: A Partnership of Sidhe Star and Stone (which documents my work with David & Jeremy’s Card Deck) speaks to this – both from a giant (mountain) perspective as well as a modest (pebble) perspective. I often ‘hear’ stones calling to me as I hike the Alps (‘See me! See me! I want to help Gaia too!’).

If they’re small enough I bring them home for blessing with Love’s Light, to then offer in healing to the fractured places of the world. With a large glacier erratic, the blessing occurs within their (adopted) ‘home-space’. In German we call them 'Findling' which (translated) is the same as ‘Foundling', a child abandoned on a doorstep. It's this 'mother-love' that I bring to my embodied relation with stone (standing or otherwise), which has opened me to the 'mothers' of Gaia, a very precious collective of crone wisdom …"— Anne Gambling

Much gratitude to all of our readers who took the time to share stories or just dropped us a line to say they enjoyed reading Rock Talk and other blog posts. Please keep your emails coming.

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Views from the Lorian Community publishes essays from a team of volunteer writers expressing individual experiences of a long term, committed practice of Incarnational Spirituality (and the general principles shaping such a practice.) Views expressed do not necessarily reflect the sentiments or thoughts of any other person in Lorian or of Lorian as a whole. If you would like to subscribe, please visit our website and click on Follow Our Blog Via Email. Or email the editor:drenag@lorian.org.

Rock Talk

By Mary Reddy

During my apprenticeship to a shaman, I learned how to journey into the non-ordinary reality of the lower, middle, and upper worlds where I met with power animals, nature spirits, deities, and all manner of beings for which I had no name. My first attempts were tentative yet soon enough I was surprised by some very real alternate realities. When going to the upper world for the first time, I expected to see ethereal castles and cloud cities. I thought I’d meet austerely other-worldly teachers. Instead, I wandered as though in a fog and began to worry that I would fail to see anything. Suddenly, I found myself in the presence of an old crone of a woman with wild hair and wilder eyes. I appeared to have startled her. She turned from something she was working on, took one look at me, and yelled in consternation “Go talk to rocks!” Her hoarse voice and peremptory command shocked me back home. Journey ended. Message received.

I followed her advice. In the beginning, I would touch into a rock and get a clear sense of its intelligent but foreign-to-me nature. Eventually, my rock communions expanded to include something like rock emotion. For example, I once leaned into the cliff cradling the Baptism River as it rushed down a gorge into Lake Superior. The Rock Being I connected with exuded a rocky delight that I cared to visit and proceeded to convey wordlessly how much it enjoyed shedding its minerals into the river, tinging it a copper. Part of its earthly mission was to hold the swift-flowing water on its course to the deep lake. I still believe it had much more to “tell” me if I’d had the patience of a rock to listen for hours.

Another time, touching an old standing stone in Ireland that was carved with tree runes, I heard a delighted voice that said “Ah, you’re back!” Then I felt as though I was atop the rock and we were flying through the night skies. I can’t explain what that was about, but it moved me to happy tears. 

Here on Whidbey Island, I go for walks in a Buddhist nature reserve known as the Earth Sanctuary where they have created a standing-stone circle using slabs of Columbia Gorge basalt. I walk the circle, greeting each stone. Every time I perform this ritual, I am struck by a peculiar sensation when touching the stone slabs. I feel the exact opposite of grounded and immobile stability. I feel a watery current, a rushing and waving motion moving through dark space. Some of the standing stones convey this energetic feeling more strongly than others; with one, the sensation is quite strong ( the 11th in the circle proceeding clockwise). It reminds me of the flying sensation I experienced with the stone in Ireland. I can journey to stones at a distance, but the physical touching of stone is precious to me. 

We humans have interacted with stones for eons, performing ceremonies in standing stone circles, carving runes on stones and painting wild animals on cave walls, using hot stones for physical healing or crystal stones for concentration of light and intention. Someone told me once that stones hold memories. Our histories and the history of the planet may be stored in stone. I wonder if it’s possible for humans to co-author stories with stones? Is that what happened with the ancient standing stones? Was the meaning embedded in sacred stones through human beings collaborating with stones, angels, or Sidhe? Or were the messages generated by other beings to communicate with us? Whether collaboration took place in the past, perhaps it’s time to experiment with it now. 

It’s been years since I learned shamanic practices. Later, discovering incarnation spirituality, I realized a key difference between the two approaches to journeying or attunement. In shamanic journeying, I learned to leave the body behind. My consciousness departs the surrounding environment to enter a full-on trance state. Incarnational spirituality, with its joyous acknowledgement of embodiment, encourages me to involve my whole self. I retain awareness of my body and invite my environment to accompany me in fellowship. Thus, the touching of stones physically carries a powerful charge for me, as it works on a Gaian wavelength.

I'd love to hear from you about your experiences with stones. And if this is new to you, I invite you to “Go talk to rocks!” (and bring your body along with you!)

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 On September 28, join Lorian teacher Susan Sherman for a free webinar on Energy Tending. In this one hour interactive webinar on Zoom, you will learn a simple and effective practice that can shift your inner landscape towards a more welcoming, loving and connected way of meeting the world in your daily life. For more information and to register, click here.

Excess Baggage

By Susan Beal

A sense of urgency always overtakes me when I get to an airport, even when I am in plenty of time. It’s the overall vibe, I suppose, of a seeming non-place—everyone there is rushing off to somewhere else or working to get people from here to there. The muffled, sub-sonic vibration of jets overhead and the smell of diesel that permeates everything adds to the unsettled feeling.

The process of going through airport security adds to the stress. One day a few years ago, my husband David, and I, were flying home from Sea Tac. He had gotten TSA pre-check and I hadn’t. I waved goodbye to him as he sauntered off to his special check-in point—no line there—and I paused to fish my wallet and ID out of my backpack. Just then, a gaggle of Japanese school girls sashayed past, and all at once I was at least 20 people farther back in line than I would have been moments ago. It wasn’t a big deal, since we were in plenty of time and it hardly mattered if we waited here or at the gate. But I smoldered as the line barely inched forward. I saw David collect his bags from the conveyor belt, clear of security. It was so unfair!

I told myself I was being silly. Our flight didn’t leave for two hours. Everything was fine. Yet everything rankled and my nose was out of joint. What was wrong with me?

The morning had started off well. I had just finished the second of four weekends that were part of the Lorian ordination program. I had been in a fine, even inspired, mood. And although airport security is tiresome at the best of times, I’m generally laid back. Even if I get upset, I can usually summon a sense of gratitude to lighten up. It’s fun to get a hassled security officer to smile, or to share a sense of amusement with fellow passengers at the mild indignities we were all enduring. I also like to recognize and say hello to the life and sentience within the airport building, the monitors and machines, the subtle beings and energies at work alongside their physical counterparts, unseen and rarely acknowledged.

On this occasion, however, I couldn’t summon the least smile. To make matters worse, after I’d been in line for fifteen minutes or so, a TSA officer ushered everyone just behind me into a new, shorter line. I escalated from petty annoyance, to robust anger, to simmering rage.

As I looked around me at the mass of people being processed by armed, uniformed officials, my mood shifted into something darker and more troubling. Suddenly, we were not air passengers having our bags checked for bombs and knives, we were refugees being herded into camps, prisoners in a gulag, illegal aliens captured for incarceration and deportation. The scene around me was superimposed in my mind with images of Jews being unloaded from cattle cars and sorted on train platforms, of women in headscarves being harassed by military troops. On top of anger, I was flooded with grief about the cruelty humanity visits upon itself. Clearly these weren’t all my own thoughts and feelings, but why was I picking up on them so strongly?

I shook my head. I needed to get a hold of myself. I gazed around me and reoriented to the present. Amidst the hubbub, a woman in the cylindrical x-ray machine raised her arms. A guard ran a beeping scanning baton over a man’s pockets. A mother bent down to help her young daughter put a Dora the Explorer bag on the conveyor. Tall, potted ficus trees presided calmly over the crowd. Sunlight filtered down from skylights high up on the ceiling. I could see blue sky through the glass, and clouds drifting past. I breathed in, I breathed out. But I was still mired in anger and grief.

I collected my stuff and put everything back into place, then found David, who was smiling as I approached him. I thought, “Fine for him to smile! He didn’t have to wait in line!” We decided to grab lunch before heading to the gate. After we ordered food I ran through various techniques for grounding and calming myself, but I couldn’t regain my equilibrium. Things didn’t improve on the plane. We were in the last row, in seats that didn’t recline because they were up against the bathroom wall. The smell of bathroom disinfectant wafted over us and the man in the aisle seat crunched noisily through bag after bag of smelly bag of onion sour cream potato chips.

Finally, somewhere over the middle of the US, my mood began to lift. Hurtling through space in a winged aluminum cylinder, subjected to bad odors, limited personal space, minimal oxygen, and an accumulation of annoyances, I started to feel better. They say angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. Maybe it works the other way around, too—when you fly, you take yourself more lightly. My mood lightened—not entirely, but I no longer felt hijacked by rage and despair.

Flying always makes me aware of the angelic and elemental beings who assist the material world. It’s not just physics that keep planes aloft, but the assistance of angels and sylphs. And the view above the clouds reinforces a sense of celestial collaboration. Also, I find the enforced inactivity of being stuffed into a plane seat conducive to meditation and self-reflection. When I fly, I review my life. What effect it would have if I went down in a plane? How would my family fare? What messes and blessings would I leave behind? It puts things in perspective.

The plane landed, thanks to the human and subtle teamwork. Once home, the peace and familiarity of our land and house embraced me. I sat down to center myself and do some energy work to ground and transmute the psychic gunk that had thrown me off. Despite, or maybe because of my sensitivity, I often don’t make a distinction between energies that originate with me and energies that are no more mine than the rain falling from a cloud or the exhaust from a tail pipe.

I reviewed the morning’s events from a clairvoyant perspective. I saw the emotional residue of thousands of people’s irritation, fear and frustration accumulating in the check point area, like an ecosystem overburdened with toxic runoff. There were vague shapes moving among the heavy residues, perhaps a combination of projections and thought-forms left behind by travelers, and more autonomous beings who find nourishment in such an environment, like rats in a garbage-strewn lot.  

I felt stupid and chagrined for having been thrown so far off center. What kind of a Lorian priest would I make? I asked my inner guides for their perspective and all at once I was flooded with a new understanding. I often take on difficult energies from other people and places. I used to feel vulnerable, even victimized by my sensitivity, but I’ve learned through the years how to cope more effectively and safely with discordant energies. In this case, the subtle cleaning crew at the airport had recognized I had those skills and had handed me a bag of psychic trash to recycle when I got home. Apparently I’d agreed to it on a subconscious level. Yes, I’d gotten whammied at first by “leakage” from the bag, but I’d contained it until it could be properly transmuted, and my subtle courier services were much appreciated. I smiled as I thought of the constant warnings played over airport PA systems about not accepting bags or packages from any unknown person. Little did the TSA know it was happening all the time in ways they hadn’t imagined!

Since then I’ve learned to be a more conscious partner in such work.

On September 28, join Lorian teacher Susan Sherman for a free webinar on Energy Tending. In this one hour interactive webinar on Zoom, you will learn a simple and effective practice that can shift your inner landscape towards a more welcoming, loving and connected way of meeting the world in your daily life. For more information and to register, click here.

Formative Forces

Essay and Photos By Freya Secrest

I spent a day in the northern section of Yellowstone National Park this past summer. It was a brief visit, but nonetheless powerful in connecting me with the formative forces building our world.  There were geysers spewing out hot bubbling minerals not safe to be touched by human hands, powerful rivers cutting channels in the landscape and various microbial life-forms wearing down rock. My day’s experience was an amazing window into the forces that tirelessly move, meet and mold a world.

Going into the Park I recalled several National Geographic documentaries of Yellowstone which shared the beauty and the rawness of life in its mountains and valleys. But as we traveled by the mineral geysers, the Yellowstone River canyon, and a wide valley with a vista that dwarfed its resident buffalo, I was aware of the vast energies that sculpt and give shape to our planet. Those documentaries had not given me the felt sense of the power in wind and sky and molten chemicals that underlie its unique landscape of bubbling springs and delicate wild flowers. Images could point me to a tree growing close to sulphurous upwellings or a wild creature who made that world their home, but they didn’t fully capture the spirit of determination and joy evident when standing in their presence.  

On the way home to Michigan, I found myself considering my own relationship to formative forces, not looking to those powers of nature outside myself but to those powers available within my human stream of action. Standing, Partnering, and Generativity – these are not geologic forces but human-centered formative forces that I can direct— each elemental and powerful in their way.  They work with elements of creation different from the geologic forces, but they are no less potent to the life of Gaia.

Back now to my daily life, I wonder how to better focus my formative actions. I do not always see the impact of my life in the world, do not always recognize myself as a formative force. But the choices I make, the relationships I foster and the way I invite possibilities to emerge in my life help shape the wider world. My awareness of the possible impact of my actions leaves me feeling daunted. How do I know my individual actions contribute to the dance of life in a way that leads to a more whole and coherent world?

The answer that comes to me in this moment is that we don’t always get to know our impact. We cannot control the end result of our contributions in life except through Love. The understanding we bring to our actions and the choices we make from Love create a field where connection, possibility and respect enhance mutual unfoldment, where results foster wholeness and a vitality of life. As a formative force, it is my responsibility, my opportunity to step into Love as the controlling factor.

I have to admit that love has been a bit of a mystery for me, not so much in the specificity of personal love or the spaciousness of love for the Sacred in life, but in the mystery of how to bring them together. How does personal love expand to touch the universal and cosmic love reside in daily connections? How do they come together into a wholeness of love that is a life-enhancing, formative force?

What comes to me as a path into answering this question is to live with the same determination and joy as does the nature I connected with in Yellowstone Park – to stand and celebrate my life as a feast , to partner deeply, joyfully, lovingly with myself and the people and life around me, to be generative as a spring is, bubbling out the fullness of myself from wellsprings of love, a resource freely available for co-creative interaction with my world.   

After millions of years of interaction and relationship, many large and small acts of beingess, Yellowstone is a landscape manifesting a presence that touches its visitors with integrity, beauty and coherence.  It is a whole greater than the sum of its parts. No one element could alone imagine its current shape and vitality, but each element is a formative force in creating it. The same is true of each in our own lives; we are a formative force in connection with other forces and together we shape a more whole and beautiful world.

Views from the Lorian Community publishes essays from a team of volunteer writers expressing individual experiences of a long term, committed practice of Incarnational Spirituality (and the general principles shaping such a practice.) Views expressed do not necessarily reflect the sentiments or thoughts of any other person in Lorian or of Lorian as a whole. If you would like to subscribe, please visit our website and click on Follow Our Blog Via Email. Or email the editor:drenag@lorian.org.

The Shadow of the Moon

By Julie Spangler

We Americans have just passed through "The Great American Eclipse”. It was a dramatic name for a dramatic event. Like most of the country, I waited eagerly for 10:20 AM to arrive in Seattle. It was awe-inspiring.

Seeing them all lined up, the three celestial bodies which makes life possible on our planet was a moving moment to reflect on. Celestial events always lead me to consider where I stand in the universe on a small planet revolving around a small sun on the outskirts of a huge galaxy. Our beautiful earth is a miracle worthy of love.

As part of the whole experience, I then watched the televised videos of the event as the shadow of the moon moved across the land, welcomed by crowds and news reporters all across the country sharing in the experience of the totality.  I was shocked to see how suddenly darkness fell, how complete the darkness was, and then how swiftly light returned. At each location the event was welcomed with cheers and the joyful camaraderie of a community created simply to share a unique cosmic event at a moment in time. Very different from some more recent public gatherings of people in our country.

As I watched the news, they played a clip of Frank Reynolds, the ABC news anchor in 1979 when the last solar eclipse happened in the US: “So that’s it, the last solar eclipse to be seen on this continent in this century,” he said. “As I said, not until August 21, 2017, will another eclipse be visible from North America.”

“That’s 38 years from now,” he continued. “May the shadow of the moon fall on a world at peace.”

Hearing this, I found myself gripped by a grief which I still feel. May the shadow of the moon fall on a world at peace. It did not. People the world over pray for peace, march for peace, work and write for peace, yet our world continues to display war and violence. Suddenly I am in touch with the grief I have buried in the face of all of the news we are bombarded by daily of those tortured parts of our planet where people and families and communities are torn asunder by violence.      

With Frank's words, though, I am also made aware of our collective expectation that global peace is possible. I am deeply moved by the way humans continually envision a future of peace. In the '70's we marched for peace with the hopeful, expectant youthful belief that we could make it happen. One war ended. Others began.

Unlike many of my fellow students who thought taking down the government would solve our problems, I believed that the only way to make such changes was for each individual to be at peace within him or herself, to seek a spiritual center which does not foster violence. Often violence comes from dark unintegrated parts of our past which can lead us to strike out. It is the task of each of us to find the courage to uncover those parts, to see them, name them and reclaim them as part of our wholeness. There are many teachings and approaches to help us do this, but first we must look at how we choose to act and take responsibility for it.

The shadow of the moon imposed an unusual darkness during the daylight, a darkness that unexpectedly brought things up to be examined. As we enter times of darkness when things go bump in the night, we may find ourselves confronting those things which hide inside us from the light of day. They may sneak up on us, taking us by surprise as I was, or they may erupt suddenly and forcefully. For me, this grief for my world in the grip of so much violence has always been there, but I manage to keep it under the bed so that I can function in my day. The eclipse and Frank Reynolds brought it back into the light of my consciousness.

We are in a time when the violence and hatred in the collective is erupting all over the world. Is there more violence than there has been in the past? Are we in a time in the cycles of the world where hidden distortions  at the heart of humanity are brought to the surface - shadows of the collective past - so that they can be seen and dealt with? Or is it simply that with the speed of communications and connections these days we are seeing the violence and hatred more clearly and more immediately, again bringing to our awareness that which isn't normally visible? Will being made more aware of it allow us to finally address the hurt and pain in the human experience in order to bring healing to the species? In any case, we are seeing it and if we are to see a future where the next shadow of the moon can fall on a peaceful world, we must act toward that goal.

I still believe that the path to peace is a personal one. It requires us each to be attentive to those buttons which lead us to violent thoughts, words or behaviors. And it also requires us to reach out to each other with love and caring, recognizing and accepting our differences. What a boring, colorless world it would be if we were all the same.

With Frank Reynolds, I also wish for the shadow of the next eclipse to fall on a world without war. And given that the next eclipse is in 2019, I suspect that it will not. But this knowledge does not have to stop me from holding the intention for global peace, and as we are aware, subtle effects can have impact. The more people holding a vision of global peace, the closer we get to it. One day, through the efforts of us all, it will be the reality we live in.

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There's still time to join Julie Spangler for A Journey into the Sacred Fire of your Life, a six-week class exploring the sacredness at the heart of our ordinary human experiences and incarnate lives. Click here for more information and to register.