By David Spangler
Editor's Note: This essay was originally published in 2008. A subscriber recently inquired about it, and David felt the message (with a few minor updates) was still relevant today. We recognize that this blog post in its entirety is particularly focused on the United States and we hope that our non-US readers will appreciate David's wisdom given challenging circumstances on this side of the world.
The Soul of America
The Soul of America has all the capacities and performs all the functions of any other country’s soul, as I discussed above. But what is the spiritual destiny which it embodies and empowers? What are the gifts that the United States has to offer humanity and the world? What are its talents?
A place to start is with the “self-evident” truths presented by the Declaration of Independence: “…that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These are certainly qualities which the Soul of America has a destiny to develop and offer: Equality amongst all people; liberty and freedom; the sanctity of a person’s life with all its unique potentials; the capacity of all individuals to seek their highest good and to possess happiness in their lives, particularly the happiness that comes with the opportunity to unfold their potentials and to accomplish good in their lives.
To these four qualities, I might add a generosity of spirit, a capacity for innovation, invention and discovery, and an attitude of accomplishment, that whatever needs to be done, can be done. Finally, I would add a spirit of hospitality and community.
These are all human qualities and potentialities that the United States, which is itself an invented nation and an immigrant nation, seeks to develop within itself and to offer to the world. You may think of others that are part of the destiny—the talents—of this country. Feel free to make your own list.
Partnering with the Soul of America
The simplest way to partner with the Soul of America is to share its tasks and to express the qualities and virtues that represent its talents and gifts to the world. You might ask yourself, “What do I do to express the best qualities of being an American in my everyday life? How do I express and promote equality, liberty, generosity, openness to the new, and a spirit of possibility? How do I enhance the lives of others and provide opportunities that support their pursuit of happiness and the fulfillment of their own potentials? How do I nourish the common good in my country and foster cooperation instead of conflict? In the realm of civic discourse, how do I promote civility to ensure good, clear, and truthful communication? Do I enrich in some way the emotional and mental life and character of my country, if only in my own sphere of influence? Am I hospitable to those who are different than I and open to the gifts their differences may bring? Do I diminish or increase the use of violence—whether emotional, mental, or physical—as a means of problem-solving? In the midst of extremes, do I find the creative and empowering middle, the Radical Middle, where synthesis and co-creativity may flourish? Do I diminish fear and its crippling effects in my community?”
Bringing a loving heart, an open mind, and a will-to-good in any or all of these matters is an example of partnering with the Soul of America.
Connecting to the Soul of America
If you accept that there is a Soul of America as a genuine protective and nourishing presence and not simply as a metaphor or a projection, how might you contact and connect with this being? How might you invite its energy into your life as a citizen for your blessing and the blessing of those around you?
There are different ways this might be done, and ultimately you need to find a way that is right for you. For instance, you can invite the Soul of America, its qualities and energies, into your life through a prayerful and open-hearted invitation. Your commitment to live out the best and highest of the qualities and virtues this being represents is another way. You can imagine the Soul of America as a person, like Uncle Sam, who comes to you so you can have a conversation in your mind and heart with him. Also, partnering in the tasks of this being, as I mentioned above, is a means of connection.
In essence, contact and connection is through resonance, through like speaking to like. If you embody in yourself the kind of energy and qualities you imagine the Soul of America possessing, then you are connected. These qualities are its “address,” its “phone number;” you go to that address or you dial that number by actively expressing these qualities. To contact the Soul of America, be the Soul of America in your own unique way.
A Modest Exercise
Here is a modest exercise you can do to attune to the Soul of America in your own life. Here you are going to use your imagination to develop a felt sense of what America is for you. You are in effect recreating the spirit of America within yourself in your own individual way. This provides a resonant connection with the Soul of our country.
To begin, find a time and place when and where you can be uninterrupted. Take a moment just to relax and enter into a calming, refreshing inner silence.
You are going to work with four images: your American Self, the Land of America, Mythic America, and the Destiny of America. You may wish to record in some manner any ideas, images, insights, thoughts, feelings, or physical sensations that come to you as a result of reflecting on each image.
First, reflect on what it feels like for you to be an American. Who or what is your American Self? When you think of yourself as an American, what comes to your mind? What qualities in you do you identify as being American? (They may not be exclusively American; if a quality is generosity, for example, you can also see this as a human quality—and certainly citizens of other countries can be generous as well. But if you feel that part of being an American is to be generous, then claim it not only as a personal quality or a human quality but as an American quality, part of your Americanness.) Think of things you do that represent your Americanness to you. How does the spirit of America take concrete shape in your life? What is your felt sense of being an American?
Second, reflect on the land and geography of America. How does it influence or affect you? The land of America is spacious, rich, beautiful, and diverse. It had a profound impact on the Native Americans, the colonists, the pioneers, the settlers, and the explorers. Indeed, much of the American character has been shaped by our country’s geography and its vast openness and potential. How has it shaped you? Think of all the different aspects of our country: mountains, prairies, swamplands, deserts, forests, rivers, the Great Lakes, and so on. How do these images of the land make you feel? What kind of energy do they inspire in you?
Third, reflect on the stories and myths of America, the legends, and the persons, like Washington and Lincoln, who live large in our history. Mythic America, the inner landscape of our country, is a powerful force in our lives. Here are the stories we tell about who we are, the images we draw upon for inspiration, and the personalities we use for role models. What myths about America live for you? What is your relationship to mythic America? How do you draw upon its energy? What myths or stories do you tell about yourself as an American? Not all myths are useful or healthy, and myths that may have served our ancestors may not serve us now, like the myths that underlay and justified the practice of slavery. What American myths do you feel no longer serve the Soul of America or even obstruct its work? What myths that you hold help the Soul of America?
Fourth, reflect on the Vision of America, its sense of destiny. What does America have to offer the world? What are its gifts and talents? What vision inspired the men and women who created this country? What do you think are the spiritual and planetary tasks of our nation? How might it serve humanity? How does this vision live in you and influence your own life and actions? What is your felt sense of the Vision of America?
Finally, stand up. Feel each of these four qualities of your Americanness, the energy of the Land of America, the quality of Mythic America in your life, and the Vision of America as if they were four presences surrounding you. Each of them embodies one aspect of the Soul of America. Imagine them all stepping into you, blending, melding, becoming one, becoming the Soul of America within you. What is that like? What felt sense arises in you as you imagine this happening? Who are you standing in oneness with the Soul of America? As this felt sense emerges for you, you will find your own feeling of connection with the Soul of America. May it be a blessing and a partner in your life as a citizen, both inner and outer, of this great country.
Engaging the Soul of America (Part One of Two)
By David Spangler
Editor's Note: This essay was originally published in 2008. A subscriber recently inquired about it, and David felt the message (with a few minor updates) was still relevant today. We recognize that this blog post in its entirety is particularly focused on the United States and we hope that our non-US readers will appreciate David's wisdom given challenging circumstances on this side of the world.
An Introduction
From the standpoint of spiritual perception, a country is a living being, a field of collective energy that possesses a unique consciousness. Like us, it has an emergent nature and a transpersonal nature. On the one hand, it has characteristics that arise from the geography and ecologies that exist within its boundaries and from the energy of that land; likewise, it emerges from the thoughts and feelings of its inhabitants and their dreams, visions, hopes, history, myths, and actions. These two might be thought of as the body and the psyche of the country respectively.
However, the country as a being is more than just the sum total of all its environmental and human parts. It also has a larger wholeness that emerges from its connections with the sacred and with the world as a whole and draws its existence from spiritual realms. This is the transpersonal aspect, which might be thought of as the spirit of the country.
Spiritual Destiny
This transpersonal aspect embodies as well the country’s spiritual destiny. When we think of this, we may imagine an objective or goal, what a country is destined to become, the role it is intended to fulfill, or the tasks it must accomplish. In other words, “destiny” may be equated with “destination.” Spiritual perception suggests, though, that spiritual destiny may be better understood as a seed-presence—a “will-to-serve”—that unfolds and expresses as the unique contributions and spiritual energy which that country and its people have to offer to the world and its wellbeing. It might be thought of more as “talent” than as “goal.” It represents what this particular pattern of land, nature, and humanity uniquely embodies and can give to planetary and human wholeness and evolution.
The Soul of a Country
The soul of a country is that active intelligence that holds the body, psyche and spirit of a country together and integrates them into a dynamic wholeness. It expresses capacities for synthesis, love, and evolution. It is the custodian of the spiritual destiny. It nurtures and develops that country’s talents. It seeks to promote the qualities and capacities that are that country’s unique powers and gifts to the world.
If we think of a country as a collective field fed by energies arising from its geography, its ecologies, its people, and its spirit, then the soul of that country tends that field. It seeks to keep it clear and unobstructed. It seeks to reduce or if possible, eliminate toxicity and dysfunction within that field, particularly as manifested by violence. It seeks to enhance the flow and radiant power of love within its field. It enhances creativity and emergence. It promotes and nurtures connectedness, coherency, integrity and wholeness. It works to synthesize its various dynamic elements, such as the land and the people, into a mutually enhancing presence. It works to integrate its field with the fields of other countries and with the great collective field and presence of the planet as a whole and with the sacredness that underlies all existence.
That is the work of the soul of a country.
Inner Citizenship
Inner citizenship is what we do when we take up this work of the soul of our country. When we seek to embody and express its soul to the best of our capacities, we are being active inner citizens.
We are all familiar with outer citizenship. As citizens we seek to support the political, economic, and civic life of our country. We take on a responsibility for the physical and social wellbeing of our nation. Depending on where we live, this may entail voting, running for office, being part of volunteer organizations, supporting public education, and so forth. There are many ways in which we may be good citizens in our outer world.
Inner citizenship requires us to realize that there is more to our country than just its physical and social dimensions. The country exists as a field of energy and as a spiritual presence as well. How do we relate to these? How do we act on their behalf?
Inner citizenship takes place in the invisible realms of energy, thought, imagination, feeling, and spirit. In outer citizenship, we may vote, but in inner citizenship, we may pray or bless. In outer citizenship, we may run for public office, but in inner citizenship, we monitor the quality of mental and emotional energies that we broadcast into the collective fields of our neighborhoods,towns, our cities, or our nation. In outer citizenship, we may serve on a panel to clean up pollution in a city, but in inner citizenship, we clean up toxic energies of anger and violence that we may be holding in our own psyches or that we sense in the atmosphere around us.
Each is important. To truly be partners with the soul of our country, we need to be both outer and inner citizens.
Coping with Darkness Without Conceding
By Susan Stanton Rotman
Introduction by David Spangler: "Susan Stanton Rotman and I live on opposite sides of the North American continent, she in Boston, and I near Seattle. Yet, more often than not, it’s as if our respective subtle colleagues share the same room together, putting their heads (or energy fields) together to send us compatible and complementary communications.
Often, reading what Susan has received, it’s as if I’m hearing my own inner allies speaking, and I know the same is true for her. But this is not surprising, as there are common messages reflecting common intents and a shared love as the subtle worlds reach out to many people around the globe to provide inspiration and assistance during these difficult times. And they are difficult times! Stress visits all of us, for we all share humanity’s communal energy field; we are all linked. Whether it’s the pandemic or social and racial injustice or political divisiveness or just plain anxiety and fear, we seem surrounded on all sides with challenges not just to our physical well-being but to our spiritual wholeness as well.
When my children were young, among our favorite family novels was Susan Cooper’s wonderful series of books beginning with The Dark is Rising. That title would seem to sum up what many people are feeling. But over and over again, my subtle colleagues ask us not to “fight the Dark” but to stand in and hold the Light, to be confident and empowered in who we are as individuals whose essential nature is Light. If the “Dark is rising,” then all the more need for us to stand taller in our Light and in the power of our love.
Susan’s subtle colleagues express this eloquently. It is with great appreciation for the love that surrounds us all that we are happy to share, with her permission, what they have to say."
We have now spent most of this year facing the physical, economic, emotional and psychological threats and consequences of the COVID pandemic, along with the parallel crises of social upheaval and protest against the inequities of racial injustice, and the ever heightened polarization of our divided nation as we watch the sacred tenets of our American experiment in democracy attacked and depreciated on a nearly daily basis. We are all exhausted.
We are indeed navigating a very difficult time. I feel and hear and know the anxiety and the loss that so many of you experience. I want to reassure you that we are strong together, and we will emerge from this time of transition into a brighter future. What we are slogging through right now is the cost of transformation.
In the meantime, I thought it might be helpful to share a communication I had with my inner contact earlier in the summer. I was sitting in prayerful contemplation and I posed the question "How can I understand the fact of darkness in the world?"
An inner voice stepped forward with this response:
"It is not so much to understand it as to accept its reality. Try it. See what acceptance feels like."
So I tried it. I moved into trying to accept the presence of darkness, rather than trying to fight it or ignore it or deny it. And I found that if I accepted it is present I need not be fearful of it. There was a clear shift in my body, my mind, my emotions--everything shifted.
My inner contact continued talking about darkness:
"Be bigger than it. Light absorbs dark. Or surround it. But do not weep over it, that is a form of denial. Denial is paralyzing and will not move you or others forward. We have said to you before: Hold the light.
Hold it steady, BE it. Darkness will always present itself, in one form or another, but light is greater. You need not fear darkness if you are in your full Self Light.
The answer is not to fight it but to accept it is part of the equation. To fight it directly is to empower it, to make it bigger. You cannot defeat darkness with aggression or fear. But you can blind it with brilliance.
To fight it directly reinforces its presence. It brings the focus of thought onto the darkness, giving it more manifest power. You can know there is darkness and be aware enough to direct yourself towards disarming it, but the means of disarming it matter.
Your thought and intention matters. Your heart matters. Your focus must arise from your own sacred knowing, as an alternative to darkness.
Do you see what we mean? Create the alternative, rather than reacting and responding to the terms as set by darkness.
Be bigger. Be fuller. Be brighter.
Know thy self. You are Light, it is your source. Darkness is but the symptom of that which has forgotten its source. Do not go into that darkness lest you lose sight of your own light. You can address darkness from without it, by setting your own goals, your own field.
We do not mean abdicate to darkness, to fall from your own resources and power in front of it. Just the opposite. Stand in the wholeness, the completeness, the fulness of who you are, of your Self Light, in your expression of Source. This is the strength stance, if you like you could envision it as a warrior stance, like the Archangel Michael stands in light. But it is not a negatively aggressive stance.
Michael’s sword of light represents the power of light to cut through darkness and illuminate not by show of force but by a show of the Light that is Love. That is the true source of power."
Just as I was preparing to post this message today, I received an addendum!
"Light, Love, is a real force, it is actual, not imaginary or merely a thought. It may be held and concentrated and directed towards good and beneficial practical and concrete outcomes. It requires only the focus on and acknowledgment of its presence, the act of heart opening or expansion. Love together with hope is a powerful antidote to fear and the hatred fear breeds. Weaponize Love! It is the warrior stance of transformation."
Click here to visit Susan's website.
Holy Funk
By Karen Johannsen
In the midst of this COVID crisis, I woke up in a funk. I felt edgy, frustrated, impatient, closed down. I think all would have been well if I could have just held those feelings and stayed with them, but I immediately started judging myself for having them. After a few days my body started screaming at me, ”Do something. We can’t hold all this negativity much longer.”
I used to have a much greater tolerance for negativity. Now it makes me literally feel sick if I don’t deal with it. Given the current state of the world, the isolation and confinement, how do I come to a deeper sense of my own wholeness?
As I have worked to answer this question, several pieces of a puzzle have fit together to make a clearer picture of me.
My first puzzle piece arrived as I immediately started doing several things that I knew might help me release and realign. I deepened my spiritual practice by spending more time: meditating; sitting outside, bare feet on the earth, feeling the power of the Mother fill my body; dancing by myself to my favorite old rock and roll music, (that truly is a spiritual practice, BTW); and taking long walks in the woods.
Another piece came when I realized that my struggle with insomnia wasn’t personal. It didn’t need to define me in any way. I was not a defective person just because I couldn’t sleep through the night. My previous mindset had somehow morphed into, “I’m not ok if I have this sleep issue.” Letting go of that unhelpful thought did help my sleep and my mood improve.
Also, I sat with a pile of cards that I have collected over the years. In the past when I would read or hear something inspirational, I would write it down on an index card. The pile has become quite a collection. Just reading through this stack of cards helped me remember truths that I had forgotten.
I recollected a line from an old hymn I learned in childhood. “Thank you, Lord, for making me whole.” This hymn had been rattling around in my brain for months, but several weeks ago I felt it enter my body. I was born in wholeness, not defective, not in “sin”, not in need of salvation. Of course, I had known this intellectually for many years, since abandoning my fundamentalist upbringing, but this felt like embodying a fundamental truth.
Another time I found a jewel of a quote. It was labeled, A Morning Intention, and here’s what it said:
“May I this day keep my heart open.
May I remain curious, no matter how difficult things may get.
May I generate a warm heart toward myself.
May I see what I do, without turning it against myself.”
I began repeating that third line, over and over to myself, during the day. I was shocked to realize how seldom I had sent myself any kind of loving energy. It felt like wrapping a warm blanket over myself.
One provocative piece of the puzzle came from a brief conversation I had with an old friend. She was sharing that in her women’s group, all of them in their 80’s, they had been discussing the question,
“When will it be enough?”
I pondered this over many days. When will I have done enough? When will I have learned enough, grown enough, become spiritual enough? I began realizing that for several weeks I had automatically deleted all workshops, podcasts, seminars, online courses that came to my email.
I began thinking, “...Maybe I am enough. Maybe I’m done striving to be better, somehow. Striving to always improve, always ‘pushing the river’ as one friend describes me." I really started taking that in. I didn’t need to DO anything more to be ok. I am wholeness, after all.
Along with that came an acknowledgment that I trust my Soul to bring to me any issues that might need healing. I don’t need to go looking for my lessons. They will come to me, and when they do I will deal with them, but basically, the searching is over. Maybe it’s my age, 78 for a few more months. Maybe it’s the whole COVID thing. Whatever the reason I am feeling a deep sense of ok-ness.
The final piece, at least for the time being, came in the form of a poem, shared with me by my friend Heidi Robbins. It’s by one of my favorite poets, Jan Richardson, and it’s called, “Blessing the Body.”
Blessing the Body
"This blessing takes
one look at you
and all it can say is
holy.
Holy hands.
Holy face.
Holy feet.
Holy everything
in between.
Holy even in pain.
Holy even when weary.
In brokenness, holy.
In shame, holy still.
Holy in delight.
Holy in distress.
Holy when being born.
Holy when we lay it down
at the hour of our death.
So, friend,
open your eyes
(holy eyes).
For one moment
see what this blessing sees,
this blessing that knows
how you have been formed
and knit together
in wonder and
in love.
Welcome this blessing
that folds its hands
in prayer
when it meets you;
receive this blessing
that wants to kneel
in reverence
before you:
you who are
temple,
sanctuary,
home for God
in this world."
I know that this deep feeling of holy-ness may come and go, as the truth cycles in and out of my consciousness, but my hope is that when the next funk appears, I will remember.
Even in the funk......holy still.
Conversations with Lorian: Should I Support Black Lives Matter?
Editor's Note: Conversations with Lorian is a collection of different voices and perspectives responding to inquiries pertaining to Incarnational Spirituality. Often we receive questions that don't have a single, uniform answer, due to the ways that individuality and sovereignty shapes our practice. At times like this we like to gather a number of responses from teachers, priests and other colleagues in order to honor our diverse yet complimentary approaches to Lorian's work in the world.
Please note that Conversations with Lorian blog posts are the personal insights and opinions of individual practitioners and do not represent others in Lorian or the Lorian Association as a whole.
If you have a question you'd like the Conversation team to respond to, please email info@lorian.org.
Question :
"I have copied this from Wikipedia:
'2016, Black Lives Matter and a coalition of 60 organizations affiliated with BLM called for 'Indecarceration in the United States, reparations for slavery in the United States, an end to mass surveillance, investment in public education, not incarceration, and community control of the police: empowering residents in communities of color to hire and fire police officers and issue subpoenas, decide disciplinary consequences and exercise control over city funding of police.'
Would you comment on the above as I am concerned that BLM state they want community control of the police. I have seen on TV the results in Seattle. I am concerned we are being taken in by the name and not really understanding the objectives of this organisation. Appreciate your opinion. Love and light."
Thank you for your thoughtful question. It's an interesting time we're living in, isn't it, as people and groups are experimenting, protesting, and striving for a more just society, a more whole society, for all of us? An exciting time to be alive and to offer our Light, compassion, and understanding to the process!
You asked about the Black Lives Matter organization and specifically about its call for community control of policing. Such good questions. They bring up a number of thoughts for me.
The first is that the idea that black lives matter is much larger and more comprehensive than the BLM organization itself. A person can support the former without supporting the latter. And, it's certainly possible to support an organization in pursuing its largest goal, such as transforming the unconscious attitudes of white people towards black people and other people of color, without supporting specific objectives it may endorse. Heck, I support the Democratic Party in its desire to restore unity to our country even though I don't agree with some of its specific political objectives. Same for the Catholic Church: some things I can agree with and support and some things I cannot.
I have gone to the BLM website and read through their objectives as an organization (in these matters, I have found Wikipedia to not always be the most accurate or unbiased source, though I know it strives for greater objectivity--better to go to the horse's mouth, as it were, when possible). There are things they espouse that I fully agree with and support and things that I don't, which I would expect. This makes them like many other change-oriented organizations. They are putting their voice out into the public market place, where people can see what they are after and can agree or disagree. I'm sure all black people agree with the principle that black lives matter but not every black person would agree with the particular political objectives of BLM as an organization.
You asked about community policing. The idea is not new by any means, and when you think about it, of course communities should be responsible for their own welfare and well being, including handling crime. Ideally, a police force should arise from and represent the community in which they operate; they are supposed to be servants of that community and the people within it, which includes the police officers themselves. Historically, though, police forces originated not to serve communities but to keep order amongst slave populations in the South, prevent slave uprisings, and preserve the segregationist status quo. This is very well documented. This means that there is a karmic thread in modern policing that views the community (particularly its black members) as the enemy, not as that which it serves. I know many, if not most, individual police officers may not feel this, but it's there and is, again, well-documented in overall police culture.
I view the current call for community policing and "defunding the police" (which really should be understood in most cases as "refunding" the police or funding a police force in different ways) as an attempt to restore a balance that serves everyone. The police should not be seen as "the enemy" but neither should the black community,or any community. If we are going to find wholeness in our society, the police need to be seen as truly part of, arising from, and serving all community members, and not as a separate quasi-military force viewing certain members as part of the problem.
There are cities in the country that are experimenting with community policing and have been doing so, successfully, for some time. If you are interested, here are a couple of articles discussing this:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/what-would-it-mean-defund-police-these-cities-offer-ideas-n1229266
https://nypost.com/2020/06/09/camden-nj-did-police-reform-right-not-that-radicals-will-pay-attention/
I am not trying to persuade you one way or another, but just responding to your question about community policing. I'm sure there's lots more information out there about it, and I know we are all still looking for the answers that will bring Light into our country and our world and serve us all. In this regard, I believe BLM is playing its part in focusing the conversation. I can respect that without agreeing with all their propositions and positions.
And I certainly thank you for your own inquiring mind and spirit and your own desire to bring, as you say, Love and Light into our world. I join you in that and in the ongoing explorations our times demand. None of us have all the answers, but it's good to be asking the questions.
- David Spangler
Seated in the Fiery Hope of Possibility
My grandson is the child of an interracial marriage. His mom is African American, his dad, my stepson, is white. My grandson is well loved on both sides of his family; all of his cousins, aunts and uncles care about him deeply.
But he is very aware of the impact of one side of his heritage. Recently he came to visit and work with my husband and me on a building project.. After a hot day’s work, we went to swim at our local public beach. As we walked toward the water from the parking lot, he made the comment that he thought he would be the only one with an Afro hair style. I realized that coming into a public place for him might always present the question, “Will I be the only one with dark skin?” or “How will I fit in?”
This time he wasn’t; there were other African Americans swimming and sunning along on the beach. He pointed out several hairstyles he liked or didn’t like, we swam and then went on to find ice cream to take home for dinner. It as a small event, easily passed by, but it did open up a window for me to see the world through his perspective as he now looks to extend his home in the world outside of the safety of the family circle.
Growing up he was an energetic kid, free to laugh, eager to be seen and participate, willing to try new things, a loving kid. Now coming into his teens, just like many other 15 year old boys, his thoughts center more on basketball, computer games and cars. He is still eager to learn and enthusiastic about the world.
Yet as he gets older, I realize I am afraid for him.
He has already met racism in school, as one of only a handful of black children in his town. And he told me recently of meeting the father of a new female friend. He laughed as he talked about the reluctant response he felt from the man. He recounted that he kept a polite conversation going, and shrugs now as he tells me about it. That kind of hesitant reaction is already something he knows to anticipate from adults and even from fellow students.
His father tells us about trying to find ways to support him in being successful in our American social climate. “Stay out of trouble, do well in school, be polite.” As a family we focus on his gifts for math and science, his aptitude for engineering. We applaud him for his success in basketball and the ways he shows care for his younger sister.
But how can those of us from the white side of his family really communicate what will help him be prepared for the other kinds of situations he might meet soon in the wider world, on the street driving home at night from a dance, or from a pizza date in town? We have not experienced the discrimination possible just based on the color of our skin. We might be able to help him fight some of the more serious racial biases and challenges that we've heard about from other families, but how can we heal any loss of trust or possibility in his future? Right now, most anything seems possible for him if he sets his mind to it. Outside our family circle of safety, many things can be blocked for him because he doesn't look like us.
The recent death of George Floyd and the flood of protest that has unfolded are eye-opening, exposing me to a wider view of the subtle and not so subtle acts of racist thinking. The ripples moving out from this stone that has been thrown into our community awareness are making an impact in me. I see how I have been lulled by the safety of our family circle and my distance from the other daily interactions of my grandson’s life, from the small acts that cut away at his sense of self and inclusion. I am saddened to realize how many of those he has already experienced and am respectful of his work to navigate in his world and still maintain his sense of self.
As a society we are being forced to pay attention to the inequalities resulting from the social divides in our culture. We are recognizing that racial injustices are so ingrained in our community fabric it is easy to not see them. It is easy to minimize them as individual events and just move on. But with recent events we are seeing them in their wider pattern, not as one-time unfortunate occurrences but as a cultural norm that separates and divides. It is time to pay attention. We are being asked to notice and make choices and changes. We are being invited to recognize how much a part of our lives these divisive norms have become and to take up the work of reconciliation so we can work together with humility and honesty to change them.
I connect with these protests in a new way now, both through my grandson and through my work with IS. Because of my grandson these social issues impact me in personal ways and I want to find more ways to meet them and contribute to healing our social commons. Because of my incarnational orientation to a sacred universe, I am called to stand in my fullest commitment to honor the diversity and wholeness of all life. I feel deeply that connecting my inner and outer actions are key to contributing to our collective forward unfoldment in both social and spiritual arenas.
I don’t have any easy global-scale answers to the steps that are needed, but there is much wisdom in our collective insight that can be tapped; so one thing I can do is be willing to hold that change is possible. Staying seated in the fiery hope of possibility seems the important first step for me. Knowing my grandson inspires that kind of hope for me. Seated in that hope, I also sense the encouragement of future generations, they want us to succeed.
For me now, after seating in Fiery Hope a next step is being open and committed to making room for what is emerging in these changing times. It means renewing my attention to holding my questions and my willingness to step outside of my own habits and assumptions to co-exist with discomfort. It means noticing my own choices and the soil they are rooted in and taking the steps needed to increase healthy growth. With this attention and intention I will work to nurture a garden in which possibilities can grow, possibilities for my grandson and every other child on earth. Possibilities for the future of our planet as a whole.
DAVID’S DESK #158- KEEPING SAFE
David's Desk is my opportunity to share thoughts and tools for the spiritual journey. These letters are my personal insights and opinions and do not necessarily reflect the sentiments or thoughts of any other person in Lorian or of Lorian as a whole. If you wish to share this letter with others, please feel free to do so; however, the material is ©2019 by David Spangler. If you no longer wish to receive these letters, please let us know at info@Lorian.org.
There is a moment that is seared into my memory for all time. Julie and I had just come home from the hospital with our new baby son, our firstborn. As we stood in the hallway, I put down the various pieces of luggage I’d been carrying, and Julie handed John-Michael to me to hold for the first time in our house. Looking down at him, I felt such a powerful surge of love and protectiveness. I’d been writing and teaching about love for a long time, but in the moment, I felt like I was discovering anew what love was. I felt that I would do everything in my power to enable this new life, this new person, to thrive, to be safe, and to become all that he could be in the world.
I know this is not a unique experience. Love for our children and the desire for them to unfold their potentials and to succeed in life are universal. In that moment, I felt plugged into the community of parents everywhere who share these feelings and who strive in every way to make the world a place of safety and empowerment for their offspring.
In that moment, I also plugged into the pain that arises when parents are unable to succeed in this endeavor. When I see a mother and father grieving because something terrible has happened to their child, I feel my own heart break. I know the excruciating pain I would feel should something happen to any of my four children.
I know, too, the fear that can come over me when they venture off into the unknown. My youngest daughter, for instance, is planning to take up vanlife, going on a pilgrimage to explore and discover in deeper ways both her own inner nature and the world in which she lives. I know she can do it, and I support her on her journey. Vanlife is a growing social movement in this country, and there are tons of resources and a thriving (and highly mobile) community of “vanlifers” that she can draw on for support. Still my father’s heart trembles thinking of her living in a van and traveling about the country by herself.
But I do not fear when my children do ordinary things, like going to a grocery store, driving to work, or simply going for a walk in their neighborhood. I never learned growing up that such things can be dangerous. Why would I? I am a white man in a predominantly white culture. I have never had to walk down the street afraid that someone might deem me suspicious and call the police, leading to an encounter that, as so many recent events have shown, could suddenly turn lethal.
A black friend of mine described to me how her son had been pulled over by the police while out driving. When he politely asked why he had been stopped, the police officer hauled him out of the car, handcuffed him, and arrested him for “resisting arrest.” Fortunately for him, his parents were well-to-do and respected members of the community who could afford a lawyer to immediately investigate. This revealed that the boy had done nothing wrong, and the officer hadn’t really had a cause to pull him over in his car, much less arrest him. The boy was released, and the case was dropped. I do not know what consequences, if any, befell the police officer.
This story, unlike so many, had a happy resolution. But talking with my friend, I could still hear the pain in her voice describing it. A tragedy had been averted, but it should never have happened in the first place. It was obvious that her son had been stopped because of his skin color, something that would not have happened to my son or to any of my daughters. These kinds of events, and the attitudes, assumptions, and beliefs behind them, are why our society is erupting right now, demanding change.
When I tune in to the inner landscape of the United States and its “subtle” environment, I am presented with a diverse set of perceptions. Though it may not seem like it watching the news, there is a great deal of good energy active in this country. To draw on former President Bush’s statement, there are more, many more, than a “thousand points of Light” working to bring healing and wholeness into being. But at the same time, there is an undercurrent of pain and trauma that is pervasive. It is not just located in the black community. Whites share it, Native Americans share it, Asian and Latino Americans share it, we all share it. It is a reservoir of soul-damage that afflicts us in so many ways. Some of it is very ancient and can be traced back to our human experiences in other lands, other cultures, and other, now dead, civilizations—a karma of human violence and suffering—and some of it is specific to North America and the histories of colonization and nation-building here in the United States and in Canada.
It is soul-damage that replicates itself unless we are willing to put our “fierce attention” upon it, as I wrote in my last David’s Desk, to see it, recognize it, confront it, and heal it. As long as this pain is there, this trauma is there, none of us are truly safe. And let me be clear: by “safe,” I don’t mean simply being protected from harm—though that is certainly important. I definitely don’t mean cowering behind walls, whether physical, mental, or emotional in nature. I mean feeling confident in one’s right and ability to grow and expand. I mean feeling able to explore one’s potentials. I mean feeling relaxed and willing to expose oneself to the world, for creativity and growth demand vulnerability. I mean feeling a foundation of support that let’s you take the kind of chances that success often requires. I mean not being afraid of making mistakes from which you can learn.
I mean being able to breathe.
I do not see us succeeding as a nation, fulfilling the promise of the American ideals of freedom and equality, much less keeping us safe, until this trauma is dealt with and healed. It is a challenge for all of us, and we work it out in how we draw love and compassion, listening and caring into our lives in dealing with each other.
There are many ways of reaching into and healing this collective trauma, but at this historical moment, the Black Lives Matter movement is a powerful lens for doing so. It brings the trauma to the surface in specific, addressable ways. Yes, I know all the arguments for saying “All Lives Matter,” and in a universal way, this is true. But if I’m a therapist and you come to me with your specific problem and needs, it’s not helpful for me to respond to you saying, “Well, everyone has problems and needs.” This may be true, but it doesn’t help you and it doesn’t help me focus my energy to meet the challenge you have brought me. I can’t heal what I won’t recognize in its specificity. I can’t help “everyone,” but perhaps I can help you, and in helping you, I contribute to helping everyone.
“All life” is not specific. A black person is. A black mother or father grieving the loss of a child is. A black child crying for the loss of a father, or a wife for her husband, is. Black society in America is. My friend’s son is not an abstract universal principle. He is a person for whom I would wish all the blessings and benefits that I would wish for my son. And as a father, I feel pain thinking of having to have “the Talk” with my children, especially my son, the way so many black parents have to do to ensure their offspring will be safe—or at least safer—in a currently dominant white culture.
When I see the Black Lives Matter protestors on the street, people of all colors walking together in solidarity and vision and hope, what I remember is that first moment when I held my son and felt so much love for this new being, and prayed that I could keep him whole, keep him safe. It’s that prayer, that demand, I feel rising from our struggling streets. Keep black people safe. Keep our children safe. Keep our world safe.
Keep us all safe and able to thrive.
In this, we are each other’s keepers.
What Can I Do?
By Jane Ellen Combelic
"Something wonderful is happening!"
—Lovinda Heart (aka Lucy Thomas), 1 May 2020
A new humanity is being born. After ten thousand years of a domination system, we are moving inexorably toward a global society built on love. As Charles Eisenstein puts it, we have the opportunity to move from a Culture of Separation to a Culture of Interbeing (he uses the word coined by Thich Nhat Hanh to describe the interconnectedness of all life). After building civilization after civilization on a premise of fear and separation, it is time for humanity to step into a new way of being. Or perish.
The birthing process is painful. I weep for the immense suffering of humans on the planet today, especially those in the global south and those mired in poverty everywhere, and for the suffering of the animals. I feel anticipatory grief for the loss of so much that I am attached to—the beauty of things, the people I love, the immeasurable wildness of nature, the complex web of society’s infrastructure, the small pleasures and comforts of everyday life. Sometimes I’m just plain scared.
But rather than think of this planetary transition as a laborious birth, I prefer the metaphor of the transubstantiation of the caterpillar into butterfly. First, the caterpillar, full and fattened, comes to rest in the safety of the chrysalis that it has constructed around itself. This is our modern civilization, fattened on centuries of exploitation and expansion. What happens next is that the caterpillar slowly dissolves, consumed by secretions it has created. Think climate disruption, threat of nuclear annihilation, global pandemics, catastrophic floods and wildfires. Our culture is being dissolved by the very mechanisms we have put in place.
None of this is wrong. No one is to blame. Humanity is not evil. Granted, many people in power (abusing it in large and small ways) have caused undue suffering and continue to do so. The bigger picture, however, as described by David Spangler, is the evolution of Gaia herself, of which the evolution of human consciousness is an integral part. One hundred years ago, Rudolf Steiner described this in intricate and gorgeous detail. This has also been prophesied in many indigenous traditions, and in the major religions as well. Christianity foretells the second coming of Christ. Buddhism postulates the arrival of Maitreya, the Buddha-to-be-born, which Thich Nhat Hanh says will be not an individual but a sangha, a community. For me this does not mean a select group of the chosen, but all humanity. Christ, Maitreya is in all or in none.
In the chrysalis, the caterpillar dissolves into a kind of soup that contains an “imaginal disc” for each of the adult body parts. Those discs contain the blueprint for the miracle that is to come. From them, the butterfly takes form. One day she emerges into the sunshine, resplendent and new, made of colour and movement. Her essence is joy and her substance is light.
If you told the caterpillar that this was her destiny, would she believe you? It would be far beyond her imagination. And that is one thing that humans have aplenty. Look what we’ve created from our imaginations! Every human creation, from the fork to the tallest skyscraper, from the wheel to our indispensible mobile phones, was born from someone’s imagination.
We who are alive at this time can imagine a better world for ourselves and for all of earth’s creatures. Every human being contains the “imaginal discs” for a new world. All we need to do is choose the ones we want to activate. This is not an idle task; it is an imperative. We can imagine a better world, or we can let the catastrophic stories unleashed by our fears spiral us into dystopia. It is up to us.
This means it is up to me. Yet what can I do? This is a question I have asked myself for years, more urgently in recent weeks. So, on a recent walk in the woods, I asked the Sidhe. Thanks to Jeremy Berg, David Spangler and the Lorians, I’m learning to reconnect with the Sidhe—the Faery Folk, the People of Peace, the Good Neighbours, our cousins in the subtle dimensions. I’ve known them all my life but grew away from them as a child. Reclaiming them has been a wonderful gift. On this walk I asked them exactly that question — What should I do?— and as often happens, they replied with a question of their own.
Sidhe: What does the world look like that you want to see?
JEC: People find joy in what they do, and their work brings them joy, as well as providing a decent simple living.
We find fulfillment in our environment and relationships rather than things and experiences.
We are deeply connected to the earth, living in a reciprocity of generosity and gratitude.
There are no distinctions between races or classes, and each is honoured for their unique talents, skills, and knowing.
We use thought actively to manifest what is needed and wanted, in alignment with the forces of life.
(And so much more...)
Sidhe: What needs to happen for this to become reality?
JEC: People need to be empowered and liberated, trained in the ways of the heart.
We need to learn to listen to Gaia for the solutions to all our dilemmas,to her own needs and desires so we know how to serve life, which will serve us.
Sidhe: How can you live this, right now?
JEC: DANCE PLAY LAUGH SING LOVE REJOICE with full awareness of body and earth and humanity.
Sidhe: Yes!
Keep your heart open, including to your own suffering.
Listen deeply. You will be guided at every step.
WRITE PAINT GARDEN
LOVE THOSE YOU LOVE!
So... when the night grips me with fear and sadness, I come back to my body, I breathe, I soften my belly. I open to the feelings, embracing them with tenderness, talking to them. “Reclaim imagination and feelings as your most precious gifts,” says Lovinda Heart, Findhorn’s very own tantric comedienne and Ambassador of Love. On a good night, when I manage to do that, I fall through the dark feelings into a spacious state of love and joy. As long as I can continue to practice that, I’m part of the something wonderful that is happening in our world.
Dreaming into Life
By Mary Reddy
Dreams have guided me for as long as I can remember. Occasionally, they mystify me but isn’t that true for many of the channels that bring us wisdom? Some dreams are clearly inspired by events and feelings from the recent past. Those help me tease out a deeper understanding of my layered inner responses to what’s going on in my life. Others come to me from beyond myself, lighting fires under my feet or lightly grazing my cheek with bird feathers. Still, others are explicit messages from the postmortem world or from that timeless world from which the future casts a shadow.
In all my dreams, but especially in the dreams from the Beyond, the Big Dreams, I know that I am in communication. I interact with an inner Self, or a larger Self, or Others who know how to reach me in the dreamworld.
Of course, many people have written about theories and techniques for understanding dreams. When I was young, I read a lot of Freud and am familiar with his interpretation of dreams, though Jung’s sensibilities spoke more to my heart. I am familiar with Robert Moss’s work but I am not drawn to the practice of lucid dreaming—not as a goal in and of itself. To be more conscious is always my desire; to be more in control, less so. My interpretation of dreams is a DIY approach. I follow the same paths I take when absorbing the meaning of a painting, a poem, or a symbol. I relinquish some degree of rationality. I allow myself to wander, to feel, to listen, to take time. I free my heart and soul to uncover the subtle meanings.
Several years ago, my friends and I began a dream group. We meet often. Each woman takes a turn recounting a dream and the rest of us begin to ask questions about the beings or symbols or settings in the dream. Associations are explored. The dreamer moves more fully into the dream environment. And without fail, this leads to some “aha!” that opens the dreamer’s eyes to a message or meaning she had not yet discovered.
Here is a dream I once brought to the group.
I stand behind a dark-haired man, to his right, and watch as he ceremoniously gives some objects to a young woman. He even moves in a ceremonial way, holding the objects out in his two hands with his head slightly bowed. I suddenly realize that one of the objects he’s giving away is my Celtic cross brooch. I am dismayed and filled with grief to see it go. Does he not know it is precious to me? But I somehow feel that it’s a done deal. I cannot ask to have it back. Time passes, but in a fast-forward way. Suddenly, the young woman comes to me and gives me back the brooch. I am so happy to have it but I see that a part of one of the stones has broken off. I ask the woman if she found the sliver of stone when it broke so that I can glue it back on. I wake up before she can answer me.
My friends asked who was the man who ceremoniously gave away my precious brooch. Did I know him in real life? Did he remind me of anyone? Was the young woman someone I know? Why did I think it was inevitable that the brooch would be given away, that I could not stop the process? What is the brooch like in real life? How exactly was it broken in the dream? Is it an illusion of mine—that this brooch is a sacred object—and do I need to let go of that illusion?
With these questions, a generous space opened up for me to wander through my dream. The man and the young woman in the dream were not related to people I know. I associate the man’s looks to a journalist whose work I admire, but his back was always turned to me, toward the young woman. And the young woman never really took on a specific appearance. Their roles felt archetypal to me, not personal.
I considered the brooch. In real life, it came to me in a Wisconsin second-hand store forty five years ago. It was pinned to the lapel of a woman’s wool coat from the 1940s, a beautiful dark green coat with big padded shoulders. The coat and the pin together cost me 25 cents. The coat aged and fell apart from repeated wearings but I’ve kept the brooch close to me ever since. I don’t often wear it. I keep it on my altar instead.
By the time we finished discussing my dream, I had threads of meaning to follow. The primary thread is about giving away what is sacred to us and in doing so, it returns to us. And it does not return to us unchanged. There may be sacrifice. Loss. But the spiral completes another turn and we go on. Other threads are evocative of lineage. I am reminded of the two sides of the coin, possessiveness and generosity, that live in the ties between mothers and daughters. How passages can be painful, how ceremony creates safety while facing change. I may even find more as I continue to ponder the imagery, activities, and mood of my dream.
The group's questions are especially effective in uncovering the trickster element in our dreams. What is that element that you don't want to look at too closely? Where is the shadow and what is it doing in your dream story? Is that thing that terrifies you the thing that you actually long to be with?
A fascinating side effect of doing this work in a group is that we seem to be building a communal dream space. I sometimes feel the beings in my friends’ dreams hanging around us, ready to interact. We joke that we’ll start dreaming each other’s dreams. We tap into a collective consciousness in our dreams. And it feels as though there are local pools within that great ocean. Recently, when one of our members described a beautiful and moving dream, I was amazed to recognize how nearly identical it was in theme and message to what I and a few other friends have been seeing in our meditative journeys around working with Gaia.
Ultimately, I love this dream work because it’s so subtle. It feels like a fractal of the imaginative communication lines which open up as we work with subtle world energies or inhabitants. It’s the same open-ended, sensitive, inquisitive, wondering approach that strengthens our connections across the worlds.
One of the cards in John Matthew’s deck, The Sidhe Oracle of the Fleeting Hare is the Dreaming Hare. The message from the Sidhe for this card includes this: “In sleep and dreams you will find many of the answers you seek. Even if … you cannot remember what you have been shown, know that its wisdom is still present within you. … The source of these dreams is a mystery even we do not understand. We envy you, for we do not dream.”
Earth Laughs in Flowers
Pastel Essay and Text by Claire Blatchford
When walking recently through a meadow—cloudless blue sky above, warm but not blazing sun, the trees at the edge of the field sprouting yellow-green leaves, a Bobolink pausing on a weed stalk telling me not to come too close to his nest, ripening grasses dotted through and through with wild flowers —I had the delightful experience of the earth catching me up in a moment of merriment.
Merriment – in these grim times?
Yes!
Here’s an attempt I made to catch the whirling shapes and colors of that instant.
The next day when working in the garden and feeling concerned—not at all merry—about the dry dusty soil and the many small seedlings I was putting in, I remembered Ralph Waldo Emerson’s marvelous comment, “Earth laughs in flowers.” I was reminded, in turn, of the flowers in the meadow the day before: pinks, clovers, daisies, orange and gold grass flowerings whose names I don’t know. They hadn’t seemed the least bit affected by the dryness I was brooding over. Their merriment bordered on hilarity. As though the earth simply has to erupt periodically in color, song, laughter. And what a laugh that was, in advance of the first day of summer! The kind of belly laugh that bubbles up and out so suddenly it can bring tears to your eyes!
On my knees in the garden I turned my attention from what I was trying to put in and coax forth to what was already there and felt myself open anew to earth’s flowering eruptions. Here follow some of the laughing flowers with whom I’ve been keeping company.
Hear the soft chuckle and good cheer of teeny-tiny sorrel:
To the bold, unabashed glee of the California Poppies:
Sometimes I think I hear a chortle from the lush peonies.
Then, there’s the airy hee-haw and ho-ho of various “weeds” already going to seed before I can get all my seedlings in. How dare them!
And last but not least, and not in my garden but on the open hill side, I’m drawn again and again to the sweet outright exulting of bluets.
DAVID’S DESK #157 - FIERCE ATTENTION
David's Desk is my opportunity to share thoughts and tools for the spiritual journey. These letters are my personal insights and opinions and do not necessarily reflect the sentiments or thoughts of any other person in Lorian or of Lorian as a whole. If you wish to share this letter with others, please feel free to do so; however, the material is ©2019 by David Spangler. If you no longer wish to receive these letters, please let us know at info@Lorian.org.
It’s hard to write my David’s Desk this month. Words seem pale before the towering immensities of sorrow and grief at the tragedies stalking our nation and our world. I do not need to quote statistics to you—they are easily obtained, staggering in the losses they represent, and, unfortunately, constantly changing for the worse. Last week, another unarmed black man, George Floyd, was killed by a white police officer, and last night, parts of my city, Seattle, were burned and destroyed by violent agitators hijacking what had been a peaceful protest march by those mourning his death.
Perhaps your city was burning, too.
At the top of the page, I write, as I do every month, “David’s Desk is my opportunity to share thoughts and tools for the spiritual journey.” So, what are my thoughts and tools today, in the midst of our national and planetary tragedies?
Those who are dedicated to the spiritual journey and who seek to be sources of Light upon the earth know that in moments like these, the need is for calm. This is calm within oneself and, where possible, extending calm to others. This can help us banish fear from our hearts and minds and, again, where possible, through example if nothing else, from the hearts and minds of others. Calmness and fearlessness give us a foundation to see clearly, think clearly, and act clearly. They also enable us to act with love. Otherwise, we can easily contribute to the problem, increasing the agitation and turmoil around us.
But in addition to calm, this is a time for attentiveness to what is happening. Not just ordinary attentiveness, the kind that listens to the news and then assumes we know what’s going on. What is needed is a fierce attentiveness that, from a calm and loving place, can look deeply at the chaos of the moment, see it, feel it, and not reflexively, immediately, try to understand and name it and thus pigeonhole it somewhere in our psyche.
It’s easy to do. We all have our favorite labels for moments like these: it’s “outsiders,” it’s “them,” it’s this race or that race, this religion or that religion, this political party or that political party, this politician or that politician. Our labels can keep us from seeing and feeling clearly the anger, the pain, the suffering, the chaos we all feel, that Humanity feels, that the Earth feels. It can put these things outside of us, onto “them,” the ones to whom our fingers point. We buffer our pain with blame.
It takes courage—and calmness, and love—to say, “Let me just be with the pain. Let me feel it.” When we do, we learn three things. The first is that we really are strong enough to do it; we are stronger in spirit and in love than we may think we are. The second is that it’s our pain. It’s not their pain, nor my pain alone; it’s ours, together. If you hurt, I hurt, and vice versa. The third is that when we realize this, then we can act, not from pain, not from suffering, but from wholeness, from the realization that we are all in this world together and if healing is to happen, we will do it together.
Sleepless in Seattle
By Karen Johannsen
On a typical night I am in bed by 11:00 pm, asleep usually within a half hour then wide awake 2 hours later. Getting back to sleep is a nightmare of anxiety, frustration, fear, and restlessness. Trust me when I say I have tried a million remedies, homeopathy, acupuncture, diet, medications, meditation, audio cd’s on relaxation...the list goes on. What often happens with me is that when I am facing a major issue in my life, the universe sends me many teachers to help enlighten me about what is really going on.
My adult children were the first teachers. My insomnia is a regular part of our conversations as they are concerned about the long-term effects of sleep deprivation. One afternoon, my daughter, whose wisdom always amazes me, said, “Maybe what you need is a deeper sense of your own intrinsic safety.” I had been pondering the idea that perhaps the insomnia was related to childhood abuse by my pedophile grandfather. I thought about her comment a lot and wondered how I could get a sense of my own intrinsic safety. Did I really trust the benevolence of the universe?
Several weeks later I discussed this with my acupuncturist, a deeply wise, spiritual person who suggested I look up something called “The Living Daylight.” This teaching by A.H. Almaas, founder of the Diamond Approach, offered me insight. Here’s what Almaas says in his book Facets of Unity:
Living Daylight, this tender and loving presence, is experienced as the origin of all states of consciousness, as well as the origin of everything. If this loving presence is seen as the true nature of everything that exists, the universe is seen as benevolent since it is made up of benevolence and is therefore something you can trust. The soul feels held by the universe, taken care of in a loving, appropriate way, provided for, supported and loved. This universal conscious presence is experienced not only as loving but also soft, sweet, gentle, and delicate, giving you the sense that you are held in a loving embrace by the universe. If the universe as a whole and everything in it is pervaded by, is composed of, and is an expression of, this fundamental loving presence, it is natural that you would feel relaxed and trusting, with the sense that you will be taken care of and that things are going to turn out okay.
Reading this felt like hearing a direct quote from God. It resonated so deeply with me that I began to read it each night before I went to bed. It calmed something deep within me. Almaas goes on to say that what blocks this Living Daylight is a resistance to feeling helpless. Certainly, as a victim in my early childhood there was a complete feeling of helplessness. Had this carried over into my adult life, even after all the healing work I had done? He goes on to say that in order not to feel helpless we begin to believe that we can do it all alone. That we don’t need to depend on anyone. We don’t need anything or anyone. It separates us from God.
...(it is the belief) that one does not need real holding. You feel that you can do it on your own and so you don’t need nourishment—whether human or divine. It also means that you believe that you do not need grace, and therefore block it. Grace is the descent of Living Daylight...it allows us to be held by the universe and to trust in it.
I realized that I had been trying to do it all on my own for so long that I had never surrendered completely to the Grace that was always there for me.
I would love to say that this was the end of my insomnia, but it didn’t result in consistent sleep. What it did do was make me aware of an unconscious belief that was not helpful, and bringing that up to the light did help me relax. Sinking into the arms of a benevolent and loving universe released something in me.
My daughter also suggested that perhaps I was dealing with end of life issues and facing my own mortality. Since I turn 78 this year, that rang a bell. Again, my acupuncturist came up with an observation. “Maybe this is a good practice for preparing for death,” he remarked. “It’s a way to practice releasing your attachment to your body, to reaffirm that you are more than your body.” Another teacher, Michael Robbins, said in one of his webinars, “Life in form is just a small part of reality.” Somehow putting this in perspective helped.
But how to identify with that larger reality? How to trust it? I happened to tune into a webinar given by Anita Moorjani who wrote the book, Dying to Be Me. What I got out of it was a perfect perspective for how to deal with the insomnia issue. I needed to take the focus off what was wrong and what I’m trying to fix and instead focus on loving myself more. The kind of love that acknowledges who you are at your essence. One way to love ourselves more deeply and affirm our divinity is to fill our lives with joy and to strengthen our ability to say no to anything that does not bring us joy. In other words, choosing what we want to be involved in. The more joy, the more light we bring into the body, the easier it is for us to believe in our own radiance.
This resonated so deeply with me, partly because I had already been feeling drawn to play the piano, dance, and be with little kids. Those are my joy fixes. So I recommitted to follow through on those things. I got a piano (loaned to me by a generous friend) and started taking dance lessons. I also officially relegated my insomnia to the outer ethers to be healed or not, but I stopped obsessing, talking about and reliving each night in my mind. Instead, I fueled myself with thoughts of dancing and playing, bringing more light into my life.
Another powerful teacher that came to me during this insomnia marathon was a good friend who also is a Feng shui practitioner. She suggested I move out of my spacious, open master bedroom with lots of mirrors and windows and many drains — sinks, bathtub, toilet, shower. She mentioned that energetically it was more of a room for dancing, activity and high energy, not conducive to restful sleep.
Go sleep in the guest room that has a queen size bed. After all you are a queen, not a king. You don’t need that big, king-sized bed. Get a headboard for solidity and grounding and create a sacred space for yourself that feels like a womb so you can feel held and supported by your space.
I took her advice and changed rooms. I created a sacred altar with all my precious things on it, moved in two plants that have special connections for me, bought a headboard, and began a nightly ritual of re-stating my prayer each night as I face my altar. I connected to the angels of my home, my room, and asked them to partner with me in maintaining an environment that will promote restorative sleep. A side benefit that I have noticed is that I want to keep the room neat and clean energetically, and my prayers each night help that. Also, I’ve been inspired to make up my bed each day, which I’ve never done before, just to make it look good. It feels like my sacred space now and I want to take good care of it.
My latest insight came when I picked up an issue of David Spangler’s Views from the Borderland and in the first paragraph he describes how at this time his colleagues have been emphasizing the importance of managing our own subtle fields and tending to the subtle energy environments around us (my bedroom, especially, I took this to mean for me):
.....be a source of calm, of hope, of love, of positive vision and positive energies for others. By your very nature, you cannot help being generative and influencing the subtle environments around you. By your choices and your intentions, you can determine what kind of influence you are. Take one step infringing blessing into the world, and a thousand angels will support you in the steps that follow. Act! Act! Act! You are not alone!
I continue to be amazed at how synchronicity plays out in my life as I work with the challenge of insomnia — everything weaving into everything else, supporting and inspiring me. Even though the insomnia is still there I am grateful for the learning that has taken place through all these insights and revelations.
I have learned patience, as I confront the possibility that this deep healing process may or may not be resolved in my lifetime.
Ease has become more of a companion as I face each night.
I practice acceptance for what is and try to stay in the moment.
Learning to surrender to the ground of my being, the benevolent universe, I am beginning to feel held and safe.
I am most grateful for the strengthening of the energetic connection to my environment and to the beings that live here with me. It has become part of my daily practice to acknowledge them each day with love and appreciation and to reaffirm our partnership. We are on this journey together.
As I continue to deepen this connection and sink into the nurturing and support that they offer I know it will translate into a stronger belief in my own intrinsic safety.
Out of the Woods
Blog Post and Photos by Susan Beal
My husband and I are guardians and stewards of a piece of land that has been in my family for several generations. In Vermont, where I live, owners of large properties can enroll in a state program to significantly reduce their property tax burden. For woodlands, you must have a Forest Management Plan written up every ten years by a licensed forester. The plan has to include a certain amount of logging, as one goal of the program is to support Vermont’s rural economy through agriculture and forestry products.
We chose a forester recommended for his conservation approach and had a plan drawn up that we thought would minimize logging and prioritize habitat preservation in our 150 acres of woods. We met the loggers he chose for the job and were impressed by their knowledge and integrity. We walked through the woods to see what trees were marked for harvest. We let the trees know what would be happening, asked for their input, and sprayed a white X over the marks from any trees we didn’t want taken or we sensed shouldn’t or didn’t want to be harvested.
However, when the logging began, it was much more extensive than we’d ever imagined. For me, all kinds of difficult emotions rose up. I was grief stricken. I felt shame, as if I had failed in my responsibility to protect the woods I love. I felt angry and betrayed by the forester and doubted his integrity. I felt cynical about standards of forestry that require logging as part of a management plan—as if Nature couldn’t manage forests without human tinkering!
We were assured over and over again by our county forester and the forester who designed the plan that it was in keeping with our wishes, and that, in fact, it was consistent with the goal of cultivating old-growth characteristics in at least 20% of Vermont’s forests, where currently less than 2% of our woods can be considered old growth.
Several friends and neighbors railed against the logging, telling us that “trees should never be cut for human use!” or, “Logging is all about human greed,” or “that logging at your place is devastating the woods for generations!” We had equal numbers of neighbors and friends complimenting the logging, wanting to get in touch with the forester and loggers for their own properties.
The county forester insisted that all was well, and that despite the seeming chaos, this was exactly what needed to happen to return the woods to a state of true balance after generations of human meddling. Over a hundred years ago, Vermont's mountains were 80% bare, the trees having been cleared for agriculture, timber, mining, and quarrying. Today, much of the cleared land has returned to woodlands, forming a second-growth forest. Our forester reminded me that we’d embarked on a very long term recovery process of at least 300 years and more like 800 years. We must learn to think not just like trees, but like a forest ecosystem that measures time in centuries and millennia rather than seasons and years.
Reverence and appreciation for trees keeps growing, which is heartening. We’re beginning to understand their importance not only from an ecological standpoint, but from emotional and spiritual perspectives, as well. Forest bathing is an expanding wellness practice with scientific backing. Planting a tree is synonymous with ecological responsibility and concerns about climate change. Outcries are increasing over greedy, rapacious logging practices that have destroyed forest ecosystems the world over. The more confused I felt, the more the universe kept tossing tree-welfare information at me. I got emails from friends with links to books about tree consciousness or articles like, “Do Trees Scream When Stressed?”, or “Join the Tree Sisters to Save the World’s Trees!” A fellow in a local meditation group, a man of very few words, announced one day that there were only two things we needed to do for the world: “Plant trees, and don’t cut them.”
All of us use wood and paper products, so none of us are quite entitled to wash our hands of responsibility for logging. I pointed out as much to friends who questioned the logging in our woods. I blessed the loads of logs as they left the property, imagining the furniture and houses that would be built from them, and hoping that they’d retain a sense of connection to the land they came from. I checked in regularly with the woods to see if I needed to do any geomantic adjustments to help harmonize the energy.
One day, while stumbling through the woods along rutted skid trails, I was feeling more and more upset by the visual chaos of tangled branches and cut stumps. Trees I had used to orient myself by were gone. I realized I couldn’t possibly get an accurate read on the energetic and subtle effects of the logging until I quieted my emotions and listened to the trees, themselves. So I found a big, fresh stump, still oozing sap, and sat down on it. I calmed and centered myself, and, once I felt quiet, I felt the roots of the stump ground me deep into the forest floor.
I reached out to the trees and woods around me and I was surprised by the utter peacefulness, so at odds with my turbulent emotions and the disruption from the logging. I felt welcomed and embraced. The trees were not upset, but accepting of the logging, in fact—and this really surprised me—partners in it. I felt their appreciation for the connections we’d made with them during the process, which had allowed them to prepare and adjust in ways of their own.
I learned many things, some of which I already knew but that were good to be reminded of: that human emotion can greatly distort or block subtle communication, that trees don’t hold onto form or experience time the way humans do, and that the trees that had been cut were still present as energetic forms over-lighting their very-much-alive stumps, and still contributing, in an altered way, to the wholeness of the woods. The energetic trees seemed to have a different role than they’d had as physical trees, one that contributed in some way to the shift the woods were undergoing.
But more than that, I could feel the residue of Love everywhere in the woods—streamers and pools and skeins of it left there by the love of the foresters and the loggers for their work, men with a deep love and respect for trees. I could feel that the trees respected them in return and that they were actually partners in the logging, thanks to the mindfulness with which the management plan was crafted. I could also feel the love and appreciation of the hikers and skiers who used the trails that cross our property, and I felt as well the forest’s appreciation of my own and my family’s love for it. The woods knew me, and welcomed me, and did not see me, or the logging, or anything as separate from its communal wholeness.
This presence of Love as left by humans was very distinct, different from the energies of the physical and elemental beings who inhabited the forest. It was Love transmuted by its passage through human hearts and minds, a product of incarnate human experience. And I came to understand that it was very precious, a vital, potent ingredient that the trees and the spirit of the forest could use, like fertilizer, in creating a new wholeness out of the changes from the logging.
The trees made me understand that by being in communion with the woods while also becoming conscious, in my heart and mind, of the presence of human love lingering there, I was organizing and anchoring the Love, making it more available or assimilable to the landscape and the Spirit of Place.
Beyond that, I saw that this was true everywhere else in the world, wherever traces of human love can be found (and surely it can be found everywhere!) – in the woods, in a Walmart, at a tollbooth, an airport, an operating room, a public restroom, in one’s own bed at night.
This is the practice of Incarnational Spirituality, and our privilege as incarnate human partners of Gaia.
Green Shoots
By Freya Secrest
The robins have arrived in my northern garden. I walked out the door and saw five of those harbingers of spring on my lawn. For a few weeks I have been noticing the chipmunks scampering around, released from their winter hibernation, the squirrels gathering materials for their nests and general background bird song increasing, but seeing the robins was like a neon sign proclaiming “spring is here.”
I looked at my gardens more closely. The bulbs I planted last season are now visible in the flower beds, small green tips soon to be identified. Is that a daffodil or an allium planted there? I recognize the winter aconite with its yellow flowers. A snowdrop here and there. Eagerly I peek under the mulched leaves; what else did I plant last fall?
The spring garden’s appearance is so anticipated because after the quiet snow of winter, I am impatient with the back and forth temperatures of Michigan waking from its wintertime sleep. This energy in this time of the year builds a sense of emergent expectation in me. If I am not careful, it is like a wave that sweeps me away from the patient tending that is needed to encourage roots to wiggle deeply before exposing leaves to the sun. I loosen the leaf mulch and leave it in place. I send out my welcome and settle back to wait for the timing that the garden and animals know better than I.
So, what is there for me to do in this time? I find it is important to savor this moment, to sit back and re-connect myself to what I planted in the deep stillness of last year. What was I dreaming and how to now tend to those sturdily emerging possibilities, especially now in the up and down transitions of temperature, sun and clouds, tempest and gentle breeze that characterizes the shift from winter to spring?
Most of my natural envisioning around my garden is about its blooming phase, with summer’s deep greens, bright colors and expansive growth. Stepping back, I look to establish more of a connection to this formative spring garden phase, to feel into the seed and the deep richness of soil that fosters that summer radiance. I remind myself not to get too far ahead, to bring my imagination into the present moment and feel into the young, intense, bright green of new growth. I find myself admiring and honoring the small nubs of potential that are the forerunners of summer’s expansion. What power is there! The seed’s energy is revealed, but has not yet unfurled its potential. The buds are potent with possibilities, like a wave, gently but relentlessly swelling to its crest.
Both in my garden and in my life, it is valuable to stay present and attentive to the essential nature of what I would harvest this year. How exactly it will unfold is unknown to me, like the timing of spring’s growth, it is not mine to direct. But I can stay attentive to what I want to foster and, in that way become a part of the swelling energy of life in partnership with the growth.
In my garden I would learn more about the structure of branch and leaf that frame the bright color of a flower. I want to highlight the shrubs that create the backdrop of the garden and bridge between tall tree and delicate flower. Admitting to how much I favor the blossom, I would learn more about shape and texture of the leaf and how to artfully play with relationships of structure and form.
Similarly, in my life’s garden this year, I want to find more ways to feature joy by creating the space for appreciation to naturalize and spread through my relationships in the world. There are small shoots poking up, and I am committed to attentively encourage them to grow. Appreciation creates spaciousness, so even in the uncertainties of spring and the tempest of immediate social events the diverse part of my community and life experiences can weave together in ways that serve a more coherent wholeness.
I am challenged this spring to highlight bright beauty through weaving an ordinary but elegant frame of appreciation. I am challenged to stay present to and honor each phase of the garden. I am invited to slow down and listen, to join in the swell of spring’s life power and to partner in earth’s transformation.
Conversations with Lorian: I Am Losing Hope That Things Will Get Better
Editor's Note: Conversations with Lorian is a collection of different voices and perspectives responding to inquiries pertaining to Incarnational Spirituality. Often we receive questions that don't have a single, uniform answer, due to the ways that individuality and sovereignty shapes our practice. At times like this we like to gather a number of responses from teachers, priests and other colleagues in order to honor our diverse yet complimentary approaches to Lorian's work in the world.
If you have a question you'd like the Conversation team to respond to, please email info@lorian.org.
Question : “I am feeling discouraged by the state of the world. What advice do you have for someone losing hope that things will get better?"
I have to be honest, it is going to be a long process for things to get better. That is a reality. So I have to look at just where my hope needs to be grounded. What do I need to do to in myself to keep my focus on loving my world, feeling joy in its beauty, treasuring the creatures and people within it? What can I do in my small way to make a difference?
I fundamentally believe in the inherent goodness of most people. There is a lot of kindness, community, compassion and caring in our world. Look for it. Support it. I look for what can I do to create hope around me. I might not be able to affect the big wide world, but I can lighten my locality. And for every person who reaches out to connect and lighten their neighborhood, hope spreads in ripples.
- Julie Spangler
I fully understand how you or anyone can get overwhelmed by the stream of news about incidents and developments around the globe and nearby. How I have learned to deal with this is as follows:.
Instead of just focusing on the presented situation, I try to center and focus upon myself, feeling overwhelmed. I see and experience myself being in that state. Then I step back from that aspect of myself, as an observer, and while I observe, I experience being in a quiet state. When I see that I am able to "step-out" and possibly look with compassion to the suffering part of myself, I realize I can choose between distress and peace, or at least choose a neutral state. From there, I can experiment with feeling joyful and positive, just for the sake of it or for the things that I know are still there to enjoy.
I do not have to wait until depression strikes, I can exercise this right now, allowing myself to upgrade my current state. By practicing this on a regular base, I master my moods and make myself available to make a positive contribution to our planet and humanity, just from where I am. Good people will often feel themselves being like Atlas, carrying the burden of Earth on his shoulder. The Earth, however, does not need our shoulder, but our joy, and even without that, she can manage. Even so, she will enjoy a free Atlas as a partner.
- Floris Rommerts
Remember that you are not alone. Have courage. I often think of the warrior when I hear the word courage. The warrior steps into the fray, weapons drawn, despite the fear of injury or death. But in meditation recently, I saw the warrior image fade away. Instead, I felt my sense of courage opening up, taking on a very different image. This courage stood on the ground of self-knowledge and then stretched into an inspired state of imagining something better, something different. It stood on the self knowledge that awakens me to my sovereignty and to my power as a source of light. It beautifully imagined something better, thereby taking me out of a weakening descent into hopelessness. But more important than that, this imagining courage is full of power to lend shape to a better future.
And we don’t imagine alone. We join the community of the courageous—seen and unseen. We join them whether or not we know or are aware of all those connected beings. So take courage that you are not alone. And then imagine. Imagine the most beautiful, peaceful, vibrant, nurturing world. Hold that vision and feed it even as you face the world we are in right now.
- Drena Griffith
IS is a co-creative project from the subtle worlds. Initially it was to teach people how to enhance the soul and personality to work together as partners and not see the personality as something to be subdued or destroyed. There are two of what you might call pressure waves that effect us. One draws us towards the physical and matter and the other toward spirit and the transpersonal worlds. IS teaches us to balance these two so we can achieve what one might call an alchemical buoyancy space. We can freely embrace incarnation and still have our connection to the sacred. We embrace the world in joy, love and will and can then foster the dynamic presence of wholeness in the world around us.
- Tim Hass
Your question leads me to consider what is at the root of hope for me. Underlying all the experiences I would define as “bringing hope” or “being hopeful” is a sense of connectedness. Hope for me flows out of my connections to life and the Sacred, more than a particular set of activities or state of the world. So when I feel discouraged, and I do sometimes, it is not a state of mind or a particular configuration of events I look to change. Instead I work to reestablish connection with the sacred pulse of life. A hopeful attitude and positive choices flow naturally out of that focus.
Hope is always there for me within aliveness. I can’t really lose it, but I can move away from my connections with the pulse of life. Reconnecting myself by engaging in relationships - sharing laughter or a kind word with another person, breathing in the beauty of nature, or settling into the peace held in a moment of wonder - helps to reset my connections with aliveness and leads me back to hope.
- Freya Secrest
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 Association as a whole. If you questions or comments, email the editor at drenag@lorian.org.