David's Desk 188

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 ©2023 by David Spangler. If you no longer wish to receive these letters, please let us know at info@Lorian.org.

Making All Things New

The New Year is a human invention. Although I’m sure they are aware of the changing of seasons, I doubt whether the maple trees in my backyard or the crows that sit in its branches know that a “new year” has begun. They don’t keep calendars or mark certain days as special.

But we do. The idea of “newness” is important to us. We believe in renewal, in new beginnings. We make resolutions and say that this year will be different. In our iconography, the new year is pictured as a baby, something yet to be formed, filled with potential, alive with hope.

For many years, I wrote and lectured about the idea of a New Age. Although this is a complex idea with historical antecedents and mystical and cultural overtones, at heart, it’s an expression of the same desire for newness and for making a fresh start. Whether it’s a New Year or a New Age, there is a feeling of a door opening onto new vistas and new potentials.

More importantly, what we celebrate at New Year—resonating with the idea of newness itself—is not an event in time but a power within us. We have the power to change.We have the power to make things new.

When we make our New Year resolutions, we are acknowledging this power. We may do so laughingly, recognizing that in the face of habit and inertia, change can be difficult.  We may ruefully acknowledge that the resolutions we made probably won’t survive into February, but the point is that we make them in the first place, recognizing that, whether successful or not, we do have the ability to change. We are not irredeemably tied to or shaped by our past. We are not prisoners of our history. We can begin anew.

Recognizing this ability, this power to make all things new, is particularly important at this time when humanity is being asked to make unprecedented changes on behalf of the world and our own survival. 

As an event on the calendar, the New Year will come every January 1st. But as an event in our hearts and minds, it comes each time we open to hope, to new vision, to possibility and potential, and act to be a source of newness in our lives.

May you have a blessed and wondrous New Year!

An Experiment

One of the advantages of David’s Desk being digital is that I can do things I couldn’t if it were printed. My Lorian colleague and friend, James Tousignant, and I do podcasts together. He thought it might be interesting to you, my Reader, if he and I were to have a discussion around the theme of that month’s essay and then add the audio at the end. That way, you could both read my thoughts for that month and also listen to me talk about them with James. So, without further ado, here is this month’s conversation. I hope you enjoy it and the added dimension it brings to David’s Desk.

David's Desk 187

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 ©2022 by David Spangler. If you no longer wish to receive these letters, please let us know at info@Lorian.org.

The Light is Born

This month we are celebrating the Light of the Sacred, the Light of Life. Depending on our traditions and preferences, we are celebrating the return of Light, the birth of Light, the miracle of Light, the presence of Light, or all four

In thinking about this, what interests me is the relationship between Light as a universal quality and Light as embodied and manifested in individual people such as you and me.  There is often a curious dichotomy here. In my work over the years, I have often met people who can readily accept the existence of a universal presence of Light active in the cosmos but who have difficulty accepting that this Light is in them, as well. The jump from the universal to the individual is too great to take. This may be expressed in phrases like “I’m not worthy,” “I’m no saint,” or “maybe someday, I’ll get there.”

Of course, the reality is that if Light is truly a universal quality, then it is everywhere, in everything, and in everyone. In Incarnational Spirituality, there is the concept of “Self-Light,” which is simply the Light that each of us always carries innately as part of who we are. It is our unique embodiment and expression of a universal quality. We may not recognize it, we may ignore it, we may forget about it, but it is always there, nonetheless. 

Part of the challenge of recognizing our own inner Light comes, I believe, from a dichotomy that has become part of Christian teaching. This month, Christians celebrate the birth of Christ, the Light taking flesh in the person of Jesus. The idea that the Sacred, the Source and Presence of Light, can embody in a human individual is the original incarnational spirituality. Unfortunately, early on in the history of institutional Christianity, it was proclaimed that this embodiment only ever occurred once and only in one individual, which is a denial of the very essence of Jesus’s teachings.

But it’s not only Christianity that can separate the universal from the individual. In my years in the New Age movement, it was commonplace to hear people talk about “Christ Consciousness” or the “Cosmic Christ” while leaving Jesus out of the equation. But this can leave us out of the equation, too. We are not universal people, we are specific people, with specific characteristics and connections to the world. We are the dream made flesh, not just the flesh dreaming.

Some of this was certainly in reaction to the institutional Christian teachings that made a Christed awareness and presence the exclusive property of only one person. But universalizing the Christ without also celebrating its grounding in a human person only risks perpetuating the separation between the universal and the particular. 

As long as the Light, whether I call it Christ or by some other name, is something I aspire to, it is safe. It’s “out there.” It’s the embodiment of the Light that can be scary. After all, who am I if I become the Light? Do I become more than human or other than human?  We may fail in our attempts to embody the Light only because we cannot imagine the Light as other than universal. We can’t imagine how Light can be part of our ordinary lives. It has to be extraordinary, we may feel, which means that we have to be extraordinary, too. How many of us feel up to that? What we forget is that if Light is truly a universal, cosmic quality, pervading all existence, then it is supremely ordinary and normal. To be Light is the most normal thing in the universe. It is divinely ordinary.

This is one reason I’m happy to celebrate the Christmas nativity story this month as a celebration of the mystery of the universal becoming specific, the Light becoming embodied. It is a birth, I believe, that is happening in all of us, if we will only acknowledge it.

A few years ago, for one of my classes, I developed a Self-Light exercise using the Christmas Nativity as a template. I offer it here as my gift to you this Season. May the Light be with you AND be you always!

NATIVITY SELF-LIGHT EXERCISE

Picture in your mind the nativity scene in the Christmas tradition. Three kings, shepherds, animals, Mary and Joseph, and angels are all around a crib in which a baby is lying, while in the sky above, a bright star sheds its radiance below.

Now imagine your point of view shifting from that of an observer to that of a participant in this Nativity scene. And not just any participant. You are the baby lying in the crib.

Imagine yourself lying there, warm in swaddling clothes, your loving parents looking at you from above. Kings are watching over you reverently. Shepherds are gazing upon you with awe. Animals press close to be one with you, the life of the earth surrounding you and welcoming you. Angels looking protectively and lovingly down upon you.

Feel yourself held in the gaze and love of all these people and beings. Feel yourself sinking into the warmth of the cradle. Feel yourself being embraced by Earth itself, welcoming you and rejoicing that you are here.

As you lie there, allow yourself to sink deeper and deeper into this welcome, this warmth, this love.

As you do, you feel yourself surrounded with Light, sinking into Light, your own Light expanding in response.

In the midst of this Light, you feel the Light of the Star above shining down into you, merging with your Light.

In the midst of this Light, you feel the Light of the earth below shining up into you, merging with your Light.

As you lie in this crib, surrounded by parents and angels, kings and shepherds, animals and birds, all the creatures of the world, feel the Light of the Star, the Light of the Earth and your own Light blending, becoming one. And as they do, YOU are born.

YOU, a Being of Light, one with Stars, one with Earth, one with humans and creatures and angels.

YOU, an emergence of Light, the Light that Renews, Heals, Blesses, and Unfolds the sacred within all the world.   

YOU, an embodiment of Gaia, the spirit of the whole Earth, human and non-human, land and sea.

Feel yourself as this Light.  It is your Self-Light…..your Christmas Self-Light.

As you feel this Light that you are, you rise up, no longer a baby. You have been born, and you are now a Person of Light, standing free, strong, sovereign, and connected upon the Earth, a Gaian Person.

Let this Light that you are now be a blessing to your world. 

An Experiment

One of the advantages of David’s Desk being digital is that I can do things I couldn’t if it were printed. My Lorian colleague and friend, James Tousignant, and I do podcasts together. He thought it might be interesting to you, my Reader, if he and I were to have a discussion around the theme of that month’s essay and then add the audio at the end. That way, you could both read my thoughts for that month and also listen to me talk about them with James. So, without further ado, here is this month’s conversation. I hope you enjoy it and the added dimension it brings to David’s Desk.

David's Desk 186

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 ©2022 by David Spangler. If you no longer wish to receive these letters, please let us know at info@Lorian.org.

Liminalities

Liminal space is the threshold between two states, neither fully here nor fully there but somewhere in transition. For someone in such a space, a “liminalite,” it can be an exciting place, full of novelty and opportunity, and it can be a terrifying place as well. The familiar and the old are falling away but the new hasn’t taken shape yet. Promise and peril seem equally possible.

All around us, if we look, we can see the seeds of a new consciousness, a new way of being in the world, beginning to appear, taking root, forming sprouts. Some are more robust than others; some, like the seeds in Jesus’s parable, have fallen on inhospitable soil and others on fertile soil.  

Although this new consciousness is taking many forms as it experiments with what works and what doesn’t, two elements are consistent. It is global in its outreach and its concern, exhibiting a compassionate caring for all life, and it takes a long-term approach to human and planetary affairs. That is, its vision is not captured by the short-term but considers the long-term consequences of our decisions and actions, believing us responsible not only for our own immediate welfare but that of our distant descendants, hundreds of years in the future. What kind of world are we leaving for them?

This new consciousness, which I choose to call a “Gaian consciousness” to reflect its planetary inclusiveness, is still in the background of human affairs; it has not yet coalesced sufficiently as a compelling and necessary worldview to change the course of human affairs. And, unfortunately, it might never do so. That is up to us, to the choices we make and to the vision we hold of the world we wish to inhabit.

However, the evidence is piling up around the globe that the institutions, habits, and ways of being that humanity has developed over the past two and a half millennia do not have the capacity to hold and express this new consciousness. They are creaking at the seams and breaking as a new world emerges around us. They are increasingly proving unequal to the task of gracefully and successfully meeting the challenges of this liminal period.

What is sad and dangerous about this time is that, seeing that what we have isn’t working, there is a reaction to replace it not with something new but with something older and familiar. We see this in the rise of autocratic rule around the globe, including the Western democracies, and in authoritarian leanings in the United States. It is a reversion to hierarchy instead of networking, to power over rather than power with. It is an impulse born of fear and a longing for stability and the known, an impulse that confuses conformity with safety. It is an impulse that values winning over collaboration. It is an impulse that would impose a monoculture, stifling differences of belief and custom, forgetting or ignoring that monocultures are highly vulnerable to change and never survive in nature.

Being a liminalite is not easy. Depression, hopelessness, anxiety, and cynicism can be daily challenges. But at the same time, being a liminalite means being open to creativity and opportunity, open to hope and vision, open to thinking and acting outside the box.  While we may be living in liminal times, we don’t need to be liminal in ourselves, caught between old and new. We can embody our vision of the new right now. If our vision is of a world of ecological wholeness, compassion and respect for each other, collaboration and mutual support, then we can embody those qualities in how we act in the world right now. In some ways, the new, whatever it may be, needs to live in us before it can fully live in the world.  

Being a “liminalite,” someone living between one world and another, doesn’t have to mean being confused. It can mean taking the opportunity provided by an emergent time to be a seed for something better. That is the seeding the world needs right now.

An Experiment

One of the advantages of David’s Desk being digital is that I can do things I couldn’t if it were printed. My Lorian colleague and friend, James Tousignant, and I do podcasts together. He thought it might be interesting to you, my Reader, if he and I were to have a discussion around the theme of that month’s essay and then add the audio at the end. That way, you could both read my thoughts for that month and also listen to me talk about them with James. So, without further ado, here is this month’s conversation. I hope you enjoy it and the added dimension it brings to David’s Desk.

David's Desk 185

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 ©2022 by David Spangler. If you no longer wish to receive these letters, please let us know at info@Lorian.org.

Responsibility

In 1973, my wife, Julia, and I were in London taking part in a conference. We had an evening free and were out walking, taking in the sights and sound of that world city at night. We came upon a large crowd all standing behind a line of limousines waiting outside a movie theater where the movie Lost Horizon about the mystical, mythical city of Shangri-La was being premiered. Large floodlights illuminated the scene and cast their beams into the night sky. There was a buzz of excitement in the crowd. They were obviously waiting for something rather than lining up to go into the theater. We asked someone what was happening and were told that Queen Elizabeth was attending the premier and was soon to come out. Everyone was there to see and to greet her. Julie and I decided we would wait to see her, too.

Across the street from the theater was a small park surrounded by an iron fence. Holding on to the pole of a streetlight, we were able to climb up and stand on the top of the fence, which allowed us to see over the heads of the crowd. Although there were police present in the crowd, no one seemed to mind us being there. Everyone’s attention was focused on the theater entrance, so no one may have even seen us.

We had only been there a minute or two when a sigh went through the crowd. It was at that point that the Queen came out, accompanied by her husband, Philip. She was wearing an all-white gown that looked encrusted with diamonds, and she had a tiara in her hair. When the light from the floodlights hit her, she suddenly burst into radiance, as if she had transformed into a being of Light. It was breathtaking, and an audible gasp went up from all the people there. I think it was especially dramatic for Julie and me given our elevated vantage point.

As she moved toward the waiting limousine, she smiled and waved to the throng, and they cheered back. You could feel the love flowing out from these people towards this woman and her love flowing back. For me, the energy was palpable.

That was nearly fifty years ago, but the memory came back to me as I watched Queen Elizabeth’s funeral, seeing the thousands of people who lined the streets in mourning and in celebration of her life. She was a truly global figure, a point of connection for millions of people. Whether they supported the British monarchy or not, people could still admire and love Elizabeth for her seventy years of dedication and responsibility to something larger than herself.  

This word, responsibility, was one that kept coming back to mind for me throughout the days of mourning for the Queen. We all have responsibilities, to families, to jobs, to our society, and our own well-being. But these days, we tend to hear more about “rights” than about “responsibilities.” The gaining or losing of rights is a major issue for many people, and so it should be. But an acknowledgment of our mutual responsibilities to each other can get lost in the clamor. Milenko Matanovic, my good friend and one of the original founders of Lorian, said to me recently that America has a Bill of Rights but what we also need is a Bill of Responsibilities, something that lays out the duties we have to each other, to the nation, and to the world we all share.

When the American Constitution was written, the ideas of public service and civic responsibilities were taken for granted. The struggle was to obtain rights; responsibility was assumed. But I don’t think we can make such an assumption today, especially when so many political factions fight to secure their own power and their own point of view with little regard for the well-being of society as a whole. This is one reason Queen Elizabeth was held in high regard for her ability to transcend factionalism in support of all her subjects. She modeled responsibility for the whole, not just for a single part.

Given the world condition, such responsibility for the whole is precisely what is needed, not just by one or two leaders or a few exceptional people but by all of us. Though it hardly seems so from the headlines and news that confront us daily, the time when the right to act without responsibility for humanity and the world as a whole has passed. What the Queen modeled in an institutional way is a quality we all need to embody and express in the years ahead: how to serve and be responsible for that which is larger than ourselves. We don’t need to be a monarch to do this, but we do need to love the world in which we live and all the lives who share it with us.

---

An Experiment

One of the advantages of David’s Desk being digital is that I can do things I couldn’t if it were printed. My Lorian colleague and friend, James Tousignant, and I do podcasts together. He thought it might be interesting to you, my Reader, if he and I were to have a discussion around the theme of that month’s essay and then add the audio at the end. That way, you could both read my thoughts for that month and also listen to me talk about them with James. So, without further ado, here is this month’s conversation. I hope you enjoy it and the added dimension it brings to David’s Desk.

David's Desk 184

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 ©2022 by David Spangler. If you no longer wish to receive these letters, please let us know at info@Lorian.org.

World Embracing

I’m always exploring and playing with words when it comes to describing the ways in which we can interact with the non-physical, “subtle” dimension which form the other half of our world. It’s easy to pin down most phenomena in the physical world and give them a name: “that’s a fireplace,” “that’s a glass,” “that’s making a cup of tea.” Such things have clear boundaries that define them in time and space. But spiritual and subtle phenomena and activities exist beyond time and space as we experience them–this makes their boundaries, if they have them, harder to perceive.      

We are an example of this. Each of us is well-defined physically by our bodies. I can say without any doubt that as I write this, I am sitting here in my house in the Pacific Northwest and nowhere else. I’m not in Ukraine. I’m not in the American Southeast where floods are ravaging the countryside. I’m not anywhere else in the world but here. This is a very clear boundary.

However, in my subtle nature, physical boundaries are less important. My spiritual, energetic presence can be in a war-torn Ukrainian city, seeking to bring qualities of comfort and blessing to the subtle and psychological environments there. My spiritual, energetic presence can be in places where floods, fires, heat waves, and other disasters are occurring, acting as a lens through which blessings can be added to the situation. Whether through prayer, imagination, ritual, or meditation, I can make use of the comparatively boundaryless nature of my subtle being to participate in healing or supportive ways anywhere in the world, something my physical body cannot do.

I know where the boundaries of my physical body are. Where the boundaries of my soul or my subtle energy field may lie are harder to discern.

This ability to project into areas of need anywhere on the planet qualities of love, compassion, calm, courage, healing, creativity, and so forth is something I have called world work. My friend, David Nicol, coined the term subtle activism and wrote a book about it by the same title. Subtle activism is a phrase I have used many times as well.

But I don’t find either of these terms, useful as they can be, completely satisfying when it comes to describing what is going on. “World Work” suggests a task, something hard to do. It conjures up images of having to make an effort, even of having to strain at it. It’s the opposite of play. Yet, the actual process of performing this kind of subtle activity is grounded in joy and a kind of creative playfulness. Effort or strain can get in the way. Yes, one is working (in the sense of expending subtle energy) on behalf of the world, but it’s not a “job.” Thinking of it as such can prove limiting.

There is a similar objection to the idea of subtle activism. Being active in using one’s subtle resources and nature to bring help to world conditions is a wonderful thing, but the idea of “activism” can also conjure up expectations and images that get in the way. For many people, being an activist means taking an adversarial stance. It carries the flavor of protests and opposition to the status quo. These may be effective ways of working in the physical world where confrontation may be the only way to initiate change, but it can backfire in the subtle worlds where thoughts and energies of imposition and opposition create the very resistance and inertia they are trying to overcome.

The real problem here is one of identity. Whereas in the physical world, acting and doing create change, in the subtle world, it is the quality or nature of one’s presence or beingness that does so. If I think of myself as a “worker” or as an “activist,” I am substituting a mental concept for a quality of being. I may find myself trying to “manufacture” qualities through my imagination that I will then “send” into the world, rather than experiencing qualities that I can be in the world. While the former can have an effect, it’s the latter that has the greatest impact and does the real work.

This brings me back to exploring just how to give language to the process that “world work” and “subtle activism” seek to describe and name. Both terms have their uses and benefits, but both are lacking. Perhaps something like "world embracing," which suggests that, in this subtle energetic process, I am gathering the world into the embrace of the qualities that I am holding and embodying in that moment. There is joy in such an act and a sense of love and caring for the world as our partner.  

Or maybe we might call it "world being." It’s a clumsy phrase, but at least it suggests that I become and embody the qualities of the world I wish to bring into manifestation. Thus, in a situation of crisis where the subtle and psychological environments are filled with anxiety, fear, and confusion, the energetic presence I project into that condition is that of a world of calm, of help, of strength, and of blessing.

I think my search for the perfect phrase may be fruitless, as there may be no single term that fully captures what we are about when we commit ourselves to bringing love and blessing into our world, especially through the ability of our subtle nature to act at a distance. For each of us, the reality of this act comes through the experience of it, not through what we call it. In the end, it is our loving relationship with our world that is the name.

---

An Experiment

One of the advantages of David’s Desk being digital is that I can do things I couldn’t if it were printed. My Lorian colleague and friend, James Tousignant, and I do podcasts together. He thought it might be interesting to you, my Reader, if he and I were to have a discussion around the theme of that month’s essay and then add the audio at the end. That way, you could both read my thoughts for that month and also listen to me talk about them with James. So, without further ado, here is this month’s conversation. I hope you enjoy it and the added dimension it brings to David’s Desk.

David's Desk 183

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 ©2022 by David Spangler. If you no longer wish to receive these letters, please let us know at info@Lorian.org.

Where it Starts…Again

Three years ago, I wrote the following David’s Desk. It’s one of my favorites.  Some ideas deserve to be repeated, so in the midst of summer, I thought I would repeat this one. Also, we are starting an experiment with this David’s Desk. The information is below.

I live in a suburb about twenty miles east of Seattle, Washington. The city itself is on Puget Sound, a large body of water that separates us from the Olympic Peninsula to the west and that ultimately opens out into the Pacific Ocean.  Here are some pictures of what the Sound looks like:

My home is about twenty-five miles or so from Puget Sound itself. Beautiful as the Sound is, I normally don’t think about it as I go through my day at home. I can’t see it from where I live, so it’s easy to forget. It seems removed from me.  

Unless I walk through our neighborhood….

Throughout our neighborhood, there are storm drains where rain water can run off. They look like this:

They are not beautiful. But they are very useful and necessary when it rains!

If you examine the picture of this drain, you’ll see a little sign embedded in the concrete of the curb or sidewalk above it. Here’s a closeup of what the little sign says:

This sign tells me that in terms of being connected and thus of potentially having an impact upon it, Puget Sound is not twenty-some miles away but right here at my feet. Right here where I am standing by one of these storm drains, I am connected to the large body of water that is the Sound.

In effect, this:

Is also this:

Something small, utilitarian, and locked in concrete is connected to, and thus part of, something majestic, beautiful, and spacious.

Rather like the relationship we have with sacredness

Every time I take a walk around the neighborhood, I am getting a little lesson in connectedness. Each time I see one of these drains with its accompanying sign, I’m reminded that what I do in my neighborhood (at least in terms of putting things down these drains) affects Puget Sound. Truly, the Sound starts here.

For me, this is a perfect metaphor for how we are connected with each other and with the world and the universe beyond in many unseen but nonetheless impactful ways. If there is one lesson humanity struggles to learn right now, it is this lesson of just how interconnected we all are. It is a lesson of how our actions can have an effect on people and places in ways we can’t measure by physical proximity. It’s a lesson in our interdependency. 

What we generate in our lives through our thoughts, our emotions, and the ways we choose to express them can have a far-reaching influence in a world that is so much more than just its physical nature and appearances. Love and hate both connect, though with very different consequences.  

It is also a metaphor for how we in our ordinariness and individuality are also part of something vast, special, and all-encompassing. Whether I call it the World, the Universe, or God, we are each part of a source of beauty, spaciousness, and abundant life. We are each part of something larger, a Wholeness affected by all that we do.

---

An Experiment

One of the advantages of David’s Desk being digital is that I can do things I couldn’t if it were printed. My Lorian colleague and friend, James Tousignant, and I do podcasts together. He thought it might be interesting to you, my Reader, if he and I were to have a discussion around the theme of that month’s essay and then add the audio at the end. That way, you could both read my thoughts for that month and also listen to me talk about them with James. So, without further ado, here is this month’s conversation. I hope you enjoy it and the added dimension it brings to David’s Desk.

David's Desk 182 Life and Freedom

Back in the Seventies, I was visited by a mother and her teenage daughter who had become pregnant. They were debating whether to have an abortion. The boy who had gotten her pregnant was also a teenager and had neither the wisdom nor the desire to be a father The mother had been a single parent, and she didn’t want her daughter to go through that experience. The daughter herself was unsure what she wanted.

They came to me to see if I could contact the soul of the developing child and ask it what they should do. This was not something I usually did. When people came to me for advice on life-altering decisions, my standard response was to encourage them to use their own best judgment and not give the power of their agency away to someone else. In this case, however, I found myself almost immediately in touch with the child’s soul who asked that I convey a message to the young mother. I don’t remember the exact words anymore, but essentially it told her that it would abide by her decision but that if she accepted the challenge of motherhood, she would find that this soul was an old friend who would bring blessing into her life. I shared this communication with them, they thanked me, and then they left. I never heard from them again, and I had no idea what the young woman had decided to do.

Twenty years later, I had just finished a large public lecture and was talking informally with a small group who had listened to me. A lovely young woman came up to me and took my hand. She said, “You don’t know who I am, but twenty years ago, my mother came to you for advice on whether to have an abortion. You told her that the child’s soul said that it would bring blessing. I am that child, the soul that you spoke with, and I wanted to thank you. My mother and I have had a wonderful life together.”

This was a powerful moment, one I shall never forget. It was thrilling to see the woman that that soul had become. I was filled with gratitude that I had been able to make that contact at that time.

There have only been two other occasions when a pregnant woman has come to me to ask whether to have an abortion. In one instance I said that I had no inner contact one way or another and that she had to make up her own mind in consultation with her doctor. In the other case, though, as in the first, a soul immediately presented itself to me and said, “Please tell my mother that this pregnancy is out of timing. I got caught in an energetic vortex and should not be incarnating. She has my blessing if she wishes to terminate this pregnancy, though I shall abide by her choice.” I conveyed this message to the woman, who was relieved as she and her boyfriend had not intended to become pregnant and had thought they had taken protective measures…which obviously had failed.

Two pregnancies, and in one case, the soul wished to be born and in the other case, it didn’t. The point is that life is complex, especially when we take the subtle realms into account. In my experience, the beginning of an incarnation is when the soul connects in a permanent and intimate way with its physical form. But this can happen anytime along a continuum of development, making it problematic to say that this is the moment when that life begins. We know when the biological processes of body-formation and gestation begin, and we know their stages of development.

What a purely materialistic approach cannot tell us is when “soul impregnation” occurs. These biological processes can take place whether a soul is involved or not, though, past a certain point of fetal development, the magnetism of the physical organism will attract an ensouling presence. But just when this happens is not the same for every individual. We may say that life begins physically at conception, but in my experience, soul-life—or the ensouling of the fetus—does not necessarily happen then (though other soul-forces such as those of the mother or the father may be present supporting the embryo). I have encountered souls that were only very lightly connected to the form developing in the womb and who, as in the example I mentioned above, were not averse to its termination (which could happen anyway through miscarriage), and I’ve encountered souls that keenly desired incarnation and were engaged in the subtle formation of their body even before their parents actually had intercourse that would lead to conception.  

But knowledge of the subtle dimension of life and incarnation is rare in our society. We have medical knowledge, religious beliefs, an evaluation of our life situation, and a sense of the value and sanctity of life, and from this, we draw the wisdom we need as best we can.

We are witnessing a collision between two spiritual principles: the sanctity of freedom, especially the freedom to choose as well as the freedom to take responsibility for our choices, and the sanctity of life. Life requires freedom and freedom requires life. They are complements to each other. But in our society, we have turned them into adversaries. How we resolve this will determine how whole and healthy our society can become.

There is no question that our society—and humanity in general—needs a strong dose of what Albert Schweitzer called a “reverence for all life.” There are so many ways we celebrate death (or the threat of death) as a way to solve problems or to remove what we don’t like or what is different from us. When a politician claims he or she is pro-life and pro-gun, or a society celebrates saving babies while also celebrating arming adults so they can kill other adults, there is a contradiction here that would be ludicrous if it weren’t so tragic. Life is sacred. One can’t agree to this on the one hand and deny it on the other.

In a similar way, we need the freedom to shape our lives and to make our own decisions. A monoculture is a vulnerable ecology, one lacking resilience or a capacity to change as the world changes. It requires more energy to sustain because life moves towards diversity, not uniformity. When we restrict peoples’ right to make their own decisions, to be diverse in their individuality, we create human monocultures, and we weaken ourselves in the process. Life is harmed, not helped by diminishing an individual’s sovereignty and ability to make his or her decisions.

What must be added to this discussion is a third element, a third spiritual principle. This is the principle of limits. Life unchecked without limits devours itself and its environment; it becomes a cancer, and the result will be collapse and death. Freedom without limits is anarchy, a state in which we become less free because we become less responsible to the larger wholeness of which we are always a part. If I claim the freedom to pollute as I see fit, my environment will suffer, and I will suffer with it. A selfish freedom creates limits that make it no freedom at all.

There is no question that we are grappling with momentous questions and challenges as we move ahead in the twenty-first century. Our best chances, I believe, arise when we can honor the sanctity of life, the sanctity of freedom, and the sanctity of limits. This may seem paradoxical and even contradictory, but only because we are choosing one or the other of these and not seeing how they come together, as we must, in a larger wholeness.

David's Desk 181 Anger And...

As I sit down to write this, my soul is aching from the senseless killing of nineteen young elementary school children and two of their teachers in Uvalde, Texas. It brings to an end a month of horrors in which we have seen the targeted massacre of African-Americans in a grocery store in Buffalo as well as the ongoing catastrophe that is the Ukraine-Russia war, where schools and hospitals are targeted by missiles to terrorize and demoralize a population. And these are just the atrocities that have made the headlines, the tip of a planetary iceberg of human trauma inflicted by other humans.

There are different ways one can respond to this: grief, sorrow, compassion, a reaching out to bring help and comfort. But anger is surely on the top of the list, anger at those outworn attitudes and behaviors that fail to recognize our common humanity and are unable to accept that our survival depends on our ability to communicate and cooperate with each other.

Where there is inertia, anger is a powerful motivator to bring about change.  Anger can transform into the courage to confront habits of thought that promote greed, injustice, selfishness, and the well-being of one group (or one individual) above that of others, and behaviors that protect incompetence and ignorance in the name of “business as usual.”  ronically, we can be angry at the way anger is used as a tool to divide us in order that a few may gain and maintain power at the expense of the many.

Anger is rightly seen metaphorically as a fire. As such, it can provide the energy to change. It can burn away what is unhealthy and rotten. But like fire, it can injure those who wield it. It can spread in unpredictable ways and consume what should be cherished as well as what should be removed. The person who holds anger in her or his heart can be damaged by it, which can lead to damaging others. Who knows what unresolved anger led the Uvalde shooter to buy a gun and attack a school?

Anger can be useful, but it should be seen as part of a process, not as a destination. We can think “anger, and….”  I am angry, and my anger leads me to change. I am angry, and my anger leads me to positive action. I am angry, and my anger leads me to seek understanding and a new vision. I am angry, and my anger leads me to stand up to what is harmful in my world.

Of course, it takes an act of intention and morality to make anger part of a creative, internal act of alchemy in which something transformative and healing emerges. It is easy for anger to simply become more anger, destruction, killing, and death. Anger is an elemental power, and if we give it the reins, it can take us over a cliff, and often others with us. There is nothing wrong with feeling anger. What matters is what we then become and what we do. What is important is how we determine what comes after the “and….”

Let’s think of this as an alchemical process. I have a hot substance that I want to transform into something useful, but to do so, I need to pour it into a container so I can work with it. If you’ve ever poured very hot water into a thin glass, only to have the glass shatter, you know that the strength and durability of the container is important. This is true when we are the container and anger is the hot substance. How we hold this anger determines whether the process can proceed towards a constructive “and…” or whether we shatter and are damaged.

For me, the essential ingredient of our inner container is love.  It can also be formed by joy, compassion, goodwill, a positive vision, and the hope that always opens doors to possibilities. In the end, though, it is love that provides the inner strength and resilience that can safely hold the intensity of our anger and ensure it can—and will—be transformed into something positive and powerful.

This past month, a friend sent me the YouTube video of Dr. Timothy Shriver’s commencement address at Georgetown University:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF0bMQusMy4 

Dr. Shriver is the son of Sargent Shriver who helped found the Peace Corps and has himself been the Chairman of the Special Olympics for several years. It’s an inspiring address, in which he says, “I don’t believe that ‘love your enemies’ is any longer the strategy for saints. I believe it is the new requirement for citizenship,” finishing his talk by affirming, "We can’t heal what we can’t love.”

We diminish ourselves when we underestimate the power of love, and we weaken ourselves when we mistake the power of anger as a force of vengeance or retribution for the harms in the world, whether to ourselves or to others. But when justifiable anger is held and transformed by a love that seeks to heal and uplift, then the “and…” that can result is a power that can change the world.

David's Desk 180 Gourmet of the Soul

My father was an engineer by profession but a gourmet chef by hobby. He loved to cook and in particular, to create amazing dishes from scratch relying not on a recipe but on his own sense of flavors. His mouth was like a chemical analysis laboratory. Give him a taste of something, and he could tell you the ingredients, the spices that may have been used, the proportions of one thing versus another. He was a virtuoso of the kitchen.

I inherited none of that talent. In fact, I have virtually no sense of smell—never have had—and thus a diminished sense of taste. When it comes to fine dining, as long as I have ketchup, I’m good! Still, I loved watching my dad cook, seeing his delight at producing something wonderful, and I always enjoyed whatever he concocted.

I got to thinking about this when I read something this past month about the importance of having a spiritual path in these challenging times. This is a sentiment with which I would agree, but the author’s definition of a “spiritual path” was different from my own. He was thinking of something formal, a tradition that had its own beliefs, practices, rituals, and so on, all of which would provide a place of comfort and relief from the buffeting of world events. It was as if there was a “daily path” that we walked while doing our work and attending to our affairs and then there was a “spiritual path” that could take us out of the world for a time, allowing us to renew and refresh ourselves.

I think having practices that renew and refresh are important, but my idea of a spiritual path is different. In thinking about this difference, I got to thinking about my father in the kitchen. For him, cooking was about combining the main ingredients such as meat, vegetables, grains, and so forth with spices. Dad knew how to cook the main ingredients, but it was in knowing and choosing just the right spices and their combination that his talent shone. He had a large rack of spices, and he knew precisely how and when to use each one to get the effect he desired. For him, spices weren’t the meal—you still needed the main ingredients—but they made the meal and transformed it into something special and unforgettable.

This is what a spiritual path is, for me. It is a collection of spices that can transform the ordinary fare of everyday activities into something special, something uplifting, something healing, something inspiring, something enriching. These “spices” are flavors like love, compassion, listening, respect, forgiveness, understanding, calmness, bravery, and so on. Life gives us plenty of opportunities to try any or all of these out. A spiritual path for me is having access to a spice rack of spiritual qualities and knowing which to use, when and how to make a moment shine with Light. Walking the spiritual path is really learning to cook in the kitchen of everyday life.

There are lots of recipes for how to live a spiritual life and act in a spiritual manner. It’s wonderful having recipes. I’m certainly not against them. In fact, you wouldn’t want to eat a meal I’d cooked unless you knew I’d followed a recipe. But life is unpredictable. We don’t always know what ingredients it’s going to present us or what the “kitchen” of the moment will be like. There may be no recipe for the situation in which we find ourselves, no “right way” to solve a problem or fulfill an opportunity. This is when we have to improvise with the spiritual spices we have, the qualities we’ve developed in ourselves.

My dad learned about spices by using them. I’m sure he made mistakes; not everything he cooked was always a gourmand’s delight. But he practiced tasting them and using them until the nature of the spice was part of who he was.

This is what we do with those qualities which we call “spiritual” but which are really the qualities that make us most human and enable us to create wholeness and joy in our world. We practice them in daily life with each other until they become part of us. We master the taste of joy, love, courage, compassion, trust, kindness, and so on by using them. Sure, we may make a mistake, but we learn how to make these qualities our own so that we can make them part of our world. We become gourmets of the soul.

It’s the spicy spiritual path!

David's Desk 179 Sweet Sixteen

With this essay, I’m starting my sixteenth year of writing these monthly David’s Desks. Honestly, I had no idea when I started doing this in 2006 at the age of 61 that I’d still be sharing my “Desk” when I was 77. That these essays have continued for so long is due in no small measure to you, my faithful readers, and to your support. You have given my thoughts a warm reception, and this has encouraged me to keep going.

When I started David’s Desk, George Bush was President. We were two years away from the subprime crisis that came close to derailing the world’s economy. We were two years away from seeing the first African-American elected President of the United States. For that matter, we were one year away from Apple introducing the iPhone in 2007. While not the first “smartphone,” (IBM has the honor of having produced that in 1994), it was the first to give unfettered complete access to the Internet, in essence putting a computer in your pocket. That opened up whole new worlds of interconnection and communication, giving us the modern phenomenon of social media with all its benefits and challenges, its rewards and its dangers. And speaking of social media, Facebook opened its doors to the public the same year as David’s Desk began.

In other words, a lot has happened ever since I began writing these essays. Through it all, my intent here has not been to “follow the news” or to write about whatever current event is in the headlines. As it says in the prologue above, my desire has been to share “thoughts and tools for the spiritual journey,” as seen from my perspective. As best I can, I have tried to make each essay reflect on who we are and the resources we have as spiritual beings in touch with timelessness, resources that can then inspire the life we lead in the midst of time and the events of the world.

That will continue to be my objective.

Thinking about the history of David’s Desk (some of the earlier “Desks” were collected and published as a small book, The Flame of Incarnation), I went back this morning to re-read the very first essay I wrote. I wanted to see what thoughts had been in my head all those years ago. True to my objective, they were not tied to any particular event in 2006 but spoke to a truth about our own whole nature. I found them as relevant now as they were back then. So, I decided that in honor of starting this sixteenth year of David’s Desk, I would send you the one that started this experiment. I hope you enjoy it!

NO MUGGLES HERE

I don’t know if your family is a fan of Harry Potter. Mine is. As the books have come out over the years, we have enjoyed more and more J. K. Rowling’s engaging tale of the boy wizard and his friends. In fact, my youngest daughter and I have made a ritual of attending the midnight release parties at our local bookstore whenever a new Potter book has come out. When our four kids were younger, we would all gather in the living room and listen while my wife read the latest installment. It was fun and exciting. Rowling tells a great yarn.

In Harry Potter’s universe, the world is divided into magic-users, known collectively as wizards and witches, and non-magic-users, known as muggles. Much of the fun of the books comes from reading the author’s invention of new words and terms; as neologisms go, muggles is about as good as it gets.

The big difference between Rowling’s fictional universe and ours is that, however fun a word it is, there are no muggles here. We are all magic-users.

Now I’m not talking about fantasy magic, the kind that Harry uses or a wizard in a game of Dungeons and Dragons. Stories, while fun, deceive us about magic by turning it into something implausible. We come to think of magic as wizards hurling thunderbolts and flying through the air.

But there is an everyday magic that surrounds us that is so common, even in its occasional unexpectedness, that we don’t pay attention to it. And I’m not talking about the “magic of life” or the “magic of our senses” or any other metaphor for the wonderment we can find in life.

Here are some examples. I’m about to say something, and someone else says the same thing before me. I’m thinking of a friend and she calls unexpectedly. I need to see someone and I accidentally run into that person in a store. I need money that I don’t know how to get and a check arrives out of the blue in the mail from an unexpected source.

Here’s a true story of magic at work. A friend of mine wanted to buy some special bells for her mother but could not find them anywhere. One afternoon she phoned a friend but accidentally dialed the wrong number. The person at the other end turned out to be the clerk in a gift store she had never heard of. More importantly, this store turned out to be the sole importers in the whole city of these special bells.

We call these kinds of events synchronicities, manifestations, good luck, God’s hand, or coincidences. We see the way people long married can complete each other’s sentences, and we talk about them “being in resonance.”

What all these kinds of events and experiences have in common is that something intangible—a thought, a desire, an intent—is having an effect upon something tangible. The immaterial and invisible is affecting the material and the visible. For example, one day I had to give a lecture in the city at a place that is notorious for having very limited parking as one has to park on busy city streets. It was raining, and I was not anticipating a long walk from wherever I could park back to the lecture hall. So I visualized an empty parking place right in front of the hall. When I got there, though, all the parking spaces were full, but on a hunch, I went around the block. Nothing was available, but as I came in view of the lecture hall again, a car pulled out right where I had visualized my parking place. I was able to park conveniently right in front of the hall. An invisible, intangible thought in my head had a visible, tangible consequence.

We can call this coincidence, but it happens time and again in everyone’s life in one way or another. Our thoughts, feelings, intents, desires, wishes, fears, and hopes have a way of manifesting, the invisible world becoming visible.

The evidence is that life responds to us; it configures to our inner nature, to our thoughts, feelings, and spirit. This is real magic.

Why does it do this? How does it happen? What makes this magic work and create a response? Over the centuries, people have come up with different theories: the law of attraction, or the power of thought, of imagination, or of the will. All of these undoubtedly contribute and are part of this magic. At the same time, we all have examples of when they don’t work, of when we thought positively about something and it did not happen or wasn’t attracted or when our will or imagination did not bring about the result we wished.

The point then is not that there is no magic but that it operates more holistically than we may have thought. It isn’t just the law of attraction or the power of thought or the use of the imagination. Other things may be involved, at least some of the time. And if you think about it, this makes sense. Life responds to us as whole beings, not just as thinking beings or feeling beings or imagining beings. What evokes a response at a given moment may be a mystery; we may have to do some attentive observation and experimentation to gain clues about what works for us and what doesn’t. Each of us may come to this magic uniquely, based on our particular individuality; what works for someone else may not work for us because we are different people. But what is certain is that life will and does configure to us. It does respond. Who we are affects and shapes the world we experience. We are the makers and unmakers of worlds. This is everyday magic.

Experiment with this. Try it out. It may not for you be as straight-forward as thinking, “I want that new car,” and it will appear. How magic works for you may operate differently based on your unique relationship with life, the way your interiority and inner nature relates and configures to the world and vice versa. But your magic will work for you and is working all the time. Be a scientist of your own invisible world and investigate to find out how.

The first step into using your magic may be the same for everyone. I believe it is. It consists of simply acknowledging to oneself, “I am not a muggle. I am a magician.”

David's Desk 178 The Light Bank

For many reasons, including jobs lost due to the COVID pandemic, there are many people in our area who are experiencing food insecurity. To meet this challenge, neighborhood food banks gather and distribute food to those in need. These food banks are invaluable not only as a place from which to receive help but also as a central place, a hub to receive donations of food and money. If I contribute to my local food bank, that’s a way for me to reach and help those families who have needs but who are unknown to me personally. Our local food bank does know these specifics and can distribute aid accordingly.

This past week, along with millions of others around the world, I’ve been filled with sorrow for the events transpiring in the Ukraine. This is a tragedy for the Ukrainians and for the average Russian, who has no more desire to invade another country and wage war than I do to invade Canada. One man’s megalomania is adding millions of victims to the ranks of an already too-large number of those suffering from the many ways humans can persecute each other.

As most of you know, my experience embraces the reality of a subtle, non-physical dimension of spirit and energy in which we are all profoundly interconnected, even, to borrow a word from quantum physics, “entangled.” What affects one can affect all, and vice versa. I don’t write about this dimension much here in David’s Desk; I leave that to my classes and workshops. But today, I feel I want to offer an insight from that side of my life and work.

Consciously or unconsciously, we all participate in the subtle dimension of the world. When we are aware of this as a reality in our lives, we discover we have the ability, through thought, feeling, imagination, and embodiment, to create a field of energy around ourselves that can hold a spiritual quality such as love, peace, courage, compassion, and the like. Such a field of energy, when shared with another, can be a source of vitality and blessing, transferring that quality from our life to theirs. As part of their life and subtle energy field, that shared quality can make a difference. 

What we create through our love and caring can be shared through our love and caring. Most importantly, where the subtle dimension is concerned, distance is not a factor. Resonance is. If I can feel connected with someone in my mind and heart, then it doesn’t matter where that person is in the world. As far as transferring that energy field of quality from my life to theirs is concerned, they might as well be standing next to me.

Sharing a helpful, vital, spiritual, emotional, or mental quality with another who is in difficulty or who is suffering somewhere in the world, in order to enhance their ability to deal with and change that difficulty, is called subtle activism. It can envelop a person who is in despair with hope, with courage, with clarity, and with attunement to their own sacred core. Such subtle activism can be directed towards individuals or towards environments or towards collective fields of thought and feeling. 

The more specific one can be when doing subtle activism, the easier it is to establish resonance between yourself and another (even when that “other” may be a collective field of energy shared by many). Simply put, a general rule of thumb is that you can share best with whom or what you know best. For example, if I know a family who is suffering from food insecurity, then I can bring them food directly, and more importantly, I know exactly the kind and amount of food that they need. I can tailor my response to their specific situation.

But when it comes to subtle activism, more often than not, I don’t have that kind of specific connection or information. Here is where the example of the food bank is a useful metaphor. There are “Light Banks” in the subtle dimensions held and managed by various spiritual beings whose purpose is to do exactly what a food bank does: to receive “donations” of Light, of prayers, of goodwill and blessings from individuals who wish to help but don’t know specifically where their good energies should be directed.Such Light Banks do know and can “distribute” or share these blessings specifically with other individuals and situations that are reaching out for spiritual help, for guidance, and for blessing. In my own subtle activism work, therefore, I connect with an appropriate Light Bank and know that by adding my intention and blessing to it, help will be given where it is needed, even when I don’t know who or what that recipient may be.

To help you visualize this process, here is a sample example of how I might go about this. If you wish, you can adapt this example to your own unique style and way of engaging with subtle and spiritual dimensions.

A SUBTLE ACTIVISM EXAMPLE USING A “LIGHT BANK:”

I begin by imagining what quality of subtle, vital energy I’d like to share with people in the Ukraine and thus which I’d like to “donate” to the Light Bank. Let’s say, I’d like to share the qualities of courage, steadfastness, hope, and resilience with the citizens of Kiev as they live through the siege of their city and seek to protect their homeland. The first thing I do is imagine as fully as I can what I feel like when I embody these qualities. I don’t want this to be just a mental or imaginative image but something I really feel in my body. This aspect of embodiment is important. We generate subtle energies and qualities as a full person, not just as an act of thought or feeling, a mind or a heart. Our body is definitely a participant in the process.

Therefore, I want to discern in myself the felt sense of the quality or blend of qualities I want to share. I want to know myself as an embodiment of these qualities.

Once I have this felt sense and I can feel the quality or qualities I wish to share as mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical realities in and around me, then I put my imagination to work. I know what a Light Bank feels like in the subtle dimension, but I don’t know what it looks like in any physical sense. But I don’t have to. Subtle allies can read my intention. What I need is a pictorial or imaginal language that demonstrates my intention and enables me to connect with the proper subtle ally.

So, I picture a building (and it could be anything: a person, a place in nature, an abstract geometric form, etc.) over which hangs a sign: “Kiev Light Bank: Donations Welcome!” I’m using the physical model of a local food bank to give shape to my subtle intention. This image of the Kiev Light Bank is a symbol of where I want my blessing to go, and those in the subtle realms who are in charge of such a Light Bank can easily read this symbol and discern this intent.

In my imagination, I go up to this building, holding steady in myself the felt sense of the quality or qualities I am bringing to the Light Bank, and there I meet its “Custodian,” the being who receives my “donation.” I can imagine this Custodian anyway I wish; again, I’m working with symbols here that connect my physical mind with the non-physical reality of the subtle and spiritual dimension. Standing with this Custodian, I visualize my package of energy, the felt sense of qualities I’m holding in my whole being, shifting from me to this representative of the Light Bank. If you are doing this, you can see this happening in any manner that gives you a felt sense of the reality of what you are doing. 

Once this sharing and exchange has taken place, I give thanks to the Custodian and to the Light Bank, affirming that it knows how to both magnify and distribute my blessing and contribution of energy to the city of Kiev, to its over-lighting angel, and to the people who are part of that city.

At this point, I let it all go, bringing my awareness fully back to my everyday self, my everyday life, and to my own wholeness and balance.

This is a simple example, one that, as I say, you can adapt however you find useful to yourself, should you wish to work with a Light Bank. In this context, I would also remind you that you can do this work with Light Banks connected to the Russian people. They are as much victims of this tragedy as the Ukrainians. Perhaps, if their Light, their resolve, their courage is empowered by subtle activism, they will find a way to bring balance and justice back to their country and peace to the world.

The important point about subtle activism is that it is rooted in the fact that we are all part of one world, which includes a shared ecology of spirit and energy. None of us is without the power to contribute to this shared world and help nudge it in directions of wholeness. We are all citizens of every country on earth, part of nature, part of Gaia. Subtle activism is a finger pointing to this reality as well as offering a way of acting from that connectedness for the blessing of all.

May all our Light Banks be filled to overflowing, their blessings advancing goodwill and peace on Earth.

---

Editor's Note: Here are some of Lorian's resources on subtle activism if you would like to learn more:

Webinars and classes, including:

• Free webinar, March 10: Why Subtle Activism?

• March 17-30: Subtle Activism Card Deck: Making a Difference in the World

• Subtle Activism Self-Directed Study (scroll down the page to find it)

• Free webinar, March 31: Exploring Subtle Perception

• April 7-May 18: Subtle Energies I Standing Whole

(the latter class and webinar are not directly about subtle activism, but provide an excellent foundation for all subtle activism work)

Books and Card Decks, including:

• The Subtle Activism Card Deck and Manual

• The Wonder-Full World of the Home

• The Wonder-Full World of the Home: Second Story

The above book links lead to Amazon.com via Lorian’s affiliate link, which allows Lorian to receive a small commission on the sale at no extra cost to you. Most of the books are also available through Barnes and Noble online or can be ordered through your local bookstore.

David's Desk 177 Heartful

I was unloading the dishes this morning and practicing mindfulness as I did so. One benefit of mindfulness is that it draws your attention to the present moment. So often our thoughts go to the future or the past, and our awareness of the present gets squeezed and constricted between remembering and anticipating. Yet, it is in the present that we find our power. I cannot act in the future or in the past; the former has yet to materialize and exists only in imagination; the latter is over and exists in memory. It’s in the present that I can summon the wholeness of my being into action. Even as basic an action as simply being aware in the moment makes my surroundings and my presence in them come alive, opening possibilities that I might miss otherwise.

So, mindfulness is a powerful practice for marshalling our attentiveness and potentials in the present moment. Its usefulness is shown in how ubiquitous the teaching of mindfulness has become; it can be found in schools, institutions, corporations, even the military. In some ways, it is in danger of becoming a cliché. Being mindful is a powerful, even a life-changing tool; it would be a shame for it to become only a fad.

This morning, though, while unloading the dishes from the dishwasher, I reflected on the primacy that we give to mind, a bias left over from the Age of Reason in Western culture. Why not a practice of “bodyfulness” or “sensory-fullness?” Why not “heartfulness?” The body has its own form of attentiveness, as does the heart. 

Actually, we do have such practices. Professional athletes, dancers and martial artists, for instance, all develop a high kinesthetic awareness, a form of “bodyfulness,” which, like mindfulness, draws one’s attention to the present. 

I, however, am no athlete (whatever fantasies I may entertain!). If I were to describe my daily spiritual practice, though, it would not be mindfulness as much as “heartfulness.”

For me, mindfulness focuses on myself and my being aware and present in the moment. Heartfulness, though, focuses on the “other” and what I might add to their life or beingness in the moment. This “other” doesn’t need to be a living being. It can be an artifact as well. Incarnational Spirituality has an exercise called the “Touch of Love.” It’s very simple. You focus upon a source of love within you, which many people find located in their heart, and you draw the energy of that love, like drawing water from a well, into your body, down your arms, and into the fingers of your hand. Then, you touch something, visualizing that love flowing out from you as a generative source to bless whatever you are touching. 

It’s very much a heartfulness exercise, one that honors the life, the integrity, and the wellbeing of the object you are touching. It forms a connection of love in the moment, and I have found that where such a connection exists, the blessings are reciprocal. Beyond that, it reminds me as I do it that everything is alive at a subtle, energetic level; I am—we all are—a part of a living universe

The wonderful thing is that we can “touch” the world around us in more than just physical ways. The “touch of love” can be through our eyes in the way we see, acknowledge, and appreciate something or someone. It can be through our ears as we appreciate the sounds we hear and the sources from which the sounds come. It can even be through our thoughts and imagination as well, which is where mindfulness and heartfulness can merge and reinforce each other.

Mindfulness makes me aware of the moment. Heartfulness makes me aware that I am part of a living community all around me, one with which I can commune and relate, especially through love. This morning, as I took each dish, each piece of cutlery, each utensil out of the dishwasher, I could let my appreciation and blessing for that object flow through my fingers. After all, whatever it looks like on the surface—whether a plate, a bowl, a fork, a pan—it is always a manifestation of the Sacred, an expression of the One Life that permeates all things. How could I not be heartful with it? We are kin on the long journey of evolution; we are participants in the manifestation of a universe.

So much of what divides us at the moment and generates conflict exists on the level of concepts, ideas, and perceptions. They are conflicts of the mind, of misinformation, of “fake news,” of propaganda and deceit. Perhaps in heartfulness we can find the bridges over the chasms that thoughts are creating.

David's Desk 176

In my last David’s Desk, I offered a prayer for December as we entered the Holiday season and its celebrations of Light. I wish to do the same for January as we enter a new year, filled with possibilities, with challenges, with needs, and with hope.

May this be my prayer each day of this New Year:

May I appreciate this day the presence of love in my world.
May my actions increase this presence.

May I appreciate this day the value of my life and my power to make a positive difference in the lives of others.
May I act with this power.

May I appreciate this day the wonder of the world and all its life.
May my actions serve the wellbeing of this life.

May I appreciate this day Humanity’s efforts to unfold a global awareness that brings peace and nurture to the Earth.
May my actions support this unfoldment.

May the Light of my Soul be present to me this day, and through me, to all whom I meet.

May I make this day a chalice to hold and share the blessings seeking to manifest in my world.

May I make this day a seed of Hope.

David's Desk 175 The Presence of Light

This is the month when, in one form or another, we celebrate Light: its presence, its return, its wonder, and its miracles in our lives. My “Desk” this month comes in the form of a prayer on all our behalf.

May we know the Light that is eternally within us.
May we be that Light to the world.
May we know the Light within all the life around us.
May we serve that Light that all may thrive.
May we know the Light that yet seeks to unfold.
May we be its unfolding that our tomorrows may be blessed.
May Light be Present in who we are, where we are, and in all that we do.
May we celebrate the Presence of Light.

However you celebrate this December, may your life be enriched with blessing and with joy. I will see you again in 2022. A Happy New Year to you!

David's Desk 174 Changing the Game

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 post with others, please feel free to do so; however, the material is ©2021 by David Spangler.

When I was ten years old, I read Homer’s Odyssey (not, I assure you, in the original Greek!). I was enthralled with the whole story of the siege of Troy, the actions of heroes like Achilles, Hector, Ajax, and Ulysses, and the interventions of gods and goddesses. What a tale to fire my imagination! I immediately set about to translate it into a board game so that I could play out the story. It took me a couple of months, but eventually I had a full-fledged board game with rules that only I could understand and play, which nevertheless brought me hours of enjoyment. I was a strange kid!

This began a life-long love of board games. Not just the “family classics” like Monopoly, Clue, The Game of Life, and Careers. In the Fifties, an obscure board game publisher named Avalon Hill produce a line of historical war games in which you could play a famous battle, like Gettysburg, and, in the words of the publisher, “attempt to change history!” I was well and truly hooked.  

Avalon Hill was the first of many small, independent game publishers that made up what came to be called the “adventure game hobby.” These companies produced board games that allowed the players to be famous generals from history, run your own multinational corporation, lead an expedition to an unknown planet, or delve deep into an ancient dungeon filled with gold…and monsters. They were all a feast for the imagination.

They also tended to have long, complex rule books, which I loved. In my geeky mind, there was nothing like curling up with a sixty-page rule book! Obviously, this was a hobby for nerds, and when national board game conventions came into existence, there were thousands of us!

For years, nearly all these boardgames were competitive with winners (usually just one) and losers.

Recently, though, there has been a change in the industry. New generations of gamers (including my own children) are enjoying board games that encourage or even require cooperation rather than competition. Either everyone wins or everyone loses. These games not only present compelling challenges to be met and dealt with. They also give players the fun of discovering how to work as a team and of overcoming obstacles together.  

The cooperative mode has become so popular among many gamers that now many new board games are designed to allow for cooperative, as well as competitive, play. Many games are entirely cooperative. This is a huge change from the games of my youth.

I think about this when I think about the climate crisis and generally about the various social and economic crises that humanity is facing. For millennia, we have been playing competitive games with each other and with nature. Winning, often called “survival of the fittest,” is everything. We are seeing the consequences of this in our world today.

One of my friends from the Lindisfarne Association was the microbiologist Lynn Margulis. One of her seminal discoveries in her research with single-celled organisms was the vital role symbiosis plays in evolution. As it turns out, it is cooperation, not competition, that gives the greatest advantage in evolutionary survival and advancement.

This is a truth well-known to our indigenous ancestors who saw us as a part of nature, not as a competitor against nature. It’s a truth that the climate crisis and other environmental and ecological crises is forcing modern humanity to remember.

What we are discovering is that it never was really a competitive game. It has always been fundamentally a cooperative game. Ignoring this is now threatening us with species survival, which would make us all the biggest losers ever.

When I listen to the news and look out at the world, what is evident to my gamer’s sensibility is that many haven’t realized that rules have changed. They are still acting, still legislating, still behaving in politics and economics as if competition and winning were the way the game is played.  But many others have realized or are discovering that, living on planet Earth, we are in a different game and now need to play in cooperative mode.

It’s not and never has been the game our society taught us to play. It’s past time to learn new rules.

---

An Apology

In my last David’s Desk, I quoted from an email that my friend Patrick S. Wolfe sent me. Here is what I said:

“I want to close this essay with some thoughts shared with me by another friend, Patrick S. Wolfe, a writer living in Canada.  Over the years, he has taken part in several of my online classes and forums, and he always has good, wise thoughts to contribute. After taking part in a recent online forum focusing on how we can meet the future, he sent me these comments in an email. I could not have said this better.

May all who can, open to the qualities of fiery hope, peace, joy, and love, and to the potential and energy of the new civilization unfolding around us.  May love, not fear, hope, not despair, joy, not distress, compassion, not anger or hate, enfold each of us in safety, protection, and courage.  May we have the will to do what is available to us to bring the new civilization into being.  May my strength, my calm, my courage, my joy, my love empower at least one other person to join in this enterprise and become a source of vision and new life.

Be peacefully urgent and aware, open to engage with love and power with what the world brings to your doorstep.”

As it turns out, I may not have been able to say this better, but in fact, I did say it, translating something one of my subtle colleagues had said.  The challenge is that when I receive a communication from a non-physical source in the spiritual realms, it is rarely in words. It is a direct transmission of meaning through a blend of telepathy, the sharing of thoughts, and telempathy, the sharing of feeling. I then supply the words so I can put it on paper or share it with another. After doing so, however, I often forget the actual words I’ve written, though I always can remember the actual energetic transmission itself. That, for me, is where the meaning is, not in the words themselves.

For this reason, when Patrick sent me this quote, I didn’t recognize it as something I’d written but went ahead and shared it with you as something he had said. Patrick immediately let me know, wondering humorously if I were setting him up for a charge of plagiarism, making it seem as if he were laying claim to the authorship of my words. It was an inadvertent mistake on my part, a quirk and consequence of “trans-dimensional” communication and a seventy-six year old memory, for which I take full responsibility. You’re off the hook, Patrick, my friend, and I do apologize for any inconvenience my mistake may have caused.