Monday, January 30, 2006

Let in the Light!
I'm not usually drawn to gurus or the kind of spiritual growth where transmissions of energy are required, preferring to access higher states directly myself. But some people have come to my attention who are giving transmissions of an energy that comes from a guru who says that if we can achieve 64,000 enlightened souls on the planet, the earth can easily shift out of duality, divisiveness, and suffering. Curious, I went to a demonstration for a small group, during which the practitioners walked around placing their hands on our heads for a few minutes. During my experience, I had a quick, spontaneous vision of an older, warm, dignified, relaxed me taking her seat at a higher level among a group of beings who were both colleagues and family. We were done! We were satisfied. I experienced a flash of my own self-assigned mission being accomplished, that everything I've ever done has been in concert with the other beings, and everything has been on purpose. And some part of me has always known this. Such a shift of identity! I don't know what the energy did, if it was "special" energy, or if I was just ready to open more and used the session as an excuse, but I feel much less anxiety. There is a feeling in my body that may be a precursor to something akin to enlightenment. I want to start using this word a little more; I sense enlightenment is within reach for many of us in this lifetime.

Monday, January 23, 2006

The Heart is the Highest Brain
I am slowly reading The Biology of Transcendence, by Joseph Chilton Pearce. He makes a case for the heart being the actual fifth level of the brain (the other 4 are in the head), and that we are designed for transcendence. He says, "Neither our violence nor our transcendence is a moral or ethical matter of religion, but rather an issue of biology. We actually contain a built-in ability to rise above restriction, incapacity, or limitation and, as a result of this ability, possess a vital adaptive spirit that we have not yet fully accessed. While this ability can lead us to transcendence, paradoxically it can lead also to violence; our longing for transcendence arises from our intuitive sensing of this adaptive potential and our violence arises from our failure to develop it." I LOVE this! What blocks the natural flow of consciousness from reptile to mammalian to human to soul, is only the perception of fear and separation, which throws us into survival mode, interrupts the transcendence, and irritates us beyond description.

Monday, January 16, 2006

Dissolving Hearts
My heart has been pounding, almost out of my chest, as soon as I lie down to drop into sleep at night. I am not aware of being anxious about anything. Is it a world event I'm picking up on? Is someone I know in danger? When this happened last December, my friend John died suddenly of a heart attack. I could interpret it as me having sympathy pains. Or, looking farther, I might see it as both of us attempting to stretch the capacity of our hearts to let more light, wisdom, love, and warmth shine through. John's heart couldn't take it and he burned right through into the bigger world out there, and became the heart, without limitations. Am I trying to do this without dying? To become the heart and see the world as the heartfield, to experience a seamless communion? Now I rub aromatherapy oil on my chest at night, and bless my heart. I welcome in whatever wants to come and focus on clearing away any guardedness I've inadvertently been holding. I trust my heart. I love it—that it keeps beating.

Monday, January 9, 2006

The Ego and Its "Special Relationships"
It seems that some spiritual force has picked me up by the collar and marched me over to the Unity church to attend a Course in Miracles study group. I read and studied the course many years ago, always liked it. Now I find myself dropping into the book midstream, and wouldn't you know, they're talking about something that is totally pertinent! Tonight we focused on how the ego (the part of the mind based on fear and separation) always forms "special" relationships, and always to get something. It takes people hostage who it thinks can give us what we didn't get in our past. It keeps these people close by attacking them and making them feel guilty, as though it is their responsibility to do this job for us, or we won't love them. They do the same to us—this twisted responsibility game we mistake for love—and we end up in cycles of violence of various degree, where blame, belittling, and sacrifice are the predominant modes. The ego fears forgiveness, thinking it will cause the Other to leave. So anger is the ego's main tool. "All anger is nothing more than an attempt to make someone feel guilty." I think of myself as a loving person, but this is a whole new thing to pay attention to! I do this attacking in insidious ways, deceive myself that I don't. Time for a little radical honesty. . .

Monday, January 2, 2006

Tending as Artform and Worship
I've just returned from Christmas holiday in Florida, visiting my mother and a coterie of 80- and 90-year-olds, who are actively creating good, entertaining lives. Though some are coping with the death of spouses, I am amazed at their positive attitudes. It reminds me that the business of creating our lives as we want does not end; old age is as fertile a time as any. And so much of their entertainment is simple. I've been traveling for 6 months of 2005, and I'm really ready to feel my house, tend to the tidying of its corners, and to my desk which has been gathering piles. I'm craving silence. I'm in a relationship with my house now, cleaning, replacing old things, moving furniture and art, examining how I move through the day here. Where do I stand? Where do I think? When do I shift gears from one activity to another? Focusing on small things, doing mundane tasks well, letting myself relate to the life in my dishwashing liquid, or the death of a lightbulb—no one will see this, but it is a way to love God. I know, and God knows.