The Second Question

The 2nd question to ask before having conversations with spiritual beings is a doozie.

What is a Spiritual Being?

This question generates many, many questions so it is not one that we ask very often. This may also be due to the fact that most of us grew up with “God.”

If the idea of “God” is satisfying to you, you don’t need to read further. And you probably shouldn’t consider my teleseminar, Having Conversations with Spiritual Beings. You probably believe prayer is the only form of interaction with “God” and think the idea of a conversation with a spiritual being is ridiculous or blasphemy.

However, if you feel there are spiritual beings in layers and hierarchies, actually, a whole panoply of gods, between us and “God,” then read on or think on. Play on with my questions below and add your own through the comment function of this blog.

Questions to ponder as a beginning...

Are you a spiritual being?

What is a being and what makes a being spiritual?

Are spiritual beings great dancers - always moving and flexible?

Do they ever tire and rest?

Or are spiritual beings fixed and immovable?

Do spiritual beings need something from us, their creations?

Do spiritual beings live in rocks or roses? swans or hyenas?

Can you see, hear or touch a spiritual being?

Do we have guardian angels?

When a human being dies, what happens to their spirit?

What is an elemental being?

Are there house spirits?

Do spiritual beings have clear roles and tasks?

Do spiritual beings have a voice and a language?

How do you get the attention of a spiritual being?

So many questions.

And here are a few questions of a different sort…

If we pray or meditate, why do we need to have a conversation with a spiritual being?

Are there different conversations for different spiritual beings?

Why would a spiritual being want to have a conversation with a human being?

Why would a human being want to have a conversation with a spiritual being?

Where and when do these conversations take place?

If spiritual beings have all the answers, why did they create the capacity to ask questions?

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Add your questions and your thoughts about spiritual beings below.

These questions and more will be addressed and explored in my teleseminar, "Having Conversations with Spiritual Beings." If you want to engage in a conversation with other human beings on this rarely discussed or explored human capacity and challenge, join me. The conversation begins this Sunday, November 1 - All Saint's Day! Click here.

Two Things to Ask Before Having a Conversation With a Spiritual Being

The First Question:

What is a conversation?

How many conversations do you have in the course of a day, a week, a year, a lifetime?

Having been part of so many conversations, how do you define conversation? If you were to write your own definition of conversation would it change your response to the the question about how many conversations do you have?

Let me help you with your thinking about the meaning of conversation.

The key root to converse is a Latin word, vertare, which means to turn. Con, of course means with. Conversation as a word means “turning with.”

When I think of “turning with” two images appear: spirals and dancing.

Spirals: spinning inward to the details or outward to the expansions.

Dancing: leading and following, choreography, navigating the floor.

How do I “turn with” in the art of speaking and listening? I turn toward and in turning toward, I also turn away.

I am turning toward my conversation partner and away from myself when I listen. I am turning toward myself and away from my partner when I am speaking.

What speaking and listening is not a conversation? I think of empty phrases, reporting of data, untruths. What else?

Do I pay attention to this turning? Does it matter?

Are most of my conversations about thoughts and ideas, about feelings and emotions, or about deeds and possibilities? What does the content of the conversation tell me about my turning and what I turn with?

And the contexts of my conversations? What are they?

Do work with these questions. Any answers you come up with write them down and then turn them into questions. Wisdom lives in the next questions, so always find the next questions. Is there a conversation if there is no question? Is the question the turning?


I want to read your thoughts on conversation. Please leave a comment below.
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To learn the second question you must ask before having a conversation with a spiritual being, wait for my next post to the Inner Year blog in a few days.

November in the Inner Year is the time to pay attention to conversations with Spiritual Beings. The darkening of the Sun asks us to turn away from material existence and the surface of things. The soul is turning toward what exists beyond the surface seeking spiritual contexts and content and beings behind, beyond, below and above.

Now is the time to evolve your capacity to have conversations of all kinds and all purposes with spiritual beings. Learn the meaning, the design and the grace of these conversations.

I am offering a 4 session Inner Year teleseminar: Having Conversations With Spiritual Beings. In the teleseminar we will explore these questions and others about conversations. There are two options for this teleseminar series. The Basic is 4-40 minute presentations of content. It is essentially a lecture over the phone. You will find lots of insight and creative possibilities on having conversations with spiritual beings. However, it is not a conversation. If you want to engage in a conversation on having conversations with spiritual beings, you will want to take the Intensive Option which includes many conversations. (I didn’t make this distinction between the two learning options until I wrote this blog.) Visit here to learn more about the teleseminars.

Do invite your conversation partners in life to join you in the teleseminars. Forward this blog to all your friends.

Three Adversaries to a Good Life

The adversaries to a good life are many. They sneak into our personal thoughts, feelings and behaviors and oppose our healing, our liberation and our empowerment - the good life. They are internal and external forces that distract, disturb, delay or destroy our attention and intention. When we seek to learn or express truth, beauty or goodness, they confuse us and cause us to doubt. They work to get us stuck, when we need to move. They demand we resent, when we need to forgive. They seduce. They inflate. They arouse selfish desires. And so much more.

The adversaries know how to hide in the shadows of our consciousness and circumstances while they play with us. They are masters at “smoke and mirrors.” They create illusions and delusions as they convince us they are good, supportive, comfortable or essential. They will appear of little consequence in the long run of life and convince us to ignore them or they will appear so large, so dramatic, so powerful, so threatening, so beyond our little selves that we could never, ever grasp them, tame them, or vanquish them.

We need to meet the adversaries in the full light of consciousness, our own individual consciousness. We each need our own awareness of these opposers of the good life.

Three Adversaries

Procrastination - put it off. Cras is Latin for tomorrow. Crastinus is Latin for belonging to tomorrow. Life is a verb. You are a verb. Your actions express who you are. Your actions reveal your meaning and significance. Procrastination is a resistance and failure to act in the right time. Do you initiate action and fail to complete it? Or do you fail to initiate and begin the deed? I struggle with completion for the most, putting off the logical steps and trying to leap to a miracle. But when it comes to initiating, here are a few little demons: I put off asking for help. I put off celebrating my life. I put off cleaning up my messes. I put off telling my truth. I put off having fun. I put off managing my money.

Do you sleep better because you have so much to do tomorrow or because you got so much done today? Like me, you probably get more done in a day than you realize. There is a reason to review your day - but the adversaries of procrastination don't want you to do it.

What do I do with all the time I have today because I put off doing everything until the tomorrow that never comes? I think or, to use a better word, I perseverate. Perseverate is to repetitively think a thought long beyond the need to think it. I avoid doing by thinking and thinking and thinking. Others do and do and do to avoid thinking or feeling. Which leads to the next adversary I want to write about.

Habit - an addictive or automatic way of thinking, feeling or acting. Habits dull us, our minds, our hearts, our will. Sharp minds, sensitive hearts, and skilled will keep us strong against other adversaries and capable of many good deeds. We all proudly list our good habits but I will take the risk of asking what is good about any habit? What is good about any action that does not have thought living in it? Do I do a better job brushing my teeth if I think about what I am doing, how I am doing it and why I am doing it while I am doing it? In our crazy world of multi-tasking there is less and less attention and more and more reliance on habit. Does this make for a good life? Habit leads to conformity and the denial of our individuality. We become thoughtlessly obedient to convenience and automaticity. We risk becoming a machine. How great for the adversaries of freedom.

Minimalization - making something small, insignificant, meaningless and unreal.
We take a view of something and determine it is not worthy of attention. We take something in our lives that is significant in its impact and we pretend it is insignificant. We experience something that is bad and convince ourselves that it is okay, normal, even good. Or we look at something that is quite wonderful and dismiss it as ordinary.

How can we express or recognize truth, beauty or goodness in a minimized reality? How can we confront lies, distortion, and harm in a minimized reality?

A good life only exists in the reality of reality.

What are you minimizing in your life? Your loneliness, your anger, your talents, your joy? Look at pretense in your life. What do you pretend is okay, when it is not? Why do you do this? What is really cool and fabulous in your life that you pretend is flawed or insignificant? Why do you do this?


Procrastination, habit and minimalization are adversaries. They are forms of evil. Not doing something in a timely way, not doing something with full consciousness, not seeing the true reality of something will keep us from the good life.

As you look at procrastination, habit and minimalization in your life, observe, don't judge. Evil wants you to judge yourself. Through self-judgment, we identify with and strengthen the adversarial forces. Compassionate self-awareness is our empowerment and redemption.

As you pay attention to “the adversaries,” as you learn the subtle manipulations of evil, you will discover in yourself the following benefits, the elements of a good life:

• Courage
• Compassion
• Stable Balance
• Capacity to take a stand based on moral imagination
• Evolution - growing the wise heart.

Where do we engage with the questions of forces of opposition, of evil? When do we become aware of the role of evil in our personal lives? What are the benefits of meeting evil?

To sign up for my teleseminar on Evil (Sundays at 8:00PM - 9:00PM)
October 11,18, 25 please go to
www.lynnjericho.com/catalog.

Please comment and share your experiences with these three adversaries.

Michaelmas and Continuous Improvement

Archangel Michael's gesture is recognized and attended to each year on September 29th. Michael carries the sword that points to, penetrates, and slays evil. The great works of art in sculpture and painting are always dramatic and active.

In the course of the Inner Year, now is the time to focus on evil. We want to find a clearer, more conscious relationship to evil. Most of us want to avoid this work. Many of us would rather enjoy the entertaining depictions of evil and trust the heroes of novels, movies, plays and TV shows to do the dragon slaying for us.

But, the Michaelic gesture does not demand dramatic deed. It is more often subtle, nuanced, small as a snowflake, raindrop, grain of sand or sunbeam.

And in the realm of time, it appears continuous and endless - think of how many continuous snowflakes it takes to make a blizzard, raindrops to make a monsoon, grains of sand to make a coastline, sunbeams to light the day.

Dragons, particularly the little ones living in our souls, have a way of only playing dead for a glorious moment, before rising up with new vigor.

So, what good is the sword of Michael? More important - how do we find the strength to wield the sword continuously?

To provide an answer I am going to send you to another blog. This post was in my inbox today and I read it before beginning my writing for the morning. The dragon of postponing my work caught me, seduced me, overcame my better self - or so I thought as I clicked on the email.

Presentation Zen is one of the most inspiring blogs I read on a regular basis. Garr Reynolds is a master of design, writes very well and knows what matters in many cases. He has lived and worked in Japan for most of his adult life and often shares the wisdom of Japanese culture as a source of good design. (Michael is constantly admonishing our souls to design a good life.)

Reading Garr's post today was not an avoidance of my task for the morning, but the inspiration for it. He writes about "kaizen" the art of continuous improvement - or, in my eyes, the subtle sword of Michael.

Read Garr's post here.

Garr offers 15 tips for continuous improvement in presentation design. Use your imagination to experience the tips as possibilities for continuous improvement in design your life as a Michaelic gesture, as ways to continuously find the dragons.

Please make comments below. Thanks.

I intend to write a few blog posts on evil over the month of October.

The Mysteries of Balance

A harmonious life is a life of balance. Harmony and balance are feelings, not things! All feelings are experiences belonging to an individual in momentary experiences. However, following our feelings and engaging in objective and compassionate perspective on our lives, our goals and our difficulties, we can design, establish and celebrate our own balanced lives.

Here a couple of insights to help you find greater, more creative balance in your life, practically, emotionally, and spiritually.

The Static Balance and the Dynamic Balance

I was friends with a man who wrote an engineering textbook on statics and dynamics. Statics are the things that are not active and never change and dynamics are the things that are always active and changing. It helps to think like an engineer when you are working on balancing your life. Categorizing the elements of your life into statics and dynamics is a first step to designing and building a balanced life.

I have an affinity for dynamics. I naturally bring change and activity into my life. (Writing this is giving me a whole new perspective on ADD/ADHD). I do not have a very conscious or comfortable relationship with most things static. Before I can create a balanced life I need to begin a new relationship to statics and dynamics. I need to learn to limit my indulgence and attention to the dynamic elements of my life and overcome my reluctance to be conscious of and appreciate the static elements. I then need to fit the static elements together with the dynamic ones in a way that works for me, for my goals for living a richly balanced life.

Equilibrium

Being balanced may require us to be out of balance or rather off center. Balance is not about equal parts, it is about equilibrium.

Balance comes from right relationship and right measure. As I write, Julia and Julie is a very popular new movie. It is a film about recipes and great food. Julia Child was a great cook because she worked and worked on balance - finding the right ingredients in the right measure in the right combination and cooked rightly. Julia felt wonderful when she sat down after cooking and surrendered to the joy of her meal. She was an engineer, a manager and an artist in the kitchen as she balanced her life as a cook.

Does your life have the right ingredients in the right measure? Do you combine them well? Do you know you know how the right temperature and the right cooking time to bring the flavors of your harmonious life to elegant expression? What is your recipe for a balanced life? My teleseminar will help the participants determine their own recipe - Mastering the Art of Balanced Living. ;-)

The Space Between

Another aspect of balance I want to share with you is the notion of “between.” Many of our questions of balance come from our experience of “between.” Between has a number of definitions. The definition I use here is the sense of conflict, of being pulled by two opposing realities. Living gracefully “between,” feeling a confidence of self while confronting the conflicts is something toward which you aspire and strive.

Harmony is an inner peace you feel in the space between.

between how you want to live and how you actually live.

between how you want your space to be and how your space actually is.

between what you want to accomplish and what you actually accomplish

between all you want to do and how much time you actually have to do it.

between all the attention you want to give to others and all the attention you want to give to yourself.

between all the things that you want and need and the money you have.

between your need law and order and your need for freedom and creative chaos.

In “the space between” you make most of your decisions and choices. In “the space between” you find the mood of your life. In this sacred space of balance you can tell your truth.

My Balanced Life

Do I have balance and harmony in my life? Yes! No! I have some balance and the feelings of harmony are growing as I examine my personal dynamics of balance. It’s an evolving process. Life is about increasing the simplicity of managing my increasing complexity - a balancing act, not a juggling act. I know that I am increasing my mastery of balance. Balance has become less of a high wire act and more of my feet moving gracefully along a winding path that sometimes takes me to cliffsides, battered with gale force winds. I haven’t fallen yet. In fact I don’t anxiously cling to soothing supports anymore. I feel my feet on the ground, my head upright, and my heart open.


If you were to create a dynamic design for a balanced life specific to your style, needs and quirks, where would you begin?




Join me and be one of twelve participants in an intense and intimate exploration into the mysteries of balance, please sign up here.

Defining and Finding Balance

The Mysteries and Questions of Balance

Late summer, as the crispness of autumn air begins to energize us, we find the cosmic forces supporting our souls in the organization of our lives. This is the time of year to contemplate balance.

How balanced is your life? How balanced would you like it to be? What is a balanced life anyway?“Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.”
Thomas Merton

Balance is a mystery. Is it about feeling harmony (such a sweet word, but a word that has little reality beyond a wish in today’s crazy demanding times)? Is it about maintaining emotional equanimity - not getting too high or too low? Or is it about not falling off the tightrope of life? Is it about having a keystone that holds everything together and upright? Maybe it is about symmetry or equality. What is balance?

Balance and Babies

We might learn about balance if we look at how we develop physical balance in our first year of life.

Balance begins with our eyes. Both eyes need to work together for proper vision. We learn to focus. Balanced vision!

Our next miracle of balance is the ability to balance our heavy little heads on top of our spines. Here we gain the ability to look up to the heavens, down to the earth and straight ahead without having our skull waver and shake. We learn to move our head from side to side, look around and come back to center. A balanced head!

Then we learn to balance on our sitz bones and sit up. This balance makes it possible to use our arms and hands. We reach out to what we want. We can push away what we don’t want. Balanced desires and the ability to accept and reject!

Finally, we stand upright on our heels balancing our body so that we can move about the world, follow a path, reach our destination. A core sense of self and the ability to stand in the vertiginous world!

Balance is about focus, observation and midpoint. Balance is about being clear about what we want and don’t want. Balance is about walking our path.

Do you have trouble focusing? Can you observe your life with compassion and integrity? Do you have a strong sense of your own center?

How much stuff clutters your life because you can’t say no or let go? How much have you missed because you couldn’t grasp the truth of your desires?

What would make it easier to stay committed to your path? Your path of joy? of contribution? of health?

Establishing and maintaining balance is an endless exercise of grace. You need to have deep even breathing, a focal point, a center of gravity, and a straight spine that keeps you upright as you speed through the constantly changing and landscape of your life.

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Explore Your Life's Balance Teleseminar

Join the Mysteries and Questions of Balance Teleseminar - four 90 minute sessions that will bring new meaning and new capacity to balance in your life.

7:30 PM - 9:00PM Eastern
Mondays
August 31, September 14, 21, 28 (skips Labor Day!)
Only 12 spaces available.

$120

Register for the Balance Teleseminar here.

Inner Vacation

In the lazy, hazy days of summer, I hope you have a sweet restorative inner vacation - full of fun and full of meaning.

I just looked up the definition(s) of vacation and found some real inspiration for self-awareness and some yummy food for thought.

Vacation is

1. an extended period of recreation.
2. a fixed holiday between terms as in school or law courts
3. the action of leaving something once occupied.

In thinking about these definitions I came up with some thoughts on the meaning, purpose and significance of vacation.

As children we learn that vacation means play and fun. Many of us continue with that picture of vacation but a vacation can be so much more. Using the three definitions above (in reverse order), I share some deeper perspectives on what a vacation can mean to us as we live our lives.

Vacating an Occupation

A vacation occurs when you leave a state or occupation of existence, activity, familiarity, identity, sameness, competency, ordinariness, and experience something different or new. A sacred vacation provides a new way of knowing yourself, your world and your future. Some part or all that has occupied your inner or outer life is left behind either temporarily or permanently. Do you need to leave something behind? Do you vacate and take a break from the “givens” of your life? Do you need permission to let go?

Between Terms

A vacation is a fixed time between terms. Do you have a fixed time or times of between-ness? This is a regular and committed time of reflection and rest or a time of adventure and inspiration? Do you take these kinds of break once a year? once a season? once a month? once a week? once a day? Is the duration of the vacation also fixed - 5 minutes? 5 days? 5 weeks?

This kind of vacation consciousness also asks us to be aware of the terms of our lives. When does a natural “between” occur in your year? or your month? or your day? How do you design an inner or outer vacation between the terms of your life that restores you and returns you to your commitments with new energy or new perspectives?

Re-creation

A vacation is an extended period of recreation. Of re-creation! Do you ever take time to re-create yourself, your world or your future? It is the school year of our childhood that teaches us, imprints us with the notion of summer vacation. We leave our school work for play. School gives us an education when we are young. As adults we leave work for vacation but instead of play, vacation might be education - educare is the bringing out of the deeper self - of what lives within. Education can be the re-creation of ourselves.

Who We Are in the World

In the work of the Inner Year, late summer is a time of educating or awakening ourselves to a deeper sense of who we are in the world. Beginning on July 27, I will be offering an intensive teleseminar program of four 90 minute sessions devoted to

The Mysteries and Questions of Personal Contribution.

What do you contribute to the world?
What do you long to contribute to the world?
What is your special talent?
How do you find personal fulfillment through your work?
How do you break free from a life of dissatisfaction?
Can you vacate what has occupied your life, but not occupied your spirit?
How can you re-create your life?

If your heart does not sing in the world or if you would like your heart to sing with more strength, register for this teleseminar. You may or may not find answers during the four weeks, but you will find new and meaningful questions. Take a vacation with eleven other people and educate your soul’s intentions around your unique contribution.

Working with the insights from this teleseminar, Questions of Contribution, you will

• develop ways to make the right choices and changes for your career.
• find your true reasons for volunteering and for learning new skills.
• give yourself permission to end an activity or begin an activity.
• learn how to liberate yourself to the demands and limitations that inhibit your self-expression.

Registration is limited to 12 participants. Participants receive a private 20 minute consultation with me to discuss specific issues about their life of contribution. Sessions are recorded and materials are sent out via email.

Register here!



Please add any comments or questions.