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.