Feeling Blessed and Full of Grace

 

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March 25, 2011

At the beginning of the week, my inbox was full of beautiful writings about the Vernal Equinox, Ostara, and Spring and I had thought about offering my own thoughts on the new season.

 

The Annunciation

 

But a few weeks ago, as the Cherry Plums began to bloom here in South Devon, I noticed on the calendar the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25. The inner question marks bloomed in my soul like the Cherry Plums -- What is the experience of Inner Annunciation?  I’ve surrendered to the questions and today on the Annunciation I want to share the results of my wonderings .

As with the other Christian Festivals, I look for meaning and relationships that are esoteric, hidden, personal, evolved, immediate, even practical, and outside the traditions of institutionalized Christianity. I connect with the Festivals as true and archetypal models of how each of us can incarnate the divine, fulfill our destiny and manifest goodness in the world.

You might want to go here to read the various versions of the Annunciation from the Bible and the beautiful version from the Koran.  You will also find a gallery of Annunciation art - so many painters have found inspiration in the story.  Plan on giving your soul at least 5-10 minutes of the healing beauty of these images.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annunciation

 

The Results of My Wonderings

 

Archangels appear when a divine impulse will change the future of human existence or human consciousness. They announce, make whole, enlighten and protect the impulses living in our souls.  The impulse they attend to can be subtle and delicate or grand and powerful but the impulse is not personal and will impact more than an individual and more than the moment.

A virgin is pure, innocent and has yet to receive.  In each of us, in our consciousness, at any moment there is a place of virginity.  This is the place where we receive Imaginations, Inspirations and Intuitions. When we become aware of these divine impulses we often feel surprised and unworthy and wonder how this could be.

Immersed in the materialism of our modern times, it is difficult to realize in our humility that we are blessed and full of grace in these moments.

In your inner experience of the Annunciation, feel your way into an intimate connection to this festival.  Take a spring walk and quietly bend to your innocence.  Think back on your inner annunciations.  Consider how you let the divinely conceived grow in your inner womb until it is time to birth.

Blessings on the Blessed,

Lynn

Can you say YES, to saying NO?

What is Lent about for you in 2011? 

For me, Lent is about learning to say "No" to what tempts us.

Most of us aren’t very successful saying " No" when we are weak with our bottomless addictions, our powerful fantasies and our rigid prejudices.  And each of us, if we look at ourselves with objective compassion, can admit to many of these weaknesses.

With even a minimal mastery of "no!" we find greater freedom, integrity, fulfillment and growth.  Each year the practice of Inner Lent can evolve our command of our own impulses, habits, and anxieties and develop a greater confidence in our ability to liberate our consciousness, our feelings and our deeds.

When we enter and dwell in the wilderness of our soul we find the untamed instincts, obsessions and compulsions of our inner lives. There we feel our unfed hungers and unquenched thirsts. We face the ever more seductive temptations of egotism and meet the wild beasts living in our undisciplined and immature natures.
 
Inner Lent leads to deeply essential self-knowledge and self-mastery. During Inner Lent we learn to have a healthier, more responsible, more active, and more spiritual relationship to "NO!"

Inner Lent explores the three temptations in their modern soul reality: the temptations that live in our soul as addictions, fantasies and prejudices.  We look at how to understand these temptations, face and vanquish the inner tempters, and center ourselves in the embodiment of our destiny.

In this second week of Lent:
What addictions can you name and say no to without anxiety?
What fantasies can you ground with real action? 
What prejudices can you evolve into openness?

With what I cover and discuss with you in my three Inner Lent webinars, you will be able to apply your Inner Lent practice to the addictions, fantasies and prejudices in all areas of your life: health, diet, work, love, parenting, spiritual practice, emotional well-being.  Like Inner Christmas, Inner Lent will give you the wonder, the wisdom the wit and the will to shape a valued and valuable life.

The commitment to the three webinars keeps you focused and attending to your Lenten practice, working with your Lenten questions, and refining your Lenten insights.

Like all the Inner Year programs, Inner Lent is spiritually clarifying and inspiring and practically grounding and creative.

Each of the three Inner Lent webinars is recorded for listening and downloading. A number of helpful handouts will be emailed to all participants. If you cannot attend the live webinars you can listen to the replays and work with the handouts.

Say "YES!" to saying "NO!"

Deepen your Inner Lent:

The First Temptation:  To Turn Stones to Bread Through Your Addictions 
Sunday, March 20 at 1PM Eastern.

The Second Temptation: To Leap Off the Pinnacle Through Your Fantasies 
Sunday, April 3 at 1PM Eastern.

The Third Temptation: To Claim Dominion Over All You See Through Your Prejudices 
Sunday, April 17 at 1PM Eastern.

The cost for Inner Lent: access to the three webinars, the recordings, the inspiring handouts,  is $47. 

To register click here:  Inner Lent

If you have any questions, need to pay by check, or any difficulties registering please call me 973-457-4147 between 10AM Eastern and 4PM Eastern or email me anytime.

Those constant temptations...

What is the meaning of Lent for your soul?

In the cycle of the Inner Year, the first quarter of the year is spent working with your relationship to yourself:

Inner Epiphany celebrates and deepens your sense of the purpose living in your existence.

Imagining Your Contribution addresses the evolving needs and expressions of that purpose. 

Then comes Inner Lent, the time of facing the possibility that you may be tempted to forego your purpose for more immediate and seductive powers and pleasures.


365 days a year, I succumb to little temptations. Don’t you?

There is always some voice urging me to turn a stone to bread, leap off some high perch trusting the angels to rescue me before I crash on the ground, and the great temptation to be right, to know it all.  And I succumb...dumb!

A stone is not bread and never satisfies my appetite.

Angels come to my side when I walk firmly on the ground, but laugh at my ridiculous attempts to magically fly through the day or the deed. The sound of angels laughing at my foolishness is an absolutely cringing sensation.

And being right, has nothing to do with being alive and in the moment. The sense of being right relates to a past and very dead moment.  Being right has no lasting power. If I arrogantly attach my life to a story of the past, time, the world and real joy pass me by.

Inner Lent is the time when my inner learning, my self-knowledge, focuses on my relationship to temptation.

Won’t you join me?

Inner Lent, like all of the Inner Year programs, offers archetypal imaginations and questions that guide and support you in your very unique and ,just right for you and only you” awakening and understanding of your soul’s unfolding.

I’ve made a recording of some thoughts on the first questions of Inner Lent. I look at the landscape of inner isolation and the experience of inner fasting. I describe why Inner Lent is connected, not to Inner Easter, but to the experience of Inner Baptism. 

As I write this, I keep struggling with the third temptation. I keep wanting to rerecord and make my thoughts perfect, so right that I would stand in glory above the world. Yuk, yuk, yuk!! 

Listen to my imperfect thoughts.  In spite of their imperfection you may find encouragement and inspiration for you own Inner Lent.
Click here to listen...

Then consider engaging in a deeper look at your relationship to each of the three temptations and their appearance in the modern soul (that’s our souls) as addiction, fantasy and prejudice. This is the Inner Lent program of three webinars and a bunch of great materials. 
You can click here to go to my “store” to register for the Inner Lent program. (I’ll be sending out at least one more email next week sharing more about the content of the webinar and how you might find real value in it.)

One reason to signup - to keep you focused on your Inner Lent, as our daily lives are so filled with temptations that distract us from the work of self-knowledge and our inner development.  It is so sad to let these rich inner seasonal possibilities slip by.  Yes, we can work on our addictions, fantasies and prejudices at any time of the year, but we do so without the support of the cosmos.  Now is the time when the cosmic design where the human soul finds alignment with divine intention and the course of the sun and the greatest amount of light shines down on these inner questions.