Welcome to the Inner Year...

To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven. Ecclesiastes 3.1.



The Inner Year relates personal soul development to the festivals of the Christian Year and to the cycle of Nature. I work with an esoteric spiritual understanding of the festivals. Esoteric perspectives reveal the deeper universal mysteries of things.

Whether or not you are Christian in your beliefs and your practices, you will find personal and spiritual relevance, insight and possibility in these posts.

Friday, April 29, 2011

Are you seen? Do you see?



In the film, Avatar, instead of saying “I love you,” the Navi say “I see you.” The Navi experience and cherish all of life as connected and interwoven, so the statement “I see you,” indicates an intimacy that recognizes and cherishes the individual beyond the collective connection.

Today, I was reading an interview with Barbara Taylor Brown, an Episcopal priest and successful writer on seeing the spiritual in everyday things.  She comments on the meeting of another, a stranger, “The moment I turn that person into a character in my own story, the encounter is over.”

Real intimacy is about being seen in your individuality and your differences and seeing the individuality and differences of the other and it’s about being one of the characters in a story written by the “being of the relationship.”

~~~~~~~~~~~

Much of learning about and developing a capacity for intimacy is becoming awake to the failures and absences of intimacy. Shining the light into the shadows and finding the courage to find oneself hiding in the shadows as both a victim and a perpetrator.


I want to give you a framework of four ways of not being seen and what it means to be a character in somebody else’s story or script. Sadly, this often occurs in our childhoods, leaving wounds that distort our intimate adult relationships.

You are not seen except as a character in another's story when you are
idolized
demonized
utilized
marginalized

As a character in the stories of your naive and often well-intentioned parents :

You are the divine child with amazing talents that reflects light on the others sense of self. You are the dark, wild child that needs to be controlled and suppressed in order to living up to the their need for the good child.
You are the dutiful child prematurely burdened with taking on the parent’s tasks, often caring for the parent.
You are the forgotten and lost child living on the margins of the parent’s life rarely seen, understood or held.


Each of us has experienced degrees and mixtures of all four of these. It is so liberating to reflect on these experiences and the self-defining feelings that resulted and to speak the truth of the failures of intimacy you have known, even living through now.

So often we miss out on intimacy because we idolize, demonize, utilize or marginalize our partners or let them see us in one or more of these gestures. I speak with the authority that comes from living, not from theory.  I played the idol, the demon, the servant, the excluded in my childhood and my key intimate relationships and I have done this to my partners - until I realized it - till I saw the framework.

The framework names the failures and in knowing their names we find the possibility of healing, of liberating and of empowering our relationships.  With consciousness, relationships become creative and rewarding for all concerned and engaged.

Now I take the responsibility to celebrate and honor instead of idolize, respect differences and set boundaries instead of demonize, express needs and make requests with gratitude and a sense for the other’s needs instead of utilize, and to pay attention to, include and appreciate deeply the presence of the other instead of marginalize and neglect.

And I know when I am not seen, when I am just a character in another’s story. I can forgive this, work with it, challenge it, end it.   I speak up with compassion and calm courage about my feelings.

You can, too.

I had a great therapist years ago that said “Know it. Catch it. Change it.” It’s true.

Imaging and Creating Intimacy -The Fundamental Schooling in Being in Conscious Relationship is full of the “Know it.” epiphanies. You will leave the course knowing a lot about the twists and turns of intimacy. Then you will need to start catching them and changing them. You can do it.

Intimacy is an art and a science and requires a living creative tension - it is not a magical romance, a gift from the gods to be idolized, then demonized, diminished to merely conviently useful, or pushed to the edges of your life. Intimacy requires energy, focus, imagination, conservation and innovation.

Join the course and bring a more fulfilling, more responsible intimacy to all your relationships. Register here for the webinar.

Though I have taken the intimacy. program before--twice, I think:  once solo
and once with my husband--I am considering registering again.
Though I know the content each time is similar, you always have
something new to think about and work through or to see through
different eyes.  All of my relationships, including my relationship to myself,
benefited from taking a deep inner look at  relationship history
 and how past experience colors the way
we relate in the present--particularly in deeply intimate relationships.
This brought about a beginning point for greater trust, and therefore,
greater capacity for intimacy that is free of demands and 
one-sided expectations.  Marilyn Dixon, Baltimore, Maryland



~~~~~~~~~

I want to clarify some questions about the partnering aspect of the course.  I assign conversation partners among the participants. I pair you up with another participant. You do not need to share the course with your existing intimate partner, best friend or sibling.  I am sorry this wasn’t clear. 

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

The Fund of Generosity

You have arrived here because you are considering donating beyond the program fee. any amount is welcome. 

Thank you for your financial integrity and your generosity.

You just need to go to the Donation button on the right column.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Inner Easter's Tender Possibilities

 

Find Yourself   Know Yourself   Become Yourself
April 20, 2011


Your inner life is designed by you for you.

How do you want to design your Inner Easter and Inner Spring?
 
By you, for you!

Read on below, if you want my suggestions of elements to include in your design.


What I write and teach through the Inner Year are suggestions for you to consider as you shape your active inner life.

Use my suggestions your way.


It's Spring and It's Easter.

It's the time to imagine new life and lasting love.

Spring seems fleeting in its newness. Easter seems eternal in its love. Together they wake us up to the celebration and the obligation of ever-renewing, limitless love in our relationships to others.

Inner Easter

Inner Easter is not an Easter shaped by religious tradition and ritual.  It is the Easter you discover in your own soul, living in your own life. 
 
Easter is the time each year when we renew and further deepen our relationship to love and death through contemplating

inwardly celebrating a final feast with our dearest companions,
inwardly surrendering our will to suffering and death as sacrifice to others,
inwardly forgiving,
inwardly descending into hell to redeem and release, and
inwardly resurrecting to a new life.

To inspire our feeling pictures as we seek new life and creative nuance in our relationship to Easter, we can turn to art.  Listen to some great Easter music, read or write great Easter poetry, or look at or make great Easter paintings or sculptures.  Let the art be yeast bubbling up in the sweet warmth of your heart. What feelings arise in you? Are they new feelings about the Christ Mystery? Do they give you a new illuminating sense of who you are and what you are capable of offering?

It seems strange to write this, but the blessings of the technology, means that I can turn my mechanical laptop into an inspiring altar.  I can download Mahler's Resurrection Symphony on itunes and play it while reading and speaking outloud Rilke's beautiful poem "The Last Supper" and then listen to Judy Collins singing "Morning Has Broken" while gazing at the Isenheim Altarpiece.  
 
And then, I can close my eyes and let my feelings open up to what lives in my heart as the art of my soul.
 
Tenderness
 
Just this morning in a conversation with a dear friend the word "tenderness" was spoken. Tenderness. I knew immediately that that word had been placed into the conversation so that I might realize and share that the mood of Easter is tenderness, calm, resilient tenderness.  As you meditate, listen, see, penetrate, imagine Inner Easter, do so with tenderness. 
 
Revisiting To Be Surprised

Last year on my blog, I shared some intimate ways to see the Easter mysteries and meanings reflected in your own life.  I included audios.  I've reread what I wrote and relistened to what I spoke. The perspectives and questions surprised me and challenged me in new ways.  So I have put the links here.  Revisit the blogs, download the audios and spend some time with them over these days of Easter. I hope you will share my surprise and uncover new layers of personal meaning.
Your Last Supper
Your Resurrection
http://theinneryear.blogspot.com/2010/04/inner-easter-your-resurrection.html

Please go to the blog and leave your Easter comments to inspire the rest of us.
 
Inner Spring Programs
 
Next week I will be sending out the information on the upcoming Inner Spring webinars which focus on mysteries of our relationships with others:

Imagining Intimacy
Sundays, May 1 - May 22

Learning the Language of the Four Temperaments.
Sundays, May 29 - June 19
 
 
Tender Blessings for Your Inner Easter,
Lynn

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Happiness or Wisdom?

It’s amazing and thrilling to me... over 4000 people opened the email I sent out on “Is This You???” I’ve received many, many responses - more than I can answer. This has given me the idea to include a “Is This You?” statement in each newsletter in the future.  Some of you even suggested other statements which felt wonderful. Please engage and continue to send me your statements of inner qualities, characteristics and perspectives - I will share them with all my readers.

Many of the responses were single words like “WOW” and “YES.” A lot of you took the time to right a comment about each of the twelve.  One reader said she was going to design a birthday card using the twelve statements and send it to her friends. Wow and  yes to that idea.

I do regret not posting the twelve statements here on the blog allowing the comments to be available to everyone. It was not wise and I am not happy, but I have learned. 



WISDOM OR HAPPINESS?

Number five on the list: “You would rather be wise than happy - although you find real joy in crossing the thresholds of inner experience.” received the most response.

Some people gave very thoughtful defenses of happiness as a primary and essential goal. 

I am so grateful for your challenges, deeply grateful.  All of you have pushed me to look at both happiness and wisdom in new and more objective and reflective ways.  What is the experience of happiness?? What is wisdom?  How do I relate to each and how do they relate, if at all, to each other?

Seeking the wisdom to answer these questions has caused me to sacrifice the happiness of at least two hours of early morning sleep for the last week!  Here are some of the thoughts that seemed to have some real inspiration living in them as they appeared in my consciousness.


 My Reflections on Wisdom and Happiness


Wisdom is as vast, and limitless as the cosmos. Happiness is small, brief, and contained within the personal. I lay no ownership on wisdom, but my happiness is mine and no other’s.

What is happiness?  Here’s my living (growing and evolving, becoming more complex with each reflection) and most “noble”list of my lasting happiness goals. (but do they answer the "what is" question?)



I feel health in my body, my earthly existence. There is a certain creative tension between arousal, confidence, and calm in just the right relative measures.  I feel a radiant and grounded presence of truth, beauty and goodness. I feel that whatever I need is available and generously provided. I am loved and loving. I am secure and stable, but also ready for surprise.  I feel a relaxed, contained enthusiasm for life. I am standing in the light and the light that shines from within me is seen by those I love. What I have to give is received. My relationships are harmonious and flexible.

Some of my happy moments...

I am ‘‘happy” when I enjoy a great ginger margarita or my hair sylist gives me a great cut and blow dry.  I am in bliss after a 90 minute massage. I feel joy waking up to a crystal clear sunny day after a good storm in the night. I can’t begin to speak of the happiness of loving my grandchildren (actually all children, puppies and kittens).  I love surrendering to my desires and sharing magical moments with the man I love.

but they are so fleeting...

The margarita gets drunk(well, that has two truths living in it.) My very fine hair can’t hold a style for more than 15 minutes before flattening and hair grows unevenly no matter how well cut. And so on.  Even my grandchildren are blessedly growing and becoming different with every breath - this is the closest experience I have to lasting happiness as long as I don’t get attached to the adorableness of a particular gesture. And the man I love is … sometimes a very challenging soap opera.

Happiness is found in the memories of our stories and in our sensations.  Wisdom is the penetration and ultimately the dissolving of opinions/stories and the transformation and purification of sensations. (That’s a whole other post I will write soon)

The challenge with wisdom is that it forms out of suffering. (We don't need to seek suffering as it arrives with the breath of life.) Wisdom awakes and gives meaning, purpose and significance to suffering.  Rudolf Steiner says it beautifully, “Wisdom is crystalized suffering.” The heart crystalizes, not the head, as the heart is capable of suffering and the head by itself is not. Heads do not feel but hearts can think.

Suffering is not the cause heartbreak as wise hearts do not break.  What can break is faith in the image that symbolizes truth, beauty, goodness and finally, the loss of faith in all forms of love ( agape, eros, philia and storge). Wise hearts do not harden as the heart is the organ of responsiveness and as long as blood/life flows the heart responds with powerful tenderness. What can harden is the vessels of blood when blood/life stops flowing because of attachment to the temporary things that offer happiness. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love and freedom.

When we can observe/suffer the height, depth and breadth of our happiness we become wise.  This is equally true for observing our grief, our love, our sadness, our fear, our doubt, our resentment, our boredom. 

When we die it is not our happiness we take with us, it is our wisdom.

Wisdom requires compassion. The wise soul knows that it is one with the world.

Wisdom frees us from anxiety and awakens an emotional equanimity.  Wisdom observes and relates in an inner freedom. Wisdom does not react to its observation but learns from it. 

Because our hearts and bodies know happiness is fleeting there is that moment when we, the selfish mind realizes there will be an end to a particular source of happiness and it will be replaced by the nasty, obsessive longing for happiness. We feel anxiety begin its disturbing trickle. What would you do to stop the trickle from flooding your soul?

Or maybe it feels the opposite, that it is not a trickle in of anxiety but a leaking out of happiness and the encroaching sense of desolation.  What will you do to plug the leak and stop the encroaching pain?

These are the right questions for this time of the Inner Year. It is the soul season to do the work of Inner Lent and face what makes you susceptible to temptations.  Yes, it is wisdom that vanquishes the devil, not happiness.