A Sword to Protect Your Soul...forged in the heavens

Archangel Michael, is the spirit of our times.  The mood of our times is anxiety and Michael is the spiritual model and teacher of the courage, calmness and clarity that overcomes the mood of anxiety. If you are challenged by demons of confusion, overwhelm, uncertainty, fear, Michael’s spiritual sword can pierce your soul, filling it with light and strength.  This is a sword that brings grace, transformation and balance to your thoughts and actions.

Michael’s sword can appear in life in many forms.  I think Tolkien’s Lord of the Ring’s Trilogy is filled with the inspiration of Michael which is why I find myself rereading it every few years.  Certain music enters my soul bringing the sounds of courage to my soul such as Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and the Ode to Joy.   I feel the sword in the willingness of my clients to face and heal the traumas of a painful childhood. I find it in the compassion and encouragement coming from my friends when I stand on the edge of an inner threshold needing to make a choice that will change my life. 

Where do you feel the force of Michael entering your soul? 

Here is a powerful meditation verse to work with on Michaelmas 

and anytime you feel the mood of anxiety overtaking your soul.  

For the Michael Age
by Rudolf Steiner



We must eradicate from the Soul

All fear and terror of what comes towards us

From out of the future,



And we must acquire serenity

In all feelings and sensations about the future.



We must look forward

With complete equanimity to everything that may come,



And we must think only that whatever comes

Is given to us by a world directive full of wisdom.



It is part of what we must learn in this age:

Namely to live out of pure trust

Without any security in existence,



Trust in the ever-present help of the Spiritual World.



Truly, nothing else will do

If our courage is not to fail us.



And we must seek this awakening within ourselves



Every morning and every evening.

~~~~~~~~~~***********~~~~~~~~~~

A few weeks ago I was researching gem elixirs on the web and I found an unusual one made from a meteorite.  At the time of Michaelmas, September 29, there are many iron meteorites falling to earth.  As I read the description of this essence and the story of the keris, I felt the image of Michael.  I have copied it below and included a photo of a keris and its scabbard. 

Meteorite Gem Elixir

A journalist friend made us aware of Kosta Danaos’ book The Magus of Java – a personal account of the Greek Martial Artist’s journey of finding and studying under a Chinese Taoist master on the island of Java. A chapter of this book is dedicated to telling the story of the authentic Javanese Keris, a particular bladed weapon that many Javanese consider to be magical. Kosta delights the reader with his first-person narrative of a demonstration of spinning and moving kerises he witnesses. In Kosta’s sequel to The Magus of Java, his teacher explains: “a real keris must be forged from a meteorite!” In response to Kosta’s question why this is so, the Sifu explains: “Because only a meteorite can contain the yin energy of the talisman. Any keris that truly has power has been forged from a stone that has fallen from the sky.” We were, of course, intrigued. If this explanation holds true, we should get some highly unique performance from an elixir made of such an iron-nickel meteorite as is used for forging a keris! And so we set out to acquire a meteorite from a private collection, only to dissolve the beauty in sulfuric acid…and to produce one of the most remarkable elixirs we’ve ever made.

For Personal Transformation: Meteorite energizes and warms the third eye and upper tan tien. It enables the recognition and change of unwanted thought patterns and strengthens one's willpower.

For Medicinal Purposes: Meteorite affects particularly the brain and the hypothalamus, assisting in overcoming mental fatigue. Meteorite has a relaxing effect on tension or cramps of the digestive system and to a lesser degree of muscle tissue while at the same time it is highly energizing. Meteorite is a choice preparation for those athletes who want simultaneously alertness, relaxedness and a toned and primed-for-action mind and body.

Imagine self/SELF

As I reflect back over my work over the last 21 years, I recognize the thread that weaves all the counseling, writing, speaking and teaching into a meaningful fabric - supporting each of us in imagining our own individuality. I've been discovering and sharing tools, insights, inspirations and encouragement for forming a sense of self/SELF that heals, liberates and strenghtens from many directions both within and without. 

Yes, we are two in one.  The small self and the immense SELF.  I use lower case when I am referring to the small self that wants a linear life without complexity, with simple answers, clear choices and no confusion or ambivalence, yet finds instead endless dilemmas, wounds that resist healing, longings that never seem to be fulfilled and dreams that never die. I use all caps when I am referring to the immense SELF that contains endless paradoxes, contradictions, and riddles while remaining whole and integral and always has room for more.

My clients, readers and audiences are brave, creative and evolving.  They embrace light and dark, the internal and external, (self)love and (self)hate, the constant and the ephemeral, matter and spirit, growing young and growing old, exuberance and restraint, stillness and movement, humanity and individuality and ultimately, dying and resurrecting.  And they want to make sense of everything and find the right relationship to everything. They want to mature and ripen their thinking, feeling, and willing in finding deeper and often painful truths, forming more beauty and harmony and manifesting goodness unselfishly.

They are willing to devote time to imagining self/SELF - creating the image of the human being and the image of the constant and ever-changing "I." Being willing to devote time requires a discipline, particularly in our demanding and distracting times. Ideally, everyday you have a time to reflect, to engage, to ponder and wonder, to write, to study, and to converse on this imagining.

The benefits are worth the efforts of time and attention. Imagining self/SELF is the only way to know self/SELF. Little steps will get you there and sometimes the little steps , on reflection, will be giant leaps. It's fun and scary - like an outrageous rollercoaster ride where gravity intensifies and then disappears, where up becomes down and left becomes right and suddenly returns to a new normal.

Please send me your thoughts on self/SELF and let me know how you set aside time for   nurturing and cultivating your imagination - for celebrating you. Email me.

 

Six Ways To Celebrate All of You!

 

Almost seven years ago, I began writing the Inner Christmas messages - a guide for a path of twelve small steps to take between Christmas and Epiphany during the Twelve Holy Nights.  Two years ago I wrote my book, Six Ways to Celebrate Christmas & Celebrate You! describing how we can consciously and creatively experience the holiday and ourselves.   I knew I was decribing the six ways we can celebrate every day. Six ways we can find and honor new personal meaning in our lives within every twenty-four hours. Each way of celebrating is a dialogue between self and SELF.

Beginning next Sunday, I will bring your attention to each of the six celebrations and offer some creative guidance on making every day meaningful. Here's a list of the six celebrations for you:

Nature - celebrate your new awareness of the natural world.
Divinity - celebrate your new experience of the spirit
Riches - celebrate new material and sensory delights
Relationships - celebrate new feelings about your many relationships to other human beings
Childhood - celebrate new insights into your personal history
Selfhood - celebrate your growing self-knowledge

This will take us through the first Sunday in November.



(I really want to encourage you to order the Six Ways to Celebrate Christmas & Celebrate You! now as it gives real examples/questions for each celebration - it is a wonderful book to use in a book club or study group. Between now and Christmas there are no shipping charges! Order here. http://www.store.lynnjericho.com/Six-Ways-To-Celebrate-Christmas-Celebrate-You-111CCCY.htm)

 

Michaelmas - September 29

 

I will be sending out a special message on Wednesday about this very meaningful festival - the celebration of the courageous human heart.

 

Much Autumnal Warmth...

Lynn

  

 

The Sense of Ego

The Sense of Ego

Of the four mysterious senses of Love, hearing, word, thought and Ego, the Ego sense is the most subtly exquisite (ORIGIN late Middle English (in the sense [carefully ascertained, precise] ): from Latin exquisit- ‘sought out,’ from the verb exquirere, from ex- ‘out’ + quaerere ‘seek.)

With this sense we perceive the eternal essence, the I AM, of other individuals.  Imagine all the other perceptions falling away - the ones that tell us all about the earthly appearance, the personality, the intelligence, the energies, the feelings, all the “things” and attributes of another - and all we are left with to know is the pure spirit of the other.  Can you bear that imagination?

It is an imagination of a flame searing your soul leaving behind embers of profound truth, indescribable beauty, fierce goodness and the warm glow of evolving freedom and emerging  love.

We are always perceiving the Ego of others, but oh, so rarely are we conscious of this perception.  We remain dull to this sense most of our waking lives as the other senses draw our attention.  When we do bring consciousness to this perception it is usually felt as a glance, a glimmer, a whiff,  a moment of buoyancy, a whisper of the name of God.

I thought I would ask you to recall this fleeting experience of the I of another, but as I think about it,  I realize that ordinary memory does not come from these most sacred perceptions. We cannot remember what lives beyond thought.  We cannot memorialize the “I” the way we can memorialize what perceive in our bodies or in the world.  We memorialize through our emotional responses and reactions, we like and dislike, we judge and evaluate, we desire or resist the perceptions of the other eleven senses.

This is what we can gradually grasp through attention to the four senses of love, that all the senses are only alive in the moment, that our memories of perceptions are just memories and are diminished and intensified , even distorted, over time. We must strive for a wise innocence in all our perceptions, we must perceive in the living moment free from all memory. 

Instead of the kind of earthly security that comes from perceptual familiarity, leap into the fires of the present and experience the person beside you free from the veils of space and time and memory.  Simply love, in freedom. Then your soul will be blessed by the perception of the Ego of the other, shining forth.

What we can remember is within each human being, in their holy of holies, dwells the Ego, the “I Am” and that within our own souls lives the sense to perceive it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is the closing post for this 2010 Inner Summer journey through the realm of the senses.  Thank you for sharing it with me. 

Thanks also to those who have shown their appreciation through the donation button on the blog. 

I have found it a rich experience to commit to the responsibility of writing once a week about the Inner Year mysteries of the soul.  I work to articulate the thoughts that create an imagination of Self.  I plan on continuing this rhythm.   The next six Sundays I will be writing about the many ways we find meaning in our daily lives.

Lynn

Some thoughts on Evil...

Some thoughts on evil... (This is a long one.)

It is Yom Kippur, the Day of Attonement. A good day to think about evil.


We need to begin to think maturely about evil, to form a conscious and active relationship to evil.

Given that as small children we were not allowed to touch, hear, taste, see or smell “dirty” or “disgusting” things, we have grown up thinking that we are good and safe only if we avoid all the things that might be untouchable, distasteful, hard to hear or reek with foulness. We close our eyes/minds to thinking about evil.

Evil feels to our immature consciousness as if it is about blame, shame and guilt. It feels mysterious and unknowable. We feel we must keep evil at a distance or we will be punished.


As adults we scapegoat others. We attach evil to others and drive them out of the community of humankind or execute them. We believe if we kill an evil person for doing evil things, we rid our world and our future of evil.

Hollywood has entertained us with our desires to kill or avoid evil. Occasionally, we see on a screen a suggestion of our relationship to evil as when Luke Skywalker learns Darth Vader is his father, but even then Luke kills his father.

It is not who is evil but what is evil and what is our relationship to evil?

We believe if we avoid perceiving evil, it will cease to exist when actually evil thrives on our lack of attention.

If we can’t face evil in ourselves and in others and in the world, if we can’t imagine taking responsibility for our relationships to evil what hope is there for the future? We remain manipulated by evil. We remain stuck in our naivete and evil runs our life.

If in our moral space we keep evil at a distance, we can’t connect with it consciously or define it or see when and how it penetrates our thoughts, feelings and actions.

I have found over the years I have been reflecting on my many relationships to evil in all it’s shapeshifting forms that the reflections give me more moral stability and moral freedom in my choices. I feel more real having a clearer sense of my shadows. It nurtures me more than false feeling found in maintaining my appearance of being good.

The work of personal and moral development is not about walking in the light of goodness, it’s about slogging through the swamp to find the demons and dragons of our inner life.

Here are three manifestations of evil that show up in our social interactions.

Any attempt to influence, coerce or control another person or group of persons where there is potential to

• cause harm
• violate the integrity of the other
• disrespect the other’s differences

Now I am a parent of two grown children. Reflecting on my parenting (long before I began to look at evil from a mature consciousness) I see many times when I thought I was being a good parent raising a good child, but I was not thinking of the lasting harm I was doing, how I was violating their emerging integrity or my insensitivity to how different they were from me.

My intentions were never evil. Of course, not. Yet I had so little consciousness that all my parental goodness was often a foil for evil, because I had never explored evil in a thoughtful way.

As adults we cannot develop morally, without attending thoughtfully to our manifold relationships to evil.

A Teleseminar on Evil

Over four 60 minute teleseminars, I am going to present some observations I have made about evil and our inner life. I will share what I sense to be difficult, humbling and liberating questions about the demons and dragons we find dwelling in our soul and in the soul of the world. If you register for the teleseminar you can be on the call and ask questions or you can simply download the recording of the call and listen to it when you find the time and the quiet.

Two different sessions:
Beginning tomorrow, Sunday, September 19 at 4PM Eastern.
Beginning Thursday, September 23 at 8 PMEastern.
The fee is $47
Register here. http://www.store.lynnjericho.com/Slaying-Inner-Demons-Dragons-IY-DD10.htm

This is not “Evil for Dummies.” It is a course on thinking about ” What is Evil? and What is My Relationship to Evil?” for those who strive to be fully and powerfully human, to courageously build their personal bridge between spirit and matter, good and evil, life and death. It is not a course for those who find comfort in a belief system or dogma. I want offer you some perspectives that will encourage you to find your own evolving thoughts on evil.

In writing the previous paragraph I had two closing thoughts:

When we strive, really strive for moral development we will engage with evil with every step we take but we will serve evil less and less.
And then the bridge metaphor made me think of the nursery rhyme/song, London Bridge is Falling Down. The full verson is stanza after stanza of how we build London Bridge up again! The nursery rhyme teaches children all about how our soul overcomes the evil it falls into over and over again.

Register here. http://www.store.lynnjericho.com/Slaying-Inner-Demons-Dragons-IY-DD10.htm

Where did I come from?? Where did I begin??

Where did I come from???? Where did I begin???

There are two answers to these two questions: Sex and Spirit!

As a physical being, I come from and began in a sexual act between my mother and my father.

So do you!

As a conscious, evolving being, I come from and began in realms of spirit.

So do you!

Both sexuality and spirituality are expressions of love. I can also say I come from and began in love.

So do you!

I am innately woven into myself through my evolving relationship to sexuality and spirituality as ideas and ideals and my sexuality and my spirituality as personal identity and personal drama.  How do I see this great tapestry of myself?  How do you?


My relationship to sexuality and spirituality involve my thoughts and feelings about being alone.  I have my own mysteries about being alone, being lonely and being all one.  How do I penetrate these mysteries?  How do you?

I wonder how I act out my spirituality and my sexuality in my daily life.  How consciously spiritual am I? How consciously sexual?  How conscious are you?

By grasping a picture of the archetypal development of human sexual consciousness and spiritual consciousness beginning with birth and moving to adulthood, I create an objective and universal imagination of sexuality and spirituality.

Then I can begin exploring my own version of the archetype in my sexual and spiritual dreams, stories, adventures, absences, abuses, experiments and longings and discover healing, liberation, possibilities.

I can see what imprints, interruptions and illuminations have happened as I unfolded my fierce and fragile sexuality and spirituality.

I can forgive and celebrate myself for being myself.

I can integrate what was split off from my soul.

I can find a new, deeper, freer relationship to and confidence in my aloneness.

I can know myself.

Join me in an Inner Life Biographical Review of Sexuality and Spirituality beginning this Saturday, September 18 at 1PM Eastern or this Tuesday Evening, September 21 at 8PM Eastern.

 Learn more here.

Inner Life Biography Reviews are safe, respectful, warm and confidential.

Meanwhile here is this sweet video on How To Be Alone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7X7sZzSXYs

The Sense of Thought

The Sense of Thought or Meaning

Like the word sense, the sense of thought is difficult to describe and imagine.  

I struggled to write this and suspect you will struggle to make sense of it all.  The three “highest” senses of word, thought and "I" are so beyond our ordinary thinking.

Last week we attempted to think of the perception of word, language and gesture isolated from the perception of thought or meaning.  Not easy and for many of us not possible. But perceiving is not thinking!! It lives more in the realm of intelligence, rather than intellect.

 

Let me offer a metaphor for the relationship of word to thought. If I dive into a pond, I can float or swim in the water.  The water carries me, just as words carry thoughts.  The water is not me and the word (or words) is not the thought or meaning.

Stop reading right now and think about the last few times you perceived the words “I love you.” Obviously, you perceived the same words but did you perceived the same meaning each time? Or consider the word “green” referring to the color of a pine tree, an olive, or a dollar bill. Different, different, different.

When I am working with my clients, five of them may say “I am angry with my spouse” or “I don’t know what my destiny is.” Same words, different meaning with each client. I must perceive the meaning being carried by the words or I must ask my client to find more distinct expresssion or words for carrying the truest meaning.

I see a smile or a tear on a clients face, what do they mean? Same gesture, different meaning.

In my teleseminars and my messages, I use words to convey meaning.  I work very hard to make sure  the words I use are the right words - that they point to the meaning I am intending to awaken in the perceiver.  Likewise, I work very hard in discerning the meaning in the words my client is speaking, in the gestures of their facial expressions and so on.

This sense is very challenging to pay attention to.  Often we rely on a previous perception. Get caught in biographical memory or the perspectives of certain identities - never risking going outside the box.  Ideally, we are always perceiving new meaning, meaning free of past perceptions or prejudices and seek the true meaning behind the words in the moment.

The practice of sacred attention is the full awareness of the hearing, word and meaning perceptions, subtle, profound, mysterious. And the pursuit of perception of true and momentary  meaning is a high and noble endeavor in the realm of the senses and the realm of the soul seeking spiritual significance through earthly and sensuous manifestation.


Bringing our attention to the development of this sense of thought can lead to hesitancy and confusion.  Without courage we conform, to cultural or family determined meanings. With courage we step outside the givens and the formals and risk awakening to something alive, challenging, even creatively uncertain.

This week look beyond the word, see beyond the gesture.  Ask yourself what is the deepest meaning I perceive in this phrase, this sentence, this paragraph of ideas?

Poetry often begins in thought and seeks elegant expression in words.  Instead of just speaking familiar words that have lost their meaning, write a poem today. You will feel more alive in your soul.

The Sense of Smell

We perceive over 10000 different odors and an seemingly infinite number of combinations.  And with each breath we smell the  scent combinations of whatever is around us.  Though we don’t notice all the smells, we are making decisions about them all the time.  Decisions beyond like and dislike.  We assess the health and safety of all that is near to us with our sense of smell.

Before we taste, we smell. If something smells bad, we won’t taste it.

Our smell sense links directly to memory.  We love familiar smells.  We immediately know our blood relatives through smell and feel at home with the smells of our culture.

Smell takes us on adventures.  If we smell something we love, we will follow the smell to its source.  If we don’t like a smell, we will move away from it as far as necessary. Because smell comes with breath, it tells us good smells are about life and bad smells are about death.  We seek life and avoid death and smell is our guide.

Likewise, smells soothe us and stimulate us and offer a healing action for our bodies and souls.  Those who have lost their sense of smell feel life has been taken away from them.



The soul’s sense of smell tells us about the health of an idea, the complexity of a mood, and the safety of an intention.

When you reflect on your inner life build your awareness with metaphors of odor and smell. I suggest you spend a few minutes everyday recording perceptions, thoughts, feelings, intentions and actions and then put a scent metaphor next to each one.

As I write this I am thinking about the childhood associations with Ivory Soap.  Something about the scent of Ivory awakens a sense of clean - of being about 3 years old in the bathtub and getting scrubbed, feeling/smelling new and fresh.  Why would that memory/metaphor appear as I write this post?

Well, I want you to be inspired to seek in your inner life a fresh, clean, newness through this exercise.  Does that smell good to you?

But look at the soul experiences that don’t smell good to you, too.  Look at the ones that feel like perfume covering up stink. What about the one’s that have no smell - did they ever have life?

Sometimes as I am doing research on an aspect of the Inner Year, or working with a painful memory from my childhood, or working with a client on a critical questions, I smell a faint odor that gives me a sense that something is almost near enough to taste or see or touch.  These “soul smells” pull me forward.  I become like a bloodhound following a scent of thoughts, of feelings or of intentions.

If you practice this “smell” attention, you will find you have a nose for what’s right for you!

The Sense of Word

The Sense of Word


I was with my grandson for a month, a very vocal month.  For a couple of weeks, as he turned six months old, he was delighting in the sounds he could make. From grunts to squeals he was learning how to master the range of his voicebox.  On the last day he was sitting on his father’s lap and we let our friend’s dogs in.  They came up to the baby, sniffed, licked and walked away.  Edon wanted more.  He stretched out his arms and called out to the dogs.  He didn’t use a real word but it was a distinct sound with a distinct desire behind it.  Language as a conveyor of personal reality was being born.  Edon was not just making sounds and finding his voice, he was speaking and gesturing. And blessedly, I perceived this first attempt at language.

Words, language and gestures bear meanings but are not the meaning.  They are form but not substance.  In most cases, they carry merely parts of the meaning but not the whole. 

With the sense of word, language and gesture, we perceive the sounds of vowels and consonants. We notice syllables. And we notice intention. We actively shape our words. We choose our words and we perceive the choosing of words.

My mother tongue is English.  My words are American, a combination of Long Island and South Florida dialects.  I also use jargon words, esoteric words, slang, etc stemming from my studies and my interests. I am female. And it is important to know that most of my choice of words and my pleasure in perceiving certain words is loaded with the emotional and intellectual shadings of my biography - my joys and sorrows.

Because most of us confuse words with meaning and are not aware that the perception of words is distinct from the perception of meaning, we get into states of misunderstanding, confusion and distraction in our learning, our relationships and our communications.


Sometimes people don’t know what my words or gestures mean. They have either a different personal history with the word or a different language all together. An Italian or a Chinese perceives my words and could parrot them, but his sense of my meaning is lost in the simple perception of language. And then there is the struggle with spouses, lovers, parent, children and others so familiar and dear, that sometimes don’t hear the words, let alone care about the personal meaning they bear.


But what is really scary is sometimes I don’t know what my words mean to me or I use the wrong words for the meaning I want to convey. A word I was working with as I thought about this little essay was “money.” Money is a word I perceive and load with lots of emotional meanings and little thought.
I can define words in isolation but put them in a string of words, a sentence, and put the sentence in a context of even more complex meaning and I must work to perceive the meaning of the word in the context of many words.

Most words have several meanings.  One word with many subtle meanings is the word “love.”  I perceive the word and a million possible meanings appear.  How do I perceive the exact meaning in the moment?  Not by perceiving the word.  (Next week I will share about the thought sense which allows us to perceive meaning even when the meaning conflicts with the words being used!)

This week notice words.  And notice body words or gestures.  Notice how you use the word or react to the word and ignore or miss the meaning. And notice how your perception of the word is tied to your biography with the word.  (I could write pages about my biography with the money words!)

Here is a great article on language and thinking that was in the New York Times Sunday Magazine last week. It’s a great read.

Does Your Language Shape How You Think?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine

Here is the website to create a word cloud out of any written document. http://www.wordle.net/ A word cloud works with the sense of word.  It is fun to play with.