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.

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.

A Lonely Place

There are times in our inner lives when we must dwell in a lonely place. A lonely place is unfrequented and remote. You dwell there without companions and without comforts. Inner Lent takes place in a lonely place. The reward of spending time in your lonely place is a clear inner strength of purpose and direction.

It's the middle of the Season of Lent and the time of the Inner Year when we can reflect on our personal need for or connection with the 40 days in the wilderness or desert. Immediately following the Baptism in the River Jordan, Christ is taken by the "Spirit" to this lonely place to fast for 40 days. Following the 40 days, the Devil comes and tempts Him three times.

The Baptism is the moment when the Christ enters Jesus of Nazareth. The Cosmic Christ incarnates within a human being. Following the Baptism, the incarnated Cosmic Christ must spend time in isolation contemplating the experience of human existence and the challenges of earthly limitations of space, weight, time, boundaries, hungers and desires.

The forty days of Lent is a time for you to contemplate the relationship of your divine purpose to the limitations of your personal existence. Inner Lent is not a simple gesture of denial, it is a profound and enriching time of self-exploration and self-awareness that occurs in a lonely place.

Lonely is the right word. When we reach a new inner level of development, meaning or purpose, we are different and "strange" even to ourselves. Our inner place of solitude is where we can adjust, adapt and engage with our new self.

What is your lonely place? The Gospels refer to either desert or wilderness. In the Inner Lent program, I have asked the participants to imagine their own experience of both inner landscapes.

The wilderness is untamed vegetation. There is a feeling of too much. Some find this environment overwhelming and others love the intensity and complexity of wild life. In the wilderness there is no distant horizon. Everything is close and demanding.

The desert is a place of vast emptiness. The horizon is faraway and endless. There is no shelter from the sun. The day is hot and long, the night cold and long. There is no distraction. Is this a safe environment for your soul?

How do you feel about these two environments? Neither the desert or the wilderness offers a path. Can you find your own inner direction? Do you have your own inner resources? How do you awaken to and strengthen your spiritual destiny in your inner isolation and your inner harsh environment?

Do you create a clearing in your wilderness? How do you do this?
Do you find an oasis in your desert? What does it provide for you?

When you reach a new stage of inner development, how can you give yourself time to meditate on how it changes your life? Each of us finds our Baptism when the Spirit comes into our lives and we are no longer our ordinary selves. It requires us to fast from our daily realities and overcome our temptations for external comfort, safety and personal power.

Inner Lent is the yearly season of attention to our renewed purpose. Whether you find yourself in a wilderness or a desert, hold fast to your Inner Divinity.

Please share your experience of dwelling in your lonely place? You will be inspiring others with your openness.

Working with the Inner Festivals

Working with the Inner Festivals

On February 25, Lent begins. Lent is the Christian festival that remembers the forty days, Jesus Christ spends in the wilderness following the Baptism in the River Jordan. During this time, Christ does not eat, is ministered to by angels, meets wild beasts and is tempted three times by Satan.

It is a Christian practice to “give up something tempting” for Lent. Usually we give up a favorite food or activity - chocolate, pasta, TV or video games. Even as a child, I wondered about this. It felt like a demanding law that had to be obeyed to be good, but didn’t make much sense spiritually or personally. Of course, I have never been any good at denying myself anything for a few hours and couldn’t imagine 40 days of living without anything I enjoyed, just to be “good” in the eyes of the Church. Yet, had I given a or found a reason, or an understanding in the heart of my heart, I felt I could have a true Lenten devotion and given up anything.

My childhood wonder and doubt has shaped my spiritual life into a practice of questioning. I don’t accept answers offered by exclusive dogmas and sectarian perspectives. I am fascinated by all religions - the dogmas and the rituals - and study them all with loving objectivity and respect.

In my childhood I attended a number of Christian denominations (from Catholic to Christian Science) as my father wanted me to have a liberal and inclusive religious experience. College opened me up to the Eastern paths and also to Judaism. I loved the whole gamut enough to minor in religion but did not find any one doctrine that called me to belong or practice.

With my marriage to a recovering alcoholic, I found both community and personal significance in AA and Al-Anon. I loved that it was a 24/7 relationship, that the “program” was devoted to healing, liberation and the acceptance and support of all others without judgment. The 12 Steps offered a one-size-fits-all path to self-mastery that was beautifully effective, challenging and compassionate. No dogmas and a open spirituality related to a self-defined Higher Power meant beliefs were personal.

Yet I still had a quiet longing for more. I felt there was something profound in the Christian Mystery and the story of Jesus Christ. Although I was not aware of my feelings at the time, there was something in the Christian festivals that called out to me even though the “church and cultural” festival practices felt empty of personal meaning. What did Christmas mean to me and all other souls? What was the personal and present significance of the Resurrection?

I wanted and needed festival practices that took me into myself, that made greater meaning of and in me. (I had no idea that I would need to create these inner festivals for myself or that I would be sharing them with others around the world.)

Then I put my kids in the new Waldorf School of Princeton and discovered Rudolf Steiner. Steiner brought this wonderful esoteric picture of Christianity and the Festivals. Esoteric signifies “within.” Everything I had been longing for in my heart and in my mind was present in Steiner’s cosmic worldview. I had found the essential ground and foundation on which to build a fulfilling spiritual life and my future work - Steiner’s anthroposophy (the wisdom of being human).

Inspired by Steiner’s loving and wise imagination of role of the Christ in human consciousness, a major piece of my personal work is a new psychospiritual understanding and practice of the Christian festivals - the design and guidance for a yearly cycle of practices for cultivating a rich and dynamic inner life.

Imagine what it means to your inner development to have a yearly rhythm of self-evolving practices that intimately connect your soul life to the cosmic cycle of the year and the esoteric meaning of the Christian festivals. The therapeutic process is often shaped by the immediate issues of the client, not any archetypal design or rhythm.

Through my attention to the Inner Year, I am now quite excited about a new two-part therapeutic design. Why not combine one-on-one counseling dealing with the immediate personal issues with the engagement in a group activity based on the festivals and the cycle of the year. This combination provides a highly effective process that acknowledges your reality as a unique individual with a unique biology, unique biography and unique destiny facing unique challenges, while also acknowledging the universal significance of the cosmic cycle of the sun through the course of the year and the esoteric impact and meaning of the Christian festivals to your thinking, feeling and willing?

The Inner Year is a program of self-knowledge, self-healing, self-development, self-restraint and self-liberation. It addresses all the archetypal issues of the soul in a yearly cycle. The Inner Year is a cosmic and universal guide for inner work and complements the intimate and unique process of one-on-one counseling and coaching.

Each of us has an inner sun shaping the life of our souls. This inner Sun is an image of our sense of “I am.” The inner Sun moves between solstices and equinoxes shaping our spiritual and material realities and attention. The twofold process of immediate and cosmic therapy engaging the unique and the universal aspects of our souls supports the development and maturing of our individuality and our humanity, the awareness of our Inner Sun.

The Christian festivals provides an extraordinary design for our lives. They reflect nature and both the story of the Christ Being and the longing and preparation of the human soul for the experience of Divinity dwelling and acting within in our heart of hearts.

Over the last few years I have given talks and written about all the major festivals - the quarterly festivals that reflect the esoteric meaning of the four seasons - Christmas/Winter Solstice, Easter/Spring Equinox, St John’s Tide/ Summer Solstice and Michaelmas/Fall Equinox. I have also spoken on Whitsun or Pentecost and on Advent. My focus on these talks is always the role the festivals play in the personal awakening of our inner life, the guidance to the fulfillment of the truth, beauty and goodness of our thoughts, feelings and deeds.

I have come to feel a real conviction that the renewal of the festivals, not as ritual and sentimental demonstrations of religious dogma, but as essential symbolic and guiding events during the year providing inspiration and illumination of our inner journeys, will free us to be free.

Christmas and the Holy Nights
December 25 - January 6
renews our innocence through Nativity and
increases the gifts of our wisdom through Epiphany.

Lent
40 days prior to Easter
cultivates self-mastery and builds the capacity to wisely and freely say “No!”

Easter
1st Sunday after the first full moon following the Spring Equinox
brings a conscious relationship to sacrifice, death and resurrection.

Whitsun or Pentecost
50 days after Easter
(re)awakens our sense of community and active empathy.

St John’s Tide
June 24
leads our souls to our moment of destiny and manifestation of our deeds in the world.

Michaelmas
September 29
asks us to face the presence of evil in our souls and in the world. We learn to redeem the perpetrator and resurrect the victim.

All Saints and All Soul’s
November 1
engages us with souls beyond the realm of life and death.

Advent
28 days before Christmas
offers a time to reflect on the meaning of the course of the year and the release of our attachment to our stories (dramas)allowing us to enter into the deep mystery of Christmas and the renewal of our inner (re)birth.

Over the course of 2009, beginning with Inner Lent, I will be offering some group opportunities for awakening and deepening your experience of The Inner Year. I will offer an indepth teleseminar of 2 or more 60 minute sessions of more direct guidance and interaction for each festival. These programs will be offered for a reasonable fee.

Click here to register for the Inner Lent Teleseminar.