Standing in the Center - Inner Pentecost

It’s Pentecost.

When I write my posts it is always scary and thrilling because I am taking a stand. I take a stand somewhere between opinion and truth, between prejudice and openess, between demand and encouragement. I struggle to have my language of soul meet your language of soul in a creative engagement.

I strive to find the words that point to the center of an idea or a feeling or a desire so you can find first your bearings and then the momentum to move toward the center of your relationship to the idea, even to the center of your being.

I imagine center as a place where my being is found unfettered by limiting stories, distorting perspectives, constricting one-sidedness. Perhaps in the center I find my consciousness living free from the distracting and distorting challenges of karma or sin.

There are a number of biological elements in the human body - your body and my body- that give us a living corporeal experience of center.  Of course, there is the heart and the spine, and the corpus callosum, but I find the fovea centralis the most exciting. The fovea is the tiny “pit” in the retina which provides the most acute sight - receptive to the brightest light. Perhaps understood esoterically, the fovea is also the place where our own inner light shines forth most brightly into the world, into others sight.

I’ve learned that from the center of our being something can become, something new can enter in that then radiates out.  In the ideal, it is truth, compassion, empowerment, love, even freedom, that comes in and radiates out.

In my conversations with clients, I find the collaborative goal or intention is to find their center, so they can stand in it and clearly experience who they are and interact with others and the world from that place. It is so hard to stand in our times and even harder to find our center but once there we can get a clear and empowering imagination of self.

INNER PENTECOST

Each year for Inner Pentecost, I share a way to find a deeply personal connection to the   great cosmic event that is described in New Testament Acts of the Apostles 2:1-31. This year I celebrate standing in the center.

FYI: I am writing this in the kitchen in front of a big window. Today there is indeed a mighty wind in the earthly sense.  Truly blowing with major gusts - almost frightening.  And finally, heavy rains falling on the parched Devon earth - it’s been a record setting dry spring.  There is a grouping of irises outside the window and they are being blow off center but their strong rootedness allows them to “bounce back.”


The pentecostal event could not occur without one being standing in the center of the gathering of the Apostles and the other devoted souls. That individual was a woman and a mother whose soul carried the twin experiences of innocence and wisdom. In the stories of the New Testemant she is Mary. As a being, she is the Virgin Sophia.

Nothing is out of place in cosmic events so we can learn much about our inmost selves this Pentecost by embracing the image of standing in the center and having a feeling of who stands there.

Ask yourself, “Who am I who stands in my center? Who stands in my center ready to receive the spirit of love and the future?”

Can you hold the circle, all that is you, from the center? Too often we think we can only hold the circle by running frantically around the periphery, by attempting to expand or contract our limiting definitions of who we are. We do not hold our lives and our destinies together by stretching or limiting at the periphery. We hold them together by gently, firmly, warmly, dwelling at the center of our being. Without the center there is no circle, no life and no love.

The center is the neutral zone I wrote about in my post on Mother’s Day. The you that stands in the center has no stories.  The moment you tell a story about yourself you have moved off center.  We all move off center often.

What is important is to remember the centered feeling and know how to return to it.

When we only hear and speak our own language/stories we are off center, standing in one part of ourselves. When we are not in our center, we can only understand the languages of competing needs and defensive rejections.

Inner Pentecost asks us to find our center and stand in it, relinquishing our own languages so we can experience the universal language and see in clear bright light those who stand around us.

SUGGESTIONS FOR INNER PENTECOST

Here is a list of the key phrases I have written in this post that I want to consider more deeply and more personally.  I want to find feelings and events that bring each phrase to life, my life.  I’ve added some of my thoughts about each phrase. 

You may want to follow this example and take a few minutes to note and respond to whatever words or phrases you resonate with. Listen to them and write down what you comprehend.


Innocence and wisdom —  Only if I am innocent can I be wise?  Being wise keeps innocence alive. 

Holding the circle from the center — Holding all the parts of my life together from the core of my being.  Given that I have a tendency to pay attention to too many things at once, this holding from the center imagination slows me down and lets me understand more of the language of things.

Center — What is my center? How do I know I am in my center? Is my center where I am most loving, most courageous, most understanding, most understood?

Expanding and contracting the periphery —  From the serene power of the center I don’t worry about the peripheral activity.

The neutral zone of no stories — This is my upper room, where my Inner Pentecost takes place every time I can get myself there. I need to make up a list of reminders on how to return to the neutral zone.

Give up and forgive competing needs and defensive rejections — The key words are competing and defensive.  We are entitled to have needs and entitled to reject but the pentecostal image of standing in the center sees all needs and rejections with equanimity. This is liberating maturity, not dramatizing adolescence.



Here are my previous posts on Pentecost.

http://theinneryear.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html


http://theinneryear.blogspot.com/2010/05/understanding-and-being-understood.html

I read this insightful quote from the great French novelist, Stendhal. He wrote

 “One can acquire everything in solitude except character.”

Which word in this quote got your attention?

Each temperament will be attracted to a particular word in this quote and base its interpretation and understanding of the entire statement on it.

The choleric will see “character.”

The sanguine, “everything.”

The phlegmatic, “acquire.”

The melancholic, “solitude.”

Which word got your attention?

If the four temperaments were having a conversation about Stendhal’s thought, the word they would all struggle with is “except.” Each temperament will have a different reaction to “except” in relation to the word they identify with.

Let’s look at a more mundane statement. 

"We need to get the dishes done before we can go to the movie."

The choleric sees it all done — a pristine kitchen and a great movie (that he chose.)

The sanguine will rush through the dishes, because she can’t wait to be entertained.

The phlegmatic is still at the table finishing dessert.

The melancholic is thinking they should all leave. He will do the dishes after they have all gone and then sit and read.

Will they understand each other? Will they find social harmony? Will the dishes get done? Will everyone enjoy the movie? Maybe.

If the temperaments are understood, the way they perceive and the way they behave, life works.  Understanding differences, even revering differences, makes social interaction rich with good possibilities.

Understanding temperaments, also, makes self-forgiveness an easier consideration.

I’m offering my course on the Four Temperaments in four sessions beginning next Sunday.

This is the Inner Year course in social wisdom, social grace and social creativity. This is not about having good manners or being polite. This is about understanding yourself and the person you are interacting with. The temperaments are what shape all interactions and all reactions creating social success or social disaster.

All books on etiquette were written to overcome temperament. Manners and politeness mean you don’t need to understand anyone, you just have to conform to convention. No wisdom, grace or creativity needed. So if your social goal is to be boring and bored, you don’t need to take this course. Read a book on manners, instead. (BTW, books on etiquette are usually written by phlegmatic cholerics.)

If you want to have fun, be effective, love and be loved, it all begins in the games temperaments play. This course teaches the games.

You will learn all the reasons to love each of the temperaments and all the reasons to hate them.  And then you will learn all the reasons to just observe them, hear the music that resonates in each and get a feel for the motivating energy behind each.

You will learn how each temperament asks for help, gives directions, and makes love.

You will learn how each temperament relates to authority, neediness, and change.

And then there are the ways the temperaments combine — the singles, doubles and triples. We will look at them all.

Social interaction without the four temperaments would be dull and lifeless. Creative collaboration requires the gifts and challenges that each temperament brings.  Making temperamental differences more conscious as  social wisdom, grace and creativity is the intention of this course.

The choleric will love this course because it provides knowledge and skills for moving toward social harmony, an ideal for the future.

The sanguine will love this course because it is lots of fun and offers lots of ways to experience the variety of the social life.

The phlegmatic will love this course because it organizes the social life and when the temperamental organization is understood, the social life becomes more comfortable and less demanding.

The melancholic will love this course because it offers so much to think about and encourages the deep compassion of universal love.

Register for the course here.




Learning the Languages of the Four Temperaments
http://www.store.lynnjericho.com/The-Languages-of-the-Four-Temperaments-IY4T.htm


If the time does not work for you, you can still take the course.  Each presentation is recorded.  You can listen to the replay online or download the MP3. 

You will receive the slides with the outline of each session prior to the webinar so that you can make notes as you listen.  There are also many valuable handouts to help you understand the differences.

The New Inner Year Curriculum

THE INNER YEAR CURRICULUM

If you want to know yourself better, make this and every year 

a year of growing and profound self-awareness

Being Human Courses - A Primer in the Core Experiences of Being Human

Becoming I  Courses - The Fundamental Schooling for Healing, Liberating and Empowering Your Individuality

Inner Winter Curriculum - Destiny

Being Human: The Three Temptations: Addiction, Fantasy and Prejudice
February

Becoming I: Imagining and Creating Your Contribution 

The Fundamental Schooling in Recognizing Your Destiny
March

Spring Curriculum - Relationship

Being Human: Understanding Your Own and Others Temperaments
April

Becoming I: Imagining and Creating Intimacy 

The Fundamental Schooling in Being in Conscious Relationship
May

Summer Curriculum - The World 

Being Human: Embodiment through the Senses
July

Becoming I: Imagining and Creating Balance 

The Fundamental Schooling in Standing Strongly in the World
August

Autumn Curriculum - Moral Development

Being Human: Encounters Part One — Confronting Your Challengers
October


                           Encounters Part Two — Engaging Your Companions
November

Becoming I:  Imagining and Creating Fulfillment 

The Fundamental Schooling in Living in Time
December

The Festivals

I will be sending out essays with audios offering imaginations for the esoteric meanings   and personal meanings for the major Festivals of the Christian Year.  I hope these will inspire your inner work.

Epiphany

Lent

Easter

Ascension

Pentecost

St. John's Tide

The Transfiguration

Michaelmas

Saints & Souls

Inner Easter's Tender Possibilities

 

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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

http://theinneryear.blogspot.com/2010/03/inner-easter-your-last-supper.html

Your Crucifixion

http://theinneryear.blogspot.com/2010/04/inner-easter-your-inner-crucifixion.html

Your Descent into Hell

http://theinneryear.blogspot.com/2010/04/inner-easter-holy-saturday.html

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

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.

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

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.

Inner Epiphany - Your Initiative

YOUR INITIATIVE

Initiative is the power of the individual (or community) to begin to manifest a new reality.  In other words, it is the courage and power to show up as yourself, contribute what only you can contribute and make the difference only you can make.

Initiative lives in initiates.  In ancient times there was a process of initiation lead by hierophants or gurus. In the evolution of consciousness, we now initiate ourselves with guidance from wise friends. Through the challenges and struggles of self-initiation, we imagine and develop our capacities to contribute to humanity. At some point we experience an inner shift, a graduation. Then we actually do it - we make our difference!

In the Gospel of John, we read the brief description of the first “difference” made by Jesus Christ, the changing of water to wine at the wedding at Cana.

In this description we can find a number of archetypal elements of initiative.  Paying attention to these elements and to the personal insights they inspire can bring to your soul a self-awareness that will support your self-initiation. I explore these in the audio.

Just let me say here that our individual path to our unique initiatives in not for sissies or slugs.  It takes courage and perseverance.  Most of us need to change our thinking, our values and our habits - step way out of the familiar box.  But remember we have been given the three gifts and immersed ourselves in the living waters of personal baptism, so we have been moving toward taking initiative our whole life.

In the audio below, I share my thoughts on the first sign or miracle of Jesus Christ and how we might find a model for fulfilling our destiny deeds.  Please leave your comments.

Note: I made the audio yesterday. When I listened to it, I was disappointed in my hesitancy at the beginning, a lot of ah's and um's, as if my thoughts were stammering into speech.  When we take initiative we often trip over time as in "my time has not come" translated into "my thoughts or my words have not come."

Working with this inner mystery of the Wedding at Cana triggered a lot of resistance in me.The challenge to share my insights felt right, but not comfortable. Yet as I persevered, putting aside my hesitancy, the thoughts moved beyond my self-consciousness and I found the warmth of enthusiasm flowing into me as the thoughts became speech more gracefully. And the content and feeling of the thoughts became surprising to me, the speaker.  Do listen and forgive the stammering thoughts at the beginning and find the juicy flowing thoughts that come once I get out of the way.

Then last night, I saw "The King's Speech."

Click here to download the audio on Your Initiative…

or to listen immediately click the button.

IMAGINING YOUR CONTRIBUTION

 Following the process of relating to the three inner epiphany experiences of the manger, the river and the wedding, the soul’s cycle of the inner year takes us into an intensive exploration of how we imagine our personal contribution. Do you know what your contribution is? Do you want to learn a number of important insights and essential questions that will guide you on your path of self-initiation? Imagining Your Contribution begins in in two weeks. 

I will be sending out info on this program in a few days including the opportunity to register for a complementary teleseminar on Imagining Your Contribution next Sunday at 5PM GMT (that's Noon Eastern and 9AM Pacific).

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.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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.

Thoughts and Questions on Intimacy

In the course of the Inner Year, the annual cycle of soul development. Where Christmas, at the dark of the year, is the time we focus on our spiritual solitude - the deep interior of our lives, summer, when the sun shines brightest is the time of the Inner Year to focus on our life that reaches into the world and into relationships. We look at our earthly reality as bounded and formed by time and space, well-being and story. This is the time when we study and learn about our capacities for creative intimacy with others, creative contribution to the world and creative balance in our daily lives.

This post looks at intimacy and describes the teleseminar I am offering to help us become more intimate with how intimacy lives in our souls and our gestures in the world.

DEFINING INTIMACY

Intimacy comes from intimus - Latin for inmost.

Intimacy emerges from inmost closeness and knowledge. How willing and capable are you to be close to and to know another, physically, energetically, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually? Intimacy is complex. You can be physically intimate, spiritually intimate. Spiritually intimate, but not emotionally intimate. You can be close and not know or be known. You can know or be known at a distance.

What is your ability for intimacy?

Like all things human, intimacy is a two way relationship - we are the object of intimacy and the subject of intimacy. We are born the object of intimacy - our mother is holds us close to her and knows us our every need and our every development. How our mother succeeds in providing us with feelings of intimacy, shapes are capacity for and our gracefulness in intimate relationships. As the subject of intimacy, we feel, think and act intimately in regard to a certain object of our intimacy.

We each make intimate choices. We recognize our needs and desires for intimacy. We resist and reject intimacy. We allow ourselves varying degrees of intimacy as object or subject - I can be close to you, but I will not reveal my inmost reality - so I will limit how much you will know me in spite of our closeness. Paradoxically, how intimate it is to speak the truth of your intimacy boundaries, to acknowledge to another that you need to limit the degree you will allow yourself to be known and close.

You can be closely related, but not intimate. You can hardly be acquainted with someone, yet find moments and brushes of profound intimacy. How have you experienced relationship without intimacy and intimacy without relationship? How have these intimacies caused joy or sorrow in your soul?

Intimacy is about the intersection of relationship with encounter. In encounter there is an adversarial component - a sensitivity to difference and otherness. Through encounter we find a closeness to the other and revelation of difference that is extraordinary in the context of the relationship. With each intimate encounter, the intimacy of the relationship grows. How open are you to intimate encounters? Do you feel unsafe or resistant when confront the difference and otherness in someone? Are you willing to look at your lover or your friend, your child or your colleague, as if they are a stranger and seek to encounter their inmost truth?

Intimacy asks us to gaze at each other. Not look, stare or glance at each other, but gaze! When we gaze we seek to know what is inmost in each other. When did you last gaze at another or experience someone gazing at you? Of course, we can gaze at another in our imaginations. How do you develop your capacity for gazing? How do you develop your ease at being gazed at?

There are measures of intimacy. How frequent are your intimate encounters? How intense are your intimate encounters? How enduring are your intimate encounters?


Like all things living, intimacy evolves and morphs.

Look at your biography of intimacy...
How close were you to…
Did they know you...
Parents?
Siblings?
Grandparents?
Aunts and Uncles and Cousins?
Step-relatives?


Best friends (What is best?)?
True loves (What is true?)?

Do you have an intimate relationship with God and the Spiritual World?
Do you have an intimate relationship with Nature?

How have you known ...
Intimacy welcomed?
Intimacy rejected?
Intimacy evolved?
Intimacy ended?

What are your...
Needs for intimacy?
Strategy for intimacy as subject and object?
Weaknesses as intimate object or intimate subject?

Spiritually, we can meditate on the karma and destiny of intimate encounters and relationships. Where is a relationship (or an aspect of a relationship) an encumberance or an obstacle? When are intimate difficulties and disappointments sources of opportunity and blessing?

Intimate knowledge never forms fixed judgment. It is so much about being truly sensitive, aware, attentive to the evolution of the object of intimacy. Like a mother’s womb to the fetus, or the walnut shell to the walnut, intimacy is a kind of evolving, responsive embrace to the subject.

Questions of Intimacy
a teleseminar

Tuesdays, 7:30PM - 9PM Eastern, 4:30PM - 6PM Pacific
June 23, June 30, July 7, July 14

Join this intimate group on intimacy. Limited to 12 participants.
We will reveal our stories and find our questions of intimacy. We will intimately listen to and be inspired by the stories and questions of 11 other people. We will be open, truthful, vulnerable. We will not try to fix, correct or heal. The group is a learning group, a liberating group, a questioning group. The reverence for each other will protect what is shared. The wonder at each other will nurture heart-confident disclosure and insight.

Do you seek to have more intimacy in your life?
Do you have too much intimacy in your life?
Do you desire more consciousness in your intimate relationships?
Do you desire more balance in your intimate relationships?
Can you express yourself intimately?
Can you contain yourself?
Does intimacy over stimulate you?
Do you withdraw and self-inhibit when faced with intimate encounter?

What inmost questions appear in your soul when you answer these questions?

The Questions of Intimacy teleseminar will not awaken all your questions and solve the intimate mysteries of your relationships, but it will help you articulate a few questions - enough questions to support your inner development over the Inner Year so that next summer you will be ready to become more intimate with your inmost questions of self and other.

You will need to plan on 30-60 minutes of "homework" and also be willing to have a phone conversation with another participant to work with your thoughts on "Questions of Intimacy."

Register here.

To pay by check, please mail it to Lynn Jericho, 132 Hillside Avenue, Chatham, NJ 07928 and send me an email immediately so I can include you in the seminar.

Questions? Or if you do not live in the US. please email me or call.

Pentecost, Community and The Future

There is so much living in the description of Pentecost.

• A gathering of people from all kinds of backgrounds, cultures, and status.
• A mighty wind that blows through the whole house.
• The Spirit appearing as a divided tongue of fire on everyone.
• Everyone speaking and hearing everyone’s native language.

And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, That I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, Your young men shall see visions, Your old men shall dream dreams. Acts 2.17

• The image of the future living in everyone as capacities to prophesy, envision and dream.

This year for Inner Pentecost, I want to share with you some thoughts on speaking, listening, and the future.

Three inner gestures live in this soul festival:

• a moving outward to meet and to know the other,
• a willingness to be met and to be known by the other and
• a capacity to perceive, even conceive, the future.

Inner Pentecost is barely inner. If all the other festivals of the Inner Year have been well-celebrated then Inner Pentecost will be a turning inside-out. This is the festival of the soul becoming social.

At Pentecost, we find a fully nourished self that can enter into the other. We find a self-knowledge so penetrating the self of the past and so aware of the unfolding self of the future that a genuine, truly confident and serene enthusiasm for the other emerges. Equally, this self is totally open to being deeply known and understood by the other. Finally, the future forms an inspired community of empowered and focused will. The inner life gives birth to the social life.

Writing these words, fills me with the joy of Inner Pentecost. It is the party of the Inner Year. Everyone is invited.

The story of Pentecost in the New Testament, gives the impression that the Holy Spirit comes and makes this all happen. That the invitation to this extraordinary "party" asks you to just show up.

Not so. Everyone present at the original Pentecost had prepared, had undergone an intense and complex initiation willingly. Their souls had willingly and dramatically evolved. There was nothing casual or miraculous about their path or their experiences. Every step had been willed. To experience the Holy Spirit we must actively develop our will forces.

Do you will yourself to know yourself?
Do you will yourself to know your fellow souls?

If you are thinking "I will do it!" You are speaking about doing something in the future. Will it now!

Our soul’s will forces make earthly manifestation possible. Through our will we bring the future into reality. When our own will merges with the will of others we form creative community, conceiving and giving birth to a higher community of unselfish and devoted and shared Imaginations, Inspirations and Intuitions. The work of the Inner Year gives birth to a new self and a community of "new selves" gives birth to the future.


The path of the Inner Year is an arduous journey. When you take the journey, you find the ending festival known as Pentecost is quite a celebration and the community of the future welcomes you with awesome wisdom and warmth. Through the experience of Pentecost, love evolves. There is no coercion, manipulation or deception in the Pentecost community. Truth, generosity and goodness prevail.

I hope my intense description hasn’t driven you into your intellect. When I write these Inner Year thoughts I go so deep into my consciousness that I sometimes get so serious, I am afraid I might be asking you to think too deeply for comfort and ease. Just remember that we must all learn to think with our hearts. It is only through heart thoughts that the deepest of ideas and the most meaningful ideals are met with inner grace.

Our soul loves to dance gracefully with both spirit and matter. Our heart is the dance floor. For Pentecost we dance a circle dance and hold hands with the souls of our fellow human beings. We move together like flames dancing in the wind to the music of the Holy Spirit.

For Inner Pentecost, think about the moments when you have joined hearts and hands with others to make something good, beautiful and true come into existence. Look around at the harvest of your community life. Celebrate the bounty of our shared future.

***********************************************

Today others are working on the imagination of this community of Pentecost. One individual has penetrated the Pentecost mystery and written about it with great clarity. Otto Scharmer’s book, Theory U, does not mention Pentecost, but those who practice the principles he shares, take up the challenges he articulates, will have a Pentecost experience. You can download very inspiring “tools” at his website: www.presencing.com

Scharmer describes the activity of listening with an open mind, an open heart, and an open will. He proposes that the future manifests through meeting each other through the generative listening of the open will. Generative listening is the listening of Pentecost. Out of generative listening comes the language everyone speaks together, the language of the future.


Theory U is chock full of brilliant guides to the listening and speaking that reflects the festival of Pentecost. The book is a gift from the future.

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.

Inner Whitsun

Hello dear Friend,

49 days after Easter and the Resurrection is a day known as either Pentecost or Whitsun. This day celebrates or acknowledges a mysterious event: the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Here is what happened about two thousand years ago. All those who had been with the resurrected Christ in the 40 days before the Ascension had gathered together. These included the Twelve Apostles and maybe 144 others. The Holy Mother or Virgin Sophia enters the gathering and everyone forms a circle around her. A mighty wind rises and a dove appears bringing a new force of spiritual energy. This dove is the way we experience the Holy Spirit and have come to recognize as a symbol of peace and new beginnings. This sacred energy radiates into the Virgin Sophia and out to the Apostles causing tongues of fire to appear on their foreheads at the place known as the Third Eye. Following this event those present found the Apostles could speak to and hear each one of them in the language of their birth.

What is the meaning of this event for the human soul and the evolution of consciousness and self-awareness? Why does it occur at this time of year? Why should anyone, not Christian, be interested in this celebration? And how can we celebrate Whitsun in a modern and meaningful way that cultivates a desirable experience in our souls?

I have such a feeling for this holy day. I love it like I love the flowers of late Spring. The joyful love of and for all souls blooms irrepressibly within our being.

If Easter is about redemption and resurrection, Whitsun is about universal and intimate love. When you know through loving another soul intimately enough to speak the language of their being or are the object of such a love, you know the gift of the Holy Spirit. This speaking of the native language has nothing to do with the geographical place of birth. It is the language of the self, of the native essence, of the truth of the individuality.


Whitsun reminds us to know one another intimately. I mean deeply, compassionately, unconditionally, completely, unselfishly. The flame of Whitsun is the energy of the Third Eye chakra, the two petalled lotus seeing wisely and without prejudice all that lives in another’s soul.

Pentecost in the Hebrew tradition was a feast of the first harvest. What can you harvest from your Inner Year practices? We began with the new seeds of selfhood of Inner Nativity and Inner Epiphany. We cultivated the soil of our soul through Inner Lent finding new freedom. We brought new life to our soul through Inner Easter. Now with Inner Whitsun we begin to harvest the fruit of Inner Living, new love.

What are the practices of Inner Whitsun? How do we grow wise in knowing/loving the other?

Read a great biography or autobiography. Study another’s life. Do a google search on an individual, read a number of posts, look at the images - not out of curiosity, but out of willed love or devotion. Invite a friend or several to do the same. Get together and share your perceptions, perceptions arising out of reverence for the individual.

Write a poem about a friend. Could you describe the true nature of your friend in 13 lines or 13 stanzas? Twelve lines or stanzas each presenting a perspective of your friend and the thirteenth being a metaphor for the place where all twelve perspectives meet. Don’t write this poem from your intellect, write it from your heart — your heart’s wisdom. Like the Virgin Sophia, the heart is both wise and innocent at the same time.

Have a love feast. I do this at the end of the biography workshops I lead. I have a love seat that each participant sits in silence, with arms and legs uncrossed. All the other participants take turns speaking of their admiration, respect, and love for the person in the love seat. So invite a few of your friends over and give them each and yourself a chance to sit in the Love Seat and receive the language of love that arises out of their friends wise heart.

Pick a place on the planet and love it. Yes, choose a different culture/language and bring love to it. Pick your place and do a search online or at the library. I suggest you just work with images as text tends to drive us from our heart into our head. God bless Google and Wikipedia for giving us quick access to the strange, the different, the other. Another possibility, much more difficult, is to lovingly speak and lovingly hear the language of an opposing political perspective. Somehow I feel that both Hillary and Barack would love to be actively loving each other rather than competing and attacking. What would at Whitsun election look like in the USA or any other country?

Practice ho’oponopono. Have you heard about ho’oponopono? This is very much a “Whitsun deed.” that works with the language of the shadow. Here is a link to a brief description of the work http://www.reuniting.info/wisdom_hooponopono_buddy_system. Just doing this practice for five minutes feels good (good as in goodness, not good as merely a pleasant feeling).


The next festival I will be writing about is St Johnstide which falls on June 24th and is connected to the Summer Solstice.

If you just read these thoughts on Whitsun you will be opening up to a very sacred part of your being. Having a sense of the cycle of the Natural Year and its impact on the Inner Year is a great step in self-awareness and personal development. Do what you feel capable of doing and love yourself.

Feel the power of the Third Eye, not just to see, but to love.