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

Understanding and Being Understood

I am visiting England and having a beautiful time. Dear friends and beautiful gardens provide me with amazing conversations with human spirits and nature spirits.

Today is the festival of Pentecost or Whitsun which reminds us of the sacred event fifty days after the Easter when the Holy Spirit ignites the twin tongues of fire within the souls of each one present and suddenly everyone can be understood by everyone in “the language of their birth.”

This is generally interpreted as the speaking in tongues but if we penetrate the esoteric and evolved meaning we find a very profound and liberating possibility that has nothing to do with where one was born and what their mother tongue is.  Actually, it never had to do with the languages of locations.

In the possibility of Whitsun, it is where you are “coming from” in the moment that is understood.  If every moment you are born anew and this birth is understood by all those around you, you will receive the love that surpasses all understanding.  If you find in your heart the ability to experience the constant birthing anew of the individual in front of you then you will give the love that surpasses all understanding. Through this love you experience the “fulness of Spirit.”

Whitsun or Pentecost occurred almost 2000 years ago. How close are we to understanding and being understood by those who are dear to us, let alone those who are strangers or perceived enemies? Do we have any sense of a love that surpasses understanding? Do we experience the fulness of Spirit - the full incarnation of the inner divinity?  These are not rhetorical questions and when considered deeply they ask us if we really want to feel, know, be penetrated with, this understanding, this love, this fulness? Could our hearts bear it?

Supporting the opening our hearts and the maturing the noble capacities of our human souls is the intention behind the Inner Year emails and teleseminars.

Much of the Inner Year focuses on the awakening of our individuality. Pentecost is the festival that celebrates the connection of one individuality to another.  This festival nurtures and celebrates how the inner I moves out to meet the I of the other.  It is the once a year attention to community. It’s the party of the year.

Yet, to really know communion with others we must know the community that makes up our sense of self.  Yesterday I was having a significantly healing conversation with a kind and thoughtful friend.  He was confronting me about some of my inner challenges.  He was saying “You are…” I was struggling with feelings of being understood but misjudged.  I defended myself and counter attacked even tho’ I felt he was touching a truth.  In a moment of inspired Whitsun wisdom, I realized that the truth was about a part of me, but not all of me.  I asked him if he could restate his insight and begin with “I see a part of you, Lynn, that is ….” He did and I immediately felt understood and loved. My complexity of good and weak parts, bad and wonderful parts, creative and stuck parts was being acknowledged by my friend and by me. My defenses rolled away and I could love all of me including the not-so-thrilling part he was pointing to and the conversation became compassionate transformative.

So what are all the languages of my parts? What are the languages of your parts?

Last night as I was falling asleep, I began to look at all the languages I am speaking in my own being and not understanding. The languages of my moods, the languages of my fears, the languages of my longings, the languages of my needs for love, sex and romance, the languages of my senses, the languages of my gut and my nervous system, the ancient languages of my biography, the languages of my traumas and my healings, the languages of my aging and on and on. Each part of me has a language and only a few do I speak well, listen to or understand.

Perhaps this polyglot challenge causes my love of this festival.  I shine in the Whitsun promise that I will be given the grace of knowing my own languages and in knowing my own come to know the languages of all other human souls - the twin tongues of self and other. But I also wonder what are the archetypes of this understanding and how can I apply them practically.


Today I will be giving a workshop on Stimulating and Soothing, the Art of Creative Self-Management, at the Steiner School is York, England.  As I was preparing my outline, I reflected on the many twin tongues of fire living in the wisdom of our humanity.  Soothing and stimulating are twin tongues.  If we understand the mysteries of soothing and stimulating, we can speak the languages that will soothe and stimulate our own and each other’s souls.  In the workshop I will focus on the soothing and stimulating of our temperaments and our senses.  I feel the possibility of a “fulness of awareness” here.  Knowing the languages of the temperaments is the foundation of understanding ourselves and others.  Knowing the soothing and stimulating languages of the senses helps us find the right perceptions of all things.

I will be offering a teleseminar on the languages and conversations of the four temperaments in June.  I will send out the information after I return to the States next weekend.  Over the summer I will be sending out 12 weekly emails on the Twelve Senses, sharing the way these sensory tongues shape our consciousness. I will offer teleseminars on the mysteries of Intimacy and the mysteries of Balance beginning in July.  I hope you will join me as we learn these challenging languages spoken in our souls.

Whitsun is often celebrated with flowers.  Here in England, spring flowers are everywhere.  Let flowers speak to your soul today.

with Whitsun wonder and love,

Lynn

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.

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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.

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.