Beyond the Prayers of Childhood

How did you learn how to pray? What did you pray to? Pray for?

I learned to pray at night before I went to sleep.  I learned to be on my knees.  At four, with a naive sense of responsibility and devotion, I loved the litany of individuals in my “God bless...and...and...and...and…” list.  I was proud of my thoughtfulness in including my cat and my stuffed animals among my relatives and friends.

What I was praying for: safety, comfort, health, good weather, what I thought would make me happy, that mommy and daddy would stop fighting - was always clear. Who I was praying to was “God” or “Lord” or in the year I, raised Protestant, went to a Catholic boarding school (fourth grade) I thought it was pretty cool to pray to saints and martyrs and I loved saying the rosary and experiencing repetitive, impersonal prayer.

But building a real consciousness of a relationship with spiritual beings was never considered. I prayed to an anonymous power and authority.  The Virgin Mary seemed human - she might hold me with the same tenderness she held the Infant Jesus. But overall whatever being received my prayers, I believed in, but didin’t know and couldn’t describe.

In my late thirties, I met the vast and amazing insights of Rudolf Steiner.  Steiner’s mystical knowledge of spiritual beings provided rich meaning and profound distinctions. I found I could relate and relate and relate to spiritual beings of all sorts and purposes, angels, elementals, thrones, the Holy Spirit and so many others.   I could speak to them and listen to them.  I could feel them and learn from them.  Steiner spoke of the longing of these beings for real engagement with human souls, so I engaged as best I could. I found joy in my humble attempts to offer what I could out of my thoughts, feelings, deeds and perceptions to these beings. And I found new thoughts, feelings and deeds arising in my soul that were clearly not self-generated. These beings were engaging with me. I moved from prayer to contemplation to holy conversation. I was consciously connected.

Now once a year, in the deep spiritual mood of Inner Autumn, I give a teleseminar on “Connecting with Spiritual Beings.” I invite you to be part of this 4 part teleseminar. I share my perception of these beings and the ways we can relate to each of them.  I look at what they bring to our earthly lives and what they seek from each of us.

What would it mean to your inner life and spiritual practices to build creative, comforting and challenging relationships with the beings of the spiritual world?

Connecting With the Dead and other Spiritual Beings

Do you ever want to connect with a loved one who has died?

There is a thread in your heart that ties you to many souls who are no longer living.  How do you work with this thread?  Do you know how to connect actively with the dead? The true core of each human being is spirit and spirit does not die but it does end a lifetime.  Our connections are deeper and more lasting than the end of a lifetime. We can stay connected beyond time and space.

Staying connected is not about avoiding mourning. We grieve the loss of the daily sense impressions of our loved one and there seems to be no more story to live.  But going forward we can stay connected spiritually and spiritually the relationship can continue and be profoundly fulfilling.

Before death, we connect with our waking consciousness of our senses.  We see with our eyes, Hear with our ears. Touch with our fingers.  And our stories are told by our likes and dislikes, our drives and  desires, our agreements and our disagreements.

After death, inspired by our mourning, we can stay connected through our heart and through sleep.  Our hearts do not need the senses to love and be loved and the stories found in deep sleep will not be told by the drama and ideals of responses and reactions.

Call out to the dead before you go to sleep.  Ask them questions or simply wonder about them. Offer them your open heart. Fall asleep and enter the spiritual conversation.  When you wake up, you will feel the connection and the spiritual conversations will glimmer in your consciousness.

I have found two activities very helpful.  I will read from a spiritual text before falling asleep.  These words take me beyond the drama and the wishes of ordinary connection and open my heart.  Upon waking, I will journal and capture the mystery of the feelings and discover the spiritual warmth and sometimes quite practical wisdom that could only come from one free of the fetters of the senses and the stories but still connected in love.

This is one way to stay connected.  

 

In this season of the dead, I encourage you to reach out with love.

 

With love,

Lynn

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Connecting To Spiritual Beings

an Inner Autumn program

The more one is oneself, the more one feels alone. But the pain of feeling "alone" is very different from the anguish of feeling "abandoned." Marcelle Spira, Swiss psychoanalyst
                  

Each of us feels the need to awaken fully to the self, to the meaning and significance of what we refer to when we say "I," during our lifetime.  As we discover our selfhood, we  separate from our identities in the world and our connections to other human beings.  This can be psychologically very scary and  threatening.  We discover that knowing our individuality necessarily separates us from others.  We become a solo subject, with strange and subtle relationships to all other things.  We may feel the grief of being alone or the nightmare of being abandoned. We experience ourselves abandoning all limiting attachments in order to hold on to this sacred sense of oneself. This is our earthly dilemma.

If we explore this spiritually, we come to another experience.  We experience being all one.  If the core of the experience of "I" is spiritual, recognizing ourselves as spiritual beings living an earthly existence of separateness, then another reality comes into our consciousness.  There is no separation in spiritual reality and selfhood coexists in our consciousness with being all one.  We find eternal connection.

To overcome the pain of aloneness and the horror of abandonment, we need to know the presence of spiritual beings.  Who are the beings that never abandon us? That always honor and support our selfhood? How do we relate to these beings? What do they want from us, the human beings, if anything?

The first step in having an active and conscious relationship to spiritual beings, is to know their names and their deeds.

In this teleseminar series, we will build a creative understanding and imagine a meaningful relationship with spiritual beings.  We will look at our connections to...

...our own guardian angel - this connection will surprise you as it is not the sweet relationship,

...the spiritual hierarchies - these beings bring a wonderful creative order to our existence

• angels, archangels, archai - these beings support the human life and activities and interact with us all the time
• exusiai, dynanmis, kyriotetes - these beings support creation (and have these unpronouncable Greek names)
• thrones, cherubim, seraphim - these beings offer divine substances to our thoughts, feelings and deeds

...elementals and nature spirits - these beings are all around the earthly world and can be very helpful and they thrive on our attention.

...the dead and the unborn - those on either side of the threshold of earthly life - if the core of the self is spirit - there is a part of each us that needs no birth and never dies.  These loved ones are always with us even if we cannot see them.

 

...the spiritual core living in our own hearts and the hearts of other human beings

 

We will also look at the challenges to these connections and the path to overcome these threats.

 

The course will help you develop spiritual connections that will take away the fear of isolation and of the future. 

 

 

Inner Autumn Teleseminars

The Inner Autumn teleseminars are part of The Inner Year curriculum for personal development.  The Inner Year provides creative perspectives on the great psychospiritual needs of human consciousness and the questions living in the seeking soul. The Inner Year is based on the wisdom of the cycle of the seasons of the soul.

Connecting with Spiritual Beings is a teleseminar offered via the telephone and the internet.  It is live and interactive with presentation and sharing. There are four sessions.  Each session is 60 minutes. Handouts are sent via email.

The course is offered:
Sundays 4:00 - 5:00 PM Eastern Oct 24 - Nov 14
Thursdays 8:00 - 9:0 PM Eastern Oct 28 - Nov 18

The fee is $47.

 

Register for the Connecting With Spiritual Beings here.
http://www.store.lynnjericho.com/Connecting-With-Spiritual-Beings-IYCSB10.htm

Email me if you need to register by phone or have any questions.

The Second Question

The 2nd question to ask before having conversations with spiritual beings is a doozie.

What is a Spiritual Being?

This question generates many, many questions so it is not one that we ask very often. This may also be due to the fact that most of us grew up with “God.”

If the idea of “God” is satisfying to you, you don’t need to read further. And you probably shouldn’t consider my teleseminar, Having Conversations with Spiritual Beings. You probably believe prayer is the only form of interaction with “God” and think the idea of a conversation with a spiritual being is ridiculous or blasphemy.

However, if you feel there are spiritual beings in layers and hierarchies, actually, a whole panoply of gods, between us and “God,” then read on or think on. Play on with my questions below and add your own through the comment function of this blog.

Questions to ponder as a beginning...

Are you a spiritual being?

What is a being and what makes a being spiritual?

Are spiritual beings great dancers - always moving and flexible?

Do they ever tire and rest?

Or are spiritual beings fixed and immovable?

Do spiritual beings need something from us, their creations?

Do spiritual beings live in rocks or roses? swans or hyenas?

Can you see, hear or touch a spiritual being?

Do we have guardian angels?

When a human being dies, what happens to their spirit?

What is an elemental being?

Are there house spirits?

Do spiritual beings have clear roles and tasks?

Do spiritual beings have a voice and a language?

How do you get the attention of a spiritual being?

So many questions.

And here are a few questions of a different sort…

If we pray or meditate, why do we need to have a conversation with a spiritual being?

Are there different conversations for different spiritual beings?

Why would a spiritual being want to have a conversation with a human being?

Why would a human being want to have a conversation with a spiritual being?

Where and when do these conversations take place?

If spiritual beings have all the answers, why did they create the capacity to ask questions?

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Add your questions and your thoughts about spiritual beings below.

These questions and more will be addressed and explored in my teleseminar, "Having Conversations with Spiritual Beings." If you want to engage in a conversation with other human beings on this rarely discussed or explored human capacity and challenge, join me. The conversation begins this Sunday, November 1 - All Saint's Day! Click here.