Festivals are spiritual celebrations that live in our Imaginations.
I live in an urban environment and there are no flowers around me, just cement, steel and glass. For Whitsun, I must imagine blooming flowers, just as I must imagine the circle of apostles, the Virgin Sophia and the Holy Spirit.
So it doesn't matter if you are in the Southern Hemisphere or the Northern, what matters is how alive your spiritual Imagination is. Your environment, your relationship to the sun may align with the imagination or not. You can pay attention to the sense perceptible seasonal realities or not.
We must realize that each of the festivals lives within the human spirit and can be celebrated and experienced any day of the year and on any place on the planet.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Monday, May 5, 2008
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.
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.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Living in the Southern Hemisphere
Dear Friends in the Southern Hemisphere,
With Inner Christmas and The Inner Year I am always thinking about you. I know your natural world meets the Sun in the reverse of my Northern Temperate experience. I wonder about your experience and how my thoughts meet your feelings.
The individuals who determined the dating of the Christian festivals lived in the Northern Hemisphere long before there was awareness that the Earth was a globe. They made their dating decisions based on the Gospels and the seasonal Pagan Festivals (which in so many ways reflected the unfolding of the events of the three years of Jesus).
Your intuition and the strength of your soul's connection to the seasons of Nature or to the Christian traditions will guide how you work with the thoughts on the Inner Year.
I encourage you to explore your inner experience. Develop your own way of following your Inner Year. Try reversing the festivals and see if it feels "right." Remember in the Spiritual World there are no calendars.
All things are relative in your imagination and in your heart. If you work with Inner Easter and the mood of the vernal equinox (when light overcomes darkness) when your days begin to darken, you may find that in six months your soul will awaken in some new and meaningful way. Perhaps it is your destiny to find spiritual growth in dealing with paradox and reversal.
Please post your experience as I know so many of my friends in the Southern Hemisphere wonder and even struggle with this question.
With Inner Christmas and The Inner Year I am always thinking about you. I know your natural world meets the Sun in the reverse of my Northern Temperate experience. I wonder about your experience and how my thoughts meet your feelings.
The individuals who determined the dating of the Christian festivals lived in the Northern Hemisphere long before there was awareness that the Earth was a globe. They made their dating decisions based on the Gospels and the seasonal Pagan Festivals (which in so many ways reflected the unfolding of the events of the three years of Jesus).
Your intuition and the strength of your soul's connection to the seasons of Nature or to the Christian traditions will guide how you work with the thoughts on the Inner Year.
I encourage you to explore your inner experience. Develop your own way of following your Inner Year. Try reversing the festivals and see if it feels "right." Remember in the Spiritual World there are no calendars.
All things are relative in your imagination and in your heart. If you work with Inner Easter and the mood of the vernal equinox (when light overcomes darkness) when your days begin to darken, you may find that in six months your soul will awaken in some new and meaningful way. Perhaps it is your destiny to find spiritual growth in dealing with paradox and reversal.
Please post your experience as I know so many of my friends in the Southern Hemisphere wonder and even struggle with this question.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Inner Easter
Saying Goodbye to Winter
Easter is the time of Balance. We find the balance of life and death in the soul and the balance of light and dark in nature.We have moved into another Spring. Winter has ended. You have lived 13 weeks or 91 days. Your soul has thought, felt and willed a season of life.
Spend a few moments reviewing your Winter. What thoughts stand out from the ordinary and the forgotten? What feelings colored your soul with shades of light and dark and warmth and cold? What deeds moved from thought to loving action? What did you learn about yourself? About those you love? work with? admire? resent? What happened in this season that you need to grieve or need to celebrate?
Easter, Nature and Your SoulSpend a few moments reviewing your Winter. What thoughts stand out from the ordinary and the forgotten? What feelings colored your soul with shades of light and dark and warmth and cold? What deeds moved from thought to loving action? What did you learn about yourself? About those you love? work with? admire? resent? What happened in this season that you need to grieve or need to celebrate?
Wikipedia has a beautiful description and some great images of equinox. I urge you to spend a few minutes reading the article.
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox
After reading this article on the Equinox, reflect on how much the experience of the Equinox is dependent on your place of observation.Where in the world are you? Which hemisphere do you live in? Between the equator and the pole - where is your latitude?
How you experience your life depends on where you are in your life. How you experience the light and dark of your inner life is so relative and so mysterious. Bringing your Inner Sun, the spiritual experience of "I am," to the equator of your soul and dwelling in the eternal moment of self-enlightenment is the goal of spiritual practice.
Nature's equinox occurs for a moment twice a year. Solstice occurs twice a year giving opposing experiences at the poles. Equinox is the perfect moment of "in between." Have you known the perfect between" in your soul? Or are you always seeking a polar moment? Where in your soul life do you find seemingly endless soul light? What do you find there? What about seemingly endless soul darkness?
In the seasonal mood of the Vernal Equinox, can you feel the natural fit of the Easter imagination? Out of the "dead" earth, new "life" sprouts in spring. With Easter we are drawn to the mysteries of death and of resurrection.
Death and Resurrection
How does your soul experience death? Is it the disappearance of a living thought of truth, a living feeling for beauty, a living intention for goodness? Is it the death of a loving and responsible relationship to the world, to the past, to the future, to another, to yourself? And is the death such a profound loss that you are willing to walk through hell, a deep personal hell, to find a greater inner sense of self that will resurrect or restore the dead to new life, meaning, purpose, significance?One image illuminating Inner Easter is unselfishness. The Resurrection of the Christ is not selfish. It is a deed of cosmic devotion and cosmic destiny.
Resurrect only what lives in your soul to serve others and the future. Resurrect the thoughts, feelings, intentions, relationships that bear your "I am," not those that merely provide the pleasure of "me, my, and mine." Resurrection for selfish and egotistical reasons is cloning and not resurrection. Cloning of the soul stops inner evolution and personal growth.
Celebrating Inner Resurrection
In the course of every year, we make choices that crucify our higher self and true destiny. We crucify our higher self and our life's noble destiny with inner attachment to the superficial, the transient, the habitual, the easy, and the selfish.Easter is a time to reflect on those choices, not to recrucify ourselves, but to resurrect ourselves. We can resurrect our devotion to the profound, the lasting, the creative, the challenging and the loving.
How long would it take to deepen your awareness of the superficial, the transient, the habitual, the easy and the selfish attachments in our daily lives? Perhaps we could make lists of the aspects of our lives that deaden our spirit. Consider how these attachments kill the True, the Beautiful and the Good in our souls? Write journal entries or poems about the crucifying and the resurrecting choices of your life.
As I work with the possibilities of the Inner Year, I am amazed at the graceful connectedness between the esoteric meanings of the Christian Festivals and the moods and questions supporting a rich and healthy unfolding soul life. What other time of year would nurture the soul's reflections on death and resurrection?
Bring the dawning of new life to your soul. Live into the mood of Easter.
One Woman's Death and Resurrection - An Easter Inspiration
Jill Bolte Taylor shares the story of her death and resurrection in an 18 minute video - http://www.ted.com/talks/view
In this inspiring video, Jill shares how she lived her "death" and her "resurrection." Whether you are more of a scientist or a spiritualist, you will find her talk amazing. It is truly an Inner Easter story.
Comments, please!
Inner Easter awakens many complex and personal thoughts and feelings. Please share your experience, your imaginations and your hopes. I will offer another posting in time for Whitsun or Pentecost, 50 days after Easter.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Inner Lent
Lent is the Christian festival of fasting and denial in preparation for Holy Week and Easter. As a young child I was fascinated with the idea of giving up something for Jesus. But, as I grew up I found myself thinking of Lenten denial more as a religious diet, a Weight Watchers for the Soul. Dieting and other disciplines have always been difficult for me so Lent became a time of failure and meaninglessness. I didn’t quite understand how giving up chocolate, pasta or going to the movies for forty days connected me to the Spirit or my spirit. How did it serve my moral and spiritual development? How did it serve the world and the future?
Working with Inner Christmas over the last four years has opened me up to the personal and intimate possibilities living in the rest of the Christian Year. As a counselor/healer/educator, I find the calendar of the soul very important. If I contemplate the life of the soul in relation to the seasonal flow of Nature and the esoteric imaginations of the Christian festivals, what do I see?
Inner Christmas ends with Epiphany. Epiphany is the Baptism of the Christ - the incarnation of the Christ Being into Jesus of Nazareth. Following Epiphany, the mood of the soul is one of seeking knowledge. Winter supports a time of inner reflection on the questions “Who am I?”, “What do I want?” and “What am I doing?” These are destiny questions. We look at our life path of self-expression, of self-manifestation and of self-management. We consider our potential to contribute and to grow. And we attend to the big question of “What gets in my way.”
I believe Lent is the time to work with what gets in our way - the obstacles to our desire to fulfill our destiny. Lent finds its inspiration in the forty days in the wilderness that follow the Baptism. Christ Jesus goes off to be alone - to struggle with gravity, hunger, limitation - the challenges of being human before taking up His Deed for humanity. Each year the calendar of the soul gives us the mood of the wilderness, a yearly time to look at our personal deed and the temptations that seductively promise an existence free from pain, responsibility and discipline.
During the forty days, Christ is tempted three times by Evil. (You can do a google on “three temptations” and find much to read.) In the modern wilderness of soul, three temptations seduce us, individually and collectively. They are very powerful and we often succumb to them. The temptations are prejudice, fantasy and addiction.These are three ways in which we cripple and corrupt our thinking, our feeling and our willing and we distort the flow of time from past to present to future. Inner Lent is the time when we can face and overcome these 3 temptations of our soul.
Prejudice
Prejudice is thinking trapped in the past. Prejudice is pre-judgment. Most of us think of prejudice as being harmful, but prejudice can also be positive. The quality of prejudice is not the temptation. The temptation is the absence of living thinking. A thought that had validity in the past is carried forward, whether or not it has any relevance or meaning in the present. We don’t think - we remember an old lifeless thought. We assume a momentary perception, or concept, is forever.
The Lenten challenge is first to recognize your prejudices. Recognizing your prejudices is so difficult - it is like going into the cemetery of your soul and digging up dead bodies; Or ghost-busting in your soul; Or finding the thought vampires or living dead and driving a stake through their hearts; or shining the light of Spiritual Sun on them.
Make a list of five dead thoughts. These are thoughts that are very familiar in their comfort or discomfort. Consider,: a thought about yourself, a thought about someone you interact with, a thought about your work, a thought about your belief system and a thought about your future. Now explore the truth of each thought in the present moment. Is there any truth or relevancy?
Can you notice your prejudices during the forty days of Lent? Most of us have little awareness of how old our thinking is. Every prejudice is the absence of Spirit. Overcoming the temptation of prejudice means questioning the newness of your thoughts, attitudes and behaviors. What among these prejudices can you make new and imbue with freedom? What likes and dislikes can you examine? What dead thoughts can you give up for Lent?
You might find it less challenging to explore an impersonal thought. We all know the Sun rises in the East. This is a truth that we once thought with living interest. For most of us, it has become information and a dead thought. However, during Lent, wake up every morning and have a living experience of the newly rising Sun.
Addiction
Addiction is the avoidance of pain in the present. With an addiction we take in a substance to create an artificial and temporary harmony in the present. As a society, we tend to think of negative addictions, but there are many more positive addictions to consider. I used the addiction of reading spiritual and self-help books for years and years. I received great value out of my reading but I used it like a drug. I was in pain and, when I read, I was avoiding my pain.
Being in the wilderness is a time to face pain. What you resist, persists. The writer Joseph Conrad wrote “In the destructive element immerse.” Lent is the time to feel the pain of the present. Your Spirit will sustain you through this agony. Whether you suffer with the weight of the past, your hunger for the future or the limitations of the present, your forty days of Lenten suffering will strengthen you. You will spring forth at the end of Lent with a new understanding of your destiny.
Do not forego your biggest, most soothing addiction. Find your small, or medium-sized, addictions. In our age of comfort and anxiety, we need to modulate our inner lives. We go into the wilderness to find wisdom - not torture.
Do you have an addiction for information? Do you face fear when you don’t have all the answers? Can you give up reading the newspaper for forty days, or even five days? Do you avoid anxiety or sadness with addictive physical activity? Can you give up exercise for a week, or moderate your fitness program for forty days? And consider modifying spiritual practices or beauty routines? Spiritual practices can be about avoiding discomfort with material existence and beauty routines can mask the pain of aging or anxiety over feeling desirable. Your inner Spirit is filled with equanimity and compassion and will not abandon you in the wilderness of your pain.
Look at your life and determine which practices, activities, consumptions are motivated by avoidance of pain, of anxiety, of sadness, of self-disgust. This is the real challenge and gift of Lent - recognizing your motives of avoidance and finding the courage to immerse in the destructive elements of your soul.
Fantasy
Fantasy is will trapped in the future. Fantasies are so comforting because we do not need to do anything. We can fantasize the most amazing results and outcomes of our efforts and never take the first step. We don’t need to be in the reality of life. We create worlds and powers and benefits with fantasy. Fantasy is the future that will never come.
Thinking about doing good is not doing good. Good thoughts are not good deeds. Dreaming about possibilities is not fulfillment or contribution, it is just dreaming.
With so much powerlessness in childhood and so much emphasis on being freed from our enchanted castles and witch’s lairs, we learn to deal with the entrapment of our will forces by fantasizing all kinds of happy endings and wild adventures.
Our will needs to be active in the present. We need to free ourselves in the reality of the moment through responsibility and courage. If the work of the wilderness is to have any redemptive or creative power we must pull our will out of the future and act now.
What is the dream of the future that has no present action? What horizon do you see, yet fail to take any step toward? If you were to take just ten steps over forty days, what would those steps be? You cannot be in fantasy when your will is active in the present.
Closing thoughts
In facing the three temptations, do not be grandiose. Be successful in small ways. Just as God is in the details, find your radiant strength of spirit in the elegance and humility of the simple. Self-compassion is about being gentle and tender with your soul development.
Please think about commenting. To leave a comment click on the word "comments" below.
Working with Inner Christmas over the last four years has opened me up to the personal and intimate possibilities living in the rest of the Christian Year. As a counselor/healer/educator, I find the calendar of the soul very important. If I contemplate the life of the soul in relation to the seasonal flow of Nature and the esoteric imaginations of the Christian festivals, what do I see?
Inner Christmas ends with Epiphany. Epiphany is the Baptism of the Christ - the incarnation of the Christ Being into Jesus of Nazareth. Following Epiphany, the mood of the soul is one of seeking knowledge. Winter supports a time of inner reflection on the questions “Who am I?”, “What do I want?” and “What am I doing?” These are destiny questions. We look at our life path of self-expression, of self-manifestation and of self-management. We consider our potential to contribute and to grow. And we attend to the big question of “What gets in my way.”
I believe Lent is the time to work with what gets in our way - the obstacles to our desire to fulfill our destiny. Lent finds its inspiration in the forty days in the wilderness that follow the Baptism. Christ Jesus goes off to be alone - to struggle with gravity, hunger, limitation - the challenges of being human before taking up His Deed for humanity. Each year the calendar of the soul gives us the mood of the wilderness, a yearly time to look at our personal deed and the temptations that seductively promise an existence free from pain, responsibility and discipline.
During the forty days, Christ is tempted three times by Evil. (You can do a google on “three temptations” and find much to read.) In the modern wilderness of soul, three temptations seduce us, individually and collectively. They are very powerful and we often succumb to them. The temptations are prejudice, fantasy and addiction.These are three ways in which we cripple and corrupt our thinking, our feeling and our willing and we distort the flow of time from past to present to future. Inner Lent is the time when we can face and overcome these 3 temptations of our soul.
Prejudice
Prejudice is thinking trapped in the past. Prejudice is pre-judgment. Most of us think of prejudice as being harmful, but prejudice can also be positive. The quality of prejudice is not the temptation. The temptation is the absence of living thinking. A thought that had validity in the past is carried forward, whether or not it has any relevance or meaning in the present. We don’t think - we remember an old lifeless thought. We assume a momentary perception, or concept, is forever.
The Lenten challenge is first to recognize your prejudices. Recognizing your prejudices is so difficult - it is like going into the cemetery of your soul and digging up dead bodies; Or ghost-busting in your soul; Or finding the thought vampires or living dead and driving a stake through their hearts; or shining the light of Spiritual Sun on them.
Make a list of five dead thoughts. These are thoughts that are very familiar in their comfort or discomfort. Consider,: a thought about yourself, a thought about someone you interact with, a thought about your work, a thought about your belief system and a thought about your future. Now explore the truth of each thought in the present moment. Is there any truth or relevancy?
Can you notice your prejudices during the forty days of Lent? Most of us have little awareness of how old our thinking is. Every prejudice is the absence of Spirit. Overcoming the temptation of prejudice means questioning the newness of your thoughts, attitudes and behaviors. What among these prejudices can you make new and imbue with freedom? What likes and dislikes can you examine? What dead thoughts can you give up for Lent?
You might find it less challenging to explore an impersonal thought. We all know the Sun rises in the East. This is a truth that we once thought with living interest. For most of us, it has become information and a dead thought. However, during Lent, wake up every morning and have a living experience of the newly rising Sun.
Addiction
Addiction is the avoidance of pain in the present. With an addiction we take in a substance to create an artificial and temporary harmony in the present. As a society, we tend to think of negative addictions, but there are many more positive addictions to consider. I used the addiction of reading spiritual and self-help books for years and years. I received great value out of my reading but I used it like a drug. I was in pain and, when I read, I was avoiding my pain.
Being in the wilderness is a time to face pain. What you resist, persists. The writer Joseph Conrad wrote “In the destructive element immerse.” Lent is the time to feel the pain of the present. Your Spirit will sustain you through this agony. Whether you suffer with the weight of the past, your hunger for the future or the limitations of the present, your forty days of Lenten suffering will strengthen you. You will spring forth at the end of Lent with a new understanding of your destiny.
Do not forego your biggest, most soothing addiction. Find your small, or medium-sized, addictions. In our age of comfort and anxiety, we need to modulate our inner lives. We go into the wilderness to find wisdom - not torture.
Do you have an addiction for information? Do you face fear when you don’t have all the answers? Can you give up reading the newspaper for forty days, or even five days? Do you avoid anxiety or sadness with addictive physical activity? Can you give up exercise for a week, or moderate your fitness program for forty days? And consider modifying spiritual practices or beauty routines? Spiritual practices can be about avoiding discomfort with material existence and beauty routines can mask the pain of aging or anxiety over feeling desirable. Your inner Spirit is filled with equanimity and compassion and will not abandon you in the wilderness of your pain.
Look at your life and determine which practices, activities, consumptions are motivated by avoidance of pain, of anxiety, of sadness, of self-disgust. This is the real challenge and gift of Lent - recognizing your motives of avoidance and finding the courage to immerse in the destructive elements of your soul.
Fantasy
Fantasy is will trapped in the future. Fantasies are so comforting because we do not need to do anything. We can fantasize the most amazing results and outcomes of our efforts and never take the first step. We don’t need to be in the reality of life. We create worlds and powers and benefits with fantasy. Fantasy is the future that will never come.
Thinking about doing good is not doing good. Good thoughts are not good deeds. Dreaming about possibilities is not fulfillment or contribution, it is just dreaming.
With so much powerlessness in childhood and so much emphasis on being freed from our enchanted castles and witch’s lairs, we learn to deal with the entrapment of our will forces by fantasizing all kinds of happy endings and wild adventures.
Our will needs to be active in the present. We need to free ourselves in the reality of the moment through responsibility and courage. If the work of the wilderness is to have any redemptive or creative power we must pull our will out of the future and act now.
What is the dream of the future that has no present action? What horizon do you see, yet fail to take any step toward? If you were to take just ten steps over forty days, what would those steps be? You cannot be in fantasy when your will is active in the present.
Closing thoughts
In facing the three temptations, do not be grandiose. Be successful in small ways. Just as God is in the details, find your radiant strength of spirit in the elegance and humility of the simple. Self-compassion is about being gentle and tender with your soul development.
Please think about commenting. To leave a comment click on the word "comments" below.
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