I base all my Inner Year writing, teaching and healing on the commitment that all spiritual realities must be made practical and functional in our material lives or they are simply “stories,” beautiful, powerful, frightening, soothing, but without daily practical impact. I want to spiritualize my material life and materialize my spiritual life. I want to become as fully human and fully divine as I can become and I want you to become as fully human and fully divine as you can become in each year. I want to surprise myself with my own evolving meaning and I want to delight in your evolving meaning. Each cycle of the year, I want to follow the inner processes that imbue me with more love. And I am willing to work at it.
Imagine instead of looking at each passing year as growing older, you could experience your heartsoul becoming a greater source of overflowing love year after year. Imagine the love that comes from greater self-knowledge and the love that comes from greater knowledge of other human souls.
Attending to the unfolding of the Inner Year each year will give you the nurturing support, the guiding imaginations and questions, and the creative perspectives to cultivate your love of self and other, your love for the earthly and the divine, and your love for the mystery and wonder of existence. Perhaps the greatest gift of the Inner Year is it’s compassionate cyclical return. You do not need to do it all at once, like the sun, your soul revisits each Inner Year festival with its particular expression and admonition every year. Like a growing oak, each year brings deeper roots, a stronger and taller trunk, more branches, more leaves and more acorns. As you move through each year you evolve into a new you, the same and different, less and more, something comes toward you and something moves away – all of this to deepen, enrich, heal, liberate and strengthen your ability and capacity to give and receive love.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
A Lonely Place
There are times in our inner lives when we must dwell in a lonely place. A lonely place is unfrequented and remote. You dwell there without companions and without comforts. Inner Lent takes place in a lonely place. The reward of spending time in your lonely place is a clear inner strength of purpose and direction.
It's the middle of the Season of Lent and the time of the Inner Year when we can reflect on our personal need for or connection with the 40 days in the wilderness or desert. Immediately following the Baptism in the River Jordan, Christ is taken by the "Spirit" to this lonely place to fast for 40 days. Following the 40 days, the Devil comes and tempts Him three times.
The Baptism is the moment when the Christ enters Jesus of Nazareth. The Cosmic Christ incarnates within a human being. Following the Baptism, the incarnated Cosmic Christ must spend time in isolation contemplating the experience of human existence and the challenges of earthly limitations of space, weight, time, boundaries, hungers and desires.
The forty days of Lent is a time for you to contemplate the relationship of your divine purpose to the limitations of your personal existence. Inner Lent is not a simple gesture of denial, it is a profound and enriching time of self-exploration and self-awareness that occurs in a lonely place.
Lonely is the right word. When we reach a new inner level of development, meaning or purpose, we are different and "strange" even to ourselves. Our inner place of solitude is where we can adjust, adapt and engage with our new self.
What is your lonely place? The Gospels refer to either desert or wilderness. In the Inner Lent program, I have asked the participants to imagine their own experience of both inner landscapes.
The wilderness is untamed vegetation. There is a feeling of too much. Some find this environment overwhelming and others love the intensity and complexity of wild life. In the wilderness there is no distant horizon. Everything is close and demanding.
The desert is a place of vast emptiness. The horizon is faraway and endless. There is no shelter from the sun. The day is hot and long, the night cold and long. There is no distraction. Is this a safe environment for your soul?
How do you feel about these two environments? Neither the desert or the wilderness offers a path. Can you find your own inner direction? Do you have your own inner resources? How do you awaken to and strengthen your spiritual destiny in your inner isolation and your inner harsh environment?
Do you create a clearing in your wilderness? How do you do this?
Do you find an oasis in your desert? What does it provide for you?
When you reach a new stage of inner development, how can you give yourself time to meditate on how it changes your life? Each of us finds our Baptism when the Spirit comes into our lives and we are no longer our ordinary selves. It requires us to fast from our daily realities and overcome our temptations for external comfort, safety and personal power.
Inner Lent is the yearly season of attention to our renewed purpose. Whether you find yourself in a wilderness or a desert, hold fast to your Inner Divinity.
Please share your experience of dwelling in your lonely place? You will be inspiring others with your openness.
It's the middle of the Season of Lent and the time of the Inner Year when we can reflect on our personal need for or connection with the 40 days in the wilderness or desert. Immediately following the Baptism in the River Jordan, Christ is taken by the "Spirit" to this lonely place to fast for 40 days. Following the 40 days, the Devil comes and tempts Him three times.
The Baptism is the moment when the Christ enters Jesus of Nazareth. The Cosmic Christ incarnates within a human being. Following the Baptism, the incarnated Cosmic Christ must spend time in isolation contemplating the experience of human existence and the challenges of earthly limitations of space, weight, time, boundaries, hungers and desires.
The forty days of Lent is a time for you to contemplate the relationship of your divine purpose to the limitations of your personal existence. Inner Lent is not a simple gesture of denial, it is a profound and enriching time of self-exploration and self-awareness that occurs in a lonely place.
Lonely is the right word. When we reach a new inner level of development, meaning or purpose, we are different and "strange" even to ourselves. Our inner place of solitude is where we can adjust, adapt and engage with our new self.
What is your lonely place? The Gospels refer to either desert or wilderness. In the Inner Lent program, I have asked the participants to imagine their own experience of both inner landscapes.
The wilderness is untamed vegetation. There is a feeling of too much. Some find this environment overwhelming and others love the intensity and complexity of wild life. In the wilderness there is no distant horizon. Everything is close and demanding.
The desert is a place of vast emptiness. The horizon is faraway and endless. There is no shelter from the sun. The day is hot and long, the night cold and long. There is no distraction. Is this a safe environment for your soul?
How do you feel about these two environments? Neither the desert or the wilderness offers a path. Can you find your own inner direction? Do you have your own inner resources? How do you awaken to and strengthen your spiritual destiny in your inner isolation and your inner harsh environment?
Do you create a clearing in your wilderness? How do you do this?
Do you find an oasis in your desert? What does it provide for you?
When you reach a new stage of inner development, how can you give yourself time to meditate on how it changes your life? Each of us finds our Baptism when the Spirit comes into our lives and we are no longer our ordinary selves. It requires us to fast from our daily realities and overcome our temptations for external comfort, safety and personal power.
Inner Lent is the yearly season of attention to our renewed purpose. Whether you find yourself in a wilderness or a desert, hold fast to your Inner Divinity.
Please share your experience of dwelling in your lonely place? You will be inspiring others with your openness.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Peace and Goodwill
Last year at Christmastime, I gave an interactive presentation on exploring the personal meaning of
Peace On Earth to Human Souls of Goodwill
I find this translation from Rudolf Steiner, the most empowering of the individual and the most meaningful in awakening the forces of community. Do you?
Let me give you two contrasting translations,
"Peace on Earth, goodwill toward men." King James version and the one I grew up with.
"...on Earth peace to men on whom his favor rests." New International version
(which I feels leads to war - one group feeling another group is in disfavor and therefore unworthy of the respect and safety of peace)
Whatever translation you feel most comfortable with or most engaged in, I encourage you to seek the deepest personal connection to the declaration. Is this wording the right wording for what lives in your heart?
I thought I would share with all of you the basic questions and thoughts I explored with my audience.
I took them through each word and asked them to meditate on the meaning.
How do you experience "Peace"? How do you experience "Goodwill"?
These are words of great mystery and live beyond personal definiton. What is the thought behind each word?
I led my audience through brief meditations on each word asking them to let the meaning of the word speak to them in their hearts rather than thinking a definition in their heads.
As everyone shared their imaginations of Peace and Goodwill, I captured them on the whiteboard. "Seeing" these heartfelt meanings brought a warming energy to the group.
Perhaps each individual expression of Peace and Goodwill was filled with the resounding voice of an angel. Certainly there was a sense of a host of meaning.
How does Peace live in your soul, your actions, your conversations? How do you practice goodwill. When in the last year have you been the beneficiary of the goodwill of another? I hope this stimulates deep thoughts. This is the time of year when our souls call out for these questions.
Ask your self, your friends, your family members to meditate on these words. What a Christmas gift. Remember these words were spoken to simple shepherds.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I have spent some time considering our Christmas music and the relationship of Christmas carols and songs to each of the six Christmases. In looking at the Christmas of Nativity and the Shepherds and the Kings, I was surprised to see most Christmas music relates to the experience of the Shepherds.
Interestingly, most paintings of the Nativity focus on the Kings.
The shepherds hear the voices of the host of angels. The kings see the Star. Magi share the same root as image. The shepherds and the kings reflect on the two gestures of our brains. The left hemisphere is auditory and analytical and the right hemisphere is visual and intuitive. I see the shepherds as auditory and intuitive and the kings as visual and analytical. I find this fascinating. Do you?
With all my heart, I wish you peace and goodwill.
Peace On Earth to Human Souls of Goodwill
I find this translation from Rudolf Steiner, the most empowering of the individual and the most meaningful in awakening the forces of community. Do you?
Let me give you two contrasting translations,
"Peace on Earth, goodwill toward men." King James version and the one I grew up with.
"...on Earth peace to men on whom his favor rests." New International version
(which I feels leads to war - one group feeling another group is in disfavor and therefore unworthy of the respect and safety of peace)
Whatever translation you feel most comfortable with or most engaged in, I encourage you to seek the deepest personal connection to the declaration. Is this wording the right wording for what lives in your heart?
I thought I would share with all of you the basic questions and thoughts I explored with my audience.
I took them through each word and asked them to meditate on the meaning.
How do you experience "Peace"? How do you experience "Goodwill"?
These are words of great mystery and live beyond personal definiton. What is the thought behind each word?
I led my audience through brief meditations on each word asking them to let the meaning of the word speak to them in their hearts rather than thinking a definition in their heads.
As everyone shared their imaginations of Peace and Goodwill, I captured them on the whiteboard. "Seeing" these heartfelt meanings brought a warming energy to the group.
Perhaps each individual expression of Peace and Goodwill was filled with the resounding voice of an angel. Certainly there was a sense of a host of meaning.
How does Peace live in your soul, your actions, your conversations? How do you practice goodwill. When in the last year have you been the beneficiary of the goodwill of another? I hope this stimulates deep thoughts. This is the time of year when our souls call out for these questions.
Ask your self, your friends, your family members to meditate on these words. What a Christmas gift. Remember these words were spoken to simple shepherds.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I have spent some time considering our Christmas music and the relationship of Christmas carols and songs to each of the six Christmases. In looking at the Christmas of Nativity and the Shepherds and the Kings, I was surprised to see most Christmas music relates to the experience of the Shepherds.
Interestingly, most paintings of the Nativity focus on the Kings.
The shepherds hear the voices of the host of angels. The kings see the Star. Magi share the same root as image. The shepherds and the kings reflect on the two gestures of our brains. The left hemisphere is auditory and analytical and the right hemisphere is visual and intuitive. I see the shepherds as auditory and intuitive and the kings as visual and analytical. I find this fascinating. Do you?
With all my heart, I wish you peace and goodwill.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Connecting with The Dead
Halloween, All Saints Day and All Souls Day, October 31 - November 2, are Holy Days devoted to the dead. This time of the Inner Year we seek to understand and evolve our relationship with the dead. How do we show devotion to those who have crossed the threshold of death?
My cousin died of leukemia when I was five. I only heard about his death. I did not go to his funeral. Not even his sister was allowed to go to his funeral. We were “protected” from the death process by our parents. Death and grief were not appropriate or not seen as significant for young children.
Someone I knew shared a bedroom with her beloved grandmother and found her dead one night. She, too, was not allowed to attend the funeral. She never felt like she had said goodbye to her beloved granny.
Why did our parents want to keep us from death? Children, who are filled with life and love, have such a natural, fearless connection with the dead. Often children tenderly remain in active contact with the soul of the dead. Do you have a childhood experience with a dead soul?
Around 9, I learned about the festivals of All Saints Day and All Souls Day. At the same time, I first saw a dead body in an open casket.
I found these feast days, and the dead body, fascinating but not meaningful. I didn’t know how to make meaning of death and no one in my life seemed to have any ideas that spoke to my young heart. Was death an end or a beginning? Was death really a time when we faced judgment? I rarely thought about dead souls. Heaven was filled with angels, not the souls of the dead.
Fast forward fifty years. Every, well almost every, night before falling asleep, I engage with the dead. I relate to them with a reverent and open heart. I call out their names to let them know I remain connected to their being.
I don’t mean I remain connected to the memory of their earthly existence. Even though they have physically disappeared, I still sense the ongoing reality of their spirit. I am aware that they live on beyond the threshold of death and that I need only reach out with the force of my unselfish heart to touch them.
With the festivals celebrating the dead falling almost six weeks after the Fall Equinox, does the growing darkness in our earthly world give us a clearer vision of the other world and all its inhabitants?
If we did not have electricity, we would be dependent on the soft glow of candlelight after nightfall. The flickering shadows at the edge of the light might give us a sense that the dead were living nearby. But the harshness of mechanical light does not create the mood of the threshold and leads us to feel only the physical is real.
During these festival days of the dead, do your best to resist the soul-killing energy of the mechanical and technical world. Find your way to the life of spiritual perception and sensitivity. Most of all keep your thoughts pulsing with newness. Spiritual beings, including “dead” souls, connect to living thoughts. They cannot experience mechanistic thoughts, thoughts that lack our own spiritual creativity.
If you have wondered how to stay connected to your loved ones after death (beyond dwelling on your memories) reach out in three simple ways.
As you call out their names, feel their presence. This feeling of presence is the bridge of connection between the earthly here and and the heavenly there.
As you read aloud from a sacred text, feel the spiritual nourishment. Sacred texts feed both the living and the dead. You share a meaningful spiritual meal with your loved ones.
As you pray, feel the music of the heavens living in your heart. The resonating tones and meanings of love, harmonize the relationship between you and all the dead.
You can make this a daily, weekly or monthly practice. You can even invite your friends and family to join you in a monthly gathering of the living and the dead.
As I wrote earlier, I call out the names of the dead nightly. I know in my sleep, my soul and spirit are freed from the limitations of space and time. Calling out the names of the dead before I fall asleep, is a way of saying “Here I come for my nightly visit.”
These nightly visits bring many blessings. I wake up with clearer thoughts, designs for deeds of goodness, and a sense of emotional balance.
The more we connect with the dead in their continuing life in the spiritual world, the more alive our earthly lives become.
If you want to read more about our work with the dead, I strongly urge you to get a copy of Staying Connected, a wonderful book of Rudolf Steiner’s insights about death, dying and the dead. Christopher Bamford introduces Steiner’s work with warmth and intelligence. Here is a link to purchasing the book through Amazon.
My Childhood Experiences
My cousin died of leukemia when I was five. I only heard about his death. I did not go to his funeral. Not even his sister was allowed to go to his funeral. We were “protected” from the death process by our parents. Death and grief were not appropriate or not seen as significant for young children.
Someone I knew shared a bedroom with her beloved grandmother and found her dead one night. She, too, was not allowed to attend the funeral. She never felt like she had said goodbye to her beloved granny.
Why did our parents want to keep us from death? Children, who are filled with life and love, have such a natural, fearless connection with the dead. Often children tenderly remain in active contact with the soul of the dead. Do you have a childhood experience with a dead soul?
Around 9, I learned about the festivals of All Saints Day and All Souls Day. At the same time, I first saw a dead body in an open casket.
I found these feast days, and the dead body, fascinating but not meaningful. I didn’t know how to make meaning of death and no one in my life seemed to have any ideas that spoke to my young heart. Was death an end or a beginning? Was death really a time when we faced judgment? I rarely thought about dead souls. Heaven was filled with angels, not the souls of the dead.
My Present Relationship to the Dead
Fast forward fifty years. Every, well almost every, night before falling asleep, I engage with the dead. I relate to them with a reverent and open heart. I call out their names to let them know I remain connected to their being.
I don’t mean I remain connected to the memory of their earthly existence. Even though they have physically disappeared, I still sense the ongoing reality of their spirit. I am aware that they live on beyond the threshold of death and that I need only reach out with the force of my unselfish heart to touch them.
With the festivals celebrating the dead falling almost six weeks after the Fall Equinox, does the growing darkness in our earthly world give us a clearer vision of the other world and all its inhabitants?
If we did not have electricity, we would be dependent on the soft glow of candlelight after nightfall. The flickering shadows at the edge of the light might give us a sense that the dead were living nearby. But the harshness of mechanical light does not create the mood of the threshold and leads us to feel only the physical is real.
During these festival days of the dead, do your best to resist the soul-killing energy of the mechanical and technical world. Find your way to the life of spiritual perception and sensitivity. Most of all keep your thoughts pulsing with newness. Spiritual beings, including “dead” souls, connect to living thoughts. They cannot experience mechanistic thoughts, thoughts that lack our own spiritual creativity.
Ways to Stay Connected
If you have wondered how to stay connected to your loved ones after death (beyond dwelling on your memories) reach out in three simple ways.
- Call out their names.
- Read aloud a passage from a sacred text. Read with your heart, not just your head.
- Speak a prayer or a verse aloud. Speak with your heart in your voice.
As you call out their names, feel their presence. This feeling of presence is the bridge of connection between the earthly here and and the heavenly there.
As you read aloud from a sacred text, feel the spiritual nourishment. Sacred texts feed both the living and the dead. You share a meaningful spiritual meal with your loved ones.
As you pray, feel the music of the heavens living in your heart. The resonating tones and meanings of love, harmonize the relationship between you and all the dead.
You can make this a daily, weekly or monthly practice. You can even invite your friends and family to join you in a monthly gathering of the living and the dead.
As I wrote earlier, I call out the names of the dead nightly. I know in my sleep, my soul and spirit are freed from the limitations of space and time. Calling out the names of the dead before I fall asleep, is a way of saying “Here I come for my nightly visit.”
These nightly visits bring many blessings. I wake up with clearer thoughts, designs for deeds of goodness, and a sense of emotional balance.
The more we connect with the dead in their continuing life in the spiritual world, the more alive our earthly lives become.
If you want to read more about our work with the dead, I strongly urge you to get a copy of Staying Connected, a wonderful book of Rudolf Steiner’s insights about death, dying and the dead. Christopher Bamford introduces Steiner’s work with warmth and intelligence. Here is a link to purchasing the book through Amazon.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Michaelmas - The Soul's Season of Dragons and Courage
Michaelmas is September 29th and in the Christian liturgical year reflects the Equinox in the natural cycle of the year. In the Northern Hemisphere it is the beginning of Autumn and the overcoming of light by darkness. Our soul's natural task at this time of year relates to the inner experience of the struggle between inner light and inner darkness.
This is the festival of the Archangel Michael. Michael is the Protector/Warrior, the Dragonslayer and the being of Cosmic Intelligence. He is the Face of God. Islam, Christianity and Judaism revere Michael.
Sadly, in our modern world little attention is paid to Michaelmas and our souls suffer for it. Michaelmas gives us courage. Michael protects us. Michael is a model for facing the darkness, demons and dragons within our souls and our material world. Michael represents the intelligence to move out of our personal stories and into a pure relationship with our destiny. Michaelmas gives us the strength of will to face moral development, inner growth and the incredible redemptive power of forgiveness. We can slay dragons and we can tame dragons and we can actually know the difference between the two deeds.
I became aware of Michaelmas when I was 37. My children had just begun their Waldorf Education and so had I. Waldorf Schools celebrate Michaelmas as a festival recognizing the strength of will in the human spirit. The celebrations reflect on the slaying of the dragon. I didn’t quite know what I thought about this festival or the Archangel Michael but part of me, my soul, wanted to pay attention. Now 23 years later, I am writing about Michaelmas and the Soul here in my blog and this Tuesday evening, I will be giving a Michaelmas talk in NYC.
As this blog indicates, I feel the importance of awareness of the cycle of the seasons of the soul. The soul’s reflection of Nature gives our inner life and our practical life in the world an invaluable organizing principle, grounding framework and cosmic flow. There was a time when the human soul was innately and naively sensitive to the spirit living behind and within nature. We then evolved a capacity for the intellectual mastery of the world, the denial of the creative forces of spirit and the domination of nature. Now we seem to have evolved to a place where we are willing to consciously reconnect, to choose to attend to the spiritual forces living in nature and the spiritual freedom living in our own souls.
I live in Jersey City. It is urban with a capital U. Jersey City is an extension of New York City. But Jersey city is also the home of Liberty State Park - 1,212 acres of nature on New York Harbor. The park faces the Statue of Liberty. Liberty State Park is one of the amazing places on the planet. Earth - water, air and fire (the sun and the torch in Lady Liberty's hand) are present in vast expanses and surrounded by spectacular manmade, earth bound structures and institutions.
At least five mornings a week I spend an hour walking in the park - the boardwalk along the bay and into the salt marshes and meadows. Nature nurtures my senses and my soul on these mornings. Now the meadows are filled with Michaelmas Daisies and the rich golds, reds and purples of early fall.
How aware are you of the relationship between the thresholds of nature and the thresholds of soul that exists at this time of year? What do you feel living in your soul? What kind of energies and emotions do you feel? Nature is beginning to drive you away from the outer environment and into the inner environment of your soul life and your relationship with darkness. How do you meet your inner dragons, your inner darkness? What kind of Cosmic Intelligence can we connect with to move us compassionately and courageously through this inner journey? Michael waits to give us some guidance and direction.
Here are some thoughts I have on these questions.
What are your dragons? How do you slay them as protector or tame them with cosmic intelligence?
How does the Michaelic Spirit live in you as courageous will?
Many of you are warriors. You are fighting battles, moral battles with moral dragons. You will attack lies and oppressions and you will defend rights and innocence. You do noble, incredibly noble, deeds, or, perhaps, you only think noble deeds and for some reason find little force to carry out that which you feel such a strong impulse to achieve.
Often you are one of the wounded warriors. You were wounded in your initiation into the battleground of the soul or you are wounded in the course of your moral and personal battle engagements. Yet, somehow, you sustain your inspiration and your commitment. Your heart rings true even though your actions fail to give evidence or truth or power to your imagination.
Before you condemn yourself, find self-compassion. Look at your wounds. Look at your needs. Michael is a friend of our souls. He represents self-compassion and urges restorative gestures. Michael’s sword serves self-compassion. You can ask Michael for guidance.
With our economic drama and potential devastation, in the US and worldwide, how do we restore our moral economy? Is this not a time to call upon the Michaelic forces of courage and cosmic intelligence?
We are facing challenges and questions that many of us have never considered. Our times are making moral and inner demands of our consciousness and soul life so that our material life begins to reflect our inner truth, beauty and goodness.
Michael can give us guidance as we think about materialism, greed, consumerism. Michael can give us courage as we wonder how we adapt to the threats and realities of dramatic changes in our material lives, how we witness and respond to changes in the material realities of our neighbors and the world. We, the world, are on a threshold right now. How we cross this personal and global threshold will be a Michaelic tale of strength or weakness.
So I realize I have moved between the personal, the collective and the cosmic in my writing. I have not made it easy or comfortable for you. I wish that Michaelmas was a time of comfort. It is not. Michaelmas is a time when we confront dilemmas and confusions. We must face dragons, inner dragons in our soul and outer dragons in our social, political and economic environments. But Michaelmas also declares the role of intelligence, compassion and courage.
Take time this season to consider your relationship to Michaelic courage, Michaelic compassion and Michaelic intelligence.
Here is a video I created for the International Day of Peace - September 21. From a Michaelic perspective every day is a day we need to bring a conscious sense of peace to our thoughts, feelings and deeds. The audio on the video is a beautiful expression of John Lennons's Imagine. I tried to capture the mood of the lyrics in the visual images. Look at the video and bring an awareness of your sense of the making of peace during the Michaelic Season.
}
This is the festival of the Archangel Michael. Michael is the Protector/Warrior, the Dragonslayer and the being of Cosmic Intelligence. He is the Face of God. Islam, Christianity and Judaism revere Michael.
Sadly, in our modern world little attention is paid to Michaelmas and our souls suffer for it. Michaelmas gives us courage. Michael protects us. Michael is a model for facing the darkness, demons and dragons within our souls and our material world. Michael represents the intelligence to move out of our personal stories and into a pure relationship with our destiny. Michaelmas gives us the strength of will to face moral development, inner growth and the incredible redemptive power of forgiveness. We can slay dragons and we can tame dragons and we can actually know the difference between the two deeds.
I became aware of Michaelmas when I was 37. My children had just begun their Waldorf Education and so had I. Waldorf Schools celebrate Michaelmas as a festival recognizing the strength of will in the human spirit. The celebrations reflect on the slaying of the dragon. I didn’t quite know what I thought about this festival or the Archangel Michael but part of me, my soul, wanted to pay attention. Now 23 years later, I am writing about Michaelmas and the Soul here in my blog and this Tuesday evening, I will be giving a Michaelmas talk in NYC.
As this blog indicates, I feel the importance of awareness of the cycle of the seasons of the soul. The soul’s reflection of Nature gives our inner life and our practical life in the world an invaluable organizing principle, grounding framework and cosmic flow. There was a time when the human soul was innately and naively sensitive to the spirit living behind and within nature. We then evolved a capacity for the intellectual mastery of the world, the denial of the creative forces of spirit and the domination of nature. Now we seem to have evolved to a place where we are willing to consciously reconnect, to choose to attend to the spiritual forces living in nature and the spiritual freedom living in our own souls.
I live in Jersey City. It is urban with a capital U. Jersey City is an extension of New York City. But Jersey city is also the home of Liberty State Park - 1,212 acres of nature on New York Harbor. The park faces the Statue of Liberty. Liberty State Park is one of the amazing places on the planet. Earth - water, air and fire (the sun and the torch in Lady Liberty's hand) are present in vast expanses and surrounded by spectacular manmade, earth bound structures and institutions.
At least five mornings a week I spend an hour walking in the park - the boardwalk along the bay and into the salt marshes and meadows. Nature nurtures my senses and my soul on these mornings. Now the meadows are filled with Michaelmas Daisies and the rich golds, reds and purples of early fall.
How aware are you of the relationship between the thresholds of nature and the thresholds of soul that exists at this time of year? What do you feel living in your soul? What kind of energies and emotions do you feel? Nature is beginning to drive you away from the outer environment and into the inner environment of your soul life and your relationship with darkness. How do you meet your inner dragons, your inner darkness? What kind of Cosmic Intelligence can we connect with to move us compassionately and courageously through this inner journey? Michael waits to give us some guidance and direction.
Here are some thoughts I have on these questions.
What are your dragons? How do you slay them as protector or tame them with cosmic intelligence?
How does the Michaelic Spirit live in you as courageous will?
Many of you are warriors. You are fighting battles, moral battles with moral dragons. You will attack lies and oppressions and you will defend rights and innocence. You do noble, incredibly noble, deeds, or, perhaps, you only think noble deeds and for some reason find little force to carry out that which you feel such a strong impulse to achieve.
Often you are one of the wounded warriors. You were wounded in your initiation into the battleground of the soul or you are wounded in the course of your moral and personal battle engagements. Yet, somehow, you sustain your inspiration and your commitment. Your heart rings true even though your actions fail to give evidence or truth or power to your imagination.
Before you condemn yourself, find self-compassion. Look at your wounds. Look at your needs. Michael is a friend of our souls. He represents self-compassion and urges restorative gestures. Michael’s sword serves self-compassion. You can ask Michael for guidance.
With our economic drama and potential devastation, in the US and worldwide, how do we restore our moral economy? Is this not a time to call upon the Michaelic forces of courage and cosmic intelligence?
We are facing challenges and questions that many of us have never considered. Our times are making moral and inner demands of our consciousness and soul life so that our material life begins to reflect our inner truth, beauty and goodness.
Michael can give us guidance as we think about materialism, greed, consumerism. Michael can give us courage as we wonder how we adapt to the threats and realities of dramatic changes in our material lives, how we witness and respond to changes in the material realities of our neighbors and the world. We, the world, are on a threshold right now. How we cross this personal and global threshold will be a Michaelic tale of strength or weakness.
So I realize I have moved between the personal, the collective and the cosmic in my writing. I have not made it easy or comfortable for you. I wish that Michaelmas was a time of comfort. It is not. Michaelmas is a time when we confront dilemmas and confusions. We must face dragons, inner dragons in our soul and outer dragons in our social, political and economic environments. But Michaelmas also declares the role of intelligence, compassion and courage.
Take time this season to consider your relationship to Michaelic courage, Michaelic compassion and Michaelic intelligence.
Here is a video I created for the International Day of Peace - September 21. From a Michaelic perspective every day is a day we need to bring a conscious sense of peace to our thoughts, feelings and deeds. The audio on the video is a beautiful expression of John Lennons's Imagine. I tried to capture the mood of the lyrics in the visual images. Look at the video and bring an awareness of your sense of the making of peace during the Michaelic Season.
}
Thursday, June 19, 2008
St. John's Tide - Loving the Other
Dear Friends,
On June 24th, the birth of John the Baptist is celebrated. It is called St. John's Tide and is celebrated with bonfires all over the world.
I seek to share with you an understanding of the personal meaning and personal application of the gesture of John the Baptist. John's life is given great attention by the the Gospels. John had a personality and life of complex significance and I would need to write a small book to address the meanings and applications of all that we are told about John in the Gospels. Since this is a brief post, that I hope will inspire reflection and growth, I will only address two of John's gestures. These are his two gestures of recognition of Jesus. In our modern consciousness of intense individuality and isolation, the ability to find in our souls the willing recognition of what lives in another soul is essential and challenging.
The two responses John has in relation to Jesus can inspire similar responses as we interact with all others. The first recognition is the
The first recognition occurs when the newly pregnant Mary visits her pregnant cousin, Elizabeth, John's elderly mother. The child in Elizabeth's womb, John, joyfully leaps with life, when the two women greet each other. The John fetus recognizes existence of the Jesus fetus.
When have you felt in your soul a joyful leap of life at meeting another? We speak of "love at first sight." If we take this "love at first sight" experience out of the romantic context and put it into a spiritual context, we begin to get a sense of this "John the Baptist" moment of recognition. This moment is a response to the other's divinity coming into being. The nascent divinity of this other person you are meeting for the first time fills you with joy, crystalizes your life force and energizes your soul.
Recall the moments of your life when what you recognized in another caused you to fill with joy and leap with inner aliveness. It might also be the recognition of a phrase or a paragraph of thoughts that sparkle with truth and wisdom. Or a work of art that is filled with beauty. The more you allow yourself to recognize what is both new and ageless in another's soul or the manifestation of this soul in word, art or deed, the more you build and refine your sensitivity to the divinity in others.
The "other" may be a family member, a friend, a colleague, a stranger. or a lover. The recognition may be subtle or profound, brief or lasting. You could have this experience of nascent divinity once in your lifetime or thousands of times.
Now we will imagine the 2nd gesture of John the Baptist:
Thirty years later at the River Jordan, John recognizes Jesus of Nazareth and declares His Presence to others. This declaration initiates the three years of the full expression of the Destiny of Christ Jesus. Jesus requests that John baptize Him. John is humbled at this request. Baptism was a cleansing of the body and John could not imagine that this Being in front of him needed cleansing, but he did as he was requested.This Baptism is the Birth of the Great Deed for humanity's future.
What in your soul is capable of recognizing the time has come for deed of another to manifest? Are you willing to call out to others that something needed has arrived? Are you willing to humbly serve the individual and her or his destiny?
In each of us, divinity dwells waiting for recognition and support. This is the Jesus within. In each of us, recognition rests waiting to declare and to serve the divinity of the other when their time has come. This is the John within.
At Christmas time we go into ourselves seeking our own divinity. At St John's Tide, we seek our ability to recognize the divinity in others and imagine how our own divinity can serve what we see as their divine deeds for serving humanity's future.
I find such fulfilling delight in these two aspects of the John within: To know the empowering joy of seeing the spiritual seed germinating in another's soul and then seeing and serving the flowering bloom of that seed.
Do you see the germinating soul seed? Do you resonate with the new life you experience in another?
Do you ever feel your heart calling out - I see you! You have come! I will serve your requests!
Take some time on St John's Tide to recall all you have recognized in others over the last year - the germinating seeds and the blooming flowers? Gaze at those around you today and let your heart tell you what you recognize.
St John's Tide is a joyful time. Enjoy.
Lynn
On June 24th, the birth of John the Baptist is celebrated. It is called St. John's Tide and is celebrated with bonfires all over the world.
I seek to share with you an understanding of the personal meaning and personal application of the gesture of John the Baptist. John's life is given great attention by the the Gospels. John had a personality and life of complex significance and I would need to write a small book to address the meanings and applications of all that we are told about John in the Gospels. Since this is a brief post, that I hope will inspire reflection and growth, I will only address two of John's gestures. These are his two gestures of recognition of Jesus. In our modern consciousness of intense individuality and isolation, the ability to find in our souls the willing recognition of what lives in another soul is essential and challenging.
The two responses John has in relation to Jesus can inspire similar responses as we interact with all others. The first recognition is the
joyful recognition of new existence - the germinating seed
The first recognition occurs when the newly pregnant Mary visits her pregnant cousin, Elizabeth, John's elderly mother. The child in Elizabeth's womb, John, joyfully leaps with life, when the two women greet each other. The John fetus recognizes existence of the Jesus fetus.
When have you felt in your soul a joyful leap of life at meeting another? We speak of "love at first sight." If we take this "love at first sight" experience out of the romantic context and put it into a spiritual context, we begin to get a sense of this "John the Baptist" moment of recognition. This moment is a response to the other's divinity coming into being. The nascent divinity of this other person you are meeting for the first time fills you with joy, crystalizes your life force and energizes your soul.
Recall the moments of your life when what you recognized in another caused you to fill with joy and leap with inner aliveness. It might also be the recognition of a phrase or a paragraph of thoughts that sparkle with truth and wisdom. Or a work of art that is filled with beauty. The more you allow yourself to recognize what is both new and ageless in another's soul or the manifestation of this soul in word, art or deed, the more you build and refine your sensitivity to the divinity in others.
The "other" may be a family member, a friend, a colleague, a stranger. or a lover. The recognition may be subtle or profound, brief or lasting. You could have this experience of nascent divinity once in your lifetime or thousands of times.
Now we will imagine the 2nd gesture of John the Baptist:
the recognition that the time has come
Thirty years later at the River Jordan, John recognizes Jesus of Nazareth and declares His Presence to others. This declaration initiates the three years of the full expression of the Destiny of Christ Jesus. Jesus requests that John baptize Him. John is humbled at this request. Baptism was a cleansing of the body and John could not imagine that this Being in front of him needed cleansing, but he did as he was requested.This Baptism is the Birth of the Great Deed for humanity's future.
What in your soul is capable of recognizing the time has come for deed of another to manifest? Are you willing to call out to others that something needed has arrived? Are you willing to humbly serve the individual and her or his destiny?
In each of us, divinity dwells waiting for recognition and support. This is the Jesus within. In each of us, recognition rests waiting to declare and to serve the divinity of the other when their time has come. This is the John within.
At Christmas time we go into ourselves seeking our own divinity. At St John's Tide, we seek our ability to recognize the divinity in others and imagine how our own divinity can serve what we see as their divine deeds for serving humanity's future.
I find such fulfilling delight in these two aspects of the John within: To know the empowering joy of seeing the spiritual seed germinating in another's soul and then seeing and serving the flowering bloom of that seed.
Do you see the germinating soul seed? Do you resonate with the new life you experience in another?
Do you ever feel your heart calling out - I see you! You have come! I will serve your requests!
Take some time on St John's Tide to recall all you have recognized in others over the last year - the germinating seeds and the blooming flowers? Gaze at those around you today and let your heart tell you what you recognize.
St John's Tide is a joyful time. Enjoy.
Lynn
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