Solstice, St John & YOU

June 21 The Solstice

Midsummer is here. We have just experienced the Solstice. Here in the Northern Hemisphere we have had the longest day/shortest night of the year.

I just realized that I wrote the year. Even for me with all my work bringing our attention to the Inner Year, I write the. Let me begin again.

...You have just had the longest day/shortest night of YOUR year! This is your inner year. Nature gives us a year that belongs to no one and everyone. Your inner year belongs to only you. If you don’t pay attention to it, if you don’t give it meaning, then it remains simply Nature’s passing of time.

My inner year work seeks to awaken in you a creative awareness of your year of soul days and soul nights. How many inner solstices have you felt in your soul? Long day/short night? Short day/long night? Inner moments of dramatic imbalance marking a turning points in your life and your imaginations of self.

If you recollect your own inner solstices, what do you feel? For me, my inner solstice feelings seem to call forth a poem - a painting of tender and violent words or a watercolor painting of colored tears and dancing lights.

(Wow, imagine if our tears were a rainbow of colors to reflect our rainbow of feelings.  What color tears would flow from grief, from rage, from joy, from truth??? Did the creator gods miss an opportunity here? Could we ask a crying person, a child, a friend, ourselves, what color are your tears?)


Do you connect more with long soul days or long soul nights?  Do like the light shining in the world or the light shining from within yourself?

June 24
St. John’s Tide

John the Baptist’s birth finds it’s celebration at the height of summer, mirroring the birth of Jesus in the depth of winter. But most of us don’t have a conscious feeling for this festival and its meaning.

(Dear Folks in the Southern Hemisphere, Thank you for bringing a balancing feeling to the impact of Nature on these great archetypal experiences.)

John dwells in the wilderness and cries out with a voice that is heard throughout the cosmos.  He is crying out for something he cannot name until he meets it. The power of his cry is not his dispair, but his confidence.  He knows the turning point is coming.

In the mood of a voice crying in the wilderness, your voice, think//recollect your moments of greatest despair rising up in your throat lifted by an underlying, equally great, but not nameable confidence.

Have a moment today to feel the deep confidence that another of your turning points is near at hand.

The Missing Pieces - An Understanding of the Father

Most of my mentees, those I mentor through conscious conversations,  arrive wanting to find the missing pieces of their lives. 

I remember being a child and loving to play with
puzzles - putting all the pieces in place was such a great
experience.

But when a piece was missing, it didn't matter that I had put
all the other pieces together, the hole sucked away all my joy.
It took all the pieces to create the complete picture. Missing a
piece meant I should throw away the entire puzzle.

We can't do that with our lives.  We need to keep searching for
the pieces and put the puzzle together.  Over many years as a
personal mentor, I have become adept at finding
missing pieces. Having an understanding of the human soul -
the puzzle with infinite pieces, has helped in many searches.

I want to share four essential pieces.  I will give them names,
ask you questions about your experience, and suggest exercises.

These are pieces that come from paternal forces.  They define the internal good father.  Most of us have generations of missing paternal forces.  You can have a very loving, wonderful father and still find these pieces missing. doing this work is not a betrayal of the father you love. Not doing it may be a betrayal of the you you need to become.

The four deeds of the  generational paternal forces (going back to great-grandfathers and beyond) are

to provide
to protect
to name
to lead or guide

When these deeds are not fulfilled essential pieces of life, of our sense of self, are missing in some degree.

without adequate provision satisfaction is missing
without adequate protection safety is missing
without adequate naming identity is missing
without adequate guidance direction is missing

Each and everyone of us is missing satisfaction, safety, identity and/or direction in some areas of life:

the physical,
the emotional,
the intellectual,
the financial,
the sexual,
the relational,
the spiritual

And we suffer and puzzle over every missing piece.

This names our missing pieces and the naming empowers our ability to complete ourselves. I am giving you some challenging and comforting naming activities.

One of the dilemmas of being human is that we are never complete and always evolving.  We are always growing, changing, transforming, transcending, learning, never fixed.  We want a sense of not being curtailed or entangled or stuck.

The feeling of completeness is the experience of being unconditionally loved.  Nothing to be, do or have to be totally seen, embraced, acknowledged, validated and valued. To complete ourselves we must love ourselves unconditionally as we are and as we are becoming.

Sadly, there is no magic wand for self-love.  Coming to self-love is a process of self-attention.  Working with the missing perceptions of satisfaction, safety, identity and direction is a significant path to self-attention. 


Rate the Missing

Begin with simply rating your overall degree of satisfaction, safety, identity and direction in your life on a 1-10 scale. (10 means there is no way in heaven you could experience more, which means I can’t imagine anyone having a 10.) You can consider 5 a midpoint of reasonable degree.  Below five is challenging and a 2 or a 1 is a dramatic missing. Ideally, you would feel pretty great with an 8 and nine is fabulous.  Remember, self-loving is always a feeling that encourages growth, so hold off on the perfect 10’s. You can have an 8 in safety and a 3 in satisfaction, a 5 in identity and 2 in direction.

This is not a test on which to seek a perfect score in order to feel good about your self.  This is just an exercise to support your self-awareness. 

You can go through each of the life areas I mentioned above.  Feel free to add to the list.  I suggest you create a chart to track your ratings. Do this in a spreadsheet on your computer or a page in your journal. 

Create a Positive Definition

Write down your description of each feeling: satisfaction, safety, identity and direction. 

If your family was deeply dysfunctional you may not have a clue how to describe these feelings.  If that is the case, begin with a dictionary definition.  Use a dictionary as a source of possibility, not as the word of God.  You are looking to create the description that rings true with you, not anyone else. 

However, sharing this exercise with a close friend or two can be very encouraging. 



If The Missing Pieces Are Found, This is What I Would Know….

Make a list of five to 8 statements indicating fullness in each feeling. I have put down four for each feeling as a source of inspiration.

Satisfaction
I have…
Growing recognition of my needs.
Knowledge of responsible ways to meet those needs.
Awareness of essential resources.
Ability to forgive those who could not meet original needs of childhood.

Safety
I have…
Ability to articulate my boundaries.
Ability to maintain my boundaries.
Sense of my personal strength.
Willingness to call for help.


Identity
I have…
Confidence in my authority.
A sense of inner integrity.
Knowledge of my rights.
No need to fantasize being someone else.

Direction
I am…
Orientated toward an achievable goal.
Grounded  in a clear assessment of my talents and gifts
Able to say no to seductive distractions.
Able to create and follow effective plans of action.



This exercise is to first be approached from an overall consciousness.  Then, you are encouraged to bring this first list to a more specialized consideration of each area in your life. 

I don’t know about you, but I would have loved to have been able to do this in high school or college.  But it is never too late to get hold of your life.

You are the source of your satisfaction, your safety, your identity and your direction.  You can find the missing pieces and put your puzzles together. 

If you find this challenging, disturbing or isolating you may want to give yourself the gift of personal coaching or counseling.  A good counselor will provide the elements of warmth, containment, encouragement and creative review and reflection.  Each of us needs a rhythm of sacred conversation centered on our own path of self-development. 


Please let me here from you.  Share your questions, your process, your surprises. Post your comments on the blog.

Standing in the Center - Inner Pentecost

It’s Pentecost.

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

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

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

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

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

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

INNER PENTECOST

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SUGGESTIONS FOR INNER PENTECOST

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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



Here are my previous posts on Pentecost.

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


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

Is Ambivalence Making Crazy?

Do I change or stay the same? Do I rebel or conform? Do I leave or do I stay? Do I do it now or later?

Of these 20 possible toppings for my pizza, what are my three choices?

Do you suffer from ambivalence? I do, all the time.  But I am learning to work with it, master it, observe it, appreciate it. Here are some thoughts that will give you some solid ground on which to find both feet walking on the same chosen path - the path of ambivalence.


Ambivalence. This is a word we need to take to heart.  Much of our anxieties would fade if we could accept and understand ambivalence.

Here are two dictionary definitions from the web:

1. The coexistence of opposing attitudes or feelings, such as love and hate, toward a person, object, or idea.
2. Uncertainty or indecisiveness as to which course to follow.

Take a minute and write down the person, object or idea that you have opposing attitudes or feelings for and a few of the choices you doubt you can make. As you read this post, reflect on these.

To the first definition that uses the word “coexistence” I would say we need to add another perspective — ambivalence is the experience of “rapidly alternating” opposing feelings or attitudes.

Coexistence refers to the soul or mind as space.  Rapidly alternating refers to the time experience of consciousness.  Singularity of interpretation, purpose and evaluation requires a clear sense of place and moment.  Of course, movement in space and time means we changes places (points of view) often and moments, never static,  lead to other moments. The struggle to be certain and constant can never be conquered.

Uncertainty and indecisiveness have to do with a disconnect from confidence in personal resilience in the everchanging experience of place and moment.  And it is not only which course to follow, but which feeling to feel, which truth to state, which good to offer, which harm to avoid.

In our crazy, challenging, over-stimulating world it is so difficult to feel confident in our choices, our feelings, our beliefs, even the impact of our deeds. Do we trust ourselves?  Do we make choices based on instincts or insight or both? What is real and what is not - in the world and in me?

Sometimes my ambivalence is just choice exhaustion. The pizza topping dilemma showing up in a dozen ways everyday - the supermarket, the internet, the closet, the bookshelf, the debit card. Knowing what we want and what we need is so difficult. And so often we are making choices for others -- children, elderly parents, coworkers, organizations.

Sometimes it is the moral perplexity that comes from obsessing about two equally positive outcomes or avoiding two equally negative outcomes.


Sometimes I am just afraid of myself and the interpenetrating feelings of hate and love, fear and need.

One way out of this ambivalence dilemma - not a good way - so I don’t recommend it, is to leave the choices up to somebody else or conform to an external dogma. Another is to leave it up to delay, hoping time will take away choice and leave only one possibility, also not a good choice.  Both of these render you powerless, even unconscious.

That said, there are times I just don't want to choose because I don't care or I am afraid I will override the desires of someone I care about. 

Since I am confident that ambivalence is a trial we must suffer through willingly, the real solution, rather, the resolution, is to risk and embrace the mistake, the regret, the challenge, the celebration.

Don’t let the fear of ambivalence paralyze your will, freeze your feelings or hamstring your thoughts.

Embracing ambivalence offers no safety, no certainty, no clear outcomes.  But it offers the freedom of discovery and the unfolding of potential.  And great lessons in understanding consequences, managing outcomes and surprising yourself.

Let go of fear, doubt and anger around ambivalence. Talk about it with friends.

You need to trust yourself, your coherent sense of self, and the ability of yourself to recognize, integrate and modulate the “gifts” of the wrong choice, the wrong judgment, the wrong call. You can forgive and you can make meaning.

And for the coexisting or rapidly alternating love/hate and fear/need of relationships, these are the two faces of the relational coins. We use them to pay the toll that lifts the gate allowing us to move along the inner path to the maturity that is beyond the dramas and blesses us with confident compassion for both self and other.  I will write about this more as we move toward Inner Pentecost.


To close I offer two film clips that show the positive results of living with ambivalence and making a choice - regardless of outcome. Both these choices lived in the face of both positive and negative outcomes. Of course, Hollywood plays ambivalence to the hilt and loves the happy ending with nothing to integrate.  But ambivalence is always heavy to confront so I wanted to lighten up at the end. I recommend both films for all the corny lessons in risk, growth, trust and values that they offer.

Remember the ending of Dirty Dancing and the leap full of the creative ambivalence of uncertainty and confidence.


Dirty Dancing - Final Dance - Time of my Life by Schutzengerl1205


And then remember the image of risking self expression in Sister Act II.





Relax and embrace ambivalence. 

Temperamental Ambivalence

Your temperamental configuration really impacts your feelings and relationship to ambivalence.  Don't be ambivalent about taking this course. It is no risk in terms of value, enjoyment, and benefit.

Do register for my program on the temperaments:

Learning the Languages of the Four Temperaments

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

Beginning this Sunday, May 29

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

 “One can acquire everything in solitude except character.”

Which word in this quote got your attention?

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

The choleric will see “character.”

The sanguine, “everything.”

The phlegmatic, “acquire.”

The melancholic, “solitude.”

Which word got your attention?

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

Let’s look at a more mundane statement. 

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

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

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

The phlegmatic is still at the table finishing dessert.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Register for the course here.




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


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

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

Mother’s Day - A Day of Forgiveness

Cards, flowers, gifts, brunches and dinners, smiles and hugs and sweet words of appreciation, gratitude and love - that’s what Mother’s Day is all about — another sentimental celebration of the ideal.  But what if it were a day of celebrating the shadows of mothering.

This is my 64th Mother’s Day. I am choosing to make it a day of forgiveness.  I want to forgive my mother, forgive my grandmothers and their mothers, forgive myself as a mother, be forgiven by my children, forgive the mothers of all my friends and especially the mothers of the men I have loved, forgive the cultural idealization of motherhood and its disregard and diminishment of mothering.

 

The Mystery of Forgiveness

 

Most of my life I have struggled with the concept, the feeling and the act of forgiveness. Yesterday, I had an epiphany that I want to share with you. I was researching the theories on object relations, a psychotherapeutic approach that places relationships at the central struggle of being human and becoming I.  Of course, the mother is the primary object the infant relates to and separates from. Object relations theory addresses “splitting” in the infant’s psyche.The initial split is the division between “good” mother and “bad” mother — the fairy godmother and the wicked witch.  In this split experience, there is no neutral zone. Neutral comes from neuter - Latin for "not either."

It was reading the words “neutral zone” that set off the forgiveness bells, whistles and sirens.  My relationship to everything and every relationship has been split into good and bad, heaven and hell, friend and enemy, perpetrator and victim with no NEUTRAL ZONE. This has been especially painful and constricting in my relationship with myself, I am either too good or I am too bad for self-forgiveness.

Forgiveness in my struggling soul has always been about the good forgiving the bad and the expectation that forgiveness has this transformative impact on the bad - it disappears.  On the primal level, the bad mother and her bad daughter disappear. But then I didn’t want the bad to disappear I wanted to integrate it with the good and heal the split - be whole, embrace the light and the shadows.  But from the good pole there is no way to integrate the bad and vice versa.

There needs to be the neutral zone.  Relating, forgiving, integrating, reconciling all come into being in the neutral zone. It is not about being good. Being human and becoming I, seeing the being and becoming of another, compassion and empathy all happen in the neutral zone.

Now as a counselor and educator, I live in and provide a neutral zone most of the time.  Where I struggle being in a neutral zone is with my mother, my father and with men I love.  I either struggle to prove my goodness  or I assume all guilt for all wounds and sins and condemn it (and me) or try to fix it.  Martyrdom, anyone?

The good mother we feel one with and adhere to.  The bad mother is the mother that separates from us.  Reactions to that separation are infantile anger, shutdown, shut off or shut out, fear and/or sadness.  And then we grow up with these unresolved, unregulated, unacknowledged feelings but aware of the hope that maybe we will be the good mother we so wanted.

Recognizing these feelings, we can begin to understand the four types (based on the four temperaments) of the “bad” mother in the dramatic story of our childhoods.

the angry mother
the absent mother
the anxious mother
the grieving mother

My mother was never there, she was the absent mother.  She would appear momentarily to charm or to attack and then she would disappear. I felt the glow or the slap of her shimmering light and then the the cold hollowness of her absence. Her primary temperament was sanguine.

The angry mother is always demanding and disappointed because she is suppose to be the ideal mother and the child is suppose to prove it by being the ideal child. Succeed little one. She’s choleric mother.

The anxious mother wants everything to be comfortable and pleasant.  She wants to provide everything for the perfect childhood, so she can relax and eat chocolates with her happy child.  She’s the phlegmatic mother.

The grieving mother will never really connect with her child except in moments of shared suffering.  There is this well of sadness that she seems to be drowning in and the child always feels like a floating device or a life jacket. She’s the melancholic mother.

My mother was a very bad mother - really bad. But when I am in the neutral zone, the land of forgiveness where there is nothing to forgive, I see she really did the best she could. She also had an absent mother.  In the neutral zone I also see that much of my ability to do what I do comes from the wisdom living behind my mother wounds.  She was the right mother for me - the one I chose. It is from the neutral zone that I can see her, see me and celebrate our relationship - she was a bad mother for my story and the best and only mother for my destiny.

With my children, I was too present in their early years as I was determined they would never feel abandonned. Then when I divorced there were times when I was absent, seeking the part of myself that was not mother and not child.

 

Mothering and the Neutral Zone

 

This post is about forgiving mother for not providing a neutral zone.  As a therapeutic researcher, I want to know why my mother (your mother, all mothers) couldn’t provide a neutral zone. Simply, she didn’t have one for herself.  The sin of the first mother, Eve, meant we all have been born into the world of good and bad and need to create our own neutral Eden for ourselves.

Let’s forgive our mothers for not giving us what they didn’t have to give.  Let’s see them from our self-created neutral Eden of compassion.

On Sunday, Mother’s Day, and every day, meet your mother, all mothers, and your children, all children, and yourself in the neutral zone.

As Rumi said

Out beyond ideas of wrong doing
 and right doing

there is a field.


I'll meet you there.


When the soul lies down in that grass


the world is too full to talk about.

The New Inner Year Curriculum

THE INNER YEAR CURRICULUM

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

a year of growing and profound self-awareness

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

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

Inner Winter Curriculum - Destiny

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

Becoming I: Imagining and Creating Your Contribution 

The Fundamental Schooling in Recognizing Your Destiny
March

Spring Curriculum - Relationship

Being Human: Understanding Your Own and Others Temperaments
April

Becoming I: Imagining and Creating Intimacy 

The Fundamental Schooling in Being in Conscious Relationship
May

Summer Curriculum - The World 

Being Human: Embodiment through the Senses
July

Becoming I: Imagining and Creating Balance 

The Fundamental Schooling in Standing Strongly in the World
August

Autumn Curriculum - Moral Development

Being Human: Encounters Part One — Confronting Your Challengers
October


                           Encounters Part Two — Engaging Your Companions
November

Becoming I:  Imagining and Creating Fulfillment 

The Fundamental Schooling in Living in Time
December

The Festivals

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

Epiphany

Lent

Easter

Ascension

Pentecost

St. John's Tide

The Transfiguration

Michaelmas

Saints & Souls