Open all doors, Close all doors

Recently, the team of non-physical "thesis advisers" that work with me has drawn my attention towards six to eight specific women who they tell me are "candidates" to join me in this work of the World Prophet, in training.    I feel ready in many ways for a new dawning of both the inner and the outer woman in my life.  Yet I also often feel confused and off-base, as if I am misunderstanding what they say -- pouring new information into worn out mental and emotional models. 

In this reading, I had asked for clarification of how to deal with these women, given that in some sense I am "pursuing" all of them at the same time.  In the culture in which I grew up, pursuing more than one woman at the same time was frowned on.  Now the team is telling me not only to do so, but to tell each of the women all about it. They also suggest that I include it in this blog.

<begin transmission>

Stop taking it personally.   We need you to open the lives of many women and support the lives of many men.  The ones you are working with so far are examples and "types" of what is yours to do.  Your opportunity and challenge now is to get good at it.

You have made in your house a room called the Lady Room.  It is not designed for just one lady, but first and foremost for a lady "principle"  (First the lady principle and later the principal lady.)  It is fine and expected and proper for you to pursue and honor and open all the candidates we send you,  in parallel and in earnest.  Stop at nothing in your quest to have the lady energy be fully present and embodied in your life. 

Get to know these women as you get to know your Self.  Allow each one to know you. Choose each one totally and fully, and with nothing held outside of discourse.   Practice giving yourself.  Trust Love.  Fear not to lead the way: love provides.

Each of these "candidates" is a partner, a member of the "tribe of ten thousand".   Each is also a possible condensing point with you in establishing the "shape" of the tribe of ten thousand.  Your complement and consort will be she whose energy will marry with yours to create the greatest possible reach for the joint married vision. 

Physical marriage is not essential, yet may follow.  Physical marriage is somewhat easier than the alternative structures in the sense that it helps to "put all the eggs in one basket".  It hence clarifies the resulting lines of energy.  But do not stress. Allow circumstances to change gracefully and gratefully along the way. Trust that each of you is sent as an answer to prayer.  Allow us to take care of how that prayer is made real.

Explore all partnerships. Explore all partners.  

Be the answer to prayer.  Be the Holy Spirit for each other.  Be God for each other.  

Be alive.  Be fully human.  Be and accept nothing else.

Q: What are good ways to "explore all partners" all at the same time?


The above statement in italics is a complete and true answer to this question.  Only when you try to substitute your answer for the Holy Spirit's answer, or your timing for "tapestry timing" does this get confusing.

Here are general principles, for all of life:

• When circumstances get overwhelming and confusing, it always helps to clarify the DDP.  Start to clarify the Definition, Direction and Purpose of the "gardens" where you are currently at work. Tell the truth.
• If you don't like the circumstances you see around you, start to tell the truth to yourself about your deepest prayer.  Your deepest prayer is life: it is who you are.  You can see it outside, you can see it inside.  There is no gap in who you are.  You are one.  By owning and claiming your deepest prayer, you own and claim your Self.
• Open all doors.  This is a deep principle of life.  Open all doors is a motto to hold in your heart.  It will help you be open to the gifts that come your way, the gifts that surround you, and the gifts you bring.  Remember that in time you will open all the doors of your heart.  But this does not mean to open all doors all at once or without preparation.   Open all doors in the proper sequence and in the proper arrangement and in the proper timing.   There is no door that must remain closed for eternity.  Yet there is no door that must be opened all at once. Trust the Voice for God, within you and without you, to indicate which doors are yours to open and which doors are yours to enter into.  Leave the rest alone.
• Close all doors.  This is also a deep principle of life.   It is another way of saying to live now, which is the only time there is. When you are not using a door, keep that door shut.  As you move on from each encounter, be aware of the closing door as you mutually depart.  Doors do not remain open by themselves.  They must be kept open. To close a door means simply to let it close. By allowing the doors to close, you reestablish the living, breathing skin around each organism.   Each door will open again when it is needed. The oneness of the open door is never lost.  It just goes into a resting and relaxing and ease-filled state.   Any door you keep open when you are not using it is a drain.  More than that, it is in some sense a lie.   By keeping open a door that you are not using, you pretend to yourself there is something you are doing that you are not actually doing right now.  So tell the truth yourself about which doors you are currently using and keep only those doors open.

This is how you can picture passing between your women.  Open all the doors of your heart in proper timing and alignment and be with what's there.   Be fully present in love.  Offer love fully, as it is offered to you.  And then let it all go.   Stay true.  Refuse to be drawn into channelizing the total love gift  into an insufficient, untimely, or demeaning "package".  Neither a physical package, an emotional package, a mental package nor a spiritual package alone, will have room for the full gift. 

Here are three concrete practices to try:

• Tell each one about the others.  This is excellent practice for all of you.  It also helps you all meet each other across the circle, which is important for the total tapestry.  This is how the full tribe of ten thousand will gather.
• Blog about the whole experience. This will be freeing.   In fact, you literally have no idea how freeing this will be.
• Keep inviting people to Holy Spirit Night.  Many questions, issues, and problems will resolve themselves automatically when you see each other in person.   One of these women has, with you, been the condensing point for Holy Spirit Night.  This is an example of what all of these women can be for you and for each other.  Allow each one to be all of who she can be for you and for all of you and for herself.  Expect miracles. Nothing else will satisfy.  Amen.

<end of transmission>

Faerie Tale - Ahriman claims one of his own and is put off

From time to time I have a research session that occurs in the form of a discussion with one of the dark powers.   I call these faerie tales.  The faerie tales are intended to be helpful and timely, but not at all "accurate".  Think of it as poetry.

This faerie tale is a discussion is with Ahriman where he claims one of my friends and is put off.

In Rudolf Steiner's material, Ahriman (the name comes from Angra Mainyu, the principle of darkness in Persian mythology) represents one pole of an unbalanced and tempting pull away from truth.  The opposite unbalanced and tempting pole that also leads away from truth is Lucifer.  Ahrimanic energies are dense, materialistic: too grounded. Luciferic energies are grandiose, ambitious: too high-flying.  Truth lies in a dynamic balance that permeates both Ahrimanic and Luciferic energies one with the other.  And all must be held in service of the Christ energy, which is centered, whole, and real.  The image of Archangel Michael with his foot upon the neck of the dragon is a pictorial representation of the proper interrelationship of the Christ energy with both the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic tendencies.

In the drama of this faerie tale, I am discussing with Ahriman the fate of a friend he wishes to claim back to "slavery".  The voice denoted "All" indicates the voice of the Coning itself, which represents the deepest and most balanced wisdom available.   The All voice gives me feedback when I ask for it, but otherwise does not intervene.  My questions are addressed to All.

I am transcribing the session as received, with minimal edits.  I am including it in this blog because its themes are relevant at this time.

<start of transmission>

Ahriman: You have tried to claim one of my own.  I want her back.  She has pledged herself to me.

Me: Pledge?  Show me the pledge.

Ahriman:  She pledged on her life's honor to heal her brother, her sister, her mother, and her father.  They all already belong to me.

Me: Is this a vow that can be broken?

All: Not in this life.

Me: Is this a vow that can be honored?

All: Not in this life.

Me: What is the life in which this vow can be honored or broken?

All:  The Life of Joy.

Me: Does Ahriman have a claim that prevents her from attempting the Life of Joy?

All: No

Me: But does he have a claim on the brother and the sister?

All:  The claim goes deep.

Me:  Can she release her sister to Ahriman?

All: Not and keep her vow.

Me: So she must find the joy in turning her sister and brother over to Ahriman ("to be tortured")?!

All:  There is no other way.

Ahriman:  If she cannot do this (and she will not) then by ancient claim she belongs to me.

All:  It is so.

Me: Is there any rescue for the sister?

All: Not this side of hell.  She must enter and pass through.  She must be redeemed from inside the belly of the beast.

Me: Isn't the miracle stronger than any beast?

All:  Of course.  But then she would have to ask for it herself.  Then all vows are null and void, and the world starts over anew and afresh.

Me: But you think this is unlikely.

All: She is heavily defended against it.

Me. So she must give the sister up to you?

All: There is no other way.

Me: What miracle can she request?

All:  She must find that within herself.  The only miracle worth asking for is the one miracle she came to this world to manifest and receive and give and serve.  There is no other.

Me:  Does she know what this is?

All:  Only in part.  To the extent she refuses to ask for all of it, then part remains inside of Ahriman's claim, and hence her Joy is forfeit.

Me:  The miracle is joy?

All:  So it was, so it is, and so it may be.   But remember, you who wish to help, that her joy is that which you will never see and never feel and never be.

<end of transmission>

A Course in Miracles

A Course in Miracles is essential.  It is of the essence -- the essential ingredient.

What is A Course in Miracles?  A Course in Miracles is a book.  More specifically, it is a set of three books and some related pamphlets all published within one cover. The material was written down by a pair of professors in New York City in the years from 1965 to 1973.  The professors would say they transcribed the book, not wrote it.  One of them, Helen, would receive the words by a process she called inner dictation or automatic writing and write the words down in shorthand.  Later, she would read her notes aloud to the other one, Bill, who would type up the scribed material.

The author of the course material is Jesus.  This bold claim is the one way I can speak my true relationship with the course.   Through the course, I have come to know its author and his love.  The author speaks with a one-pointedness, an authority, an honesty, and an uncompromising joy that helps me see this world and my place in it through eyes of  love, truth, and power. Over time, it has become easy and natural to simply accept what the book itself says about its own authorship, namely that the author is Jesus, rather than quibble, doubt, or theorize.  It rings true.

The first book is the Text.    The Text is the heart of the course.   It is through the text that you will begin to see the all-encompassing scope of what is possible in the thought reversal of this world.  It is a self-study course.  One can do it together with others (and this makes most things easier and more fun).   Yet it is through ones own internal work that one will make the material ones own and start to live it in ones life.

The second book is the Workbook. I will not attempt to improve on what the Workbook says about itself.  The Workbook starts with the following:

A theoretical foundation such as the text provides is necessary as a framework to make the exercises in this workbook meaningful. Yet it is doing the exercises that will make the goal of the course possible. An untrained mind can accomplish nothing. It is the purpose of this workbook to train your mind to think along the lines the text sets forth.

The exercises are very simple. They do not require a great deal of time, and it does not matter where you do them. They need no preparation. The training period is one year. The exercises are numbered from 1 to 365. Do not undertake to do more than one set of exercises a day.

The third book is the Manual for Teachers, which could equally well be called the Manual for Students.  Many have found that this description of the pathway involved in becoming a Teacher of God is exactly the missing piece to sustain them in their studies and to point the way forward.  It seems in many ways more practical, more focused, more down to earth than either the Text or the Workbook.

Without the Course, I could never hope to occupy the job description known as World Prophet, in training.  Here are a few of the reasons:

• With the Course, I have come to trust the aspect of the Voice for God that speaks through me.  I have accepted the call.
• The year of "mind training" that the Workbook represents, and which  I have now repeated several times, shows me at deeper and deeper levels that there is no substitute for joy, that joy is our natural inheritance, and that the pathway to joy is giving freely that which is given us.  The course calls this forgiveness.
• To fully inhabit the role of World Prophet requires partners -- lots of partners.  My job is to gather together with the "tribe of ten thousand".  A few of the partners are ready for the call and just need to be reminded of what there is to do.  But many of my partners need help.  Some need help to even begin to hear the call.   Many more have spent their entire life hearing the call but have reached an impasse where it has become clear that what they started out with will not go all the way. With the course, there is something to give them.  The course demonstrates both where to start and how to keep going all the way home.
• Saying, "Yes!" to life can be deeply disturbing to the status quo.   If one is not used to it, it rearranges everything.   The course provides a foundation, a stepping stone, and a safety net when people are reaching out into the new.
• If used properly, the Course helps one see through ones own hesitation, puffed up arrogance, and lies.

--

To explore further, I suggest the website ACIM.org, which is run by the Foundation for Inner Peace, the original publishers of the course.   On that site, one can read the full text of the Workbook and a good overview of how the Course came into being and what it says.  And lots more.

When buying a copy of the course, I recommend the third (complete) edition.   This edition includes the two pamphlets that were published later but were received through the same process of inner dictation as the rest of the Course.  You can purchase this version through the acim.org site online store or at a discount through online stores such as amazon.com (hardcover, softcover, or mass-market paperback).  I do not recommend the copies of the course through other sellers.

To Honor Life's Challenges

This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.  Deuteronomy 30:19

What does it mean to choose life; to choose to live?  This has been a deeply personal question.  Perhaps it is the most personal question.  Every person's answer is different.   One answers by living.   This post is about one window on choosing life -- one way of saying one's own deep and powerful "yes!" to the full catastrophe of life.

Earlier this year, I asked my team of non-traditional "thesis advisers" for help in giving the gifts that come from this "World Prophet in Training" research program.   I sometimes get tongue-tied when I try to explain this research.   Much of the research takes place on inner levels; inner experiences are notoriously difficult to convey to others.  When one tries, one generally sounds both arrogant and flighty.  So, how can I be the benefits of researching what it is to be a World Prophet, in training, and give the gifts that come from there?

The team offered the following:

Challenge, Courage, Grace, and Will -- then Garden

Today's post is the first installment of this.   Let's start by honoring your challenges in life. 

This isn't a lecture, it is an exercise.

List all your challenges.   Go ahead.   You can do it right now.   It is not an infinite and unending list.   What are all the areas and circumstances in your life that you find challenging?  When I do this, I start by telling the truth to myself about what are all the circumstances that I don't like, that I am annoyed by, wish would go away, wish were already different than they are.   I sink into those challenging circumstances, looking past my reaction to the circumstances to see the challenge itself.  So you do that.  Look deeper into each one of your challenges.   Stay with it until you can see what about this challenge is calling on you to rise -- to become who you must become.  (It is in this sense that the challenge is something to honor -- your challenges can show you who you are.)

Let's try an example.   Today's annoying circumstance is that my lovely six-year-old dog (Dixie, a Golden Retriever Mix) is occasionally peeing on the floor.  Yecch.  I have an immediate reaction and annoyance to cleaning up the pee.  I have an annoyance that my "orderly routine" is ruined and that she seems to need a level of care and attention beyond what I am used to providing.  But what, specifically, is the challenge in that?   It is not all that challenging to stoop down and clean things up.  It is not even all that challenging to start a healing coning or to call the vet.   But the circumstance is not just annoying, it is indeed challenging.  So I sink down into that feeling of being challenged, and see and look and observe.   What is there?  

What arises is a question of, "Whom shall I trust and how far shall I trust them?"   Will I trust my Coning partners with this issue from the day-to-day world?  If it were my own health, I would not hesitate.  But now another being is involved.   And my daughter is involved as well, who cares for this dog as much or more than I do.   Am I willing to stake their health and their love on the same tools I use in my research?   Really?   That is today's challenge.  

There is no easy answer.   The challenge calls on me to rise to a new level.  It calls on me to take a stand about what really is the highest and best standard of care for this loving companion animal who calls my house her home.   The particular action I end up taking is less important than the question itself.  There is no "right" answer. The challenging question itself is what to honor.  It calls on me to choose.

Perhaps I will involve my daughter in the decision at a new level.    Perhaps I will invest several weeks or a month in exploring Nature Healing Conings at a new level, and only then involve the vet.  Perhaps I will involve the Coning partners in the decision about how and when to involve the vet.  It would of course be smart to involve Nature in this way. The Nature Intelligence side of the coning  are the masters of order, organization, and life vitality in any situation; the coning will generally be better than I am at determining the most appropriate means, once I have articulated the intention clearly.  But only I can (and must) set that intention.   That is my job and no one else can do it for me.

A challenge is not (just) something that is hard.  My daughter is now playing high-school field hockey; the practices are hard, uncomfortable, ugly, and long.   But what part of that is challenging?   Is it the sense of blowing past ones perceived limits?   Or is it learning to trust and work with coaches who are calling out the best in their athletes in a way that seems perhaps both supportive and also "mean" at the same time?   Or is it dealing with the grief of giving up other options for what to do this fall?  Only she can see.  Our challenges are as personal as our gifts and our joy.

What is there to honor about challenges?  As you might see from the example above, whatever it is that I find challenging shows me who I next need to become.   We normally think of courage as what helps us meet our challenges.   The challenge is there first, and then the courage helps us meet it.   But I suggest that is exactly backwards.   Instead, I suggest you imagine that your challenges are a direct window that shows you what your courage must be.   You have exactly the challenges that your courage makes room for.  But that is a lead-in to a future post.

So stick with it until you can list all of your challenges and find something to honor in each one.  This by itself is a worthwhile accomplishment.   Pat yourself on the back.  Then stay tuned for future installments.

Contegrity

Contegrity is a word, a made up word that is not yet in the dictionary yet one day will be.   Contegrity signifies a deep integrity and wholeness of Self and Others and Life and that which integrates and fulfills life, lived out across a background of time and circumstance.  Contegrity, as a word, was invented by my friends and mentors, Ken Anbender and Gail Cantor of Contegrity Program Designs.

The following words are my own.   Ken and Gail have not reviewed these words; I am sure they would say this all quite differently.  Yet just as I feel free to weigh in on Perelandra and the gifts I have received there, while still pointing people directly to the Perelandra material itself, so too I feel free to say in my own words the great gifts I have received and continue to receive from Contegrity.  The gift of gratitude works in the soul, and by the fruits of the gift, one, over time, comes to know what the gift must have been.

Ken and Gail are professionals who were interested in supporting all that goes in the direction of what integrates and fulfills life.  They needed a word to distinguish and set apart what is worth steering by and engaging with when the intention is to have life fulfill itself in and around you. 

There is something whole at the heart of life.   Whether one calls it God, Nature, the Beyond, the Inexpressible and Ineffable Wonder of Life, there is something about the way life is working itself out that is worth observing, cultivating, and in a Ken-and-Gail phrase, belonging to become.  Life is not (just) a bunch of bodies interacting.   Nor is life (just) a set of conversations, disconnected from the physical life that embodies them.   Life is whole.  It is as unsatisfying to be "all physical with no spiritual" as it is to be "all spiritual with no physical".   What is needed now, today, is wholeness, balance, completeness, integration, and flow, and the real-world A-class results that come from there.   Ken and Gail set out to determine what goes in that direction and what does not.   Nothing else would satisfy.  If you will, they simply observed that many, even most, of the approaches to "having a great life" did not offer this. They set out to find what does.

In my words, Ken and Gail started investigating how to garden wholeness.  What are the seeds to plant if wholeness is the intended crop?  What ways of engaging and conversing help the tiny seedlings of wholeness emerge and blossom, the way that water, sunlight, good soil and fresh air help the tiny plants become a bumper crop?  And, conversely,  what ways of conversing and engaging are like weeds that grow quickly yet do not satisfy, and will take over the entire garden if left on their own without being lovingly pruned and weeded.

And even beyond the means to do so, what is the crop itself that is being gardened for wholeness and fulfillment? What is wholeness and fulfillment, anyway?  Contegrity is the word for the crop of wholeness. Contegrity the word signifies the aspect of life that is worth planting and tending and caring for, and defending with ones honor and ones life.  Ken and Gail needed a made up word for this.   All the existing words already point at something and what they point at isn't working.

Here are some basics.    Contegrity is a different view of what it means to be a Self. To be a self is to be already connected, related, enmeshed, engaged. Contegrity, the crop of wholeness,  is relational, not thing-like.    To be a self has nothing to do with being separate, though it has much to do with being unique. Contegrity is discerned not invented.  There is that which goes in the direction of wholeness and that which does not. One can tell the truth about that but not determine it.  Right use of will is to will what works, not to will what one wishes would work.

-------------------

To learn more, browse the Contegrity Program Designs web page, especially their FAQ and the pages that are linked from the top right corner of any page.  Or consider participating in one of their programs.  One of the Contegrity flagship programs Life Design will be held in the Hartford, CT, area on October 21 to 24 this year.  Life Design focuses on what, uniquely, is your one wild and precious life designed for.  What is unique about you and what connects you with others and the world are one and the same.   Getting the truth told about what that is -- and what that is not -- is a key starting place for living with freedom, ease, and joy.   In a phrase I have used in the second post in this series, joy comes when you stop giving what you don't have, and start learning to give in abundance what you have in abundance because it is who you are.

A koan

Keep letting go of control; control is not what you want; you want love.

Keep letting go of love; love is not what you want; you want peace.

Keep letting go of peace; peace is not what you want; you want joy.

Keep letting go of joy; joy is not what you want; you want God.

Emergency MAP

MAP is the profound and simple health practice I have talked about in earlier posts here and here.   One of the best reasons for become familiar with MAP is to be able to set up an Emergency MAP Coning when you need one.   Chapter 6 of the MAP book describes this process in detail.  Read it. It is designed to be something so simple that you can do it even in the midst of a massive and sudden trauma.  Basically, you ask for an emergency connection to your team, and keep it open for as long as you are "in the hospital".

My MAP team holds a somewhat loose definition of what counts as an "emergency" and what counts as "in the hospital".  At times of spiritual emergence, when I have opened a new reality and am now stepping into it, I have several times tested to start an emergency MAP coning.   The team has asked me to keep the emergency coning open for several days, until the new energy from the emergence can be digested and stabilized.  This is not to be taken lightly.  Keeping any coning open is an energy drain.  Keeping a coning open for several days would never be suggested unless there is an extremely powerful and timely benefit to be received from it right now.

Using an emergency coning is the only time I have ever kept a coning open while driving.  The team has told me that in this special case, the increased clarity of having the emergency coning open can actually make me a safer driver than I would be without it.  Needless to say, I never trust my own good ideas about questions like when to start or continue an emergency.   The Nature side of the coning is responsible for matter, means, and action of any project or goal.   In particular, Nature is the expert in order, organization and life vitality. And this includes all questions of timing and appropriate means.

The most recent time I have tested positive for a several-day emergency coning was this week.  Over the weekend, I received initiation and anointing into a new role with new responsibilities and new challenges.  This was a tremendous expansion.   And as I said in the first post in this series,

Your health practice must meet and match and balance your expansion practice in every way.

So the emergency coning has been very appropriate.   After a few days of that, I have now graduated to "only" needing a Two-Week Intensive Flower Essence Process.  The two-week process is an incredible tool for allowing several layers of self-definition to slough off and be replaced by a new self-definition.  But that is a subject for another post.

Endorsement: Vittorio Passanante

This is my first endorsement post.  I plan to sprinkle in a few such posts over the next few weeks.  I wish to bring attention to healers and practitioners and approaches that reach the level of mastery.  

The first of these endorsements is for my spiritual brother and partner in healing, Vittorio Perri Passanante.

http://victoriouslight.com/

Vittorio describes himself as a healer and a spiritual intuitive, and as a channel of the Holy Spirit.  I say he is more like a Lion of God.  When he is in a spiritual session, he speaks with the voice of authority.  Sleepers do awaken; demonic energies do depart (and then submit to their own healing); new openings for healing do occur.

The deepest and most profound part of Vittorio's work is in the area of healing the holy inner Child.  At our core, each of us is a holy inner Child for we are all children of God.   Along the way, this holy inner Child often goes underground.  Then the holy inner child is commingled with the less than holy inner tyrant.   Here, there is both tremendous unshakable wisdom yet also immediate black and white reactions,  addiction and repulsion, and magical thinking.  The challenge is to awaken the wisdom, love and compassion of this inner Child and to make room for the strength of will that it represents and allow all the rest to gently disappear.

The holy inner Child cannot be commanded, for it is stronger than the Universe.  It cannot be coaxed, for it is wise in the ways of the world that has lured it and hurt it before.   Yet the holy inner Child can be loved, can be welcomed, can be spoken to in words of the heart.  The holy inner child will recognize one who comes in the name of truth and is willing to honor the truth.   The truth is not always easy; the truth is not always nice; yet the holy inner Child dwells only in the truth and will move for nothing less.

Yesterday, I had an experience that showed how much Vittorio has taught me through his example.  I had received some news that at first seemed like a disappointment, and this disappointment seemed to hit home at this inner Child level.   By giving "little Petie" a chance to speak in his own voice I could then hear his sorrow.  More important, he could hear his sorrow.  For just a moment, it was heartbreaking.   Without Vittorio's example in front of me, I might not have trusted this experience and stuck with it until the pain could let go.   But I did, and then the sun came out again.  Just a second later little Peter was laughing again.

Other approaches have helped me observe and upgrade the kernel of truth that may be shrouded behind early episodes.   This is different.  It can be a direct channel to wisdom that is beyond this world.  It can mean putting down the burdens of a lifetime.    Real freedom can emerge from sharing the burdens and dreams and loves of the holy inner Child, for it too can be a channel of the Holy Spirit.

Wednesday Holy Spirit Nights

I am hosting a gathering at my house in West Newton on Wednesday night to celebrate the Fall Equinox.  This will also be an opportunity to initiate a longstanding vision of mine.

The exact moment of the equinox is September 22, 11:09pm EDT.    We'll gather at 7pm, and continue until 11:30pm.   Some people may come later than 7; some may leave earlier than 11:30.  That's fine.   The point is to gather in company and appreciate the turning of the natural cycle.    It will be an organized evening, but informal. All who would appreciate this type of gathering are welcome.

I have a vision that Wednesday nights all year could be dedicated to being a home each week for the Holy Spirit Voice in each of us to thrive.   Not church.  Many of us already have church.  Not meditation.  Not a seminar.  Not boring. The intention is to gather together with joy-filled and wonder-filled activities that bring us closer to each other and to the Holy Breath. (Feel free to translate that name into something that works for you.) 

I could use some help fleshing in out this vision, and in hearing which part connects with your heart.  Here are some examples of activities I have imagined:

• Breaking bread together
• Studying A Course in Miracles together, or supporting those who are.
• Starting Soil-less Gardens for key areas in life.   A soil-less garden is a way of partnering with the supporters of human form and the supporters of human evolution to multiply the effectiveness, balance, and fun in any project.  Many of us have big challenges in life that seem stuck.  I envision that working together in this way helps all of us un-stick and have fun with these key challenges while moving mountains at the same time.
  
• Lifting our hearts together in praise-filled song

Of course, this coming Wednesday is just a one-time event, not the whole series.   Since the fall equinox is the start of the natural year,  I envision we could:

• Eat fun snacks
• Appreciate the year that is coming to a close. Take stock of what was planted, birthed, grown, and harvested over the last 12 months
• Listen (and maybe pray) together to see whether there is a core of people and a core of activities that might make Wednesday Holy Spirit Nights a reality
• And then, open our hearts to the moment of the equinox itself.

Intermediate MAP

I was talking with a friend yesterday about his business. He described a vision he has had for a long time. He mentioned his "resistance" that "gets in his way" of fulfilling this vision.  This is a job for MAP.  Today's post is about making full use of MAP.

MAP (the Medical Assistance Program) is a profound and simple health practice that is the subject of a previous post. Many people would not think of "resistance", "fear of failure", "fear of success", "resentment", "I want to get what I deserve", "I am set back by not knowing where to start",  and "I am afraid that I look at it, it will  get worse" as proper subjects for a "health program".  Yet MAP will go to work on any physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual block to health that you are willing to bring to the team.  So all of the above are fair game.

If this is not health, then this must be time for MAP.

Many people don't make full use of MAP.  The first impediment is that people haven't heard of it.  If you haven't heard of something, it is hard to make full use of it.

A second impediment is thinking that MAP is too strange and unfamiliar or too nontraditional to be helpful.  With a name like, The Co-Creative White Brotherhood Medical Assistance Program, MAP can call up people's previous associations.  Some people (even many people) would prefer to stick with the medical models that are used widely in our current society rather than branching out.

Others might be willing to experiment, but find difficulty in suspending their disbelief.  It can be tempting to think that believing in MAP is a prerequisite to exploring it. To experiment with MAP is to take it on its own terms -- Here, try this.  Even to try MAP, especially for the five-month introductory period that the book itself recommends, does mean a leap of faith and an entry into a different world.  But this is the leap of faith of the gardener who plants a seed in the spring never quite knowing what the fruit will be in the fall.  You don't need to believe in a garden for the garden to bear abundant and tasty fruit.  You just have to water and weed and tend and care.

Some people worry about MAP.  I am not doing it right. Or, I don't feel a thing. Or, it doesn't seem like anything is happening.  Or, the muscle testing thing doesn't work for me.  Well, how many people give up on their gardens sometime between when it is planted and when it is harvested?  I am certainly not saying that you have to wait "all the way until fall" for the results of MAP to show up.   MAP can have dramatic and obvious effects even in the first session.  But for many people and certainly for me, there has been a learning curve.  And it has taken an ongoing investment.

MAP itself is the most powerful tool for learning MAP.  If I bring to the team an issue such as When I don't feel anything happening, I get discouraged and want to give up,   or even I want to be better at learning muscle testing, I have seen dramatic and often instantaneous results.   At other times, a request such as I want to feel, see and hear more of what the team is doing when they are working results in a much more gradual and sustainable learning curve.  It is as if the team is saying to me, "Do you as a beginner really want to see what the surgeon sees when he is doing surgery?  Stick with your current work and eventually you can run the hospital."

Another area I have learned to bring to MAP is when I want to get better at something. There are health related aspects to any new challenge.  Here's an example with physical, emotional, mental and spiritual components. My daughter and I sing in a chorus.  Like many choruses, we were short on tenors, and I was asked to sing for a term at the higher end of my range.  At first, it hurt.  I asked my MAP team to help my voice feel better after a night of singing high.   It worked.  And then it branched out from there.  How about, help me prepare ahead of time so that I can sing high for a whole night without even feeling bad at the end.   It worked.  How about, help open up my vocal chords so that I can sing effortlessly at the high end of my range and the notes are clearer and purer and more beautiful.  It worked!  Now I love singing tenor.

I am sometimes unsure what it means when MAP talks about "spiritual health issues".   I am asking the team about this as I write this post. Here is an example, again from singing tenor, that the team is pointing me to. At first, there was a secret grief associated with what I had left behind as a bass.  Part of what I have loved about singing the base notes of a piece is that the bass part provides the grounding or foundation of the whole.   One knows ones place and ones value.  One can sing the whole piece from the bass part.  I missed this.

When singing tenor, one is "in the middle".  The notes can be harder to find, and it can be harder to distinguish what difference you are making to the piece.  I was singing tenor, and even enjoying it, but some deep part of my core wasn't yet aligned.   So I asked the team to help me find ways to enjoy being a tenor as much as I had enjoyed being a bass.  This might sound like an emotional issue, but the team is showing me that it is indeed a spiritual issue.  It is really about, How am I connected to the whole? and What is uniquely mine to do here?  And these are spiritual, not emotional, topics. Anyway, it worked!  I was able to feel my way into "singing the whole song from the tenor part" the same way I had done as a bass.  The secret grief was gone and had been replaced with a public joy.  Amen.

Why me? Why you?

This series of posts is dedicated first-among-equals to E because she needs the results of this research, she needs it all, and she needs it now.  Having her in mind helps focus and hone these words to what is needed this instant, here.  (And of course, it is all meant for me as well. It is ever thus.)  Although this post may sound very different, it is intended as a continuation of my love letter to E and to B and to myself and to the year that is passing.  To my ears, this post sounds challenging and a bit annoying.  Yet even that is not a bad place to start. I am happy to have written it at all.

Today's post is a chance to clarify who this research is for--who is the audience. Why you?  Why me?

First, let me start with that research phrase that my non-traditional thesis advisers gave me.  This phrase applies to you to whom I write these words, though others can listen in:

The world needs a world prophet and you are one, so get to work and learn as you go.

The title of "world prophet in training" is a job description.   The world needs men, women, children, and others who choose to inhabit this job description and learn to give what it requires.   The "job requirements" are individually designed and must be owned.  No two prophets are ever given the same.  No one else can take your part.  Are you willing to teach yourself to give what only you can give?

World Prophet is a joint calling.  We are called to join together.  There is work to do on both the outer and the inner levels that can be done only together.  As we each "be ourselves", we join together.

The "job" of the World Prophet, the job that can only be done truly by those who come together, is to set the Definition, Direction, and Purpose (DDP) of the world garden.  Even having one world prophet is qualitatively different than having none.  But when it truly "takes off" and becomes something unprecedented is when there is a large collection of "world prophets in training" acting as one within a single group Coning.  The coning has to be shaped when there is such a large group -- that is part of what the "research" of my PhD program with nature is about.  Not everyone need join this shape or this Coning.  There are many callings and many ways to say, "yes!" to them.  Yet my calling is to point in the direction of this shared shaped group coning and call together those who will.

Here are a few of the "articles of faith" with which I write these posts:

• You will be happy and joyous to the extent you accept and own your part in creation.   Engage.  You were built for engaging.  The results as such don't matter.  Just engage.
• For those who are called as World Prophet, true joy will come from getting to work as a world prophet, in training.  Some things are so worth doing that they are worth doing badly.
• Abandon all good ideas.   Good ideas will not make you happy.  If you are doing something because it is a good idea, you will disappoint it and it will disappoint you.   Good ideas are never who you are.
• Honor the challenges of life.  Let your challenges show you who you are.  Whatever the challenges you face, it is always your challenges that show you where your courage is, and then the grace beyond the courage.  Don't be distracted by your reactions to the challenges you face.   It is the challenges themselves that show you who you are.
• You are given by a Will which you did not invent and which you do not own.  Own this will by making it yours, complete and whole and free.
• Have fun.

The Lady Room

The next few posts will be a kind of love letter, not just to E and B, but to myself.  It is a love letter to the year that is passing. The new "natural year", which runs from from fall equinox to fall equinox, starts on September 22 at 11:09 p.m., eastern daylight time.  Here is what Machaelle Small Wright says about the Fall Equinox:

In nature, this is the new year, the day that begins the next year's cycle. It is the day when the call goes out for the new cycle to activate and begin its formation processes on the deepest of energy levels. At Perelandra, at the precise moment of the fall equinox I, as creator of this garden, initiate the call by saying aloud,
I request the next cycle and wish to assist its full unfolding.

This has been a year of Love and of Preparing for Love.  I am the same man I was a year ago, but in a new way.   Something is ready to blossom:  I have started to marry my own inner woman.

Starting this year, I have a room in my house I call the Lady Room.   It used to be my home office. And for right now, it is still where I sit to do my research, write these notes, and do many of my practices.  But now it is ready for something else.  Over the course of the last year I have moved almost all of the "office" out of it.  The books are gone, the file folders put away.  The MC Escher print of a head in ribbons that used to hang on the wall has been replaced by a print of Our Lady Queen of the Universe.  It is now a room that is dedicated to the inner and the outer "lady".  The "Lady Room" is ready for the lady.

The inner and outer women in my life have at times felt left out on their own, as if there is no partner here to partner with.  My emotional life is more like Earth and Air than it is Water and Fire -- at times dry, hidden, and even bare.  The mental life is more obvious, more flashy, more celebrated.  (Even here there is much to appreciate, as I learn to let go of trying to be anybody else than who I am.)  But this year of love has emerged quite naturally, like a flower after rain.  No "forcing", no "will power".  Just one simple prayer:

Trust Love.

Amen.

Challenge Courage Grace and Will -- Grace

The other day I was walking along a rocky headland close  by the ocean.  I came across a twisted pine of quite good size that had lodged itself in a crack in the rock.  It seems out of place, far from the other trees and completely exposed to the wind and -- in winter storms -- to the waves.  In a twisted and low-slung and bonsai-like way, this tree is beautiful.

A 500 pound rock sits on the roots of this tree.   The tree's roots emerge from the back side of this rock, bare and scraggly.  The roots barely make it the 12 inches from there to the tiny crack from which the tree draws its life.  This "poor tree" must deal not only with wave and wind but also with a huge weight on its back that almost chokes its roots out of existence.  Yet without this weight, the "poor tree" would have washed away 10 times by now.  Without this rock, the tree could never reach this size, this level of energy, or this beauty.  The 500-pound rock, the exposed location, and the tree itself are all examples of grace.

Grace means ease. Life has a gift of ease in seeming difficulty. 

Grace is ours to embrace.

To the extent that the tree embraces its location, the tree can live, and live well -- live with ease.

Why Start With MAP?

I dedicate these posts to you who can receive all the joy that is in them.  May your wholeness continue to blossom into light, and joy, and life.   Amen.

My first post set the stage for joy.  Joy comes when you stop giving what you don't have and start learning to give in abundance what you do have, because it is who you are. You need an expansion practice because you teach yourself how to be happy as you extend to give more of who you are.   And you need a health practice to balance that expansion -- breathing in after you breathe out.

Help abounds, but you have to ask for it.  Today is a post about what to ask and what not to ask, focused on health practices.  For expansion into real joy, it is helpful to start with a health practice called MAP. 

MAP stands for the Co-Creative White Brotherhood Medical Assistance Program.  At one level, it is a health practice that you do yourself in the privacy of your own room.  It puts your health into your own hands. There is no one to pay, no one to go see, no complicated steps to follow.   The steps are simple and anyone can do them.  You can do them, starting from where you are right now.  Sessions are relatively short (40 minutes) and yet they can have deep and profound effects. MAP is practical.

At another level, MAP trains you in asking for and allowing in the help that surrounds us all the time.  In MAP, you will be asking for the combined support of the supporters of human form and the supporters of human evolution.  The support of human form comes from the world of Nature and of Nature Intelligence.  The support of human evolution comes from the collection of helper souls of all genders, colors, backgrounds, and callings that is often known collectively as the White Brotherhood. Together, these different experts create a healing "room", called a Coning, in which all of that expertise, along with your Higher Self (i.e. your own pattern and timing and identity) can speak with one voice and work with one heart.   MAP is whole.

But what I love most about MAP is how it challenges us to ask for help at all levels by asking us simply to list our symptoms at all levels.  In MAP, the rule of the game is that your individual healing team, your MAP team, will "work on" any area you can bring to them.   The clarity with which you can bring your issue -- by articulating all the symptoms of the issue; by describing what you have noticed about it at the physical, emotional, mental or spiritual levels;  by stating and offering up your fears, suspicions, wishes, fantasies and hopes about what else your issue might be connected to -- all of this is what gives your MAP team "permission to go to work".   This is great training in surrendering your supposed certainty that you know who you are, that you know what you need, and that you know what should be happening right now. Where you cannot "offer up" your issue -- say if you do not mention it at all or if you make only blanket requests that try to handle all issues right away without taking responsibility for any of them -- they will wait.   They wait for you to ask.  They will not override your timing.  They cannot override your free will.  MAP is respectful.

The way to start MAP is to buy the book, read the first 5 chapters, and then set aside some time for your first few sessions.   (It is also helpful to buy a bottle of ETS+ at the same time.) The book recommends that you do MAP sessions on a regular schedule for the first 5 months. I recommend this, too.   It is enough time to learn the program, to work through many of your initial issues, and to determine for yourself if this program is something you want to make part of your normal routine.

50 posts in 60 days

This series of 50 posts is dedicated to my friend E, who is passing through a major health crisis.  And also to B, and D, and V, and many others.  These are people who have a deep love of life and a deep connection to truth.   Yet their circumstances are so painful that sometimes even to keep going seems impossible.  And yet, God put the joy where the pain is.   Healing is to be found there, where the sickness is, and not someplace else. To you, then, my friends, are dedicated this series of notes on finding the joy in the unlikely places where it seems to dwell.

I will also be discussing planetary healing.   When I started my "PhD program with Nature", the non-physical teachers who are my "thesis committee" suggested a research phrase:

The world needs a World Prophet and you are one, so get to work and learn as you go.

What I have learned from this phrase is that the world is changing out from us at an ever increasing pace.  The stress of technological and economic upheaval, of climate change disruption, of spiritual dislocation and beyond, keeps offering us a new world to live in -- every few minutes.  What kind of garden can we create from all of what we live in today?  What is our "home world"?  And how can we create our home world in the here and now?

The last two years have been the most joyous of my life. Not easy, but joyous.  I stopped trying to "fit in" to anybody's picture of who or what I am or where I could go.  I determined to do my own research and find my own pathway.  I gave up trying to be "normal" and I gave up trying to even understand all of what it is I am called to do.   I honor that which is mine to do and let go of all the rest.   And in that is the greatest joy.

Specifically, I set aside time to do research every day.  I set up a team of non-traditional "thesis advisers" to assist in the research, loosely following a set of suggestions from Machaelle Small Wright of the Perelandra Center for Nature Research on how to become a Co-Creative Scientist.  I use a Coning as the energetic structure to talk with the team. Kinesiology (muscle testing) is the tool for refining and developing the intuitive insight that is my major communication link with this team.

And I set up a series of health practices.   One of my maxims is

Your health practice must meet and match and balance your expansion practice in every way.

The expansion practice is where I train and develop myself to do that which only I can do.  To expand is an act of Will and of Courage in the face of life's Challenges. Healing is the Grace with which the universe responds.  Only one small part of what there is for me to do has never been done. For the rest, I can relax.  I can let myself receive healing as a gift. I can allow myself to see and feel and appreciate the multitude of things that happen every day to adjust the balance and the flow as the universe and I spiral around each other in our eternal dance.  And I can get good at it.

In this series of posts, then, I want to

Feel the joy. Write the joy. Live the joy.

I want to meet these friends and lovers where they need to be and where they are.  I want to give and love and serve, and to have that love show up in the writing.

And so, I leave off with a simple prayer.

I choose Life.  Amen.