Good day good people,
Many of you are joining me in the coming weeks (through mid October-ish) in taking another dive into the practice that Cynthia Bourgeault has introduced to the Wisdom network of Creating Moon in Oneself. This practice comes from the Fourth Way Work and is thought to be an important aim after we have developed three-centered presence and awareness. It is also thought to be the necessary preparation for Creating Sun in Ourselves.
As Cynthia Bourgeault has said, "“creating moon in myself” prepares the inner ground through a direct confrontation with what Thomas Keating famously called “our false self system”: the habits, conditioning, inner commentaries, and shadow stuff that keep us stuck in our comfort zone, unable to swim upstream against the flow of instinctual drives and entropy. Left untended, human consciousness tends to default to autopilot. “Creating moon in myself” helps ensure that consciousness is not left untended" (Spirituality & Practice ecourse, Spiritual Gifts from the Imaginal Realm, Session 8).
As we work with three-centered presence and awareness, we see that there are many ways we fall asleep and are at the whim of our various little 'i's agendas. Maurice Nicoll reminds us, “If you consent to every ‘I’ of the moment in yourself, you are not working, and you do not understand what work on yourself means. Work on yourself means to get into a new way of living – of living consciously inside yourself instead of mechanically. It means to work against your mechanical ways of reacting to everything, and so on. Work on yourself … begins when you observe yourself and begin to see different ‘I’s in you that have preyed on you and enslaved you all your life. But all this is impossible if you imagine you are one person” (Psychological Commentaries, p. 313-314).
It is likely that we have all discovered we are many inside, we have different ‘I’s or parts that have at times varying internal experiences, approaches, and reactions. We have come to see the ways in which we are not yet single or unified within. At the same time, we have likely come to discover that we are beginning to "acquire a different centre of gravity within ourselves" from which we can operate more frequently. It is from this different center of gravity that we are able to engage this work. Nicoll tells us, “You can only digest your day by having something to digest it with, something that has been established in you by the assimilation and consent and valuation of the Work. When you refer things to the Work you will find at once something that will help you to arrange your daily impressions rightly. You will learn to take things in a light and easy way which ordinary people would take very negatively and heavily, and you will also learn to take things in a serious way that ordinary people take very lightly” ( Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p. 338).
Over time, our Wisdom practices help us make contact with and establish this center of gravity within ourselves that is different from our ordinary sense of selfhood at the narrative level identified with the many I’s. "Ordinarily, in the mechanical state where different I’s continuously appear and disappear the [Fourth Way] System says that the centre of gravity for a human being is the moon. To begin to become one it is necessary, the System says, to ‘create moon in oneself.’ What can this mean? According to the System the moon acts as a balance weight upon the earth; certainly its counter effect upon the earth’s gravity creates the tides and affects the movement of all liquids. To ‘create moon in oneself’ means finding a way to voluntarily bring some kind of order to our inner states—to escape from mechanicalness. Initially, it is our physical movements that must become voluntary and conscious. Experience shows us we cannot do this of our own volition—we don’t yet possess sufficient will—we can at best only observe our mechanicalness, not change it." (Gerald Beckwith and Professor Robert Simmons)
I invite you to, in your own way and timing, join us in the work to create moon within by engaging the foundational practices and states of self remembering (self presence, aware of aliveness, being, that we occupy the infinite and finite at once) and self-observation (developing the non-critical observing I which can view concrete thinking, emotions, sensations in specific areas of life). As we work together in this way, our work supports one another in the imaginal realm.
With love, Heather
Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses
Monday, August 5th
Chant: o Sacred Three, transmute me
Tuesday, August 6th with Catherine
I have a small grain of hope–
one small crystal that gleams
clear colors out of transparency.
I need more.
I break off a fragment
to send to you.
Please take
this grain of a grain of hope
so that mine won’t shrink.
Please share your fragment
so that yours will grow.
Only so, by division,
will hope increase,
like a clump of irises, which will cease to flower
unless you distribute
the clustered roots, unlikely source–
clumsy and earth-covered–
of grace.
– Denise Levertov
Wednesday, August 7th
Reading: “Life is meant to be lived from a Center, a divine Center. Each one of us can live such a life of amazing power and peace and serenity, of integration and confidence and simplified multiplicity, on one condition- that is, if we really want to. There is a divine Abyss within us all, a holy Infinite Center, a Heart, a Life who speaks in us and through us to the world. We have all heard this holy Whisper at times. At times we have followed the Whisper, and amazing equilibrium of life, amazing effectiveness of living set in. But too many of us have heeded the Voice only at times. Only at times have we submitted to [this] holy guidance. We have not counted this Holy Thing within us to be the most precious thing in the world. We have not surrendered all else, to attend to it alone.... John Woolman did. He resolved so to order his outward affairs as to be, at every moment, attentive to that voice.... He didn't have to struggle, and renounce, and strain to achieve simplicity. He yielded to the Center and his life became simple. It was synoptic. It had singleness of eye. "If thine eye be single thy whole body shall be full of light." His many selves were integrated into a single true self, whose whole aim was humbly walking in the presence and guidance and will of God. There was no shouting down of a disgruntled minority by a majority vote among his selves. It was as if there were in him a presiding chairman who, in the solemn, holy silence of inwardness, took the sense of the meeting.” —Thomas R. Kelly, A Testament of Devotion, p.116-118
Thursday, August 8th
Reading: Yeshua took everyone by surprise, for he did not reveal himself as he truly was, but only according to the capacities of those who were able to perceive him. Though everyone was susceptible to mortality, nevertheless he revealed himself to all. To the great ones he revealed himself as great; to the little ones he became small. To angels he revealed himself as angel, to humanity as a man. Yet in all of these the Logos itself was the hidden secret, though some who saw him realized they were seeing themselves. — Analogue Fourteen trans. Bauman, Bauman, Bourgeault
Chant: you the one, one in all, say I am, I am you
Friday, August 9th
Reading: “We are each like a well that has a source in a common underground stream which supplies all. The deeper down I go, the closer I come to the source which puts me in contact with all other life.” — John Welch, Spiritual Pilgrims: Carl Jung and Teresa of Avila
Chant: Sink into the taproot of your heart (by Heather Ruce)
Saturday, August 10th
Sunday, August 11th
Reading: All praise is Yours;
we are in Your hands, in Your eyes, and beg to be surrendered in Your Sacred Heart;
everything is Yours.
Where can we go where You are not?
Guide us and provide that
which serves You.
Please remove all obstacles and by Your Grace and Mercy
Surrender us in Non-Judgmental Love.
– Red Hawk
Chant: O Mercy, I entrust myself to you, that I may be transformed (by Suzanne Toolan RSM & Catherine Regan)
Comments