Good day good people,
We are still in the midst of the Eastertide season with the ongoing charge to "acknowledge, explore, and live out of our" second body [aka kesdjan, imaginal realm, world 24, Queen/King/Kin-dom of Heaven body]. As well as to continue to build and explore a mutually caring, honest, tender, trusting relationship between this body and our first or earthly human creaturely body.
This can allow us to gain greater knowledge and genuine understanding about our Whole Self which includes these bodies. This can help us learn to keep our attention deep and wide enough that we can see, as de Salzmann speaks of in The Reality of Being, from moment to moment what we are, abandoning all that we pretend to be. In so doing, an energy is freed and gives us the force to look deeper in ourselves without turning away or stopping. She says, "What is most important for me is to see, to see without the reaction of my memory and regardless of what I see. Whatever the fact – ambition, jealousy, refusal – the act of seeing it reveals an enormous power. As the fact itself blossoms, there is understanding not only of the fact but of the action that seeing produces – the change in my consciousness. The very act of seeing brings this change, and the truth of what I see transforms my attitude toward life. Consciousness opens – I see. I see reality, and this becomes all powerful for me. I have an emotional understanding of truth."
But it doesn't stop here. Over time this kind of true seeing, as Jacob Needleman suggests, "acquires a completely new meaning as the development of attention lets go of its effort, joining and willingly submitting to a higher conscious seeing. In this new relationship of individual attention and a higher impersonal consciousness, a [person] can become a vessel, serving another energy which can act through the individual." Thus, this spiritually charged season is meant to support our own joining and willingly submitting to a higher seeing in which we offer ourselves to being a conduit of spiritual energies (such as faith, hope, love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, self-control, forbearance, forgiveness, courage, trust, compassion, etc.) acting through us in our own bodies and ecosystems within the greater body and ecosystem of which we are a part of.
Let's keep at it. . .
Eastertide Love,
Heather
Daily Contemplative Pauses Readings
from last week
Monday, April 15th with Heather
Reading: "How do you love yourself? First of all, you breathe in, mindfully, and you become aware that you have a body. "Breathing in, I know i have a body." Your body is a very important part of yourself. You spend two hours with your computer, you are stressed, and you don't know how to stop, and you forget completely that you have a body during these two hours. You are looking for something in the future, in your work, while your body suffers. So the first act of love is to breathe in and to go home to your body. "Breathing in, I know I have a body. Hello body, I am home. I'll take care of you." So to be aware of our body is the beginning of love, and when mind is home to body, mind and body are established in the here and now.
And you might notice two things with the practice of mindful breathing. The first thing you might notice is: your body is a wonder. You have to rediscover that your body is a wonder. Biologists are trying to understand the body. It is a masterpiece of the cosmos. Your body is a wonder. Your body is the seed of consciousness, of the core consciousness of the cosmos, and you don't know the value of your body. Your body contains all information of the history of the cosmos. In every cell of your body you can recognize the presence of your ancestors -- not only human ancestors, but animal, vegetable and mineral ancestors. And all your ancestors are still alive in your body with their weaknesses and with their strengths. You may have taken your body for granted, but it is a wonder. Your brain, the neocortex, is a very sophisticated kind of organization. The cosmos have come together in order to produce this wonder which is your body, and if you can get in touch with your body, you can get in touch with the whole cosmos, with all your ancestors, and also, with all the future generations that are already inside of your body (that will) manifest later.
Do you have the capacity to appreciate that wonder that is your body? Mother earth is in you -- not (only) underneath, or above or around you -- but in you, also. And father sun is also in you. You are made of sunshine, you are made of fresh air, of fresh water. And to be aware of that wonder and to value that wonder can already bring a lot of joy and happiness. "Breathing in I know I have a body." And you can enjoy having that body…" — Thich Naht Hahn
Chant: Every cell of this body, sings glory
Tuesday, April 16th with Heather
Reading: "You don’t want to hear the story of my life, and anyway I don’t want to tell it, I want to listen to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.
And anyway its the same old story–a few people just trying, one way or another to survive. Mostly, I want to be kind" — Mary Oliver, Dogfish
Chant: Every cell of this body, sings kindness
Wednesday, April 17th with Heather
Reading: "No one hides a thing of great value in something that will attract attention, but folk will often put objects of worth into a container that is worth little or nothing. Likewise, the soul—a precious thing-has come to exist in a humble body." OR "No one hides a thing of great value in a vase which is too visible; treasures are hidden in inconspicuous pots. So it is with the soul, which is precious, and incarnated in perishable matter." — Analogue 11, Gospel of Phillip, trans Bauman & Leloup
Chant: Every cell of this body, sings glory
Thursday, April 18th with Faye
Reading: "We know by now that there is always, already a place within us that is rooted beyond our first body. We know this place. We may have dropped into it consciously or it has dropped into our awareness in a moment of pure gift. Our second body is right there within our first body and vice versa. Thus, there is a consciously loving relationship available between them within the ecosystem of our Whole self.
This week we might consider cultivating and practicing conscious love and relating within this internal ecosystem. We might begin to notice the climate of relating within. Specifically, noticing the ways our first body relates with our second body and how our second body relates with our first. We can allow there to be mutual recognition, forgiveness, care, tenderness, mercy, appreciation, truth, courage, trust, patience, and/or any other spiritual substances that may need to be exchanged between them so that those substances fill the atmosphere of our ecosystem nourishing both bodies. We can discover, as we grow our relationship between these bodies, that they can be partners rather than at odds with each other. This conscious loving relationship within can allow our Whole Self to work from a place that is steadier, more flexible, and more real more and more often." — Heather Ruce
Chant: The streams of my Father’s [Mother’s] Love run daily through me, the streams of my Father’s [Mother’s] Love run daily through me, from the holy Fountain of Life to the seed throughout the whole Creation (by Paulette Meier)
Friday, April 19th with Heather
Reading: Kenosis ”is a direct gateway into a divine reality that can be immediately experienced as both compassionate and infinitely generous. Abundance surrounds and sustains us like the air we breathe; it is only our habitual self-protectiveness that prevents us from perceiving it. Thus, the real problem with any constrictive motion (taking, defending, hoarding, clinging) is that it makes us spiritually blind, unable to see the dance of divine generosity that is always flowing toward us.”
Chant: open my heart (by Ana Hernandez)
Sunday, April 21st with Heather
Reading: “The pure in heart are the undivided ones and the ‘undivided’ is because you’ve let go of that which pulls and tears and pushes you in all directions and gives you a lower point to constellate your being around... When that has become stabilized in a person, so that it’s not just a place you go to, but a place you come from, and a place that you can—when you’re mature and ready—not only come from it, but bestow it in the quality of your own aliveness—then you are considered to be a single one.” — Cynthia Bourgeault
Chant: “Become, become a living spirit, Ihidaya, Ihidaya” (by Elizabeth Combs) *in the Syriac-Aramaic language “Single One” or “Singleness” is “Ihidaya” and is used to describe souls that enter into mystical oneness
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