Divine Conversation

I am so close, I may look distant.
So completely mixed with you, I may look separate.
So out in the open, I appear hidden.
So silent, because I am constantly talking with you.

-- Rumi

The metaphorical Mary Magdalene (every woman)

"Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven devils had been cast out" —Luke 8:2.

The first was that I was very busy.

The second — I was different from you: whatever happened to you could
not happen to me, not like that.

The third — I worried.

The fourth — envy, disguised as compassion.

The fifth was that I refused to consider the quality of life of the aphid,

The aphid disgusted me. But I couldn't stop thinking about it.

The mosquito too — its face. And the ant — its bifurcated body.

Ok the first was that I was so busy.

The second that I might make the wrong choice,

because I had decided to take that plane that day,

that flight, before noon, so as to arrive early

and, I shouldn't have wanted that.

The third was that if I walked past the certain place on the street

the house would blow up.

The fourth was that I was made of guts and blood with a thin layer

of skin lightly thrown over the whole thing.

The fifth was that the dead seemed more alive to me than the living

The sixth — if I touched my right arm I had to touch my left arm, and if I

touched the left arm a little harder than I'd first touched the right then I

had

to retouch the left and then touch the right again so it would be even.

The seventh — I knew I was breathing the expelled breath of everything that

was alive and I couldn't stand it,

I wanted a sieve, a mask, a, I hate this word — cheesecloth —

to breath through that would trap it — whatever was inside everyone else that

entered me when I breathed in

No. That was the first one.

The second was that I was so busy. I had no time. How had this happened?

How had our lives gotten like this?

The third was that I couldn't eat food if I really saw it — distinct, separate

from me in a bowl or on a plate.

Ok. The first was that I could never get to the end of the list.

The second was that the laundry was never finally done.

The third was that no one knew me, although they thought they did.

And that if people thought of me as little as I thought of them then what was

love?

The fourth was I didn't belong to anyone. I wouldn't allow myself to belong

to anyone.

The fifth was that I knew none of us could ever know what we didn't know.

The sixth was that I projected onto others what I myself was feeling.

The seventh was the way my mother looked when she was dying—her mouth wrenched into an O so as to take in as much air…
The sound she made — the gurgling sound — so loud we had to speak louder 
to hear each other over it.

And that I couldn't stop hearing it—years later—

grocery shopping, crossing the street —

No, not the sound — it was her body's hunger

finally evident.
—what our mother had hidden all her life.

For months I dreamt of knucklebones and roots,

the slabs of sidewalk pushed up like crooked teeth by what grew underneath.

The underneath —that was the first devil.
It was always with me.

And that I didn't think you — if I told you — would understand any of this —

Copyright © 2008 by Marie Howe. 

Things I Learned From Trees

Things I learned from trees yesterday
Include nothing not already known

And yet everything transformed

Into a kind of radiance of the Old
New way of being with Mystery

The children of Mother and Father;
These trees

Reaching out in all directions -
Never fearing Love's dark reciprocities

And so Growing up from tenderness
To create this bridge Between

And suddenly I too could remember
Giving birth to those majestic beings.

-- Whitney Logan, 6.9.13

Yes.

"We were made and set here to give voice to our astonishments." -- Annie Dillard

Aunt Leaf

Needing one, I invented her – - -
the great-great-aunt dark as hickory
called Shining-Leaf, or Drifting-Cloud
or The-Beauty-of-the-Night.

Dear aunt, I’d call into the leaves,
and she’d rise up, like an old log in a pool,
and whisper in a language only the two of us knew
the word that meant follow,

and we’d travel
cheerful as birds
out of the dusty town and into the trees
where she would change us both into something quicker – - -
two foxes with black feet,
two snakes green as ribbons,
two shimmering fish – - – and all day we’d travel.

At day’s end she’d leave me back at my own door
with the rest of my family,
who were kind, but solid as wood
and rarely wandered. While she,
old twist of feathers and birch bark,
would walk in circles wide as rain and then
float back

scattering the rags of twilight
on fluttering moth wings;

or she’d slouch from the barn like a gray opossum;

or she’d hang in the milky moonlight
burning like a medallion,

this bone dream, this friend I had to have,
this old woman made out of leaves.

-- Mary Oliver

Tree of Life

On a warm night in January of 2009, while taking a very necessary year-long hiatus from independent adult life, I sat down by a tree in my parents' backyard and wept bitterly about my own feelings of alienation from myself.  Sometime during that powerful release of grief and fear and shame and longing, I began to press my whole body and face into that old, familiar tree in their yard.  I suppose I must have called out to the spirit in that tree in some way that evoked its presence, because very soon I began to feel a visceral kind of sweetness reaching out to me from deep within the tree.  I let my exhausted body and mind yield into that small miracle of connection to nature, and from a place of gentle surrender, I began to feel as if that generous spirit in the tree was also within me.  My mind was suddenly able to see how I had been trying to live my life out on the furthest, most outward-facing branch of my experience, and that this was in fact the cause of my suffering.  I realized then that by choosing to live out on this fragile limb, I had become completely identified with the weather patterns - or vicissitudes - of my immediate subjective experience. 

From a sense of deep kinship with this tree, however, I began to feel curious about my own sturdier branches, trunk, and roots -- my deepest, most essential self.  I believe that this connection with the tree afforded me both the courage and the grace to discover how I might symbolically turn around from my outward-facing position on that limb where I had been living, and look deeply into my own origins instead.  I reference the need for courage because I remember exactly how terrified I was to look that deeply into myself; I was almost paralyzed with fear about what I might find there!  I also understand that grace played a part in this experience, precisely because I did not know how to bring my own conscious awareness into what had remained so willfully unconscious until then.  

But I learned how to do it that night!  And with my back pressed into the trunk of that ordinary tree, I swallowed hard, and surrendered my ego's firmly held position on that far-reaching limb, in order to actually see my-Self (consciously) for the very first time.  To my utter amazement, I saw something so neutral, timeless, cohesive, eternal, spacious, and incorruptible that I began to laugh out loud!  I could not believe that I had been so afraid of this profoundly empty, receptive, flowing, spacious, awareness.

I wrote a poem of sorts that night, which I later understood to be a kind of reflective love letter to my most Essential Self.  And the poem goes like this:

Lover.

Filled with wonder.

Playmate of the Universe.

More curious than afraid - a steadfast friend to Mystery.

Soft.

Tender.

So soft and tender.

Spacious enough to include all beings.

Different than trustworthy: Entrusted.

The way a river has a course, yet is absolutely Free.

I've kept those words and that embodied understanding with me ever since -- and my experience of mySelf has never been the same.  The profound feeling of alienation ended in an instant.  I also understood in an instant that I would continue living a life full of plenty of mistakes.  The lasting transformation for me, however, has been that I've never doubted for a single moment since this one that I could find my way Home to this place within myself whenever I notice that I've lost my way.  

A few days ago, I painted a picture of a naked, yet luminous tree at a friend's arts-y birthday party (see image below).  I had never painted anything before, and was amazed that this image was willing to manifest itself through me that night.  It felt like another gift from that same spirit I first connected with inside that old tree.  The next day, I showed a picture of this painting to one of my colleagues at work.  He took one look at it and said, "It sort of looks like you - I mean, it has a feeling to it that reminds me of how I experience you".

I don't know this man very well, but he gave me a tremendous gift inside of that simple statement. It made me feel like my Essential Self was indeed infusing my outer branches with it's innermost Truth more and more consistently.  I went home that evening after work and looked for the poem I had written back in 2009.  To my astonishment, I discovered that I made this tree painting exactly 4 years TO THE DAY that I had this experience I've described above.

Looking at this painting now, I feel grateful for my own human journey - and simultaneously less and less afraid of being down here on the earth; where pain and beauty seem to always exist in the same place at the same time, and nothing worth having ever comes easy.

May the grace and courage that was given to me four years ago continue to assist in the liberation of all sentient beings.  Namaste. 

Sacred Spaces

Grateful: for ritual, for compassion, for safe spaces to do inner work, for grace, for creativity, for community, and for reminders to approach all of these light-filled qualities with the kind of humility that acknowledges their ever-present shadow.

- CG Jung Institute, 1.6.2013

Imperfection: the vehicle to all growth?

"Symmetry may have its appeal but it is inherently stale. Some kind of imbalance is behind every transformation."

-- astrophysicist, Marcelo Gleiser

Today's Solar Eclipse!

I used to pay attention to horoscopes in the newspaper or magazines because I thought they were quirky and fun.  Maybe it also gave me a sense of cosmic connection when they were accurate as well.  Over the years, however, I've had more exposure to some very serious practitioners of the art, and any residual dismissive attitude has been consequently silenced.  According to the author of one particular astrology blog I read, these are the potential gifts of today's solar eclipse in Scorpio:

"Information lives in light.  This information comes from the heart of a Star–a star called the Sun. Our Sun holds information from its Creator (most likely the Black Hole at the Center of our Galaxy; the Galactic Center; Hunab Ku)… to Imagine what types of information is encoded within these primordial ancient galactic wave forms is mind bending. And light isn’t just information, it’s also energy. 

When the Moon aligns perfectly between Sun and Earth we experience Solar Eclipses.  Divinely infused New Moons meant to catapult us onto the right path.  It is up to us to be good tricksters in this opportune space.  Nobody is going to do this work for you.  It is up to you.  Be quick, be stealthy, and have an idea of what you are looking for.  Without the light of the Sun, we are “eclipsed” and free to roam in the Shadow of our being for a short time, rewriting aspects of our story we have been hungry to edit. 

What is the Shadow?  The Shadow in Jungian psychology is the unconscious dumping ground for undesirable characteristics of personality.  And so, during Eclipses we get to choose what gets released or incinerated in our unconscious dumping grounds.  Only with intent will you experience the stellar magic of these Dragon holes.  Intention and courage will bring you to the moments where you become weightless, carried by Love and nothing else…."

For more moon updates - check out this blog:  Holes To Heaven.

The Intelligence of Play.

"Who knows what makes us play?  The young of very many species, including our own, spontaneously chase, leap, twist, wrestle and cavort, promoting strength and endurance, instinct, social bonding and adaptation.  Complex play with objects and goals is associated with more complex brains.  But playing is also, apparently, just for the sheer pleasure of play.  An aquarium fish will repeatedly leap in and out of a tiny waterfall.  Ravens have been observed sledding on their backs down slopes of snow, and kea parrots toss rocks in the air.  Elephants kneel to equalize play with a smaller playmate.  Cats, dogs and primates, among others, incorporate objects and obstacles in their play and often have favorite toys.  Dolphins invite play with human swimmers.  Play, in fact, is a principal way in which acquaintance is made with another".  -- from The Book of Symbols

Intuitively, we know how important play is for our ongoing development.  We teach children games and give them time to play.  Hopscotch, for example, has it's origins in myths about the soul's journey from earth to heaven through a labyrinth.  I have no idea why we stop valuing this way of learning for our adult selves, but I think it's a grievous error to do so.  As Ramikrishna reminds us, "The divine mother is always sportive.  The universe is her play... her pleasure is in continuing the game".

The Book of Symbols further elaborates: "Psychologically, consciousness and unconscious interact and impact one another in all kinds of play.  The reverie of play unveils feelings, aspirations, impressions, locked up pieces of experience and potentialities.  Play can evoke the affinity and polarity between psychic opposites, and dynamics of exclusion and integration, separation and reunification.  Alchemy described a part of the opus as "child's play" despite the arduous nature of the work of self-understanding, suggesting that psychic process requires an attitude of play and that the imagination was a primary tool of the adept".

Carl Jung played "children's games" of drawing, sand-tray, making models out of clay, and dialoging with unseen figures, all of which are ways of engaging the unconscious energies of the psyche in order to coax them into consciousness.  Physicists, also, play speculative "god-games" with specialized toys that can only be handled safely because of the agreed upon rules of a specific game.  We could conclude, consequently, that play allows for "evolutionary change, self-awareness, scientific discovery, artistic composition, invention, pleasure, good friends of multiple species and the resolution of many questions" (The Book of Symbols).

Do you remember being a young child and enthusiastically ringing someone's doorbell in order to see if they could "come out and play"?  I believe that THIS is a good intention to have with ourselves and each other throughout the entire course of our lives.  Tremendous creativity and learning can come from play in a way that few other practices are able to facilitate so... playfully.  :-)

Restor(y)ing the Body!

"You see, somewhere our unconscious becomes material, because the body is the living unit, and our conscious and our unconscious are embedded in it: they contact the body. Somewhere there is a place where the two ends meet and become interlocked. And that is the place where one cannot say whether it is matter, or what one calls psyche."  -- Carl Jung

My good friend and collaborative partner, Dana, and I have been working together to create a mind + body integrative healing practice, which we have affectionately named 'Restor(y)ing the Body'. Essentially, we work together to explore the unique ways in which our clients carry their own personal stories in their physical bodies.  Much of the work we do reflects the above idea from Carl Jung, as we aim to help people discover the precise places where their ideas about themselves and their physical expressions have become interlocked in symptomatic ways.   In our practice and our workshops, we use a variety of methods to help people explore and transform these constricting patterns that exist in both the body and the mind.  These methods include (but are not limited to!) body work, shamanic techniques, energy and vibrational medicine interventions, guided meditation, and authentic movement exercises.

We also passionately agree with psychologist and spiritual teacher, Judith Blackstone, when she suggests that "our fixed grasp on ourselves and the world is not just mental but also somatic. There are rigid holding patterns throughout the whole body, limiting our capacity for cognition, emotional responsiveness and physical sensation.  Even our sensory perception is limited by the psychologically based constrictions throughout our whole body".  The real thrill for us has been watching people rediscover the magic of who they are, by reconnecting with the wisdom that can be found when the mind and body begin to dialogue at the same point of reference.

We LOVE this work, and are so excited to start sharing it with more individuals and groups of people.  If you or someone you know would be interested in beginning to learn how to re-write their own "story", whether through a private session or a workshop experience with us, please feel free to message us on our Facebook page: Restor(y)ing the Body, or email us at restoryingthebody@gmail.com!

Namaste,
Whitney & Dana

Divine Formlessness

In this culture, most of us remember learning about the Judeo-Christian concept of God when we were very young.  Perhaps the background for this learning was deep, rich and mysterious.  Or maybe our exposure to religion often felt stuffy and bland.  The ideas we formed about this God may have been wonderful or menacing or terrifying or healing or comforting or even confusing.  I know that one of my early associations to "learning about God" involved a felt-board with felt cut-outs of animals that I could arrange on Noah's felt-ark according to my own whims.  With all this power to pick and choose who might survive the flood, I really questioned the necessity of alligators in my version of this brave new world.  A little later on in my religious education, I read about this same flood from a leather-bound bible that included a little sketch of a woman on a rock, gripping a small infant in her arms while these turbulent flood waters rose up around her.  If I had been familiar with swear words like this at the time, I'm pretty sure I would have shouted or cried out to the tune of "What the FUCK?"!!

Instead, I ran crying into my parents bedroom and demanded an explanation!  What was I supposed to make of this?!  Had I not been told that God was a powerfully safe, wise, moral, benevolent, grandfather type of God?  One that LOVED THE WORLD SO MUCH that he gave his only begotten son?  (I don't think I knew what the word 'begotten' meant, but I sure knew that phrase by heart). None of this made any sense and my whole spiritual-worldview was consequently hanging by a thread!  I imagine that was one of my mother's more unwelcome parenting moments in some ways.  She didn't have a satisfying answer for me, and likely didn't have a satisfying answer for herself either.  I've thought about that moment many times as I've moved along my particular spiritual path.  Because, as it turns out, this capacity to question and wrestle with the image (i.e. form) of God that's being presented to me has remained a consistent, and almost involuntary function for me.  And despite many moments of uncomfortable disillusionment, I consider this to be one of the great gifts of human consciousness.

The gift, as I understand it, is this: my questioning mind has not limited my receptivity to the many expressions of God in my life.  In fact, so far, the inverse has been true for me.  I have not had to exclude possible mediums through which Divine Mystery or Presence or Purpose might reveal Itself to me.  Nor have I needed to limit the ways I might be able to approach This Mystery.  God has been God in everything from Vacation Bible School and charismatic church gatherings, to gong baths, Sufi mysticism, poetry from Mary Oliver, the novels of Barbara Kingsolver, yoga practice, the Muslim call to prayer, quantum physics, microbiology, Hindu shrines, Jungian psychology, mountain ranges, weeping willow trees, my husband's heart beat, shamanic journeys, remembered dreams, top 40 music hits, conversations with friends, conversations with enemies, and even those dreadful alligators.  It's a thrilling way to orient to the world when you believe that around any corner or behind any set of eyes (human or animal), one might encounter Divine Mystery!  

Another curious consequence of this openness towards the Divine Personality has been that I tend to shame and neglect less and less parts of my own personality as well.  Maybe this is because I learned that mankind was made in God's own image around the same time I left those alligators to fend for themselves during the Great Felt-Board Flood!  If God is truly limitless, then perhaps being made in God's own image allows us to become wildly undefinable too.  I'm reminded of the way God described God's Self to Moses, saying only this:  "I AM WHO I AM, I AM BECOMING WHO I AM BECOMING, I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE" (Amplified Version).  I also take great comfort and inspiration from the first three sets of commandments that God gave to Moses during that same Mt. Sinai conversation.  First) there's no other God than Me.  Second) you better not try to form any image of Me.  Third) don't even name Me.  

Whew!  Now, see if you can orient yourself to that Divine paradox of nameless, formless specificity!? For me, it's become such a perfect set of instructions to keep me company on my own spiritual quest. From this vantage point, I can never assume I know this God completely, but I can always assume this God knows God's Self entirely.  Does that not sound like the most wild invitation into a simultaneously thrilling and humbling relationship with Mystery?  Both God and mankind can then be always on the move together!  And thank God -- because without movement we would all be disconnected and dead.  Final note:  I still don't have a satisfying answer for why this Great Flood is part of The Mystery, but with Great Doubt in fixed ideas and Great Faith in the limitless of possibilities, I'm really quite content to keep questioning.  After all, it seems that all the great heroes of this particular faith tradition (Job, Jacob, Abraham, Jesus, and maybe Eve?!) modeled a similar kind of attitude of open-hearted wrestling with These Mysteries.  

Movement Theory!

In this culture, we are typically taught to understand the body as the ultimate biological machine in which the brain functions as a kind of "control" switch board.  Over the past decade of my life, I've been questioning this irreverent attitude towards the body in a really persistent and ongoing way.  My questions are largely intuitive and typically require more experiential learning than theoretical learning. However, once in a while I have the good fortune to stumble upon some fascinating theoretical information about the body that deepens the way in which I experience my own.

Apparently, there are five basic types of human movement that make up something called "The Satisfaction Cycle":  Yielding, Pushing, Reaching, Grasping, and Pulling.  All five of these movements are fundamentally important for human survival and interaction.  BUT - and here's the amazing teacher within this concept - yielding is the foundation for every other movement possibility in this sequence.  In other words: without being able to first yield into something, you cannot push off from it, reach out from there, grasp hold of anything, or pull things back towards yourself.

Why is this so fascinating to me?!  Because what's true in the body is also true in the mind and in the heart, of course!  See if you can make this analogous connection with me: we must first yield into our own authentic desires if we want to be able to move towards, reach out, grasp hold of, and pull them back into ourselves.  I don't know about the rest of you, but I certainly got the message from this culture that being soft and open about what I really wanted to experience in my life would make me an easy target for disappointment.  In recent years, however, I've been able to slowly (sometimes painfully!) unlearn this defensive habit, and experience many tender and beautiful things as a result. It now absolutely stuns and delights me to discover that the movements of my physical body were there all along, revealing this truer picture of things.

So what is yielding and how do we do it?  I imagine we each have to explore this question in our own personal hearts and minds to some degree.  Yet, it's equally interesting to note that Merriam-Webster defines yielding as "lacking rigidity or stiffness; flexible", "disposed to submit or comply", or "productive" (as in "high-yielding wheat").  That's right; yielding can mean "productive"!  As the cornerstone of all other movement possibilities, this makes perfect sense to me.  A seed must be willing to submit to the earth and the rain if it wants to be able to then push, reach, grasp, and pull in all the nourishment it requires to become the fullest (most productive!) expression of itself. We, ourselves, are no different.

Here's how Rumi might also say it: "Let yourself [yield and] be drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.  It will not lead you astray".  I wonder if your heart - or mine - is softening into it's own gravitational pull yet?

Deep Calls Out to Deep.

I had something like an enlightenment experience the other day.  I'm choosing the words "enlightenment experience" simply because the light of my own consciousness touched something that was previously unknown to me.  The words I've written below are an attempt to describe the revelation within the experience:

A human heart beats to a contracting rhythm of in and out, honoring the pattern of union and separation and union again.  Cells do this same dance when they divide from one another, in order to only return to each other again.  We remember to let our lungs fill up again with our breath only because we first notice how it has gone out.  I marvel at these movements and wonder if this is the whole creative pattern of the Universe.

Love once told me that it disconnects from Itself in order to get an experience of Itself.  And of course it would!  Love wouldn't be Love if it didn't want to Love itself too.  Similarly, John O'Donohue once reminded me that one of the real excitements of being a human is that we are the place where the Universe can become conscious of Itself.  The alchemists seemed to understand this when they tried to channel this precise dynamic in order to turn base metals into gold.  Plato, too, suggested that a similar psychological movement pattern would increase our own awareness of ourselves.  And God told us it was Good when He parted Day from Night.  Perhaps Adam and Eve had to experience their own shame in order to encounter their True longings.  What then, really, is shame?  Perhaps shame is simply BELIEVING that our separateness is fixed instead of mutable.  

Maybe we have also been given the same set of initiation rites as our ancestors in Eden.  If so, it might be helpful to recall how their redemption arrived through a being that could remember his full Divinity and full humanity too.  Perhaps we too must be initiated into our own sense of separateness, experience our deep longing to return, in order to find our own authentic way back to this remembering.  

But, why all this trouble?  I have no idea.  Nonetheless, this experience of disconnection and reconnection appears to be the life-generating movement pattern of the cosmos.  Perhaps it's like this:  by the time we start remembering our connection, we've already been deeply initiated into the experience of our separateness, which enables us to become powerful messengers of the Truth of both realities.  I think John O'Donohue was right about one of the real excitements of being a human. We really can learn how to be the place where the Universe can become conscious of Itself.

Remembering the Body.

“Human skin is porous; the world flows through you. Your senses are large pores that let the world in. By being attuned to the wisdom of your senses, you will never become an exile in your own life, an outsider lost in an external spiritual place that your will and intellect, have constructed.”  - John O'Donohue

Much of my professional practice involves trying to teach people how to come home to the intelligence of their physical bodies.  In our culture, this can be an extraordinarily difficult task for most people.  It seems that at some point (perhaps around the Renaissance) we began to devalue the body and glorify the intellect.  You may notice this inheritance in many of our cultural, philosophical, and religious ideals such as "mind over matter", "I think therefore I am", "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak", etc.

There are many implications and consequences for this devaluation of the body's wisdom, which is easily noticeable in our modern society.  I imagine that we can all think of many times when we have mistreated or shamed our own bodies or the bodies of others.  However, I also believe that much of our personal and collective suffering is related to this pervasive sense of cultural disembodiment (mistreatment of the earth, improper allocation of resources, oppression, war, chronic pain, auto-immune diseases, addictions, eating disorders, diabetes, and other habitual self-destructive patterns).

This is a hard pattern to change because once we believe we are our minds, we become convinced that the stories we generate in our minds are absolute truths.  In order to avoid threat to our sense of self that any sort of cognitive dissonance would inevitably produce, we then feel compelled to act in ways that will reinforce the stories we're so busy telling ourselves.  Example: "no one will ever accept me for who I really am" becomes a devastating self-fullfilling prophecy when we let that belief convince us to keep secrets and tell lies.

But, what if we didn't have to believe all of our thoughts?  What kind of personal freedom would we experience if we weren't married to our own stories?  I think it's hard for us to imagine this in a cultural context that tells us we ARE our thoughts.  In fact, I think that the split between body and mind is so deeply rooted in our ideas about ourselves that we cannot address this chasm by simply "thinking" about it.  Einstein first famously suggested that we cannot solve problems on the level in which they were created.  Following that logic, I believe we must address this split by turning towards what has been split-off (i.e. the body) in an embodied way.

I've found that one of the most accessible ways for people to re-discover the body's wisdom involves practices that pair conscious physical movement with a simultaneous unknown goal.  This revelation is something that I've stumbled upon by accident after many blind leaps into body practices like yoga, thai massage, authentic movement, conscious breathing, rolfing, energy medicine, somatic experiencing therapies, etc. etc.  I'm not sure why I've never bothered to try to understand these things with my mind before I do them, but the gifts I've received as a result of "not needing to know" (i.e. figure out) what's happening have been immeasurable.  Chiefly, I have discovered this: embodied presence feels like Love.  ALL OF THE TIME.  Even when there's an experience of pain and discomfort, a larger field of loving awareness seems to permeate and contain it simultaneously.

Note:  I'm not suggesting that the mind is not engaged in this, but that it is simply free to stop trying to control and predict my experience, and can instead become open to some new possibilities.  In fact, it's precisely because the mind reflects the body and the body reflects the mind, that we can begin to understand how habitual physiological posturing is connected to habitual psychological posturing. Consequently, when we start to notice how changes in the body predict changes in the psyche, a really miraculous thing can happen:  reconnection!  (Fun side note: the word "religion" comes from the latin root re-ligamentus (i.e. ligament), and literally translated means "re-connection"). The reward for this kind of reconnection is a renewed access to one of our greatest sources of natural intelligence.  I have noticed that when we are able to reconnect to this embodied intelligence, we are then immediately drawn back into a deeper connection with our natural belonging.  As John O'Donohue reminds us, "our bodies know they belong; it is our minds that make our lives so homeless".

Internal Energy Medicine: An Imaginal New Approach?!

I believe rather enthusiastically that imagination is one of the more creative human intelligences.  I also agree completely with Brenda Ueland who suggests that "the imagination needs moodling -- long, inefficient happy idling, dawdling and puttering".  The following personal anecdote is written with the intention of illustrating one example of the genius of personal reveries.

Starting with a sensory awareness of chronic inflammation in my physical body, I wandered around aimlessly through dozens of personal reveries.  Somewhat spontaneously, this wandering helped me understand (or maybe to remember?) that the inflammation was an expression of personal "resistance".  Becoming curious about what exactly I might be resisting, my subsequent inefficient, happy, idle dawdling and puttering allowed me to discover how a viscerally felt sense of unconditional love dissolved the energy of resistance (manifesting as inflammation).  But, seriously.  The painful stagnant energy was released and moved out of my physical body via the antidotal influence of unconditional love.  It felt - and still feels - quite miraculous to my own sensibilities!

Here's the fun part:  the twists and turns in this happy, idle dawdling were all so seemingly disconnected when they first rose up in my own reveries.  It amuses me to know that the myth of Saturn, images from a Tim Burton movie, the psychological concept of Need Theory, and the principles of Einsteinian physics played a significant role in this happy, idle wandering towards the eventual cessation of physical discomfort in my body.  I'm not quite sure how to describe this process, but it felt like I was first learning the imaginal, energetic language of my own dis-ease, and then similarly the imaginal, energetic language of what might offer me relief.  When I then applied what I was learning to my immediate experience, something shifted in my physical body almost spontaneously.

It's so wildly non-linear and non-rational that it's almost incredible.  But it's true!  And it worked!  And I am so relieved!  Yet, here's the catch:  I needed to find the time to idle and dawdle and wander aimlessly.  This particular process had several small interruptions, but by and large it took an entire day.  I wouldn't have given myself that kind of time if I did not first believe in the potential wisdom in the aimless wandering reveries of my own imagination.

Human Hearts

I learned something miraculous recently while listening to an interview with Richard Bartlett about a healing technology he developed called Matrix Energetics.  There's a whole lot of remarkable content within this concept and you can listen to the whole interview by clicking the link I provided.  However, the single most impressive thing I learned from this conversation was about the nature of the human heart.

By describing this healing technology and how it works, Dr. Bartlett also explained a concept from quantum physics called a "torsion field".  To borrow his words exactly, a "torsion is just a spin or a twist. If you think of a tornado or a hurricane, that’s a torsion field. You’ve got this intense spinning energy, and then at its center, you’ve got a null point where there’s actually a change in the way the laws of physics behave".  Here's the exciting part -- Dr. Bartlett goes on to explain that the human heart is actually a torsion field.  Apparently, the first thing to form in an embryo is a 72-beats per minute pulse.  That pulse is driven by a whirling vortex - or spinning field with a null point - that eventually develops into the physical human heart.

His point?  Inside the field of the heart, there is this null or zero-point in which the laws of physics do not apply.  Consequently, Dr. Bartlett believes that there is this powerfully creative place in all of us where miracles can be conceived and then spun outward into this time-space reality.  He's not speaking metaphorically or philosophically here, however.  In fact, Matrix Energetics attempts to teach people how to get into the literal field of their hearts - which is apparently 5,000 times stronger electromagnetically than the field of the brain - and then tap into the infinite and lawless creative potential of their own torsion fields.

Dr. Bartlett makes two compelling claims:  One) getting into the field of your heart can be done.  Two) miracles, signs, and wonders do manifest as a result.  According to him, the source of this possibility is related to that neutral zero-point within the heart's torsion field.  Neutral, lawless, personality-less, empty, creative space:  that's where the miracles are sourced from!  He goes on to suggest that we can learn to return to a point in our hearts where there are no thoughts, no feelings, no emotions, no time, no space, and no rules.  He argues that when we get to that point, we have actually arrived at the point of our being that transcends all rule sets.  Dr. Bartlett calls this grace.  If this is true - I think it is - then we could conclude that the manifestation of Grace is the divine creative potential of the human heart.

Throughout this interview, Dr. Bartlett makes references to the person and miracles of Jesus Christ, as well as the transcendent experiences of monks, saints, and other mystics.  I can't remember if he then made this connection directly or only implied it, but I'm going to boldly suggest that these people knew how to get into that precise point of their being, and therein experience literal communion with that Grace.  There's a follow-up conversation I want to have about the body being the literal temple of the Holy Spirit, but I'll save that for another time.

Muir Woods

Recently I spent some time in Muir Woods, a national monument of ancient coastal redwood trees near the San Francisco Bay area.  For reasons I could not understand immediately, being with the trees made me feel overwhelmingly tender and reverent.  At some point, I wound up sitting with my back against an opening in the trunk of one of these giant trees.  Pressing myself into the base of this tree, I eventually had something like a conversation with it.  Over time, I've decided that this conversation is something I want to keep sharing with others:

It's more than beloved

The heartbeat of the earth is my own

This is the planet of contrast

Where love and beauty can pierce our ideas of separateness

And return us back to belonging 

Here, we get to both love and be this planet

In fact, it's possible that there are no mistakes

There's certainly no one to blame 

For the contrast in our own experience

We may choose to teach the ego to submit to this Unity

And even in times of great pain and discomfort 

There is a space of awareness that can care about this too,

Thus returning us to the kingdom of grace

By means of our own awakened hearts.

(- from my 'conversation' with the spirit of Muir Woods).

Rosa Parks!

I am absolutely devoted to the practice of "Active Imagination" as a method for remembering what we already know.  One of my favorite examples of how this practice can be so powerful came to me via advice I received from an amazing energy intuitive named Marie Manuchehri.  She told me that I should regularly visit an imaginal space within myself where I could dialogue with being I respect. These beings could be alive or dead, historical or spiritual, personally known or unknown, etc.  During one of these Active Imagination exercises, I wound up having a stunning conversation with Rosa Parks.

And here's the fundamental wisdom she shared with me during that time:  Rosa said that she had to believe wholeheartedly that she really mattered.  And it was only this deep inner conviction that allowed her to live outside of overwhelming fear, oppression, violence, and hate.  She said she did not realize it at the time, but it was precisely by acting out this conviction that her own experience mattered just as much as anyone else's that empowered other people to liberate themselves similarly.

Beautiful, Rosa!  I'm trying to remember that humble, brilliant example as often as I can lately.

Imaginal Intelligence

Imagination is another one of those intelligences that gets so much praise in our early development before it becomes subjected to a full-fledged beating by the systems that value immediately tangible results.  Tragically, it's often our schools and workplaces that are the greatest adversaries of imaginal intelligence.  I say 'tragically' because after the age of 5, we will likely spend most of our waking hours in one of those two environments.  The great irony of all of this is that our schools and workplaces are set up in order to teach or facilitate ideas that have their origins in the genius of human imagination.  I might even argue that ALL great innovators, leaders, artists, and thinkers have been aided by the intelligence of their own imagination.

So here's a fun exercise for affirming the sacred intelligence our own imaginations:  IMAGINE a panel of your favorite geniuses (be they social, creative, spiritual, or scientific).  Seriously.

Now, look around at who has assembled and how they have assembled.  Are you indoors, out of doors, seated at a long or round table?  Or is a casual social gathering?  Really look and see who's there and how you are all interacting with each other.  Trust whatever arises.

And then start naming names.  Einstein?  Buddha?  Jesus?  Martin Luther King Jr?  William Shakespeare?  Justin Bieber?  Seriously.  This is personal and there's no right or wrong answer.  So simply name the crowd at your gathering by actually looking to see who's there.

Next, I want you to address one of them and ask them about the role imagination played in their life on Earth.  Ask the question sincerely, and then allow this imaginal figure to answer you just as sincerely.  Here's a tip:  it doesn't matter if you think you're making this all up in your imagination.  In fact, that's the whole point.

If you wind up enjoying yourself or gaining anything useful, feel free to ask other guests other questions about anything at all you've ever wanted to know!

I'll post the information I once gathered from my imaginal conversation with Rosa Parks soon!