Thoughts
Our living bodies have an active warmth. When we die our bodies become cold as they have lost the intention to warm. Between life and death, what enters our bodies we warm to our temperature. Each breath we take we permeate with our warmth before we exhale. In breathing, the substance we are taking in is “itself”, but once within our being, we impress something of ourselves into it. This something is our warmth. This also happens to all we touch. As we press against surfaces, we warm them up. Our bodies bear the intention to warm, not just to be warm.
Intimacy occurs when we feel the warmth of another and they feel our warmth. Think of the brush of warmed breath and warm skin. We experience active warmth coming from deep within others and they experience it coming from deep within us.
Pause your reading for a moment and simply imagine this sweet warm feeling of intimacy.
When I sit on a chair that was recently occupied by another, the chair bears their warmth. Always I am aware that I am feeling something of the other, even if they are a stranger that I did not catch a glimpse of. Of course, I leave my warmth where I sit to be felt by another.
I also want my hands that reach out to touch another to be warm. I want to give warmth, not need warmth. Yet, nothing feels better than a warm hug and warm words when some experience has left me chilled, unable to experience my own warmth.
Our souls warm what they breathe in. A new thought or feeling enters with one temperature and when we permeate with our interest, we warm it and change its temperature.
We feel heartwarmed noticing the warmth living in the way another speaks a phrase, sips her tea or scratches his head. Part of grief is the missing of the way a loved one warmed a thought, a feeling or a deed - the way they warmed the world.
I spent twenty minutes a few days ago gazing at Raphael’s Alba Madonna in the National Gallery in Washington. Raphael’s painting warms my soul. He warmed the world with this painting. Our great artists breathe in our earthly world and great spiritual realities and warm them with their souls and give them back to the world with their extraordinary genius. And this warmth remains forever.
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On this Second Holy Night feel your intention to warm and how you experience this intention living in others.
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A few questions to warm up with your contemplation and exploration:
What new ideas did you breathe in this year and how did you warm them with your own genius?
What great works of art have warmed your soul this year or over your lifetime?
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Are you aware of your ability to kill/chill an idea, a desire or an effort to produce, create or manifest? (We human beings have the gift/curse of opposition.)
What lights your spiritual fires and keeps the warmth of enthusiasm living in your thinking, your feeling and your willing?
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I breathed in the question, “What is the inner intention to warm about?” and I have warmed it with my soul. Now it is your turn.
Imagine your soul as a sun bring warming the past, the present and the future. You might want to make a list of how your inner sun warms all it receives.
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Please warm us up with your warm thoughts and feelings about warmth. Write a comment for us to read.
