All Inner Christmas messages are gifts for you. Make them your own through inspired reflection. Share them with those you hold dear and let them be the beginning of a creative and heart-freeing conversation. Dance with them. Dive deep with them. Leap into the heights with them as during the Twelve Holy Nights we live beyond time and space and find the spiritual conditions for profound creative play.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

December 30th, The Sixth Holy Night - The Intention to Grow

[Note: please consider the thoughts, perhaps re-reading and visualizing a few times. Then do as many of the exploration steps as you have time for.]

  Thoughts 



As I begin writing this message I feel a growing relaxation.  My nature feels at home in the realm of the growth mysteries, so though I know I will be surprised by the results of my attention to them, paying attention is not a challenge.  Paying attention to the mysteries and meanings of the inner intention to maintain was the most difficult which reveals something of my temperamental configuration.  To grow feels like going to a party following the real work of to maintain.  I share this to suggest that you notice which of the messages you can relax into with your attention and which ask you to push your attention past the resistance and confusion you feel. The Holy Nights are not bliss and not easy.

Our bodies grow by division and replication of the trillions of cells that hold our life.  Cells divide to multiply! Cells replicate their content from the nucleus to the membrane - the center, the periphery and all that lives in between the two are replicated.

It gets more fascinating if we look at the initiating conception of stem cells - the ur-cells, or the archetypal cells that can take on any of the forms required for specific functions. Stem cells relate to the experience we have of being human - our humanity bears the vast, incomprehensible possibility to become anything yet we become an individual with a specific and limited destiny deed to fulfill. To grow as a human being means to limit and fulfill potential.

Healthy growth requires healthy limits. Unlimited growth is cancerous. Unlimited growth devours our resources and confuses our relationship to all our intentions. However, healthy limits do not imprison or retard. Healthy limits are flexible and allow us to stretch and surprise ourselves in creative ways.

My hair grows. My finger and toenails grow.  I see this growth.  My hair has also “grown”  more gray and my nails have “grown” ridges and twists with age. To grow means to become, metamorphose and evolve. This is not just simple increasing by division and replication.  Growth is complex.

When we look at the inner intention to grow we have much to consider (con-sidere - with the stars - there are so many stars to examine).  These are some of the ways we grow:
we increase,
we expand,
we gain,
we fulfill,
we become,
we manifest,
we mature,
we evolve,
we metamorphose.


We reach and stretch into the heights, the depths and the widths of our own becoming.

We grow our capacities to think, to feel and to will.  We grow our capacities to perceive and observe.  We grow our capacities to know and love ourselves, to know and love others and to know and love the world around us. We grow more embodied with our earthly deeds and more light and transparent with our spiritual deeds.

We discover our inner potential and we find our inner limits through growth.

The Holy Nights are the time to recognize our growth and to prepare for growth.

 1
What are your feelings about growth and limits? Happy? Scared? Sad? Angry?

  2 
What do you need to continue to grow?

 3 
What limits have you discovered? What potential?

  4 
Do you like limits? Do you respect them? Are you imprisoned in anyway?

  5 
Do you want to grow endlessly? Is that healthy? What aspects of your inner life need growth? Need limits?

  6 
Who helps you grow? Who helps you limit your growth in healthy ways? How do you support the growth of others?