Here is the simple list of these extraordinary seeds of will the spiritual world planted in the soil of our souls.
The Seven Inner Intentions of Knowing
to breathe
to warm
to nourish
to secrete
to maintain
to grow
to reproduce
The Five Inner Intentions of Loving
to wonder
to be in awe
to revere
to express gratitude
to devote
Having worked with each of these inner intentions over the Holy Nights, in the mood of the Holy Nights, I feel each intention germinating in my heart. I am confident the germination will begin to form into roots, leaves, flowers and fruits as the year unfolds.
I know that when I find a difficult moment, a difficult mood, a difficult relationship, I can bring my heart thoughts to these twelve intentions and find which is being thwarted or withheld. Perhaps an intention has gotten active too soon.
We have the sprouting of wisdom regarding each of these twelve inner intentions.
In ancient times we would have been initiated into each of these intentions by great teachers. Now we must initiate ourselves while in the inner solitude of the mystery center of our own souls.
With Epiphany we celebrate the insights, the inner stars, that, wisely and nobly, we have seen and followed along our Holy Nights’ journey as we bring precious gifts to our newly born sense of self. Gifts of meaning, significance and purpose living in our individuality.
The Holy Nights are not easy. They are not packaged or processed. They demand a great new consciousness and active cultivation from each of us.
I wish you fierce courage, a profound creativity and a stable confidence for the unfolding of the year.
The veils obscuring the spiritual world have fallen again, but the connection living between us mortals and the divine is stronger than ever. With awareness of this connection, each of us goes forward this year more capable of honoring our twelve inner intentions.
Have a good year.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Monday, January 4, 2010
January 5th, The Twelfth Holy Night - the Inner Intention to Devote
Thoughts
Here we are at the Twelfth Holy Night and the twelfth message about inner intentions.
Tonight’s inner intention is to devote. When the soul experiences love, not as something to think about or feel about, but as something to do, it devotes its will to the nurturing of the other. Within our inner life of self exists the pure and powerful intention to devote - to intuitively put our thinking, feeling and willing at service to the other. This intention exists throughout our lives but manifests only in and for rare moments.
In those rare moments the great paradox occurs. In devotedly serving the other, we find our true selves. We become love. And this happens in all devotions. If you clean a toilet with devotion, you become love. If you listen to a piece of music with devotion, you become love. If you draw a circle with devotion, you become love. If you birth a child with devotion, you become love. If you look a stranger in the eye with devotion, you become love.
Do not make devotion a promise or a vow. A promise or a vow is a picture that defines and confines. Devotion is not a commitment nor is it sacrifice, it is a happening in the freedom of the moment. I do not diminish the goodness of making and keeping promises and vows, but I suggest that devotion is much more than either because there is not story or drama living in devotion. Promises and vows are the result of story - the picture we strive for.
The source of inner devotion lies deep in the unconscious realms of our souls where there is no sense of result or outcome. Devotion is the result of devotion. And that is more than enough. Have confidence in your inner intention to devote. Know that the intention is there in the core of your being and it will manifest in your will as it is meant to.
Another reassuring aspect of devotion lives in its growing strength and presence. When you put aside thought pictures and emotions, devotion surfaces. With each moment of devotion, putting aside the thoughts and feelings becomes easier and devotion comes forward more gracefully. With this growing strength and presence, the moments of devotion begin to last longer and come more frequently and the oneness with love and freedom becomes more whole, real and permeating.
The Twelve Holy Nights are framed by Nativity, the innocent devotion of the newborn, and Epiphany, the profound devotion of the wise heart. The Holy Nights are devotional. Reading these messages as devotional practice and seeking and finding what lives behind them (not my interpretive articulation, but the archetype I hope to point you toward) is what liberates and strengthens you for the coming year. Spiritual beings enter our will through the portal of our inner devotion during the Holy Nights.
Rudolf Steiner gave us an exercise that strengthens the will. Steiner asks us to chose a meaningless act, such as taking your watch off and putting it on your other wrist then returning it to the original wrist, and to perform this at a particular time of day, each day for 30 days. If we fill this meaningless act with true devotion our capacity to devote strengthens.
To give a practical illustration from my own life: I really struggle with managing the financial administration of my life. My financial life feels very "other" to me. In our financial lives, we have a great chance to materialize spirit and spiritualize matter. Once I engage with my finances, I feel the love and freedom of devotion. But, I resist. I feel incompetent. I disregard. I feel disgust for my failure. I fantasize. These judgments create huge obstacles to the flow of my work and my life. My main resolve for the coming year is become devotional in my financial life.
Having written these last five messages perhaps I need to begin with wonder. I have so much stuff clogging my inner emptiness with prejudice around financial management. Or perhaps I should work in the other direction and ask myself about my gratitude for my financial life. Ironically, I would have little difficulty in being devoted to another's financial management as caregiving is an easy devotion for me.
As you work with the inner intention to devote, remember the spiritual world responds to our devotion to personal truth. This response is why we feel called to reflect and consider just what is true about our lives at this sacred time of year.
1
What area of your life shrivels from lack of devotion?
2
Do you trust in the presence of inner devotion in your soul?
3
Where in your life does devotion surface gracefully?
4
Is it a greater struggle to devote your soul life to parts of your own existence, or to the existence of others?
Here we are at the Twelfth Holy Night and the twelfth message about inner intentions.
Tonight’s inner intention is to devote. When the soul experiences love, not as something to think about or feel about, but as something to do, it devotes its will to the nurturing of the other. Within our inner life of self exists the pure and powerful intention to devote - to intuitively put our thinking, feeling and willing at service to the other. This intention exists throughout our lives but manifests only in and for rare moments.
In those rare moments the great paradox occurs. In devotedly serving the other, we find our true selves. We become love. And this happens in all devotions. If you clean a toilet with devotion, you become love. If you listen to a piece of music with devotion, you become love. If you draw a circle with devotion, you become love. If you birth a child with devotion, you become love. If you look a stranger in the eye with devotion, you become love.
Do not make devotion a promise or a vow. A promise or a vow is a picture that defines and confines. Devotion is not a commitment nor is it sacrifice, it is a happening in the freedom of the moment. I do not diminish the goodness of making and keeping promises and vows, but I suggest that devotion is much more than either because there is not story or drama living in devotion. Promises and vows are the result of story - the picture we strive for.
The source of inner devotion lies deep in the unconscious realms of our souls where there is no sense of result or outcome. Devotion is the result of devotion. And that is more than enough. Have confidence in your inner intention to devote. Know that the intention is there in the core of your being and it will manifest in your will as it is meant to.
Another reassuring aspect of devotion lives in its growing strength and presence. When you put aside thought pictures and emotions, devotion surfaces. With each moment of devotion, putting aside the thoughts and feelings becomes easier and devotion comes forward more gracefully. With this growing strength and presence, the moments of devotion begin to last longer and come more frequently and the oneness with love and freedom becomes more whole, real and permeating.
The Twelve Holy Nights are framed by Nativity, the innocent devotion of the newborn, and Epiphany, the profound devotion of the wise heart. The Holy Nights are devotional. Reading these messages as devotional practice and seeking and finding what lives behind them (not my interpretive articulation, but the archetype I hope to point you toward) is what liberates and strengthens you for the coming year. Spiritual beings enter our will through the portal of our inner devotion during the Holy Nights.
Rudolf Steiner gave us an exercise that strengthens the will. Steiner asks us to chose a meaningless act, such as taking your watch off and putting it on your other wrist then returning it to the original wrist, and to perform this at a particular time of day, each day for 30 days. If we fill this meaningless act with true devotion our capacity to devote strengthens.
To give a practical illustration from my own life: I really struggle with managing the financial administration of my life. My financial life feels very "other" to me. In our financial lives, we have a great chance to materialize spirit and spiritualize matter. Once I engage with my finances, I feel the love and freedom of devotion. But, I resist. I feel incompetent. I disregard. I feel disgust for my failure. I fantasize. These judgments create huge obstacles to the flow of my work and my life. My main resolve for the coming year is become devotional in my financial life.
Having written these last five messages perhaps I need to begin with wonder. I have so much stuff clogging my inner emptiness with prejudice around financial management. Or perhaps I should work in the other direction and ask myself about my gratitude for my financial life. Ironically, I would have little difficulty in being devoted to another's financial management as caregiving is an easy devotion for me.
As you work with the inner intention to devote, remember the spiritual world responds to our devotion to personal truth. This response is why we feel called to reflect and consider just what is true about our lives at this sacred time of year.
1
What area of your life shrivels from lack of devotion?
2
Do you trust in the presence of inner devotion in your soul?
3
Where in your life does devotion surface gracefully?
4
Is it a greater struggle to devote your soul life to parts of your own existence, or to the existence of others?
Sunday, January 3, 2010
January 4, The Eleventh Holy Night - The Inner Intention to Express Gratitude
[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
With wonder and awe, the other comes toward us. The soul welcomes with thought and moves toward feeling the other.
With reverence, we permeate the other with warm feeling. Reverence is a gesture of pure feeling.
Now we begin the reaching out from our heart with feeling will. We express gratitude for the existence of the other. Remember, other is anything and anyone that is not self.
Although, during the Holy Nights, we work with images that live in the radiance of spirit, pure and unselfish, held without limit, known without prejudice, we often need to begin our understanding of the images from a more mundane position. If it works better for you to think of love as a romantic experience, a feeling for family and friends, for your job, for your cat, your favorite pair of shoes or song, begin there. It is much better to have an authentic feeling than to pretend an exalted one.
With this intention of expressing gratitude, we are not talking about the feeling of gratitude, but the act of gratitude. With awe and reverence there is a mood of gratitude that permeates the two intentions, but not the act of gratitude. As a deed, gratitude is its own gesture, a powerful, transformative gesture.
“I thank you for being you.” “I thank you for being in existence whether for a moment, a lifetime or eternity.” I thank you for being there, separate from me, yet part of my consciousness, my life, my attention.”
Gratitude energizes life and energizes spirit. Wow! Without gratitude, love has a dullness, nothing is reflected, nothing shines. Love is passive without gratitude. Gratitude keeps love alive and present. I smell the perfume of the narcissus flowers that are blooming in my room right now - if I felt no gratitude the perception would have no life.
We also celebrate gratitude in retrospect and recollection - when gratitude offers bittersweet pangs. When I think of lost friendships, I mourn because I am grateful. When I throw out an old pair of beloved sneakers, I throw them out surrounded with gratitude for all those walks.
Since most of us were raised to say, “thank you,” we have more of a sense of gratitude than the other four intentions of love. I have never heard a parent say to a child “Wonder!” or “Feel awe!” or “Revere!” but I could never count all the times I’ve heard a parent admonish their child to offer thanks. It’s a custom of politeness but we need to raise gratitude to its true gesture of love. Love is never polite and it is always grateful.
We also need to realize that many of the people, things, events and everything else in our consciousness that we feel and express gratitude for have caused us difficulty, challenged our peace of mind, disrupted our daily routines, our habits and our identities. It may take time to express gratitude for the unpleasant and uncomfortable, but remember gratitude is the foundation of intentional maturity.
On the Eleventh Holy Night, be grateful for gratitude.
1
Make your gratitude list. Make your weird gratitude list, not the easy one - the list that makes you giggle, weep and breathe deeply. The list that grows your capacity for love.
Make sure you write “I express gratitude for.......... .”
Don’t forget to be grateful for the body parts that you have always wished were different. Without this gratitude, self-love will never be in your unconditional heart.
Thoughts
With wonder and awe, the other comes toward us. The soul welcomes with thought and moves toward feeling the other.
With reverence, we permeate the other with warm feeling. Reverence is a gesture of pure feeling.
Now we begin the reaching out from our heart with feeling will. We express gratitude for the existence of the other. Remember, other is anything and anyone that is not self.
Although, during the Holy Nights, we work with images that live in the radiance of spirit, pure and unselfish, held without limit, known without prejudice, we often need to begin our understanding of the images from a more mundane position. If it works better for you to think of love as a romantic experience, a feeling for family and friends, for your job, for your cat, your favorite pair of shoes or song, begin there. It is much better to have an authentic feeling than to pretend an exalted one.
With this intention of expressing gratitude, we are not talking about the feeling of gratitude, but the act of gratitude. With awe and reverence there is a mood of gratitude that permeates the two intentions, but not the act of gratitude. As a deed, gratitude is its own gesture, a powerful, transformative gesture.
“I thank you for being you.” “I thank you for being in existence whether for a moment, a lifetime or eternity.” I thank you for being there, separate from me, yet part of my consciousness, my life, my attention.”
Gratitude energizes life and energizes spirit. Wow! Without gratitude, love has a dullness, nothing is reflected, nothing shines. Love is passive without gratitude. Gratitude keeps love alive and present. I smell the perfume of the narcissus flowers that are blooming in my room right now - if I felt no gratitude the perception would have no life.
We also celebrate gratitude in retrospect and recollection - when gratitude offers bittersweet pangs. When I think of lost friendships, I mourn because I am grateful. When I throw out an old pair of beloved sneakers, I throw them out surrounded with gratitude for all those walks.
Since most of us were raised to say, “thank you,” we have more of a sense of gratitude than the other four intentions of love. I have never heard a parent say to a child “Wonder!” or “Feel awe!” or “Revere!” but I could never count all the times I’ve heard a parent admonish their child to offer thanks. It’s a custom of politeness but we need to raise gratitude to its true gesture of love. Love is never polite and it is always grateful.
We also need to realize that many of the people, things, events and everything else in our consciousness that we feel and express gratitude for have caused us difficulty, challenged our peace of mind, disrupted our daily routines, our habits and our identities. It may take time to express gratitude for the unpleasant and uncomfortable, but remember gratitude is the foundation of intentional maturity.
On the Eleventh Holy Night, be grateful for gratitude.
1
Make your gratitude list. Make your weird gratitude list, not the easy one - the list that makes you giggle, weep and breathe deeply. The list that grows your capacity for love.
Make sure you write “I express gratitude for.......... .”
Don’t forget to be grateful for the body parts that you have always wished were different. Without this gratitude, self-love will never be in your unconditional heart.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
January 3, The Tenth Holy Night - The Inner Intention to Revere
Thoughts
Wonder is the absence of any thoughts about the other.
Awe is the presence of ever new thoughts about the other.
Reverence is feeling: deep, profound, vulnerable, sacred feeling for the other.
Our souls are filled with perceptions, thoughts, feelings and intentions. Loving moves from perception which is the gift of wonder to the thoughts of awe and into the pure feeling of reverence. Oh, to imagine your soul filled with reverence for all others. Can you imagine the sense of grace and freedom if you revered all others, all things, everything that is not self. This feeling of universal reverence then makes all things self! The feeling of reverence in honoring otherness dissolves otherness - a spiritual paradox.
Reverence is not an automatic feeling response. It is intentional. We will ourselves to revere. Otherwise reverence is unconscious, based on easy sympathy, not on the acute and lasting conscious and awake awareness of the other.
We revere in awareness of difference and in presence of antipathy. Even what we don’t easily like in the other, we honor. This is very challenging when we are looking at feeling. Feeling tends to be dreamy, semi-conscious. The will in reverence brings feeling to the same level of wakefulness we find in thinking. To revere we must wake up our feeling life. When our feelings wake up, they are liberated from patterns of sympathy and antipathy.
Reverence brings us close to the other. With awe we maintain a distance. With reverence we are intimate without confining or manipulating gesture.
With wonder and awe, we find light. Reverence stimulates warmth. There is nothing cool about reverence. Honor embraces warmly. The cooling presence of dread living in awe, evolves into true warming of our whole being and the being of the other in reverence.
I find there are two moments of reverence that are particularly touching: when we tenderly witness the other waking up and when we witness the other falling asleep. This can be the literal sleeping and waking moments, or we can see this in other moments. We revere birth and death. We revere the calming of agitation. We revere the stimulation of enthusiasm. We revere the completion of a deed. We revere the initiation of a new deed. We revere the loss of a familiar perspective. We revere the discovery of a new perspective. And so forth.
To revere is the third intention of love in our souls. It is pure feeling. Let’s look at this from the receiving perspective.
You are revered. What does that do to your sense of self? Does it change anything?
To me when I am revered: I discover a freedom to express my truth. I feel my feelings are beautiful in a moral sense. I wake up to the commitment to act in ways that are good and noble. My heart sings. I feel I can and do bless the universe.
1
Tonight, experience revering and being revered.
2
Feel reverence for and from the whole world. Feel reverence for and from every rock, plant and animal. Feel reverence for and from every other human being that ever was and ever will be. Feel reverence for every birth and every death. Feel reverence for every cell in your body.
3
Revere all that your resist connecting with.
When you revere all is forgiven. When you revere your feeling life finds new forces of joy.
Revere. Rejoice.
Wonder is the absence of any thoughts about the other.
Awe is the presence of ever new thoughts about the other.
Reverence is feeling: deep, profound, vulnerable, sacred feeling for the other.
Our souls are filled with perceptions, thoughts, feelings and intentions. Loving moves from perception which is the gift of wonder to the thoughts of awe and into the pure feeling of reverence. Oh, to imagine your soul filled with reverence for all others. Can you imagine the sense of grace and freedom if you revered all others, all things, everything that is not self. This feeling of universal reverence then makes all things self! The feeling of reverence in honoring otherness dissolves otherness - a spiritual paradox.
Reverence is not an automatic feeling response. It is intentional. We will ourselves to revere. Otherwise reverence is unconscious, based on easy sympathy, not on the acute and lasting conscious and awake awareness of the other.
We revere in awareness of difference and in presence of antipathy. Even what we don’t easily like in the other, we honor. This is very challenging when we are looking at feeling. Feeling tends to be dreamy, semi-conscious. The will in reverence brings feeling to the same level of wakefulness we find in thinking. To revere we must wake up our feeling life. When our feelings wake up, they are liberated from patterns of sympathy and antipathy.
Reverence brings us close to the other. With awe we maintain a distance. With reverence we are intimate without confining or manipulating gesture.
With wonder and awe, we find light. Reverence stimulates warmth. There is nothing cool about reverence. Honor embraces warmly. The cooling presence of dread living in awe, evolves into true warming of our whole being and the being of the other in reverence.
I find there are two moments of reverence that are particularly touching: when we tenderly witness the other waking up and when we witness the other falling asleep. This can be the literal sleeping and waking moments, or we can see this in other moments. We revere birth and death. We revere the calming of agitation. We revere the stimulation of enthusiasm. We revere the completion of a deed. We revere the initiation of a new deed. We revere the loss of a familiar perspective. We revere the discovery of a new perspective. And so forth.
To revere is the third intention of love in our souls. It is pure feeling. Let’s look at this from the receiving perspective.
You are revered. What does that do to your sense of self? Does it change anything?
To me when I am revered: I discover a freedom to express my truth. I feel my feelings are beautiful in a moral sense. I wake up to the commitment to act in ways that are good and noble. My heart sings. I feel I can and do bless the universe.
1
Tonight, experience revering and being revered.
2
Feel reverence for and from the whole world. Feel reverence for and from every rock, plant and animal. Feel reverence for and from every other human being that ever was and ever will be. Feel reverence for every birth and every death. Feel reverence for every cell in your body.
3
Revere all that your resist connecting with.
When you revere all is forgiven. When you revere your feeling life finds new forces of joy.
Revere. Rejoice.
Friday, January 1, 2010
January 2, The Ninth Holy Night - The Inner Intention to Be Awed
The Ninth Inner Intention - to be awed
Wonder is the virgin soul. Awe is the pregnant soul.
Wonder is nothing to think about. Awe is something to think about.
Something has been perceived or conceived within.
To be awed is to perceive or conceive in wonder and in dread.
If you are like me you are struggling right now with our modern words:
dreadful
wonderful
awful and awesome.
These words are thoughtless and their meaning distorted. Through their energized exclaiming they debase sacred states. Wonderful and awesome exclaim blinding light. Awful and dreadful exclaim chilling darkness. They have become Hollywood words, cheap novel words. They are reactive and superficial, not responsive nor deep.
During the Holy Nights, we return to sacred meanings/feelings. Sacred or spiritual love asks us to be awed in wonder and dread.
Awe is an awareness that something has come to dwell in you that is not you. You must come to know/love this otherness. With wonder you are innocent in relationship to this otherness. With dread you are wise to the otherness. With dread you consciously include the fear that the otherness will require you to grow, to evolve, to renounce, to forgive, to suffer and to know joy.
Too often we cover otherness with a shroud of egotism. We cannot bear awed love, so we make it selfish love. The otherness is seen as an extension of ourselves. We devour otherness with dismissals, denials and demands.
The intention or willingness to be awed means we will always sense the otherness and give it its own space no matter how deeply and profoundly it comes to dwell within us. The moment we possess or even attempt to possess, we cannot be awed.
Imagine being awed by the perceptions that we experience in relationship to a rock, a rose, a cat, a friend, a child of our own, an enemy, a work of art, nature. Imagine doing this with a concept: addition, truth, money, is, suffering, love, breath.
I so wish I had been awakened (initiated?) to the intention to be awed. Somehow, perhaps through some karmic grace, I was able to remain in a state of awe for my two children, for my clients, works of art and certainly for concepts. However, I lacked the ability for extended awe (I usually manage momentary or intermittent awe) for so much and so many. Too often I have fallen into a wonderful-awful-dreadful determinism and selfishly dismissed otherness, denied otherness and demanded absorption into my way. How much more I could have loved if I had perceived or conceived awe as my soul’s intention.
The Holy Nights are nights of wonder and dread. Our soul’s will fills with awe.
The thoughts on the Inner Intentions to Love, do not inspire me to offer questions or exercises. Simply contemplate what has awakened in your soul as you read this message. I imagine working with the notions of awe as innocent wonder and awe as wise dread will be quite stimulating. And I am sure you will never say or hear wonderful, awesome, awful and dreadful in the same way again.
I hold you and your Inner Christmas in awe.
Wonder is the virgin soul. Awe is the pregnant soul.
Wonder is nothing to think about. Awe is something to think about.
Something has been perceived or conceived within.
To be awed is to perceive or conceive in wonder and in dread.
If you are like me you are struggling right now with our modern words:
dreadful
wonderful
awful and awesome.
These words are thoughtless and their meaning distorted. Through their energized exclaiming they debase sacred states. Wonderful and awesome exclaim blinding light. Awful and dreadful exclaim chilling darkness. They have become Hollywood words, cheap novel words. They are reactive and superficial, not responsive nor deep.
During the Holy Nights, we return to sacred meanings/feelings. Sacred or spiritual love asks us to be awed in wonder and dread.
Awe is an awareness that something has come to dwell in you that is not you. You must come to know/love this otherness. With wonder you are innocent in relationship to this otherness. With dread you are wise to the otherness. With dread you consciously include the fear that the otherness will require you to grow, to evolve, to renounce, to forgive, to suffer and to know joy.
Too often we cover otherness with a shroud of egotism. We cannot bear awed love, so we make it selfish love. The otherness is seen as an extension of ourselves. We devour otherness with dismissals, denials and demands.
The intention or willingness to be awed means we will always sense the otherness and give it its own space no matter how deeply and profoundly it comes to dwell within us. The moment we possess or even attempt to possess, we cannot be awed.
Imagine being awed by the perceptions that we experience in relationship to a rock, a rose, a cat, a friend, a child of our own, an enemy, a work of art, nature. Imagine doing this with a concept: addition, truth, money, is, suffering, love, breath.
I so wish I had been awakened (initiated?) to the intention to be awed. Somehow, perhaps through some karmic grace, I was able to remain in a state of awe for my two children, for my clients, works of art and certainly for concepts. However, I lacked the ability for extended awe (I usually manage momentary or intermittent awe) for so much and so many. Too often I have fallen into a wonderful-awful-dreadful determinism and selfishly dismissed otherness, denied otherness and demanded absorption into my way. How much more I could have loved if I had perceived or conceived awe as my soul’s intention.
The Holy Nights are nights of wonder and dread. Our soul’s will fills with awe.
The thoughts on the Inner Intentions to Love, do not inspire me to offer questions or exercises. Simply contemplate what has awakened in your soul as you read this message. I imagine working with the notions of awe as innocent wonder and awe as wise dread will be quite stimulating. And I am sure you will never say or hear wonderful, awesome, awful and dreadful in the same way again.
I hold you and your Inner Christmas in awe.
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