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.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
January 1st - The Eighth Holy Night - The Intention to Wonder
[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
The first seven Inner Christmas messages explored the soul's mysterious reflection of our life processes ending with the intention to birth new thoughts, new feelings and new deeds.
With the life processes we interact with life. We receive life through breathing, warming and nourishing.We find our free relationship to life through secreting. Finally, we express our commitment to life through maintaining, growing and reproducing.
These processes are key natural activities of our life body but within our soul's reflections, processes ask us to bring them into conscious inner intention. Within the soul these inner intentions provide us with a knowledge of the world, create a free relationship with the world and fulfill our presence in the world with living thoughts, living feelins and living deeds.
We are here to live and to love. The remaining five inner intentions are the elements of the deed of loving ourselves, others, the world, the spirit, and the future.
In the highest intention for life, to reproduce, we discover a sacred emptiness or nothingness. We give up what is to create what will be. The first intention in the deed of loving also requires us to be empty of all things. The first intention for loving is to wonder.
When we wonder we have no preconditions, no requirements, no selfish desires living in our soul. We are a void waiting.
Imagine being a void waiting! This is not a lifeless void. This is a vibrant, fertile void. And the waiting is a vibrant and fertile state. The vibrancy and the fertility awaken in our wondering souls a capacity to draw in, a suctional quality. Free of all deadening conditions and controls, the waiting void of wonder does not know what it attracts. Like a newborn emerging from the womb, the void is open to receiving all. Emptiness awaits fullness.
If we want to love, to truly know, we let go of knowing anything. In letting go of knowing anything, we become capable of knowing everything. Not knowing allows for true knowing.
Our souls long to wonder. If just once in a lifetime we manage to truly wonder, we open to love. A moment of real wonder, transforms our lives.
The spiritual world wonders at us, especially during the Holy Nights. We wonder at the spiritual world, especially during the Holy Nights. It is wonder that lifts the veils between ordinary consciousness and spiritual consciousness, between who your have been and who you are becoming, between you and another, between now and the future. Wonder creates the grace of oneness with what wants to be known.
On this eighth Holy Night, wonder at wonder. Feel the place in your soul where the void waits in wonder.
If you have trouble wondering about wonder, consider this. Do you want to be seen for who you really are and known from every possible perspective, to be loved unconditionally? Imagine meeting another's wonder.
Wondering is not for sissies. It takes courage to wonder, but if we want to truly love, we must risk fulfilling the intention to wonder.
Thoughts
The first seven Inner Christmas messages explored the soul's mysterious reflection of our life processes ending with the intention to birth new thoughts, new feelings and new deeds.
With the life processes we interact with life. We receive life through breathing, warming and nourishing.We find our free relationship to life through secreting. Finally, we express our commitment to life through maintaining, growing and reproducing.
These processes are key natural activities of our life body but within our soul's reflections, processes ask us to bring them into conscious inner intention. Within the soul these inner intentions provide us with a knowledge of the world, create a free relationship with the world and fulfill our presence in the world with living thoughts, living feelins and living deeds.
We are here to live and to love. The remaining five inner intentions are the elements of the deed of loving ourselves, others, the world, the spirit, and the future.
In the highest intention for life, to reproduce, we discover a sacred emptiness or nothingness. We give up what is to create what will be. The first intention in the deed of loving also requires us to be empty of all things. The first intention for loving is to wonder.
When we wonder we have no preconditions, no requirements, no selfish desires living in our soul. We are a void waiting.
Imagine being a void waiting! This is not a lifeless void. This is a vibrant, fertile void. And the waiting is a vibrant and fertile state. The vibrancy and the fertility awaken in our wondering souls a capacity to draw in, a suctional quality. Free of all deadening conditions and controls, the waiting void of wonder does not know what it attracts. Like a newborn emerging from the womb, the void is open to receiving all. Emptiness awaits fullness.
If we want to love, to truly know, we let go of knowing anything. In letting go of knowing anything, we become capable of knowing everything. Not knowing allows for true knowing.
Our souls long to wonder. If just once in a lifetime we manage to truly wonder, we open to love. A moment of real wonder, transforms our lives.
The spiritual world wonders at us, especially during the Holy Nights. We wonder at the spiritual world, especially during the Holy Nights. It is wonder that lifts the veils between ordinary consciousness and spiritual consciousness, between who your have been and who you are becoming, between you and another, between now and the future. Wonder creates the grace of oneness with what wants to be known.
On this eighth Holy Night, wonder at wonder. Feel the place in your soul where the void waits in wonder.
If you have trouble wondering about wonder, consider this. Do you want to be seen for who you really are and known from every possible perspective, to be loved unconditionally? Imagine meeting another's wonder.
Wondering is not for sissies. It takes courage to wonder, but if we want to truly love, we must risk fulfilling the intention to wonder.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
December 31th, The Seventh Holy Night - The Intention to Reproduce
What is the final intention in knowing - responsible and creative knowing?
It is the intention to reproduce. This is not about replicating yourself. This is the intention to create and to originate the new and the unknown.
In a physical sense, the intention to reproduce manifests in new human beings. We do not duplicate ourselves but we are the living physical creative source that conceives a new individual, a new member of humanity.
To do this we must meet another human being and get to “know” them in a very intimate and vulnerable way. Sex! our fabulous reproductive drive. But then there are these great mysteries of conception, gestation and birth.
I am staying with my daughter and son-in-law for Christmas. My daughter is expecting her first child in late February. I will be at the birth. I know a lot about all stages of reproduction and yet all I feel looking at my daughter is the mystery.
I also remember the awe I felt as a little girl watching our cat give birth to kittens. Amazing.
Human beings and animals reproduce.
But we human beings have the inner intention to reproduce:
to imagine the not-yet thought thought or perceived perception,
to intuit the not-yet willed deed,
to be inspired to feel the not-yet-felt feeling.
This is the gift from the gods that lets us become like them - creators. We give birth to new forms, new activities, new wisdom. We make new love and establish new freedom.
We do this for ourselves, for others and for the future.
Only the indwelling Selfhood, the kernel of the divine, bears the inner intention to reproduce. This Spirit makes love to our soul to fertilize us with a new being and nurtures us and this newness throughout the gestation and holds us while we give birth. The inner intention to reproduce, to give birth to the new, is clearly and sweetly the greatest of our inner mysteries.
Tonight, on the seventh Holy Night, let yourself be enfolded in this mysterious intention to reproduce. Let the spiritual world make love to you and with you.
Be blessedly empty and open. Be womb-like. Concieve tenderly and powerfully.
It is the intention to reproduce. This is not about replicating yourself. This is the intention to create and to originate the new and the unknown.
In a physical sense, the intention to reproduce manifests in new human beings. We do not duplicate ourselves but we are the living physical creative source that conceives a new individual, a new member of humanity.
To do this we must meet another human being and get to “know” them in a very intimate and vulnerable way. Sex! our fabulous reproductive drive. But then there are these great mysteries of conception, gestation and birth.
I am staying with my daughter and son-in-law for Christmas. My daughter is expecting her first child in late February. I will be at the birth. I know a lot about all stages of reproduction and yet all I feel looking at my daughter is the mystery.
I also remember the awe I felt as a little girl watching our cat give birth to kittens. Amazing.
Human beings and animals reproduce.
But we human beings have the inner intention to reproduce:
to imagine the not-yet thought thought or perceived perception,
to intuit the not-yet willed deed,
to be inspired to feel the not-yet-felt feeling.
This is the gift from the gods that lets us become like them - creators. We give birth to new forms, new activities, new wisdom. We make new love and establish new freedom.
We do this for ourselves, for others and for the future.
Only the indwelling Selfhood, the kernel of the divine, bears the inner intention to reproduce. This Spirit makes love to our soul to fertilize us with a new being and nurtures us and this newness throughout the gestation and holds us while we give birth. The inner intention to reproduce, to give birth to the new, is clearly and sweetly the greatest of our inner mysteries.
Tonight, on the seventh Holy Night, let yourself be enfolded in this mysterious intention to reproduce. Let the spiritual world make love to you and with you.
Be blessedly empty and open. Be womb-like. Concieve tenderly and powerfully.
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?
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?
Monday, December 28, 2009
December 29th, The Fifth Holy Night - The Intention to Maintain
[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
Our bodies are always working to maintain life and well-being. A maintained life is a stable and secure life. Life is maintained by four processes: protection, repair, purification, and replacement. If the intention to maintain is successful, life is constant.
To protect life we have our immune system. This system recognizes and kills all life-threatening invaders and protects the environment while killing the enemies.
A complex set of interactions occur to repair any damage to any part of our bodies and restore wholeness and health.
We keep our bodies pure through various cleansing and detoxifying activities.
Our bodies are made up of cells, trillions of cells. They all die in intervals and they all are replaced with identical cells.
All four of these maintaining activities keep things the same. Our functions and our appearances remain constant and normal.
As an inner intention, maintaining gives us inner security, a peace of mind, a certainty that we will continue to exist. It allows us to feel sane.
We sense we can uphold our inner reality in the face of our enemies, heal our inner wounds and disturbances, keep our inner experiences pure and bright, and replace all that we lose in the course of our difficult lives.
Because we maintain our inner life, we are able to continue to feel like ourselves. We keep own individual experience of being inwardly “normal,” whatever that may be.
The inner intention to maintain is the most boring of our seven intentions for knowing. It is the least adventurous when all is well. It is the “behind the scenes” intention. Few of us pay attention to it until the drama arrives. Then we struggle and bring all our attention to maintaining.
On the Fifth Holy Night, we need to bring our attention to our intention and ability to maintain. For some of us maintaining is rarely thought about. But for many maintaining a stable, secure, constant sense of self is a struggle as our souls live in chronic stress or chronic neglect. We are fragile, uncertain or inflexible. Or we are ignorant of the soul’s ways to repair and restore, to replace, to clean and purify, to resist and protect our sense perceptions, our thinking, our feeling and our willing.
I did not have an education in how to maintain my inner life as I was growing up. I learned inner survival skills, but little in the way of maintaining a thriving inner life. As an adult I have spent much time acquiring an education in the art, science and religion of personal soul maintenance.
The Holy Nights are a wonderful time to reflect on your education in soul maintenance as the guiding interest of the spiritual world is so present. You will find just a brief and simple reflection will alter the quality of your inner intention to maintain.
Of course, attention to the celebration of the Holy Nights is soul maintenance. They are the time of the most intense soul maintenance of the year. Acknowledge yourself for the extraordinary will living in your soul to undertake this inner activity.
1
How did you maintain your soul life over the last year?
2
How did you protect your inner life from invading “enemies.”
3
How did you recognize and repair any damage to your sense perceptions, your thinking function, your feeling function, your will function?
4
Did you clean up and detoxify your inner life?
5
Did you replace any parts of your inner life that had lost meaning, purpose or significance?
6
How do you intend to maintain your soul life over the coming year?
(This year, to support your inner intention to maintain, I will be resending the Inner Christmas meditations monthly. On the first of each month (except January) you will receive an email with a link to a message.)
Thoughts
Our bodies are always working to maintain life and well-being. A maintained life is a stable and secure life. Life is maintained by four processes: protection, repair, purification, and replacement. If the intention to maintain is successful, life is constant.
To protect life we have our immune system. This system recognizes and kills all life-threatening invaders and protects the environment while killing the enemies.
A complex set of interactions occur to repair any damage to any part of our bodies and restore wholeness and health.
We keep our bodies pure through various cleansing and detoxifying activities.
Our bodies are made up of cells, trillions of cells. They all die in intervals and they all are replaced with identical cells.
All four of these maintaining activities keep things the same. Our functions and our appearances remain constant and normal.
As an inner intention, maintaining gives us inner security, a peace of mind, a certainty that we will continue to exist. It allows us to feel sane.
We sense we can uphold our inner reality in the face of our enemies, heal our inner wounds and disturbances, keep our inner experiences pure and bright, and replace all that we lose in the course of our difficult lives.
Because we maintain our inner life, we are able to continue to feel like ourselves. We keep own individual experience of being inwardly “normal,” whatever that may be.
The inner intention to maintain is the most boring of our seven intentions for knowing. It is the least adventurous when all is well. It is the “behind the scenes” intention. Few of us pay attention to it until the drama arrives. Then we struggle and bring all our attention to maintaining.
On the Fifth Holy Night, we need to bring our attention to our intention and ability to maintain. For some of us maintaining is rarely thought about. But for many maintaining a stable, secure, constant sense of self is a struggle as our souls live in chronic stress or chronic neglect. We are fragile, uncertain or inflexible. Or we are ignorant of the soul’s ways to repair and restore, to replace, to clean and purify, to resist and protect our sense perceptions, our thinking, our feeling and our willing.
I did not have an education in how to maintain my inner life as I was growing up. I learned inner survival skills, but little in the way of maintaining a thriving inner life. As an adult I have spent much time acquiring an education in the art, science and religion of personal soul maintenance.
The Holy Nights are a wonderful time to reflect on your education in soul maintenance as the guiding interest of the spiritual world is so present. You will find just a brief and simple reflection will alter the quality of your inner intention to maintain.
Of course, attention to the celebration of the Holy Nights is soul maintenance. They are the time of the most intense soul maintenance of the year. Acknowledge yourself for the extraordinary will living in your soul to undertake this inner activity.
1
How did you maintain your soul life over the last year?
2
How did you protect your inner life from invading “enemies.”
3
How did you recognize and repair any damage to your sense perceptions, your thinking function, your feeling function, your will function?
4
Did you clean up and detoxify your inner life?
5
Did you replace any parts of your inner life that had lost meaning, purpose or significance?
6
How do you intend to maintain your soul life over the coming year?
(This year, to support your inner intention to maintain, I will be resending the Inner Christmas meditations monthly. On the first of each month (except January) you will receive an email with a link to a message.)
Sunday, December 27, 2009
December 28th, The Fourth Holy Night - The Intention to Secrete
[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
Secreting is a two step process. We must sort and we must discharge. Both require a level of conscious will and willed consciousness. Most importantly, it is through this intention that we claim our freedom to be ourselves.
In our physical life, our process of nourishing requires us to kill the life of what we take in and resurrect it as our own being, our own life. For this to be successful we must sort through all that we have killed seeking that which can resurrect as our own and discern, and then discharge, all that, for numerous reasons, will not or should not become our own being.
In our physical life, we do this most obviously through the endocrine system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_system which secretes the hormones that regulate our lives. We create a regulated life by paying attention to our needs and providing or releasing anything and everything that is/is not required, appropriate or adequate to our unique configuration and purpose. We stimulate and we inhibit all biological activity. This is almost an artistic gesture as we design our inner balanced reality.
We make the secreting decisions in recognition of our individuality. We become aware of who we are rather than remaining merely aware of what is coming into us as breath, what we warm and what we kill to provide nourishment for ourselves. With this self-awareness of our bodily needs we take charge of our aliveness and reject and rid ourselves of all that would interfere with it.
Secreting is a intention of independence. Each of the three previous intentions were about degrees of dependence. Now independent, we intend our own possibility for freedom, the freedom of self-regulation.
In our soul life, the intention to secrete, to regulate our soul juices, requires us to develop a self-understanding of our needs for stimulation and inhibition. We need to know what gets our soul juices flowing freely and how to slow down the juices when our soul starts to flood with too many thoughts, feelings or intentions.
We also rely the informing metaphors of rhythm (breathing), temperature (warming), and quantity and quality (nourishing) when we look at regulating our soul life. These metaphors help us diagnose our regulatory needs around the flow of our soul juices/hormones.
Thoughts flow into other thoughts, into feelings and into our will. Feelings flow into other feelings, into thoughts and into our will. Will flows into our intentions, into our thoughts and into our feelings. The force of the flow can be comforting or challenging. The force can be too intense or too weak.
What about our time flow? Too much past, too much future, to much in the moment?
What about our flow between spirit and matter. Too much or too little stimulation of one aspect of our humanity and not the other can cause challenges to our moral life. The degree of too much or attention we give to either our material concerns or our spiritual concerns can leave us vulnerable to serious imbalances.
Now here is another challenge for regulation: self-awareness. Actually, this requires the regulation of our egotism. Do we need more objectivity flowing or more compassion? Do we need to be more aware of “not-self” and less aware of “self?”
The kernel of the Divine, our Selfhood, steps in and regulates these flows through soul secretion. This function of the Divine Self is the source of our inner freedom.
1
What stimulates your inner life?
2
What inhibits your inner life?
Do you have a sense of self-regulation - a consciousness of your inner needs for stimulation and inhibition?
4
With the intention to secrete we find self-knowledge through artistic exercise: draw, paint, speak, sing, dance your sense of self-stimulation or self-inhibition. Do not feel this is about control. It is about self-regulation and sustaining an inner balance.
5
This is the fourth message and you may feel you are over-stimulated by the messages. I suggest you release some of the stimulation by going back to the wisdom of the breathing intention. Do a light reading of the messages - a gentle inhale. Then exhale, release your soul breath. If you are up to warming the messages, do so. Impress yourself on the message, which may come through sharing them with another or writing down a few thoughts or feelings about them (leave a comment!). I’ve already encouraged you to kill the message and nourish yourself with the remains. Now with secretion you can find your free relationship to each of the messages as they have become your own.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
These first seven messages are inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s Seven Life Processes. I first read about these life processes about 15 years ago. I immediately exhaled them as strongly as I could - a real reluctance to pay any attention to them. It was just a few months ago that I realized that it was time to work with each of the seven processes. I knew the deepest work would come through the Holy Nights this year. Fifteen years! it took me engage with the Seven Life Processes.
As with every year’s Inner Christmas messages, these thoughts on the seven life processes are gifts for you to engage through your process. I am just putting out a soul buffet, a soul landscape, enjoy whatever tastes or perspectives you desire.
Thoughts
Secreting is a two step process. We must sort and we must discharge. Both require a level of conscious will and willed consciousness. Most importantly, it is through this intention that we claim our freedom to be ourselves.
In our physical life, our process of nourishing requires us to kill the life of what we take in and resurrect it as our own being, our own life. For this to be successful we must sort through all that we have killed seeking that which can resurrect as our own and discern, and then discharge, all that, for numerous reasons, will not or should not become our own being.
In our physical life, we do this most obviously through the endocrine system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_system which secretes the hormones that regulate our lives. We create a regulated life by paying attention to our needs and providing or releasing anything and everything that is/is not required, appropriate or adequate to our unique configuration and purpose. We stimulate and we inhibit all biological activity. This is almost an artistic gesture as we design our inner balanced reality.
We make the secreting decisions in recognition of our individuality. We become aware of who we are rather than remaining merely aware of what is coming into us as breath, what we warm and what we kill to provide nourishment for ourselves. With this self-awareness of our bodily needs we take charge of our aliveness and reject and rid ourselves of all that would interfere with it.
Secreting is a intention of independence. Each of the three previous intentions were about degrees of dependence. Now independent, we intend our own possibility for freedom, the freedom of self-regulation.
In our soul life, the intention to secrete, to regulate our soul juices, requires us to develop a self-understanding of our needs for stimulation and inhibition. We need to know what gets our soul juices flowing freely and how to slow down the juices when our soul starts to flood with too many thoughts, feelings or intentions.
We also rely the informing metaphors of rhythm (breathing), temperature (warming), and quantity and quality (nourishing) when we look at regulating our soul life. These metaphors help us diagnose our regulatory needs around the flow of our soul juices/hormones.
Thoughts flow into other thoughts, into feelings and into our will. Feelings flow into other feelings, into thoughts and into our will. Will flows into our intentions, into our thoughts and into our feelings. The force of the flow can be comforting or challenging. The force can be too intense or too weak.
What about our time flow? Too much past, too much future, to much in the moment?
What about our flow between spirit and matter. Too much or too little stimulation of one aspect of our humanity and not the other can cause challenges to our moral life. The degree of too much or attention we give to either our material concerns or our spiritual concerns can leave us vulnerable to serious imbalances.
Now here is another challenge for regulation: self-awareness. Actually, this requires the regulation of our egotism. Do we need more objectivity flowing or more compassion? Do we need to be more aware of “not-self” and less aware of “self?”
The kernel of the Divine, our Selfhood, steps in and regulates these flows through soul secretion. This function of the Divine Self is the source of our inner freedom.
1
What stimulates your inner life?
2
What inhibits your inner life?
3
4
With the intention to secrete we find self-knowledge through artistic exercise: draw, paint, speak, sing, dance your sense of self-stimulation or self-inhibition. Do not feel this is about control. It is about self-regulation and sustaining an inner balance.
5
This is the fourth message and you may feel you are over-stimulated by the messages. I suggest you release some of the stimulation by going back to the wisdom of the breathing intention. Do a light reading of the messages - a gentle inhale. Then exhale, release your soul breath. If you are up to warming the messages, do so. Impress yourself on the message, which may come through sharing them with another or writing down a few thoughts or feelings about them (leave a comment!). I’ve already encouraged you to kill the message and nourish yourself with the remains. Now with secretion you can find your free relationship to each of the messages as they have become your own.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
These first seven messages are inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s Seven Life Processes. I first read about these life processes about 15 years ago. I immediately exhaled them as strongly as I could - a real reluctance to pay any attention to them. It was just a few months ago that I realized that it was time to work with each of the seven processes. I knew the deepest work would come through the Holy Nights this year. Fifteen years! it took me engage with the Seven Life Processes.
As with every year’s Inner Christmas messages, these thoughts on the seven life processes are gifts for you to engage through your process. I am just putting out a soul buffet, a soul landscape, enjoy whatever tastes or perspectives you desire.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
December 27th, The Third Holy Night - The Intention to Nourish
[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
We breathe.
We warm all that enters us.
We nourish ourselves from the substances that live outside us.
Notice how with each intention the deed becomes more willful, more complex, and more self-ful. We engage more actively.
To nourish ourselves we interact with what is “not self” in such a way that it becomes “self.” To nourish our own lives, we take the life out of other living beings, out of plants and out of animals. We must chew, dissolve, swallow, digest and destroy. We cannot live without taking life. This is the sacred and mysterious paradox of life.
However, there are two exceptions: milk and honey, gifts of the feminine, and both are intensely sweet. Milk comes from the fertilized feminine and honey from the infertile feminine. Breastmilk sours quickly and exists to nourish innocent new life. Honey, which is not safe for babies, stays sweet forever and nourishes with energy for our mature, wise creative forces during the cold, bleak winter. What meanings do we find here for the land of milk and honey.
Another thought to inspire our Holy Night contemplation: the Latin root of nourish is nutire which means “to suckle.” Suckling is the nourishing relationship between mother and child. In order to suckle the infant must create a vacuum. A newborn knows how to create a vacuum allowing the nourishing of its life with life. This suckling capacity is lost as we leave the breast ( It is very different from simple sucking.)
How does our soul mirror these images of nourishing our physical life?
What enters your soul space to nourish you, needs you break it down, devour and destroy it till, utterly dissolved, it flows into your being and becomes your own inner substance? The act of taking life, of nourishing, demands from you a courage for death and evokes in you a gratitude for life. The inner intention to nourish requires your soul to mourn and to celebrate.
With each inner intention we find deeper mysteries to challenge our consciousness, to manifest the inner fulness of being human - self-knowledge. It is much easier to simply, unconsciously interact with the death/life aspects of nourishing. To bring consciousness to the intention to nourish we must include in our thoughts the intention to kill and mourn, to resurrect and to celebrate.
But we must also recognize the presence of the milk and honey nourishment of our souls. Even our daily lives are filled with milk and honey, if we just notice. Each day we find moments when we are newborn and able to suckle at the breast of living thoughts. We, also, find moments when we need the sweetening energy of soul honey to allow us to face the bitter cold winds of life’s lessons or the manifest our own creative gestures.
In between the milk and honey, we nourish our souls through this killing of the life outside us to create life within us.
During the Holy Nights, our relationship with the spiritual world nourishes with spiritual milk and spiritual honey. No killing is needed. Just the need to suckle and the need to suffer. We must feel spiritual hunger pains - the vacuum of our innocence and the pain of our wisdom. For the Twelve Holy Nights we nourish ourselves with the pure milk and honey of the Spirit and then so nourished we begin the New Year of our earthly life.
[Writing this message has been a very intense experience for me. I imagine it is equally intense for you to read it. I wonder what the next nine messages will demand of us and offer us. In spite of the intensity, they are a sweet feast at this sweet time of year.]
On this Third Holy Night contemplate what nourishes your soul from the world around you.
1
How do you forage in the world for inner nourishment? What nourishes your thinking? your feeling? your willing?
2
Are you comfortable with this truth about nourishing requiring killing? How does this occur in soul nourishment?
3
What gives your soul indigestion? How do you cool the burning heat of your soul’s efforts to kill what is too tough, too toxic, too false to be made soft, safe, and true?
Do you know when you have nourished your soul enough? Too much nourishment can overwhelm your forces for soul activity, just like overeating our delicious Christmas feasts puts us to sleep.
Or do you never find the food to nourish your soul like the little matchgirl of the fairytale?
5
For these Inner Christmas messages to nourish you, you must suck the life from them and make them your own. Otherwise you are just looking at them as if they are beautiful candy in a glass display case. You may know the candy is sweet, you may imagine its sweetness, but you will not taste the sweetness nor take in the nutrients.
I write these messages for you to find nourishment for your inner life during the Twelve Holy Nights. My dream is that you will kill them.
What do you offer to the soul of another and to the soul of the world as willing sacrifice? We all come with this capacity, this destiny to become soul food for others.
Thoughts
We breathe.
We warm all that enters us.
We nourish ourselves from the substances that live outside us.
Notice how with each intention the deed becomes more willful, more complex, and more self-ful. We engage more actively.
To nourish ourselves we interact with what is “not self” in such a way that it becomes “self.” To nourish our own lives, we take the life out of other living beings, out of plants and out of animals. We must chew, dissolve, swallow, digest and destroy. We cannot live without taking life. This is the sacred and mysterious paradox of life.
However, there are two exceptions: milk and honey, gifts of the feminine, and both are intensely sweet. Milk comes from the fertilized feminine and honey from the infertile feminine. Breastmilk sours quickly and exists to nourish innocent new life. Honey, which is not safe for babies, stays sweet forever and nourishes with energy for our mature, wise creative forces during the cold, bleak winter. What meanings do we find here for the land of milk and honey.
Another thought to inspire our Holy Night contemplation: the Latin root of nourish is nutire which means “to suckle.” Suckling is the nourishing relationship between mother and child. In order to suckle the infant must create a vacuum. A newborn knows how to create a vacuum allowing the nourishing of its life with life. This suckling capacity is lost as we leave the breast ( It is very different from simple sucking.)
How does our soul mirror these images of nourishing our physical life?
What enters your soul space to nourish you, needs you break it down, devour and destroy it till, utterly dissolved, it flows into your being and becomes your own inner substance? The act of taking life, of nourishing, demands from you a courage for death and evokes in you a gratitude for life. The inner intention to nourish requires your soul to mourn and to celebrate.
With each inner intention we find deeper mysteries to challenge our consciousness, to manifest the inner fulness of being human - self-knowledge. It is much easier to simply, unconsciously interact with the death/life aspects of nourishing. To bring consciousness to the intention to nourish we must include in our thoughts the intention to kill and mourn, to resurrect and to celebrate.
But we must also recognize the presence of the milk and honey nourishment of our souls. Even our daily lives are filled with milk and honey, if we just notice. Each day we find moments when we are newborn and able to suckle at the breast of living thoughts. We, also, find moments when we need the sweetening energy of soul honey to allow us to face the bitter cold winds of life’s lessons or the manifest our own creative gestures.
In between the milk and honey, we nourish our souls through this killing of the life outside us to create life within us.
During the Holy Nights, our relationship with the spiritual world nourishes with spiritual milk and spiritual honey. No killing is needed. Just the need to suckle and the need to suffer. We must feel spiritual hunger pains - the vacuum of our innocence and the pain of our wisdom. For the Twelve Holy Nights we nourish ourselves with the pure milk and honey of the Spirit and then so nourished we begin the New Year of our earthly life.
[Writing this message has been a very intense experience for me. I imagine it is equally intense for you to read it. I wonder what the next nine messages will demand of us and offer us. In spite of the intensity, they are a sweet feast at this sweet time of year.]
On this Third Holy Night contemplate what nourishes your soul from the world around you.
1
How do you forage in the world for inner nourishment? What nourishes your thinking? your feeling? your willing?
2
Are you comfortable with this truth about nourishing requiring killing? How does this occur in soul nourishment?
3
What gives your soul indigestion? How do you cool the burning heat of your soul’s efforts to kill what is too tough, too toxic, too false to be made soft, safe, and true?
4
Do you know when you have nourished your soul enough? Too much nourishment can overwhelm your forces for soul activity, just like overeating our delicious Christmas feasts puts us to sleep.
Or do you never find the food to nourish your soul like the little matchgirl of the fairytale?
5
For these Inner Christmas messages to nourish you, you must suck the life from them and make them your own. Otherwise you are just looking at them as if they are beautiful candy in a glass display case. You may know the candy is sweet, you may imagine its sweetness, but you will not taste the sweetness nor take in the nutrients.
I write these messages for you to find nourishment for your inner life during the Twelve Holy Nights. My dream is that you will kill them.
What do you offer to the soul of another and to the soul of the world as willing sacrifice? We all come with this capacity, this destiny to become soul food for others.
Friday, December 25, 2009
December 26th, The Second Holy Night - The Intention to Warm
[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
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.
1
On this Second Holy Night feel your intention to warm and how you experience this intention living in others.
2
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?
3
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?
4
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.
5
Please warm us up with your warm thoughts and feelings about warmth. Write a comment for us to read.
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.
1
On this Second Holy Night feel your intention to warm and how you experience this intention living in others.
2
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?
3
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?
4
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.
5
Please warm us up with your warm thoughts and feelings about warmth. Write a comment for us to read.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
December 25th, The First Holy Night - The Intention: To Breathe
[Note: please consider the thought, perhaps re-reading and visualizing a few times. Then do as many of the exploration steps as you have time for.]
Thought
How many breaths do you take each day? The archetypal breathing rhythm for a human being is 25,920 breaths each day! 25,920 inhales. 25,920 exhales. Our life begins with an inhale and ends with an exhale. From the first inhale to the last exhale, our breathing is continuous. And we don’t give this breathing a thought and it never tires us.
On this first Holy Night I am asking you to think about your inner breathing - the breathing of your soul. Your soul breathes. It inhales. It exhales. What is the intention living in each soul breath?
Ideally, our souls breathe truth, beauty and goodness. Ideally, our soul breathing is a steady even rhythm supporting our evolving individuality and humanity. Ideally, our breaths would be either innocent or wise.
But in reality, we often breath half-truths and lies, distortions and corruptions, and harm and evils. In reality, our soul breathing is often too quick and too frequent, or too slow and infrequent. In reality, our breaths often lack innocence or wisdom.
Our souls are continuously breathing all that is around us from all our sense perceptions, the deeds we witness, the ideas we meet, the moods and energies we feel, the hearts and souls of those near to us, always moving from inhale to exhale and another inhale.
Like our physical breathing, our soul breathing can be shallow or deep. How deeply into our souls do we want to take in the world, the thought, the mood or the deed? How does the soul hold its breath?
This past week I attended a concert of the "Messiah" at Carnegie Hall. It was "breathtaking." I found parts of it so beautifully performed that my soul could barely breathe it in!
1
Tonight, explore your soul’s intention to breathe. With compassion and self-attention, seek the needs of your breathing soul. Reflect on the year you have just lived and consider the one you are about to start living.
2
What did you inhale? What did you take into your inner life? What do you want to inhale over the next twelve months?
What do you need to exhale? Are you sensitive to the need to exhale what fills your soul?
Do you hold your breath?
Do you realize that another inhale will fill you soul again?
What experiences of the year were breathtaking?
3
Celebrate the truth, the beauty and the goodness you welcomed into your soul.
Forgive and redeem the shadow breaths.
Feel the confidence of the continuous rhythm of your soul breath.
4
Do a drawing of your soul’s breathing. Or write a poem. You might also get up and dance your soul’s breathing. Express your innocent soul’s breathing and then see what changes if you express your soul’s wise breathing. Is there a difference? Be playful. Become a newborn on Christmas night.
5
Please post a comment sharing how and what you realized about your soul’s breathing, it will inspire others.
Thought
How many breaths do you take each day? The archetypal breathing rhythm for a human being is 25,920 breaths each day! 25,920 inhales. 25,920 exhales. Our life begins with an inhale and ends with an exhale. From the first inhale to the last exhale, our breathing is continuous. And we don’t give this breathing a thought and it never tires us.
On this first Holy Night I am asking you to think about your inner breathing - the breathing of your soul. Your soul breathes. It inhales. It exhales. What is the intention living in each soul breath?
Ideally, our souls breathe truth, beauty and goodness. Ideally, our soul breathing is a steady even rhythm supporting our evolving individuality and humanity. Ideally, our breaths would be either innocent or wise.
But in reality, we often breath half-truths and lies, distortions and corruptions, and harm and evils. In reality, our soul breathing is often too quick and too frequent, or too slow and infrequent. In reality, our breaths often lack innocence or wisdom.
Our souls are continuously breathing all that is around us from all our sense perceptions, the deeds we witness, the ideas we meet, the moods and energies we feel, the hearts and souls of those near to us, always moving from inhale to exhale and another inhale.
Like our physical breathing, our soul breathing can be shallow or deep. How deeply into our souls do we want to take in the world, the thought, the mood or the deed? How does the soul hold its breath?
This past week I attended a concert of the "Messiah" at Carnegie Hall. It was "breathtaking." I found parts of it so beautifully performed that my soul could barely breathe it in!
1
Tonight, explore your soul’s intention to breathe. With compassion and self-attention, seek the needs of your breathing soul. Reflect on the year you have just lived and consider the one you are about to start living.
2
What did you inhale? What did you take into your inner life? What do you want to inhale over the next twelve months?
What do you need to exhale? Are you sensitive to the need to exhale what fills your soul?
Do you hold your breath?
Do you realize that another inhale will fill you soul again?
What experiences of the year were breathtaking?
3
Celebrate the truth, the beauty and the goodness you welcomed into your soul.
Forgive and redeem the shadow breaths.
Feel the confidence of the continuous rhythm of your soul breath.
4
Do a drawing of your soul’s breathing. Or write a poem. You might also get up and dance your soul’s breathing. Express your innocent soul’s breathing and then see what changes if you express your soul’s wise breathing. Is there a difference? Be playful. Become a newborn on Christmas night.
5
Please post a comment sharing how and what you realized about your soul’s breathing, it will inspire others.
The Theme - Inner Intentions
The Meaning of “Inner”
Let’s begin with inner. Inner refers to the inmost life of the individual, the sense of self least shaped and affected by the outer forces of family, traditions, culture, and times. A place where you are free of the challenges of your biology and the prejudices of your biography. Inner is the place where you find yourself free to be your truest self.
Each year during the Twelve Holy Nights the path to your individual inmost being is easiest to find and follow. Between December 25 and January 6, an inner star, a personal sun, a sun being, lights your way and guides you into yourself, to your inmost self.
In your inmost self, you touch, you discover, you connect with your truest thoughts, your most harmonious feelings and the goodness living in your will to act.
When you reach the inmost place of self you come to know the greatest mystery of the inner experience: you are suddenly capable of the most powerful outer gestures. Going in leads you out as a portal lies at the core of your inner life, the threshold between what you strive for and what you manifest.
Designed by your truest thoughts and visible to your most harmonious feelings, this portal is the entry to your destiny. Your will filled with goodness opens the portal and carries you across its threshold. You stand in the portal and cross the threshold as the true, beautiful and good expression of your individuality, a spiritual being seeking to fulfill your destiny in the material world and an earthly being expressing your ineffable and eternal spiritual essence.
The Meaning of “Intention”
Intention is an imagination of a purposeful course of action. By intending, we gather our will forces in service of a potential result, ideally a desired, ultimately good result.
The inner intentions I write about over Twelve Holy Nights are universal intentions that form our individuality. They live in all of us as the processes by which we become uniquely ourselves. The degree that we are able to imbue these intentions with adequate will forces supported by right thinking and right feeling brings all our other intentions into the world as full expressions of our individuality and our humanity.
These intentions create right knowledge and right relationship. I don’t say “right” with arrogance or righteousness or fundamentalism. "Right" indicates the knowledge and the relationship are living in freedom and flowing with love.
The Twelve Intentions
The first seven intentions come to our creative knowing and describe the processes through which we experience what lives outside us, how the experience dwells within us and finally how we evolve the experience into something the moves out of us. With each message I am certain you will find a clearer understanding of yourself. You will find a new freedom for your creative and fulfilling future.
The final five intentions will explore how we love. These five shape our relationship to all things.
Knowledge and relationship, freedom and love connect with the beginning and end of the Twelve Holy Nights - the Nativity and the Epiphany. You can find within the creative knowledge and the loving relationship the full gesture of your innocence and of your wisdom. You express your individuality and your humanity in dynamic and exquisite balance. You are absolutely you in the moment.
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