Forgiveness is the essence of peacemaking and begins with ourselves. First, we find the wisdom to be gained from whatever mistakes we have made or failures we have experienced and give thanks for it. Then we forgive ourselves by releasing blame, guilt, and pain. We also need to forgive others who have hurt us. We do not have to condone what they have done, but we do need to release our anger and resentment toward them... Since our inner world is reflected in our outer world, peace, joy, and love (the fruits of forgiveness) will flow into the world's environment and help people who are having difficulty forgiving themselves or others.
~from "Creating Good in the World" by Theresa Magness, in Sacred Journey, Dec. 2000
Greetings dear friends ~ Having recently participated in a weeklong gathering to explore the Enneagram in Motion, I have been pondering the nature of soul, transformation, and the interdependence necessarily at the heart of the evolution of human consciousness. Russ Hudson describes the inner work of the Enneagram as profoundly different from working on our "issues" so that we can become a better caterpillar. A caterpillar perseverates on devouring leaves and molting into a bigger, yet still identical, version of itself. One cannot grow wings and fly, however, without first entering a chrysalis and allowing the known self to dissolve into something new, capable of participating in the complex web of interrelationships at the heart of the cycle of life. Yet how much difference can our tiny, individual metamorphoses really make? I cannot begin to fathom how the beating of one butterfly’s wings could possibly cause even a whisper of a ripple on the other side of the globe.
The essential self is fundamentally invulnerable and at ease, because it is anchored in Being. This anchoring at the core of oneself allows the personality to be much more vulnerable, open, honest. If the essential self adopts a provisional or social identity — which may be necessary for certain reasons—it does not take it too seriously, does not become completely identified with it. The essential self does not become inflated with its identity, it lives in the humility of presence and can keep a sense of humor about itself.
You are unquenchable spirit,
A heart of Light
Called to make more
Than just an appearance.
Invited to show up
With your truest self,
Your deepest you,
Awake and uncovered,
Even with all the risk
Such intentional wholeness implies.
Serious spiritual practice is more than serene walks in the woods, lit candles and incense. You have to be committed. Your have to be willing to enter into your own darkness and transcend it.
Transfiguring experience is not granted to people as an easy and ready access to glory. Only in going up the mountain, rejecting and being rejected by the world, identifying with those who are most broken, does one encounter the divine refulgence...Our substitution of consumer tourism for pilgrimage, of canned experience for life-changing risk, is symptomatic of our inability to entertain in any way the reality of our own transfiguration.
~ from THE SOLACE OF FIERCE LANDSCAPES by Belden C. Lane
When a gong or "singing bowl" is struck in the silent stillness, a reverberating sound is suddenly born...it lingers briefly...decays and dies. The sound can represent the span of our life-experience, but never our Life. Our true self is not the perishable sound, but the imperishable, still silence from which the sound arose and resonated temporarily. Indeed, this truth has even greater depths for it may be understood, that in our essence, we are none other than That which strikes the gong, so to speak, and silently witnesses the resulting "sound."
When we express our creativity, we are a conduit for the Great Creator to explore, express, and expand its divine nature and our own. We are like songbirds. When one of us gives voice to our true nature, it is contagious and others soon give tongue as well. We do not live or create in isolation. Each of us is part of a greater whole and, as we agree to express ourselves, we agree to express the larger self that moves through us all.
Crack yourself open!
What use is it to continue to hide
behind your facades and roles?
Why waste your energy playing games?
Isn’t it time to cry your tears;
to shout your passion;
to dance like Zorba;
and to let your soul touch
the Soul of the world?
