Category Archives: Reflections

Nature-Informed Silent Retreats

Reflections, Silence Practice

Illustration by Maurice Sendak from Open House for Butterflies by Ruth Krauss

Nature holds our bodies in a way that allows us to relax. Relaxation allows the nervous system to down-regulate. 
A down-regulated nervous system is one that listens. 

In listening, we discover that we are not separate from nature or from all life—our heart pumping, our breath, the feel of our feet on the ground, the smell of the roses and lavender, the taste of tea-–all of this is nature enjoying herself through our body. 

Attuning to water, wind, trees, birds, wood, bugs, grass, flowers, dirt and more—through smell, hearing, touch, sight, taste, and the timeless intuition within Silence-- we discover home.
Attuning to nature involves slowing down to listen with the body through the five senses, intuition, and knowing. Many of us feel ourselves respond to Nature’s flow and deep wisdom because the same rhythm exists within our own bodies; an unconditional movement that includes joy and suffering.
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As the western half of humanity, we have achieved remarkable things. However, our achievements have often caused immense suffering as they lacked a conscious understanding of our relational wholeness. Our lack of connection has harmed nature, indigenous peoples, animals, and ultimately our own connection to our depth. At a deep level, we intuitively know that separation is not our true place. When our mind, heart, and body cohere, it becomes increasingly difficult to continue unconscious harming-habits .
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Our disconnected dynamic makes the integrative relational structure of Nature a great teacher for these times. Many of us sense this and regularly seek to “get away” into Nature to replenish and restore ourselves. If we slow down to feel the magic that we seek in Nature, we discover there is no place where there isn’t communion with nature. Within a humble blade of grass, the feel of our feet on the ground, the smell of a rose, or an authentic dialogue, there is a quiet hum of a palpable sensation with a higher ordered-intelligence. The Tao te Ching addresses this timeless order:
Man follows the earth
Earth follows the universe
The Universe follows the Tao
The Tao follows only itself.
(vs. 25, trans. Stephen Mitchell)
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Reminders that we are beings with an unconditional place in Nature are incredibly calming to the nervous system. Even our suffering habit of separation is included within Nature’s pulse and flow. We start to see that many of our suffering habits come from feeling separate and isolated. Truly seeing our separation, rather then making it something to fix, opens a compassionate heart that can include the disconnected wounding of our world.
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Inner stillness and Silence allow us to attune to life through a wholeness that includes the “underdeveloped parts” of ourselves. We literally begin living and breathing within a different relational field that becomes an organic transpersonal blessing rather than a personal achievement; a surrendered listening, not a conquering; the feminine right-brain in relation, not the  masculine left-brain managing the parts.
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Seeing an expansion of our collective consciousness and a growing awareness of our strength as a collective gives me a sense of future possibilities. As embodied beings, we are meant to be here … together … within the wholeness of Nature; sharing what we learn as we learn to listen through the powerful transmission of Nature.

Heart Feet: Walking with the Ancestors

Group Inner Constellations, Reflections

Clarence Dalton Hicks (“Grandad” circa 1918)

“Heart Feet: Walking with the Ancestors” is the Workshop title for the next Inner Constellation Workshop on Saturday March 4, 2023.

For many years of my life, I did not realize the importance of my roots. I was focussed on my individuality and the blessings of my wings, rather than the deep embodiment of my roots.

I was unaware of the division and lack of peace this isolated paradigm was creating in my life. I felt as though I was an alien in the world, and therefore sought my belonging within the spacious light of mystical dimensions. In these moments I felt a belonging in a spiritual or timeless sense, but not on the ground. I was very connected vertically (with soul in God/source) but the flow did not continue easily into the horizontal (relational) dimension much of the time. My becoming and belonging were not synchronized. 

The traits of our genetics and DNA, and the way our ancestors have treated one another, create the substance of our horizontal realities. We are born into them. In my case, I experienced the horizontal landscape as hostile towards the inherent grace of soul’s vertical resonance. The fragmentation between our “wings of becoming” and “roots of belonging” is ubiquitous. It has created famous sayings like “be in the world, but not of it (Jesus),” or “engage but don’t enrol (Thomas Hübl).” If we are going to live in peaceful ways, we are tasked with befriending these disparate parts of ourselves—because the ground we stand on is where peace begins.

The science of epigenetics is now showing how unresolved wounds continue through the generations. Like our hair and eye colour, trauma patterns are passed down through the generations. Until they are seen, felt, and integrated into life, they are experienced as a lack of belonging roots (as in my case) or a lack of becoming wings (experiencing the light)–or both. Many times we are not aware of where our divisions are, we just feel the symptoms as some kind of gnawing discomfort or suffering. Eventually, we may come to accept our “symptoms”  as normal and just “how life is.” 

Collectively, we share a wounded humanity that is still largely in unconscious denial of that wound. Where denial is active, projection is strong and we make “how life is” someone else’s fault. A blaming syndrome is driven by fear and separation.  It alienates us further as life  happens “outside” of us rather than through us. We become limited by victimhood rather than free to participate.

According to Ken Wilber the evolutionary movement of our consciousness is one of transcend and include. Like me, you may have been pretty good at the transcending part and have forgotten about the including – the roots of your authentic belonging. Although painfully challenging at times, I have found new ground in my heart through walking with the ancestors. It has freed me from entangled ways of relating that were habitual (survival oriented) rather than authentic. Contact with ancestral patterns helps us to befriend—rather than distract from—the wounded life we are born into and walk with. When vertical transcendence includes horizontal embodiment, we gradually become everything we have longed for–eventually realizing that we have been looking everywhere else for a very long time.

Grounding Thought: Making Sense of the Present

Group Inner Constellations, Reflections

For most of us our thought habits and patterns interfere with our ability to be still and present in life. Although this doesn’t have to be the case, thought patterns often become a disembodied helicopter whirring around on-top of life — a sort of  “life-manager.” As a consequence, we tend to divide life circumstances and people into parts: safe and unsafe, good and bad, with me or against me. Unchallenged thought-patterns continue until we pause to feel the energy driving them—often a younger self where we have had to pull away from life to protect ourselves.

Divisive thought patterns lack the warm intimacy of an organic relational trust in life. Experiencing the truth of our wounding is not a mental process, but a surrendered willingness to experience what is true. The beauty of this gesture also allows the soul’s spaciousness to be felt in our nervous system. A state of innocence and unconditional belonging arises when disconnected trauma wounds are felt, witnessed, and understood, rather than managed.

Gathering in groups where non-bypassing-presence is priority allows thinking patterns to ground through a felt sense of their energy-flavour. Our mind-dominant culture has been hypnotized away from a direct experience of life. With courage and room to explore, we begin to trust that our bodies, hearts, and minds are a process of life-evolving and not solid and fixed. We are “life in process.” Feeling life may initially be more uncomfortable than managing it, but it is also a starting point for engaging in an abundant life of deep connection and belonging.  

What is arising in you while reading this blog post? It could be a mix of resistant thoughts as well as an uplifting heart-glimmer that feels a call to a new life. It is helpful to feel the two different paradigms running through our nervous system: one from the contracted density of our unintegrated ancestral and cultural conditioning and the other from the expanded light of our soul calling us home to our life. 

Even a small taste of the generous abundance of our true nature can be a huge blessing in our life because we discover a miracle: that we can relax and be here in the simplicity of how things are. Managing life creates a lot of ungrounded (disconnected) thinking that robs us of our life-vitality and our life-place (which always begins where we are). Pausing to be touched by the suffering under repetitive thoughts can make the timeless whisper of our soul more audible. As divisive thoughts are grounded through the felt-awareness of our individual, collective, and ancestral bodies, our life changes.  Our life begins to make deep sense through the timeless stream of our soul’s embodiment.

The Hidden Gifts of Integrated Shadow

Group Inner Constellations, Reflections, Silence Practice

By Keira Louise Madsen at vaedderstudio.com

 

May your awareness be relaxed.
May it expand to include the grace and beauty of life during these intensifying times.

 

Turning towards the increasing intensity of unintegrated/denied/frozen collective and ancestral shadow contains within in it a hidden gift—a gift beyond imagination, a pearl beyond price, a heart open to a universal and timeless belonging-intelligence. This may sound altogether too fantastical, but when a quiet experiential belonging-to-a-larger-flow sense begins to pulse  through our nervous system, the resting-in-what-is gifts of shadow integration become difficult to deny.

 

Paradoxically, it is a sincere willingness to turn towards the exiled and undesirable that expands our contact with life. As we learn to trust life, we begin to realize that we have the ability to slow down and allow shadow to be here–seen and acknowledged. Presence comes on-line with this willingness, and allows us to know experientially that life is a process we belong to, irregardless of what the experience is. “We are not seeing the world as it is, we are seeing a wounded world” says Thomas Hübl. Shadow’s trapped unintegrated energy continues to explode in the world because it has nowhere to land, and yet must land–consciously or unconsciously. As conscious beings, the choice is ours. An abandoned shadow lives in our world and is creating chaos. Our western lives are built upon the habit of “getting away from.” Many use their spiritual practice to in order to get away from embodied life; wanting the light but not the dark.

 

If we choose life through personal preferences that avoid shadow, the collective message is that shadow is bigger than light. We actually add to the accumulation of shadow, while making “the mess out there” someone else’s” fault. This certainly seems to be the reality of our shared world: lots of pointing fingers and few integrating ones.
Our fear of unintegrated shadow and its chaotic nature is a learned fear. Each generation reinforces the turning away paradigm. And yet, we are souls born for these times are we not? Are we really separate from our wounded world, and not an essential part of it? Do we turn away and try to live on top of generations of trauma shadow, without honouring shadow’s repetitious and intensifying call for attention? Shadow teaches us where we have separated from life and calls us back from unconscious shadow-habits. The light lives within our courage to explore and bring unconscious energy back into life.

 

An important question for each of us wanting to evolve and expand our life is to look at how we are “here” in relationship to life. Are we here only as the echo our familial/cultural conditioning? Or can we also sense that we are here as a soul, that there is a part of us that is not bound by our unconscious conditioning? Can our “here” include life as it is right now: shadow or light, pleasant or unpleasant, shallow breath or deep breath … without trying to change how it is? What do I experience when I stop trying to manage life and simply listen to how life informs me? What old patterns, friendships, contracts are naturally released? We must discover the integration process for ourselves because shadow’s gift is given through the intimacy of direct experience.

 

Our willingness to be with life’s wounded shadow-parts expands to become a movement of universal restoration. No longer limited to a few saints through history, embodying the light behind the shadow is like small orchestras-in-training. LIght’s healing power is listening with life, not managing over life. One is joy-filled, one is stress-filled, and our body will let us know where we are in the process. And yet, I cannot open to the light authentically unless I trust in something I don’t already know.
So how do we learn to trust?  Ah! There is the question! Just for a moment, try turning towards what you are experiencing right now with a sort of naked vulnerability–not a top-down inquiry from the mind–but through an aware sensing that is without agenda. Turning towards life without a personal agenda takes less than a second, but over time it can change the quality and course of your life. The deepest change-makers in life are those “being changed” by life.

 

Without deep connection to life as it is, our spiritual path is vulnerable to disembodied ideologies that further distance us from the hidden gifts of authentic connection. We each walk a unique path and yet we can support each other to walk that uniqueness into life more fully. Contrary to what we may have believed, discovering our “authentic walk” within unintegrated shadow is profoundly healing. Mental habits of projection and fixing begin to calm and relax as we experience being in deep relationship with life just as it is. In these moments of pause and embodied reflection, we might discover a precise and intimate felt-sense of our inner landscape—healthy or wounded, unbound or contracted, flowing or numb–and somehow, it all belongs. I am not meaning to imply that this is easy, only that the reward is implicit within the journey.

 

When finally seen and felt, we understand that all of life belongs, because the nature of life is light and shadow. When we see and feel the aspects of our displaced shadow-exiles  compassion naturally arises. We no longer need to resist or find fault with life when we engage with life on its terms. Within the depth of this understanding the wounds of the past have space to be welcomed into our consciousness. Witnessing the paradoxical miracle within this depth continues to be the blessed inspiration for my PhD studies, related ICM/UH groups, and sound healings. Making the hidden shadows more apparent and including what our ancestors and human collective have historically feared and rejected is a living and felt-sense in our nervous system. When trauma belongs more fully and precisely named and felt, we discover that we can be in life with more joy, spontaneity, and authenticity. We are free from the human wounded story because we have been brave enough to include it. In doing so, we make space for an authentic human story to awaken within us. We heal the world because we make peace with it. The war inside subsides.

 

For most of us, direct experiential contact with our historic, personal, and collective wounds occurs within a strong intentional group energy—that is, an open field of presence where we are not trying to manipulate or fix anything. Initially, we are simply being with our discomfort, but we stay with this because we honour where we are. The Tao reminds us that “we start the journey of 1000 miles beneath our own feet.” We learn to listen to how our discomfort informs our body, emotions, and thought patterns.
The intelligence of our nervous systems is universal and timeless. It also holds the unintegrated shadow patterns of our ancestors, our souls, and the collective. Many of us have experienced this wide-open relational intelligence as children, but exposure to the unintegrated trauma of our birth place/time/family caused us to protect ourselves from this deeply alive and universal connection to life.

 

Both the Fall Inner Constellations Workshops and Spring Universal Heart series have emerged through the grace of Thomas Hubl’s mystical teachings and trauma trainings. Following on the heels of ten years of exploring healing through Silence and Sound, Thomas’s uncompromising commitment to including trauma in our spiritual practice has been revolutionary me and the way I work with groups and individuals. I now understand that a grounded or embodied spirituality frees us from having to “wrong” life or each other in any way because we learn to be here for life and with life.
Practice groups willing to explore and embody shadow-inclusion expand our shared world. We know ourselves and each other from a more holistic and generous consciousness. Light flows more naturally and effortlessly through our nervous system. The soft trusting centre of the heart becomes the pearl beyond price as we learn to trust life through a deeply authentic experience of her in all her earthly human parts. With joy and an expansive sense of home coming we discover the life-giving gifts of integrated shadow.

The Greening Promise of Summer Solstice

Group Inner Constellations, Reflections

As summer solstice approaches and we witness nature blooming all around, we might chance to be blessed by a similar stirring within our own bodies. Life’s abundant promise rises in our midst once again as winter’s dormancy tranforms into glorious green canopies and flowering blossoms— endless in their variety, shape, and colour. Once again, nature reminds us of the miraculous universal intelligence from which we are inseparable—even in Ukraine summer’s greening continues.

How then to navigate the stark contrast between human destruction and life’s abundance? How to realize our true place within the radiant miracle of life while traumatizing atrocities abound? Here is precisely where the “rubber” of our spiritual practice meets the “road” of our incarnation. Slowing down to presence and feel the intergenerational trauma unconsciously stored within the nervous system of our own body can be as radically restorative as the lush greening of a dried winter branch. Our latent spiritual potential arrives as an awakened nervous system and a heart pulsing with the promise of a new humanity. Throughout history, this timeless inner-greening potential has brought mystics and saints to their knees in gratitude, wonder, and service.*

An embodied spiritual response to trauma is one of slowing down so that trauma symptoms no longer need to be “managed,” but find their place in a consciously engaged relational process. Acting out trauma symptoms through projecting or numbing is a collective habit. It causes us to build our lives on top of trauma rather than in relationship to it. We learn to take this way of living as “normal.” A spacious awareness, on the other hand, reveals where our inner-greening potential is damaged.

Summer’s greening potential needs the soil of our individual, ancestral, and cultural blueprints. Greening takes all of us, including the unconscious exiled parts that continue to show destructive symptoms. The life that has contracted from trauma becomes the rich soil of embodied spirituality. With considerable humility, we discover that our trauma belongs here as a “vital ingredient” on an embodied spiritual path— and not an obstacle “in our way.” As we encounter the radical grace of inner-greening a universal intelligence begins to pulse within our own hearts and nervous system.

Instead of being many, splintered, we unify into the one body of the world. We create peace. Thomas Hübl

Pause for just a moment … reflecting on what resonates in you as you read these words. I encourage you to slow down and sit with your embodied (felt) perception. Do the words open an inner-space in you? Does your mind argue with them? Are you left unmoved by them? Confused by them? Invited by them? More important than our cognitive assessment of whether these words are true or false is our felt sense of them. How do these words inform the subtle nature of your perceiving and understanding of yourself and the world you live in?

Many paradoxes swim together in the stream of our spiritual embodiment: in emptiness, we are filled; in being intimate with the darkness of fear, a light begins to glow; in not-knowing, a deep transpersonal knowing begins flowing through our nervous system. The promise of summer solstice is an invitation towards relaxing and enjoying the abundant life-presence in this moment. “Trust me,” the greening whispers … “trust me because I am your deepest nature.” As the heart awakens to this compellingly intimate, ancient, yet ungraspable promise, it is as though a wind passes through our heartstrings, releasing harmonious notes of blessing and peace. Where do you sit in relation to the glory of your true nature as summer solstice approaches? How does the greening potential show up in your life?

The promise mirrored in nature’s beauty is already within us. As we practice breathing life into our trauma contractions—just as they are—we are also opening ourselves to the eternal greening promise of summer. Conscious presence is the activation energy of a timeless promise that invites our greening potential into every moment. Our deepest purpose is revealed through our courageous relationship with life and mirrored back to us each year in the greening promise of summer’s solstice.

* (For more about “greening,” see Greening Moon-Coherence in a Sun-Seared World at https://lauramadsen.ca/phd-research/)

An Inner-Spring

Group Inner Constellations, Reflections
AN INNER SPRING

An inner-spring is arriving: a rebirth of beauty, an experience of knowing our true nature from this grace-filled place. Can you feel it moving in your nervous system and heart? My sense is that this abundant beauty lives within us all the time, but the spring season helps it arrive more viscerally.

This spring feels different as we enter the second year of Covid-19 lock-down.  It feels like the “pause” time is birthing something new–a gestation. A new way, a new sensitivity, a new relating, a new me, a new you, a new us. If together, we discover a spiritual beauty that stays with, that befriends, that understands, and “stands under” that which is challenging to presence within ourselves, we become  containers of bold sensitivity, ushering in new possibilities.

These possibilities help to stabilize the emerging inner-spring that sees and keeps track of exiled trauma pain with heart-eyes  of compassion. The simple recognition that there is nothing to fix, and that our willingness to be in relationship with discomfort is love, and the most effective of trauma remedies. A better future calls us home to our “now”; a future of spiritual embodiment where good, kind, whole and connected become the norm. It will take groups of like-minded/hearted people to land the beauty of our inner-spring. Just two letters rearranged, and we move from “scared” (in) isolation to “sacred” connection. In that vital relational movement to see and feel, the world becomes a brighter more friendly place because we are in relationship.

We touch life and each other differently when trauma has been befriended. Experiencing ourselves and others more authentically reveals the beauty of our Soul. Tibetan Buddhists long ago foresaw the arrival of Warriors of Compassion and Discernment. However fragmented our inner and outer worlds may seem, we walk this evolutionary journey together. As we begin enjoying the beauty of Spring 2021, I wish you the blessings of befriending the challenging places and feeling the warmth of connection.

Stillness Within

Reflections, Silence Practice
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By Keira Madsen 2015

Stillness Within: A Communal Intelligence

In moments of deep stillness, it would seem that Silence surfaces from the deepest recesses of our being. By some mysterious hand of unspeakable ease, Silence offers a Knowing Intelligence that gently lifts us far beyond habits of an individuated “self.” Within a field beyond time and space, there is an inclusiveness that shatters self-imposed limitations. In these moments, I have experienced “a new world” that is both fierce and gentle: fierce in its uncompromising clarity, and gentle in its compelling generosity.

As wonderful as this sounds — and is — I also experience times of painful resistance to the direction of this authentic practice. During these times, I am torn between the desire to stake a personal claim within this field of generosity; and a deeper Knowing that everything turns to dust within its landscape.

The extraordinary edge to this Communal Intelligence is that everything belongs. Everything. Even my desire to personally manipulate it belongs. The paradoxical realization that even my egocentricity is a non-issue, brings with it a palpable heart-response that spills over into my entire body. I experience a fluid freedom that causes my body and psyche to relax. This generous field of “All is Well,” even within the struggle, must be what the mono-theistic traditions refer to as Faith, or Buddhism’s trust in the Dharma. The thrill of these mystical moments is augmented when shared in communion with others. There is no “teacher,” but rather a willingness to lean beyond our separative habits, into the communal nature of the Stillness  within.

This prose, written in December 2012, expresses some of the inclusive abundance of this Communal Intelligence, as well as my resistance to it — trying to hold on, to make the experience “something about me.” Like many of us, making life “something about me” has been encouraged and rewarded. And yet, mystical awakenings of deep connection far surpass any fulfillment I might experience within the separative paradigms we fiercely hold as reality. Deep Stillness awakens a Communal Intelligence that is uncompromisingly paradoxical: in both its glory, and in the ruthless mirror it holds before me. It shows me the nothingness of my Allness.

When I listen … deeply …

I am not alone.

Something echoes through my being,

like a distant memory …

It speaks of endless time,

 endless tenderness, endless generosity.

As I sit alert, ever more still in response to this energy,

wave after wave of Reality washes through my heart,

which is becoming The Heart,

and I lose track of the identity that entered the experience.

No wonder I have been avoiding Silence Practice lately.

It is no longer about me.

It can no longer be about me …

It is now about Love,

And Love’s story is not about me.

I don’t like the lost feeling when life is not about me,

so I make ugly scenarios in my mind.

I make things up about how much better or worse I am than others,

or what they must be thinking about me.

I really don’t believe any of it, but it keeps me busy enough

to distract me from being nothing

in this dynamic field of Love.

Love …

uncompromising, and yet wildly compelling;

disorienting, and yet gloriously up-lifting.

One can never find the separate-self identity here.

It is burned beyond recognition.

The fire of Love is strong,

uncompromising,

Liberating beyond comprehension,

and utterly unshakable.

Nothing exists but Her …

nothing

ever

did.

Scriptural References

“When a man knows the solitude of silence, and feels the joy of quietness, he is then free from fear and he feels the joy of the dharma” (Buddha)

“Be Still and Know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10)

Permeability

Reflections, Silence Practice

FT-Wheel-HEAD

Over the course of the last weekly Silence Practice group, the recognition of our need for “permeability” evolved quite naturally. People began to recognize their availability for something beyond the conditioned mind and heart. Like a stain-glass window, many of us began to sense our unique colour (essence) becoming more permeable to the light.

Relating to Silence through our personal willingness to “let go” into stillness, makes us more and more transparent to Divine influence. When we begin to taste (experience) the profound effects of “being permeated,”  our spiritual eyes open and we are able to see the Divine Light in another — even when they may be blind to it themselves!

The result of increasing permeability is a transformational alchemy that opens us to the experience of our true nature: which has never been — or ever could be — separate from Love. It is impossible to know this if our heart is closed by habits of unwillingness. The simple directness of Love, makes a closed heart is impermeable.

When defended habits bind the heart, we succumb to increasing levels of spiritual blindness. A classic “catch 22” situation can develop, whereby we defend our defences through constant (unconscious) habits — usually rooted in fear. We eventually become twisted in our denial habits — to the point where we will strike-out when the truth is spoken.

Many times in the Hebrew Bible ( Old Testament), “God’s people” are described as stiff-necked and/or hard-hearted. This is a story of the human condition. It is an eternal story. It is therefore a story that we cannot ignore. If we do, we do so at our own peril.  The myriad forms of global crisis are fueling a deep calling to live life from a higher dimension of conscious-relatedness.

It is profoundly humbling to recognize where we have become stiff-necked and hard-hearted.  But it is this same humility which grows our permeability — our willingness to be influenced by higher states of Consciousness.

The inter-permeability of higher states of Consciousness, makes it the only reliable path to recovering our true nature in God and in Love. Unless we experience the orchestration of  Love’s Intelligent movement within and between us, we remain stiff-necked and hard-hearted.

The defended ego likes to talk about surrender and humility, but until ego learns to be permeable, it will remain on the outside of Love. What does it take to permeate the hardened walls of a heart wounded by pride, shame, or fear? Like many, I have tried to “Love from the outside” by living up to ideals that I thought supported Love. But, ideals and concepts don’t permeate. They don’t foster the surrendered nature of the “permeable ego.” Only the permeable ego can be present in Love.

Love doesn’t need support. It needs our surrender. Surrender comes from being on the inside of Love, whereas support carries the dangerous illusion that we are somehow outside of love and able to orchestrate It! This is the primary trespass of ego-pride, and widespread in our Western culture. This creates spiritual blindness, especially within New Age spiritual movements and “liberated” Churches.

So what is to be done? What does freedom from our pride (stiff necks) and defense (hard-hearts) look like?  How do we find others who are truly interested in being transformed by Love, rather than discussing It as though it were some kind of object? How do we recognize the presence of such true Love within our relationships?

Somehow, we need to come together to practice a way of relating that is aligned with our True Nature. When we are able to be still within ourselves, we are in relationship with the Depth of Silence. This Depth is a place of undivided reality. It is not separate from the unmanifested or the manifested. The experience of this Oneness does not compute in the ordinary thinking mind with which most of us are heavily identified.

The courage it takes to be willing to practice relating from Depth cannot be overestimated. It is truly the most profound gift we can give to each other. The courage to recognize that we belong here together,  within an Intelligence of Universal Love, comes through the activation of the Permeable Heart.

The Permeable Heart is activated when we are willing to not-know. When we are more interested in discovery and inquiry then we are in defending a particular position. With time and practice, it is my experience and observation that this is when the heart begins to be permeable. We then see the world through softer eyes, which can take in the world through the heart’s compassion. It is not something we do, it is something we experience when we let go of “doing.”

It is with great delight that I have discovered my mind is also permeable! Drop by drop, like an IV-drip, the Universal Heart begins to enter and expand the personal heart-mind. Stiff-necked and hard-hearted habits begin to yield to higher influences.  We begin to truly live, and to live truly. We have become permeable to Love.

Backdoor Revelations

Reflections

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Over time, the “letting go” nature of Silence Practice begins to yield “backdoor revelations.” And nothing quite prepares us for the immediate freshness of one of these transparent (open) moments. It is like discovering hidden treasures in the most unlikely places or times.

In the heightened mood of a backdoor revelation, we find ourselves in relationship to the world in radically different ways; while being more grounded and present than ever! Backdoor encounters have the paradoxical nature of being both simultaneously natural and new. While feeling deeply relaxed and at home, we also feel a sense of emergence. Something has awakened that I wasn’t aware of before.

Our absorbing frontal-self, with its accompanying world views and mental habits, leaves little space for emerging awarenesses. But through sincere and regular practices of stillness and authentic communication, we build awareness “sensitivities” within the body, and the subtle energy fields around us and between us. We learn to trust the process of leaning in to what we “don’t know,” rather than falling backwards into conditioned patterns of  already-knowing.  We do this on and off the cushion. We practice in every moment we remember. We don’t expect outcome, but we are resolute.

And yet … in the wake of a backdoor experience, we see that nothing prepares us for the vastness of that experience.  Because … a backdoor revelation takes everything we have previously “believed” about the “how-to’s, where-fores, and there-fore’s,” and turns them on their presumptuous heads. That is the simple purity of backdoor action — direct, uncomplicated, and impersonal. And did I mention devastatingly humbling?

Jesus spoke about the first being last and the last being first. He also spoke about the meek inheriting the earth. He never endorsed the known — the power structure — personally, culturally, or religiously. Backdoor revelations displace power structures in every life-facet. In many ways, Jesus’ subversive parables are reminiscent of a Crazy Wisdom teacher. He undermined cultural and religious structures almost constantly. If he were alive today, I am sure our narcissistic ideologies (secular,religious, and spiritual) would become targets for his sharp tongued uncompromising  commitment to Love.

Jesus also spoke of many being called, but few being chosen. I sense that there is a deep calling in many of us, and those “chosen” become servants to the unknown future-of-our- divine-becoming — however reluctantly that may manifest at times. (Even Jesus showed reluctance in the final hours of Gethsemane.) Servants of the not-yet-here future are pulled from familiar or recognizable paths and ways of living, into something far beyond their personal habits or “bucket list.” They are given something far more fulfilling, and yet infinitely more demanding.

The demand is for nothing less than everything. The parable of the rich man not being able to enter the kingdom of heaven addresses the reversal inherent in the backdoor landscape. Our Western tendency to live on steroids of self importance is living “richly.” This creates a certain psychic/emotional/intellectual “fatness” that removes us from direct relationship with Life. Over time, the practice of  “letting go” and choosing to align with stillness and silence, teaches us to travel lightly with our opinions, judgements, and fears — no matter how precious or founded.

The refining process of being “chosen” into servanthood, eventually means that we are available to listen more reliably from a holistic/deeper/higher dimension of Self. We become effective servants for the greater evolution of  God/Self Consciousness. We become increasingly able to see and act from beyond the slings and arrows of the personal dimension. For example, when we are offended, we refrain from throwing stones, and take 100% responsibility for what we are feeling. Moreover, we do this willingly because we know that our life — our True Life — depends upon it. As Crazy Wisdom teacher, Lee Lozowick (d. 2010) would say: “Practice like your hair’s on fire.” When we have nothing left to defend, everything can live through us. We are free to live fully engaged because nothing stands between us and the movement of life.

The evolution of consciousness into higher/more inclusive dimensions is a backdoor affair. Any knowing before hand, or intellectual prowess that might try to lead the way, needs to be released in the uncompromising rigour of backdoor revelations. The mystics paint images with their words, but they do not create very much for us to hang on to. At best, they leave a trace … a fragrance … that lingers long enough for us to realize that we’re being called by a divine reality — distant, but strangely familiar.

Backdoor Revelations might read like this:

1. We do the preparing, Grace does the choosing.

2. Backdoors are hidden when we lose ourselves to front door living only.

3. The backdoor revelation is the Truth of our Heart. We discover that we are home.

4. When we have “steeped” enough in Truth, only the backdoor exists.

5. Backyard discoveries “include,” no matter what habits of fear & judgement  “conclude.”

6. Shared Truth has always been stronger than Separate Suffering.

7. Backdoor realities are relaxing, uplifting, and aligning.

8. We are where we are going.

 

The Call of the Wild Heart

Mystical Theology, Reflections

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Again, I was awakened this morning between 4:30 & 5:00 AM by the clarion call.  And again, I lay in bed for 45 minutes convincing myself that I needed more sleep. But sleep is impossible when the heart awakens. With this realization, I surrendered to the magnificent Beauty that seemed to be flowing from “my” heart centre.

Where does this come from? Who does it belong to? And what is it within me that could ever resist such Beauty? Choosing sleep over this? I find my body in a state of breathless  anticipation — like the delightful anticipation of meeting a lover, sensing that something is about to happen that is mysteriously beyond both of us. And so we lean in and make ourselves available … to the mystery. Beyond all common sense or reason: we trust in the unseen, in what has not yet fully shown itself.

I lean into the thrilling nature of this Wild Heart. My whole body feels awake.  The bottoms of my feet feel like they’ve been slapped. They vibrate and tingle. My thinking mind trys to make sense of the experience: “Not “my” heart, and yet it lives within my heart. How could it be my heart calling me beyond myself? A call going far beyond even my loftiest ‘ideas’ of enlightenment, and any self-constructed limitations of what is possible and real.”

The nature of the Wild Heart is untameable by religious tradition or secular culture.  It has a language and law all its own. Its wild unpredictability frightens me. The “me” that I identify with has no way to find its ground here. Niceties and norms fall flat. Father Thomas Keating refers to the “Divine Indwelling.”  This certainly resonates with what I am feeling. While it is not good to get stuck on definitions, it is important to name experiences.  Naming helps us grow in understanding because we are reasoning creatures. It helps us to integrate divine beauty through awareness. Like many, I have strong tendencies to claim divine experiences as my own.  To pump myself up with importance because I have “tasted” (“Taste and See that the Lord is Good” – Psalm 34:8). I have found this habit to be devastating to the alive relationship with the Wild Heart. Surrender is the only way, and then learning to listen.

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For the most part, I have let fear run my life.  Fear of being nobody, fear of not fitting in, fear of disapproval and being misunderstood. So I have turned away from the Wild Heart, the Divine Indwelling,  and the deadliest fear of all — I have claimed “Divine Tastes” as my own. But even while I have chosen to remain small and safe, throughout my life, people have continuously seen through my “straw-woman-smallness” and expressed their appreciation of who they “saw” me to be. And yet, for the most part, I have still defended against the beauty of the Wild Heart and its abundant gift of undefended freedom. Jesus taught from the Wild Heart. He also taught how to have relationship with it: “If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it” (Mt. 10:39).

With 6 years of focus on the philosophy and practice of Silence behind me, habits of denial and fear are slowly weakening. I can feel it. Instead of shutting down with fear, I am simply being present with it. Such a simple practice, and yet with so much power. It seems that the Wild Heart has no problem with fear!

I am also discovering groups of people here, and around the world (internet is amazing), who are willing to learn to relate in ways that allow for the untameable Beauty, Truth, and Goodness to emerge within and between us. With time, we learn to operate from courage and trust, allowing us to bypass individual and collective fear patterns. We relax into ways of participating in something deeper/higher than the separate-self and its illusion of safety. Our willingness counts a lot. Our willingness to get out of bed at 5 AM and write a Blog Post. Our willingness to lose our life in the stillness, so that we can come alive in the Wild Beauty of the untamed Heart.

Namaste