A deeper inner wellspring.

heather
Oct 26, 2025
6 min read

Updated: Nov 10, 2025

Dear Ones,

How are we to move beyond simply managing crises to co-creating a new pattern of being that is adequate to the complexity and sacredness of the world? How do we stand rooted and firm—clear in mind, emotion, and body—as death/birth doulas, midwives, and shepherds able to see and act skillfully rather than be swept up in polarization or despair?

We know that when basic human needs are threatened, the main survival strategies physiologically wired in us are fighting (confronting a threat by setting a boundary against it), flighting (escaping from or avoiding a threat and helping others do the same), fawning (appeasing the threat to avoid harm), and freezing (becoming immobile or numb when there is no way to escape a threat).

We can look at a lot of the good work taking place in world 48 as trying to assist and protect the basic human needs of those whose needs are not being met. Many people are fighting, flighting, and fawning to help others out of circumstances of violence, exploitation, inequity, etc. and this is very necessary sacred work that we can participate in as well as support.

At the same time, we know that in these rough (world 48, 96 & 192) conditions, very difficult life circumstances unfold again and again. We experience the ache of unmet basic human needs, and we understand that survival is never guaranteed for us or anyone else. This is a hard truth of the world we are a part of. And, at the same time, we know that Yeshua (Jesus) spoke about an abundant life accessible even in the midst of these conditions (John 10:10).

Somehow, we must find our way to a deeper anchor, what James Finley calls “a base of operation that is deeper than the self that things happen to.” We must sink into the taproot of our heart “in a presence that transcends [our] ordinary humanity, and at the same time utterly permeates it through, and through, and through, and through, and empowers [us] to be present to do the best [we] can to be a nurturing person, a protective person, a healing person, in a peace that isn’t dependent on how that might turn out specifically for [us] or [our] loved ones.”

We must learn to draw on a deeper inner wellspring of nourishment and abundance whose source is the origin of all Life. This sustenance can be recognized here now in the kingdom of God, the imaginal realm and beyond (world 24 and higher). It is the bread of life that satisfies (John 6:27, 32-35, 51) and the living water that quenches (John 4:13-14, 7:37-38), available to all who wish to partake. It is the provisions that arise from an inner obedience (listening), alignment, and service to the will of God (John 4:31-34). Even as we dwell within a reality where, in the words of Finley, “God protects us from nothing but somehow unexplainably sustains us in all things.”

So, even as we engage the important and compassionate work of meeting the good, material, basic human needs of all beings, we are simultaneously invited into a radical entrustment, that beyond these needs we can root ourselves in a Self beyond the self that things happen to, and feed on, drink from, those sources that are beyond material. The provisions that are eternal. We do not need to abandon one for the other. We can be rooted in multiple worlds co-present within and all around us, the entire Ray of Creation, alive, flowing, and sustaining.

This is our work to do as we navigate the conditions of this unraveling in-between place we are in.

With Love,

Heather

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses

*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*

Monday, October 20th

Reading: "One of our cultural identities or myths is of the one who goes it alone and pulls herself up by her bootstraps—the rebel, the outlaw, the self-made person. What a lie. What an ingratitude. What a danger. We are each the recipient of innumerable currents of life—through the lives of others-streaming into and influencing our own lives. – Geoffrey Shugen Arnold

Chant: The streams of my Father’s love run daily through me, the streams of my Mother’s love run daily through me, from the holy Fountain of Life to the seed throughout the whole creation – Paulette Meier

Tuesday, October 21st

Reading: "While despair might permeate the greater part of the nation, others achieved a new realization of the fact that only readiness for self-sacrifice could enable a community to survive. Some of the greatest saints in history lived in times of national decadence, raising the banner of duty and service against the flood of depravity and despair." – Sir John Glubb

Chant: The earth is full, full of your [beauty, trueness, mercy], the earth is full, full of you, your [beauty, trueness, mercy] fills the whole earth – Darlene Franz

Wednesday, October 22nd

Reading: 'All the Good in You' by Andrea Gibson

When all the good in you

Starts arguing with all the bad in you

About who you really are,

Never let the bad in you

Make the better case

Chant: Surrender to the beauty, become a mighty kindness – Elizabeth Combs

Thursday, October 23rd

Reading: “The mystics have intuitively understood this: that we live grounded, rooted in this great "electromagnetic field of love [or mercy]." Itself invisible, it is the hidden bedrock of actuality. In it, all things live and move and have their being. Nothing can fall out of it…

“The all-important implication of this insight is that this field in which we live and move and have our being is relational... In this great electromagnetic field of love, everything - from the tiniest electrons to the great three persons of the Trinity — is endlessly exchanging, giving and receiving of itself in that riot of self-communication that, in fact, constitutes the very dynamism of love. This field is not an "it" but a Thou." And it is only in opening our own hearts to the irre-ducibly personal and relational nature of this Thou in whom we are rooted that we ever come to discover who we truly are.” – Cynthia Bourgeault, The Trinity and the Law of Three, p. 151

Chant: We Swim in Mercy, as in an endless sea, we swim in mercy, as in an endless sea – Psalm 103:11 put to chant by Susan Latimer

Friday, October 24th with Tom

Reading: ““We have a longing we don’t understand, for a oneness we don’t understand, but we know it’s true because we’ve tasted it. This is our awakened heart experiencing infinite love, again and again, in our most childlike hour.” And what can that childlike hour look like? “[It emerges when you recognize] the invincible preciousness of yourself experienced in moments when you find tears for yourself.” - James Finley

Chant: Return again, return again, return to the [Root of your Heart]. Return to who you are, return to what you are, return to where you are born and reborn again – Shlomo Carlebach, sung by Cantor Azi Schwartz of Park Avenue Synagogue

Saturday, October 25th with Tom

Reading: "Eckhart says an image is not of itself nor is it for itself. It has its origins (in God)... It does not belong to what is foreign to this origin. That’s very important... I do not belong to what is foreign to this image... An image receives its being immediately from that of which it is an image. It is one being with it and is the same being... Imagine you’re looking at an image of yourself in a full-length mirror except as a self-reflective thinking image of you. And it’s been through a lot of therapy, it’s meditated a lot, it’s worked through a lot of things and It/You think the time has come to branch out on its own, that it doesn’t need God. And you try to explain to the image as gently as possible that it won’t go well without God because it’s an image of you but the image just thinks you’re trying to hold it back, you’re preventing me. And so, to prove your point, you step halfway off the mirror, half the image disappears. It has a panic attack, has to go back on Xanax, goes into therapy, it says, “I’m not real.” Now, the image is real, it just isn’t real the way it thinks it’s real. And Eckhart says that’s us with God... See, we think we’re real without God. I think I’m here all by myself... We are the song God sings. And without God singing the song of us: no us! and we’re trying to find our way to experientially live in that." – James Finley, transcript of Turning to the Mystics: Eckhart