Multi-realmic Beings: Bearing Good Fruit

“By their fruit you will recognize them.” – Matthew 7:16

Dear Ones,

We are now well into the season of Eastertide, a time in the liturgical year when Yeshua, having passed through death, appeared again and again to his students. He came reminding them of the arc of his life, consolidating his teachings, and encouraging them to carry the path forward.

Through the lens of the Ray of Creation, Yeshua’s life, death, and resurrection reveal something essential about our own possibility. They point to a way of living rooted in a deeper selfhood, of World 24: the Realm of Heaven within and around us, where we awaken our spiritual senses and awareness. This selfhood can increasingly come under the influence of World 12, what Cynthia Bourgeault calls the Christic realm of sacrificial love, objective conscience, and a more unified “Real I.”

In this light, we are invited to live fully in our earthly condition (World 48), while not being limited to it. World 48 corresponds to our ordinary, narrative self. World 96 reflects a more contracted, mechanical mode of being. World 192, even more so, points toward states of deep bondage. Yet the movement of the path is not away from these, but toward a greater integration, one in which higher influences can be received and embodied here.

Yeshua’s teaching consistently challenged the idea of a distant, separate God requiring mediation. Instead, he revealed that the divine had already entered even the densest layers of reality. These realms (World 24 and 12) are not postponed, they are present in our midst when we have developed the senses of the heart which can see, smell, taste, hear, and touch it. Our invitation is to learn how to live in multiple realms simultaneously, with increasing awareness and participation.

Our ongoing work is to become, in this way, multi-realmic beings. As we begin to live more consciously in our World 48 centers—intellectual, emotional, and moving—a new capacity emerges. Cynthia calls this “luminous seeing,” a way of perceiving guided by the heart. In this tradition the heart is not the seat of emotion, it is an organ of perception and reception, capable of sensing truth beyond the reach of our ordinary faculties. We can open to higher influences while remaining honest about our more limited patterns. Over time, this creates a more coherent inner ecosystem, something that becomes tangible not only within us, but in the atmosphere we emanate.  It is precisely this capacity, to see from the heart rather than from a contracted, reactive place, that the moment we are living in is asking of us. 

So let’s pause and take an honest look at our overall state of being and ways of operating within the ray. Bring some awareness to your baseline inner posture toward what is unfolding in the world. 

Toward ICE agents. 

Toward those protesting ICE agents. 

Toward Republicans. 

Toward Democrats. 

Toward Donald Trump. 

Toward those who do not like Donald Trump. 

Not what you think it should be. Not what you've been taught or feel expected to believe. But what is actually here, in this moment? What emotions arise? What thoughts move through you? What sensations are present in your body? Can you see this from the deeper selfhood of World 24 who can witness all of this without judging, editing, or needing to change it?

Now take a moment to reflect on how you speak about current events with those around you. What is the tone of your voice? What energy is behind your words? Do you feel inwardly free as you speak, or are you caught, identified, carried along by automatic reactions? What are some of your easiest and most difficult identifications to spot? Perhaps you find yourself identified with being kind, accepting, and understanding which may at times quietly slide into passivity, or into a kind of soft condoning of harm. Perhaps you find yourself identified with the heat of righteous conviction, and carry with it real anger, judgment, even hatred toward those you perceive as causing harm. You may feel justified and even feel that anything less would be a moral failure.

When we are identified with a position, a side, a reaction we are seeing from a contracted place. Our perception is narrowly shaped by the selfhoods of World 48, 96, and/or 192 and our heart becomes divided. And it is a divided heart, the desert Abbas and Ammas remind us, which cannot perceive fully. It cannot receive the finer movements of conscience or respond from inner freedom. This is not a moral indictment. It is simply a limitation that we all share, and one this path invites us to work with honestly.

Consider, for a moment, an ICE agent. Someone who may believe they are serving a lawful process, or who quietly senses something is off but feels constrained. Someone navigating fear, pressure, and uncertainty, much like the rest of us. To see their humanity does not mean agreeing with their actions. It does not require abandoning discernment or softening our recognition of harm. It asks something real of us: 

Can we see reality and what is needed in response, from an inner platform that is able to take in the situation objectively and respond without hatred? 

Based on a practice of writing a love letter to a suicide bomber from Thich Nhat Hanh, teacher Kaira Jewel Lingo offered the practice of writing a love letter to an ICE agent. Perhaps we might take up this practice of writing a love letter to an ICE agent or, if that wouldn’t be difficult, to a democratic socialist or anyone whom you find yourself having disdain for. Of course this is not a letter to be sent, but one that opens us to imagining their life, their fears, what has shaped them. The point is not to dissolve discernment. It is to soften the rigidity that keeps us from seeing the whole person, and in doing so, to discover something about ourselves.

Because if we look honestly, we may begin to recognize our own capacity for fear, for harm, for closing down when we are not awake. And that recognition quietly dismantles the wall between us and them. We are not as separate as we would like to believe. The question then becomes harder and more interesting: How do I meet another without abandoning truth  and without abandoning my own humanity?

This is what it means, I think, to bear good fruit in a time like this. Rooted in genuine feeling, and grounded in an equanimity that meets the fray rather than escapes it. The capacity to see clearly, name harm honestly, hold a line or boundary with courage when that is what is called for and remain inwardly unbound while doing it. To meet another with dignity, even when what they represent must be firmly opposed.

We are living in a time of real instability. The impulse to react, take sides, fix, oppose, or withdraw is strong and understandable. We will not always know what the right action is. But we can begin to sense the state of our own being. We can become more available and receptive to an impulse that arises from somewhere deeper than our reactivity.

That is the fruit this season is asking us to grow.

With love,

Heather

You can now find these reflections on Substack.

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Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses

*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*

Monday, April 13th with Tom

Reading: "This morning when I was saying Prime under the pine trees in front of the hermitage, I saw a wounded deer limping along in the field, one leg incapacitated. I was terribly sad at this and began weeping bitterly. And something quite extraordinary happened. I will never forget standing there weeping and looking at the deer standing still looking at me questioningly for a long time, or minute or so. The deer bounded off without any sign of trouble." — Thomas Merton

Monk Merton

He’d be drunk or dead, lying

in a gutter somewhere (said his

 friend to me) except for the cloister

and the hard swallow of

its ancient rule, that desire

to see beyond

the walls. Those wrought

iron rails the rose climbs, the kite

ascending by the very knot

of its resistance.

— Tom Amsberry

Chant: As the Deer Longs

Tuesday, April 14th

Reading: “In every single one of us though unbeknownst to most of us, is the level that Thomas Keating describes as our "spiritual awareness." "Awareness" might be too mental a word to describe it, however; the sensation is much more visceral, more like [a tug we experience]… drawing [us] down into [our] depths. You might picture it as a kind of interior compass whose magnetic north is always fixed on God. It's there; it's as much a part of what holds you in life as your breathing or your heartbeat. And its purpose, just like a compass, is for orientation.” — Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, p.12

Chant: Let me hear what you will speak, when I turn to you my heart

Wednesday, April 15th

Reading: “The problem is that most of us are not in touch with our spiritual awareness (or at least, not deeply and consistently enough in touch with it), let alone having any idea of what it's there for or how to use it. It comes upon us only rarely… That "nostalgia for the divine" sweeps over us and we are left trembling before the presence of a Mystery almost more vivid and beautiful than we can bear. But ordinary life does not encourage such moments, and the impression fades, to be revisited only in our dreams, the usual repository of our spiritual awareness.

“But spiritual awareness is actually a way of perceiving, just as ordinary awareness is a way of perceiving. And as with ordinary awareness, there is a sense of identity or selfhood generated through this mode of perception. The big difference between them is that whereas ordinary awareness perceives through self-reflexive consciousness, which splits the world into subject and object; spiritual awareness perceives through an intuitive grasp of the whole and an innate sense of belonging. It's something like sounding the note G on the piano and instantly hearing the D and the B that surround it and make it a chord. And since spiritual awareness is perception based on harmony, the sense of selfhood arising out of it is not plagued by that sense of isolation and anxiety that dominates life at the ordinary level of awareness.” — Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, p.113

Chant: You the One, One in All, say I Am, I Am You 

— The Oriental Orthodox Order in the West 

Thursday, April 16th

Reading: “If you wish to experience what lies beneath, spiritual tradition teaches, the first step is simply to pull the plug on that constant self-reflexive activity of the mind. And that's what intentional silence, or meditation, is set up to do. It's like putting a stick in the spoke of thinking, so that the whole closed circuit gets derailed and the more subtle awareness at the depths of your being can begin to make its presence known.

— Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, p.16

Chant: “Stillness, deep deep within us. From small beginnings it flows into the living waters. The ocean of God, through our stillness, God moves.” 

— Words of Gerard Guiton from Stillness, p. 23, put to chant by Paulette Meier

Friday, April 17th with Joy

Reading: Gospel of Thomas, Logion 24 His disciples asked: "Teach us about the place where you dwell, for we must seek it." He told them: Those who have ears, let them hear! There is light within people of light, and they shine it upon the whole world. If they do not shine it, what darkness!

A great deal of today's Kabbalah refers to the raising of holy sparks. This comes from the teaching of Luria, who said, "There is no sphere of existence, including organic and inorganic nature, that is not full of holy sparks which are mixed in with the kelippot (husks) and need to be separated from them and lifted up."

… If gathered together into one place— not a physical place, but symbolically the center of the universe-all the sparks combined would radiate ultimate awareness. But when scattered, the sparks drop to denser and denser levels of consciousness, represented by shells or husks (kelippot) that surround them.

Every particle in our physical universe, every structure and every being, is a shell that contains sparks of holiness. Our task, according to Luria, is to release each spark from the shell and raise it up, ultimately to return it to its original state. The way these sparks are raised is through acts of lovingkindness, of being in harmony with the universe, and through higher awareness.

The ramifications of this teaching are enormous. In each moment of existence we have the potential to raise holy sparks. If we are unaware of this ability and are spiritually asleep, then we do not accomplish much, for the medium through which sparks are raised is consciousness itself. — David A Cooper, “God is a Verb”

Chant: In your light may we see light, in your light we offer light — Joy Andrews Hayter 

Saturday, April 18th

Reading: “At first when you begin a practice of meditation, it feels like a place you go to. You may think of it as "my inner sanctuary" or "my place apart with God." But as the practice becomes more and more established in you so that this inner sanctuary begins to flow out into your life, it becomes more and more a place you come from. It is a bedrock of spiritual intelligence, a sense of connectedness known from so deeply within you that nothing can shake it. This is the ground of what tradition calls theological hope, "the hope that can never be taken away," because you simply know your abiding union in this place of interconnection; you know that nothing can possibly fall out of God, and that, as St. Paul so profoundly expressed it, "Whether I live or die, I am the Lord's." This is really not a statement that can be made from the level of ordinary awareness; ordinary awareness is just too frightened! Because it perceives itself as separate, it will always perceive itself as at least somewhat endangered. Only from the level of spiritual awareness do you begin to see and trust that all is held in the divine Mercy. But once grounded in that certainty, you can begin to reach out to the world with the same wonderful, generous vulnerability that we see in Christ.” — Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, p.116-117

Chant: Whether I live, whether I die, I am the Lord’s  — Alana Levandoski

Sunday, April 19th 

Reading: “You sometimes hear that this kind of prayer is private or narcissistic, and from the outside it may look that way: each person sitting on his or her meditation stool, wrapped up in his or her personal silence…[but] what goes on at the energetic level during this prayer is neither private nor without its profound effects in the physical world, a secret that hermits and mystics have always known. For now, however, as we begin to set ourselves to learning the discipline of Centering Prayer, I'd like to think that we do so in service of the gospel, to increase our capacity to become followers of Christ. The intent is not to escape into some private holiness trip, but to allow the gospel to become more and more alive in us, more and more firmly rooted. Till at last, in the words of that remarkable prayer in Ephesians 3:16-19 (NIV), which is really the charter of contemplative prayer:

I pray that out of God’s glorious riches God may strengthen you with power through God’s Spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled with the very nature of God.”

— Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, p.117-118

Chant: Born of below, born of above – a vessel of the Kingdom  — Henry Schoenfield

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