Growing the Oak Tree that is Real I: Death feeds Life.

Dear Ones,

Let us continue with the theme of dying to self through the lens of the Ray of Creation (you can find out more about the Ray here).

Many Wisdom teachers affirm that we are born with an essential self—a seed of the Kingdom of Heaven (World 24) already present within us. As we develop within the visible world in which we live (World 48), we necessarily form a personality self. This World 48 structure of selfhood is not a mistake. It is required and protects Essence, gives us functional coherence, and allows us to navigate life under denser laws.

At the same time, we often develop an additional layer, a false personality sense of self (World 96). This is an even more adaptive self organized around belonging and survival, at the expense of our authentic personality and Essence. In this way, our original seed becomes further covered over, protected, and obscured.

Maurice Nicoll used the metaphor of the acorn to speak of our becoming. The seed of the oak is already present within the shell. In the same way, the seed of our essential World 24 self, which will become the oak or Real I selfhood (World 12), lies within the casing of personality and false personality formed in Worlds 48 and 96.

For the oak to grow, the shell must crack.

This cracking is not the destruction of these selfhoods but their transformation. The very structures that once protected the seed become nourishment for it. What once defined us becomes substance. The food of personality and false personality are gradually digested so that a greater order of selfhood, Real I, may come into form.

When the shell begins to crack and become substance, the sense of selfhood it represents experiences this as dying. The structures that maintained psychological homeostasis begin to loosen. We tend to enter a season of incredible disorientation and pain. Yet beneath this destabilization, there is a lawful, ordered, and trustworthy intelligence at work. While one structure of selfhood seems to be collapsing, an organic reconfiguration is underway.

When the seed of Essence germinates, it does not first grow upward. It first establishes a primary root, the taproot, which grows downward extending into the dark soil, seeking water. Sometimes a tree evolves to develop extraordinarily deep and robust taproots, capable of reaching hidden water tables which support them in withstanding drought.

In the same way, as the shell of personality softens, the seed of the Essence sends its taproot downward toward a deeper source. Essence alone is not yet the oak. The taproot must reach the living water table of the Christic dimension (World 12) and draw on the nourishment there so that the tree of Real I can grow stable. This is where objective feeling becomes more available and conscious Will more active.

And even this water table is not ultimate. Its unseen source lies further upstream in Worlds 6, 3, and 1—realities rarely perceived directly yet always present, feeding the entire structure of our becoming.

We are the acorns. 

We consent to the cracking of the shell so that personality may become nourishment rather than prison. We allow the taproot of Essence to grow deep enough to draw from living water. We entrust ourselves to a process far more intelligent than our surface identity.

The Paschal Mystery, seen through the Ray, is not abstract theology. It is organic law. Death feeds life. The shell becomes soil. The root finds water. And what was latent becomes oak.

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, February 23rd

Reading: “Every seeker of Ultimate Mystery has to pass through interior death and rebirth, perhaps many times over.  Our contemporary world desperately needs persons of boundless generosity who dedicate themselves to great ideals and who wish to transform themselves and contribute to the transformation of the world.  A great vision is what gives ordinary daily life its direction and invests it with purpose.

Seekers of Ultimate Mystery have to share in the agony of our time.  Only trust can make this experience transforming for themselves and for others.  As the sense of alienation from Ultimate Mystery, from human values, and from oneself is very deep in our time, so also participation in that experience is bound to be very deep.  It may involve an inner poverty so intense and so complete that no word can describe it, except “death.”  But this spiritual death leads to an inner resurrection of one’s true self that can move not only oneself, but the whole human family in the direction of transformation.  From this perspective, the spiritual journey is the very reverse of selfishness. It is rather the journey to selflessness.”

— Fr. Thomas Keating in Contemplative Outreach newsletter, June 2010 

Chant: Deep Trust

Tuesday, February 24th

Reading: “Our culture is at a critical point because so many structures that supported human and religious values have been trampled upon and are disappearing. To find a way to discover Ultimate Mystery in the midst of secular occupations and situations is essential, because for most people today it is the only milieu that they know.  Humanity as a whole needs a breakthrough into the contemplative dimension of life.  The contemplative dimension of life is the heart of the world.  There the human family is already one.  If one goes to one’s own heart, one will find oneself in the heart of everyone else, and everyone else, as well as oneself, in the heart of Ultimate Mystery.

— Fr. Thomas Keating in Contemplative Outreach newsletter, June 2010

Chant: Be right here, in the Heart of God  — Henry Schoenfield

Wednesday, February 25th with Joy 

Reading: When a person is poised in all three centers, balanced and alertly there, a shift happens in consciousness. Rather than being trapped in our usual mind, with its well-formed rut tracks of issues and agendas and ways of thinking, we seem to come from a deeper, steadier, and quieter place. We are present, in the words of Wisdom tradition, fully occupying the now in which we find ourselves.

This state of presence is extraordinarily important to know and taste in oneself. For sacred tradition is emphatic in its insistence that real Wisdom can be given and received only in a state of presence, with all three centers of our being engaged and awake. Anything less is known in the tradition as “sleep” and results in an immediate loss of receptivity to higher meaning. To return to that favorite Wisdom metaphor, it is like the disciple Peter suddenly sinking beneath the surface of the waters.

— Cynthia Bourgeault, in The Wisdom Way of Knowing

Chant: We are held in love, we are one in love  — Joy Andrews Hayter

Thursday, February 26th

No reading or chant.

Video of Movement #39

Music for #39

Friday, February 27th with Catherine

Reading: There is a huge silence* undergirding us and inside of us that is trying to draw us into itself.  To enter that silence is to enter the reality of God and the reality of our real communion with each other. — Ronald Rolheiser

There is a …

*Mercy…  To enter that Mercy…

*Boundaryless Kindness…  To enter that Kindness…

*Deep Peace…  To enter that Peace…

*Stillness…  To enter that Stillness…

Chant: 

Stillness… in the stillness God moves

Silence…  in the Silence God moves

Mercy… In the Mercy God moves

Kindness… In the Kindness God moves

Stillness… in the stillness God moves

Saturday, February 28th

Reading: 

I listen and hear the Silence

I listen and see the Silence

I listen and taste the Silence

I listen and smell the Silence

I listen and embrace the Silence

— Twylah Nitsch

Chant: Listen, listen wait in silence listening; for the one from whom all [silence] flows 

— The Oriental Orthodox Order in the West

Sunday, March 1st

Reading: “There is no amount of [unlit territory] that can extinguish the inner light. The important thing is not to spend our lives trying to control the environment around us. The task is to [steward] the environment within us.” — Joan Chittister

Chant: Born of above and born of below - a vessel of the kingdom

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