Relax Into The Cracking.

Dear Ones,

In recent reflections, we have been exploring the image of the acorn—the shell of personality and false personality cracking so that the deeper seed of Essence can take root and grow into a greater Selfhood.

We have also considered how this same process is unfolding collectively. The structures that have organized our shared life—the collective “shell” of our wegoic operating system—are beginning to crack open. As they do, we experience the destabilization, disorientation, and intensity of living within a world that no longer holds together in the same way.

What we are living through is not only psychological or cultural, it is energetic. As the shell cracks, tension increases. We may feel it in the body as contraction, in the mind as agitation or confusion, and in the emotions as reactivity or overwhelm. This is natural. To be alive is to experience tension. And yet, we can learn how to work with conscious relaxation.

When we hear the word relaxation, we usually think of resting, unwinding, de-stressing, taking it easy, or disengaging. We often engage in this kind of ordinary relaxation for self-care, as it reverses the body's stress response—lowering blood pressure, slowing breathing, improving sleep, and increasing mental clarity—all of which are important in caring for our planetary bodies.

Yet conscious relaxation is something more. It is the deliberate practice of engaging only the physical, emotional, and mental tensions that are necessary in the moment. It is a balanced state of readiness and receptivity in which we are mentally clear and aware, physically at ease, able to rest or act, and emotionally attuned and present.

Conscious relaxation is not passive; it is an active skill that requires engagement and practice. It is a state of inner ease, balanced attention, and stability that allows us to come into a state of availability.

It is akin to an inner posture of repose, a trust or confidence that brings composure and freedom from (though not complete absence of) physical, emotional, or mental stress. It is a kind of spiritual tranquility, a rest and security found in dwelling in Mercy and ceasing unnecessary effort.

As Gurdjieff observed:

“We always use more energy than is necessary, by using unnecessary muscles, by allowing thoughts to revolve and reacting too much with feelings. Relax muscles, use only those necessary, store thoughts and don’t express feelings unless you wish.” — Views from the Real World

When you look up the definition of tension, you will find descriptions ranging from inner striving or imbalance to the balancing of forces and the tightening or extending to a desired degree.

Being alive involves the experience of tension. To be human is to experience trauma—or, as one of my teachers, Steve Hoskinson, describes it, “unintegrated resource”—and we often build up excessive tensions, contractions, and protective ways of being.

Tensions and contractions are not, in themselves, a problem. We will tense and contract in the midst of difficult experiences, and it can take time to allow them to deactivate, release, and move through us rather than solidifying into a habitual inner state. These tensions show up as habitual muscular contractions in the body, repetitive mental activity and agitation in the mind, and emotional reactivity and identification.

Because of this, we use far more energy than necessary. When there is too much tension, we become rigid and mechanical, developing a self-reinforcing cycle in which anxiety leads to physical contraction, which increases mental discomfort and further amplifies physical strain.

When there is too little tension, our centers don’t function properly. We may become physically weak, emotionally flat or withdrawn, and mentally passive or unable to engage in thinking work.

Joseph Azize describes this as the equilibration of tension and relaxation:

“Relaxation and tension are two aspects of one reality… They must go together in some particular ratio…”

Conscious relaxation, then, is an attunement—a living balance. It involves learning to recognize and release unnecessary effort while maintaining the right degree of tension needed for presence, responsiveness, and participation.

Because experience registers in all three centers, relaxation must occur in all three simultaneously. We begin very practically, again and again, allowing areas that are already at ease to support the release of excess effort elsewhere. Pierre Elliott describes this as the art of “unhooking”—releasing inner clutching and disengaging from what we are unnecessarily identified with.

It is essential to approach ourselves with gentleness and compassion, like we would a good friend, remembering it has taken a lifetime to become as we are. Forceful relaxation is an oxymoron. Instead, we bring attention to where there is already ease, freedom, and right effort. This is often more effective than trying to force tension to release.

As relaxation deepens, thoughts and emotions may arise. We allow this without making it a problem. We cultivate a steady openness to what we can see in any moment—a relaxed inner posture that can let be, and even welcome, whatever arises.

Over time, a new rhythm develops. The nervous system begins to regulate more naturally. A feedback loop of activation and deactivation emerges, and we experience greater openness, availability, and presence.

As we continue this work, we begin to sense a deeper layer of tension—the strain created by the image of ourselves we try to maintain, the person we believe must appear acceptable to the world. As Nicoll says, this part “never admits anything” and will not allow us to be at rest, constantly prompting us to act in the way we think we should. This creates a constant inner strain.

Real relaxation becomes possible when we soften our identification with this inner performance and attention becomes whole. Jeanne de Salzmann says, “When my attention becomes truly active… there is a letting go… and the body becomes still.”

In this stillness, a different vibration can be felt. A new energy becomes available, and presence appears. This relaxation is not something we do, it arises from seeing clearly. It enables us to receive the finer nourishment of impressions and the sacred impulses arising within.

Conscious relaxation is essential because it supports total availability.

And in this moment, it has a very specific application. We are invited to relax into the cracking, releasing unnecessary tension so that we can remain present to what is actually taking place. As we loosen our identification with the structures that are breaking down, a different inner posture becomes available—one of trust, receptivity, and grounded ease. There is a willingness to allow the process to unfold, a recognition that something lawful and intelligent is at work, and the breakdown is not separate from the emergence.

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, March 16th

Reading: "One of the mistakes we make is to imagine that great compassion means being constantly rent by suffering ourselves. Great compassion comes from a much deeper place than that. It comes from a stable, profound, divine consciousness, which cannot not be compassionate, but isn't ravaged constantly by what inevitably unfolds in this dimension. And how could the sages be sages if they were? How could the Dalai Lama get through a day? let alone this astounding life. We have to train for that. And joy is part of the training, and calm and peace in the middle of mad chaos is also part of the training. We're not going to get through if we don't have that spacious capacity to draw on the deepest sweetness, the deepest tenderness, the deepest play, the deepest... beauty for its own sake. That's what we're fighting peacefully to keep alive. Joy is the power. Joy is the bliss power that transfigures you and gives you the energy to go on through defeat after defeat after defeat for the love of the truth that you've given your life for. How could you do that if you weren't... impassioned with divine joy. You can't. You can't survive the actual battle of truth without being infused by joy.”

— Andrew Harvey, The Healer with a Thousand Faces Podcast

Chant: Surrender to the [joy], become a mighty kindness  — Elizabeth Combs

Tuesday, March 17th with Catherine

Reading: Bayo Akomolafe – A Slower Urgency

I learned, a long time ago, about a particular saying from the continent I grew up on: “the times are urgent; let us slow down.” 

The first time I heard this African saying, I knew… I had happened upon something that needed to be shared at this time when the theme of urgency, the subject of the eleventh hour, and the prospects of an apocalypse scenario (World War III? Climate change disaster?... Trump?) are now familiar tropes in our conversations about the future.

So, everywhere I was invited to speak, I offered an invitation to ‘slow down’, which seems like the wrong thing to do when there’s fire on the mountain. But here’s the point: in ‘hurrying up’ all the time, we often lose sight of the abundance of resources (the assistance) that might help us meet today’s most challenging crises. We rush through into the same patterns we are used to. Of course, there isn’t a single way to respond to crisis; there is no universally correct way. However the call to slow down works to bring us face to face with the invisible, the hidden, the unremarked, the yet-to-be-resolved. Sometimes, what is the appropriate thing to do is not the effective thing to do.  

Slowing down is thus about lingering in the places we are not used to. Becoming accountable to more than what rests on the surface. Seeking roots….

The idea of slowing down is not about getting answers, it is about questioning our questions.

Wendell Berry

It may be when we no

longer know what to do,

we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know 

which way to go,

we have begun our real journey.               

Chant: Unknowing abide,                                                                                                                In stillness abide,                                                                                                                               In patience, in patience, possess your soul

Wednesday, March 18th with LeMel

Reading: Twenty-Six

A Song of Strength

Call me on a quest for You.

Call me away from each days turbulence,

Stilling the waves of confrontation,

Drying my tears.

For You reveal the breadth of creation,

And offer peace to my soul;

You surround me with beauty,

And let me see my reflection.

Lead me on a search for you.

Lead me on through smoke of confusion,

Wiping away the smudges of weariness,

Clearing the air before me.

For You set a far horizon before me,

And offer hope to my soul;

You lay out the distance,

And move my foot toward the first step.

Sustain me on my journey to You.

Sustain me through dullness of spirit,

Alerting my senses,

Animating my tentative grasping.

For You move the stars in their patterns,

And offer delight to my soul;

You turn my head to Your glory,

And touch me with eternity.

— From Debbie Perlman’s Flames to Heaven: New Psalms for Healing & Praise

Chant: Sustain us with 

…strength

…hope

…beauty 

Oh, ever sustain us.

— LeMel's Youtube and Substack (for daily readings and chants)

Thursday, March 19th with LeMel

Chant:

Aum, O Holy God

Aum, Holy and Mighty

Aum, Holy Immortal One

Aum, O Have Mercy

Aum…

I arise today

Through a mighty strength, 

the invocation of the (Holy) Trinity,

Through a belief in the (Holy) Threeness,

Through a confession of the (Holy) Oneness

Of the Creator of creation.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,

Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ on my right, Christ on my left,

Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,

Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,

Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,

Christ in the eye that sees me,

Christ in the ear that hears me.

Aum, O Holy God

Aum, Holy and Mighty

Aum, O Immortal One

Aum, O Have Mercy

— LeMel's Youtube and Substack (for daily readings and chants)

Friday, March 20th with Faye

Reading: The existence of mercy as a substantial force, not a concept, thought, or outer action, marks the division between our understanding of what is sacred and what is ordinary. Mercy, according to the Sufis, is God’s greatest and most powerful quality, which exceeds all other aspects of His Being; in the midst of the suffering that inevitably arises throughout material creation, it’s the one force made universally available to help alleviate the terrifying consequences of existence, with all that it implies. As the prime emanation of God’s true Being, it offers us a direct contact.

Human beings are created with the capacity to open our inner Being to the receipt of this flow of mercy. To do so is one of the inner aims of the religious life. Its actions are understood to be deeply transformational; yet like the peace it bestows, it passes all understanding—everything the intellectual mind can offer.

What irony, perhaps, that we have to come to it through the intellect. Yet beginning there, if the mind is sufficiently stilled, and we wait quietly in silence, intimately sensing our bodies as the sacred vessels they are—then some particle of mercy may touch us, no matter how lightly or swiftly, and remind us not just of our mortality, but the Grace which is always and forever available to support us.

If we’re even quieter, and more attentive, some tiny portion may stay to inform us as we move outward, back into our daily life.

This is the mustard seed; and from that seed great plants grow.

— Lee Van Laer

Chant: Mercy, We live in Mercy … We move in Mercy … We breathe in Mercy … We breathe out Mercy 

Saturday, March 21th with Faye 

Reading: In practical terms, mercy isn’t just an idea or a concept; in its metaphysical and esoteric sense it’s a substance.

That is to say, it’s of a material nature, and we human beings have the potential to participate in the sensation of that tangible substance. We can receive mercy—else why ask for it? This understanding is entirely consistent with the idea that it can be bestowed; and it brings it out of the realm of the theological or philosophical and into the realm of the personal.

One can personally ask for help from a higher level; and that help can be bestowed and received. This is an essential premise in the invocation of the classic prayer:

Lord, have Mercy.

The prayer, of itself, assumes by default the personhood of both the divine and the human; it thus, whether by accident or intention, implies the union of the divine and the human in Christ, by means of the exchange between both natures. An exchange between beings.

Chant: Oh Mercy, We entrust ourselves to You, that we may be transformed

— Suzanne Toolan, RSM and Catherine Regan

Sunday, March 22nd with Joy

Reading: Trust is a big issue for many of us. Do we trust that it's possible to be free? Do we trust that reality is inherently good and benevolent and will hold us as we move through the pain of our contractions? To have this kind of trust is not a small thing. The deeper in contraction we are, the more difficult it is to trust that it's okay to really sense into our contraction and embrace it and welcome it …. Just by orienting to contraction differently, by sensing the immediate rawness, the temperature and texture of our contracted experience, without labeling it or judging it, it tends to have its own way of revealing its inner nature to us. This takes a lot of trust, especially when it's a difficult contraction.

— Zvi Ish-Shalom, in The Kedumah Experience

Chant: When we are with you, what fear of loss could we possibly have, we swim in mercy, as in an endless sea  — Susan Latimer

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