We continue on in this Lenten season. Whether you gave up something or took something on for these 40 days, I hope that you were able to listen from your Whole Heart for an intention to live with.
I keep coming back to deepening my awareness of the sanctuary within, the place where I desire to come from more and more. It is a place of Wholeness and although it includes the small egoic orbit, from Wholeness the ego can align with the Soul rather than become limited by its narrow perspective. When we live from Wholeness we can work with the conditions in this world not as obstacles, but as training in cultivating surrender and attention. In many spiritual traditions surrender and attention are two wings that balance the bird.
Working with our attention is about keeping within, having some agency over our states, being able to place attention and sustain it. Attention is a powerful substance for what we put our attention on gains life and force, be it nourishing or destructive. Surrender is a deep letting go, a non-clinging, an opening that creates space for something more to move through us, for qualities to emerge. ‘The mature and subtle flavors of love’ Cynthia Bourgeault so often mentions, ‘qualities such as steadfastness, tenderness, commitment, forbearance, fidelity, and forgiveness.’ Attention without surrender can become contrived or overly controlled. Surrender without attention can become disengaged and detached.
As we fly with both wings, from Wholeness, we can learn to read the wind and ride that edge between becoming overly caught up in the world’s drama or negligently disengaged in what it needs.
We are anchoring and tethering.
We are surrendering and trusting.
We are connecting and inter-abiding.
We are freeing and widening.
We are sensing the invincibility of our hearts.
With love,
Heather
Here are most of the readings from the ‘collective contemplative pauses’ this week. Again you will now be able to find them on Facebook and Instagram as well.
“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...”
— Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening
“The art of being lost is not a matter of merely getting lost, but rather being lost and enthusiastically surrendering to the unlimited potential of it and using it to your advantage. The shift from being lost to being found is a gradual one.
The way to encourage that shift is to first accept that you don’t know how to get to the place you want to be and then opening fully to the place you are until the old goals fall away and you discover more soulful goals emerging. Then you are no longer lost, but you have benefited immensely from having been so.”
— Bill Plotkin
'A Blessing for Perspective'
May you have freedom from one
limited
perspective,
knowing any fixed point of attention
can’t possibly reveal the whole
truth.
May you feel safe
to zoom in and out,
taking in
and letting go,
moving through
what you think you know
to arrive more fully
at what’s in front of you.
May you find companions
who offer new perspectives
simply through presence.
Loving,
accepting,
giving
space for something new
to be shown.
May you seek silence
to change
the old ways of perceiving.
Habitual,
patterned thinking
that keeps one eye on fear
the other eye closed.
May you see so much is unfolding
in you, around you, through you.
A new perspective
is offering itself
in every moment
asking only to be here.
— Julie Elliot
Calm and serene
Listen!
Whisperings of the Divine Guest are heard in open receptive hearts.
The Holy City beyond the sun beckons all to enter into the chapel of Crystal Light wherein abides the Universal Heart. Listen in the silence for Spirit’s Voice guiding your soul for service in the great renewal, the new creation, the citadel of Love here on Earth. All are welcome together as One! Listen, attune, and heed the inner Voice of Love. For in sacred Silence, we open ourselves to Wisdom, to ever deepening communion with the Source of all creation.
Lumen Christi...Holy Wisdom
— Nan Merrill
“Between God and the soul, there is no between.”
— Julian of Norwich
"Could it be that this earthly realm, not in spite of but 'because of' its very density and jagged edges, offers precisely the conditions for the expression of certain aspects of divine love that could become real in no other way? This world does indeed show forth what love is like in a particularly intense and costly way. But when we look at this process more deeply, we can see that those sharp edges we experience as constriction at the same time call forth some of the most exquisite dimensions of love, which require the condition of finitude in order to make sense - qualities such as steadfastness, tenderness, commitment, forbearance, fidelity, and forgiveness. These mature and subtle flavors of love have no real context in a realm where there are no edges and boundaries, where all just flows. But when you run up against the hard edge and have to stand true to love anyway, what emerges is a most precious taste of pure divine love. God has spoken [God’s] most intimate name.
Let me be very clear here. I am not saying that suffering exists in order for God to reveal [God]self. I am only saying that 'where' suffering exists and is consciously accepted, 'there' divine love shines forth brightly."
― Cynthia Bourgeault