Heather Ruce

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, July 13th Reading: “The transformative art of ripening occurs in the fundamental arenas of life. For example, when a young couple gets married, they look forward to what they hope will be a lifetime of love and happiness together. As the years go by, they ripen as they learn to surrender to a love that guides and fulfills their ongoing efforts to love each ot

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, July 6th Reading:“Our work is to cross a threshold into emptiness and stillness. It is like entering an empty room that proves to hold a great presence. The apparent emptiness of simple presence is richer than the crowded experience of ordinary personality. We can either be empty with Spirit or full of ourselves. “The barriers before us include our thoughts a

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, June 29th Reading: “Conscious struggle requires choice and acceptance. It must not be my state that dictates the choice. I must choose the struggle to be present and accept that suffering will appear. There is no struggle without suffering. Struggle is unacceptable to our lower nature; struggle upsets it. This is why it is so important always to remember what

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, June 22nd Reading: ”This thing you call your life, it is a living thing. Made of spirit and bone. Suppleness, softness, and severity. Notice the music of it. The air between notes. The silence in the breath of the melody. If you do not sing your life, it will not be alive. All living things are made of song and hunger for song. If you do not harvest your sorr

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, June 15th Reading: “What does the reflecting pool reflect when we look into its still waters? Does it reveal a people at peace within themselves or does it show a society broken and conflicted? Do we like what we see or is it a vision from which we turn away? These are questions to reflect upon. May Spirit give us the gift to see ourselves as we really are,

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, June 8th Reading: I am an inhabitant of this body. I dwell within it, deeply rooted in its nature, so much so that it is easy to think that we are one thing, yet it is more difficult to sense it because my awareness always separates itself from my sensation to one degree or another. And this is the moment when I bring them together here in the same pl

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, June 1st Reading: Eternal Source of Life, you are the core of our being. Flow through our bodies like a life-giving river. Wash and transform the negative conditions in our hearts, minds, bodies, and circumstances with light, love, and grace. — Ray Simpson Chant: I am Present to the Presence, it is my only care, I am held by the Presence, the fountain of

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, May 25th Reading: “Centering prayer as a discipline is designed to withdraw our attention from the ordinary flow of our thoughts. We tend to identify ourselves with that flow. But there is a deeper part of ourselves. This prayer opens our awareness to the spiritual level of our being. This level might be compared to a great river on which our memories, images

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, May 18th with Tom Guided Meditation by Debbie de la Cuesta Let's begin by arriving…. I invite you to close your eyes, take a long slow breath- Sensing how it infuses you… and a slow, unhurried breath out. Find a pace that allows you to arrive- Opening, allowing, settling like falling snow just letting yourself come here. On your next exhale, Let yourself rest

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, May 11th with Tom Reading: Ours is not the work of seeking You here or there or where we think you might be, But of opening the heart's door. And when we do this, You cannot resist coming in, since our opening and Your entering are one: You knock and wait, and when we open we find that You were there all along and will not leave us. — Meister Eckhar

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, May 4th with Tom Reading: I remember one morning when I discovered a cocoon in the back of a tree just as a butterfly was making a hole in its case and preparing to come out. I waited awhile, but it was too long appearing and I was impatient. I bent over it and breathed on it to warm it. I warmed it as quickly as I could and the miracle began to happen befo

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, April 27th with Faye Reading: I have come here to this planet to take in my life into my body and my being as deeply as possible. So I begin each day searching for a way within to reconnect to what is essential in me: the way I sense, the way I breathe. And in order to conduct that search, I begin by moving the whole of my being closer to the gre

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here* Monday, April 20th Chant: Born of above, born of below – a vessel of the Kingdom — Henry Schoenfield Tuesday, April 21st Chant: Born of above, born of below – a vessel of the Kingdom — Henry Schoenfield Wednesday, April 22th Reading: “Each one of us, and every action we make, has a quality of aliveness to it, a fragrance or vibrancy uniquely its own. If th

“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

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here * Monday, April 6th Reading: “Everyone who begins to study and know their own states is well aware that our experience is a constant dying and rebirth. We must not be frightened as we come to see this, although it really is a terrifying thing that we have no power to keep hold of our own life; that it has to be renewed or given back to us by something that does not

Dear Ones, Here we stand in the midst of Holy Week. As we recollect the events that unfolded, we begin to sense that they are not only sacred stories, but living patterns that continue to reverberate within us and around us now. Holy Week begins with celebration. A road covered with palm branches. A king entering the city. On the surface, all appears well. Yeshua (Jesus’s name in Hebrew/Aramic) is hailed as king. His students must have felt a kind of relief, perhaps

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here * Monday, March 23rd Chant: O Sacred Three, [you are with/you are in] me — The Oriental Orthodox Order in the West Tuesday, March 24th Chant: We surrender — Heather Ruce Wednesday, March 25th Reading: We awaken in Christ's body by Symeon the New Theologian English version by Stephen Mitchell Original Language Greek We awaken in Christ's body as Christ awakens our

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, dis

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here * Monday, March 9th Reading: “Joy is not a heightened state of happiness—it's entirely different. It's an experience of communion, of "being one with" beyond the boundaries of self, of interbeing Joy is a sensation of our entire being, difficult to describe in words but similarly felt whenever we experience it. Strangely, the experience of joy often feels the same a

Dear Ones, Last week we explored the image of the acorn—how the shell of personality and false personality, both based in what some call the egoic operating system, must crack so that the deeper seed of Essence (our World 24 self) can take root and grow into the oak of Real I or True Self (our World 12 self). This same image can also be applied to humanity’s collective shell of personality and false personality—what some call the wegoic operating system . For the deeper c

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 Ess

Dear ones, One of the central contemplative Wisdom themes of this season is the conscious participation in the Paschal Mystery as an inner event. Lent invites us into a voluntary, lawful dying so that a deeper root or order of Being, already latent within us, may resurrect. This “dying to self” is not moral self-negation but the gradual relinquishment of identification with the self formed under the dense laws of World 48, 96, and 192. Here, our sense of “I” is fragmented

Dear Ones, We enter the season of Lent tomorrow, Ash Wednesday, the forty-day journey that mirrors Jesus’ time in the desert. Lent is often described as a season of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Within these practices lie deeper interior and transformative dimensions of self-remembering and self-examination, both also at work in this season. One way of understanding self-remembering is as present moment embodied recognition of a deeper current of identity ultimately ro

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses *All previous readings & reflections can be found here * Monday, February 2nd Reading: Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. — Talmud Chant: What does the Lord require of you? Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly — Henry Schoenfield Tuesday, February 3rd Reading: “O