Ulises

' "TS: And then what happened that the quaking and shaking was left out of these traditions? Brad Keeney: Well, the first thing that happened was that it required a full democracy. That meant there couldn't be a hierarchy. The Spirit didn't care about who was in a hierarchical relationship to another. You couldn't have a Dalai Lama. You couldn't have a pope. Everybody was equal in matters of the Spirit. It was between you and God. This upset the whole apple cart, because it let, among other people, women to believe that they could be free! There's a wonderful academic book written—I think it's John Hopkins Press—that just came out a couple years ago, showing that part of the suppression of the Shaker and Quaker movement was because women were feeling freedom when they had the shakes seize them, and they were finding out there's no reason to have any unnatural hierarchy. So it had political implications, but it also meant, on the other hand, asking, "How do we live in a truly free world where we can relate to each other creatively, as opposed to ritualistically?" We know that, in the living of life, it can either tend to lean towards being an improvisational art, or it can follow the routines of someone's prescribed way of how we should behave with one another. And shaking, ecstatic heart awakening, let people free. It said, "Live life as jazz!" It's improvisational! It moves! It's something that cannot be held, contained, predicted. It is, in the most beautiful sense of the word, wild..." ' http://www.soundstrue.com/weeklywisdom/?source=podcast&p=3645&category=IATE&version=full

http://www.soundclick.com/player/single_player.cfm?songid=3322693&q=hi&newref=1

Dear Informer...just "imagination"...? It depends how we define the word "imagination"...there is "fantasy"(irreal images) and "imaginal perception" ; ) http://www.sevenpillarshouse.org/article/field_notes_one_an_overview/

My dear friend, watch these radiant faces with your heart wide open...do you feel they mind anything about putting this amazing opening in a box of words...? ; )

"In this ecstatic dancing, or shaking, we tap into a magical mysterious force of energy- n|om- that is an entry to a world the rest of us have heard very little about. I am speaking of the original world of spiritual mystery. There, anything is possible and impossible, sometimes at the same time. In the Kalahari, we enter a river, a current, and a mystery that flows inside us. As Rumi poetically said, "You feel a river moving in you, a joy." This movement that takes you into spiritual mystery is inseperable from n|om. You can't say it is n|om, for n|om is more than that. In fact, you never can say what n|om is. No definition can capture it. You can't even say the word "n|om" when it is moving within you; that would be dangerous. The n|om might get too strong. Like the Hebrews who refused to utter the name of Yahweh, the bushmen have long known the wisdom of having respect names. These are words for holy names. N|om has a respect name, and so does God. When you feel a holy presence nearby, you respect its power and do not allow a word to set up an illusory (and potentially arrogant) knowing of something that goes past the limit of our mind's ability to understand. You use another word to distance yourself from the mirage of knowing. In other words, the respect names help keep everything a mystery..." http://www.dailyom.com/library/000/002/000002360.html

a major, freeing cognitive change: to stop reifying "kundalini" as a "thing"... "...it's been widely misunderstood, unfortunately...(...) it's not some isolated, human event...it's the flight of the bird, the buzzing of the bee, the shades of light on the faces of the moon,it's the laughter in the human being,and the tears..." A group of elder women n/om kxaosi were asked what made them so strong in matters of n/om (Bushman for so-called "kundalini" (Keeney 2010). They replied, “we are this way because of the tears we have wept for the ancestors who have passed on.” The deepest longing human beings experience often comes from the loss of a loved one. Rather than trying to emotionally get over it, these Bushman elders keep the longing alive, feeding it until it breaks their hearts wide open in an awakened way, bringing them inside a more expansive and intimate relation with their ancestors. In this connection tears flow along a channel that keeps their relationships strong and permits a never-ending expression of love and soulful guidance. Another intense form of longing is familiar to all lovers who fall deeply in love. In this infinite ocean of Eros we find there is more than simple love. There is loving love. When we become lovers of loving, the ropes are inseparable from us and carry our hearts into the highest realms. ~CIRCULUS: Journal for Creative Transformation. Volume1, Issue 1

When differentiating mind is lulled and sleeps, The Kundalini awakens! The five senses' source gushes forht forever: The water of unceasing presence to the world Is sweet, and I offer it to Shiva. The unending sacred tremoring of consciousness Is the supreme state ~Lalla "...spanda, the sacred tremor that inhabits everything. Odier teaches that in order to feel the tremor, we have to find the root of desire and experiment with that excitement, that shivering delight. He goes further to say that we come across this tremor in our everyday life, but in order to tune in to the Divine, we need our desires to be objectless. This is quite a challenge for me, but Odier continues by saying that the point is to understand that everything is Divine and that divinity is not an object so we should turn our desires toward that "objectless Divinity." At that moment, we can feel spanda without a cause or effect; we can just become the Spanda. He also encourages the practitioner to adopt a "spherical view," where everything is included in our practice. That view enables us to evolve without limitation and helps us to integrate wholeness in our lives..." extract from a review by ascent magazine (Montreal Canada), of "Yoga Spandakarika", Daniel Odier

if you can try Andy and Maria's "An Improvised Journey into the Theatre of the Heart" at Philly or one of the Mojo Doctors intensives at New Orleans, I strongly encourage you to do it...fasten your seatbelt (or better said, get rid of it) and be ready for a wild, beautiful,life-changing ride...I can say from my own experience ; ) (it's going to be challenging, but, again, what true spiritual development is not...? )

...just take a look at the segments of the Bushman way of n/om("kundalini") - wisdom keepers of the whole of the Mysteries - in this video: open-hearted celebration, trust/surrender...

"systems, transmission, masters"..... : ( "The intelligence of kundalini/prana, or could we say:DNA, moves the body, or something even more subtle within DNA: the Mother Herself. There is a joyous sense of being in an otherwise, totally unknown world where the flowing movements from one asana to another happen effortlessly, yet with a wide range of passionate longings and even tearful or laughing-out-loud ecstasies. Such spontaneous, energy-based Yoga is like finding a well-worn path that is hidden from entry by the ways of moving or doing Yoga that are willful and, literally "premeditative." But with self-permission, one can leap onto this path where Hatha-Yoga merges seamlessly with Bhakti-Yoga and Raja-Yoga." (...) Imitating others' endogenously originated movements, heartfelt utterances, righteous actions or rapt concentrations, one can go through the back door (literally via a ventral ["front door"] or "Eastern" bodily channel) into the similar depths of wonder, wisdom, and delight. And, by motionless meditation, too, one can enter. Thus, we have numerous helpful yogic texts, new and ancient, and a proliferation of Yoga and still-meditation classes. But when kundalini is reintroduced (via the "Western" and more body-involving spinal channel) to our involvement with physical Yoga and meditation, something deep and primordial ripples through the viscera and physical Yoga or meditation practices can no more be considered "teachable techniques" than gestation or puberty can be. For Kundalini-Yoga surfaces from the same bodily depths as gestation, the first breath, adolescent puberty, and now, beyond. Hope and human development converge as the scent, sound, feel, or taste of future possibilities fructifying in the radiant juices and humming in the quivering tissues of the body and in the dazzling effulgence of consciousness. Moving with that is Yoga.(...) As the thirteenth-century attainer of final maturation, Shri Jnaneshvara stated: That is called [yogic-developmental] action of the body in which reason takes no part and which does not originate as an idea springing in the mind. To speak simply, yogis perform actions with their bodies, like the movements of children. . ~Stuart Sovatsky http://www.cit-sakti.com/kundalini/sahaja-spontaneous-yoga.htm “When you’re in tune with inner joyousness, there is no such thing as coincidence or being in the wrong place. What has been most mundane is transformed and sparkles. When you know this approach miracles begin to happen around you here and there and everywhere. But you have to know it thoroughly, as something quite practical.“ ~Dorothy Maclean "Sell cleverness and buy bewilderment" ~Rumi The very best, in my opinion, is connecting with the limitless, unconditional love of the universe and the infinite source. Opening your heart, connecting with this unconditional love is always the best. There simple is no more powerful healing energy than unconditional love. When you open your heart like this you can get into the emptiness/the oneness faster, then the Qi will do what is best for you naturally and spontaneously. ~Chunyi Lin Play? the establishment and exploration of relationship. Greeting and ritual are (just) the affirmation of relationship. ~Gregory Bateson “The next Buddha will be a Sangha.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh "Since a relationship is more powerful than any individual, we only work as a partnership. The future of spirituality is a return to the hands of relationship, not specially anointed individuals. Similarly, healing is best conveyed in community..." ~Hillary Stephenson with Bradford Keeney ....and - by all means possible - meet a group of kindred spirits (amazing synergistic effect) in a common spirit of childlike exploration with an open heart and HAVING FUN (forget the word "work")... : For the Bushmen, this is ultimately about a healing connection with God, their ancestors and one another. "This is arguably the oldest civilization on the planet, with these dances recorded on petroglyphs," says Keeney. "There's been a long time for the dance to evolve into such a sophisticated form of healing." http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NAH/is_6_34/ai_n6181245/

My dear Mokona: May I suggest for us to forget/set aside for a bit the word "work"....? ; ) Open your heart with the childlike innocence of a child and Have FUN! "Sell cleverness and buy bewilderment" Rumi Play? the establishment and exploration of relationship. Greeting and ritual are (just) the affirmation of relationship. Gregory Bateson The very best, in my opinion, is connecting with the limitless, unconditional love of the universe and the infinite source. Opening your heart, connecting with this unconditional love is always the best. There simple is no more powerful healing energy than unconditional love. When you open your heart like this you can get into the emptiness/the oneness faster, then the Qi will do what is best for you naturally and spontaneously. Chunyi Lin this book - born as an experiment - might be of help...people are reporting remarkable experiences after reading it... certainly has set my heart on fire: http://audio.kvmr.org/podhawk/index.php?id=504

from "Shaking and Uplifting "Enlightenment" Spirituality 2012 Onward" group at facebook "If Freud and his rx sequelae had been geniuses of shared romantic love that lasts/grows over a lifetime, instead of his myopic focus on 'individual desire', we would not think much of the endlessly advertised therapy goal of: 'you will no longer be driven by the need for love and acceptance from your parents and others, because you will find it in yourself.' The service of rx would instead be 100 years into ways of re-attuning entire families to this sustaining wholeness whereby we do give and receive nourishing love with parents with children, with spouse/partners, and so on.." *** "When tribes of complete families lived together, joyous births, rites of passage, marriages and funereal deaths surrounded all in the wholeness of life so that ego-creativity and its humbling dissolution naturally balanced everyone. A few awakened the primordial force through depths of inner marriage and became saints for their tribe. Much of the fragmented, technique-and-aphorism-based spirituality in these times is a patchwork trying to make up for this lost surround of organic wholeness-- a spirituality of (embodied) Life Itself---and the rare depths attained by a few extraordinary saints. That (embodied) is so often added in is most telling re this patchwork reconstruction of the wholeness." *** "That teachers talk so much about Now instead of Lifetime is also telling, as if a Now that lasts that long is too much for us to bear ..." ~Stuart Sovatsky

"...i get a feeling like night air in my back and when it gets to the sahasrara, and beyond, i feel cool throughout, very pleasantly so. I feel the sense of bliss that accompanied it at first, and in many subtle ways i feel that it is very much a part of me now." I can relate to this...

The audios offered in "The "Spiritual Classrooms" are teachings/transmissions...you can explore the different avenues - besides the gift of the audios - explained in the site...

....and more Big Love mojo here, courtesy of two beautiful souls: "Dear Sacred Journeys Community- Again we are overjoyed to offer you the next Spirited Explorations ceremonial weekend March 23rd-25th with the awesome addition of a sweatlodge on the evening of the 22nd!!! We know from the last 6 that these are extraordinary gatherings with our beloved guides Andy and Maria stirring up the mojo magic and BIG LOVE. Please join us for the first time or as a veteran and invite your dear ones who are ready to shift paradigms, shake and melt, and explore new possibilities for living and loving." Blessings to you all, Jonathan and Shari -- Jonathan Cohen PhD *** SPIRITED EXPLORATIONS: An Improvised Journey into the Theatre of the Heart What happens when you put together two dynamic, inspirational individuals and ask them to play? Anything. Drawing from a variety of talents, infused with a deep and humble respect for the traditions and values of their teachers and Elders and served up with their own brand of spicy, brilliant improvisations, Maria and Andrew have been doing the work of bringing about personal transformations and awakening love where ever they go. Known by many things in their own communities, each have been called to awaken the creative processes of heart and spirit in their own way. They are just as likely to use movement, paint, feathers or hands on work to bring forth the ceremonial, the complex or the aesthetic mystery of love. If you want to play with them, be prepared to let your traditional notions of spirituality and health go. Let your judgements go. Be willing to dissolve into the creative potential of the moment. Join us for a weekend of music, movement, dance and exploration. We can promise you nothing, except that you will not gain it, avoid it, keep it, claim it, disregard it, heal it, embrace it or cook it, unless it is in the spirit of the joyful, transformative moment. http://oursacredjourneys.com/marchshaking.html

We can rightfully consider the McDonald’s massacre and say, “something like this shouldn’t happen here.” But why not stand over a fallen soldier and say the same thing? This in a nutshell is the change—the shift in consciousness—that humanity is struggling to make in order to create a more holistic and peaceful world. How do we come to an awareness that killing and other forms of violence against each other, whether the random actions of a lunatic or the organized actions of a state, should not be taken for granted as “part of human nature.” There is, after all, an increasing body of evidence from neurobiology and evolutionary biology indicating that violence is a learned behavior, a cultural artifact, and not something inherent in our species; instead, we are genetically geared towards cooperation and altruism, something that we see every day in the world around us, as when hundreds of people drove up to thousands of miles to Joplin, Missouri, from all over the United States and Canada earlier this year for no other reason than to help strangers they didn’t know recover from a disastrous tornado. One place to begin this shift is with our expectations. Expectations are powerful. They shape how we perceive and think about the world. They affect the choices we make and the tasks we undertake. They influence our conceptions of what is possible and what is not. And they also influence our perceptions. In short, we see what we expect to see, or perhaps more to the point here, we stop seeing what we expect to see. ~David Spangler http://lorian.org/davidspage.html#gpm1_2

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I don't want controversy with Kunlun. People are drawn to this practice by common resonance - "like atract like". And that is great. But I have to say that, having practiced Autokinetics/Seiki-jutsu/Shaking Medicine formally for a few years (after it showed up spontaneosly through series of intense holotropic breathwork workshops) and then trying kunlun for a while, I strongly feel the potentially problematic issues of the "energetic Maserati effect": I felt I was forcing the opening/s, it felt very "unnatural", too much forced (being specific:one let the innately arising patterns of sound, movement, energy, emotion...to unfold by itself, according to the individual enrgetic situation, "one size doens't fits all", and the deep intelligence knows better than any teacher), the forms, special breathing, etc...were written down from this spontaneous unfolding, the natural "Prana Path" (Stuart Sovatsky) of the Pashupatis, Bushmen and other indigenous Primordial lineages worldwide...) (personal note: while in the shaking, many times arise patterns of Qi gongs - unknown to me at the moment - that sometimes I can recognise later through DVD's, youtube and the like...anyone can tap in these "fields of information") http://www.shakingmedicine.com/bushmen/video.php I feel more much more natural to trust in the innate intelligence of the Energetic Mystery to cook me in Her own terms ( and believe me, it's deepening incrementally for a time now), with any spontaneous Kundalini no-practice, such as seiki-jutsu/autokinetics ("The Energy Break", Bradford Keeney), spontaneous Qi Gong, Seidr, Pizzica, Shaking Medicine and the rest.... of course, this is my subjective feeling, if you feel happy with Kunlun, congratulations! From my experience and from what Bradford Keeney told us about the strongest spiritual teachers, these words from the master Chulyi Lin point to the key, not arcane techniques or empowerments...: the secret is a heart opening to the Heart... "Again, and I cannot emphasize this enough, the most important factor in your energy development is opening your heart and connecting with the unconditional love of the universe and learning to live your life in this love, powered by this love and radiating this love to help others." Chunyi Lin A group of elder women n/om kxaosi were asked what made them so strong in matters of n/om (Keeney 2010). They replied, “we are this way because of the tears we have wept for the ancestors who have passed on.” The deepest longing human beings experience often comes from the loss of a loved one. Rather than trying to emotionally get over it, these Bushman elders keep the longing alive, feeding it until it breaks their hearts wide open in an awakened way, bringing them inside a more expansive and intimate relation with their ancestors. In this connection tears flow along a channel that keeps their relationships strong and permits a never-ending expression of love and soulful guidance. Another intense form of longing is familiar to all lovers who fall deeply in love. In this infinite ocean of Eros we find there is more than simple love. There is loving love. When we become lovers of loving, the ropes are inseparable from us and carry our hearts into the highest realms. ~CIRCULUS: Journal for Creative Transformation. Volume1, Issue 1

The next phase of human development should be one of conscious evolution and co-creative collaboration, when we recognize that society is, in itself, an art project. We have the power to use our intelligence and imagination to reinvent society's operating system so that it fulfills humanity's highest hopes and age-old aspirations. If we can develop and construct a new economic foundation that strikes a balance between the gift exchanges of the archaic past and our modern system of swift global transactions, we might manifest a magnificent art project, an ever-evolving social sculpture, together. Such an expression of our collective human genius will benefit our kin and our descendants, and support the greater web of life. Facing a crisis unleashed by human greed and ignorance, we have an extraordinary opportunity to bring about a new-or renewed-society that is far more comfortable, harmonic, relaxed, peaceful, and humane. ~Daniel Pinchbeck http://www.realitysandwich.com/impossible_alternative

"No one deserves to live in a world built upon the degradation of human beings, forests, waters, and the rest of our living planet. Speaking to our brethren on Wall Street, no one deserves to spend their lives playing with numbers while the world burns. Ultimately, we are protesting not only on behalf of the 99% left behind, but on behalf of the 1% as well. We have no enemies. We want everyone to wake up to the beauty of what we can create." "Occupy Wall Street has been criticized for its lack of clear demands, but how do we issue demands, when what we really want is nothing less than the more beautiful world our hearts tell us is possible? No demand is big enough." "I wasn't put here on earth to sell product." "I wasn't put here on earth to increase market share." "I wasn't put here on earth to make numbers grow." http://www.realitysandwich.com/occupy_wall_street_no_demand_big_enough

Just released: "Apprenticed to the Spirit", the memoirs of David Spangler. A jewel of abook. A deeply healing spiritual detox, an emergent new spirituality (honoring Gaia, boundaries...), among other things...in many respects, very resoan (to me)of Taoism Some quotes: A STRING OF CONSCIOUSNESS I came to realize he was working working with me at both ends, so to speak: training me to attune to the higher frequencies of my soul but also training me to appreciate and attune to the resources of spirit and sensitivity within my body. In fact, he was asking me to go beyond such designations as 'body' and 'soul'. "You are an spectrum of consciousness," he said once. "You are not a soul in a body like a driver in a car. You, like everyone, are more like a string that has been tied into a series of knots. Each knot is a mode of consciousness. You look at the knots and say, 'I am this body' or 'I am this soul', but in truth, you are the string." From John's perspective, it was ultimately the string that perceived, the string that discerned, the string that had consciousness. *** "The point is that the world, like you and I, exists in different states of beingness and relationship with its environment. Some of these states emphasize distinction and difference and others emphasize unity and oneness. None is better than the other. All are necessary. The partnership of the world with the cosmos occurs along all these avenues of relationship, and that is true for you and me in our partnership as well. There is the universal and the individual, the vast and the particular, and both are needed, both are real." *** "When you say that you behaved badly because of your personality or your ego, who is the "you" who is saying that? When you say that your ego or personality is the negative side of you, who is the positive side? Who is the self that has a negative and a positive side like good and bad sets of luggage, and what will that self become if you keep one side but eliminate the other? You are drawing an artificial line, creating a new inside and a new outside, saying in effect the personality appears to be you but is not the 'real you' or the spiritual you. You think that the real you is the inner self but that the personality is outside who you are, a false self. But once you have purged this false self, what is to stop you from drawing that line again and again, always dividing yourself into the part you like and the part you don't, the part that behaves and the part that doesn't, a new inner part and a new outer part, a new 'true self' and a new 'false self'? Where does that process end? From our perspective, the personality is created in relationship to the world; it is the expression of a relationship. It is you as soul in a certain mode or function of relationship. If it is dysfunctional and negative, as it may become, the blame does not lie either in the personality or the world but in the way the relationship is being constructed. That is a pattern you have the power to change through understanding, through love, and through practice. But you begin the change by honoring the function and the relationship. Honoring the personality and its purposes is a step toward the integration and wholeness you seek." *** "Our advice is to be careful of those perspectives that divide you, especially if in that division one part is turned against the other. Both you and we are diminished by the idea that the spiritual and the personal are in conflict and that for one to triumph, the other must be overcome. When you assign all the blame and responsibility for your problems to a particular part of yoruself, yoou are creating a scapegoat. You spend energy and time trying to kill the scapegoat, which in the end does little to solve the problem. If you behave badly, instead of saying, 'This is the fault of my personality or my ego', say simply, 'This is my fault. i have behaved badly'. Let your whole self take the responsibility rather than lying the blame on just a part of you. herein lies the possibility of learning, healing, and wholeness. Your personality does not make the choices that become negative actions. You do. You are soul and personality, a single thread on which is tied two knots. Honor that wholeness. If you can make a mistake, you can correct it and you can learn from it. Taking responaibility opens the door to wsidom. Otherwise you are always a distraught master trying to control and discipline an unruly horse." *** "The personality is not your 'lower self'. You have no 'lower self' as such. What you have is a part of your soul adapted to function in engagement and connection with the particulate nature of the incarnate realm. Nor do you have a 'higher self'. These are constructs you form in your mind, and by the power of your belief, you can bring them into being and divide yourself. What you have is a single self with different functions and attributes that you are seeking to express in wholeness. What you have are differences within you, not separate entities or selves. In some ways, these differences are highly creative, but because they are different, they can come into conflict and they can interfere with each other's function. Your incarnate energies can interfere with and in turn be interfered with by the energies of your soul, but the solution is not to eliminate one or the other but to develop the skills of integration and synthesis. You, in your incarnate experience of yourself, are not one or the other, personality or soul, but that which emerges from the interaction and blending of a wide spectrum of energies, physical and non-physical. I don't care what you call yourself or this emergence as long as you see yourself as a wholeness. *** Wholeness is not the same as unity or oneness. Wholeness comes from differentiation and maintains that differentiation to generate a flow of energy that supports interconectedness and organization. Its purpose is to enhance and promote emergence. Wholeness is created and maintained by the power to hold oneself in being and simultaneously to give oneself away. Wholeness emerges from a creative tension and engagement between the part and the whole. The universe unfolds from such tension. Oneness, on the other hand, the unity of all that is, is the mystery on which all things rest. It is the rest state that complements the drive to create wholes. *** We cannot assume the sacredness nor spiritual livingness of the earth or accept it as a new ideology or as a sentimentally pleasing idea. We must experience that life and sacredness, if it is there, in relationship to our own and to that ultimate mystery we call God. We must experience it in our lives, in our practice, in the flesh of our cultural creativity. We must allow it to shape us, as great spiritual ideas have always shaped those who entertain them, and not expect that we can simply use the image of Gaia to meet emotional, religious, political, or even commercial needs without allowing it to transform us in unexpected and radical ways. The spirituality of the earth is more than a slogan. It is an invitation to initiation, to the death of what we have been and the birth of something new. *** "The intelligences that act as the souls of the planets, such as the soul of your world, seek to create conditions and connections that allow life and consciousness to emerge, grow, and gain in potential and capacities. They incubate participants in the ongoing co-creative emergence of the universe. When you, through your acts of will and love, enhance the creative ability of another, by which I mean enhancing the well-being and wholeness of their lives so that they may grow and prosper, you are acting and thinking like a planet." *** I found myself immersed in verdant life, surrounded with varying shades of green. It was like being in the middle of a green fog and in the midst not of living creatures but of the power and vitality of life itself. I had a sense of an immense presence, a bit like being at the base of a mountain, only more so. I felt a multitude of impressions and images pressing in on me, more than I could process or interpret. Then the fog parted, and I gained a different perspective. Things began to fall into place, or at least, my mind began to fashion an image it could comprehend and use to organize what I was experiencing. I was seeing the world from a distance, but it did not at all resemble the images of the planet from space. Everything remained green, and there was no differentiation between oceans or continents. It was like looking at the biomass of the earth presented as a collage of images of various life-forms, from microbes to moose, from protozoa to pinewoods, with fish, birds, animals, humans, plants all represented. This was very impressionistic, with a few sharp details, including landscapes such as forests and mountains. And underneath the green light was a deeper core of light that to my sight was a reddish gold, conveying a sense of love. Quite beyond the imagery, however, was a sense of presence. It felt vast, but at the same time it felt intimate. I did not feel diminished by its vasteness. I felt that whatever this was, I was part of it, and it was part of me. "This," John said, "is the World Soul. It is the life and consciousness that infuse the world, giving of itself to support all the other lives that are evolving on this planet. Humanity is helping it to incarnate, but its gift back is to enable you to develop a planetary consciousness. This is an essential part of your destiny as a species, a destiny which you are confronting at this time in history." *** ~David Spangler, "Apprenticed to Spirit"

My joy! = )

THE PLACE OF REST The soul is its own witness and its own refuge. Unto the deep the deep heart goes, It lays its sadness nigh the breast: Only the Mighty Mother knows The wounds that quiver unconfessed. It seeks a deeper silence still; It folds itself around with peace, Where thoughts alike of good or ill In quietness unfostered cease. It feels in the unwounding vast For comfort for its hopes and fears: The Mighty Mother bows at last; She listens to her children's tears. Where the last anguish deepens -- there The fire of beauty smites through pain: A glory moves amid despair, The Mother takes her child again. ~A. E. (George William Russell)