The Growing Capacity to Feel the Spirit
Have you thought about your soul being able to contain contradictions? This is so powerful to grasp. We grow up learning the laws of nature and the social life. We believe truths we are taught and conform to behavioral expectations. Then as we start paying attention to our inner life we find conflict. We seek a new inner worldview and most of us think that new view will be another set of laws to obey, truths to believe and a new more enlightened set of expectations.
In my counseling and teaching, I find our souls begin to radiate from within when we let go of laws, truths and expectations and we find confidence in the creativity, love and freedom that appears in cosmic chaos and cosmic contradiction.
Tonight I want to invite you to enter into a possibly contradictory experience that is simple and significant and quite joyful.
I want you to think about how spiritual light and spiritual strength pour into you. Most of us, thanks to art, nature and religious training, experience spiritual forces or presence coming toward us from above and that we move into the spirit in front of us.
What is the experience if you find spiritual forces beneath your feet giving you a ground and a path? What is the experience if you feel spiritual forces at your back - a quiet warmth and light centered behind your heart giving you direction and confidence? Both of these feelings have an immediacy of connection - the spirit is not far away but right here supporting you in your incarnation.
During the Holy Nights, this experience of the forces of the gods being right here with us is very, very real. To experience them as the ground you walk on and the support of movement at your back will bring you strongly into the New Year.
Please share your feelings and thought of this sense of the spirit in the comments on the blog.
Lynn, thank you.
ReplyDeleteNow when I hear "I've got your back" I will be reminded of Spirit. And I will add the thought "I've got your feet". Sweet.
I feel grounded when my self inexplicably merges with the self of fellow women whose love I've come to know. I am talking about mothers I've met, (I'm a mother so I relate) daughters, fellow goddesses I've had no physical intimacy with and still, distant from them, in this solitude, I feel their support within. The surge of love pouring from me is a blissful wonder to me.
ReplyDeleteWow. It is hard to envision and experience spirit pouring in so closely, under the feet, behind the heart. I wonder what that feels like- is it available in the asking or in the imagining?
ReplyDeleteImagine! Especially during the Holy Nights. The Spiritual World intmately connects with our souls through Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. You can do this. You can also meditate on an image of the Madonna and Child - she holds the Child with one arm supporting from below and one are supporting from behind. Feel those arms.
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of being constantly supported by spirit. It's so nice to remember that we are connected directly to the source and to be able to feel that support within and surrounding us whenever we want :)
ReplyDeleteThis thought of a contradiction speaks to me. I have often felt guided by powers other than my own and have worked to listen to that inner voice. These holidays have been very busy and this writing has reminded me to quiet my heart and mind so that the path can stretch out before me and I can be present to the feel of the spirit at my back.
ReplyDeleteThis is my first year participating in these meditations, but feel enriched by the writing and study. My dreams have been vivid and full.
I drew a blank on this night's message until reading these blog comments. Thank you, each one, for sharing. Thank you, mothers, for checking in. My back edge has often eluded me. This morning I arrived at the image of the unnamed edge...there is an edge between being and becoming, between self and other. The edge of womb is my backside. Being contained with promise and support for possibility. I love medieval icons of the madonna, and cave symbolism. This container has a felt shape for me and I know and feel it's edge around me and behind me. Thanks for renewing this with these comments.
ReplyDeleteFor me this is such a feminine warmth, a gentle ever present soothing, gentle nudge. It is what I sought and did not find with formal religion growing up.
ReplyDeleteEarth stands hard as iron, water like a stone...
ReplyDeleteWhen is the Earth awake and when is she dreaming? Winter seems like the time of darkness and sleeping, of closing down, but the involvement of the Earth and all her history in producing the event of the child's birth--this doesn't seem like an unconscious act.
I don't see this clearly. But I do feel the cold solidity of the ground, not as a sleeping but as a giving over of the ground, a sacrificing for the sake of our material journey. We feel more heavily weighted and the earth below comes up to meet us.
What would it be like to live where it's winter year-round, or never winter? How would we experience these sacrificial impulses? As something else probably, with a different purpose for us.
I have felt Spirit in my back,it is a wonderful feeling of being held and supported. Never really felt in my feet. But what is happening lately is the feeling of being surrounded by angels. I have heard I have 2 Guardian Angels.
ReplyDeleteJust by mentioning them right now, I felt them and usually is on my back, first come as a chill and then warmth. They comfort me. They are coming to me from all venues, even my holidays' cards and I made a Christmas tree of Angels. I feel very peaceful and protected by them. I am very humble and grateful for their presence.
I love this practice. I've been doing the grounded/feet part for a long time--morning and night and often in between. It feels wonderful to add the warm connection from behind, to sense the "hand" on my back. That is where I hold a lot of tension during the day.
ReplyDeleteWhen I feel the presence of a warm, loving hand on my back, the tension there begins to melt and flow down through my feet into the earth for composting. Then the earth, thanks to the great cycle of nature, turns it into nourishing energy.
I am in the middle of making a step that brings my work into the world in a bigger way. It's good to know--tangibly--that I'm connected to Mother Earth and have the hand of my invisible Friend on my back as I do this.
This is my first year doing the Holy Nights with you, Lynn--and this is my first comment.
THANK YOU for this gift,
Carolyn
Peace Be With You, Lynn & all others. In the stillness, I come to a pond (we Each have one). There, Yeshua sits on a dock centered in the midst of the surrounding waters with a butterfly net in his hands, on the other side of the pond, near the edge is a particular Living Tree, and there beneath it is the All-That-Is, Our God. The hand is cupped under the chin as a pondering is felt in knowing who this is who has come to this place. Each of our ponds are very different, some with turbulence, to the opposite end of the spectrum, a near stillness. Our thoughts, words, and deeds (thinkings, feelings, actions) can disturb this place. What we must do is not release a boulder, a gravel truck load, or even a pebble into this water. For everything goes somewhere, and Nothing Is Lost. If we turn these heavy items into lightness we can 'skip' the water like a skipping stone. As our load becomes light this skipping stone turns into a butterfly, metamorphosing from it's now changed state. Yeshua smiles and as we walk upon the dock to sit in the stillness now with HIM, he hands us our 'new life' from the butterfly net while First Source, under the Tree now smiles and releases into the Ether a vibrating smile that echoes across the Cosmic Ocean. Enjoy / In / Joy
ReplyDeleteLyn, for me contradiction, paradox, chaos have been the touchstones of how I’ve tuned into my spirit world. None more so than when I wanted to sever ties with my religious life and partner the love of my life. Not only did I experience seduction by God and an overwhelming sense that I was being shoved in a direction of re-engagement with Aboriginal people, but that this love would have me reach out and be embraced by many people places and events in truly remarkable ways. Allurement is never far away as I move between disparate groups and become more aware of the Sacred always there, even if I only sense it later. How often do I protest that I am hurting in this newness only to discover I am made young by this very newness!
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