The Deep Hearts Core – Spiritual Direction for Difficult Times

Lonely looking sky!

Lonely looking sky!

And being lonely

Makes you wonder why.

Neil Diamond from the soundtrack of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull

One of the great invitations from storyteller Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ book Women Who Run With the Wolves is “Do not fear not knowing. In various phases and period of our lives, this is how it should be.”Most of us fear this ‘not knowing.’ We are like trees pushing for the buds to open. We wait in a lonely looking sky and push with our logic chopping brain to make sense of it all.  We might wonder why but there is more of the why than the wonder.

This place of ‘not knowing’ is uncomfortable.  We are taught that life is about get up and go.  We are taught that life is about producing.  We are not taught that life is about birth and death and life.  In this cycle there is a time of incubation.  There is a time when the old is dying for the new to be born.

This is the phase of not knowing. What we tend to do is extend this period through resistance in order to avoid this frustrating ‘not knowing’ and we rehash the old and dress old wine in new wine skins.  This rehash is willed from the discomfort of ego rather than creative birthing from the soul.

We see this approach in our collective relationship to nature.  We view nature as something we use as a productive resource.  In a natural organic cycle of food production we allow the land to rest.  With our agribusiness focus we pour more chemicals on the soil to speed up the product cycle and do not allow the soil to recuperate.

What is the answer to this issue?  First, become aware of your fear of not knowing what the future holds.  This is usually a projection.  Come back to the present moment through focusing on the breath.  Do this as a regular practice and you will find this can become an anchor when your mind starts to fly off into a lonely looking sky and rather than feel any sense of wonder being filled with worry.

The next exercise is not popular but I am going to write it.  You are here to ser creation and you are not here to serve yourself.  This is why many of us get lonely and even get depressed.  We don’t know what to do with ourselves and we don’t know who or why we are here.  In one sense depression is a healthy response to a sick situation.

Krishnmurti, this writer’s first teacher, was interviewed by a press correspondent who began by asking, “Well, Mr. Krishnamurti, it is said you believe…”  Krishnamurti quickly corrected this correspondent’s view by replying, “You are wrong. I do not believe at all. I know.”

Carl Gustav Jung, the famous Swiss psychologist, issued a similar reply to such a question. “Why believe when you know.”

This is the invitation from “Do not be afraid of not knowing.”  It can be the prelude to your becoming the knowing of who you are.  It can become the prelude to you being born anew into the full realization of your being here now.

Real education that focused on the cycle of creation would teach you this.  Then you would be less resistant to change that invariably comes.  You would grow into your soul invitation and you would become an Anamcara.  The experience of not knowing might never be a delight but at least you would not feel so afraid of going into the unknown.

All mystics will issue the greatest invitation: “Die before you die.”  To the logic chopping mind that wants to know everything and arrogantly thinks it can know everything this does not make sense.  To the soul it is wisdom that is sensational.  If you live this invitation you will not be afraid of not knowing for you will become the not knowing that paradoxically is the experience of infinite intelligence.

Out of what appears to be ‘not knowing’ can come ‘all knowing’.  The way to get there is a paradox.  You let go and you trust the process.  You practice a sense of humility and get out of the way.  The creative intelligence that creates you also creates all things and knows what it is doing.  If you had faith in it the size of a mustard seed you would know this.

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“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

I wonder can you tell me who said the above lines?  This storyteller could hardly imagine the one who is quoted in the insight above.

It was the father of modern day science and this to this storyteller’s mind, also a modern mystic – Albert Einstein.

I love this quotation. It is a quote that one could easily live by. You would think that a scientist of Albert Einstein’s stature would tell us that knowledge is more important than imagination.  How much time is given to acquiring knowledge in our schools and universities? How much time is given over to the imagination?

One instruction that we are invited to empower ourselves with is to “think outside the box.”  Albert Einstein, it appears, would have us imagine beyond the box and to imagine what it is to be the box and the emptiness outside and inside the box.

In “The Intuitive Way: A Guide to Living from Inner Wisdom” Penny Pierce writes:

People often ask me if they can trust their imagination. I remind them that the logical mind would have nothing to do but repeat itself ad infinitum. If it weren’t for the creativity and genius of imagination life would have no juice, no zest.

So what is important in your life is to be imagined. This is why you are given an imagination.  It is your connection to the creative force that creatively imagines all things into existence.

Here are four steps to getting in touch with the imagination.

1. Decide what is really important in your life

This is not the life of your children, your partner, or your community, but what is important to the being that you are.  This importance is not something you judge but that you express.  It is signalled by joy and inner excitement.

 2. Follow the yellow brick road

The yellow brick road is the metaphor for the golden thread that runs through your life.   This is what Ralph Waldo Trine, the writer who helped shape the current crop of self-help books such as The Secret: The Law of Attraction, calls this road. Where will you allow this golden thread to lead you?  This is the golden thread that runs through all wisdom teachings.

 3. Know the limitation of knowledge

Knowledge is not the same thing as knowing or insight.  Insight comes from within.  Insight is holistic and arises from being in tune with the infinite potential that is available to play through you.  Knowledge is information. It is useful but it is always partial in the sense that it arises from the rational (ratio meaning ‘in part.’)

 4. Trade your knowledge for bewilderment

This is an invitation from the poet Rumi.  This is an invitation to let your imagination run wild.  This is not something to be afraid of but to invite it, welcome it. Your brain is designed for imagination. You only use 5% of your brain. Invite imagination to light up your brain and claim your attunement to infinite possibilities for your life.

 

 

 

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As a storyteller I am drawn to communicate.  This I do in words but the stories that I write are invitations from beyond words.  They are pictures that come out of the blue.  They are invitations that come from beyond.

It is hardly co-incidence, therefore, that one of my most favourite pictures is called ‘Communion’   by an artist called Rosekrantz. This is a picture full of blues, gold and light.  It is a picture of a man standing with his hands held together, his head bowed. He is giving thanks.

In the Way of Soul Friendship which is the Anamcara Experience this storyteller writes not only stories but writes about pictures that help reminds each of us about this incredible journey called life and the invitation that flows through your life.

This picture, so loved by this storyteller is, called Communion.  It is not a picture breaking bread or drinking wine.  It is a picture of open minded and openhearted devotion.  There is no God or recognised symbol of a God or Godman in this picture. It invites devotion to that which is unique within you.

The Way of Soul Friendship is a quest.  One asks questions.  These are questions of value.  These are questions that create real value in the sense that they create an opening for the transcendental and the experience of paradox. To have the time of your life requires that you tune into that which is timeless.  In Irish mythology this invitation come by way of the story of the Land of the Forever Young, Tir na Nog.

One way to invite this attunement is to choose a picture that draws you to it.  Choose a picture that you might not understand on an intellectual level but that you feel a connection with.

Let such a picture be put in a prominent place where you will see it often.  In this way your unconscious picks up on your intention to evoke the values that this picture invites within you.

Clearly then you will want to choose a picture that inspires rather than one that has images of violence or destruction.  In this way you are creating a picture of how you intend to invite the infinite to tune into your personal space. 

Do not rush this process.  Simply begin to be aware of the possibility that there is an opportunity here to go deeper than words.  There is no practice, no time, no having to give up something other.  There is the invitation to living a life of purpose aligned to your highest values, beyond the surface of the everyday experience of time and space.

This is the invitation from all great art in whatever form it appears.  If you want to walk in beauty then you have to begin to have it around you.  This is one of the great benefits of living today.  You have available to you a picture that says more than words and that is a heart invitation to real communion.

Ours is a lonely age.  It has mass communication but much of this is talk-talk.  This is not intimacy, which is about vulnerability of the heart.  A great picture will invite you into what the artist saw and the ‘heart reason’ that it was painted.  This was in celebration of the communion with that which created you in order that you too could commune.  The taste of communion is not bread and wine (although it can be that for a true devotee.)  The taste of communion is the creation arising out of the blue of nothing creating through you.

Picture yourself drawn to your highest values. Let a picture remind you of these values each day.  Then you and the picture begin to communicate in ways you might never have imagined.

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Storytellers, bards, séanachie and wisdom teachers all teach the essential lesson. Trust!

This is the key to their living a holistic and holy way.  It is a way of inner seeing and insight into the nature of their place in the world.  They are living from inner wisdom.

Our wisdom voice, which is our inner teacher, comes to us through our intuition, our inner tutor.  Our inner tutor blossoms when we play with our imagination.  The key here is the experience of playing with images and symbols.

Play is something we have forgotten to give time to.  We did this naturally when we were children.  It was our delight.  When we were children we had vast reserves of energy and we hardly ever ran out of ideas about how we might create a play filled experience.

This storyteller uses his imagination to create stories.  These are stories intended to heal and make whole those who receive them. These stories come from nowhere.  They come out of the blue. But for this to happen a number of conditions need to be in place. 

There has to be trust in the process

The creative process is just that – a process, often a very delicate one. I liken it to the birthing process. It is best if you allow it to have its own time. While it may be measured nine months chronologically for a human being to gestate, it takes two years for an elephant. Just trust!

Practice patience

For this Irish storyteller, this has been and remains one of the hardest aspects of the process.  This storyteller wants the play of creation to happen his way, right now! Otherwise, there is the threat of a tantrum. Quite unseemly for one his age! There is great truth in the paradoxical saying, “Infinite patience brings instant results.” Remember this. 

Love symbols

What you love you will play with and attend to and be attentive towards. Symbols are not just nice shapes. They have meaning and they give meaning.  They are an outer representation of an inner state of being.  If you pay attention then you will, over time, begin to identify those symbols that keep repeating in your life and which you have to deal with in order that creation express as Love through you.

 Be Imaginative

 Please notice that this fourth invitation begins with the word ‘be.’  You cannot ‘do’ imagination. It arises from trust in the being you are.  The creative intelligence that created you does not lack imagination. It can and does the action of imaging through billions and trillions of forms. Every snowflake is a miracle of imagination from the intelligence that lives inside all of us.

To become conscious of our wisdom voice, or higher self, we need to hold our intention and trust the process, to have patience and to pay attention to our imagination.

 

 

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Many of our greatest invitations to soul friendship come from the songs that we identify with. Many singer/songwriters are the bards, seanachie and outsiders of today.  They carry the messages of the culture that is invited to flower into existence.

 

One great bard and seanachie came from my father’s home town of Liverpool.  He was one of a group called The Beatles.  The fabulous four. Or, more commonly, The Fab Four! This singer song/writer/outsider was John Lennon. John once said that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ. He got into very hot water about this statement.

 

Lennon was wrong, however. Christ has never been popular – not even amongst the established churches that ostensibly follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. The historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth is popular but this is not the same as the less established experience that is the journey into Christhood. This is not popular at all,

 

When this journey in undertaken the established order is more often resistant to its invitation.  All great mystics of all religious traditions and I include those who were scientists felt the strong arm of ecclesiastical law when they courageously ventured into the mystery of what it is to be a Christed human being – a new kind of humanity.

 

And so it’s Christmas

And what have we done

Another year over and a

New one just begun.

 

These are the words of the bard John Lennon, who wrote them as part of a protest song.  Such is the work of the bard – to highlight injustice and invite peace on earth.

 

Christmas is a time of presents and gift giving.  The greatest gift that can be bestowed upon anyone is presence.  This is when one steps across the threshold of time and space into the knowing of eternity.  It is to live in the presence of the eternal now.

 

When you live from presence there is not another year over and a new one just begun. Time as you know it ceases to be and the eternal is known. This is what it means to be Christed – one who lives both in time and beyond time. This is not an historical, one-off event. It does not belong to a particular person in history.

 

However, that person in history who was Jesus of Nazareth, who became a Christed human being is one, if not the greatest, of invitations.  He is popular in the sense that there are millions of people on this planet who call upon his name. However, the name Jesus is a personal name and not the experience referred to when this master said, “When two are gathered in my name.”

 

The historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth was not asking us to believe in Jesus of Nazareth or worship his name.  That, as has been demonstrated, has led simply to institutionalism.  The far more radical and very much less popular invitation is included in the lines, “Greater things than these shall you do.”

 

This is the invitation to the new humanity that is the Christmas message of presence beyond time and space and form.  When enough of us have accepted this and are prepared to live it, then there will be what is intended to be – the second coming.  This is when enough individuals the world over are prepared to journey into the radical process of becoming Christed beings. In that sense, John Lennon was absolutely right. The Beatles were and still are more popular than Christ. Were it otherwise, heaven would be on earth and seen to be on earth.

 

Merry Christmas!

 

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