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To support the development of this site and the work of soul friendship you are invited to express your appreciation through the spiritual practice of Dana
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Other Articles
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The Mystical Heart As a storyteller I sing, listen too and contemplate songs for the mystical heart. This often makes me dance with joy and weep for the sorrow of the world and this experience of separateness from Love called Tony Cuckson tramping the world of Boogie Street.
Dark Night of the Soul "You cannot find the Light unless you enter the darkness. " Dark night of the soul, spiritual crisis, spiritual madness, spiritual emergency, divine madness, holy madness... these are various phrases that have been used to describe a unique experience - a profound test of faith and spiritual endurance - that seems to be a necessary part of walking the path home to God.
Tony's New Ebook Irish storyteller Tony Cuckson invites you to claim your Irish Heritage through stories and songs and blessings.
There is no requirement that you be Irish. There is a requirement that you still wish to feel a sense of beauty at the heart of who you are.
This ebook "An Irish Heritage" includes songs such as Danny Boy, Raglan Road (as sang by the great Luke Kelly of the Dubliners) and My Lagan Love. These are songs of inspiration and connectedness a land steeped in the timeless.
I am so enjoying your beautiful writing and presence on the web. You offer us such a glorious invitation each time you write. You have a true gift... Blessings all around Jan Lundy - Retreat Leader, Public Speaker and Author -Your Truest Self: Embracing the Woman You Are Meant to Be." --------------
Work as a Spiritual Practice By William and Debra Miller A partner with a large CPA firm taught us about selfless service when he shared an experience he had with a young employee. This employee had made some key errors that brought negative attention to the firm. While the partner agreed with the decision to let the employee go, he also sought to selflessly assist the employee by meeting him personally. He had the young man fly to his city and throughout their meeting together he treated him with respect and dignity. The partner's intent was to help the employee leave the firm with self-respect and self-confidence, so that he could learn from this experience and be successful in the future. What does "seeing work as a spiritual practice" mean to you? How can you see work as an opportunity for furthering your spiritual practice?
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Spiritual Partnership (1)
Bouguereau - The Abduction of Psyche The need and interest of soul consciousness is not 'how' to draw things to itself from the environment but how to draw out from itself the qualities and energies from which a greater environment can emerge. - David Spangler One of the questions that has arisen from being at Earthsong Camp 2009 is the question that I would call "spiritual partnership." One of the key aspects that I love about attending this festival in the heart of the Irish countryside are the individual moments shared around the campfire. Many people are hungry and want to draw to them a relationship that is inspired and inspires them. They have a longing to love and be loved. They ask the question of Bee's and my relationship, "How do you stay together for so many years and still keep the flame of love tended so that it remains aflame and not just a spark or becomes an ember or an embarrassment of what is termed love?" I will answer this question from my personal point of view and from the way in which I conduct my relationship with Bee. Let me say at the very outset that Barbara (Bee) is not my first love. My first love is my relationship with Self. Note here that I use the world Self with a capital S and not the word myself. This first love is no secret between us. This love affair I have with the Self, the Beloved , is primary and out of that I am graced to love the blessing in form called Barbara Smith. Some people will find it difficult to imagine that one's partner takes second place but if you really want a spiritual partnership to evolve then, in my experience, you will have to learn to stand in Love with who you are and always are. Then the other you are graced to be with is not a need that you have in order to feel fulfilled but a grace that you have available to your soul to fill up and pour into and pour away in a deepening way. As a result, they too expand into Love. This is really what your heart and soul want to do, and are designed to do. This doing your love is in one sense not a doing at all but a surrender to the process that knows how to do you better than you do yourself. The real problem is one of control. You want to do love in your own way when the real purpose of life is learning to allow Love to use you for Love's purpose. This is often the beginning of a whirlwind romance that lasts forever - that is, outside of time. In the ready to Radiate e-course on developing soul friendship I ask a key question which often shocks people. The question is this. Would you marry yourself? Personally speaking, the answer is a resounding YES. Is this a YES because I am perfect in some predetermined way judged acceptable to myself and/or others? Is it a YES because I have had an ideal childhood, ideal relationship, ideal journey? In one sense the answer is NO. However, in another sense I have had an ideal journey and this continues. It is the journey into the land of discernment rather than judgement, a journey into self-acceptance and compassion out of the land of deep doubt, self-loathing and hatred. Would you marry yourself or are you waiting until the perfect moment when you will be suitable to be wedded and live happily ever after? If you are then know that spiritual partnership doesn't happen that way. You are not a self-made image. You are an image of Self and you are already whole and holy. Your work is to get out of the way and trust. You are designed to live from this state of holiness and wholeness. This state gives you peace of mind, heart and soul. It gives you more than the duality of happiness, which is always moving into unhappiness back to happiness at more intense speeds between the ups and downs of relationship. A spiritual partnership involves the commitment not just to the person you are partnered with ( although it does involve that and more), but the unfolding of the energies and qualities that create the environment in which spirit and inspiration manifest. This is not something you add to yourself. It is the unfolding of the Self that Loves through you and always loves through you. It never goes away but you do. Are you celebrating your body or are you judging it? Are you celebrating your birthday, the day Love chose you as its gift to itself? Are you celebrating the potential within you to become all you are here to be? Or are you letting the committee, the collective consciousness of the norm dictate to you who you are and who you are to become? Is doubt, fear, judgement, anxiety part of your daily bread? What do you do this is daily bread? Do you consume it and allow it to consume you through unease leading to disease? Do you change the menu or do you simply consume these energies because they are habitual and unconscious? Are you willing to feel what it takes to open the heart to a different kind of menu? One that sustains . One that empowers. One that transcends the limitations of who you think you are to live the beauty that you truly are. This is the invitation to spiritual partnership. There is a paradox to be lived here. The more you chase the perfect partnership the more it recedes. This is because you feel you are lacking in Love but that is not the case. You are lacking in nothing. If you are lacking in anything it is the direct experiencing, knowing (not knowledge) of who you are. To know who you are you have to give up who you think you are. This is the meaning of the biblical phrase, "No one can serve two masters." You can serve your self or you can be of service to Self. In one you shrink and in the other you expand. You make it your aspiration to unfold the beauty within you. When you do this then you pour it away. This is not pouring to get to but to give. The joy is in being able to give away who you are to others and to see them expand into this never ending, ever expanding Universe. The beauty is that you never arrive because Love never begins or ends because it is who you are and who you are is timeless. You are not born and you do not die. Would you marry yourself right now and love and cherish yourself tenderly, compassionately, hopefully, faithfully in the certain knowing that you are worth it? For most people, this question, or request, will hurt. It is easier to follow a path that says, " I will marry when conditions are right." Spiritual Partnership is outside of time. It arrives in the eternal now. It is your birthright. All the people around you are vibrations of a Love that births form. You and they have forgotten what this feels like. They live an idea called separateness. You and they long for union of the body, union of the mind, union of the heart, while holding a false believe that that which created them is distant from them. You and they think that the limitation of the sense experience within time and space is all that you are. Spiritual Partnership means a core revolution called, "I love me not because of anything I do but because I AM. To share from my own experience is to say that I AM Love itself dancing in form within the limitation called Tony Cuckson (now substitute your own name.) As my mentor and spiritual guide Hafiz says God sends you into the world with only four words. Welcome to the Dance. Love is God's dance. It does not belong to 'little me.' There is no welcome in the sense of separateness that we call 'my life, 'my love,' my partner.' There is welcome in the direct feeling experience of Love as manifesting through the portal beyond time into time. This is the beginning of partnership with spirit that leads to spiritual partnership © Tony Cuckson 2009
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