Presence

Every minute of every hour of every day you are making the world, just as you are making yourself, and you might as well do it with generosity and kindness and style.

Rebecca Solnit

Dear All,

This last Tuesday we performed the simple Self-Light exercise, involving a column of green light reaching up through us from a star at the center of the earth and a column of golden light reaching down through us from a spiritual star in the center of the sun. Where these two meet, there is a personal star, a new star, that of your Self-Light.

For whatever reason, this was a powerful and successful invocation. We were bathed as a group in a palpable atmosphere of love that belonged to all of us and also seemed somehow quite independent of us.

That moment came at the end of the hour. It had been preceded by a central meditation, What does the Earth want?, which in turn was introduced by interpersonal exercises having to do with private troubles or difficulties in living.

In other words, the powerful love-event at the end of the hour had a long background. Perhaps it was the focusing on, then releasing, the whole sphere of personal troubles that made us more available to a shared love. Perhaps it was the relatively transpersonal concern for the desire of the Earth as a whole -- an unusual question-meditation, and a frame of Gaian subjectivity in which we normally do not think.

On the other hand, we've done just such practices before, and they have not resulted in the kind of energetic outpouring and co-creation we experienced on Tuesday. A deep bow of gratitude here -- though I'm not sure in what direction to aim it.

Next week, we move on to the Presence exercise to be found on pages 84-86 of Spangler's book. Presence includes wholistic connectivity of various kinds, and this is a crucial turn. Where Sovereignty and Self-Light may seem more isolated in their grounding, Presence asks us to affirm and enhance ourselves as related: to spirit and energy, to physical nature, to our everyday selves, and to humanity as a species.

If Sovereignty is the organizational 'spine' of your incarnation and Self-Light is its specific, individualized radiance, Presence is the expression of your unfoldling and dynamic incarnate Identity out into the world.

David Spangler, Working with Subtle Energies, p.77

All this self-enhancement and grounding is both good in itself and prepares us to engage with the worlds to be found around and within us.

All blessings to all,

Michael