“Out here, no one is talking. Peace of mind is tangible.
A place you can feel your heart take each beat.
A place you can hear your soul sing your song.
Sometimes in the absence of noise, we find answers.
In solitude there is healing.”
These words by Alan Cohen were deeply felt today. Letting our inner being guide us, staying in calm center, going high… these are life goals along the journey of learning that is our life.
From Alan Cohen’s August, 2022, Easeletter:
“Relationships provide us with our greatest opportunities for spiritual growth. Some relationships bless us with love and joy, and others bring challenges that help us grow stronger and wiser. We can be grateful for everyone who comes our way, friend or apparent foe. Ultimately our foes are our friends because they teach us through important experience.
Dee and I recently did a real estate transaction. During the process we had a few tense moments in negotiations. Once while we were speaking with our realtor, I got a little hot under the collar and raised my voice a bit. Our realtor, a seasoned professional, did not get upset at all. Instead, her voice became softer and calmer. In contrast to my upset, she became a soothing, healing factor. Ultimately the transaction worked out perfectly for everyone.
When other people go low, that’s the time for you to go high. Every relationship is founded on vibrational agreement. You share an energetic match on what you are doing together and how. If someone grows upset with you or insults or attacks you, you may be tempted to become defensive and counterattack. Such a response just keeps going in circles and no one gets anywhere.
When you refuse to join another person in upset, you maintain the power to create a successful solution. “Let the one in least fear lead” applies to interactions between people as well as to the part of you that is in least fear. Your greatest power to get what you want and end a conflict is to stay established in your calm center.
My friend Jon Mundy used to be a Methodist minister. Then he discovered A Course in Miracles and began to weave its themes into his Sunday sermons. Some of his parishioners did not like the change and they began to complain. Eventually a rift grew within the church. “When I received a phone call from the region’s Bishop inviting me for a meeting, I knew he was going to fire me,” Jon recounted. “As I drove to the meeting, I kept reminding myself, ‘Don’t defend, don’t attack.’” At the meeting the Bishop fired Jon, but Jon went on to develop a new and much more rewarding career as A Course in Miracles teacher. Now Jon has published a number of successful books and he is in demand as a leading ACIM authority.
Will Rogers said, “Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.” If you don’t want to identify people as pigs, you can identify the pig element of the human psyche that finds reward in conflict and separation, and prefers to be right instead of happy. We are growing beyond that mentality. Should you slip for a moment and get into a negative vibrational match, remember Jesus’s teaching, “A soft answer turns away wrath.”
When eagles fly at a low altitude, crows sometimes come and peck at them to take away their food. Yet the eagle is much larger and stronger than the crow, with a wider wingspan. The eagle does not fight with the crow. It simply rises to an altitude the crow cannot reach. When crows go low, eagles go high.
Life on the planet can be challenging, and it can also be extremely rewarding. The best spiritual tools are the simplest. You have the power to heal conflict by turning to the part of your mind connected to your Spiritual source, and allowing your inner being to guide you.”
“The spirit of a time is an incredibly subtle, yet hugely powerful force. And it is comprised of the mentality and spirit of all individuals together. Therefore, the way you look at things is not simply a private matter. Your outlook actually and concretely affects what goes on. When you give in to helplessness, you collude with despair and add to it. When you take back your power and choose to see the possibilities for healing and transformation, your creativity awakens and flows to become an active force of renewal and encouragement in the world. In this way, even in your own hidden life, you can become a powerful agent of transformation in a broken, darkened world. There is a huge force field that opens when intention focuses and directs itself toward transformation.”
-John O’Donohue
Focusing on the light as an active force of renewal and encouragement in the world… Thank you John O’Donohue, thank you to all the heart centered ones around the world doing all that they can, thank you for continuing to focus on the light, the goodness… It is difficult in these days. Let’s keep trying our best.
“Trees in particular were mysterious and seemed to me direct embodiments of the incomprehensible meaning of life. For that reason the woods were the place where I felt closest to its deepest meaning and to its awe-inspiring workings…The tree brings back all that has been lost through Christ’s extreme spiritualization, namely the elements of nature. Through its branches and leaves the tree gathers the powers of light and air, and through its roots those of the earth and the water… You must go in quest of yourself, and you will find yourself again only in the simple and forgotten things. Why not go into the forest for a time, literally? Sometimes a tree tells you more than can be read in books… ”
-Carl Jung
“Only when I walked into the forest did the world become whole again.”
“I don’t know
if the sunflowers
are angels always,
but surely sometimes.
Who, even in heaven,
wouldn’t want to wear,
for awhile,
such a seed-face
and brave spine,
a coat of leaves
with so many pockets—
and who wouldn’t want
to stand, for a summer day,
in the hot fields,
in the lonely country
of the wild-haired corn?
This much I know,
when I see the bright
stars of their faces,
when I’m strolling nearby,
I grow soft in my speech,
and soft in my thoughts,
and I remember how everything will be everything else,
by and by.”
-Mary Oliver, from “By the Wild-Haired Corn”, Long Life : Essays and Other Writings
“No one but me by the fire,
my hands burning
red in the palms while
the night wind carries
everything away outside.
All this petty worry
while the great cloak
of the sky grows dark
and intense
round every living thing.
What is precious
inside us does not
care to be known
by the mind
in ways that diminish
its presence.
What we strive for
in perfection
is not what turns us
into the lit angel
we desire.
What disturbs
and then nourishes
has everything
we need.
What we hate
in ourselves
is what we cannot know
in ourselves but
what is true to the pattern
does not need
to be explained.
Inside everyone
is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born…
And
here
in the tumult
of the night
I hear the walnut
above the child’s swing
swaying
its dark limbs
in the wind
and the snow now
come to
beat against my window
and somewhere
in this cold night
of wind and stars
the first whispered
opening of
those hidden
and invisible springs
that uncoil
in the still summer air
each yet
to be imagined
rose.”
