year anniversary of my weekend training with Andrew Harvey who coined
the phrase "Sacred Activism" http://www.andrewharvey.net/. I have now
thought for more than a year about creating a series of
classes/workshops around the concept of Sacred Activism. So far this is
the framework for what would occur in such a course: 1) It would involve
having people create a daily spiritual practice for themselves of 15-30
minutes in duration. The purpose is to have the daily experience of the
presence of the Divine in one's life. This would create an inner
reservoir of knowing the Divine to be present. Knowing not as an
intellectual exercise but as a kinesthetic reality. 2) People would then
track their ability to identify with their own Divinity/ capital "S"
Self as to see if it expands. 3) People would create a project in their
community that allows others to have similar experiences. It can be any
kind of project but it needs to be something that allows the people
involved to do what they love to do or be their deeper more connected
Self.
In reading the works of the teachers I have found such as bell hooks
"All About Love"
http://www.education.miami.edu/ep/contemporaryed/Bell_Hooks/bell_hooks.html
< http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQUuHFKP-9s >
Eckhart Tolle "The Presence of Now" and "A New Earth"
www.eckharttolle.com/ -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPg9DnMP2D4
John Wellwood "Perfect Love Imperfect Relationships",
I am always searching for exercises and experiences that will give
people access to self-love. If we each had developed our own daily
spiritual practice that put us in touch with our inner sense of Divinity
and we strengthen our association/identity with that over our
association with our ego identity we could help move our human
consciousness forward. I believe we could begin to have daily
experiences where we intentionally exercise our sense of ourselves as
connected, peaceful, loving and complete. It might make a shift in our
ability to sustain life on the planet.
I recently have been looking at videos on the TED website ( Thanks
BettyKay!) and saw both one on a woman brain scientist who was aware
when she was having a stroke and another by a brain researcher who sees
that intelligence is a function of prediction. We are very close, I
think to a scientific breakthrough in our ability to choose to identify
and possibly consciously shift to our right hemisphere functions where
we experience a sense of oneness and the dissolution of the ego. I
believe, having looked into this for a while that it is in our right
brain that the experience of Immanence occurs. Look at the videos and
let me know what you think.
Here is the link to the ted.com video called "My Stroke of Insight" by
the Jill Bolte Taylor : http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229
And here is the talk on brain science.
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/125
From the introduction: "Jeff Hawkins urges us to take a new look at the
brain -- to see it not as a fast processor, but as a memory system that
stores and plays back experiences to help us predict, intelligently,
what will happen next."
He actually quotes RC theory saying that the brain looks at each new
input, matches it with old/similar input, makes predictions, and acts
accordingly.
If you enjoy these two, you can search for "brain" in Ted.com and find
more.
The Divine not as transcendent, out there but as immanent, in here. One
of my most recent experiences of this Knowing Immanence occurred during
a phone call to my mother shortly after my return from visiting her in
Cleveland last month. I was sitting outside on my patio facing the 15 ft
tall Camilla Tree that lives there. The tree has deeply glossy dark
green leaves and was filled just then with magenta blossoms. The sky was
quite blue and luminous. I sat there with my Blackberry phone to my ear,
speaking to my mother about her activities at the North Ridgeville VFW
hall and her Tuesday night bowling league and how she was coping with
the transition of my Grandmother's recent death. Two Rufus humming birds
began to flutter and dart around the tree. I gasped with wonder and
delight as I then saw three swallows also come in and begin swooping
around the tree. Suddenly for several minutes a golden glow cast itself
over the whole scene and the birds and the tree and my mother and I were
in a Holy moment. Time slowed down, I described what I was experiencing
to her on the phone.
My housemate Stuart pulled up his car and moved toward me and the tree
and I was able to show him what was happening and he entered the moment
without disrupting or dispersing it and then as he turned to look at me
and acknowledge what we saw, it ended. I said goodbye to my mother and
the experience faded but I was able to keep the glow of awe and
appreciation going for about an hour afterwards. Last summer I was on a
major quest to expand my ability to have a sense of oneness and knowing
Immanence outside of the realm of sexual experiences. I have experienced
sex as a pathway to the Divine for many years and had come to see that
this set me up for attachment in relationships in a way that was not
always in my best interest. In other words, because I so craved to know
the Divine and could easily experience this during sex with another, I
got very attached to my sexual partners and quite "hooked in". Thus when
a relationship transitioned away from sexual intimacy I would be very
grief stricken and have withdrawals. I was not able to maintain the same
level of ecstasy in my solo sex. I wanted to expand my access to the
Divine so I went to see Andrew Harvey and his workshop on Rumi the
Divine Beloved and then I attended the 10-day Vipassana retreat with
Jude.
I am not ready to teach Sacred Activism yet, I am still working towards
it. So I am inviting all of you to look into yourself and share with me
the answer to this question: "How do you access the Divine? What
activities and environments bring you to the space where you know your
own immanence? I want to understand all the paths to God/dess that
people walk in their everyday experiences. I want to help myself and all
of us have access to our own internal resources of Divinity. Please feel
free to email your responses to this inquiry.
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