There is a second archway on the path in the garden, next to Site 2, Faith and Trust, and before Site 3. Charles Fillmore, the co-founder of Unity, called the third “day” of creation Divine Imagination. The Divine part, for me, is essential. Imagination, as often understood by the human mind, isn’t nearly vast enough.
As I walk under the archway in the springtime, there are velvety-green seedpods. When I reach to touch them, the softness hides their vast potential. The vine will blossom into an amazing profusion of lavender beauty. It will have the capacity of more flowering with exquisite color and an unfolding of generations to come.
Click on the arrow to listen to the blog:
If I’m walking with someone, describing this ‘garden amidst the flames’, occasionally I will be moved to give a seedpod to them and say, ‘You can keep it as a symbol of your Infinite Being’. The beautiful lavender flowers are still invisible. The simple seedpod may or may not have any meaning for them.
In this journey into the Unknown territories, it is all still invisible, yet existing, in Timelessness. It’s Cosmic Power can move the small ‘i’ of imagination into the Vastness of the All That Is, into the Galaxies, as well as the smallest grain of sand. It invites, never forces. Yet I have noticed occasional 2 x 4’s in my life when I didn’t recognize It’s Power in the softness. Sometimes it wants my attention!
It also has its own stages of growth, developmental stages. In the winter the vine on the arbor appears almost lifeless, brown twigs with no leaves, no vivid color. The green leaves, seedpods and the lavender flowers are still to come. I can’t ‘make’ the flowering happen, it has its own timing. What I can do is nurture it, make sure it is watered and cared for, so it can grow. Without my recognition of the need for my participation, it can die.
What I’ve noticed, however, is that it’s very impersonal in this still Invisible realm. There will be seeds ‘I know not of’ that seem to come to support the ultimate flowering of Beauty. It’s not that it doesn’t care about me. It Knows Its Field of Love, without an opposite. It knows I am in it…in whatever stages it may ‘appear’ that I’m at. This Love gives us our own time, within this amazing Knowing of Cosmic Timelessness and Perfection.
It holds a usually unspoken invitation in this recognition of Allness. It’s not easy to understand. “Be ye perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48) That was the way Jesus said it. Now, over 2,000 years later, there are thousands of interpretations of what that means or does not mean. You will decide what it means for you…if you are interested.
The gift we have is that wherever we are in our ‘seasons’ of growing, in our ‘flowering’, they will all be ‘right’ in their own season or time, when we see through the Cosmic window of this Invisible Timelessness.
Or, we can ‘show up’ wherever we are in our time-trip of past, present and future… Our human mind will know it as perfect or not perfect, maybe hate it or think it is horrible. We may be motivated to change it, or even change others.
The Field of Vastness has a built-in learning system. A phrase from ‘A Course in Miracles’ comes into my awareness… “Choose once again…” Such a simple Gift, and sometimes it seems like we can make it so hard…
I’ve come to think of it as finding our ‘center of gravity’. It can shift and change; depending on which window we are looking out of into ‘our world’ and depending on what season we are experiencing in our ‘flowering’. Yet it seems to be what we come back to, when experiencing the changes, even surprises sometimes.
And there will come a time, at least it has for me, when our ‘center of gravity’ will even begin to shift…into a ‘different color’ of our rainbow. We will begin to see our world in a different way, even while we still may love ‘the colors’ we’ve lived that have been part of our lives.
It can get tougher sometimes, more like winter. Or it can get easier and better…even magical. Depending, in part on our choices, we can move up or down…into the Above or the below…as we deal with the ‘unconscious’ within ourselves and others. We can experience it within, feel when we’re aligned, or not. And, we experience it with others as a field between us that can light up in its different colors.
Interesting, we can usually ‘see’, yet not control, the sort of hidden things, the passages through which we travel and learn. And we know we can’t control other’s passages, although we may try, ‘for their own good’ or because we ‘are responsible’.
It makes some of our roles, perhaps like parenting, interesting to navigate! A poet, Kahlil Gibran, said: Your children are sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you…yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, they have their own thoughts… Their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
One of my guides is a simple question: ‘What would Love do?’ Almost always the answer that comes is gentle, yet clear. Occasionally, although it is rare, it is Fierce.
It’s partly about Love being the Greatest guide. “And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” I Corinthians 13:13
When I ‘get’ those Radical conclusions, that even go beyond faith and hope, I often go back in the Bible, to see what came before:
“But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.” (I Corinthians 13:10-12)
I still want to insert ‘grew up’ in that passage, put that in place of the words ‘became a man’. I have trouble thinking of myself as becoming a man… The whole ‘generic’ thing doesn’t work for my unconscious. It sometimes just ‘feels’ things. It hasn’t gotten to the rational mind kicking in to explain.
You may notice that sometimes this ‘disembodied’ Voice of scripture repeats Itself. It’s sort of like a parent, like myself as a parent, that would say, “Do I have to tell you again…” And then it tells me again what could change.
Sometimes this Voice of my Higher Self is telling me, my human self, with great gentleness and immense love. Sometimes there seems a sense of frustration, even urgency, like “Will you ever learn?”
What I know is my Divine Self yearns for my human self to become One with it. It yearns for clear seeing in the Infinity of Being, the Union of the opposites, about which I’m still learning. It’s a ‘strange bridge’ sometimes between heaven and earth, between the Invisible and the visible.
I am grateful for my ‘human, living guides’. At times it is in the form of books or things I listen to. Ken Wilber is one of my teachers. Years ago I taught ‘Kosmic Consciousness’, using a tape series where Ken Wilber is interviewed by Tami Simon, founder of Sounds True. We spent weeks in the class diving deeply, 4 or 5 hours for each tape. Now it’s available on the web as a free download.
I remember especially one profound thing. We can see in a ‘veiled’ way only one level beyond where we are in our ‘developmental stages’, our experience of ‘growing up’ that relates to our maturing in human awareness. Everything beyond that, we simply don’t believe or think it’s fantasy. We think it doesn’t exist. And we may believe people who ‘think that way’ are deluded or even crazy.
We still can see the ‘stages’, the ‘colors’ that we have already lived, and perhaps passed through in our growing up. We know the texture of their colors. The imprints are in our lives, you’ve seen examples in my life as I share with you some experiences of my childhood. Each ‘color’ has its own values and views of the world, we keep some, and we grow into new ones. Awareness of ‘transcend and include’ is a huge part of seeing what is…
Wow… That helps me understand a lot…about not understanding. It gives me more patience, invites me to be kinder without making someone else wrong. Everyone is ‘right’ for where they are in their way of ‘seeing the world’, when you ‘get it’ from their point-of-view of the world. Judgment dissolves in seeing this way…
It makes me ask: How can we learn to find the bridges between these different worldviews? Is there a Conveyor Belt that could take us all higher, perhaps even save the world? For me, the answer to that question is Love.
Sometimes I witness my mind shifting into ‘complexity’, dimensions of human crises and fear. We are in a complex time of Opportunity and Crises in our world and on our planet. There is no arguing that point… And, if I breathe into my heart, pause, what comes is the Knowing that Love never fails.
I don’t know how it is going to work, my own life has shown up in so many complex ways. Love even has shown up in all of its own ‘developmental stages’, sort of like the ‘God View’ on David Hawkins Map of Consciousness. Could ‘God View’ and ‘Love View’ be like synonyms? Maybe even words like faith and trust are like that…
And yet, knowing ‘these things’ that we’ve shared, love, because it is Love, gives me hope. It gives me a worldview with Radical Trust in Love as a Kosmic Power that can show me the way.
Love in my own life has had its own ‘strange disguises’, interesting me, attracting me, taking me deep; sometimes into territories where I felt pain or disappointment. Other times it has given me the most ecstatic gifts of Joy and Oneness, beyond what I could ever have even imagined.
I’ve learned in my 75+ years of life that there have been lots of “dots” to follow in my ‘Kosmic Follow-the-Dots Coloring Book’. When I follow the inner Knowing, Love shows me the next step, the next piece of this 1,000 Piece Puzzle.
The ‘picture’ on the cover of the puzzle box isn’t available for me to see and know how it will look when it is finished. Yet somehow, there is ‘ancient memory’. I find the edges and I am aware of the colors, how they match…or don’t. It’s up to me and other ‘students’ who are learning to ‘play this Kosmic music’, even though the ‘scales’ may be tiring, hard and sometimes not seem worth it!
I have a coffee cup with a beautiful picture of a Native American playing the flute, against a backdrop of a rising sun beginning to appear in a dark, star-lit sky. There are words: “May the soothing music of Father Sky & Mother Earth forever echo in your soul”. It was my gift to my son as he was coming out of a deep crises. In the last seven years of his life, he lived and gave the Gifts of his Soul.
What I hear is Music emerging. My yearning and heart’s intention is to be part of co-creating it. My hope is that we share this yearning…
PRACTICE: BRINGING YOUR LIFE INTO THE CURRICULUM…
This ‘Infinity of Being’ is complex…until It dissolves into Simplicity…
Don’t let that throw you, scare you or cause you to walk away…
Become an Explorer, like Lewis and Clark, exploring the Louisiana Purchase, your unknown territory, never mapped… Become part of the Expedition into that, find a guide if you need one, find other adventurous explorers that have heard about and want to be part of this kind of journey.
You can WRITE YOUR SOUL, as part of the process.
What yearnings have you felt deep within your heart and soul? Have you had glimpses of them? How do you experience their still-flowering potential? How do you nurture the seeds, care for them so they will grow?
Do you have a sense of where your ‘Center of Gravity’ might be? When do you lose it and how do you find your way back? What are your Practices? How do you find the Stillness where you can listen to ‘The Whispers’ of your soul?
If you aren’t familiar with David Hawkins and his Map of Consciousness, you might want to check it out. ‘Letting Go’ was his last book, and it is wonderful. I also love ‘Transcending the Levels of Consciousness’. It has a great part on the difference between ‘love’ and ‘Love’.
How do you deal with ‘tough stuff’? Where do you turn if you feel unclear? I invite you to check out www.LivingLovingLegacy.com. Read the ‘letter’ from me just below the drop-down bar. I ask some important questions:
“Are you like me? Have you yearned to find belonging, meaning and purpose all of the years of your life? Have you yearned for love in relationships, in your work, in the mundane, in all of its forms? Have you felt it, delightful, passionate, playful, juicy, tender, cosmic, in all of its expressions?
“Have you struggled? Are you struggling? Yearning? Have you ever felt that you didn’t quite ‘belong’ in your life? Does your heart yearn for something different than the way your life is showing up? Have you had dreams and yet find you don’t know how to ‘go for them’?”
If you want to get better acquainted with me, or with any of the people I do these dialogues with…I’d love that. They are all available free or on a Love Donation basis. All you have to do is register to hear them…and to get my ‘Messages from Marj’. We would love to have you be part of our live worldwide calls or listen to the replays!
[print_link]
If you missed some of the previous blogs and recordings, go to: https://calledbyloveinstitute.com/standard-blog
To sign up for the Called by Love Institute emails updates, incl. the details about our worldwide calls and events, go to: https://calledbyloveinstitute.com/sign-up
