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The last thirty years or so, spiritual/new age authors
have sent this message to readers: “You have
something broken about you and I can fix it.”
Now a newer, truer message must be heard: “You
are here to deliver a beautiful gift to the world – and
it’s a gift that benefits everyone. Remember it, and
get on with it.”
Connie Kaplan
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Conversations about
The Invisible Garment
Principles
Copyright 2015
Connie Kaplan
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The following pages consist of notes and thoughts I have developed over the
years about each of the 30 principles of form since the original publishing of my
book The Invisible Garment. They are meant to be a companion to the original
manuscript.
That said, these short definitions/articles do stand alone as thought provoking
and dialog stimulating discussions about each of the principles. If you have
enough knowledge of your own invisible garment pattern to know which
principles influence your life, I think you will enjoy reading these conversations.
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30 Spiritual Principles of Form
Ascending Principles
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Placement
Innocence
Purity
Memory
Beauty
Extension
Regeneration
Generosity
Goodness
Awareness
Containing Principles
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
Reciprocity
Flowering
Creativity
Intelligence
Ecstasy
Resistance
Unity
Attraction
Focus
Service
Descending Principles
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
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Gratitude
Harmony
Dreaming
Randomness
Humility
Desire
Silence
Peace
Love
Movement
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Understanding the Principle of Placement................................................................... 7
Understanding the Principle of Innocence ................................................................. 11
Understanding the Principle of Purity......................................................................... 15
Understanding the Principle of Memory..................................................................... 19
Understanding the Principle of Beauty ....................................................................... 23
Understanding the Principle of Extension .................................................................. 27
Understanding the Principle of Regeneration............................................................ 31
Understanding the Principle of Generosity ................................................................ 34
Understanding the Principle of Goodness ................................................................. 38
Understanding the Principle of Awareness................................................................ 42
Understanding the Principle of Reciprocity ............................................................... 46
Understanding the Principle of Flowering .................................................................. 50
Understanding the Principle of Creativity .................................................................. 54
Understanding the Principle of Intelligence ............................................................... 58
Understanding the Principle of Ecstasy ..................................................................... 62
Understanding the Principle of Resistance................................................................ 66
Understanding the Principle of Unity .......................................................................... 70
Understanding the Principle of Attraction.................................................................. 74
Understanding the Principle of Focus ........................................................................ 78
Understanding the Principle of Service ...................................................................... 82
Understanding the Principle of Gratitude................................................................... 86
Understanding the Principle of Harmony ................................................................... 90
Understanding the Principle of Dreaming .................................................................. 94
Understanding the Principle of Randomness ............................................................ 97
Understanding the Principle of Humility................................................................... 101
Understanding the Principle of Desire...................................................................... 105
Understanding the Principle of Silence .................................................................... 109
Understanding the Principle of Peace ...................................................................... 113
Understanding the Principle of Love ........................................................................ 117
Understanding the Principle of Movement............................................................... 121
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Placement
0
It is with great pleasure that I share this series of articles with you, discussing
the thirty spiritual principles that weave the fabric of human life. These
principles, and this whole body of information, are thoroughly discussed in my
book, The Invisible Garment. However, because they are living, evolving, everunfolding frequencies, there seems to be no end to the discussions of the
various principles. Let’s start with the principle of Placement.
From The Invisible Garment:
If your Sun, your primary principle, is in Placement we know that
you are a stabilizing force for all who know you. You could be
called the anchor point for your entire soul cluster, and it is
probable that you fill that role for your friends and family, too. You
are the centering force around which all vibration can express.
This most likely means that on the most superficial levels, where
you live, work, and focus your life is very important to you. On the
more esoteric levels, it means that you are deeply rooted in your
beingness and that this rootedness radiates out of you to the other
people around you. Each step that you take on the earth creates a
ripple effect, like walking on water, and it actually provides help and
motivation for others in your sphere.
Does this sound familiar? Even if these statements do not directly apply to you,
they most certainly describe someone you know. Everyone magnetizes to the
person who has Placement in his or her fabric, because they stabilize situations,
they make life seem more real, they establish a sense of “home” in any
environment.
If Placement plays an important role in your life, you immediately know what it
means to say, “You are a stabilizer.” People who are influenced by the principle
of Placement hold the anchors, and they set the trends, although they do not
necessarily mean to. Their self-understanding just radiates, and the rest of us
feel infused by their powerful uniqueness. Modern day singer/performer
Madonna’s Venus -- her emotional body -- is in Placement. Joan of Arc’s moon
-- her mastery – was in Placement. In two very different ways, and two very
different centuries, two very different women each established a new form, a
new reality, a new way of being in the world.
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Carlos Castaneda, in his first book, The Teachings of Don Juan, told a story
about his teacher taking him into a room and asking him to find his “power
spot.” Left alone all night, Carlos suffered for hours trying to find the right spot –
the right placement. You see, Carlos’s ethical body (his ascendant) was in the
principle of Placement. Don Juan knew that (although he used a different
vocabulary), and he created this test for his new student to find out what Carlos
knew about his own authentic being. It turned out that like most of us, Carlos
knew next to nothing about his own essence.
Don Juan’s testing to see if Carlos could find his power spot functioned as an
esoteric irony. He asked Carlos to find a “place,” but he was actually looking to
see if Carlos had a deeper understanding of the original principle, Placement.
(Carlos failed on both counts, but that began a long and amazing relationship
between unlikely pair, teacher and student.)
If you’ve read The Invisible Garment, you may have noticed that I capitalize the
principles. I admit, I wish there were another way to punctuate them, as I’ve had
some judgments in the past about the overuse of capitalization when I’ve read
“new agey” material. However, I can’t really come up with a better way to make
the words stand up and out properly.
In trying to articulate this body of information, I’ve chosen commonly used
words to describe the particular vibrations or frequencies that create the world
of perceptual reality. Each of these words carries a definition that is ordinarily
used. But, in its spiritual form, each of these definitions changes. This change
of definition creates the need for the spelling to slightly change.
Placement is no exception. In its ordinary usage, placement means to be
located or situated in an identifiable spot. However, in its spiritual usage,
Placement becomes the primary stabilizing principle. Placement’s synonyms are
stabilization, identification, or establishment. Placement serves as the
foundation for all other manifestation.
People who carry Placement in their weave have that special “it” that the rest of
us can see, but cannot define. Madonna, Joan of Arc, Carlos Castaneda – they
all radiated an “it-ness” by simply walking into a room. One of the most exciting
aspects of studying this body of information is the freedom it gives us. I don’t
have Placement in my weave. There may have been a time in my immaturity
that I suffered, wondering why I didn’t have “it,” as I sat quietly by watching the
“popular kids” have all the fun. Now, I can celebrate the “it” of someone else,
knowing that my job awaits me in other arenas. It’s much more fun to watch,
enjoy, and celebrate Madonna than to try unsuccessfully to BE Madonna, don’t
you think?
Of course, the “it” of Placement does not always manifest in its cleanest, most
divine potential. Adolph Hitler had Placement in four different positions in his
weave. Can you see a similarity in Hitler and Madonna? Certainly not in looks,
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in intention, in purpose, or in result. But I think we can definitely see that each
of them had/has the ability to electrify an audience, establish a frequency,
galvanize a mood.
When we look at each other’s principles, we must remember that the
fundamental frequency behind the principle never changes. It has no shadow,
because these principles come from the light that pierces through form to
illuminate essence. The individual’s personality, and his or her choices about
how to allow these frequencies to manifest through their lives, is the changing
element.
Twenty-five years ago I started teaching a spiritual practice that roots itself and
reveals itself in our dreams. When we go to sleep, we have an exchange of
energy with the level of consciousness called unity consciousness, or humansoul consciousness. The stories that we write – those things we call dreams –
are our personal minds’ attempts to remember what we experienced during this
exchange in the void. This spiritual practice involves listening to the information
of the dream as if it were a message (a love letter, if you will) from the human
soul, rather than interpreting it as a psychological event in the subconscious
mind of the dreamer. When we come to dream circle, we come in ceremony,
we share without need for personal gain, and we listen to all the dreams that are
brought to circle as if they were one dream. This helps us break the myopic
habit of personalizing and thereby limiting the dream.
One of the first things that we noticed about our dream messages was that they
almost always locate themselves. With very few exceptions, the first sentence
of a dream starts with, “I was in. . .” Interestingly, we noticed that more often
than not, most of the dreams shared on any one night located themselves in the
same kind of place. One night we might all be in our houses, or in some house
that we know well. Other nights we might all be in a retreat center or attending
a seminar. Still other nights we might all bring dreams located in a public place
– an airport, a hotel lobby, a mall. And still at other times we might all be in
centers of learning: a university, a school, a library.
Placement reveals itself to us through our dreams. A dream starts by identifying
its placement – its location. But like Don Juan’s ironic test, the kind of
information that unfolds through the dream has a direct relationship to the
principle of Placement. We will receive a teaching in the university dreams (I call
them Universe City dreams.) We may meet up with someone who has crossed
over (is no longer embodied) in the hotel lobby or airport dreams. We will most
often discover long-forgotten rooms in our house dreams. And from our retreat
dreams, we awaken regenerated, refreshed.
Each of these principles has a numerological correspondent. Placement
corresponds to the number zero. It is the number that augments all other
numbers. It means “nothing” and yet when added to any other number, it
multiplies it’s value. The original sentence of a dream may not mean much in
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the greater scheme of the dream story, but in fact Placement establishes the
unfolding of the information sent by the soul through the dream.
Think about how Placement operates in your life.
! Whether or not Placement appears in your pattern, begin to notice the
way spiritual energies establish themselves around you. Look for the
‘esoteric ironies’ that constantly test you.
! Notice when and under what circumstances you feel rooted, grounded,
stabilized. If Placement is not in your garment, who in your life gives you
the blessing of stabilizing your energy?
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Innocence
1
Next we examine the principle of Innocence.
From The Invisible Garment:
Innocence is what keeps human beings able to learn – it makes us
teachable. . .
Innocence as a principle idea never becomes unconscious. It
keeps one available to learn at all times – waking or sleeping. Even
as we develop more sophistication and have mental categories,
expectations, and cynicisms, if our pattern contains Innocence, we
cannot totally bypass the innate influence it has on our lives.
Whether or not our personal pattern includes Innocence, we
humans never reach a point at which we cannot learn.
Each of these principles has a place in consciousness where it is focused, as
well as a place in the human body. The connection of these two focus points
gives us a key to unlocking the purpose this principle plays in the cosmic story.
Innocence is focused in the archetypal realms of our collective human
consciousness, and in the heart inside the body. Contemplating the connection
between the archetypes and the heart will create powerful “ah-ha” moments for
you, especially if Innocence is part of your weave.
Because Innocence is focused in the human heart, it includes “affairs of the
heart.” Due to the extreme emotionality and passion involved in our love affairs,
we often overlook the teachings we receive from our lovers. Yet, those men and
women who stir love in our lives are indeed most profound teachers.
Over the past twenty years, I have heard thousands of dreams from my clients
and colleagues. Often, especially from women, I hear dreams that center
around the person whom they first loved. These “first love” dreams almost
always involve the re-uniting of the estranged lovers. Often the dreamer finds
this kind of dream disturbing, as it brings up a concern in her that she’s not
“over it.”
After examining hundreds of these “first love” dreams, I saw a clear pattern
emerging. It’s a pattern of Innocence. Our first loves taught us how to love and
how to be loved. If one can bypass the inevitable reason for the eventual break
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up and heartbreak, one can clearly see the amazing lessons about love that he
or she learned from that first experience of loving and being loved in a way that
included the stirring of sexuality. That’s the principle of Innocence at work in
our lives.
Whether or not intercourse and sexual gratification existed in this relationship,
every woman experiences the awakening of The Goddess within her body
thanks to her first love, and every man experiences the emerging of real power
in his body as his sexuality begins to mature. These lessons are among the
most valuable in our entire lives. Who but a true “lover” can teach us the lesson
of the beloved? Is there anything more sacred than first love?
No wonder it continues to show up in our dreams. On certain occasions, under
certain astrological and physiological circumstances, we go to sleep and slip out
of the boundaries of our waking reality, out of our physical bodies, away from
our psychological maelstrom. There, liberated from the chains of ordinary lives,
we encounter the indescribable energy of the human soul. There we remember
how deeply loved we are and how profoundly eternal that love is. As sleep ends
and we begin that journey back to our mundane realities, we write a story (what
we call the dream) about that love, so that we’ll not forget again. We use the
most obvious metaphor for that divine energy that we felt in our deepest sleep –
our first loves. We put the face of the person we loved first (in this lifetime) on
the experience of soul love, because that’s as close as we can come to
describing the experience. Innocence actually writes these dream stories.
Innocence reminds us that we can learn the lessons of love over and over and
over again. We can and do experience the joy and passion of primal love
eternally.
Moving more deeply into this scenario, most of us experienced some kind of
“heartbreak” at the hands of our first loves. Again, a lesson. Helen Deutsch
wrote a poem once entitled “The White Magnolia Tree.” I heard it read on
television when I was very young (before my first love showed up) by Helen
Hays. I’ll never forget the line: “. . .the bitter lesson that a heart which breaks
must mend itself again (that it can and must be done.)”
It’s been said that a broken heart has more room. A heart which has once
broken loves more deeply, for it now knows compassion. No experience
teaches us about pain and resultant compassion like the first broken heart.
Again, Innocence emerges, for as Helen Deutsch points out, the broken heart
can and will mend itself. Innocence will be restored, for it must. Human must
continue to learn, or they wither. As Leonard Cohen wrote: Everything has a
crack in it. That’s how the light gets in!
The paradox of Innocence lies in the heart-mind. We traditionally think that
learning occurs in the head brain. However, science in recent years is pointing
out that the heart is also a brain-like organ. It has as many neuro-receptors as
the head brain, and thereby can bypass the head brain and communicate
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directly with the nervous system. In addition, the heart has an electro-magnetic
field of energy that extends beyond the body, which is capable of receiving
messages from other surrounding fields as well as radiating messages into the
environment.
Innocence makes learning from the heart-mind possible. The principle of
Innocence opens the eyes of our hearts, the ears of our hearts, and the mouths
of our hearts, so that we see, hear and speak with a new language. Romantic
love accelerates that experience. When we’re “in love” we hear more, see more,
feel more, experience more than what is overtly before us. Awareness of that
electromagnetic field becomes slightly more heightened when we’re in love.
Innocence, or the availability to learn, dominates our energetic field.
Scientists predict that within the next few hundred years (if we don’t destroy
ourselves before then), the heart-mind will become the dominant thinking tool.
The head brain may always be the source of reason, but the sensitivities
available to us through the development of communication with the field around
us holds the only hope that we will become true stewards of the earth.
Innocence waits patiently as we learn to trust our teachability.
Of course, we know that romantic love is certainly not the only kind of love, and
is certainly not the most enduring. However, it’s important to focus on romantic
love if we are going to fully understand Innocence.
Romantic love excites us, impassions us, turns us on. It reminds us on some
unconscious level of the enthusiasm with which we take an incarnation. It stirs
in us a memory of what it means to be fully engaged in the process of learning
about life. Innocence IS that energy that keeps us so engaged.
If you’re one who had to “fall in love” many times in your youth, perhaps you
had a memory deficit. You needed to be reminded again and again and again of
how magnificent you are, how worthy of love, and how fully capable of giving
and receiving. Innocence took a while to find its home in your heart. (Don’t feel
alone. I must have fallen in love fifty times before Innocence convinced me that
I could settle and evolve.)
If you found a life partner with whom you experienced romantic love, and then
let it root in your heart and grow into all the other forms, you may call yourself
extremely fortunate and extremely wise. Innocence has taught you well. You
know the heightened privilege of exploring all the potentialities between lover
and the beloved.
If that life partner has not yet appeared for you yet, may Innocence soon bring
that light into your life. Hearts open, eyes open, Innocence alerted. Cupid’s
arrow is not a soppy, sentimental concept. It is a heart-piercing, lesson
delivering, energetic lightning bolt.
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Look for Innocence as it influences your life. Look for the ways your heart-mind
has already developed. Notice how quickly you learn from the environment.
Measure how much you trust your wisdom. Look for ways in which your
electromagnetic field picks up information before your head-brain processes it.
And most importantly. . .look for dreams of your first love.
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Purity
2
As a kid I eagerly anticipated September’s arrival. Unlike most of my peers, I
loved school and could hardly wait for it to start each year. I grew up in a
simpler, more predictable time. School was out on the Friday before Memorial
Day, and started up again the Tuesday after Labor Day. Late August meant a
whole bunch of new clothes and most importantly, new penny loafers.
September meant a new teacher, new subjects, new books, new notebooks and
organizer folders. Purity thrived in this plan, and I loved it. Every fall I started
the school year fully intending perfection.
When I contemplate the spiritual definition of Purity, memories of the new school
year always flood my mind. Purity is about the blueprint, the design, the
overview, the intention. Of course, the plan always lost its perfection in the
execution. That first test score was rarely perfect. But the dream of perfection
never abated.
From The Invisible Garment:
Purity is the ability to recognize the essential nature of any form. It
is the ability to distill any error that has been attached to a form,
whether the error is ideological, psychological, or physiological.
Purity is the ability to liberate oneself from the patterns of error that
are present in perceptual reality and instead to experience the
intent of cosmic order. Purity involves being aware of the blueprint
behind form. The only way one can experience the true nature of
form is through the eyes of Purity.
Of course, now that I have become an all-grown-up cynic, I no longer see the
“plan” of American public education as being without flaws. It is only in my
emotional memory of the first day of school that Purity reigns.
Perhaps a more appropriate metaphor for Purity would be that of an architect as
she or he designs a house, and then watches it being constructed. The
execution of the plan is never as perfect as the design itself. I remember a day a
decade or so ago when we were adding a second story to our house. The
architect had done an amazing job of creating a plan that would make the house
look as if it had always been two stories. His exterior and interior designs were
flawless. However, the staircase (and more specifically the brilliant
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mathematically calculated banister) he designed was too complicated for the
less-well-educated carpenter. The fallen look on the architect’s face when he
saw what the contractor had decided to do “instead” will never leave my
memory. Loss of Purity can sometimes be devastating!
Each of us embodies a tendency toward perfection. Our cells, our DNA
programming, and our relationship to the cosmic grid, demand that we resonate
with perfection. People who have the principle of Purity in their invisible
garment pattern embody an undeniable imperative to try to achieve perfection in
their actions, in their environment, and in their thought processes.
Depending on where Purity is placed in your pattern, it will have different
intensity of influence on your life choices. For example, someone with Purity as
the sun principle might feel an unbendable urge to correct perceived error,
whether it be their own or other’s. If one’s Mercury is in Purity, one will almost
always come down on the side of the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the
law. If Venus is in Purity, one uses how something “feels” as a more reliable
guideline for rightness, than how something looks or sounds.
I have a friend who is an interior designer. She can hardly walk into a house
without needing to rearrange a bit. It used to bother me that she never left my
things alone. After I looked at her invisible garment pattern and saw that Purity
was there more than once, I eased up. Now, I roll my eyes (behind her back, of
course) and make a mental note to put everything back where it belongs
(meaning where I like it) after she leaves. Her desire for aesthetic perfection
overrides social rules of behavior, especially in a compassionate friend’s home.
I use that example for a very specific reason. Purity places a bit of a burden on
its wearer. If Purity weaves through your garment, you feel a nagging urge to
correct things, to realign them with their right order. However, you may not
realize that you don’t necessarily always perceive the “right” order. It’s often
easier for you to see that things are OUT of order than it is for you to see the
intended order.
I think there are some very good and logical reasons for that. Most of us have
been socialized and molded by our families and our cultures so that we lose
touch with divine plan. We actually believe that what we know or intuit naturally
is “bad.” I can’t tell you how many times people weep with relief when we
discuss their principles, because they have always assumed that specific
behaviors or feelings they carry make them “bad” people. If we could only
grasp that we’re born in blessing, that we are “good” by definition, and that we
needn’t fear our own gifts, how much more efficient would life be?
In my many hours of counseling with people, I have noticed that Purity may be
the single most attacked principle in our culture. A child who carries Purity in
her contract doesn’t necessarily learn the way the school system demands that
she learn. She doesn’t necessarily behave the way a well-intentioned but
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unconscious parent might prefer. She doesn’t see the specifics, because she’s
busy studying the whole. And she’s been criticized for it all her life.
Do not misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting that Purity has a “dark” side,
which makes its wearers flawed. In fact, I’m suggesting quite the opposite. I’m
suggesting that of all the spiritual principles, Purity may be the most
misunderstood by society, and therefore it may be the most difficult to live fully.
Social ostracizing and ridicule are so painful, that we will gladly override our
deepest wisdom rather than be shamed by our peers, parents, and teachers.
If you have Purity in your garment, think back over your life at times when you
may have been criticized for seeing the big picture, or for having a hopeful or
positive attitude in the midst of what other people might call disaster. It’s
important for you to pull your energy back from those experiences, so that
Purity can regain its rightful place in your life.
If you don’t have Purity in your garment, look around for someone in your life
who does. Perhaps you have a child or a spouse or a parent who wears Purity.
Make sure you haven’t been guilty of making them feel badly for their ability to
see the greater plan, while you were doing the muck work.
In addition to being able to perceive the intention behind a circumstance or a
structure, with Purity in your chart you may have some specific and special
abilities:
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You may see the devas of the plant, animal and mineral world. You may
literally be able to perceive the earth angels that maintain our physical
structures.
•
You may have dreams that reveal the “inner workings” of things. These
dreams may look like grids or patterns, or they may actually show you
how things work.
•
Your ability to heal may be more amplified than in other people. Because
you have access to the whole plan, you may have a unique ability to see
wholeness in spite of apparent symptoms or “brokenness.” This gives
you an advantage in knowing how to heal, how to solve problems, and
how to reconstruct with a greater degree of perfection than others.
•
You may carry an understanding about how things should work in
society, and therefore society may be a puzzle for you.
Along those lines, I’ll close with this personal story. My daughter, Sara, is the
only member of our nuclear family who has Purity in her garment. She often
shocks us with her statements of how the world should be. What seems an
obvious flaw to her, the rest of us simply take for granted as “the way it is.” One
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day when she was very young I picked her up from school. I knew they had
gone on a field trip that day to the farmer’s market, so I immediately asked how
it went.
She responded with absolute righteous indignity, “You’re not going to BELIEVE
what I learned today.”
“What?” I inquired, curious about her anger.
“You have to PAY for food.”
I was astonished. The child had been to the market with me at least once a
week for her entire life. It turns out that she thought the money exchanged at
the check-out stand was my showing gratitude for their putting the groceries in
handy bags to carry home more easily.
She continued. “It’s just WRONG. You NEED food. What, are they going to
start charging for water and air next?”
I couldn’t bear to tell her that we already pay for water. She’d find that out in
due time. And air. Well. Maybe.
Purity – alignment with the divine plan – simply does not understand the
mercantile, consumerism, capitalistic system. And she’s right. She’s an adult
now, and she continues to be enraged at the injustices in our system.
As you contemplate Purity this month, look at the world around you. How many
of our social structures have strayed from their original intent? How can you
restore Original Intent into your own life? That is your imperative – start with
your own life, your own home, your own relationships, your own garden. Purity
ripples out from its source. Be that source.
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Memory
3
In the home where my husband and I raised our children there was a wisteria
plant just outside the kitchen window. Every winter for the 25 years we lived
there, I just knew that it was dead. At the end of every winter I put on my “to
do” list to call the tree guy to come take it out. Every winter I mourned its loss.
And then, without fail, every February I saw these odd little things on it that look
a little like bugs. One morning, one of those bugs would burst into the most
glorious, delicate, sensuous, fragrant, violet flower you can imagine. Every year
this happened. What caused those limbs to look so dry and dead one day, and
so alive and full of passion the next? Memory.
From The Invisible Garment:
Your mind thinks along the continuum of life. You have access to
what might be called the Cosmic Hall of Records. Everything that
has ever happened is recorded in cosmic memory. Everything that
resides in the realm of potential is also recorded there. Your mind
has the possibility of accessing those records. In order for this to
happen, you must learn to relax your personal mind, suspend all
judgment and opinion, and allow the mind to follow the track of
Memory to the collective mind. You are always interested in
balance and healing, so any thought that leads to separatist or
fundamentalist thinking will be rejected by your mind.
“Are you kidding? I can’t remember what I did yesterday, much less the
evolution of the planet.” That’s the statement I hear most often from people
when I tell them that Memory is part of their invisible garment pattern. Indeed,
most people who have Memory in their patterns also have “bad” memories.
That makes sense if you understand that the memory they refer to is linear and
rational, while the spiritual principle of Memory is a spiraling, energetic
experience.
In their book The Universe Story, Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry describe the
moment at which the universe switched from a vast group of stars and galaxies
that had the ability to organize themselves, into a magical life story. At that
moment, the single cell emerged: The primal cells – the prokaryotes – which
had a stunning new gift to bring to the creation process. “The cells could
remember significant information, even including the patterns necessary to knit
together another living cell” (9).
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Swimme and Thomas attribute to Memory (they use the more scientific term,
autopoiesis) the very existence of life: . . .”The first cells, the prokaryotes, still
remember the early Earth by the very composition of their bodies. . .For four
billion years the prokaryotic organisms have been remembering the composition
at the beginning. . . .These cells have the power to revivify that sequence of
events that brought them into life. It is this power of memory that distinguishes
the autopoiesis we call life” (87).
Living cells know how to recreate themselves. In other words, this spiritual
principle of Memory refers to the ability we hold, in our cells – not in our brains,
to re-member our origins. We extend our species into life through Memory. The
wisteria wakes up every spring and flowers again, because of Memory. Our
babies come out with fingers and toes because the egg and the sperm contain
Memory of the blueprint of “baby-ness.” Acorns turn into oak trees because
Memory differentiates between the seed of the oak and the seed of the peach.
With Memory in your invisible garment, you have a particular alignment with
life’s cycles; its repeating and mutating patterns.
Al Gore’s natal moon is at 3º of Capricorn. Memory is the 3rd principle. We
could say that Gore is a master of earth (Capricorn) memory. Could that explain
his passion for ecological and environmental sustainability? He sees that
profound and important patterns of life are being willfully broken by the
ignorance and thoughtlessness of humanity. His heart breaks as he watches his
Gaia-home being ravaged by human looters. Whether or not he would have
been a great president, we’ll never know. But that he is a master of Memory, we
see clearly in his post-political years.
Our society needs more masters of Memory. Our uneducated, greedy, selfish
actions are exterminating thousands of species per day. The spectrum of
possibility contained in the memory-cells of these species is thereby also being
exterminated. What a shame. What a crime against life.
One aspect of the principle of Memory, a scientific aspect too complex for me to
understand much less explain, is the issue of differentiation. Swimme and
Thomas continue: “Cells not only have the power of memory, they have the
ability to share their memories among themselves” (90). In other words, when
events and circumstances occur that create mutations or differences within
cells, they share that information with each other and with their offspring. “The
genetic memory of the cells enables single events to take on supreme
significance, and thus autopoiesis reaches a new level of meaning” (91).
Through this genetic memory and mutation process, life creates itself in
countless miraculous ways.
Can you think of any structure in society that seems to mimic this process? The
Internet is a clumsy, tedious, yet miraculous metaphor for the way life works.
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On this giant interweaving informational highway, new structures of
communication create themselves.
There was, in the 2000 political campaign, a great controversy about Al Gore’s
support of the development of the Internet. While his opponents tried to portray
him as a liar for claiming any connection to the creation of the Internet, virtually
all of the developers of the internet system agreed with Joseph E. Traub, a
computer science professor at Columbia University, who said that Gore was the
first political leader to grasp the importance of networking the country, and that
without his support both as a Senator and in the Vice President’s office, the
internet would not be the vital global source of information that it is today.
Was it Al Gore at work that endorsed the development of the Internet, or was it
Memory at work through Al Gore? I suggest the latter.
Each of us is contracted with certain of these 30 spiritual principles. Our
challenge, and our imperative, is to allow the principles to operate effectively in
the world through us. Let me say this in a different way. It is not your job to
“use” the principles effectively; it is your job to allow these principles to live
through you without egoic interference.
Let’s look at some other examples of people who had Memory in their invisible
garments.
" Leonardo da Vinci’s sun (primary reason for existence) and moon
(mastery) were in Memory. He was obsessed with creating a schemata
for life’s blueprint. He is known to have raided graveyards in order to
study the musculature and bone structure of the human body. Memory’s
curiosity all but drove him mad.
" Carl Jung’s sun was in Memory. His desire to understand the map of the
human psyche resulted in an inexhaustible body of information left for the
rest of us to study for decades after his passage. Memory used his life to
investigate and expose the science of psychology.
" Mother Teresa’s sun and ascendant (ethical body) were in Memory. She,
perhaps more than anyone in modern times, gave her life to the service of
life. Memory manifested in her as a deep respect for the needs of
humanity. She serves as a prototype for any who needs to study
compassion.
" Albert Einstein’s Mercury (mental body) was in Memory. His greatest
passion was to develop a “theory of everything.” He longed to explain
scientifically and mathematically the interconnection of everything
perceivable and unperceivable. Memory lived in and through his genius,
calling out to all great minds to “remember who you are.”
" John Lennon’s Venus (emotional body) was in Memory. He longed for
peace. He lived for love. Memory spoke to us through the lyrics of his
songs, perhaps most famously, in the words of Imagine: You may say
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I’m a dreamer/but I’m not the only one/I hope someday you’ll join us/ and
the world can live as one.
If Memory is in your invisible garment, I hope you’ll spend some time examining
how it has shown up in your life so far. Conversely, I wonder if you can find
some instances in which your willful behavior or your egoic fear of not being
liked or of not being right disallowed Memory from doing its work.
Look for the effects of Memory, not in how well you remember chronological
events, but rather in how you resonate with life’s passion to re-create itself, to
re-invent itself, and to reveal itself to and through you.
Each of these principles has an inner and an outer focus. Memory’s inner focus
is in the bones. No wonder da Vinci felt a call to study the skeletal structure.
Memory needed to reveal itself to him through the structure of the bones. How
is your skeleton doing? When does “bone deep” wisdom show up in your life?
What kinds of circumstances lead you to say, “I know it in my bones?”
The external focus of Memory is in the stone devas. Just as we download our
life information into our bones, Mother Earth downloads her information into her
stones. Do you have a special relationship with stones? Do you long to touch
them, wear them, study them? Do they ‘speak’ to you? Do they heal you or
calm you?
Memory is a foundational principle. Without it, your body wouldn’t know how to
digest food, pump blood, breathe air, or send messages to itself about pain and
pleasure. Without it life wouldn’t exist. But through it, life reveals its magical
secrets.
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Beauty
4
Beauty’s only skin deep, yeah yeah yeah
The Temptations
You may laugh at the idea that I quote The Temptations as if they were mystics.
Well, maybe they were. I remember when this song came out in the early ‘70’s
thinking it was insulting to those who may have considered themselves not
beautiful. “A pretty face you may not possess/but what I like about you is your
tenderness.” I didn’t particularly want to hear that from a boyfriend. After the
angels gave me the spiritual definition of Beauty, I re-thought my original
impression of these lyrics. Perhaps inner Beauty plays a more important role
than I realized in my younger years.
If you have the principle of Beauty in your invisible garment, you’re very
fortunate. You have an unusual inner access to the unseen, intelligent, grid-like
foundation on which the realm of form rests. Some may envy, but all must
admire your cellular understanding of the template of life and your relative
mastery of the workings of the physical world.
Philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell spoke of beauty as
mathematical precision: “Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth,
but supreme beauty – a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.” And
poet Edna St. Vincent Millay spoke of its geometric roots: “Euclid alone/Has
looked on Beauty bare.” Both these writers hint at a deeper definition of the
word. They seem to be saying that true Beauty emerges from the underlying,
invisible patterns of form, and the human eye sees only a radiant reflection of
those patterns.
These teachings that I share with you suggest that at birth, each of us brings
with us a configuration of energy that creates a unique expression of the human
soul. Buddhists call these energies that interweave in us “imprints.” I like that
word. I like contemplating that each of us carries specific spiritual fingerprints, if
you will, which throughout our lifetime influence our behaviors.
However, just as a perfect fingerprint left at a crime scene can be smudged by
an investigator, so can our spiritual imprints be overshadowed by our
socialization process. Parents, teachers, siblings and peers often unconsciously
(although sometimes intentionally) smear our understanding of our own patterns.
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Studying our spiritual imprints (learning our principles) can help eliminate the
cultural smudges that may have blurred our vision, and restore our original
patterning.
This smudging happened to me once at the hands of a seventh grade art
teacher. The teacher happened to be a friend of the family, and I know she had
no ill intent when she looked at my papier-mâché dragon and said, “You’re very
smart, sweetheart, but art doesn’t seem to be your talent, does it?” Her
statement didn’t crush me. I simply put art into the “I can’t do” category in my
brain and moved on with my life, not trying again for many years to express
myself in another medium.
Thirty years later I walked into internationally-renown potter Beatrice Wood’s
living room. She took my hands in greeting and exclaimed, “Oh, another
potter!” I assured her that I wasn’t an artist at all – it just isn’t my talent. She
refuted, “I know the hands of a potter when I touch them. You, my dear, are a
potter.” Stunned, but curious, I signed up that next week for a class at the Clay
House near my home. Sure enough, Beato (our pet name for Beatrice) was
right. The smudge was erased and the artist in me came to life.
In counseling with spiritual clients over the years, I’ve found Beauty to be the
principle that most often receives the cultural smudge in people’s minds. Very
often, one who has Beauty in her contract has a face and body that our culture
calls “beautiful.” His or her symmetrical facial features, slim strong physique,
striking eyes, self-confident poster, expressive lips, and enviable hair have
received compliments time and again. All this to-do often derails the person’s
spiritual growth, making the distinction between “I am beautiful” and the more
spiritually accurate statement, “I am Beauty” terribly confusing. Beautiful people
live special lives. They are treated differently, and they therefore run the risk of
developing highly distorted egos. It’s hard to discern the difference between
beautiful and Beauty.
Indeed, the difference can be described like this: BeautiFUL is only skin deep.
Beauty radiates outward from deep within itself. Perhaps the Temptations were
only off by one syllable.
Here, I could include a Beauty-and-the-Beast story to illustrate. Instead, I think
I’ll challenge you to examine your own story. Whether you have Beauty in your
garment or not, spend some time re-thinking your definition of Beauty. What
morphic field of information defines Beauty for you? Here are some
suggestions:
" Find a picture in a magazine of a beautiful person. Do you see Beauty, or
beautiful? Why? What’s the difference in your experience?
" If you can, look at a rainbow, and then look at a picture of a rainbow.
What’s the difference?
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" Or, more confusing, look at a painting of an iris by Georgia O’Keefe, and
then go outside and look at the real thing. They both evoke response,
don’t they? What’s the difference?
" Look in the mirror. Find the beautiful. . .and then find the Beauty.
I ask you to do these little exercises because I know that Beauty, of all the
principles, is hardest to understand as a spiritual energy. We are trained about
what is pretty and what isn’t from earliest days of childhood, and that imprint is
powerful. Indeed, the social definition varies from culture to culture. But
spiritual Beauty doesn’t vary.
From The Invisible Garment:
The one undeniable fact about our universe is that it is
magnificently beautiful. Our Mother Earth is the source of awe for
any who truly behold her. Think of a time when the Beauty of this
planet forced you to catch your breath. You are one of the beings
who radiates the principle of Beauty—and who returns to the level
of soul riding on the principle of Beauty. Your connection to
Creator is simple, elegant, uncomplicated. You return to the level
of soul every time you experience Beauty.
If you have Beauty in your invisible garment, your life imperative is to walk the
Beauty Way. That means that your job – your purpose in this life – is to deeply
understand the geometric structure that under girds perceptual reality, which
some people call the “planetary mind,” and then to give yourself to allowing that
structure to emerge through your life. I don’t mean, of course, that you need to
intellectually understand geometry. I mean that your intuitive grasp of Beauty
needs to be allowed a long leash. No matter what else you “do” in life, when
you see or experience Beauty, you must stop and acknowledge it. The forms
which emerge out of the unseen realms all contain Beauty. If you have that
principle in your contract, your job in life is to see, acknowledge, give beingness to Beauty. The more fully Beauty comes to life through you, the more
available it will be to the world at large.
No matter how beautiful or not beautiful your face or your body may be, if you
learn to radiate the principle, you influence the world toward understanding the
profound foundation of Beauty on which we all rest. Gems radiate Beauty.
Gems are solid forms, geometric crystallizations, which allow the light to shine
through them. That’s who you are: a gem, being asked to polish your facets, so
that Beauty can live in the world.
If your ground of being rests on the principle of Beauty, beautiFUL will radiate
from you, no matter how many scars, warts, wrinkles, or sags you have.
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Here’s the number one, most reliable beauty secret in the world: sleep. For one
thing sleep restores and regenerates the body, and a sleep-deprived person
never looks totally healthy. But more importantly, it is through the dream that
we really access our spiritual roots, and through proper understanding of our
dreams our “smudges” reveal themselves and erase themselves. We literally sit
in the lap of the soul when we sleep, and our authentic selves re-awaken.
When we wake up from sleep, we incorporate (embody) our principles anew.
We start each day as a newborn spiritual being. With Beauty in your contract,
you may want to wake up each morning, look in the mirror (not the best time to
look too deeply, I’ll grant you) and say, “Today I embody Beauty. I am Beauty.”
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Extension
5
Spring brings new growth. In most parts of the world, the first green leaves to
push themselves out of the ground or to burst from the dead looking branches
of the tree tell us that a new cycle has begun. That image brings hope and
smiles and relief to the human family. In my yard, every year I swear that the
wisteria has drowned during the winter rains. But lo! every spring, those
beautiful blooms accessorize the side of my house in luxurious purple dangling
flower-jewels. Every year I take thousands of pictures, and weep a little with
awe at the beauty that can burst out of brown boney dead-looking branches.
Using the analogy of the garden, let’s examine the principle of Extension, and
how when it lives in our garments, it thrusts us more deeply into the soil of the
soul, and stretches us more elegantly toward the light of universal truth.
From The Invisible Garment:
Millions of years ago, a bacterium (a single-celled organism)
discovered how to eat light and transform it into usable energy to
sustain life. At that moment, a new level of soul began expressing
itself in form. It is by surfing the wave of Extension that your
consciousness is returned to the level of Soul. When you come
into alignment with the deep understanding of life as an expression
of Extension, you are automatically sitting in the lap of God.
Through you, life extends itself. Through Extension, you return to
the source of Life.
With Extension in your garment pattern, you are in profound
partnership with the earth angels. How you have chosen to
express this will probably be the most interesting aspect of your
invisible garment. If you work with the plant devas in some direct
way, you probably find enormous peace and happiness in your
daily activities. You may be a gardener, florist, cook, herbalist or
healer who works with your hands and/or with plant essences. If
you have chosen a career that does not put you into constant
contact with the plant world, then you surely have other ways of
being in touch with this very essential part of your life. Your hands
are gifted and your talent is in them.
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Each of these principles has an anchor point inside the human body, as well as
another in a level of consciousness outside the body. Extension’s inner focus
point is the eye in the palm of the hand. People who have Extension in their
garments will always feel the urge to touch things, to hold them, to hug people.
He or she will sense the energy that passes between two people when they
shake hands or pat each other on the back. His or her hands will be particularly
sensitive to energetic fields. If the talent is developed well enough, the hands of
a person who has Extension in her chart can be used as something like dowsing
rods or x-ray machines.
The external focus of Extension is the devic beings of the plant kingdom. I
remember when I was a young adult, someone gave me a copy of The Magic of
Findhorn, a book which described the outrageous encounters of a woman
named Dorothy Maclean, who began speaking with the devas (faeries) in a
garden in Scotland that she and her two friends, Peter and Eileen Cady, were
tending. This garden existed in a most unlikely place: on a sandy beach in
freezing northern Scotland. Nonetheless, the nature spirits told Dorothy how to
treat the plants so that they would grow and give nourishment to the small
community of friends who lived there. The vegetables flourished when the
gardners acted according to Dorothy’s guidance. It was the most outrageous
idea I’d encountered to date – that one could communicate with beings who
were in charge of growing plants. Mind you, she wasn’t communicating with the
cabbage itself, but with the cabbage deva.
I devoured everything I could find on the subject. Lucky for me, Peter Tompkins
and Christopher Bird published The Secret Life of Plants shortly thereafter,
giving me all sorts of scientific data about the intelligence of the plant kingdom.
Indeed, there exists a level of consciousness – or a specific kind of intelligence –
that tends to the healthy development of plants. Extension anchors itself in that
consciousness. If you have Extension in your invisible garment, you most likely
have the ability to see – or at least hear – the beings that reside in that
consciousness.
Many years ago we moved out of our house in order to add a second story.
During the construction period, the workers (who are notoriously discounting of
plant life) killed almost everything growing on my property. When they finished
and we moved back in, I had a big glaring two-story house in the middle of an
otherwise “dead” city lot. To complicate matters, we were in a drought in
Southern California, and the city of Santa Monica was actually rationing water. I
couldn’t afford to spend the money to plant a new lawn, only to watch it die in
the summer heat.
In a dream-like experience, a nature spirit named Prairie Dancer told me to plant
a prairie. I didn’t exactly have room for a prairie, but my friend (who just
happened to be a landscape designer) and I decided to investigate what kinds
of plants and grasses might grow naturally in this area. We eventually planted
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an amazing garden, which continued to change and develop and extend itself
for the rest of the time I lived there. (The subsequent owners killed it an planted
grass.) The garden became something of a prototype in my neighborhood over
the years, because its wildness called out to passers by.
Even though I don’t have Extension in my garment, when I went into that garden
to work, my hands took on an intelligence of their own, and I swear I could hear
the plant beings telling me what to do. I may have gone into the garden
planning to pull weeds or manicure the walkways, but I might have ended up
abandoning those intentions altogether, because I sensed that an aloe or a pride
of madeira needed to be pruned immediately. There was literally an urgency
about this new project, that I can’t explain other than to say Extension took
control.
When I was pregnant with my first child, I determined that I would be the most
educated and evolved pregnant woman that has ever walked this planet. I read
about three trillion books. I very carefully planned a diet that would add certain
kinds of nutrition during certain parts of the pregnancy (stronger calcium foods
during the period when the baby’s skeletal system was forming, yadayadayada.)
Of course, all of this proactive behavior served as a ruse for the fact that I was
terrified. I had miscarried my first pregnancy, and so I entered this one
determined to be in control. Ha.
Each week I would read about the fetus’s development during that phase of the
pregnancy, and then I would determine the proper nutrition, exercise, and
meditation practices for the week. One day the book read, “This week your
baby will be developing fingers and toes.” I froze. I realized that I had no clue
how to make fingers and toes. I couldn’t figure out what to eat. I had no idea
what kinds of movements might encourage finger and toe development. And, of
course, I was so distracted by my sudden idiocy, that meditation was out of the
question.
Sara was born with fingers and toes. Ten of each. It’s silly, but when I saw her
itty bitty baby fingers and toes, I gave up trying to control life.
Life longs to extend itself, to recreate itself, to mirror itself. It remembers how to
make itself, over and over and over again. We humans are not in charge of life.
Life takes care of itself THROUGH us.
I imagine Extension to be a software system embedded in each being. To return
to the analogy of the plants in the garden, think about how plants deepen
themselves as they simultaneously reach toward the light. What tells the roots
that they will receive nourishment and security if they dig deeper? Extension.
What calls the stems and stalks to stretch in each moment toward the sun’s
light? Extension. What causes the pear tree to only reproduce pear trees, and
never to make an apple tree from its seed? Extension. Well Memory and
Extension in collusion, but that’s another book. . .
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Extension molds life-force into a specific pattern which repeats itself time and
again. Each individual rose may vary in its exact color and dimension, but each
rose expresses rose-ness and elaborates therefore on the pattern.
Similarly, each human expresses a unique set of tendencies, all of which reside
in and emerge from the giant reservoir of human potential. No one needs to
cognitively select his or her tendencies. Extension does that for us in the womb.
If you have Extension in your invisible garment, pay special attention to what
your hands “want” to do, or to what you “see” through the eyes in the palms of
your hands. Listen for the voices of the nature spirits as you walk in your
neighborhood or through a grove of trees. Check your peripheral vision to see if
you can catch a glimpse of them. And most importantly, allow Extension to
show itself to you in the form of new spring growth, in the plant kingdom as well
as in your personal relationships.
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Regeneration
6
Now let’s examine the principle of Regeneration.
From The Invisible Garment:
For millions of years, the consciousness that now lives in “you” has
studied, mastered, and participated in the principle of
Regeneration. On the deepest levels of knowing, you are aware of
the constant rebuilding and replenishing aspect of life. You are a
master of recreating yourself and your world. In a very real way,
your gift to life is the gift of hope and awe. You never tire of
watching life recreate itself in multiple forms and multiple
expressions. You have a very deep bond with the Great Mother –
she who constantly gives birth and nurtures newness.
Regeneration appears as a force that continually renews and repairs. I think of
Ground Zero in New York, or of the areas of Indonesia and India where the 2004
tsunami flattened entire villages. If you watch the people in those areas, you see
that the earth herself seems to call for rebirth. After a period of mourning, the
people get up, clean up, rebuild, and continue to live.
Regeneration seems to rise up from deep within the earth herself. It’s as if
Ground Zero said, “Now, rebuild.” It’s as if the tsunami lands said, “Wait a
while, and then rebuild. You’ll know when.”
Regeneration shows itself most clearly when destruction has wrecked its
devastating path. Isn’t it true that human nature seems to become more
generous, more courageous, and more enthused about life after a disaster? We
come to the rescue, we step up to the plate, we lend a helping hand much more
quickly in times of extreme distress than in the more “mundane” periods of our
lives. We’re often much more able to participate in the Regenerative process of
someone far away who has suffered than we are able to see the suffering
around us. Isn’t that interesting about us, and silly of us?
Of course, Regeneration is always at work, whether or not there has been a
tragedy, because it doesn’t need human hands to activate it. Life longs to heal
itself, to re-write itself, to re-seed itself. Regeneration is inherent in life itself.
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Eco-theologian, Father Thomas Berry stated in his book The Dream of the Earth,
that due to the strength of Regeneration, it would only take the earth twelve
years to completely restore her ecological balance, if humans were eliminated.
Sadly, 100% of earth’s ecological imbalance at this time is directly due to our
exploitation of her gifts. And yet, Regeneration runs in the waters (the
intelligence) of this planet, as she continues to give, to rebuild, to re-seed, to rewrite her story.
Our most obvious lessons of Regeneration come from the plant kingdom. We
eat plants to nourish our bodies. We heal ourselves by ingesting them or
rubbing them on our injuries. We use them to build our homes. We weave our
cloth out of their fibers. The plants give us the three basics of life -- food,
clothing and shelter. They also give us oxygen, and they show us how to rebuild
when we’ve collapsed. If Regeneration is a part of your life’s matrix, you have a
unique and powerful connection with the plant kingdom.
I have a porch in the back of my house where I sit almost every morning as I
pray and do my spiritual practices. The porch is covered by a glorious fifteenyear-old wisteria plant, which changes radically and magically with every
season. I’ve considered that plant to be my teacher, as she continually shows
me how she generates new life every spring when those boney, dried up limbs
burst, it seems overnight, into a magnificent canopy of purple energy.
I remember one year, just as my wisteria bloomed, very heavy rains fell in
Southern California for a solid week. The intensity and fury of those raindrops
literally stripped her limbs bare. At the end of that downpour, all the flowers lay
beaten and rotting on the grown below.
Usually right after the flowers bloom, the wisteria bursts with green new-leaf
energy, and suddenly my porch is a haven of shade. But that year, no leaves
came. Her thick, twisted, gnarly, naked limbs just glared at me all through April,
May, June, and July. Late in June I decided to call the tree man and tell him to
come take my beloved dead wisteria out. Clearly the flooding had killed her.
Literally, as I stood up to go inside to look up his number, I heard an interesting
sound above my head. There virtually hidden in the twisted branches I saw her.
A mourning dove’s head peered out from her nest. She was sitting on her eggs.
She had chosen these naked limbs as the haven for her offspring. Had she
heard my thoughts? I’d been on that porch every day (well, every day it wasn’t
pouring rain) this spring and summer. How had I never noticed her before?
Why did she cry out at that moment?
Clearly the dead plant had become home to new life. I saw the metaphor, and
silently assured my new friend that her home was safe. I postponed taking the
wisteria out until I was sure the birdies were hatched and flying.
When I returned home from a trip late in July, I went to check on my mourning
dove. Her babies were hatched. She was busy flitting here and there bringing
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food, looking for more. Regeneration had done its work. I love the sounds of
those baby birds.
The next morning I stepped out on my porch and sat in my favorite chair,
cuddling in for my delicious sitting and staring time. Do you already know the
end of this story? Yes!!! At the base of the wisteria, there were new branches. .
.new growth. . .that shade of green that shines so brightly that ecstasy seems to
leap from it. She hadn’t died at all. Perhaps she went through a wisteria
depression after the rain took all her flowers. Perhaps she was in post-traumatic
shock. But she lived. She thrived. She would shade my sacred prayer spot
again. And the mourning dove can come back the next year, as her nest
remained inviolate.
Regeneration works in the dazzling darkness of mystery. It works its magic high
in the branches, and deep in the earth. My impatience had no place in the
regenerative process. My time-table simply did not have any correspondent in
Nature’s reality. In fact, in that moment as I stared at the new branches, I
wondered whether I knew anything about how life works at all? I thought the
birdies were chirping for food, constantly reminding their mother to come back,
but for all I know, it was the sound of their song that called the new branches
out of the roots of the wisteria. In fact, that seems as likely as any other answer,
doesn’t it?
The earth and all her babies regenerate themselves according to a timing not
controlled – indeed not even comprehended – by humans. It’s the sub-atomic
clock at work in the wisdom of the cells that keeps time for the principle of
Regeneration.
Look for signs that Regeneration is at work in your life.
! Start with nature. Look for the many ways that the plants, the animals,
the creeks and rivers, and the soil renew themselves. How does your
garden grow? What are the forms of life that function as your
(metaphorical) composting material?
! And then look in your home, your family, your workplace. How does the
frequency of Regeneration operate in your mundane life? Are your
“good-byes” sad and sentimental, or do they contain an excitement
about the “what’s next?”
! And finally, look in your heart. Are you exhausted, or are you refreshed?
Are you in love with life, or are you dragging through life? How can you
invite Regeneration to spring the new branches from your roots that give
you a whole new perspective?
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Generosity
7
On some days I read the paper, listen to the news, observe the world around
me, and wonder what happened? How did greed, narcissism, self-entitlement
and myopia become the fundamental law of behavior? When did American
business become founded on lies? When did we lose the ability to recognize
those lies? How did amnesia of the golden rule creep into our culture?
The spiritual principle of Generosity is fundamental in that the universe itself
depends on radical giving for its own survival. Generosity existed in the creative
flow of the cosmos long before humans showed up on the scene. In fact, Brian
Swimme in his brilliant little book The Universe is a Green Dragon comments,
“The ultimate source of all that is, the support and well being [of the universe], is
Ultimate Generosity. . .the root reality of the universe is generosity of being
(146.) The basic energy that burst forth out of the void 15 billion years ago,
beginning the process that resulted in life on this planet, was a generous energy
which gives itself again and again for expressing, recycling, expanding, and
creating new forms.
From The Invisible Garment:
You are a representative of your soul, here to be generous. This
means that not only are you a giver, but that you have made a
sacred commitment to be conscious of the balance between giving
and receiving. You are here to learn and express the great give
away, which means that you are here to serve life and to live life
fully. In a very real sense, you are not burdened with the mundane
world the way many people are, because your innate
understanding that life is a gift sets you free. You aren’t a victim of
life, you are a creator of life.
Generosity, then, evokes in us a need for a truthful perspective of the energies
that create healthy life. One must give and receive in balance. As one receives,
so one gives; conversely, as one gives, so one receives.
I read a story recently about a corn farmer in Ohio. Every year for seven years
he won the first prize at the state fair for having the tastiest, healthiest crop in
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the corn belt. Every year, after the fair, he packaged up sacks of corn seeds
from his award winning crop and delivered them to his neighbors. One of the
judges heard about his habit and asked him, “Aren’t you afraid one of your
neighbors will take the blue ribbon next year? Why would you give away your
carefully developed seeds?” The farmer replied, “The birds and the bees don’t
know one farm from another. They cross-pollinate from other fields into mine,
and vice versa. The healthier my neighbors crop, the healthier mine. In my
corner of the world, an unhealthy corn crop breeds an unhealthy community.”
Of course, this story took place before Monsanto bought the votes in Congress
to allow them to control the corn, wheat, and other “seed” industries of our
farms. BUT, this story can serve as an allegory which extends and applies to
everyone’s corner of the world, doesn’t it? Those of us who are more fortunate
simply must share with our neighbors, not only because it’s the “right” thing to
do, but because it perpetuates a healthy and prosperous life for us all. Why
feed the poor? Because hunger breeds poverty, disease and crime in our world.
Why rebuild New Orleans after Katrina? Because disaster, displacement, and
disenfranchisement breed bitterness and hatred in our world. Why run our
businesses ethically? Because imbalance of opportunity and money breeds
deep dissatisfaction and depression in our world.
This concept doesn’t stop with humanity. We must also show generosity to our
planet. We receive without limitation from the resources of nature, until we use
those resources up. At that point, nature shrivels, species die, weather
changes, and atmospheric adjustments occur. Generosity breeds plenty. Greed
breeds need. Our responsibility to humanity and the cosmos is identical: we
must live as though we are all one family, mutually supportive, because each
other’s successes are advantageous for us all.
The benefits of Generosity do not stop with materialistic and physical realities.
Spiritual generosity is equally important. In addition to being shocked when I
hear the daily news and recognize the misbehavior of our leaders and our
misguided businessmen, I also find the spiritual aridity in our culture to be
shocking.
It appears that the conservative Christian element in American culture uses
intimidation and fear rather than generosity of spirit to spread their “good news.”
In addition, I see other fundamentalists in other religious sects identifying more
with terror, isolationism, arrogance, and extremism than with loving kindness,
unity, humility and expansion. Where and how does giving and receiving fit in
our religions? What happened to caring for the poor, the sick, and the needy?
Spiritual generosity occurs when the practitioner fully realizes that life itself is the
ultimate gift. You have already received beyond measure. God has bestowed
life upon you. Giving back to life, in order to return the gift in equal measure is
your only job. If you live outside that basic understanding, then your life will be
one of struggle and limitation.
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From The Invisible Garment:
It is time for all spiritual practitioners to become the agents of
transformation. One’s participation with the principle of Generosity
demands that one not only transform oneself, but also that he or
she give that transformation a form of expression. By living in a
transformed state of consciousness one helps create patterns in
the world that allow for a larger shift of consciousness.
As the angels said to me when this material first began to take form, the real
agents of transformation in our culture are the spiritual practitioners. The
religionists, mired in dogma and limited by separatist beliefs, cannot bring peace
to the world. Generosity can and will be the bearer of peace.
Like the Ohio farmer, we spiritual practitioners, incorporating the principle of
Generosity, will cross-pollinate ethical behavior, moral foundation, truth, and
fearless philanthropy.
If you believe that you were born with a purpose – wearing an invisible garment
woven with spiritual threads – then you must also know in your bones that
everyone else was, also. Our worldly job, then, is to find and accomplish that
purpose, while also creating circumstances and possibilities for all our
neighbors to do the same. In order to do that, we must live in a world that
recognizes, values and nurtures that purpose in every being, human and nonhuman. Generosity allows us to do just that. A generous person embodies her
purpose and helps build a generous community. A generous community results
from the deep understanding of the generous universe that gave birth to us.
Look for Generosity at work in your corner of the world. See it in the abundance
of the plant world. See it in the sweetness of your animals. See it in the bodies
of your friends.
Then look for the signs of Generosity in yourself. How do you
incorporate/embody it? Do you use “them” and the way “they” act as an
excuse to be greedy, self-entitled, narcissistic? Does rudeness take over your
personality as an impotent means of self-protection? Or do you have the
courage to experience the joy of giving?
In his last speech, delivered the night before his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. explained to the families and supporters of the striking sanitation
workers in Memphis that any one African American family may feel too
powerless to affect change. But as a community, the American Negro’s
financial potential alone (their collective earnings per annum) were more than
most small nations in the world. Money is our primary energy exchange in
today’s world. And if we spiritual practitioners use our money in direct
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alignment with the spirit of Generosity, we can and will be the agents of
transformation.
Here are some specific steps to take:
" Make sure to buy from companies that are fair trade businesses – and
make sure NOT to buy from companies who use unfair labor practices
ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD
" Check your investments. Make sure you are putting your money into
corporations that are “green” in their philosophy as well as their practices
" Demand quality of product as well as quality of character from the
companies with which you do business. Research to make sure you’re
supporting ethical business practices by buying products and services
from moral vendors
Here is the bottom line, my friend. It’s redundant for us to pray for the end of
war, for we have the ability to end it ourselves. It’s absurd for us to pray for the
end of world hunger, for we have enough to feed everyone. It’s ridiculous for us
to pray for a solution to racism, for we have hearts that recognize unity. It’s
irrational for us to pray for the end of disease, for we have the mental capacity
to find the cures for ourselves. Life has been generous with us. We must give
back to Life.
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Goodness
8
I’ll never forget the first time I heard James Weldon Johnson’s poem, “A Negro
Sermon.” I was at church camp. I couldn’t have been more than 10 years old.
Another camper read it at one of our worship services. She was about my age,
a redhead, freckles galore, a bit of a lisp. Yet, she was charismatic and her
presentation was unapologetically dramatic. I was mesmerized from the
moment she started.
And God stepped out in space
And He looked around and said,
“I’m lonely –
I’ll make me a world.”
And far as the eye of God could see
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.
Then God smiled,
And the light broke,
And the darkness rolled up on one side,
And the light stood shining on the other,
And God said, “That’s good!”
The poem goes on to portray the whole creation story of Genesis. It’s moving.
It stirs. It creates in the reader/listener resonance and deep understanding of
“Goodness.”
The last verse describes a God who, after He lit the sun and flung the stars and
created the earth and all its creatures was lonely still.
This Great God
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till He shaped it in His own image.
“In His own image” is the key to understanding Goodness. Humans hold
special privilege in the animal kingdom, for humans, made in the image of Godness (Goodness), are the companions of Creation and Creator.
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From The Invisible Garment:
Goodness is very similar to “Godness.” Goodness is a knowing
that one is made and carried by God’s loving kindness. Humans
are expressions of God. Each human is one of the many faces that
God wears. To be contracted with Goodness is to live in the
constant awareness that one is made in God’s image. Real
Goodness requires a profound connection to the level of soul that
connects spirit to matter.
The 30 spiritual principles which function as the focus of my teachings may be
studied in sets of ten. The first ten, numbered 0-9, constitute what we call the
ascending principles. They are associated most closely with nature and the
natural order, striving to rise toward higher levels of expression. The second
ten, 10-19, are the containing principles – those more closely associated with
the human realm. The last ten, 20-29, are called the descending principles.
They represent the galactic energies that reach “down” into the realm of form in
order to experience themselves.
Each of the principles has a point of focus within the human body, and also one
outside the human body. Studying these focal points helps us understand the
interconnections of the inner/outer realms.
Goodness, principle #8 of the ascending group, shows us clearly how the
external focus (the animal beings) interweaves us as humans with the realms of
nature. Goodness is said to be focused in the animals. If you wear Goodness in
your garment, you are connected to the animal kingdom, and in addition your
own “animal-ness” influences you in interesting ways.
Ironically, the “animal-ness” in humans is not the gross, harmful, uncivilized
parts of us. Indeed, man’s inhumanity to man appears to come from the
“humanness” side of the equation. The animal-ness to which I refer is the
aspect of ourselves that can be in alignment with is-ness, present in the present,
without need to analyze or abstract situations. The animal-ness to which I refer
is the instinctive and spontaneous aspect of humans.
I remember seeing a story on the news a few years ago. A young boy had fallen
into the gorilla habitat at a zoo. The fall apparently knocked him unconscious.
His parents and a crowd gathered round watched, holding their breath as the
female gorilla approached the child. To everyone’s amazement, rather than
harming him as they feared, she picked him up tenderly, and took him into her
living quarters where she tended him until the zoo keepers (with whom she was
familiar) came to take him. Who among us watched that story without shedding
just a few sweet tears? I wondered, if she hadn’t known and trusted the zoo
keepers who came for the boy, would she fiercely have protected him? Did we
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anthropomorphize the gorilla, projecting human maternal qualities onto her? Or
did we simply bear witness to Goodness, emerging in the animal kingdom? I
think it was the latter. I think when we see Goodness, it moves us to the core of
our being. Perhaps more than any other principle, it reminds us of who we are.
As you contemplate Goodness, think of it as instinctual. These are the
dictionary definitions of the word instinct.
•
•
•
•
•
A natural or instilled pattern of response
An intuitive way of acting or thinking
A natural propensity or skill toward specific deeds
Imbued or filled with a quality
An involuntary drive toward certain patterns of behavior
We don’t often look at the spiritual principles from this perspective – as if they
were instincts woven into our fiber. However, the ascending ones in particular,
are just that. They program us. They influence us toward certain responses,
reactions, perspectives, and behaviors.
If you have Goodness in your pattern, look honestly at your history. How has
Goodness influenced you? When have you (metaphorically) picked up the
unconscious child and carried him to safety? Think of the many times that your
first impulse was toward “doing good.”
And also look honestly at how society has trained you not to be so “good.” It’s
considered naïve or even dangerous to just, as the Bible asks, “Go about doing
good.” I think that’s why we rush to “ground zero” whenever there’s a natural or
manmade disaster. Our desire to allow Goodness to live through us stays pent
up behind social restrictions and cynicisms. When the floodgates open, so to
speak, we just want to be a part of the healing.
The amount of money that poured into Indonesia and the other affected
countries after the tsunami of 2004 testified to people’s desire to help. We long
to create a world of peace, a world of safety, a world in which every being has
the right to live in security and sanity, don’t we? Goodness oozes in our veins.
The American government’s failure to address the catastrophic events after the
hurricane season of 2005 horrified us. We sensed the corruption, the
incompetence, and the ghastly human error behind every mistake that was
made. Again, we poured millions of dollars into what we desperately hoped
would be avenues of healing for our brothers and sisters of the South.
Unfortunately, we Americans often wear money blinders. Our first tendency is to
throw money at a problem and hope that it will solve itself. Perhaps we missed
the Goodness that flowed in those flood waters. Perhaps we failed to see that
the energy behind the heroic actions of some was more important than the news
we were witnessing on TV.
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Meister Eckhart preached an inspiring sermon about Goodness once, in which
he said, “What do good people do? They praise good people.”
The angels which brought this material to me also spoke to this aspect of
Goodness:
If one is truly connected to Goodness, then one is deeply moved by the
Goodness in other people
Goodness sees goodness; Goodness praises goodness; Goodness is
augmented by goodness.
Animals are better at beingness than humans. Goodness involves not
judging but simply being.
That’s what I encourage you to do. Look for Goodness. Recognize it. Praise it.
Glorify it. I don’t mean just actions that you judge to be “good” – I mean the
flow of Goodness as it runs through our societies.
Our media blind us. Through the news we are shown the actions of our
governments, most of which are corrupt and misguided. Behind every corrupt
government, however, good people exist. Find them. Love them. Praise them.
Bring Goodness to the table this month. Let it show itself in you and to you.
This may be a monumental task, actually. As we watch our world be torn by
hatred, religious fundamentalism, greed, racism and our beliefs in separation, it
becomes almost impossible not to polarize into one camp or another. Seeing
Goodness rise like a phoenix out of the ashes requires opening the eyes of the
heart.
In closing, let me remind you of a story I’m sure you’ve heard many times:
An elder Cherokee was teaching his grandchildren about life. He said to them,
'A fight is going on inside me...It is a terrible fight, and it is between two wolves.
One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, selfpity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, pride, and superiority. The other wolf
stands for goodness, joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility,
kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and
faith. This same fight is going on inside of you and every other person too.' They
children thought about it for a minute and then one asked his grandfather,
"Which wolf will win?"
The old Cherokee simply replied..."The one you feed."
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Awareness
9
To fully understand the emergence of the principle of Awareness, it’s helpful to
look back over the inner focus points of all the Ascending Principles.
Placement’s (0) focus is in the natural micro-universes of the earth herself. It’s
in those micro-universes that all the seeds (literal and metaphorical) get planted
and begin their process toward full maturity. Innocence (1), then focuses on the
Archetypal Realms – the infrastructure. It’s here that the acorn starts to open to
its destiny as an oak tree – always an oak tree – never a peach tree! Then Purity
(2) emerges and the Devas (the little earth angels) begin their work of
manifesting the blueprint. Memory (3) and Beauty (4) work in tandem to create
the mineral kingdom. Extension (5) and Regeneration (6) bring forth the plant
kingdom. Generosity (7) and Goodness (8) reside in the animal kingdom. So we
can see a steady growth in consciousness and sophistication from the invisible
realms of nature to the magnificence of the animals through the Ascending
Principles.
Then comes Awareness, the principle that bridges the Ascending worlds of
nature into the Containing worlds of the human realm. We humans are, after all,
animal bodies, but these bodies are inhabited by a consciousness that can
contemplate the mystery of life. Animals, I suspect, know about the mystery,
but they don’t have the need to question it, define it, probe it like we do. The
principle of Awareness drives us toward that investigation.
If you have Awareness in your invisible garment pattern, your mind wants to
expand expand expand. You can see paradox without becoming confused or
baffled. You feel totally at home with diversity.
From The Invisible Garment:
In those moments when you expand your consciousness to include
both ends of a seeming polarity, your mind suddenly becomes
clear and you feel the arms of the universe around you. You know
that your life is totally safe, supported. You remember that your
“job” is to continue to expand your understanding of life so that
nothing will be marginalized or excluded from your consciousness.
It’s a very clean and clear and open sense of well-being.
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Awareness. That’s the key to what separates us, albeit only slightly, from the
animals. Our Awareness makes us create religions, ceremony, rites of passage.
Of course some of our animal cousins also have rituals. I think, for example, of
the ritual an elephant herd creates a year after one of their elders has died. They
return to the site of the death and each member of the tribe runs his or her trunk
over the bones of their deceased friend/relative. People who have seen it
describe it as a holy event. Those kinds of rituals are certainly mammalistic in
nature. But humans take it a step further. Humans write stories about what
happens to consciousness (Awareness) after the body has ceased to live. This
principle, which bridges human and natural worlds never stops driving us
toward “comprehending the mystery.”
Have you seen the movie “Dean Spanley?” It was made in 2008 – not so long
ago – but it is a period piece set in Edwardian England. It stars one of my
favorites, Peter O’Toole. It’s about a man, Dean Spanley, played by another
favorite of mine, Sam Neill, who when he smells a certain wine (Hungarian
Tokay) begins to have memories of being a dog in a past life. The Peter O’Toole
character and his son are so fascinated by the things Dean Spanley reports
about the consciousness, the thinking, the sensations of being a dog, that they
continue to find sources for this rare wine, just to keep Dean Spanley returning
for Thursday night dinner. I’ll not be a spoiler by telling you the full story, but I
will say that the brilliance of the conversations led me to believe that the
screenwriters must have had Goodness (the focal point of the animal kingdom)
and Awareness (the ability to perceive and incorporate paradox) in their invisible
garment charts.
For example, in one scene Dean Spangler, while reminiscing about is dogness,
described escaping from his yard one day and spending the entire day running
in the wild with a “naughty” neighbor dog. They chased squirrels, napped by
the river, howled at the moon as it started coming up, ran over hill and dale with
complete freedom. And then it was time to return home. The Peter O’Toole
character interrupted the story to ask him how, after a day of running in the wild,
did he know how to get home? Dean Spangler answered, “It’s easy. One just
turns toward home and starts running. How else would one do it?”
That’s Awareness. That’s the bridge between the “wild” nature in each of us,
and the innate wisdom that tells us to return home. Awareness takes us into the
wilds, and never loses the knowledge of where home is. No matter how far out
there you travel, “home” has a resonance that, as the Motel Six commercial
says, “keeps the light on for ya.”
Genetic scientists tell us that we are biologically quite similar to many other
animals. Well, in fact we have biological similarities to everything on the planet,
animal, plant and mineral, as all forms are made from the same elements. But
we humans are astonishingly similar to our next-of-kin, the chimpanzee. In fact
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we are 98.6% identical to them. What is the difference? Rate of development.
A chimpanzee reaches maturity in just over 2 years. Humans require about 21.
(Some need 40 or more. Ask their wives.)
So what happens in those extra 19 years of maturing? Awareness. Human
children spend years and years and years playing, imagining, pretending,
developing belief systems and stabilizing behavioral patterns. And all of those
activities contribute to the maturing of the child’s relationship to the principle of
Awareness. Have you ever watched a baby develop from newborn to six
months? Surely you have no doubt that Awareness plays a big role. And have
you ever been present to see a toddler’s eyes as he or she “gets” that the toy
you just hid didn’t disappear but is just behind your back? Awareness. Each
year of human development, Awareness takes a new, more sublime, more
sophisticated, more complex role. But indeed, it takes a role.
Of course some humans become damaged or cynical or too disappointed in
how life unfolds for them, which causes them to (usually unintentionally) stunt
the growth and development of Awareness. But if that principle is in your
invisible garment pattern, you’ll not be able to stop it. Awareness will grow in
you, in spite of yourself.
From The Invisible Garment:
[Periodically throughout your life] you will have moments of
absolute divine self-recognition when your consciousness is
involuntarily expanded, and you realize the interconnectedness of
all things – yourself to all things, and all things back to yourself.
You simultaneously become the ever-regenerating center of the
universe and the No Thing from which the universe continually
reproduces itself. You become No Thing and Every Thing all at
once. You remember who you are and that all is right – nothing
needs to be fixed!
Awareness gives humanity a dimension that no other aspect of nature contains.
That’s not to say that other aspects of nature aren’t “smarter” than we are in
their own ways. I mean, who among us can become an oak tree? But access
to the principle of Awareness brings a human to a level of consciousness and a
unique participation with the development of Life Force that no other creature
has.
As you think back over your life, look for incidents when Awareness took the
spotlight. If it’s in your garment, look for specific signs. For example, if
Awareness is in your emotional body, try to remember some moments of high
emotionality (times when you felt really loved or times when you felt really
betrayed) and re-think them. Did those times actually push you over a precipice
into a wider, richer, more all-inclusive state?
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Also think about how you have witnessed other people bridging the natural
worlds and human worlds. Awareness pushed them to do it, I bet ya!
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Reciprocity
10
Autumn brings the holiday season to our year. It starts in the early fall with the
Jewish holidays, and culminates on January 1 with the beginning of a new year.
Many birthdays fall in that time-period in my family, so we’re particularly full of
the celebratory spirit. Historically, autumn and the beginning of winter have
been a time of profound celebration, giving, and receiving.
When I was a little girl the concept of giving gifts always puzzled me. I felt a
social imperative to go shopping and buy something for members of my family
and some of my friends. Carefully, I’d make my list and put down a dollar
amount next to each person, so that I’d stay within my budget. However,
without fail, during my ventures to the stores, I always found a “perfect” gift for
someone who wasn’t on my list, while I struggled to find “right” gifts for people
who were. I felt sad that I “couldn’t afford” to buy the gift for the person who
wasn’t on my list. If I did I wouldn’t have enough money for the presents I was
supposed to buy! Holiday shopping usually ended in my compromising and
buying something for the people on my list that didn’t seem quite right.
Frustration and deadlines created a stress, and I eventually just bought
something – anything – to get to mark them off the list. I don’t really remember
a holiday season from my childhood when I felt genuinely satisfied with my
giving. Interestingly, I often found that the “best” gift I got each holiday season
came from unexpected directions – from someone who wasn’t on my list.
I always wondered why you couldn’t just go shopping and buy that “perfect” gift
that just popped off the shelf and said, “Buy me for Sally!!!” It seemed to me
that the angels should just mark you down as having given a perfect gift, and
send a note to your “on-the-list” people that you were off the hook for giving
that year!
I even thought about trying it once – giving the “perfect” gift and then writing
notes to all the on-the-list people, explaining my new paradigm of giving. I
never had the nerve, but I’ve always been curious what would have come back
at me if I’d tried “perfect” giving.
When this body of information about the spiritual principles of life came to me,
Reciprocity stood out as one of the most important to understand. The balance
between giving and receiving determines a person’s understanding of how to
live a life of balance and happiness.
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Reciprocity
With Reciprocity in your garment, you are a natural peacemaker. You
understand the laws of karma. You know that while nothing is innately
“good” or “bad,” every thought, word, and deed creates its own balancing
counterpoint. When one makes choices based on a thorough knowledge
of the great force of equilibrium (Reciprocity), healing and wholeness are
the inevitable results. Relationship (relativity) is important to you and
creating balance within relationships is your vocation.
While this principle may or may not be a thread in your personal invisible
garment, it is a thread in the single garment of destiny into which we are all
woven. Each of us receives from life in proportion to what we give to life.
Happiness does not result from receiving alone. It necessarily involves giving in
direct proportion to the receipt.
While I guess that you wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t have a desire to
achieve Reciprocity and balance in your life, I’m also guessing that there is a
nagging unsettled element in your life. You’re not quite comfortable.
Something’s out of whack. There are a few “if onlys” in your vocabulary. If only
this would happen, THEN I’d be happy. . .
I’d like to suggest that your unhappiness is not personal. It’s the result of our
collective state of being. We are out of balance as a people. No matter where
we live in the world, our culture experiences Reciprocity in every moment,
although few of us recognize that fact. Any imbalances that occur in our
governments, in our religious institutions, and in our communities also are felt in
our personal lives.
In the United States, we live in a cultural climate that is presently dominated by
a resurgence of fundamental Christianity, and yet our government breaks with
traditional Christian ethics in every turn. We hear the golden rule (“Love one
another”) preached, and yet we watch as our government leaders (who claim to
be Christians themselves, by the way) adopt policies that are anything but
loving, and in fact they trample on all beliefs that any serious spiritual
practitioner path considers sacred.
! Our “love one another” government invaded a country (Iraq) based on
faulty and invented evidencej, killing over two thousand of our own young
people (not to mention the thousands, although uncounted, of Iraqi
citizens and soldiers) as well as permanently maiming at least 15,000
American troops. Simultaneously our governmental representatives have
cut funds for supporting our veterans. These maimed soldiers return to a
bleak civilian future of poverty and separation from normal life.
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! We speak loudly to the world about human rights and freedom, and then
turn our backs to the fact that we have more people (disproportionately
black by the way) in prison than any other country in the world. At the
same time we sit by pretending to be helpless as we watch jury after jury
acquit white men who have killed innocent black children.
! We praise the importance of education for our young people while
systematically providing inferior educational opportunities and facilities
for our minorities and our poor.
! We brag about personal freedom in our country, and then stand by
horrified as our government marginalizes gays, demonizes women who
make who ask for the right to make personal choices about their health,
and deepen the poverty line by cutting taxes and social services for
people who are not born into wealth.
! We listen to the rantings of fundamentalists about family values and
Christian ethics, and we stand by and watch as the poor people in our
country drown – not only in the waters of the broken levees of New
Orleans (broken because funds to repair them were cut from the federal
budget), but also in the polluted waters of our own hypocrisy.
! We observed the horror of hurricane Katrina, calling it a natural disaster
or an act of God, knowing in our deepest wisdom that our blatant
disregard for ecological balance has thrown nature into crisis.
And then we wonder why the world judges us harshly.
Reciprocity is at work here. What goes around comes around. The volume of
our actions overwhelms the empty echoing words of our preachers. And each
of us as individuals must look honestly at how Reciprocity works. We will not be
a people of peace, we cannot stand as an example to the world, until we
become fully accountable for our own actions.
The Gospel of Thomas in the Nag Hammadi Library clarifies the principle of
Reciprocity so beautifully
For what is inside you is what is outside you, and the one who
formed you on the outside is the one who shaped you within. And
what you see outside you, you see within. It is visible and it is your
garment. . .
When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known.
. .But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is
you who are that poverty.
The Gospel of Thomas
Logion I:3
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The author here speaks of a poverty of spirit, of course.
In the above examples, I refer to our seeming inability to correct our cultural
problems. “They” are doing outrageous things and we stand by, almost
paralyzed, watching our dreams be destroyed.
Please don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. The United States of America still
stands as a shining example of personal freedom for most. It still affords a free
flow of communication and information like no other country in the world. It still
gives over four times more global financial aid than any other country in the
world. Our tax dollars are still our best investment! And yet. . .
Reciprocity anchors itself in our bodies in the lungs. We inhale. We exhale.
With every breath, we exchange atoms with each other, with every living being,
with every plant. What is outside us moves inside us. What was inside us
moves outside us. We reciprocate with the world constantly.
I invite you to plunge deeply into your heart and see what happens there.
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Investigate the balance in your life between giving and receiving.
Scrutinize your desires. Ponder the question, “How much is enough?”
Consider when to stop consuming and to start regenerating the world.
Explore ways to make the outside like the inside and the inside like the
outside.
Next holiday season when that gift jumps off the shelf and says, “Give me to
______” (fill in the blank), do it. Reciprocity works. Do it and see what comes
back!
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Flowering
11
Flowering, unfolding, evolving – these are the words that the angels used when
they defined this eleventh principle.
From The Invisible Garment:
Unfolding/flowering is the evolutionary drive. It is that aspect of life
that impels humans to experience themselves in higher and higher
states consciousness. It is imprinted in the atom.
Biologist Bruce Lipton claims that humans are components of the nervous
system of Gaia (our planetary body.) As we populate the earth more densely,
the nervous system becomes more sophisticated and the potential for higher
levels intelligence increases. While overpopulation may be our downfall, it may
also be the catalyst that evokes an evolutionary shift. (Having said that, I still
think birth control is a good idea.)
Evolutionary shifts have, of course, occurred before because the intelligence of
an organism outgrows its form. A few billion years ago, when single cells
learned to divide and reproduce themselves without benefit of any parasitic
medium, a big shift occurred. Later, when single cells learned to link up with
each other and specialize their functions, creating multi-celled organisms, such
a shift occurred. On and on the story goes. Each time the intelligence system
within an organism has reached a doorway of more complexity than the
organism needs, there has been a shift.
It appears that humans have now reached such a doorway, and perhaps for the
first time in the evolution of the planet, we will cross that threshold and
experience the shift while fully awake, fully aware, fully engaged in the process.
Flowering is the spiritual principle that delivers us to this doorway, and will
escort us across to the other side. As individuals, and as a species, we might
compare ourselves to a rose bud. We are petals inside the bud. Our world is
familiar and limiting. Our beliefs, our religions, our families, our careers – all
these systems in which we live hold us in very tight restrictions, even if we think
we’re liberated from all that. Pretty soon, however, that bud is going to break
and we’re going to bloom. As the human flower begins to unfold, we’ll
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experience life as differently as the rose must when it bursts through its wombbud.
This analogy projects the principle of Flowering into the future. As with all
analogies, it is imperfect. Everyone, but especially people who have Flowering
in their invisible garments, experiences growing and evolving incrementally on a
daily basis, in the present. We constantly magnetize experiences and thought
forms that pull us toward newness. That aspect of the energy of evolution is
what I want to talk about right now.
If you have Flowering in your invisible garment, you took on the “job” of helping
to transform our species. For example, here is what The Invisible Garment says
about Flowering as the ascendant principle.
From The Invisible Garment:
Ascendant in Flowering
A part of your job in this incarnation is to evolve the ethical field of
the human. Of course, first you must do that for and within
yourself. We no longer can afford to live in an “eye for an eye”
mentality, nor can our species survive if we continue to live in
separatist mentality. You are here to work toward understanding
the unity of all things. You must learn to examine the
consequences of each of your actions – indeed each of your
thoughts. And you must realize that those consequences affect
not only you, but all the other dynamics as well: your family, your
friends, your community, the planet, the animals and plants, the
ecology – indeed the universe. It is an enormous honor to be one
of the beings creating the morphic field of high ethical standards
on which future societies will live. It is also difficult, because you
are treading new territory.
The last sentence of that statement is key. In counseling with people who have
Flowering in their garments, I’ve seen what a profound burden this principle can
place on people who don’t fully understand it. In fact, until you understand it,
Flowering feels like insanity. You feel the pull to think globally, while school
teachers demand that you to think linearly. You feel the urge to behave as if
your every effort matters, while peers encourage you to engage in covert
activities. You long to be open, wild, visible, and authentic, while parents and
authority figures demand that you adhere to strict rules of behavior. It can be
very confusing.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, arguably one of the most important musicians and
outrageous characters who ever lived, had his ascendant and his Uranus in
Flowering. Every student of Mozart knows that he experienced some inner
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tortures that drove his creative impulses, and that he behaved in ways that
flagrantly flew in the face of social tradition at the time. I expect that this double
contract with Flowering influenced many of his choices. With an ascendant in
Flowering, he could not make decisions based on social mores. His imperative
was to make choices according to his own authority. With his Uranus in
Flowering, we know that he only experienced his own authenticity in moments
of absolute truth. Thanks to Mozart, music evolved. His gift to the world
unfolded. His authenticity, even though it may have created personal pain for
him, pushed the boundaries of human consciousness.
While few of us will leave a legacy as large as Mozart’s, all of us carry a part of
the imperative to be authentic. Our invisible garments never stop urging us to
be authentic. Indeed, if every person simply allowed his or her principles to be
the driving forces in their incarnation, we would live in peace and we would
witness life-miracles on a daily basis.
If you have Flowering in your chart, you need to keep in mind your two key
words: courage and yes.
You’ll often be asked by your physical body, your mind, your emotions, and your
heart to take risks and make shifts. You’ll need courage to make those
changes, courage to be different, and courage to let yourself unfold/flower.
You’ve agreed to a relatively formidable task. And you know you’re up to it,
don’t you? So just step out to the end of the diving board and dive.
Saying yes to these tasks will be your imperative. Can you imagine the pain a
caterpillar might experience by trying to say “no” to the idea of the cocoon?
The caterpillar MUST transform. So must you. Say yes, and let yourself
become the butterfly.
A dear friend of mine has Flowering in her chart a couple of times. She was
raised, as was I, in a community where “good girls” behaved according to a set
of very strict rules. The urgency to break out of that box of rules (encouraged by
Flowering), and the desperation to be “liked” (which is the implied promised
reward if you stay within the box) raged battle in her life for many years. Every
time she said “no” to transformation, she paid a severe price (her body would
break down), but living within the rules felt like prison – no life at all. When she
tried to talk to therapists about the battle, they offered her drugs and hinted that
she was “borderline.” Eventually, she took the drugs and lost touch with reality
altogether. However, Flowering won. She finally, even in the midst of the drugimposed psychosis, remembered her authentic self and determined a path of
sanity would be her only path. She’s “well” now, although not exactly operating
within the social rules of her culture. She has transformed into the butterfly
because she said “yes.”
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If you have Flowering, have the courage to say yes. If you don’t, have the guts
to help those who do say yes. The sanity of our species and the unfolding of
our potential is at stake.
One of the many benefits of this work is that it gives you a vocabulary and
therefore a framework for understanding people who are “different.” Take a
moment to think about someone you know or have known who just always
walked a singular path. Remember someone in your past who didn’t fit with the
“group.” That person may have had Flowering in his or her contract in a very
important position – like the sun or moon position. He or she may be
contributing vastly to the shift of our world into one that allows for diversity and
radical difference. Your compassion toward that person may be the flow of
energy – the tipping point – that allows that shift to occur. Even if you didn’t
have compassion “back in the day” when you knew that person, have it now.
Time is just an illusion, anyway. Have the courage to say “yes” to Flowering, in
yourself and in others. Then we’ll experience happiness.
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Creativity
12
In colloquial terms, we use the word creativity to mean that someone has the gift
of artistry. It describes the ability to think up new or unusual ways of doing
things -- decorating a home, painting a picture, solving a problem, etc. The
spiritual definition differs slightly. If you have Creativity in your garment, you
actually think differently and see the world through a unique lens. You don’t just
juxtapose old ideas or objects in a new way – you develop NEW ideas and
objects.
From The Invisible Garment:
Moon in Creativity
You are a master of developing new ideas, thought patterns and
designs. This may take many manifestations in your life. You may
be an artist or a designer, you may be a revolutionary politician or
personal guidance worker, or you may simply be eccentric. The
thing you need to know about yourself is that our most trustworthy
quality is your unique ability to reinvent yourself and the world
around you. Until you have a real grasp of this aspect of yourself,
you may be very lonely, because you think differently from most
people. You are much more interested in new ways and new ideas
than you are in status quo. That makes school and standard ways
of learning boring for you. However, when you do find teachers
(whether academic or life teachers) who recognize Creativity as a
positive quality, you will shine.
If you want to allow Creativity to live through you, you must develop the habit of
emptying your mind. My friend, poet Betty Luceigh describes Creativity not as a
quality, but as a realm:
To enter the Creative Realm,
you must leave behind everything
Otherwise, when you exit, you will have nothing.
This idea corresponds to my never-ending warning against programming your
dreams. Many dream teachers instruct their students to actually set an intention
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before going to sleep, so that they will dream the solution to a problem, for
example. I suggest that if you try to program the dream, you limit the
possibilities of the dream realm. Dreaming is itself an act of Creativity, if and
only if you enter the dream realms fully prepared to receive without expectation
of what you may experience.
So it is with Creativity. New ideas and forms don’t come from rearranging old
ones. They spring spontaneously from an artesian well of possibility. With
Creativity in your garment you have learned to place your mind in the flow of
that well and allow new ideas to take seed therein.
Creativity, in other words, requires a touch of insanity. One cannot clutch to old
ideas and be creative. One cannot demand to be in control and be creative.
One cannot be fearful of change and be creative. Creativity requires mental
freedom in order to merge with the not-yet – the formlessness of potential.
Let’s look at three people who hold Creativity as the primary thread in their
invisible garments: The Dalai Lama, Walt Disney, and Werner Erhard.
His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, certainly lives the principle of Creativity. I love to
listen to him speak, especially when he is being interviewed, because his
spontaneity and simplicity speak louder than his words. He never fails to amaze
me with his answers to difficult questions. He knows how to purify any
complexity down to its most essential components. Because of the time he
spends in meditation, which requires empty mind, that flow of formless potential
runs through his consciousness without being dammed. One senses when
listening to him speak, that he has no fear, no need to control, no tension in his
heart. Creativity pours through his every sentence.
Walt Disney, of course, mastered Creativity. Disney is quoted to have said, “It
takes courage to accomplish anything.” He truly feared nothing. He pioneered
every category of the entertainment industry that he entered: animation,
multiple layered camera techniques, techni-color, theme parks. Interestingly,
late in his life he stated that the thing he wanted to be remembered for was
founding the California Institute of the Arts, an unparalleled college-level
program for artists of all media, with a completely innovative approach to artistic
training. Possibly more than any contemporary artist, Disney had the ability to
flow into the future (the not-yet) and come back to the present with ideas and
forms that would carry humanity toward a world of hope, imagination, peace,
and lovable mice!
Werner Erhard was a “mouse of a different color.” His personal journeys and
self-investigations gave birth to EST, a process which resulted in individual and
organizational transformation for thousands of clients. This innovation in
thinking helped shape an era of world-wide social and cultural change in the
1970’s. He is quoted to have said that through EST (Erhard System Training),
personal transformation creates a clear distinction between changing an existing
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model and creating an entirely new model. Creativity certainly got its chance to
live in our culture through its emissary, Werner Erhard.
What a perfect definition of Creativity: an activity which creates an entirely new
model.
While very few of us will allow Creativity to express itself through us as clearly as
The Dalai Lama, Walt Disney, and Werner Erhard, anyone who has Creativity in
his or her garment carries a unique opportunity to create an entirely new model.
I often borrow Brian Swimme’s phrase: we are living in a crisis of imagination.
Virtually all the “problems” our world faces stem from our own errors and our
lack of imagination. We humans fit ourselves much too easily and too willingly
into old boxes. Creativity needs to be unleashed in our cultures. New forms,
new concepts, new paradigms need to be unveiled.
If you have Creativity in your contract, take a deep look at your own patterns.
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Do you think too small?
Do you empty your mind often enough?
Do you allow new ideas to seed themselves in your mind?
Do you have the courage to express Creativity in your life?
Your gift to the planet is more important than you can imagine. Unleash
yourself! Let the Creativity take you to new heights.
If you do not have it in your life, find people who do wear Creativity in their
garments. One of our most important “jobs” in this world is to support people in
living authentically. Find ways to strengthen the birth of our new dream by
supporting Creativity in your community.
Let me close with a story.
Steve Chen and Chad Hurley had taken their digital film camera to a dinner
party. They made a short film and wanted to share it with the guests. They
became frustrated, because they felt that they SHOULD be able to share it via
the Internet. No matter what they tried, they found the process too complicated.
Eventually they stopped trying to make the existing technology do what they
wanted, and instead invented a software that would allow them to send the
video to their friends.
Every guest at the party loved the idea of sharing home videos via the Internet.
At first it was just this small group who shared. Then they began telling their
friends, and like wildfire, the idea spread. The technology had to expand to
meet the demand for video space.
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Chan and Hurley officially launched YouTube just a few months later, in
December 2005. By June 2006 (six months later) the site had become so
popular that about 60,000 videos were uploaded daily. Fifty million videos are
posted on the site at any given time, Chen says.
They tried to use what already existed. It didn’t work. Creativity awakened in
them and they not only developed a new idea and a new form, but it became
one of the most popular trends in recent history. Some of the videos uploaded
are, of course, embarrassing and silly. Some are nothing more than visual blogs
(although many of those are brilliant.) But most are beautiful artistic sharings.
YouTube became a completely new venue for film artists who have no other
outlet.
That’s what I’m talkin’ about! Creativity, when allowed to speak, brings
unexpected, delightful results.
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Intelligence
13
Each of the spiritual principles that I teach carries a definition which differs from
the colloquial use of the word. The principle of Intelligence is no exception. In
normal conversation we use the word “intelligence” to indicate how well
someone’s brain works, or how well one puts ideas and thoughts together. It’s
considered to be a mental activity. However, the spiritual definition of the word
tells us that Intelligence measures the efficiency of one’s ability to respond to
incoming information. A person who has Intelligence in his or her invisible
garment isn’t concerned with “being smart” – but rather is talented at integrating
information.
From The Invisible Garment:
Intelligence is an information-management system, interfacing with all the
other principles. It exists in the spirit of a being, not in his or her biology.
Intelligence, indeed, exists in the universe as a force that interweaves all
bits of information so that life and consciousness can evolve.
Also, from the book, a statement about a person who has Intelligence in her
garment:
You are in closest communion with the level of soul when information is
flowing freely. This is true inside your body, when the nervous system
and brain are in sync, and it is true in the outer world when you are in
honest and authentic communication with your friends, family, colleagues,
and culture. Lies that sometimes wend their way into any communication
system are more shocking and disruptive to you than they are to most
people. You are not a born politician. You need to be in closer touch
with truth than they. As long as information is flowing, you are fully alive
and you are in alignment with your soul-intent.
The principle of Intelligence guarantees that eventually truth will win. Although it
seems that truth often takes a back seat to the egoic mindplay of politicians,
business moguls, and other power-hungry people, Intelligence will eventually
win.
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I often find myself chuckling as I read about the argument that some Christians
put forth regarding evolution. They call their literal interpretation of the book of
Genesis “Intelligent Design,” and try to pass the Bible’s first two chapters as a
scientific fact. They completely ignore that the first two chapters of Genesis
completely contradict each other.
The discussion is Orwellian. It reminds me of Animal Farm, Orwell’s famous
allegory, which has turned out to also be his famous prophecy. In the story, the
animals took over the drunken and abusive Mr. Jones’s farm, and immediately
wrote a list of seven commandments. When the pigs (who were the self-named
“intelligence” of the animal community) eventually moved into the big house,
they began misusing language to cleverly re-write the commandments. For
example, the commandment which originally read, “No animal shall sleep in a
bed” was re-written to read, “No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets” – thus
allowing the pigs to sleep in the comfortable human beds inside the house. My
personal favorite came at the end of the book when the last commandment, “all
animals are equal” suddenly received the addendum, “but some are more equal
than others.”
The “Intelligent Design” argument has some of the same ingredients as Orwell’s
allegory. The people in power – the self-named morality plumb-line of American
culture – use double talk to describe their paradoxical positions. The Clean Air
Act is the name ascribed to the congressional bill that reversed almost every
step we’ve made in the last 30 years toward ecological responsibility. “Family
values” is the term used to justify denying a woman’s right to choose what’s
best for her own body, and for denying basic civil rights to gay people.
Intelligent design is also a misnomer. In fact, “intelligent design” is a perfect
term to describe evolution. Life is so intelligent that it continues to re-design
itself into more sophisticated forms that can embody more and more complex
levels of intelligence. The fundamentalists have coined a term, paradoxically
defining it, and in the name of religion have derailed the deeper investigation of
true spirituality.
The principle of Intelligence infuses humans with the opportunity to seek truth
and distribute it both internally and externally. It is a spiritual force which will not
be derailed. Intelligence demands truth. Mis-information will always find it’s
way to the cosmic trashcan. (How long is “eventually” becomes the question.)
Internally, the principle of Intelligence lives in our central nervous system.
Information which comes into the brain through the senses passes through the
brain stem into the nervous system. (The brain stem is ironically the least
judgmental part of the body. It offers no resistance and does not edit the
information that passes through it. The brain itself may have edited or
interpreted the information, but not the brain stem.) The central nervous system
then distributes that information throughout the body. The individual cells, each
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of which has its own brain and deciphering system, then respond according to
their programming and wisdom.
According to The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton, the human body consists of
something like 3 trillion individual bits of intelligence (cells) which have agreed to
cooperate, share the workload, specialize, and therefore create an organism
which can function in highly sophisticated ways. Each specialized cluster of
cells performs specific functions for the whole body. They become the organs
and systems of the body. And they depend on the nervous system to feed them
the information they need for proper functioning. The spiritual principle of
Intelligence can be seen operating within a human being if we observe how the
information-management system works for them. When nervous system injury
prevents proper information distribution throughout the body, medical science
has to become the Intelligence machine for an individual, or the individual dies.
Actor Christopher Reeve’s moon (his mastery) was in the principle of
Intelligence. A study of the last years of his life shows us that though his brain
continued to function with amazing alacrity and brilliance, the nervous system
was never healed from his accident. Without the nervous system, the body
cannot sustain itself. Because of Reeve’s tireless attempt to inform the public,
he became Intelligence. He spoke the truth ceaselessly in order to awaken the
public to our humanity, until his body could no longer sustain.
The specialized micro-universes of the human body stand as a metaphor for the
way our cultures work. Groups of people create communities, businesses, and
organizations which function as the organs of the culture. The health of the
culture depends on the information distribution.
Let’s look at our cultural response to hurricane Katrina. On an individual level, I
think there wasn’t a person in the country (perhaps in the world) who didn’t want
to help. Many of us felt paralyzed because no “real” opportunities to help
presented themselves. Sending clothes and supplies and money felt too
impersonal. In other words, the individual cells of our cultural body wanted to
respond properly. However, something was wrong.
The information broadcasting system was in place and worked wonderfully.
(The nervous system was functioning.) Through radio and television, we were
kept up to date in real time of what was happening and what was needed.
Unfortunately, the bureaucracy and the poorly managed organizational systems
kept Intelligence at bay. The information could not be integrated and the
response was unhealthy. (The circuitry that organizes the individual cells into
cooperating systems is damaged.)
The United States, using July 4, 1776 as its birthday, has its Sun in Intelligence.
In other words, the main purpose for country’s existence is the distribution and
proper use of truth.
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We have an interesting challenge in front of us, my friends. An organism cannot
live if it separates from its Sun principle. Further, an organism cannot live
without its central nervous system and its cells being in full communication.
We must learn to recognize lies. We must learn to evaluate our ability to
integrate the truth. We must literally look at the truth and re-invent ourselves,
our communities, and our culture so that it again aligns with its most sacred
purpose.
Each of us is a cell in our culture. First we must look to our personal Central
Intelligence Agency. And then we must also realize that we participate in
creating our cultural Intelligence. To the extent that we believe lies, we spread
lies. To the extent that we search for truth, we demand truth from our
leadership.
These are exciting times. As we re-write our culture, can we restore truth and
the proper flow of information as the central purpose of our lives?
Look for signs that Intelligence is at work in your life and in our culture.
! Start small, and with the positive. Where do you see Intelligence at work
in your body? Do you lie to yourself? If so, why? If not, why not?
! Look in your family, your workplace, and the places in your community
where you connect with people. What kinds of systems are in place that
allow for deep truth-telling. What is the “central nervous system” of your
family? Your workplace? Your community? Is it healthy?
! How truthful and efficient are the rules of your household?
! How truthful and efficient are the systems in your community?
! How truthful and efficient are the governmental systems that protect our
constitution?
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Ecstasy
14
Understanding the words that point to spiritual principles requires a right
brain/left brain balance. You cannot depend on the traditional left-brain use of a
word while trying to comprehend its full spiritual implication. Ecstasy is no
exception. According to the dictionary, ecstasy means an overwhelming feeling
of great happiness. That feeling is certainly a part of the occurrence of the
spiritual principle of Ecstasy, but only a small part. Happiness is the result of,
not the experience of Ecstasy.
From The Invisible Garment:
With Ecstasy in your garment, you carry a very deep knowing that
15 billion years ago when consciousness first expressed itself as
light, all the energy that has run the universe since then was
created. We are 15 billion-year-old recycled energy, and each of
us has the opportunity to become that first expression of light anew
with every breath.
Due to Ecstasy in your garment, you are aware of yourself
manifesting what I call “the stardust factor.” All the elements that
make up our planet and our bodies were created when a star
became a supernova and burned itself out. In the last two weeks
of a star’s life, it burns so brightly and becomes so hot that it melts
the hydrogen and helium atoms together to create all the other
elements in the universe. It then spews them out into space and
they eventually merge together to create other forms. We are
stardust. You are a master at remembering that fact on a cellular
level. Sometimes you can almost remember the star from which
you were spewed.
That’s Ecstasy: the experience of oneself as Original Energy. The happiness
that ensues is merely a by-product.
When I try to picture the embodiment of Ecstasy, my friend Evette comes to
mind. She is a teeny tiny woman who lives near the sea in a small village in
South Africa. A potter and artist, her relationship with nature drives her daily
existence. Each morning she swims in the sea. But her morning ritual is more
than just a swim in the cold salt water for exercise; she takes her harpoon and
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net and actually hunts in the sea. She brings home food for the day! Of course,
she sometimes encounters danger in the form of sharks and other potentially
death-bearing creatures. But rather than facing them in fear, she chooses to be
energized by those experiences. She emerges, day after day, victorious and
carrying lunch!
The circumstances under which Ecstasy shows itself are those moments in
which all the bodies – physical, mental, emotional, astral, and causal – are in
alignment with each other and with the universal energy flow. Evette has found
the activity in her life that evokes the principle. Each day as she enters the
waters, she becomes so much a part of the Whole Plan that even the danger of
a predator seems normal and she integrates it as such.
Inside the body, Ecstasy is focused in the adrenals. When we speak of the
internal focus of a principle we don’t mean that the organ or gland “causes” the
emergence of the principle, but rather that by studying the workings of that
organ or gland, we can more clearly understand the dynamics of the principle as
it operates in the realm of form. Let’s look, then at the function of the adrenals in
the human body to more fully understand the role of Ecstasy in the human
family.
Simply put, the adrenal glands produce a broad spectrum of hormones which
evoke a fight-or-flight type response. (In that sense, Ecstasy is closely
connected to the principle of Flowering, because that principle is focused in the
reptilian programming in our bodies. Ecstasy is as well akin to the principle of
Love, which is focused in the brain stem, or site of the reptilian brain.) An
adrenal rush in the body is accompanied by a release of endorphins, which
make us feel good. Endorphins not only create a sense of well being in the
body, but they also ease pain.
Now, this cycle of adrenaline and endorphin release in the body can cause a
pleasing “high,” or they can create a concerning rise in blood pressure and other
stress-related symptoms. It all depends on how one’s body interprets the
experience. Healthy reactions to adrenaline and endorphins can cure us;
unhealthy reactions can accelerate our demise.
I once heard a well-known cancer researcher tell a story about the study of
healing in his patients. It is fully accepted by researchers, since the publication
of Norman Cousins’ book, Anatomy of an Illness, that laughter and good moods
can be powerful in healing life-threatening illness. Cancer research, however,
shows that if the body experiences an adrenaline rush and an endorphin release
as fearful, the disease will spread more rapidly. For example, if you love roller
coasters, a good ride will give you a great rush and could be very healing for
you. If you are afraid of them, however, that same experience could actually
encourage the cancer cells to grow more rapidly.
Now, back to the spiritual definition of Ecstasy. This principle is a force, or a law
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of nature, which moves through humans and through human societies as an
experience that occurs when all aspects of a personality (or culture) align with
the Great Plan. Like the adrenaline release in the body, to the extent that we
interpret such an experience as joyful, Ecstasy results in happiness and wellbeing. To the extent that we are afraid of such powerful alignment, Ecstasy
brings stress. Evette’s daily dose of Ecstasy in the South African sea is also her
secret to good health.
In the last twenty years we have seen Ecstasy evoking an interesting trend in big
business. Starting with courageous entrepreneurs like Anita Roddick of the
Body Shop, and Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield of Ben and Jerry’s we have
witnessed companies as they include philanthropy in their mission statements.
They were initially met with fear and disbelief from peers and competitors. How
could a company expect to make money if it also gave away money, or created
fair trade agreements biting into their own profits in order to pay third world
workers a living wage? Within a few short years, however, these companies
proved that having balance and fairness as a part of their business plan proved
beneficial to their bottom line, and indeed attracted customers.
In the last few years, as the cancerously greedy companies like Enron have
rotted from within, more and more “main stream” companies are stepping up,
admitting their errors and revealed their plans to change (Gap and Starbucks),
and others are rewriting their business intentions altogether (Hewlett Packard.)
And perhaps even more exciting, CEOs are making commitments to put
substantial amounts of money into researching “green” alternatives to our
dependence on oil. Men like Sir Richard Brandon of Virgin and John Browne of
British Petroleum have committed millions of dollars of their company’s profits
to correcting the path of diminishing our earth destruction through abuse of her
non-renewable resources, and to changing the course of humanity toward an
earth partnership. It’s inspiring to listen to interviews of the CEO’s of these
companies. Their enthusiasm is contagious, their sincerity clear. Looking
deeply into the day-to-day operations of those companies is even more
encouraging. Their employees report that are happy, and that the philanthropic
foundation of the companies actually makes their jobs feel more substantial – as
if by working they are actually helping the world.
If you have the principle of Ecstasy in your garment, take a special time today
and do a quick life review. As if you were going through your life file, pull up
memories of when you felt absolutely in alignment with the world, and recall the
feeling within your body. Whether it came after some exciting activity like an
extreme sport, or whether it came after a great conversation with a loved one,
you’ll recognize this feeling of Ecstasy as having a common thread. You know
the feeling, don’t you? It’s exhilarating, and at the same time, it has that
endorphin feel-good component. So, as you’re remembering and reexperiencing the feeling in your body, give thanks for the fact that Ecstasy is
with you, has always been with you, and will continue to be with you throughout
your life.
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Whether in personal activity or in business, Ecstasy results from living in balance
and alignment with nature, and happiness results from living in Ecstasy.
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Resistance
15
Resistance may be an unfortunate word to use describing a spiritual principle,
as its ordinary meaning brings up harsh judgment and psychologically charged
emotions. Its spiritual definition asks you to put those pre-conceived notions
aside and consider a non-ordinary characterization of the energy.
The spiritual principle we call Resistance is that force that allows life to
experience itself by rubbing up against itself. In physics, it’s called an
interference pattern – an impediment that redirects the flow of energy. In
electronics, it’s called a transformer.
A person with Resistance in his or her garment functions as an interference
pattern. Such a person will often feel as if she is inserted into a situation just for
the purpose of transforming or transmuting the energy, redirecting its flow.
From The Invisible Garment:
You have an innate knowing of what needs to be done. You can
transform the energy of thought, for example, into the most
efficient and beneficial possible form. You have a natural knack for
creating exactly what you need. In addition, you are a people
person because you know how to put the energy of a group on the
right track to make things flow well between people. It is a good
metaphor for you to look at yourself as the transition point of a
circuit of electricity.
I spoke with a friend recently who has Resistance in her garment. She made a
remarkably memorable understatement, “I find that a little Resistance goes a
long way.” I had a good laugh in my agreement with her.
Resistance does not always create comfortable situations, either for the person
who “wears” it, or for the people or groups who come into contact with it. Most
humans don’t change gracefully or rapidly. Although many of us like to think
that we’re spontaneous and flexible, in fact when radical change confronts us
we often go to great lengths to avoid embracing it. People who have Resistance
in their garments are the agents of change, and therefore often feel saddened by
the responses they receive. In fact, they sometimes suffer from being
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misunderstood, or from being feared.
Let’s consider some examples throughout history:
People who remember the difficult decades of the 1950’s and 1960’s in the
United States know the story of Rosa Parks, the African American seamstress
who refused to relinquish her seat to a white man on that Montgomery, Alabama
bus in December of 1955. That small decision by Rosa Parks triggered the
Montgomery Bus Boycott, which catapulted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. into the
leadership of the civil rights movement, a movement often called The
Resistance. That small decision by Ms. Parks is a perfect example of my
friend’s understatement, “A little Resistance goes a long way.” Rosa Parks has
Resistance in her garment.
In that same time period, Betty Friedan, after escaping from an extremely
abusive marriage, birthed the Woman’s Rights movement. Her bestselling
Feminine Mystique still stands as a manifesto for women around the world who
continually examine the subjugated roles in society and in the workplace to
which women are still too-often designated. Friedan’s organization NOW
(National Organization of Women) functions as one of the most vocal political
voices in the United States. After her death Germaine Greer published an article
about Betty in which she stated: “Betty Friedan changed the course of human
history almost single-handedly.” Betty Friedan had Resistance in her garment.
Betty Ford’s name has become synonymous with substance abuse recovery.
She had been possibly the most candid and openly feminist First Lady in USA’s
history. In interviews she supported the Equal Rights Amendment, spoke nonjudgmentally about pre-marital sex, marijuana use, and intimacy within marriage.
After a bout with cancer, she developed an addiction to alcohol and prescription
drugs, which eventually led to an intervention by family and friends. She agreed
to treatment, and after her own successful recovery, founded the now-famous
Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, CA. (“The Betty” as it is called by
celebrities.) Her contributions to the world’s view of and approach to chemical
dependency have been arguably as important to American society as her
husband’s contribution to national politics. Betty Ford had Resistance in her
garment.
Robert Holbrook Smith grew up in the early 20th Century in a rural churchcentered community. He first discovered the “pleasure” of alcohol in his college
fraternity house. Like most serious alcoholics, he was able to fake his way
through school (all the way through medical school, in fact) and through many
years of adult life without having to face his problem. He hid liquor under
floorboards and in closets during Prohibition, he found clever ways to overindulge without being caught when traveling on business trips, and he continued
to drink, even while practicing medicine, until his health completely gave way.
One night at a dinner party, a stranger spoke to him about addiction, explaining
that while it manifested as a chemical imbalance, it was caused by a spiritual
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aridity. Addicts long for connection to the Source, the stranger assured Mr.
Smith. Bob went to bed drunk that night, as usual. When he woke up the next
morning the stranger was there. He sat by patiently as Bob drank a breakfast
beer to stave off another hangover. The stranger gave Bob some esoteric and
spiritual books to read. Bob never took another drink. That morning he wrote
the first words of his now-famous memoirs. He founded Alcoholics Anonymous
shortly after this experience, and spent the rest of his life doing for others what
the stranger at that dinner party had done for him. Bob Smith had Resistance in
his garment.
Certainly not everyone with Resistance in his or her garment will start a worldwide movement like NOW, Alcoholic Anonymous, or The Civil Rights Movement.
However, each of us who wears Resistance will be called on from time to time
to make small decisions as courageous as Rosa Parks did, or to take control of
our lives like Betty Friedan, Betty Ford, and Bob Smith did. In so doing, each of
us will transform a spiritual energy into an appropriate form.
In my own life, Resistance is the physical thread (Mars.) My story is definitely a
physical story. An illness brought me to a position of receptivity (two years in
bed, mostly asleep. If you don’t know that story, please go to my websites and
read about it.) It appears in retrospect that an amazing spiritual energy flowed
through me during that and subsequent periods of physical convalescence. My
way of transforming that energy has been to write about it. All my books are the
direct result of an downloading of information from the spiritual realms. All my
work in the world since that time has been to do for others what Spirit was kind
enough to do for me – explain to the best of my ability what a miraculous gift
Life is for every person, and what an important gift each person is to Life.
What is the key, then, to allowing Resistance to thrive through your life? Self
knowledge. Resistance focuses itself in the human’s ability to know the self, to
be conscious of the self, to bear witness to the self. It is through an individual’s
self- confidence and self-consciousness that Resistance waves its powerful
hand.
Every person I’ve researched who wears Resistance has a story of selfdiscovery in his or her life. Here are a few of the famous ones: Ram Dass,
Paramahansa Yogananda, Kahlil Gibran, Carl Sandburg, Joan of Arc, Carl Jung,
Frank Lloyd Right, Elizabeth Taylor, Albert Schweitzer, Edgar Cayce, Leonardo
da Vinci, Al Gore, Goethe, and Winston Churchill.
While most of these examples are men, such amazing women as Betty Ford,
Rosa Parks, and Betty Friedan point to a unique issue for we women who wear
this principle. We have to know ourselves, yes, but we must also understand
woman-ness itself. In order to achieve self-understanding in the 21st Century, a
woman must embody the history of her gender. I’ll close with this quotation
from the late Maya Angelou’s (yes, she wore Resistance, too) prose-poem
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“In All Ways a Woman.”
Being a woman is hard work. Not without joy and even ecstasy,
but still, relentless, unending work. . .to become and remain a
woman command the existence and employment of genius.
[A woman] must resist considering herself a lesser version of her
male counterpart. She is not a sculptress, a poetess, authoress,
Jewess, Negress . . If she is the thing, then . . .she must insist with
rectitude in being the thing and in being called the thing.
Our gift to the world is to BE the thing we were born to be. If we are to be
resistors, interference patterns, transformers, then let the BE-ing BE our gift, our
passion, our purpose, our joy.
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Unity
16
Can one ever really understand Unity? On some vague whispery level of
consciousness, I suppose we all know Unity, but in our everyday mundane
world of duality and polarity, our attempts to articulate what it means bumble
around without much success. We can’t help but try to define Unity by using
polarities and dualities.
Unity does not mean that everyone agrees. Unity does not mean that everyone
lives in compatibility. Unity is not a democracy. Unity has nothing to do with
flags or economics or diplomacy. Unity does not mean uniformity,
homogeneity, or compatibility.
What then, does it mean?
From The Invisible Garment:
You have an innate understanding of the idea that we are all One –
that the universe is a seamless whole – a cosmic fabric – and that
anyone who walks without that knowledge seriously diminishes his
or her own potential. You feel a kinship with all beings, human or
not, organic or not, alive or not. You have a natural talent for
expanding your consciousness and a natural freedom from
restrictive lifestyles, mindsets and emotional boxes.
Unity means wholeness. A person who understands Unity lives inside a
cosmology of wholeness. Your religious beliefs, political opinions, cultural
traditions and physical characteristics may be different from mine, and yet if we
both understand Unity, we see through the differences into the seed of God that
grew us both.
Meister Eckhart called Unity the “negation of the negation.” Let’s explore what
he meant by that.
The way we experience ourselves as “other” is through negation. We negate
potentials (make choices) in order to create ourselves. To say I am a white
woman, for example, is also to say I am NOT a black man. Black and man are
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negated in my configuration. To say that I am educated is also to say I am NOT
illiterate. Do you see what I mean? In order to live in the realm of form, in order
to exist in the world of humanity, we limit and define ourselves.
Eckhart, in trying to help his congregation understand unity consciousness said,
“Unity is the negation of negation.” Beyond all the decisions that we make
which identify us as unique, there exists a knowing that we’re really one energy
expressing in many forms. Unity negates our negations.
When I try to imagine Unity, I use a special visualization taught to me by a
mentor many years ago. I imagine a pearl necklace. I imagine myself to be one
of the pearls. The needle and thread go through my heart. The next pearl on
the necklace is my mother. The thread connects us heart to heart. The next
pearl is her mother, and then her mother. And so on it goes, all the way back to
the original mother. I come back to myself, and see my daughter being strung in
front of me. Her daughter follows, and then her daughter (all those who have
not yet been born.) We are all one. We are a genetic line, all one, yet each one
an individual.
Perhaps a better analogy would be that of a sweater. When you hold a sweater
in your hands you can see the individual stitches. Altogether, they make up the
form we call sweater. Individual stitches don’t mean much. A group of stitches,
however, creates a form. “We are sweater,” they might say.
The same is true of us. We are humanity. Each of us is a stitch in a great fabric
that surrounds the planet – the human fabric. All the stitches are
interdependent, interwoven, interlaced with all the others. Every stitch is
important to the whole. Each stitch exists in a precise location, functions as a
part of a row of stitches, but no one stitch can be plucked out without damage
to the whole. Some stitches may vary in color, texture, or function, giving them
more visual or practical focus than others. But all serve their function, and all
create the whole.
It’s hard to imagine that my actions affect (or are affected by) some woman I
never met who lives in China. And yet, when I take off my shirt and hang it in
the closet, I see the signal: made in China. Who was she? Was she born on
my birthday? How does she feel about her job? When I dress in her garment,
what of her energy do I embody?
Try this experiment for a day. Every time you do ANYTHING, think of all the
people who participated in creating the moment for you. As you dress, consider
every aspect of the clothing, all the way back to who planted the cotton. As you
drive consider all the people who created the car – from the original designers to
the guys who screwed on the wheel bolts. When you order your coffee,
consider the people who planted, picked and processed the beans.
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If you play the game with humor and compassion, by the end of the day you’ll
feel yourself thoroughly inter-connected with thousands of people most of
whom you will never know.
And then play it in reverse. Think of every action you take and how far those
actions extend. How do you know what you’re going to affect? There is no way
of knowing how far reaching any action may be, no matter how small.
All right, I’m guessing you’re with me so far. You’re able to embrace that on
some level of consciousness, on some dimension of form, we do emanate from
One Source, and we do affect each other with our actions and thoughts. So
now it’s time to go deeper.
What about “them?” What about those people who are murderous, who willfully
and intentionally harm others and the environment? What about evil? Our most
common way of dealing with these questions, unfortunately, is to polarize. As
we witness acts which we consider to be evil, we join forces with fundamentalist
beliefs that appear to “fight” evil, while really only perpetuating it.
Of course these questions cannot be fully answered, because they are asked
(and perceived) from a dualistic point of view. But, while the questions cannot
be answered, the point of view can be addressed.
Many of the actions we observe in today’s world simply defy reason. In order to
understand them, we must go “out of our minds.” That is to say, we must
extend our consciousness beyond reason, and instead recognize causality. We
must achieve Unity consciousness in order to recognize the sanity in our insane
world.
Sit on the moon for a moment, and watch humanity. From there you can see
that the polarities that feel so entrapping from your little earthly perspective,
actually balance themselves when viewed from the larger perspective. Violence
in one part of the world balances with kindness in other places. I remember in
December of 2004, while the tsunami raged in Indonesia, we ironically
experienced an unusually calm and beautiful week in California.
The balances you observe from your moon throne may not always look
desirable. A high infant mortality rate balances overpopulation. Adaptive
viruses and mutations balance pollution. Poverty balances greed. Hunger
balances gluttony. None of our human problems can be solved without the
balancing agent also being addressed. Hunger will end proportionate to
gluttony’s diminishing. Poverty will cease proportionate to greed’s subsiding.
AIDS will be cured proportionate to the elimination of the NEED for viruses to
mutate. It seems a little hopeless, doesn’t it? We address poverty by throwing
money at it; we address greed by throwing “them” in jail for a while. And so
on. Because we don’t sit on the moon enough, we don’t see causation.
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Okay, here’s the good news. You and I balance terrorism. You and I balance
poverty. You and I balance hunger. You and I balance viruses. As we commit
ourselves again and again and again to living life simply, purely, honestly,
authentically, generously, all the while acknowledging that opposites exist, we
diffuse and confuse the movement toward wanton violence, disproportionate
distribution of goods, and inappropriate rage. By living in Unity consciousness,
we radiate wholeness, we accept responsibility, and we perpetuate balance.
Political activism, especially in democratic countries, is vitally important, but
living simply is more important. Standing up for social justice is imperative, but
living honestly packs a greater wallop. Writing our books, preaching our
sermons, stomping our righteous feet, and praying for peace all help, but living
an authentic and ethical life helps more.
Our job, and the work of Unity consciousness, involves just this: living simply.
We must learn to take our moon perspective often, so that we can remember
how important it is to love each other, to help each other, to say kind things to
each other, and to be a strong stitch in the fabric of humanity.
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Attraction
17
To begin a new year, we traditionally write resolutions. We long to start over.
We want to become new again – to correct our errors – to eliminate our flaws –
to right our misunderstandings. Mostly, we desire to be happy.
That desire that we have to be happy is basically a yearning to experience
wholeness. While the human genome code may tell us why we have brown
eyes, it cannot tell us why we long for certain things, why we value certain
behaviors, or why we need connection and intimacy with each other. Our
spiritual DNA (the principles by which we live) tell us that. Attraction, perhaps
more than any other principle, evokes that longing to connect with others, a well
as that urge toward happiness.
From The Invisible Garment:
With the principle of Attraction in your invisible garment, you have a
talent for magnetizing exactly what you need in life. Whether it is
money, relationships, jobs or toys, you know how to manifest them.
If you really trust this talent, and if you do not abuse it, this will be
your greatest life gift. You need not worry about anything, because
the universe is looking out for your well-being. However, of course,
if you abuse the power (either through laziness or greediness), you
will pull energies to you that may be tough to handle. Be careful
with Attraction. Honor its magnificence, and it will serve you well.
When Attraction operates in our lives, energies that work somewhat like a
magnet surround us. For example, have you ever noticed that when someone is
down on their luck the “bad” luck just keeps coming? That’s, unfortunately, the
principle of Attraction at work. Of course, Attraction can show up in opposite
ways, too. You have probably also witnessed the seemingly undeserving
receiving more and more money, attention, and rewards. From a strictly
superficial view, it would appear that Attraction isn’t “fair.”
However, from a more sophisticated level of understanding, Attraction is
ultimately fair. Attraction has no judgment. It places no value on things or
experiences. It responds directly to human energetics.
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Attraction may be first cousins to gravity and magnetism, but it actually works in
a different way from either of these forces. Magnets attract opposites.
Attraction doesn’t necessarily. Gravity depends on spin and mass. Attraction
doesn’t. Attraction is not a force of nature. It is a spiritual principle that works
according to the laws of spirit.
How does spirit operate through Attraction? Like this. It calls us. It never stops
calling us to remember who we are and that we are without need. Everything
we truly need will appear before us. Our responsibility, then, is NOT to define
our needs, but to recognize the energies that meet our needs (the jobs, the
relationships, the opportunities, the ideas and the things) when they show up in
front of us. Most of us are so busy being needy and living in scarcity mentality
that we fail to recognize the gifts that life brings to us on a moment by moment
basis. Those gifts come to you via a system of energetic Attraction.
Further, Attraction acts as a frame or a lens through which we see the world. All
the principles can only work effectively and efficiently in your life to the extent
that you are liberated from childhood traumas or from belief systems that stymie
your full actualization. If you are free from limitations, however, you will see
clearly through the lens of Attraction. Ask yourself these questions to examine
whether you see clearly through that lens:
" When an opportunity to serve humanity appears before you, do you see it
as a possibility, or do you reject it as something you don’t have time or
money to do?
" When you meet a new person, do you see them with the fresh eye of an
artist, or do you categorize them as being like other people you’ve
known?
" When you encounter a challenging situation, do you embrace it as an
opportunity to be creative, or do you feel burdened by it?
" When you need to make a decision, do you rely primarily on “facts” and
“reasonable” solutions, or do you wait patiently and listen carefully for
guidance?
" When information about the external world comes to you in a dream, do
you write it off as “just a dream” or do you pay special attention to the
gift?
" When someone gives you a gift do you feel an urge to give them
something in return, or do you accept it gracefully and realize the
metaphor?
Attraction’s magnetic power may not behave the way you expect. You may not
be able to recognize the potential – the gift – in everything that shows up on
your radar screen. But when you are liberated from your old patterns and free
to experience the world authentically, Attraction will present you with everything
you need to self-actualize.
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Take inventory of what you’ve attracted and created for yourself in the past.
Now, be careful. It’s very tempting to fall into a scarcity trap when taking
inventory of one’s personal history. We’re not, in this moment, asking why you
didn’t get the job of your dreams or why this or that relationship broke up or
hasn’t shown up. Instead we’re looking at what did show up and how it was
recognized and embraced.
For example, in 2005 our global community experienced a tsunami, a
devastating earthquake, and two major hurricanes, resulting in horrific death
tolls as well as hideous living conditions for the survivors. What was your role in
serving those communities? Attraction (along with many other principles) was at
work during each of those events, calling us to remember who we are and
asking us to give the gift of life in every way we could.
Take inventory of your work history, if you have a career. Without becoming
emotionally attached to the circumstances, call up some memorable situations
that have presented themselves to you in the workplace. Think about the ways
you magnetized what you needed in those situations. How has Attraction been
alive in your career?
Then move on to your relationships with friends. How you’re your friendships
called you into the service of life? Who has shown up in your life in the last
year? Why, from a spiritual viewpoint, through the lens of Attraction, did they
come into your sphere of influence?
Then go to your family. Why did you choose your family of origin? Pretend for a
minute that you had full choice about your parents and your siblings. In what
ways have they been agents of Attraction, calling your more and more fully to
your own authenticity? And if you have children. . .why did they chose you?
How do you evoke authentic living from them? Or do you? Do you try to mold
them, or do you see them clearly?
Your final round of inventory will be to examine your relationship with yourself. It
is, after all, through your thoughts about yourself – how nakedly honest you are
with yourself – that Attraction does its magic. You will attract to yourself events,
circumstances, people, and things that reinforce your opinion of yourself.
Examine that opinion in the most unbiased way you can, and you’ll see all the
events in your life more clearly.
Spiritual practice must never be confused with psychological clean-up. We go
to therapy, or we self-analyze, in order to clear out the wounds and scar tissue
that limit our self-understanding. Psychological work is essential and must be
done before we can grow spiritually. But we do spiritual practice – self-inventory
– for an entirely different reason. Our spiritual work delivers us to the mirror of
the soul, so that we can remember who we are, so that we can get “over”
ourselves and get on with delivering the gift of soul into the realm of form. The
thirty principles that I define in my book The Invisible Garment compose the
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unique frequency of each person, and create the gift that each person is to bring
to life.
If Attraction is in your garment, look carefully at what you magnetize, and know
that what comes to you longs to be seen and embraced. The more authentically
you love your life, the more abundantly life will love you. And the principle of
Attraction is asking you to deliver that awareness into the human realm – to
exemplify what it is to BE Attraction.
If Attraction is not in your garment, look at how it operates in the world. Indeed,
this principle IS at work in your life, whether or not is a vital thread in your
personal weave. Each encounter you have with another person determines
something about how the world operates. The way you treat every person
affects the vibration of human consciousness. The way you embrace every
circumstance that shows up every day influences the holistic weave of the
planetary experience.
The next time you write New Year’s resolutions, think differently about them.
Resolve to bring into your life only that which is beneficial for the greatest
number of dynamics. Resolve to dedicate your life to Life. Deliver the gift that
you came into the world to give. Know that Attraction constantly calls you
toward happiness.
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Focus
18
Focus is the principle that you will be able to understand and contemplate
whether you have it in your personal pattern or not. It is such an integral part of
the human garment that it runs as a deep thread through us all. I find it
interesting with all the principles, but most especially with Focus, to ask whether
it operates in my life as a spiritual principle, or as a commonplace factor. The
spiritual principle of Focus (capital F) becomes a flow of energy through your life
while the commonplace fact of focus (lowercase f) may block that flow.
In other words, whether you have Focus in your chart or not, you have the ability
to set your mind on a certain task and concentrate on accomplishing it. That is
a human trait. You also have the ability to contemplate, conceptualize, and
imagine. Those are also human traits, all of which stem from the spiritual
principle of Focus, but may simply be expressions of ordinary focus.
Sometimes an irony or dilemma may result.
I know a brilliant man, a psychologist, who some would call a genius. He is 95
years old, and has had so many amazing experiences in his life that to simply sit
in his presence and listen to his stories is inspiring. He has made profound
contributions to the study of psychology, yet he has never published a book. He
has Focus in his chart, and yet his amazing grasp of the “big picture” prevents
him from being able to sit down and write the sentences and paragraphs
necessary to publish a book. Although I’ve begged him to get a ghost writer or
a writing partner, he cannot organize enough to do it.
From The Invisible Garment:
Focus is the ability to place one’s perception intentionally in a
specific frequency and thereby call forth certain responses. Focus
is the natural state of the scientific mind. One uses focus to cut off
all other data input in order to examine a specific idea or project.
Interestingly, Focus does allow us to examine specific data, but in recent years
the quantum physicists have developed what they call the observed/observer
effect. According to this theory, the observer can actually determine what to
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observe, or can (and does) at the very least influence what is being seen. So, on
one level Focus allows us to see things very clearly. On the other end of the
spectrum, focus (little f) gives us the power to decide what we WANT to see,
and conjure it. In a sense, then, Focus can create blinders, giving us permission
to see only what we “want” to see.
In my consultations with people about their invisible garment patterns I’ve
noticed an interesting characteristic of people who have Focus as a thread, as
opposed to people who have (little f) focus just because they are humans.
People who “wear” Focus aren’t as blinded by it, and yet that makes them feel
less able to accomplish specifics. In other words, people who have Focus in
their charts often see a broader spectrum of possibilities than other people,
because they are able to see situations and circumstances with less bias.
Why would this be true? Because Focus is concentrated in the person’s pineal
gland, which allows for imagination and visualization. When the spiritual
principle of Focus is evoked, the imagination opens. When little “f” focus is
used, imagination closes down in order to hone in on minutia.
When I wrote the chapter in this little book on the principle of Memory I
mentioned that when I tell people they have the spiritual principle of Memory in
their garments, they very often respond, “Impossible, I have a terrible memory.”
The same is true with Focus. When I start talking about Focus as a spiritual
principle, clients often exclaim, “I have A.D.D. (attention deficit disorder.) I
can’t possibly have Focus in my chart.” Indeed, the spiritual definition and the
mundane definitions often show up as opposite characteristics.
Furthermore, Focus is anchored in a mind-dimension that we call Planetary
Consciousness. This means that if you have Focus in your garment, you are
very aware of being a citizen of the earth, and that the earth herself is a living,
evolving organism. That knowledge keeps your perspective open rather than
closed. My psychologist friend mentioned above, for example, is so aware of
Planetary Consciousness and his (and each person’s) involvement in and
contribution to the Great Plan, that he simply cannot write down the details.
So, with imagination at work and Planetary Consciousness dominating your
view-of-self, of course you have A.D.D. It’s not in your nature to actually
eliminate incoming data. That’s the irony of Focus, because you do
simultaneously have that scientist’s mind that is curious about the details.
Here is the question I have for you, whether you have Focus (big F) or focus
(little f) at work in your world: How disciplined are you in allowing the principle
to work through you?
If you are authentically engaged with Focus, then what may have been called
“scatter-brained” by parents and teachers in your younger years has become
the ability to be present to what IS as you’ve matured. Focus will attract your
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attention to the exact perspective you need in any given moment, if you have
the spiritual maturity to trust the energy.
This is an imperfect example, but for the sake of conversation consider a
scenario of yourself driving a car while visiting with a friend who is in the
passenger seat. One part of your consciousness (probably the subconscious) is
actually driving the car, while the other more immediate part of your
consciousness is concentrating on the discussion. However, if someone cuts
you off or your car hits an icy patch and you begin to slip and slide, the subconscious demands that your immediate conscious take over. Focus is the
invisible energy at work determining which part of you is in the “driver’s seat” at
any given moment. (As a side note, studies have shown that talking on a cell
phone also demands a portion of your subconscious energy, which is why so
many car accidents occur while people are on calls. They have spread their
subconscious “autopilot” brain too thin.)
The principle of Focus, if you have it in your contract, definitely determines how
your subconscious works. You have stored habits, attitudes, opinions, and
behaviors in your subconscious mind, based on what you have determined to
be “true” in life. It’s very interesting to observe someone when they are driving,
as a way of seeing what their subconscious life opinions are. Do they have
spurts of anger? Do they handle tense traffic situations gracefully? Are they
generous with other drivers? Do they have what my son calls “driver’s terets
syndrome” (a condition of calling other drivers foul names because of their
dangerous driving choices)?
How one has programmed his or her subconscious speaks volumes about his or
her relationship with the principle of Focus. In a moment of true and authentic
attention, those attitudes and opinions are crystallized as a part of the working
mechanism of the body. You can tell what sort of thing a person has labeled as
real and important by observing how they drive.
If you have Focus in your garment, and you have programmed your
subconscious to behave with anger, self-entitlement, or aggression, then you
may want to look at why that is the case. When you elected to have Focus in
your contract (pre birth), it most likely wasn’t because you wanted to be guilty of
road rage when you grew up. I suspect that if your subconscious operates in
negative ways, you stored some false information in your personal software that
needs to be deleted. Focus, if flowing properly through your life, will simply give
you the ability to “be here now” – be available to what IS in any moment without
judging it or cursing at it!
Wearing the principle of Focus is a holy responsibility. It allows us to recognize
the fact that we are all one in consciousness. And it allows us to separate, if
only in our imaginations, and study the uniqueness of each piece of that Oneness. If we indulge ourselves in too much expansion, we miss the awe of our
gift. If we revel too much in the minutia, we miss the awe of our greatness. The
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irony of Focus is it’s inclusive ability to envision partnered with its exclusive
ability to pinpoint.
The next time a bad driver cuts you off, pay attention to the urges that well up
from your subconscious, and examine your personal relationship to F/focus.
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Service
19
When I first started researching these principles, I would invite people to come
to my home and give them a one-on-one “soul contract” reading. We would
talk in detail about each of the principles and how they were at work in the
clients’ lives. The reading would sometimes last two hours. Usually, by about
the third or fourth principle (of twelve), I noticed people’s eyelids getting heavy.
This material is, on first hearing, sometimes overwhelming, and it requires the
awakening of ones unconscious (or cellular) intelligence to really understand it.
The cognitive brain seemed to want to sleep through the readings.
However, one principle always opened the eyes quickly: Service. I noticed
early-on that when I told people they had the principle of Service in their
contract, they snapped to attention – and not in a good way. Most of the
responses were something like, “I’m exhausted from serving everyone. I don’t
want to be a servant.” I realized very soon that understanding the difference
between Service and servitude is the most important aspect of wearing this
principle.
Too many of us (especially women) live within a belief system that says
something like this: “In order to be a good person, I must meet everyone else’s
needs and expectations before I take care of myself.” It almost always falls on
the wife/mommy in a marriage, for example, to be in charge of the household –
keeping everyone fed, clothes clean, house clean, children nurtured, children
schooled, children chauffeured, spouse coddled, budget managed, domicile
maintained, volunteer work done, sometimes working a full-time job – all while
remaining skinny, sexy, healthy and perky. UGH. If that’s what one thinks of
Service, no wonder it brought such dramatic responses.
From The Invisible Garment:
You may confuse your training to take care of everyone else before
you take care of yourself with “Service.” You may tend to burn out
emotionally and not really understand why. The best possible
relationship between your emotions and the principle of Service
comes when you understand that your feelings are your give-away.
How you FEEL is your gift to life. By living in integrity with your
soul, your feelings become the most authentic gift you have. You
need not be afraid that your feelings are selfish little narcissistic
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acts of a bratty ego. NO, your feelings are your Service. Learning
to trust your feelings and act appropriately according to them is a
big part of your life commitment.
Of course, these words don’t apply to everyone. Indeed some people’s feelings
are “selfish little narcissistic acts of a bratty ego.” But people who have their
emotional body in the principle of Service have quite a beautiful gift, because at
the foundation of their emotions is the knowledge that life is a gift and that
indeed each human is a part of that gift. That philosophy, being the basis of
your feelings, gives you an all-pervading benevolent perception of life.
Although my message is usually about “being” rather than “doing,” I have
noticed over the years that people who truly understand Service have a
tendency to choose careers that allow them to be of service to the community.
Many police people, fire fighters, and civil service employees do actually wear
the principle of Service in their invisible garment.
Recently I attended a morning in small claims court with a friend. She was suing
an attorney who had employed her to decorate his home, and then refused to
pay her. She was totally in the right, but she was terribly nervous because he
was, after all, an attorney! I went strictly for moral support.
As we sat in the extremely ugly and uncomfortable courtroom waiting for the
judge, I thought, “Uch. What a horrible job – judging whiners in small claims
court in a cold ugly room all day every day.” Well, as the morning unfolded, I
watched Judge Mina choreograph a sweet day for everyone involved. She
showed stunning compassion for the man whose English was so bad that he
had to bring an interpreter. Earlier in the month he had been caught between
his fear that missing a day at work might end his job, and a court date. He was
the plaintiff in a case, and yet he had missed his court date because his boss
had gone back on his word to let him off from work. On this day he appeared,
asking for a new court date. The judge looked at him long and carefully, and
said, “I see that you’re telling me the truth. Here’s what I’m going to do for you.
. .” She didn’t punish him for missing his earlier court date, and she gave him
more time.
The next person who came up was suing her insurance company. She was so
frightened and so fluttery, that she could not produce the basic documents the
judge needed to see to consider the case. (She had them, but couldn’t find
them in her many file folders, blinded by her fear.) The judge asked her to stop
and take a breath. Then she gently said, “Sit down, please. Take some
breaths. Find the documents. Do the math. I’ll call you back up in a few
minutes.” The young girl was so embarrassed and almost in tears when she sat
down, but as promised, after hearing the next case the judge asked her if she
were ready to present her evidence. The judge’s sweetness about the whole
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thing shifted the plaintiff’s energy and she presented briefly and clearly. The
judge told her how much she appreciated such a concise and logical argument.
At the same time, there were definitely cases in which one of the people
involved was trying to “pull something.” For example, one man was accusing a
female customer of giving him a “hot” check, when in reality it was a “stop
payment” because the product she had purchased from him was faulty and he
refused to correct the error. Judge Mina did not put up with that intentional miswording for one second.
When my friend went forward, having witnessed the judge’s compassion and
desire for brevity, she presented her case simply, clearly, concisely. She had
documented (with BEAUTIFUL photographs) the work she had done in the
attorney’s home. The judge took one look at the huge notebook of pictures,
fabrics, wall color samples, and invoices. It was clear from the look on the
judge’s face that she saw what was happening here – a ruthless and unethical
strong-arming on the attorney’s part.
Of course, I don’t know Judge Mina’s birth information, so I can’t say for sure
that she wears the principle of Service. But I can say for sure that she
understands it. She didn’t enter the courtroom with a sense of “Oh, lordy,
another day of whiners.” But instead she entered with an attitude of, “How may
I serve you?” It was her courtroom, no question. She was in charge and would
suffer no fools. AND she was there to serve.
Service doesn’t have to look like servitude. Service is about recognizing that we
are all in this amazing experiment called humanity together. Service is about
remembering that life is a gift. Service is about remembering that we are also
here to deliver a gift to life. Service and compassion are inextricable.
If you have Service in your garment, take some time to look at whether your
actions and feelings are in alignment with each other. If you have the doormat
syndrome, then you must realign. Your acts of service must feel like acts of
loving kindness, which feed you rather than deplete you.
Interestingly, the principle of Service is relatively rare in people’s charts. I don’t
know if there is a mathematical reason for that (that the 19th degree doesn’t
often appear,) but it has been true in my research. Here are some people who
had Service in their charts: Martin Luther King, Jr., Princess Grace, Princess
Diana, Eleanor Roosevelt, Maya Angelou. If you take time to research their
lives, you’ll see the thread. I remember once in an interview, Charlie Rose, after
reading one of her poems about the wonder of life, asked Maya Angelou what
was the most amazing thing she had ever experienced. Her response was,
“That I am a child of God, and that you are, too.” This woman knew that life is a
gift, and she most certainly gave back!
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The principle of Service may be your most important influence, no matter where
it sits in your invisible garment pattern. It constantly reminds you that that you
are here to GIVE YOUR GIFT to life. Every action you authentically take toward
that end will ricochet and become wealth and happiness for you.
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Gratitude
20
!
As the laws of irony would have it, the person who opened my eyes to the secret
power of Gratitude was probably the poorest (if poor is measured materially)
person I ever met. I was in my mid-thirties. I had grown up in consumerism,
and like most other boomers, I had put down my peace-march banners and was
now marching toward prosperity.
On a vacation in Arizona, in an obscure little art gallery, a Native American
ceremonial pipe caught my eye. I asked about it, about the artist, about
whether a white woman could own such an object. I left the gallery without it.
Wouldn’t you know it? The pipe showed up in my dreams the next three nights.
I called the gallery back and they shipped it to me.
For a few weeks it sat on my altar, bowl not attached to the stem. Finally I
decided that I needed to be schooled in the art of using it. I sought out a
teacher. He lived in a dirt house with a dirt floor. He seemed to own next to
nothing. He was very thin. I wondered if he ate enough. His eyes sparkled.
We sat on the ground, legs folded, with a hand-woven altar rug between us. He
taught me a very long prayer, involving placing thirteen pinches of tobacco in
the pipe, each representing a specific aspect of Wankan Tanka (the great
mother/father god.) Through this prayer the pipe holder gave thanks to
everything – the air, the fire, the water, the stones, the earth, the animals, the
creepy crawlers, the fliers, the elders, the ancestors, the avatars, the stars, the
galaxies. Each pinch of tobacco represented a specific way to be in Gratitude.
In my world, prayer was a petition. One prayed to ask a favor of God. Now I
was being taught a very different concept. Prayer is a way of realigning oneself
as one with the One. It had nothing to do with getting. It had everything to do
with allowing oneself to recognize the blessing of life.
That’s the spiritual definition of Gratitude – recognizing the blessing of life.
From The Invisible Garment:
With Gratitude in your invisible garment, you are constantly aware
that life is a gift. You never forget that the gift must be used well,
or it will use you. You can see the connections in all aspects of life,
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and this makes you take a deeper level of responsibility or
accountability than most people. You know the law of cause and
effect on a bone-deep level; therefore, you are always alert to what
effect you may be causing.
For many years I prayed almost daily with my pipe. Starting the day with an
expression Gratitude for the blessing of life certainly puts the stresses we create
in our lives in a different perspective.
Now, if you’re like me, there are times when you just don’t want to hear, “Be
thankful for everything that has happened to you because it has made you who
you are” from those annoyingly perky, positive-thinking New Agers. There are
times when you just want to say, “Shut up and let me wallow and whine.”
Indeed, wallowing and whining does serve a purpose from time to time. If
nothing else, it reminds us that wallowing and whining breeds more wallowing
and whining. No one ever whined herself into a better mood. Gratitude, on the
other hand, breeds awe and wonder, joy and peace.
Tammy Duckworth was born in Bankok, Thailand where her American father, a
retired Marine, worked for the United Nations. Her mother is Chinese. Her
father’s job took them to several interesting countries during her life. She
eventually landed in Illinois where she got her PhD. In undergraduate school
she had joined ROTC and then the National Guard. Trained as a Black Hawk
pilot, she was deployed to Iraq in 2004. On November 21 of that year, after a
lunch of chocolate milk shakes and stir-fry in the Green Zone, her chopper was
hit by a grenade. Originally mistaken for dead, she was dragged to another
Black Hawk and evacuated. Eight days later she awoke in Walter Reed Army
Medical Center in Washington, D.C. and learned she had lost both legs (in spite
of the fact that her first question was, “Why do my feet hurt?”)
During her difficult recovery, Tammy realized that she had survived for a reason;
that her mission was not finished. In 2006 she ran for U.S. Congress in her
home “very red” district in Illinois. Though she didn’t win that congressional
seat (she lost by less than 2% of the votes), she was highly visible on the
national media during the campaign, and her voice was one that contributed to
an over-all Democratic victory in the country.
Shortly after the campaign, Governor Rod Blagojevich asked her to head the
Illinois Department of Veteran’s Affairs. She gladly accepted the job. She has
expressed often how happy she is to have the opportunity and needed
compassion to make sure that her brothers and sisters are properly tended
when they come home from war.
Tammy also reports a recurring dream. She’s in Iraq, in a Black Hawk or doing
desk duty. She realizes that she is dreaming, and she knows that in her dream,
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she has legs. She often dream-thinks, “Oh, I have legs. Cool. I’m going to get
up and run around.”
Subsequently, she ran for Congress a second time and won. She became the
first Asian American woman elected to Congress, the first disabled woman
elected to the House of Representatives, and the first member of Congress born
in Thailand. She’s opened many doors for many people who follow.
Duckwork embodies Gratitude. Of course, she’s not happy to have lost her
legs. But she feels Gratitude for having the compassion, the opportunity, and
the life force available so that her mission may be more authentically and fully
accomplished. And interestingly she feels Gratitude to have "dream legs" that
allow her to get up and run around in the invisible realms.88
Gratitude is not a mood or a temporary state of mind. Gratitude is a way of life.
Gratitude is the principle I find to be most recognizable in my clients. People
who have it in their garments demonstrate the “attitude of Gratitude” in their
daily lives. It comes naturally, whether they have plenty or they have little, to
simply be in a state of thankfulness for life as it comes to them.
These spiritual principles are self-perpetuating. Gratitude is probably the most
self-perpetuating of them all. When you embody Gratitude, destiny seems to
align itself so that you are given more and more for which to be in Gratitude.
Because you appreciate what you have, more shows up to be appreciated. If
you only appreciate (give attention to) what you do not have, the universe
assumes that you like not having and obliges. It’s simple; it’s powerful.
My son’s primary principle is Gratitude. “Thank you” are probably the most
spoken words of his life. Often we’ll just be sitting quietly as we drive down a
street or enjoy a meal and he’ll just look at me and say, “Thank you, Mom.”
“For what?” I always ask, as if I need to have done something to deserve the
words. “For everything,” he responds simply.
When it came time for him to write his college essay, the topic for his firstchoice school was: Describe a time when you faced adversity and explain how
you dealt with it. He struggled with this. He wrote a few sentences about a
disappointing grade point one year followed by a “bad” baseball season, which
he thought had destroyed his chances to play baseball in college. Then he
changed directions altogether. With his permission, I share these words:
Honestly I have never faced real tear-dropping adversity. I had a 3.2 GPA
one year and I had a difficult baseball season the next, but these
setbacks are embarrassingly minor. My best friend’s father deserted his
wife and six children when my friend was only 13 years old. Most of my
other friends come from broken homes and have horrible, dishonest
relationships with their parents. I have played baseball outside of school
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with kids who know real adversity. One talented player’s father died just
before his senior year in high school, and he flunked out of school that
year. Another teammate’s dad (our travel team coach) was arrested for
drug possession mid-season. The suffering I’ve seen on my friends’ faces
touches me deeply. In an odd way, being around these situations has
taught me more about adversity than my own circumstances.
Watching the adversity in the lives of my friends brings deep gratitude for
my parent’s support and my awesome life.
He got accepted. And he played college baseball in one of the best baseball
programs in the country. And while his mommy didn’t feel that the coach
played him enough (and whined about it quite a bit, by the way), he never
complained. In fact, he was in Gratitude for the opportunity the whole four years
he was in college.
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Harmony
21
As you already know, I use the metaphor of fabric in my teachings to explain
that each of us is born wearing an invisible garment, woven of spiritual threads
that holds us and protects us throughout our lives, whether or not we are
conscious of it.
There is another metaphor that I use in relation to the principle of
Harmony: jazz.
When we listen to jazz, we hear the “is-not” of a melody. The actual
notes of the tune take a backseat to the tones that surround the melody.
We hear what is implied in a song – what resonates from the shadows of
the notes. That’s the principle of Harmony at work in music.
It seems that almost every day we can see the principle of Harmony at
work in our culture. On the surface, it appears that DIS-harmony may be
controlling most situations. But after the first few gasps and “oh my
God’s” we can look more deeply and see the unseen, and understand the
unspoken messages of any tragedy.
From The Invisible Garment:
With Harmony in your contract, we know that in many ways, you
are more interested in the shadow the tree casts than in the tree
itself. That is to say, your eye and your interest are drawn in
directions that other people usually do not see. You are, in fact,
able to see the unseen side of form, if you let yourself. In art, you
like the negative spaces. In nature, you like the shadows. In
cultures you magnetize to the unnoticed. You have a very deep
understanding of dimension, definition, and subtle differences.
This may be something you keep to yourself because other people
might call it weird. It may be something you do not even notice
about yourself because it is so deeply engrained that you do not
separate it out as a uniqueness. It is unique, and it is important.
As your contribution to the realm of form, you notice the “is-not.”
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This principle may or may not be a thread in your personal invisible garment, but
it is a thread in the single garment of destiny into which we are all woven. If it
rings especially true for you, then it is most likely a principle that lives in your
garment. And it most definitely is a thread in the garment of our culture.
In fact, if you use July 4, 1776 as our birth date, Harmony is one of the principles
that shows up in our cultural garment. When the United States was born, Mars
(physical body) was in Harmony in Gemini (the mirroring sign). This means that
the physical well-being of our citizenry depends on the flow of the principle of
Harmony. We often see more clearly what we must change in our social
institutions, by seeing how they fail – by seeing their “is-not.”
Through the frequency of Harmony, we integrate the darkness (the is-not) into
our lives. That darkness, to the uninitiated, may appear to be fearful – terrorism
(human and natural) in all its implications. However, to those who have
developed a spiritual foundation, and who therefore have faith in the cosmic
unfolding of events, that darkness is like a great womb out of which all potential
leaps into manifestation. Chaos evokes creativity. Destruction evokes
reconstruction.
In psychology, looking at the shadow means that we examine the “what’s
wrong,” the “what’s broken,” the “what’s denied,” in ourselves in order to more
fully understand our negative feelings and harmful behaviors. While this
approach to self-examination, has certain benefits, unfortunately, it too often
becomes addictive and leads to more amplified forms of narcissism.
Throughout the ages, mystics have recommended a more practical approach to
eliminating personal unhappiness: help someone else. Find someone who is
“worse off” than you believe you are, and give them a hand. In other words, get
over yourself, and start being the steward to the planet that you were meant to
be.
The spiritual principle of Harmony doesn’t just ask us to examine the darkness,
it demands that we embrace and integrate it. When Harmony is at work, we
realize the radiance of Truth, because the veils caused by our ignorance are
lifted.
In the last decade, what veils of our culture have been lifted by the influence of
Harmony in our collective lives? I see a few: racism, prejudice against the
poor, governmental officials ignoring glaring problems, misappropriation of tax
dollars, and the labyrinthian bureaucratic procedures of procedures between
state and federal governmental branches.
By lifting these veils, Harmony now asks us to integrate a deeper truth as we
enter into the next millennium. How can we now assist our brothers and sisters
in reinventing lives rooted in the truth of compassion and loving kindness? How
can we play the melody and hear the harmonies of an America that we have
envisioned?
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One important contribution each of us can make revolves around our
conversations – our vocabulary. We must listen to ourselves with the ears of our
hearts. Do we use divisive words? Can we find terms that reflect the
partnership and unity consciousness of our country? Just as a jazz musician
uses enormous discipline to carefully master his instrument in order to allow the
music to flow through it, we must discipline ourselves to craft a vocabulary that
allows the truth to be spoken and heard.
And as we learn to use the vocabulary that unites us, and to insist that the
media also use that vocabulary, the principle of Harmony will gain access to our
governmental officials, and to our cultural attitudes about poverty,
homelessness, health care. Before you know it, we may realize that we have
universal accountability to the well-being of each and every one of our citizens.
And who knows, this compassion could even seep into our departments of
foreign affairs!
Recently I received an e-mail containing a story about a farmer in Ohio who,
back before Monsanto made it illegal to use your own seed, consistently won
the Ohio State Fair blue ribbon for corn. He grew the sweetest, most tender
corn in the state, year after year after year. Following the state fair every year,
he delivered bags of corn seeds to all his neighbors. A reporter asked him why
he gave away his blue ribbon corn seed – wasn’t he afraid of losing the
prestigious title? His response, after he looked rather incredulously at the
reporter, was simple. “Don’t you know about the bees? The bees crosspollinate the corn. The corn in my fields is only as good as the corn in my
neighbor’s field.”
That’s Harmony at work in the fields. Now we must allow Harmony to work in
healthy ways in our culture. Homelessness cross-breeds homelessness.
Hunger and poverty cross-breed hunger and poverty. Loving-kindness
pollinates loving-kindness. Prosperity allows prosperity to show itself. Smart
use of our resources, our language, our education, and our heart-minded
thinking will seed a new harvest of plenty in our world.
Look for signs that Harmony is at work in your life.
! Start with philanthropy. How can you partner with people, so that the
giving and receiving empower both of you?
! Look in your home, your family, your workplace. What kinds of veils are
lifted in your personal environment that allow the pure melody of human
kindness to be heard? Don’t miss an opportunity to have a conversation
using the vocabulary of unity consciousness.
! And finally, look in your heart. Where do you participate in duality
consciousness? Whom do you disenfranchise? What veils (what
ignorance) still keep you blinded from the radiance of life’s glory?
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The principle of Harmony will only work if we get out of its way and
let it. It is blocked by us when we make choices that separate and
disenfranchise, blame and judge. It becomes a joyous state of
mind when we allow it the freedom to move through us and to
choreograph our lives.
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Dreaming
22
Imagine that you are just falling asleep. What happens to your consciousness?
You lose awareness of the bed, the room, your body. In fact, your physical
body goes into an involuntary mode and begins regenerating, healing, repairing.
Your consciousness? It begins the journey “home.” It longs to return to the lap
of the soul and plug in like an iPad. It also wants to be regenerated, but in a
very different way from the physical body. It wants to remember itself.
According to this body of information, the human soul is a great field of unified
consciousness. In other words, we don’t live in a one-man-one-soul world. It is
improper to refer to “your soul,” “my soul,” “his soul,” “her soul.” We don’t own
the soul. We are individualized emanations from that unified field called soul.
So on that journey back to soul, we encounter many different kinds of energies,
differing bits of information, non-ordinary levels of consciousness. We move
into the realm of all possibility, the source of all potential. In fact, Dreaming
takes us to the “not-yet” realm. When we land in the dreamspace, we have
landed in what might be, what could be.
And on the way back into our physical bodies after a dream, our personal mind
writes a story (a metaphor) to help us remember what we encountered in the
“not-yet” space. Our personal minds are limited, and sometimes rather small in
imagination, so they generally pull from our personal lexicon of images and
faces and circumstances to create these stories. That’s why we can be so
insistent that the dream is “about me,” because so many of the images are
“about me.” But sometimes it’s just not. Sometimes we encounter energies in
the dreamspaces that are not personal at all. Sometimes we dream far outside
our personal experience.
That’s the spiritual definition of Dreaming: thinking, imagining, experiencing
outside the typical band of human consciousness. Dreaming occurs on the way
“home” to the lap of the soul.
This concept of Dreaming is explained more thoroughly in my books The
Woman’s Book of Dreams and Dreams are Letters from the Soul, and also in my
little e-books entitled Gifts from the Soul.
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From The Invisible Garment:
Your job as a dreamer is to reach into the realm of potential – the
dimension of Truth – and magnetize into form that which is ready to
manifest. You came into this incarnation as an emissary for the
soul as a dreamer. You take responsibility for all your realities,
because you know the multidimensional nature of your being.
Indeed, I have often told the women in my dream circles that we are wizards
who live backwards in time. We go periodically into the “not-yet” realms (which
could also be the future) and bring back the ideas and energies, thus turning
them in to probabilities.
Now you may be saying, but what about bad dreams? What about nightmares?
I don’t want to manifest them. Sometimes dreamers need to work “lies” out of
the possibilities. Bad dreams and nightmares are the stories you write to
represent that you encountered some dangerous and negative energies in the
“not-yet.” And as a dreamer you know what to do. You simply turn around,
look the monster or the energy in the eye, and say “What do you want?” It
usually dissolves. Or it tells you what it wants which is typically not frightening
at all. It usually just wants to be heard.
But the spiritual principle of Dreaming isn’t solely about the dreams you have
when you’re asleep. It is about your ability to move out of ordinary
consciousness and take a metaphorical perspective toward any situation.
From The Invisible Garment:
Spiritually defined, Dreaming is the ability to shift into non-ordinary states
of consciousness. Dreaming is a direct encounter with energy in the
dimension of Truth. It does not necessarily require being sleep to
experience Dreaming. It does, however, require a relationship with the
Void – the sacred whirlpool of primordial energy. It requires being able to
pull information out of that which is unformed. The Void. . .is the womb of
the cosmos.
If Dreaming is in your garment pattern, you must learn (remember is probably a
better word because you already know) how to feel comfortable in the Void.
Your innate knowledge of the “womb of the cosmos” and your abiding faith in
its divine potential create power for you.
Recently a client asked me to help her understand the principle of Dreaming. It
resides as the emotional body thread in her garment pattern. I pulled a random
example out of the air. “Let’s say you are betrayed by a friend, and you address
it very directly with her. A verbal fight ensues. It was hurtful and any other
person would really wallow in the pain of the betrayal or the feelings of the cruel
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)%!
words that were spoken. You, on the other hand almost immediately walk away
from the event itself because the emotionality catapulted you into an ‘outside
the box’ series of questions. – What is a fight anyway? For that matter, what
are emotions and why do we have them? What does it mean to betray? Why
are humans wired to fight? What is war? Why don’t we understand that war
never actually works to create peace? – Pretty soon you are so far out in the
cosmos with your thinking that the initiating event has all but disappeared.”
I stopped talking because I noticed she was crying. What are the tears about?
She said she couldn’t really articulate why she was crying. She eventually said
that she had thought her tendency to do that kind of thinking around highly
emotional events was her way of being in denial, of avoiding.
That’s true with many of us. When we learn about our principles, we often find
out that what we thought was “wrong” with us is exactly what is woven into us
by spirit.
If Dreaming is in your pattern, start rejoicing in your wizardness! BE the
dreamer. Don’t let society, friends, family, or your own inner voices tell you that
Dreaming is anything other than your greatest gift.
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)&!
The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Randomness
23
Most people wince when I tell them they have Randomness in their invisible
garment. They prefer to appear to be pulled together and in control. Commonly
used, the word random means chaotic or unplanned. However, do not despair
if your garment bears a Randomness thread. Synonyms for the spiritual
principle of Randomness might be potential or possibility. In other words, you
have a wider picture of possibility than most people.
Ironically, as we enter the information age, and as data and research become
finger-tip available to ordinary citizens, Randomness becomes more abundant.
We might expect the information age to make us more organized (and therefore
more in control), and yet many of us find just the opposite to be true. With more
information, more possibility emerges, and less control is available.
Who, in 1998, could have predicted the international data-finding revolution
would be invoked by Google, which was then housed in a garage in Menlo
Park? Developed by some Stanford University graduates who believed that
information should be free, Google’s search technology has changed the face of
fact-finding for the world.
Who, in 2003, could have seen the influence that social networking websites like
FaceBook would have on the way we present ourselves to the world, meet new
friends, and keep in touch with old ones?
Who in 2005 could have foreseen that YouTube, originally created by two
friends who wanted to share with a small group of friends a video they’d made
at a dinner party, would have such a profound impact on global news? Because
of YouTube, politicians and comedians get “busted” for making racist
statements, and ordinary people become internationally (if momentarily) famous!
The even more interesting question about phenomena like Google, FaceBook
and YouTube is, “What caused their success?” There were a number of search
engines developed over the last decade – why did Google stand out? There
were several social network websites in operation – why did FaceBook beat out
MySpace? There were potentially other ways for people to share their videos –
why did YouTube become the international favorite?
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Consider this radical suggestion: The spiritual principle of Randomness
determined their success. When Randomness is at work, all potential hovers on
the surface of human consciousness until the “best” form emerges. In fact, the
principle of Randomness is always at work, because potential always hovers,
and new ideas burst forth daily. In some ways (at least for some creative
people) it is unfortunate the every new video-sharing idea didn’t become a
YouTube. However, it is fascinating to consider the possibility that seemingly
spontaneous popularity of certain ideas became so because they were chosen
by Randomness. Don’t you agree?
I do not know if any of the inventors of these internet phenomena have
Randomness in their personal garments. However, we can state with a degree
of certainty that the principle is at work in the global culture, and that it is due to
the influence of this principle that certain concepts get selected to stand out
from a wide spectrum of possibilities.
From The Invisible Garment:
With Randomness in your chart, you are one who knows how to
allow change to occur – not for change’s sake but for the sake of
evolution. You are contracted with a spiritual principle that is
difficult for many to understand, because most people want to feel
that they are in control. Your life’s work is to realize that “control”
is not the issue at all. Accountability and responsibility (the ability
to respond) to what appear to be random occurrences make
human beings truly interdependent with life. As you mature and
develop the ability to allow deconstruction to occur without
needing to control it, your talent for reconstruction will also develop
and mature.
When she was young, Lily used to drive her parents to the brink of insanity with
her insistence on exploring every possibility before she made a decision. In fact,
she chose to be home- schooled because her curiosity was too big to be walled
in by the rules of public education. After reading that Lily’s primary reason for
incarnating was to embody the principle of Randomness, her mother relaxed.
When it came time to choose a college, Lily visited dozens of campuses. She
could not make a decision until all the options were considered. Eventually, Lily
(and Randomness) made the choice – a great choice – the best choice for her.
Had they not understood the power that Randomness had in Lily’s life, her
parents may not have been patient enough to let her take so long and put so
much energy into selecting her school. They realized that responsibility and
accountability were operating through their daughter, and that she it was her
most authentic self-choreographing this selection process. Because they were
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able to observe Randomness at work in her, the experience of college-selection
was a family adventure, rather than a family crisis.
Earlier I made the statement: When Randomness is at work, all potential hovers
on the surface of human consciousness until the “best” form emerges. The
quotations around the word “best” are extremely important.
None of these spiritual principles are judgmental. They don’t factor in human
constructs like morality, ethics, or profit margin. Randomness doesn’t choose
the “best” idea or trend because it is necessarily the most moral, ethical, or
lucrative. All these principles are frequencies of energy that operate strictly for
the purpose of extending life. The 30 principles are evolutionary forces which
blend in infinite configurations to perpetuate the development of life.
In other words, if an idea you have takes off and becomes a YouTube, don’t
take it personally. It’s not that you are a genius (although you may be, of
course), rather it’s that at that moment in time your energies were in alignment
with the forward movement of life itself. And conversely, your popular trend
may die a sudden death just as quickly as it caught on, like MySpace did. Why
is that? Because Randomness, in the service of life, sometimes opts to reverse
trends so that life may stabilize.
In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s a significant portion of Americans arose in a
relatively peaceful revolution. Certain groups and people sprang forward as
leaders of the loosely-organized movement for change: the Chicago Seven, Ken
Kesey’s Merry Pranksters, Bela Abzug and the other leaders of the feminist
movement, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X., Ram Das, the Beatles to name a
few.
Randomness played a major role in those times. It seemed that everyone was
on fire with possibility and potential, and that the whole culture experienced a
philosophical earth-quake. And then things just calmed down! Nixon resigned
and was subsequently pardoned, Viet Nam was over, schools were integrated,
women had a few more civil rights, and everyone who lived by the mantra “don’t
trust anyone over 30” eventually turned 30!
Stasis set in. Randomness seemed to disappear as a conservative backlash reestablished The Establishment. And yet, changes had occurred, many of which
will never be reversed. The country was like a kaleidoscope: one pattern
replaced another. The revolutionary, fast-changing days of the late ‘60’s were
the chink-a-chink period when the stones inside the kaleidoscope rearranged
themselves so that the new pattern could emerge.
We may be in the beginning of another such changing period. This time the
changes appear to be global. Politically, culturally, economically,
philosophically and spiritually, it seems that the whole world is in the hands of
Randomness in these early years of the 21st Century. As a spiritual practitioner,
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your job is to know yourself, find the peace within yourself that doesn’t change,
no matter what the external pictures may be showing you. As Gandhi
admonishes, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
Each of the spiritual principles has a physical correspondent. That is to say that
there is a place inside the human body that offers the same function to the body
that the energy of the principle offers to society. The ovaries and testicles are
such points representing Randomness. A baby girl is born with millions of eggs
in her ovaries. Randomness selects the ones that will be sent out and made
available for impregnation. Men can manufacture millions and millions of sperm.
It only takes one, randomly chosen by the egg, to create another human.
Randomness is a mystical, creative, awesome energetic force. If you have it in
your garment, you are fortunate. You hold the potential to understand the most
intimate secret of life – how life recreates, regenerates, and extends itself. It
turns out that it’s not by survival of the fittest, but rather by alignment with
cosmic purpose that life selects its next “best” idea!
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Humility
24
Articulating the principle of Humility is problematic. Words to describe the
power of this principle do not come easily. Humility, when defined spiritually,
becomes a true paradox. It means not thinking too highly of yourself: It means
not thinking to little of yourself. In fact, it means not “thinking” about yourself at
all, but rather simply being yourself. Hard to do; hard to describe.
From The Invisible Garment:
It’s not an easy placement to have your Sun in Humility. It means
that you must constantly be on the alert for both arrogant and selfdefacing thoughts and actions. You must be in continual selfinvestigation, and yet you must not spend too much time thinking
about yourself. You must ruthlessly eliminate lies and projections
from your reality. In short, you must walk your talk, stay in your
own reality, and never get caught in someone else’s dream. Deep
authentic self-knowing is the ONLY path that is right and
comfortable for you. There is no room for whining, victimization, or
self-importance. You must never stop checking for selfimportance!
Humility is my primary principle (my natal sun was at 24º of Sagittarius.) One of
the most interesting aspects of living with it in my garment is that I most often
see my own lack of Humility by looking in the “collective mirror.” In other words,
when I see someone else doing or saying something that is either arrogant or
showing lack of self-esteem, I immediately recognize my own similar patterns.
It’s not always a pretty mirror!
Another challenge of living with Humility is remembering that not everyone has
this bone-deep drive toward self-investigation. In fact, some people NEVER
self-investigate, because it’s not in their nature so to do. (Some people never
self-investigate out of denial, but that’s another story.) Living with Humility in
one’s garment drives that person toward truth-telling-at-all-costs. That’s not
always good.
My son has Humility in his chart, too. He is one of my best mirrors. I respect
this kid to the nth degree because his personal ethics are almost irreproachable.
He is honestly the only kid I’ve ever known who made it all the way through high
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school without being grounded, not because my husband and I are overly
tolerant parents, but rather because he never did anything wrong. He was never
late for curfew. He never, to my knowledge, lied to us about anything. As he
explained it to me once, “Mom, I’m an athlete. We play by the rules.”
The dark mirror that he holds up to me is his desire for everyone to be as “by the
rules” as he. I’ve heard him criticize peers for making “stupid” decisions. That
attitude sometimes comes at a high social price. I’m the same way. I hold a
high standard for behavior, and I don’t always hold my tongue when I see
people not meet their own potential. I can see that in both of us, Humility drives
us to constantly strive to meet our own self-expectations, and it may sometimes
blind us as to why other people don’t have the same drive. Our bewilderment at
other peoples’ lack of need to self-perfect often gets read by the outside world
as judgmental or arrogant behavior.
As one develops ones “Humility chops,” however, an amazing transformation
occurs. As one comes to know oneself more and more authentically, one also
becomes more and more compassionate toward the people in the world who
cannot achieve their own goals.
Arianna Huffington serves as a contemporary role model for Humility. In her
early adult years, she was a conservative, highly critical of people who could not
take care of themselves. She was publicly judgmental of people’s choices, and
actually headed a movement to call for the resignation of President Clinton after
the Monica Lewinsky scandal was revealed. Through deep and honest dialogs
(reportedly with her close friend, columnist Robert Sheer) and reaching higher
levels of personal maturity through her spiritual practice, her personal
compassion “trumped” her conservative politics. She began to see the need for
a government to care for its people. She began to call for federal and state laws
that reflected her own compassionate beliefs. She ran for governor of California
against Arnold Schwartzenegger, calling the campaign “the hybrid vs. The
Hummer”. (Huffington drives a Prius, Schwartzenegger drives a Hummer.) She
dropped out of the gubernatorial race, eventually realizing that her voice could
be heard more clearly through the media. Ms. Huffington’s very public
transformation from (in her words) “a former right-winger who has evolved into a
compassionate and progressive populist” is inspiring, because it demonstrates
how as we mature spiritually, we also reform our public persona.
For the principle of Humility to be alive in the world, it must be alive in
individuals. Arianna Huffington doesn’t appear to be humble (using the
mundane definition of the word.) In fact, she appears to be opinionated and
entitled to state her opinions loudly. That kind of vocal aggression doesn’t
“read” as humility. Yet, I’m suggesting that it is exactly that. As she came to
truly know herself, she realized that her authentic beingness and her words were
out of alignment with each other. Her courage to change her opinions, say why,
and speak out for compassion are reasons to admire her.
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Actor Sean Penn serves as another paradoxical example of Humility. In the
early part of his acting career, while married to Madonna, he seemed anything
but humble, in the traditional sense of the word. His reputation in the press
(probably due to his caught-on-film beating of a photographer) was one of a
violent, out-of-control, self-entitled brat. Perhaps Humility, which is his primary
invisible garment thread (his sun is at 24º of Leo), drove him in his early years to
push against the edges of himself to find his true identity. What was it that
turned the volatile young Penn into a kind and deeply concerned social activist
in the early part of the 21st Century? Perhaps it was maturity, perhaps it was
fatherhood, perhaps it was a strong, healthy relationships – or perhaps it was
the energy of the principle of Humility pushing him to search more deeply for his
own authenticity. Immediately after Katrina, Penn was one of the first people in
the United States actually lending a hand. He went to New Orleans quietly,
concerned that he might be in the way of the rescue teams. Upon discovering
that there were no rescue teams, he bought a little fishing boat, and started
motoring from house to house, carrying people to safety. He also often gave
them money to help them through the next few difficult days. This is not the
work of a self-entitled brat. This is the action of a man of Humility.
Penn and Huffington have this in common: Humility, as it has lived through
them, developed a compassion for life and for people that is magnificent to
observe. Because they took the time to know themselves, they speak with clear
voices. Because they allowed themselves room to make errors in public, and
then publicly correct them, they speak with authority and command respect.
Of course, not everyone who lives with Humility in his or her chart will be called
to stand in the spotlight like Huffington and Penn. But this is the “hook” –
Humility doesn’t demand a spotlight. Your authenticity and mine, even though it
may never be featured in the headlines, is just as important as anyone who is
rich or famous. Humility doesn’t demand attention. It simply demands
authentic living.
Of course, “authentic living” is the challenge. How does one even know
whether he or she is authentic? We live in an age of so many voices and so
much information, it’s hard to hear our own wisdom.
These are the questions I suggest every person of Humility pose on a daily
basis.
" Am I happy?
" Do I wake up with anticipation for a new day?
" Do I go to sleep with gratitude for a day well lived?
" Have I been kind to myself and to the others I encountered today?
" Do changing circumstances determine my mood?
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" Does laughter come easily and often?
If the answer to any of these questions is “no” then you need to go back to the
drawing board. If you are not happy, you are not allowing Humility to live
through you. If you do not wake up each morning excited about the new day,
then Humility has been prevented from accessing your life. If you do not end
each day with a prayer of thanks, then Humility has been blocked. If you have
been unkind to yourself or your friends, family or colleagues, Humility is not
speaking through you. If changing circumstances determine your fundamental
mood in each moment, then Humility isn’t present in each moment. And if you
don’t laugh a lot, Humility’s voice has been silenced.
Humility is not something you do. It is something you are. It is not something
you notice, for as soon as it becomes noticeable, it has ceased to be. Humility
lives through you when you open the window to your heart.
Picture yourself on your knees ruthlessly pulling weeds out of your garden – the
weeds that are threatening to choke your most beautiful, radiantly flowering
plants. Freeze-frame that image and allow it to serve as a reminder throughout
your day. That’s a picture of Humility. That’s you, recognizing what needs to go
and what needs to stay in your life. That’s you honoring what says yes to life in
its full potential, over what tries to diminish life to its lowest common
denominator. That’s you allowing Humility to live through you.
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Desire
25
Whenever I open a book of Rumi’s poetry, the exact words I need jump off the
page at me. This morning, I read this:
“All desires are the desire for God, obscured and veiled.”
The spiritual principle of Desire puzzles us, perhaps because the common use of
the word and its spiritual definition differ so vastly. Ordinarily, we use the word
desire as a verb to designate that we want something . . . something that we
think will make us feel better, more complete, more whole, more happy. “I
desire you.” However, in its spiritual sense, desire becomes a noun. Spiritual
desire moves us, informs us, guides us toward wholeness. Desire is a force
which drives our lives. Desire plays a fundamental role in our purpose for being
alive.
From The Invisible Garment:
Your primary purpose in this lifetime – or perhaps it would be more
accurate to say your primary motivation for life – is to remember that while
you appear to be separated, you are really One with the whole universe.
You appear to be living a life that is unique (and you are), and yet there is
a bond between you and the Great Plan and the Great Dream and God
that is totally unbreakable. It was your intent when you took this
incarnation to live fully as a human, and yet to remember fully your
divinity. It is not an accident that you chose to live in a capitalistic,
commerce-oriented society. It would be easier if you lived in poverty in
India, so that the possibility of getting wrapped up in buying, owning, and
possessing just would not be there. Your job is to buy, own, posses, and
yet know that all of it represents your passion to be fully embodied as a
divine emissary for the human soul.
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This thought – that the energy you experience as desire actually represents your
longing to remember that you are united with wholeness – radically changes
everything, doesn’t it?
Imagine a thing that you want: an article of clothing, a house, a car, a job, a
lover, or a pet. Make it a real, solid object. Let the thing talk to you. Let it tell
you how much better your life will be if/when you own it. Let it convince you
that you must “go after” it with an intention to posses it. It’s interesting, isn’t it,
how things call to us? They seem to want us to own them as much as we
“desire” to possess them.
Now, stop and shift your attention. Let this object of your desire transform into
a metaphor of your longing to be whole. Let it become an enticement toward
reuniting with the soul. Let it become a force field that magnetizes you toward
peace, love, unparalleled happiness. Let its “object-ness” become energy. That
energy is Desire.
Do you see that this happens unconsciously every time you purchase anything?
Literally, everything that you feel a need to own speaks to you of the
interrelatedness of all beings, all objects, all manifestation. Your attraction to it
pulls you toward your memory that the realm of form is a great seamless weave
from which we all emerge and in which we all “act as if” we were separated.
Each of these spiritual principles focuses itself somewhere in our physical body.
If the principle of Desire appears in your personal weave, then you have a
special relationship with your eyes.
Once a Native American teacher spoke to me of the light that pours out of our
eyes – the spiritual light of the inner sun centered in the head of each person.
He told me to spend the day “reversing” my vision. We learn in school that we
see things because the sun or some artificial source of light bounces off a form
and into our eyes, creating an image that our brains can interpret as a solid
object. This teacher asked me to imagine that the opposite happens – that my
eyes send out beams of light, which “grant beingness” to a form. In that sense,
I literally create the form, because my eyes have given it the dignity of becoming
visible.
While this idea may be a little radical for you, it isn’t for the quantum physicist.
He or she would agree. The observed and the observer are intricately and
exquisitely interdependent. Until something is observed, it simply resides in the
realm of possibility. Does “residing in the realm of possibility” make an object
less real? Well, to the observer, yes. Until you recognize a something (an object
or an idea), it isn’t real to you, although its potential may be forever present all
around you.
Now, this concept brings us back to wholeness. Until you experience
wholeness, it resides in the “realm of possibility.” Desire’s job is to pull you,
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evoke you, seduce you to remember that you are already complete, already
divine, already full . . .that you need nothing, lack nothing, want for nothing.
The angels who initially introduced me to this information said something that
haunts my contemporary, capitalistic, materialistic, objective mind:
The goal is to mature the Desire Principle in yourself so that your true desire is
to become the fulfillment of life rather than to possess the fulfillment of life.
What does that mean, to “become” rather than “possess” the fulfillment of life?
In a society that focuses on “doing,” the idea of “becoming or being” is alien.
We are what we do . . . aren’t we? And what we DO, if we are “successful”, is
grow up and get an education and get a good job and support ourselves and
our families, so that they can grow up and be even more successful than we. Or
if we choose not to have children and families, then we get a good job and buy
good things and make our lives comfortable, and then we do things that help
other people. Isn’t that the definition of a good life?
How does one become the fulfillment of life?
It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do: it’s the easiest thing you’ll ever do.
Becoming the fulfillment of life requires surrendering the belief that you know
what life is. As long as you believe that you know what life is, or what you are
supposed to DO, your willfulness will not allow life to flow through you
unimpeded. If you drop that belief, Life itself will teach you. Desire can’t take its
proper position in your life if your belief system blocks it. You can’t see your
own interconnectedness if your eyes won’t grant beingness to wholeness.
Let me share my own experience with Desire. As a young woman, an activist of
the sixties, I passionately pursued my happiness. I ecstatically bounced from
lover to lover, career to career, important political cause to important political
cause. Out there somewhere I would find my beloved, my right livelihood, the
cause I could forever support (the eternal sacred protest march!) I kept doing,
marching, purchasing. I knew I would find it because I knew it was out there
somewhere and I wouldn’t stop until I succeeded.
And then one day, it found me. Incapacitated by a viral infection in my brain, I
sat on the precipice between life and death, watching the sun set over the
Pacific Ocean, praying for my health to return so that I could get back to DO-ing
my life. In that moment, the experience of the world reversed itself. I literally felt
the shift in my body, in my perspective. The sun wasn’t setting. Rather, I was
riding on a big beautiful rock that was turning away from the sun. I sensed the
earth’s movement in every cell of my body. Suddenly, life began to live me! All
these years I’d colluded with consensus reality – the illusion that the sun sets in
the west – that it moves across the sky in a clockwise direction every day. Even
though I’d cognitively known that the earth’s movement created that illusion, I’d
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still lived in it, unconsciously believing that what I saw was the sun’s movement.
Suddenly, I was an extension of the earth herself, rotating in a counterclockwise
direction, turning my back on the sun for a few hours. My eyes suddenly
granted beingness to truth; my brain withdrew its addiction to the illusion.
All my life, I’d been chasing the illusion that my fulfillment – my job, my love, my
cause – was “out there” somewhere. Suddenly, Desire took its proper place in
my life. Desire pulled fulfillment out of the “realm of possibility” and into reality.
I wasn’t to look for how to live my happiness; I was to let it live me. I wasn’t to
collude with the collective belief that fulfillment is an external experience; I was
to recognize my unity with the earth, with all life, with the galaxy itself and let
fulfillment live me. I wasn’t to DO; I was to BE.
It’s hard. Yet, it’s so much easier than creating an illusion and using all your
energy to keep it alive, in spite of all the facts!
! Whether or not Desire appears in you pattern, spend some time
concentrating on feeling the earth move toward and away from the sun.
In other words, allow the truth to be a deeper reality for you than the
illusion.
! Also, watch your purchasing choices. What do you buy? Why? What do
you believe it’s going to give you? Is it true, or is it just a part of your
story?
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Silence
26
Our normal understanding of the word silence implies absence of sound.
Silence, when defined spiritually, however, refers to the emptiness of mind that
allows pure sound to be heard. Pure sound is the vibration on which the visible
universe rests. Silence is the frequency that allows that vibration to express
itself. In other words, Silence is the nothingness out of which everything
emerges, in which everything is rooted, and by which everything is nurtured.
Absolute silence cannot be achieved by most humans, therefore as a spiritual
principle, Silence can only be discussed abstractly. It’s a difficult principle, not
only because it’s impossible to “do,” but more importantly because it is
somewhat dangerous to even try. You see, it in Silence divine truth is revealed,
and in our world of relativity, divine truth bears a mighty sword. In fact, it is said
by the masters that if a human were to directly encounter the pure vibrations of
divine truth, he or she would most likely be obliterated.
Why, then, is Silence (the pathway to divine truth) ever included in our
garments? Who wants to be obliterated? Silence lives through some of us
because of this: our world is a relative reality which is evolving toward
perfection. In other words everything that appears to exist depends on and is
relative to everything else that appears to exist. That relative reality constantly
evolves toward divine truth. Every shimmer of perfection and every small
experience or minute expression of divine truth experienced by any individual
carries the entire species closer to its full actualization. Some of us have woven
within our very beingness an irrepressible drive toward achieving that goal.
From The Invisible Garment:
With Silence in your garment, we know that you have those
profound moments of self-realization when you are able to quiet
your inner dialogue and simply listen to the music of the spheres.
When you are in a place in time-space-matter that allows absolute
peace, the bones of your skull will buzz with the very tone that runs
the universe. And in those moments, you remember your part of
the Great Universal Plan. These moments are very precious and
fairly rare for you, because the busy-ness of the mundane world
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invades so much of your consciousness. But you have them just
often enough to keep moving toward your own awakening.
Of course, even the concept of awakening cannot be fully described, because
when one encounters the divine truth veiled within Silence, there is no “you” left
to be awakened. Indeed, at certain junctures in your spiritual journey, all words
are finished, all concepts gone. Silence is one of those junctures. It can’t be
described; it must be experienced.
Silence is anchored within the bones of your skull. Those bones seem to be
more alive than the other bones in your body. They are pliable, and they vibrate.
If you haven’t done it before, get a cranial massage from someone who is welltrained in the art. As you allow the bones of your skull to be ever-so-slightly
manipulated, you’ll find yourself aligning with Silence. In those moments of
blissful quiet, you have the potential of accomplishing what might require a
decade of spiritual practice under ordinary circumstances. In those moments of
Silence, your ego releases its control over your perceptions, and you realize the
Oneness of all existence.
Throughout the history of our species, there have been but a few people who
could totally access Silence. It is said that both Gandhi and Martin Luther King,
Jr., had moments of authentic Silence in their lives. Perhaps only at the moment
of their deaths, both taken by assassins, did the frequency of Silence fully
embody through them.
Why is it so hard to achieve Silence, even for the most devout student?
Because, as I said earlier, Silence contains the ultimate truth of Oneness (that
we are not separated beings), and only the rarest and most devout student can
fully face that truth.
A student of the personality knows that the human ego is a construct created to
allow the individual to experience himself or herself relative to everything else.
In other words, the ego serves as a veil between divine truth and relative truth,
protecting the individual from the annihilation of realizing Oneness. In fact, the
ego’s very existence demands that the individual not permanently establish
Silence. That’s why it’s so hard to “do” Silence and remain alive. Of course,
eventually humans will evolve their physical bodies and their emotional
capacities so that Silence can be fully accessed. We’re not there yet. If you
have Silence in your garment, you’re hopefully working on it!
There’s a cute story in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones (my favorite little book of zen
stories) about four students of meditation who decided to take a seven-day
silent retreat. They started at sunrise one morning, and did fine throughout the
day. However, that night the oil lamps grew too dim to allow for their nighttime
reading, so one of the students called for a servant to fix the lamps. The second
student, shocked to hear the sound of his friend’s voice exclaimed, “We are not
supposed to say a word.” The third student, annoyed with them both
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admonished the second, “That was stupid. Why did you talk?” And the fourth
rested in inflated self-confidence, thinking but not saying aloud, “I am touching
perfection, as I am the only one who hasn’t talked.”
Indeed, when all else fails, our egos will erupt with thoughts that prevent us from
merging with Silence.
All right, you may ask, if it’s impossible to achieve Silence, why bother with it at
all? My answer is simple. If it is in your invisible garment, you can’t help it. You
will spend your life either trying to understand it, or you will spend your life
fighting against it. Silence is so much a part of your contract with life that it calls
to you constantly.
It is true that I’ve given many invisible garment readings to people who have
Silence as one of their threads, only to discover that those are the chattiest
people I’ve ever met. For some people, the concept of learning from listening to
the sacred Nothing is repugnant, and the idea of surrendering to a vibration
rather than charting one’s own course is terrifying. Those people chatter to
avoid the pain of realizing that they don’t exist (at least not in the way they
thought they did.)
But others long to quiet their minds. When the inner dialog stills, a paradox
occurs. You find yourself in a place where all information resides, but you have
no questions. You emerge from that place “knowing” nothing. Nothing is the
key.
From time to time big spiritual trends sweep around the world. Mostly those
trends are capitalistic campaigns – selling books, selling gurus, selling a practice
or exercise – which run their course and then fizzle. I’ve watched spiritual trends
with curiosity. Do you remember when so many people rushed to purchase a
book called “The Secret.” According to this book which proclaims that it reveals
ancient wisdom, one must simply learn to wish for things or circumstances
properly in order to attract a perfect life. It was a book about the so-called Law
of Attraction. Of course, subsequently the author of the book “attracted” literally
dozen of law suits, and the scandal put an end to the furor over the spiritual
message. Of course, the message wasn’t a spiritual one at all. It was greed
gone awry.
I would argue that the real “secret” to a perfect life involves surrendering to
Silence. When one experiences and completely surrenders to the spiritual
principle of Silence, things and circumstances no longer hold ones interest or
attention. Silence calls one’s mind to the deepest secret of all: breath. Your
breath, God’s breath.
I’ve just used about 1300 words to try to say what can’t be said. Hafiz, the great
sufi master and poet, sums it up in seventeen:
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I am
A hole in a flute
That the Christ’s breath moves through –
Listen to this
Music
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Peace
27
It almost goes without saying that Peace, when defined spiritually, has nothing
to do with absence of war or conflict resolution. Peace is not a relative term
when being used by a spiritual practitioner. Instead, Peace is a state of being.
The phrase given to us by Jesus, “the peace which passeth understanding,”
offers some great insight into the state of being to which I refer. Something that
“passeth understanding” is something beyond mind, beyond thought, beyond
separation. That oneness or wholeness which is beyond separation is the
Peace of spirit.
From The Invisible Garment:
If you have Peace in your invisible garment, your main objective in
life is to reach a state of consciousness that allows you to live
beyond duality, polarity, and separation. You are constantly
seeking a place in your heart-mind that allows respite. Your only
goal – your only desire – is to be in full relationship with your soul. It
may be hard for you to integrate this longing with the harshness
and demands of mundanity. Whatever your challenges are in life,
your biggest challenge is to allow the peace that passes
understanding to flow in your body.
Of course, Peace does flow in your body, in the form of blood. Do you
“understand” blood? Does anyone? Does the mind tell the blood to flow?
Doesn’t the flow of blood, the nurturance of your cells, pass understanding?
The good news is this: Peace flows through you in every moment. The fact
that you’re not conscious of it means that it is that very “peace that passeth
understanding.” If you have Peace in your invisible garment, you also have a
desire to bring the expression of Peace to consciousness.
Every mystical tradition teaches that the world is a spiritual being and that we,
who look like individuals, are actually microcosms of that greater being. Sufi
teachings state that Peace resides in the “heart of the world.” They further
indicate the heart of man contains a window into the heart of the world. In other
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words, by virtue of the fact that we are alive, that our hearts are beating, we
have access to Peace.
Most people interpret this sufi teaching about the “window” within the heart to
be a metaphor. Scientists, however, explain it more literally. A new science
field called biomagnetics studies the comparative frequencies between the
earth’s magnetic field and human heart’s magnetic field. They have learned that
when the earth’s field is disturbed (for example with a strong earthquake) the
heart frequency of the people directly involved is also disturbed. Joseph Chilton
Pearce discusses their experiments and conclusions at great length in his book
The Biology of Transcendence. He states, “We live in fields within fields of a
holographic electromagnetic display where all information is somehow present
within every minute part of any particular frequency. . .with our human heart
being the genesis of our personal yet uniquely shared living world.”
In other words, the world has an electromagnetic frequency, which metaphysical
systems call “the heart of the world.” A healthy human heart also has an
electromagnetic frequency which mirrors and attunes itself to that of the earth.
And those frequencies create holographic fields which intertwine. The human
heart, because it is aligned with the frequency of the earth, serves as a window
into the “heart of the world.”
This implication can be found in almost every spiritual system. Meister Eckhart,
the 11th Century Christian mystic stated it thusly: “When God becomes Eckhart,
Eckhart becomes God.” Sufis speak of this electromagnetic field in terms of
color, stating that personalities take on the color of the frequency of God that
they embody. Swami Muktananda, the famous yogi says, “’God dwells in you
as you.” And the primary admonition of the Jewish culture is “love the lord with
all your heart.”
It seems that whether we look at the studies of modern scientists, or the words
of philosophers and spiritual leaders, the arrow points toward Peace residing in
the heart (and in our system in the blood) – the heart of man, the heart of the
world.
Aramaic scholar Neil Douglas-Klotz points out that the words that mean peace
in Aramaic (shalama) and Hebrew (shalom) stem from a verb that means to be
whole, fulfilled or complete. This same word also means to surrender or to die.
And of course, to “die” means to go beyond the mind – that which passeth
understanding. The greeting “shalom” then, invites the greeted to go beyond
mind, into the Peace that resides there.
The common use of the word peace invokes an idealistic set of circumstances.
Peace as a spiritual principle invokes quite the opposite. It summons us to align
with the electromagnetic field of the heart of the world – to experience our
origins so thoroughly that we bypass the beginning of our personal story, and
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indeed the story of the universe. When we access that state of being, the
external circumstances cease to control us.
My husband and I were speaking recently about his experience in Viet Nam. We
rarely talk about it, for like most veterans, he has put those memories in a
special “box” in his repertoire of memories. But as we watch another war unfold
on our television sets each day, he has opened that box ever so slightly. I asked
him if he used drugs to self-medicate and avoid the reality of his situation when
he was there. (Many Viet Nam vets did just that, I have come to understand.)
He replied that while he used drugs several times while he was there, he found
that being high would amplify the danger for him. I asked if he found a
technique to get him through the most terrifying moments. He said that when
he was awakened in the night by bombs exploding and gunfire blasting all
around him, being still and listening to his heart is what did it for him.
He’s not a spiritual practitioner. He wasn’t really talking about meditation. But
somehow, his inner wisdom showed him access to the Peace that passeth
understanding in those moments of extreme danger. Ironically, the
circumstances of war actually pushed him into Peace.
And this brings us to the crux of this discussion. Peace isn’t stagnant. Peace
flows. If the blood in your body stopped flowing, the cells would die. So it is
with the spiritual energy called Peace. It must continually nourish the body of
humankind. One doesn’t “find peace” and then sit blissfully by while
Armageddon occurs.
Modern-day mystic, Andrew Harvey, is the architect of a movement called
sacred activism. He proposes that each individual must marry the sacred
passion of the mystic with wise, radical action in the world. He calls on people
to become drastically conscious of their choices in their every-day world, and
that they make those choices based on the deepest wisdom they can access.
His suggestion for activism is profound: that you look in your heart, and find
what it is in the world that breaks your heart. Then get to work in that field. If
animal treatment breaks your heart, go to work as an animal activist. If the war
in Iraq – or war in general – breaks your heart, then become am anti-war activist.
If the state of the environment breaks your heart, then join the millions of others
who are waking up to the solutions for this crisis.
The most important part of the teachings of Peace connect directly with Dr.
Harvey’s call for sacred activism. When Peace begins to flow through you, your
actions are rooted in the wisdom of life force, not in anger. When Peace works
its way into your consciousness, your choices spring from a deep passion for
social and ecological justice, not from reactive frustration. When Peace
activates in your body, the mystical aspect of your personality merges
completely with the rational side of your existence.
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Peace is not absence of war or conflict. Peace is a level of consciousness that
is not affected by circumstances, but that instead informs and influences you,
your choices, your actions, and your experiences.
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Love
28
The unique weave that you wear constitutes the gift that you came to life to
deliver. In other words, even though much of the world would have you believe
in your worthlessness (your innate sinfulness and need for repentance), the
deeper truth is that you came here to bring a specific spiritual gift into form.
The principle of Love is a powerful gift to deliver, and a hard one. Our many
cultures in the world describe and define love (lowercase l) differently. Romantic
love, love for family, platonic love, filial love – all these forms of love can be
identified and felt differently, and each culture in the world prioritizes which type
dominates. However, Love (capital L) doesn’t actually split into many different
branches or versions.
From The Inviible Garment:
You brought the gift of Love to the planet. This infusion was necessary in
order for the species to prepare for what was to come in the rest of the
century. An awareness of the unifying nature of Love is vital for us to
make a meaningful world. Quantum physicists are presently saying that
love is the glue of the atom, and therefore of the universe. Is it out of
Love that all things come into being? Is it into Love that they eventually
return? Yes. You have a particularly intimate relationship with the power
of Love, for it is a part of the gift that you deliver by BE-ing alive.
While this statement may or may not be a thread in your personal invisible
garment, it is a thread in the single garment of destiny into which we are all
woven. Love is one of the 30 spiritual principles that weave the fabric of human
life and drive human incarnation.
Sometimes it is hard to see how spiritual principles actually impact your life, as
they are energy rather than acts. However, one can often see them at work in
the external world.
Let’s look at an example of Love at work. This week I saw a television news
story about an elderly woman who resided on the third floor of an assisted living
facility. Her apartment started filling with smoke. She opened the door to the
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hallway – even more smoke. She went into her neighbor’s apartment, where the
fire had apparently started. (Her neighbor had lit a cigarette too near her oxygen
tank.) The elderly woman, knowing that her neighbor depended on a walker,
PICKED HER FRIEND UP and carried her down three flights of stairs to safety.
Now, we read about heroic events often, especially in crisis situations.
However, it’s not the event or the action that attracts my attention. It’s the
spiritual energy behind the action. What on earth empowers an elderly woman
to carry someone of about her same size down three flights of stairs? Why
didn’t she go for help or call for help? What gives her permission to step
“outside the box” of our cultural belief system (the belief that says it’s
impossible for her to have that kind of strength) and perform an act of such
unbridled generosity? It’s Love: not the sentimental “I love you” kind of love
that we give to our nearest and dearest, but the Love that ties the universe
together. In that moment, through Love, the two of them became one. It was
no harder for her to carry her friend than for her to walk down the stairs alone.
Love moves through each of us, of course, whether or not it appears in our
invisible garment. Yet, for some the power of unconditional Love seems more
available. Those are the people who have a thread of Love in their garments.
When the energy of Love is activated, no rules apply. Our cultural beliefs, our
human limitations, our self-imposed restrictions go out the window. Nothing
can stop Love’s flow.
Angels are programmed to Love. They have no choice. And yet, they seem to
anchor Love in humanity. To some that’s a ridiculous statement because we
generally consider angels to be imaginary beings, or at least non-human
energies. However, we all from time to time refer to certain people as angels.
My money says those human “angels” have a strong thread of Love in their
invisible garment. They have continuous access to the flow of Love, and they
remain (albeit usually unconsciously) available to allow Love to flow and ACT
through them. Now, this part is important so read carefully: The people
themselves don’t make the decision to act in a loving way. Love makes the
decision. Love acts.
For the most part, I tell people not to pay attention to doingness. We worry so
much about what we should DO, that we have lost memory of what we are here
to BE. If one learns to BE the spiritual principles in his or her garment, what he
or she needs to DO will show up and say “DO ME.” I think that’s what
happened with our friend in the assisted living home. She’s an (unknowing)
angel and an angelic act was required in that moment. When the interviewer
asked her why she carried her friend down those flights, her response was, “It
needed to be done.” (She had a very sweet voice and a very matter-of-fact
tone, by the way.)
Each of these 30 principles has a “secret hiding place” inside the human body
where it anchors itself. Love’s place is in the brain stem, which functions as the
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portal of communication between the brain and the central nervous system.
That’s why the acts of Love defy our usual definitions and boundaries. In the
moment that Love takes over your body, neither the brain nor the central
nervous system carry their usual “vote.” Love makes the decisions; Love acts.
When Love activates in our system, the brain stem takes over, and we step into
a different reality – the angelic realm.
Unfortunately for most of us, the moment of allowing Love full access to our
lives comes only in sudden emergency. The terrorist bombings of the World
Trade Center and the tsunami in Southern Asia stand as recent examples.
However, emergencies which carry less shock value (genocide in Sudan, the
AIDS crisis in Africa) don’t evoke the same outpouring of compassionate
response. Why is that? Why do we need that adrenaline-rush feeling to activate
unconditional Love? I think it’s fear. We actually fear that if we let Love flow
unchecked in our systems, we might explode!
As a species, we are just not evolved enough to allow the flow of Love
conscious access to our systems at all times. As a species, we are still ruled by
the calculating mind of the head. As a whole, we actually believe that
“impossible” acts remain impossible to us most of the time.
Love requires no blocks, no hesitation, no consideration, no rules. The thought
of allowing unbounded love energy to flow through our bodies and our cultures
at all times scares most of us to death. Why, we must have rules. Every church
says so. Every club, every organization, every city, every culture, every country
HAS RULES.
Yes, of course that’s true, and it’s not a part of this philosophy to naively
suggest that we live in anarchy. However, as you come more and more in
alignment with your invisible garment, and as you learn more and more about
these spiritual principles, you will begin to see that those with Love in their
garments break the rules (especially the rules which inhibit compassion) with
unparalleled regularity. And the more people we have on the planet, the more
Love we have in our garments, the more the rules that restrict angelic behavior
will be shattered.
I want to close with two suggestions – one for those of you who have Love as
one of the threads in your garment, and one for those of you who don’t.
! If Love appears in your garment pattern, start noticing how often the
angels invade your body and do something out of the ordinary through
you. (It doesn’t count if you make the decision to do something that
appears loving. It only counts if you do it and then notice later what
happened.)
! If Love doesn’t appear in your garment pattern, find someone in your
family or in your ordinary life who has it in theirs. Observe them as often
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as you can, making note of when and under what circumstances Love
intrudes and changes their normal course of action.
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The Invisible Garment
Understanding the Principle of Movement
29
Mystics and yogis have known for centuries what the academic sciences are
just now discovering: that the world, human and non-human, is inextricably
intertwined. Specifically, quantum physicists understand now what spiritual
practitioners have known for thousands of years – that life systems are
composed of seemingly independent bodies which move in relation to each
other.
The spiritual principle that we call Movement, is that energy force that relates
individuals to each other through their relative positions. In the first chapter of
this booklet on the principle of Placement I mentioned that Movement and
Placement are profoundly connected. Through Movement, systems continually
rearrange themselves, maintaining precise relativity between the bodies within
that system. Placement evokes Movement, and vice versa.
Life moves. Individual life units, whether humans, animals, plants, or even
thought systems, move in relation to each other. My movement affects yours,
and yours affects mine. As the story goes, a butterfly can flap its wings in Asia,
setting off a series of related vibrational reactions, eventually causing a
hurricane in Florida.
From The Invisible Garment:
Movement is the highest of the principles, the most galactic, the
most subtle. With Movement in your garment, we know that you
are here to bring the vibration or frequency of soul into form. You
are a dancer of life, a choreographer of energy, a person who
knows how to animate the densest of ideas/materials/systems.
You work with the avatars – the ascended masters – or at least they
work with and through you – to help you bring your gifts to the
planet. Enlightenment and awakening are entirely within your grasp
It is hard for us to grasp the full implication of the principle of Movement, for it
requires holistic thinking. We are not accustomed to considering ourselves as
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interdependent units. Most of us love our independence too much to surrender
to the concept that without each other, we cease to exist.
Movement contradicts our fierce individualism. It asks us to understand wholly
and holistically, that we affect each other and are affected by each other with
every breath.
Living systems continually move. They continually reinvent themselves. They
continually reorganize themselves. They continually deconstruct and
reconstruct themselves. And we of the human family are indeed one gigantic
living system. Everything that we do, every breath that we take, every thoughtform that we nurture by giving it our mind-energy, affects this living system.
Movement occurs on the unconscious as well as on the conscious levels.
Molecules that you breathe into your body will embed themselves into your
physiology, affecting your health and behavior, without your being conscious of
them. The food you eat and substances you drink do the same. Even the
thoughts that you allow into your mental body will have a physiological effect on
your personal system, which will then reverberate into the collective systems.
We constantly take in molecules of energy and information, which adhere to our
physical structures and affect them for better or worse. We also constantly
excrete molecules of matter, energy and information, contributing to the giant
reservoir of life, and thus affecting the flow of life’s river.
See, I told you it was hard to grasp. It is most difficult to truly understand these
highly cosmic spiritual principles. Let’s take it down to more concrete levels.
With Movement in your invisible garment, if you are an ethical person, you carry
a particular imperative to affect the world in positive, powerful ways. On a very
literal level, by placing Movement in your life contract, you have agreed to study
and practice the choreography of energy.
As a choreographer of energy, you need to be aware that when you enter a
room, your configuration of energy impacts the goings on in that room. You
may not be aware of exactly how it works, and the influence you exert may not
be entirely under your control. But nevertheless – there it is.
In other words, you are the butterfly that can cause the hurricane. Katrina
notwithstanding, hurricanes aren’t totally bad things. They clear the air, so to
speak. They adjust the barometric pressure. They deconstruct so that
reconstruction can begin its work. They give Gaia a way to exhale. Sometimes
that’s the affect you have in the world.
Movement lives in avatar consciousness. The avatars are the ascended masters
– the humans who in the process of their lives (or possibly over many lifetimes)
achieved a spiritual authority. They so fully comprehend interconnectedness
that they no longer need boundaries, bodies, or any appearance of separation.
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They move into and through life as needed. When you have Movement in your
garment, the avatars can energetically enter the world through your auric field.
To look at it slightly differently, you may see yourself as an agent of evolution.
We are members of a vast self-organizing intelligence, and in that organizing
process, we constantly experiment with new ways to interact with each other
and with our environment. If you become conscious of Movement living in you,
the avatars operating through you, and of being instigator of that organizing lifeforce, you can look back on your life and see how it has worked. Not because
of things that you DID, but because Movement did them through you, change
has followed in your wake.
Our present-day societies need Movement and the people who wear it in their
garments in every corner of the world.
" In every profession -- medicine, research, science, business, law, or
politics – change is inevitable. Conscious, awake agents of change can
be incredibly valuable.
" Imagine how the world would be if every child had a mother and a father
who were ethical, awake, aware, conscious
" What would it be like if our military leaders realized that deconstruction
and reconstruction are equally important in our “fight” for survival?
" Religion, perhaps more than any other aspect of our cultures, needs the
reformative power of Movement. What would our world look like if the
leaders of the great religions decided to become agents of peace rather
than instigators of war?
" The arts – painters, writers, actors, dancers, musicians, and dancers –
impact the world profoundly. Think how much more important their
impact would be if they fully understood their own ability to allow
Movement to dance or sing through them.
Truly it is hard to understand Movement’s cosmic influence as it runs through
our lives. It is equally difficult, especially for those of us with great big egos who
think that we create our own lives, to understand that it isn’t “me” doing the
principle, but instead the principle interfacing with the world through me.
Dame Anita Roddick, (founder of The Body Shop) was an outrageous, eccentric,
holistic, business woman of the 20th and 21st centuries. She ran her vast
corporation in full alignment with the principle of Movement. I looked up her
chart once and wasn’t at all surprised to find that her sun principle is Movement.
I feel fairly certain that she never read The Invisible Garment, and wouldn’t have
a clue what I meant if I had called her up and said, “Hi, you have Movement in
your sun!” But in so many ways she was a prime example of a vigilante spiritual
practitioner loose in the mundane world! She allowed Movement to “do” her,
rather than using her willfulness to do it.
She was truly an agent for change in the business world. In the early chapters
of her book, Business as Unusual, she described her dream of what could
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happen if people in business began to open their eyes and realize how
profoundly we are connected to, and therefore accountable to and responsible
for every life form. “My vision, my hope, is simply this: that many business
leaders will come to see a primary role of business as incubators of the human
spirit, rather than factories for the production of more material goods and
services.” (25.)
How did she come to that radical dream? What kind of business person looks
more toward what she seeds in the world that the bottom line? How did being a
prophet become more important to her than realizing a profit?
Movement influenced her. She allowed her primary principle to live itself
through her story. (If you don’t know her story, Google her and read it.)
If you have Movement in your garment, take some time this month to look back
over your life and highlight those times when you have been an agent of change.
At first, look for changes, both good and bad (the marriages AND the divorces.)
Then start to notice how those changes began to be more and more positive,
more and more philanthropic, more and more compassionate, as you matured
and your spiritual practice developed.
If you don’t have Movement in your garment, look back over your life at bigchange moments. Somewhere in those moments, either through another
person, or through another agent, Movement was the operative principle. It’s
fascinating to see when and how the avatars show up and work their magic
through us, isn’t it?
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