The world was a crystal fantasy yesterday morning when I got up and prepared for the 5+ hour journey from Waldport on the Oregon Coast, to DuPont on Puget Sound in Washington State. Grass and roofs, leaves and tips of branches, were all shades of white and grey as the first rays of sun touched the sky. I showered and dressed warmly, then grabbed a bag and, crunching across the frozen grass, gathered what may be the last of my wonderful supply of lettuces and kale from the raised bed in my back yard, then loaded up the car with bags and such – just as the friend I’m traveling with arrived at the front door to pick me up… 
Oops! Must be later than I thought? Ok, switch the bags to his car and off we go.

Frost was everywhere we looked as we drove up the coast, and the forest was magical as sunlight shone through ice-covered branches alongside the road through the mountains to the valley. In Corvallis, the sky was clear and sunny, and all traces of frost had disappeared. Traffic on the freeway was moving well, so we made good time thru Portland and into Washington, and I arrived at my daughter Dawn’s home just as her daughter Kara and son Jonathan were finishing lunch.

Hugs all round and a few minutes at the table while they finished eating, then it was down on the floor with, first the train set, and then the erector set. A knock at the door and Dawn’s father arrived with his current wife and daughter, and much laughter and more hugs ensued… family feels good.

The afternoon stretched into evening with children and adults overlapping conversations and sharing interests, then a delicious light supper, a bit of tv and more conversation, several opportunities to observe how wise and knowledgeable my daughter has become, and one last run through of plans for today’s Thanksgiving meal, before all said “goodnight” and headed their separate ways.

This morning the world was once more a crystal fantasy – an expanse of white lawn with scattered frosted evergreens shone through the window when I crawled out of bed to tend to the turkey. Dawn serves a mid-day feast, so the stuffed bird needed to be in the oven by 8am. All went well, so, with the turkey properly set and Kara busy coloring placemats for the table, I headed to my room for an hour of meditation and peace before joining the others in morning activities.

Which, of course, including preparing the rest of the meal – all the traditional dishes: green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, baked yams, salads, gravy, and for Dawn’s husband, ham. Far more food than we can eat today, but that’s intentional: “planned overs” are a big tradition in our family.

The timing of the early meal was originally so the kids could participate and be on a fairly normal schedule and nap after, but now they aren’t napping, so our Thanksgiving feast was an interesting overlapping dance of kids’ needs and norms with the adult traditions of blessings, toasts, roasts, and numerous side dishes and desserts. And, of course, following tradition, the adults all ate far too much.

So it was absolutely the right thing when a long walk was suggested. Sadly, my not-yet-fully-healed foot wasn’t quite up for that, so I made sure all the food was properly stored and came to my room, instead.

The foot? Well, it’s the “stop work order” that I was given on the full moon night of Samhain (just 4 weeks ago!). I stepped into the darkness and there was nothing under my foot, so I managed to twist both feet in ways bones and tendons don’t like. An almost immediate hot bath and hours of sleep, study, and meditation over the next day or so – with the acceptance that it was time for me to start living and working in a very different way – brought both feet and legs into a nearly fully functioning state by the 2nd morning.

Then, wouldn’t you know, reconnecting with the larger world on that second day, I received an email that “triggered” a bunch of old emotions that I wrestled with for most of the 3rd night – so when I woke up the next morning the right foot was all swollen and uncomfortable… clearly, I had some more releasing and replacing to do!

I canceled all activities for a few more days and did quite a bit of inner work that day, including letting the world know I would not be traveling nearly as much as I had been to meet with folks on their schedules, so I was able to walk, if carefully and with the right shoes,  that next night. I did a few errands then returned to my retreat, glad that I could get around but aware that I had not yet fully dealt with whatever was causing the weakness in my right ankle.

As I went into the Silence I realized how often I had placed divine Light and Bliss outside of me – something to reach for rather than relax into. I used imagery to experience myself relaxing into it and to feel that Power flowing through this body. I used Emma’s High Mysticism to remind me of who we Are and what we can do. I used a rolling chair to keep the weight off my right foot as I did the small things one must do to each day.

So eight days after the fall I was comfortable walking again and worked my usual schedule for 6 days. The last night – precisely 2 weeks, almost to the hour, from the first fall – I had finished my Florence weekend and, getting out of the car, the ankle twisted again – higher than before and much more painfully. Sigh! Must not have been listening to the inner voice!

So back into the Silence and Study… a thought-pattern was not serving me and must go.  And I got a brace so I wouldn’t be able to twist it again. Over the next 2 weeks I worked a little and spent a lot of time in the Silence. I relearned many lessons that I’d let slip out of awareness in my recent 30 months on the road followed by 3 months of moving in to a new office and home. Other lessons were taken deeper. The Silence became filled with awareness of forms of the Loving Presence that Is, everywhere, expressing in, as, and through this being. The Study reminded me of all the ways the universe supports us.

Slowly, the symptoms were reduced, and now, 4 weeks after the fall, my foot barely slows me down, but it has become the indicator of where my focus is – if I’m in the flow, in alignment with Love and Truth, it’s fine. If I’m thinking about limitations, or being at all judgmental (of myself or others) it complains.

And today, I forgot to reset the oven after taking the turkey out, which meant the side dishes took longer and dinner was delayed, and I felt that others were put out as a result (I also ate more than I would normally choose to, surprise!) – both judgmental thoughts – and within an hour, the foot was swollen and sore again…

Hence, no walk with Dawn and the kids on Thanksgiving afternoon. Instead, I put planned-overs away and came upstairs and now I’m sitting with my foot on a pillow writing this… I’ve done a little inner work and it’s already better. Now I’ll go back in and finish the process, then go down and play with the others in my family.

Feeling soooo grateful that I can! That I have the life and work and family I do! That so many good friends are willing to share their journey with me! That this world is, truly, becoming Heaven on Earth!!

May this day of gratitude and sharing be the beginning of a lifetime filled with such days, for all of us!

It's been one of my great joys to create an online class series for Gaia Living Systems Institute that point to what's needed for a sustainable human culture on this planet. They've released a couple of short sections to share - all on youtube... and here's one of them:

Life is truly becoming more heavenly, every day. Yay! And if we are to sustain the experience we need to find easy and enjoyable ways to continue to let go of old beliefs and assumptions – and the consequences we may be experiencing from having lived with them so long.

In Lessons in Truth Emilie Cady says,

“little vexations and fears come up in your life... Calmly and coolly say within yourself, ‘That’s nothing at all. It cannot harm or disturb me or make me unhappy.’"

Later she says,

“No person or thing in the universe, no chain of circumstances can, by any possibility, interpose itself between you and all joy, all good. You may falsely think that something stands between you and your heart's desire, and so go through life here with that desire unfulfilled; but it is not true.”

In How I Used Truth she tells a story about her ankle swelling and stopping her work (we've illustrated it in my Paths of Power biography of her life, The Power of Practice):

“Ordinary affirmations of Truth were entirely ineffectual, and I soon struck out for the very highest statement of Truth that I could formulate. It was this: "There is only God; all else is a lie." I vehemently affirmed it and steadfastly stuck to it. In twenty-four hours all pain and swelling – in fact, the entire "lie" disappeared.”

She gives guidance on how to enter into that “intersphering” state with the Christ – to FEEL the Christ within “that doeth the work”:

If, then, you are manifesting sickness, you are to ignore the seeming--which is the external, or circumference of the pool where the water is stagnant and the scum has arisen--and, speaking from the center of your being, say: "This body is the temple of the living God; the Lord is now in his holy temple; Christ in me is my life, Christ is my health, Christ is my strength, and Christ is perfect; therefore, I am now perfect because He dwelleth in me as perfect life, health, strength." Say the words with all earnestness, trying to realize what you are saying, and almost immediately the perennial Fountain of Life at the center of your being will begin to bubble up and continue with rapidly increasing activity, until new life will radiate through pain, sickness, sores, all diseases, to the surface, and your body will show forth the perfect life of Christ.

 …in thus looking to Him for health, when by an act of your will you stop looking to any material source (and this is not always easy to do), and declare the Christ in you to be the only life of the body, and it always perfect life, it needs but that you hold steadfastly, without wavering, to the thought, in order to become well.

She does the same with supply:

“Christ is my abundant supply (not supplier). He is here within me now, and greatly desires to manifest Himself as my supply. His desires are fulfilled now." Do not let your thoughts run off into how He is going to do it, but just hold steadily to the thought of the supply here and now, taking your eyes off all other sources, and He will surely honor your faith by manifesting Himself as your supply, a hundredfold more abundantly than you have asked or thought.

She quotes an epistle attributed to James, saying there can be no wavering if we are to see results…

Cady was a Christian living in a predominantly Christian culture. Not all of us are, so this language may be hard to accept.

It may help if we understand that she used the term “Christ” to describe, not a man who walked on the planet, but a state of being that is totally and continually at-one-with the divine Source of All That Is. It’s the Spirit of us – not intellect, body, or soul, for those are shaped by material experience – but that aspect of each of us that has never forgotten its Source and Supply. Jesus the Nazarene called it “Abba” or “Abwoon”, usually translated as “Father,” and his declaration of unity is usually translated as “I and the Father are One.”

So we can use the word Spirit instead of Christ. Or, if we want to acknowledge the feminine as well as the masculine attributes of the Source, we can say “Mother-Father within”. In the Hebrew tradition, we might say Adonai or Elohim. If we’re more comfortable with the teachings of the blessed prophet Mohammed, we can use the Arabic name of the One: Allah. Or, if we honor the Bhagavad Gita as a source of spiritual teaching, we can, as Lord Krishna suggests, focus entirely on Him and feel His Presence fill our being.  If Buddhist, we would acknowledge that the Atman of our individuality is part of, and one with Brahman, the ground-of-all-being.

The words do not matter, but the feeling does. We need to know at a feeling level, that there is no separation from our Source and the Good that is constantly surrounding us, being offered to us, expressing as us.

Then we can allow the Power to manifest and, as Cady says

…almost immediately the perennial Fountain of Life at the center of your being will begin to bubble up and continue with rapidly increasing activity, until new life will radiate through pain, sickness, sores, all diseases, to the surface, and your body will show forth the perfect life…

Blessed be!

It’s 5pm and the great masses of cloud to the south are lit by the setting sun – radiant gold slowly shifts to apricot and then sinks into the dark gray of the shadowed billows below. The sky around them, a brilliant blue a few minutes ago, is fading to almost white…

It’s strange to see this autumn sky when so many leaves are still on the trees! The trees think it’s September; the bulbs think it’s February; the geese started flying south in September and were flying by again this week. .. Hmmmm… I’ve suggested in the past that the climate here on the Oregon coast is feeling a lot like the way it was decades ago in the San Francisco area – is this part of that process?

Friends came to visit this afternoon and mentioned that a licensed Unity teacher read a long litany of world problems in the prayer process at church yesterday morning… clearly Emilie Cady’s admonition (in Lessons in Truth and How I Used Truth) not to describe or discuss that which we don’t wish to experience more of didn’t last through that teacher’s training, (sigh!) 

We must find a way to free ourselves of the temptation to accept unheavenly appearances as worthy of our attention!

Is it so deeply ingrained in our culture to focus on what’s not okay?

Hmmmm… the small-self/Adam man/ego operates on distinctions. If normal is everything’s fine then something is distinctly different by being not okay – and ego gets to point it out. If everything’s the same good, always and everywhere, there’s nothing for ego to play with “borrring!”. God/Higher Self doesn’t make distinctions – only ego/small self does. (“The News”, being all about distinctions, is by definition, then, an ego-trip!)

So how does development happen when there’s no distinction? Ah, A Course In Miracles tells us “by extension.”

Divinity experiences more, deeper, fuller, rather than different, better, worse, other-than. All beings within Beingness are extensions/expressions of all the same qualities – in varying patterns of wonderful…

Ah! That’s why I was inspired to look at the sunset sky! Are clouds better, worse, or different when compared to each other? No, they’re just fascinating variations of the same wonderfulness.  They billow up, they stream down; they shred into pieces, they roll on by; they take myriad forms – and none of them is permanent. But the essence we call “cloud”, with all its qualities, is.

Likewise, Being, with all its qualities, is. It make take any number of interesting forms or colors in the moment and move in all kinds of fascinating ways over time, but all of those are temporary expressions of one Being.

Humanity is the same. And mind. And spirit. And the universal Substance/quantum field. They all take myriad forms of expression in the moment and move in all kinds of ways over time, but every apparent distinction is just a temporary expression of one essence.

Hmmm…. This is the truth of the Native Elder applying the term Coyote or Raven or Deer or whatever other archetypal name to the individual expression as it appears in the moment and moves through time.

In our culture we focus on the individual expression in the moment; in theirs, the focus is on the eternal essence. In ours, the manifest form is what is important; in theirs, the ongoing, ever-changing-yet-always-the-same Spirit-as-Life is all that matters.

The European-American, trained to live and see and act from ego/small self, finds the Native concept incomprehensible and that way of seeing life “borrrring!”. The Native Elder, knowing the deep peace and joy that is possible in that way of thinking/acting, can’t conceive how or why anyone would think otherwise. Only the Native youth, ripped away from the elders’ careful demonstration of Truth, is inclined to follow the European egoic pattern – and experience its pain.

So, is it possible to live in this world without focusing on distinctions between individual expressions? Yes – but only by keeping in mind the Truth that what is being perceived is simply the archetypal Being expressing in the moment and moving through time – which is another way of saying that each individual, event, or situation we perceive is the All/Spirit/Being/God in expression.

And this means, of course, that any unheavenly distinction we perceive is our own ego/small self trying not to be bored. 

Blessings of heavenly expression/extending be yours!