Illuminating Manuscripts

October 31, 2016November 1, 2016 / levelprayingfield

This weekend, my husband and I went to the Sackler Gallery and visited an exhibition: The Art of the Qu’ran: Treasures from the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts.

Over the years, I have loved studying illuminated manuscripts—ornately rendered Bibles or musical scores from the Medieval and Renaissance eras.

To view this kind of artwork applied to the Qu’ran fascinated me. I’ve read the Qu’ran many times. I have hated seeing how Muslims are being increasingly profiled today in America and around the world. So when I read about this show in the Post, I was intellectually, creatively, and compassionately curious.

Visitors entering into the exhibit see this:

It is the opening of the Qu’ran (Sura al-Fatiha):

In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate! Praise belongs to God, Lord of the Worlds. The Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate Master of the Day of Judgment. It is You we worship; it is You we ask for help. Guide us to the straight path, the path of those You have blessed, those who incur no anger and who have not gone astray.

I was struck by two things:

First, it reminded me that Arabic is written right to left, unlike most Western languages which are written left to right. What a profound difference in human perspective that makes! Remember that we as humans are dramatically affected by the imprinting of our personality in our youth. What can be more fundamental than the imprint of how we orient language, the most basic mechanism that humans use to communicate with one another.

I remember studying in biology that the brain’s hemispheres (right and left) are highly specialized, and that the muscles in each half of the body are controlled by the brain hemisphere on the opposite side. Specifically, the brain’s right hemisphere controls the muscles on the left side of the body, and the brain’s left hemisphere controls the muscle’s on the body’s right side. Left brain functions are things like processing hearing and speech, carrying out logic and math, and recalling facts from memory. In contrast, the right brain governs facial recognition, visual imagery, spatial abilities, processing music, comparisons and context.

So what must it do to our very world view – and how we process the world – to read from birth from right to left instead of left to right? What muscles—and thus nerves—must get activated in our bodies differently from having the governing visual default rest on the right instead of on the left? What gifts and specialties would that predispose us to as human beings?

To show how profoundly different a perspective this would yield, westerners, please read this—from right to left. It is a paragraph you have already read above:

rebmemer I
s’niarb eht taht ygoloib ni gniyduts
thgir) serephsimeh
dna ,dezilaiceps ylhgih era (tfel dna
selcsum eht taht
dellortnoc era ydob eht fo flah hcae ni
eht yb
.edis etisoppo eht no erehpsimeh niarb
eht ,yllacificepS.
eht slortnoc erephsimeh thgir s’niarb
eht no selcsum
tfel s’niarb eht dna ,ydob eht fo edis tfel
erephsimeh
thgir s’ydob eht no selcsum eht slortnoc
niarb tfeL. edis
gnissecorp ekil sgniht era snoitcnuf
gniyrrac ,hceeps dna gniraeh
dna, htam dna cigol tuo
morf stcaf gnillacer
niarb thgir eht ,tsartnoc nI .yromem
laicaf snrevog
laitaps ,yregami lausiv ,noitingocer
gnissecorp ,seitiliba
.txetnoc dna snosirapmoc ,cisum

Notice if you feel any differently after reading that.

I suspect we are only scratching the surface of understanding the relative strengths created from such radically different orientations in the world. I can only imagine. I hope today’s neurobiologists are exploring this. I think it would help the people of the world to understand each other better.

At the exhibit, the second thing that struck me was this sentence: “Guide us to the straight path, the path of those You have blessed, those who incur no anger and who have not gone astray.”

…Who incur no anger. The Qu’ran specifically singles out—right in its opening text—the characteristic of incurring anger in others as a distinguishing factor among those who have fallen off the “straight path” of obedience to God. In other words, if you piss others off, you must have fallen off God’s right path, buddy. You’re not living in peace and creating peace.

Pretty clear, isn’t it?

So to anyone who thinks that the terrorists fighting in the name of Allah around the world today are accurately representing Islam, think again. It’s simply not true. For proof, look no further than the first sixty words of the Qu’ran. People who wage war in the name of Islam are off on their own extremist jaunts—which is what human beings do if they perceive oneness and act in what they perceive to be the name of God before they become purified. Read in my website where I discuss the challenge this presents and the resulting problems if the challenge isn’t met correctly.

Spiritual leaders have been awakening to oneness for centuries, very often not understanding the importance of becoming purified before they act. Which is why wars have been waged in the name of religion (and, ahem, in the name of all religions) for centuries.

Not incidentally, guess what one of the core teachings of the Qu’ran is? Purification. So the world has much to learn from this illuminating manuscript.

“Hey, are you okay?”

September 3, 2014September 4, 2014 / levelprayingfield

I have been called many miles away from my home for the health emergency of a very close loved one. This loved one is very private, so I won’t say any more about his particular circumstances except to call him Fred and say that it’s serious, and Fred is very central to my life. So on Friday when Fred’s health suddenly went “tilt,” I felt like not just Fred’s but my whole world did, too.

I have been praying a lot. Reflecting a lot. Sighing a lot, then remembering to stop every once in a while to let the sighs dissolve gently into tears.

I have been thinking about how I know Fred, about all the history we’ve shared.

I am struck by how this situation might have been prevented many years ago had the people close to Fred at the time said something. “Hey, Fred, are you okay?”

I am struck by how the people Fred and I have known together over the years also might have had different, more happy and productive lots in life if, when we were younger, we had spoken up. “Hey, are you okay?”

So many ambient possibilities for healing, dampened due to words unsaid. And the words were unsaid because we were afraid of interfering, afraid of embarrassing ourselves or someone else, afraid that our concerns wouldn’t be well received. In hindsight, those all seem like pretty flimsy reasons not to speak.

I wish I had known then to separate out the saying from the outcome. I can’t control what other people do with what I say – that’s their choice, their freedom. But I can control that I say it. I can control how I say it. I can bravely, gently offer my heart, mind and observations. (My motto is: say it once and let it go.) I don’t need certainty that I’m correct – in fact, I’ve found that things usually go better when I am not at all certain I’m correct! All I need is the certainty that I care.

What are you holding back from saying? What do you see and believe might really help someone, yet for some reason you are holding back from stating it outright?

If this experience with Fred has taught me anything, it’s that time and love and words are precious.

“Hey, are you okay?” It might just as well mean, “I love you enough to speak up.”

The Audacity of Growth

July 18, 2014July 19, 2014 / levelprayingfield

In my last blog I wrote on the topic of sin. I said, “But I also came to see that there’s a place and a time to worry about sin. The time when sin becomes meaningful is after you’ve declared the “I Am” at Stage 3.”

I thought I’d spend a little more time explaining what I mean by that.

Yesterday I read a statistic in one of my favorite publications, The Week magazine. The Week was quoting from The Wall Street Journal when it recently reported :

More than two thirds of American 17- to 24-year-olds would fail to qualify for military service because they are too unhealthy, lack a high school diploma, have a felony conviction, or are taking prescription drugs for conditions like attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Are you shocked? I was shocked. Two thirds. Doesn’t sound like we could put together much of a defense if we were ever tested militarily, huh?

This statistic suggests that the next generation in America is mostly flabby — of body, mind, spirit and emotion. This is offspring from what has historically been one of the most powerful countries – if not the most powerful country – in the world.

But let’s break this down within what we know about the stages of spiritual evolution, looking at how the stages play out within a developing nation.

Remember we looked at America’s evolution when we were discussing Collective Experience (see chart).

This statistic about today’s American young adults fits poignantly but logically right in with the trajectory of development after such a meteoric national rise to the top. Think about it.

It takes a certain arrogance and maniacal focus to rise up. It took guts for the colonial fathers of our country to thumb their noses at the British. It took balls to fight and win the Revolutionary war, to dare landing on the beaches of Normandy. It took ingenuity, brilliance and perhaps even some vengeful blood lust to build the atomic bomb that put an end to World War II. Sheer audacity fueled and won the race with the Russians to the moon. All these events were key in the unfolding, expanding consciousness that is the United States of America. To be American is to have a very specific human experience.

The consciousness of America is a consciousness that states, “Anything is possible.” America is built on the notion that if can you dream it, you can do it, for opportunity abounds. In our nation’s history, we have dreamed and then accomplished extraordinary things again and again and again.

But inevitably, that arrogance has a price… as the pursuit of any specific vision has a price.

Lao Tzu said: “When people see things as beautiful, ugliness is created. When people see things as good, evil is created.”

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It is a law of nature, governing how the world stays in balance when there is any departure in any direction from the core statis of Being.

So… every assertion will have its inevitable recompense.

The reckoning of that recompense is the recognition of one’s sin. Sin is the error that you made to be so daringly arrogant in the first place.

After Stage 3 (that is, during Stages 4 & 5) is always the time when that arrogance of self-appointed initiation becomes evident. In Stage 4 (“Repercussions”), you start seeing the consequences. By Stage 5, the consequences have set in to the point that you start to becoming pummeled by them, setting the stage for Purification.

In that context, the current generation of young Americans makes sense. They are flabby not because they’re any less substantial or worthy as human beings than their forbears. Rather they were simply and somewhat inevitably raised with the assumption of the American Dream. They grew up feeling yawningly entitled to it. Why shouldn’t they? That’s the world they grew up in – the ripe Stage 1 into which they entered. How very unlike the Stage 1 of their forbears who lacked privilege, grew up ravenous for opportunity and driven to make the most of it.

Easy, big consumption grew greedy. Diets grew careless. Monetary greed cut education budgets. Concern for the benefit of all took a back seat to self-interest, which left the poor sometimes to discover ruefully that morals are a luxury of the haves. Regarding medication, Ed Hallowell says it best: we live amidst “culturally generated ADD.” We never stop! Of course we don’t, we’re Americans.

Here’s my point: this is all normal. It’s all just part of the process.

Yes, as Americans we may come upon heavy regrets if our 67% Gen-F (for flab) is ever put to the test and comes up lacking. That would set the stage for a Purification for us, for sure. Should we not have pursued, then, the audacity of the American Dream? Of course we should have! Would you ever tell a two-year-old not to try to walk, or a sunflower not to try to sprout, or kids not to imagine what they want to be when they grow up?

This is simply what we do, here. We go through these stages, and it’s how we grow. There is tremendous audacity in it, as there is recompense and purification. It’s why on a certain level we’re all sinners (as it says in the Bible), and we’re also all forgiven – because as we grow in consciousness we come out of the thrall of our hubris. We let go to God’s will.

This is the way of life on Earth, a transient experiment in the conscious discovery and expression of God. In the end, we come to realize it’s ALL God, and we all come home.

The Antedote to Hopelessness

July 8, 2014August 23, 2014 / levelprayingfield

I heard on NBC News last night that 60 people were shot, 9 dead, over the July 4 weekend in Chicago due to gang violence.

What??

A woman on the NBC video segment had it right, I thought. Speaking as someone from one of the affected neighborhoods, she traced the violence to hopelessness. I wish I could find the video online. I wish I could show you that woman’s sad, astute face.

This news comes to me the day after I have finally finished writing this website (took me a year); the day after I am busy finishing up the last pages, writing about the importance of holding tension during the spiritual process of being human.

The youths in Chicago clearly didn’t hold tension. They clearly let all the intolerable fear, frustration and adrenaline pent up inside rip out their veins into their wrists steeled against quaking rage, aimed down their fingers, blasting into a terrible world that they could validate as being all the more terrible by unleashing corporal damage on another human being. At least in so doing they could prove themselves to be right in their horrible convictions.

Certainty borne out. But at such a price.

Einstein said, “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

Yesterday upon finishing the website, I looked back over the computer logs and was startled to see that I had started the website exactly a year before. Started on July 6, 2013. Finished on July 6, 2014.

This morning upon finishing the website, I walked out into the garden to see that my Gen 2 sunflowers – offspring of the original sunflower that guided me to start this website to begin with – were, that day, beginning to bloom. Kinda wild, huh?

Lao Tzu talked about Wu Wei: the effortlessness and harmony that come from living in a completely natural, uncontrived way. Without control, force or the attempt to influence.

The news last night was not just about Chicago. The news last night was about our lives – all of our lives – and all of our struggles, in a world that seems to be going increasingly mad.

What will be your center point? The place where you can rest in Wu Wei? What will be the source of your hope, your miracles, your ability to hold your own tension?

I promise you, my friend: it is in you. It is all around you. It is the stuff of Being itself. It is who you are.

Sunflower Gen-2

April 13, 2014August 23, 2014 / levelprayingfield

Last June, I noticed something that looked like a weed pushing up from the soil in a flower pot in my garden. It was in the same pot in which the purple Clematis grow – which take over everything – so I was surprised to see another plant trying to muscle in on Clematis ground.

I reached to pull it, when that still, small voice inside said, “Stop.” I stopped.

The plant continued to grow. A few days later, I called my husband out into the garden to examine it with me. “We’ve got an alien intruder in the Clematis,” I said. “What do you make of that?”

He said, “It looks like a sunflower.”

I gasped. I had never grown sunflowers. But I love sunflowers. I love the way they stand strong, shine brightly and turn always toward the sun, ever optimistic and willing.

What’s more, sunflowers had taken on a kind of holy significance for me, ever since – in 2002 – I had come up with the sunflower analogy to explain the stages of the evolution of consciousness, and how those stages explain the underlying unity of the world religions.

So to have a sunflower suddenly crop up in a tiny blue pot in my back yard – when I didn’t plant it, when I’d been working my garden for about 7 years and had never brought a sunflower seed into my garden. I mean… a sunflower??

I continued to watch the spindly stalk grow, now mystified and increasingly awestruck. If it really was a sunflower, out of the blue, surely it was God speaking to me. Speaking to me through a bird that must have pooped into my flower pot, but nonetheless speaking to me.

Time and some searching on Google Images verified my husband’s hunch: it was indeed a sunflower. Then it became my task to determine in prayer what God was trying to tell me through that sunflower.

By the time the sunflower came to full glory, I felt I understood God’s message.

After my long decade of purification and letting go of agendas, God was saying, “It’s time.” Time to finally share what God had shown me. Time to bloom.

That’s when I started building this website.

Nine months later, this website is still under construction. I chip away at it a little bit each weekend, the only time I have in very, very busy work weeks. But it’s coming along, with just a few more pages to go, now.

Last September, after the sunflower had gone to seed, I collected its seeds carefully. I stored them in a jar. With the threat of frost now gone, yesterday I planted several of them, the next generation from my beloved, sunny messenger.

If the first sunflower brought a website, what this year’s crop of sunflowers will bring?

God at the Grammys

January 27, 2014January 27, 2014 / levelprayingfield

Kasey Musgraves performs “Follow Your Arrow” at the 2014 Grammy Awards Ceremony

Once you see the cycle of spiritual growth and how it recurs through life, you start seeing the pattern everywhere. Which starts becoming comforting. Life stops seeming so random, its edges seem less cruel. Instead, there is a divine, perfect purpose being pursued, over and over again.

Take last night. My husband and I watched the Grammy Awards. Kasey Musgraves performed her hit country song, Follow Your Arrow. (I loved her outfit!!)

Aha! The song couldn’t be a truer expression of the challenges facing the individual in Stage 2 (“Stirrings”), approaching Stage 3 (“Declaration”). Read Kasey Musgraves’ lyrics. This is a song to any individual beginning to feel his or her true, authentic self peek out from beneath the expectations and “shoulds” of Stage 1’s GroupThink.

It doesn’t matter what you’re into, the song says. Just be true to yourself. Be who You Are. Follow your arrow.

No wonder it’s a controversial song. It’s got to be. There would be no struggle to declare “I Am” if there were no resistance. That’s how we become spiritually strong, by learning to meet that resistance; by learning to believe in ourselves first. It’s all part of the plan. (Until the plan changes in Stages 4, 5 and 6!)

It’s a great song. And Kasey delivered it with just the right combination of earnest heart and hilarity. But I suspect last night’s prestigious award came partly from the fact that the song expresses such core, human truth. Congratulations, Kasey Musgrave. And great dress.

The Steady, Underlying Beat

January 25, 2014January 25, 2014 / levelprayingfield

Today I was having coffee with my husband and the dog – a weekend ritual – when my husband said, “Hey, look at this!” He handed over his iPhone and showed me the image of a beating heart:

Source: Industry Tap

I looked over at it with curiosity. Then, with an inner double-take, I felt my eyes pop as my curiosity quickly gave way to amazement. Then my amazement gave way to gratitude and awe.

The deepening of my emotions accompanied the deepening of what I perceived in the picture. As I first encountered the image, I wondered, “What is this?” Instantly, vaguely, I recognized the shape of a heart.

Soon I was looking deeper. I saw electrical impulses charging the heart, muscles contracting, chambers filling, blood rushing, all flawlessly timed. All so generous. So perfect! And all occurring within me right now without my even having to think about it.

I looked up at my husband so comforted. I had been feeling a little blue today. Overwhelmed by having had a bad cold this week, by being concerned about the care and well-being of my 89-year-old mother, very far away; trying to keep up at work, and through it all being sad about having horribly neglected this website. I was feeling–well, frankly–a little sorry for myself that I just didn’t know how to keep up and stay true to the one thing in life – my lifelong love of God – that means the most to me. That relentless juggling act: how to keep your awareness trained dearly on the world of spirit and still keep both feet planted solidly on the ground?

But in one random, inquisitive gesture, my husband was reminding me, that underneath it all, my heartbeat was steady, generous, perfect, constant. I didn’t even have to think about it.

I know this is true, too, of the Divine. It is steady, generous, perfect, constant. It beats beneath and around and through everything we are, everything we do. It never fails us, even when we’re tired, sick, blue. We don’t even have to think about it, either–it will never fail us even though we can enter into long lapses of forgetfulness. But when we do remember… oh, what blessed comfort that is.