Headed Home

Written by Sen. Orin Hatch and Phil Springer

Opening of the Lotus

  A time of awakening, of opening, of seeing
what has not been seen so clearly before.
Light is bringing all things into focus -
those we wish to see and those we would
rather not see.
Believe in the goodness of this time.
What has been concealed shall be revealed.

Emerging Realities

The presence of greater spiritual light on the Earth is increasing the speed at which the emergence of things in need of healing are coming to the suface. This includes the awareness of the need for healing of formerly concealed issues, or the translation of things that were called by other names into a truer perspective.

Even while things that lay dormant are coming into focus, producing emotional intensity and often relationship crises, at the same time, a greater capacity to hold truth and to perceive what needs to be done is also emerging. Light both reveals, and also supports the innate movement of the heart toward 'setting things right'. This movement becomes stronger in the presence of greater light which connects the embodied self with the soul or higher aspects of one's being.

Greater clarity and greater honesty within oneself and with others is opening new possibilities for life on Earth. While in any moment this may feel distressing to the ego and its defenses, it is, at the same time, joy to the soul that is now becoming able to join with physical life on the planet, finding doors that are open that were closed to it before.

May all beings be blessed with an awareness of the love that creates a new Earth.

More About 'Thresholds'

Standing at a threshold where a consciousness shift wants to happen and feels like it 'might' happen often involves a sense of risk. There is sometimes a fear of moving backwards into a previously difficult or entrenched situation. But there is even more of a fear of moving forward into the Unknown.

Movement forward at a 'threshold' is often perceived as a 'leap of faith' since one generally does not know what is on the other side. Such a 'leap of faith' is sometimes made due to a sense of inner necessity, namely, that anything would be better than what has been. But it is also and more commonly based on the willingness to trust the Divine goodness of life which is God to uphold one in an unknown space. Without trust, the passage through the doorway can seem terrifying if not impossible.

There are threshold behaviors that can help in some situations: imagining in a positive way what one hopes to encounter and letting that assume the quality of a 'hypothetical reality' - not quite real, but not quite false either. Considering the people who have walked through the doorway before oneself. Asking for the courage to surrender more deeply to Divine Will. All of these can be helpful but are not always useful when fear runs high.

When a 'threshold' appears in life and can be accepted as a passage, transformation is speeded up and a letting go of past difficulties is often the result. When the threshold is rejected or turned away from, the loss is only of time. For more time will go by and in God's loving manifestation, another 'threshold' will appear at some point in the future.


See Standing at the Threshold

Standing at the Threshold

 

There are times and moments when a door opens in one's consciousness to make something much clearer than it has been before. It may appear that this door opening has to do with an external event, and, indeed, life circumstances can catalyze shifts in awareness. However, more often than not, there is an energy shift taking place internally, allowing awareness to change its perspective to a new place, sometimes for just a moment, sometimes forever.

These shifts in perspective can be short-lived, or they can be life-changing. It depends, in part, on what one does at the threshold, and in part on the energy itself which supports the emerging state of awareness. The energy basis for holding a new perspective is generally not within one's control, but the desire to walk across the threshold often is.

What does walking across the threshold mean?

In part, it means not giving weight to fear as a reason to continue in an attitude, behavior, or perspective that has outlived its usefulness. It may mean risking something new that seemed too difficult or impossible before. It may mean taking a deep breath and saying to whatever part of the self wants to hold onto the past - "I don't need to do that any more." It may mean allowing God's help to be invited into one's consciousness with greater trust.

Standing at a threshold involves an encounter with the Unknown. It involves trust in the possibility that in stepping across the threshold, new possibilities will occur. It also involves the motivation to discontinue old patterns that repeat themselves endlessly, and the permission to let something new take their place.

Standing at a threshold is a blessed place to be and if one is truly aware of the moment, gratitude is a natural response. The presence of a 'threshold' means that God's light as it moves through consciousness has opened up a new world of possibilities. When one embraces this opening, when one can be grateful for its presence instead of frightened, the passage into a new stage, a new chapter, or a new relationship with the Divine can begin.

'Transparency' and Purification

There is a new word used publicly in government and corporate circles alike and that is 'transparency' - the willingness to be seen. This is both a beautiful word suggesting the desire for greater openness and accountability by those in positions of power. Yet it is also a word which can be misused when it is used falsely or indiscriminately.

That there are new 'transparency' advocates is a testimony both to the values of the new administration in Washington, (which we hope will live up to its own ideal), yet it is larger than this. It is a concept which comes about due to a shift in collective consciousness away from greed, manipulation, and self-interest, toward a greater concern for the collective whole. The AIG and Bernard Madoff scandals have contributed to the popular currency of this word, but these scandals are part of the larger picture of purification of a nation's consciousness - a process that is underway.

'Transparency' is not the be all and end all of a new age in America and elsewhere. But it does herald a shift in awareness that may make for more honest relations on all levels of government and between the government and the people. May this word come to be embodied on both a large scale and a small, so that deceptive practices become a thing of the past, and the desire to benefit life become a thing of the present.

The U.S. Health Care Reform Proposal and Its Opponents

In the discussion of any complex matter such as the overhauling of the U.S. national health care system, there are bound to be pros and cons, proponents and opponents of various portions of the umbrella proposal. Here, as elsewhere, the process of debating specifics is an important one and a central aspect of any democracy.

Yet, debate must produce a conversation between one point of view and another, out of which a compromise or harmonization of interests can ultimately take place. Debate, to be effective within a democracy, must result in unification, not division, since the outcome will affect all people. In the present national health care debate, we find that only sometimes are people discussing the actual health-care related issues. Often, what is being discussed is not health care but personal liberty vis a vis the government, and what is being generated as a formidable aspect of this perspective is fear of the loss of one's freedom.

Fear can be generated within any debate. It is the loud voice that declaims against something, and not only against the 'thing', but against the imputed motives of those who are proposing that thing. With respect to the present dialogue, fear of loss of freedom and of a government 'take-over' is being brought before the public in a way that gains national attention and has a powerful presence. It can make one doubt what one is hearing from the President or from legislators. It can destroy trust. It can make each person return to their own self-focused motives to the exclusion of motives that include others. Fear generates division, mistrust, conflict, and a loss of hope.

It is likely that any sweeping campaign or movement toward a change of this magnitude might call forth extensive controversy. Yet whether it calls forth fear is dependent upon the balance between light and darkness within the public conscioiusness and within the conscioiusness of those engaged in the debate. Such a fear response is not inevitable. It is especially not inevitable if one is aware of energies influencing discussions and realizes that the energetic impact of what is going on has, in some cases, become more important than the content.

In the presence of these negative energies, it is incumbent on those who understand the importance of unity, of not serving one's own interests above the interests of all, and of the power of fear - to create a stable anchorpoint of truth within themselves so that wise decisions can be made and credible proposals can not be dismissed.

Governments can disenfranchise people when they are not responsive to the public interest and when they pursue their own agendas without consultation with those they represent. Fear can also disenfranchise people, since it changes the base layer of what one perceives to be real, and robs the well-intentioned individual of the ability to choose between alternatives since the choice is no longer clear.

Let us, as we move through this public debate on health care reform, remain above the manipulation by fear as we strive to remain above it within our individual lives. Let us listen carefully and with hope to the proposals for change that are being put forth, not without discussion or due consideration to opposing points of view, but with a sense that the debate is significant and that the outcome may take this country one step further toward a newly-defined, positive vision of itself.

Relationships and Learning

Relationships often become bogged down in repetitive patterns fueled by tendencies of the past, both from the present lifetime and from past lifetimes. These relationships, however difficult they may seem, are always trying to create new learning and new healing for each individual soul. What one is meant to learn cannot be discerned from the outer form of the situation or difficulty, but only from the inner promptings of truth that dwell within each heart. While one person may need to learn to wait and to remain patient and trusting, another may need to learn to create boundaries and a new standard of respect. Each soul must go into the silence within and ask the question: What is God asking me to learn here? Sometimes the truth is apparent. Sometimes it must be pursued again and again.

Relationships are the medium through which much healing, much difficulty, and much beauty and love can take place. When they are held in God, they become like flowers opening to the sun, perpetually nourished by warmth and by food for the soul.

A Case in Point - The Gates Controversy and the 'Beer Summit'

We are now well past the flurry of excitment produced in the news media by the confrontation between Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a Harvard professor, (see references below) and the Cambridge, Massachusetts police, and the story is, for many, now fodder for late night talk show hosts. As with many news stories of this kind, it touched upon an important issue which normally lies dormant concerning existing race relations and respect for one another. This issue, in the present round, had its day in the sun, and we are left with the question of what, if anything, about race relations and about respect for one another have we learned?

While the momentary flurry of news coverage has abated, the image of the President hosting a 'beer summit' to discuss differences has not. At least not for some people. While such a 'summit' may be considered a politically-motivated move on the part of the Obama administration, or may be ridiculed as an ineffective way to deal with the much larger issue at hand, the 'summit' had this to say for it: it left us as a nation with an image of a President and a national role model espousing the viewpoint of talking things out to resolve differences, with the premise that greater understanding and greater harmony would result, even if points of view did not change.

Images can be used for all kinds of purposes. As mentioned, they can be used to poke fun at, to rally a crowd, to support an administration's policies, to deflect from another or greater issue that one wishes the public not to engage with. There are many good and not-so-good uses of images. Here is one, however, that in a very modest way can be pointed to for adults and children everywhere to take note of. Namely, that our President sat down with people at a time when feelings were inflamed to talk things out. We can only hope that such engagement and the premise of hope that it implies will expand from this personal and anecdotal level to an international level where America might take the lead in opening the doors to a similar kind of respect and understanding.

REFERENCES:

ABC News - Prominent Black Scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Arrested After Racism Charge
Bloomberg News - Gates Police Confrontation Ends With Charge Dropped
MSNBC - Cops, Scholar to Meet Again After Obama Chat

Gratitude as a Spiritual Practice

Like meditation or prayer, gratitude may, in some cases, be considered a spiritual practice that one needs to touch base with regularly in order to stay connected at the center.

The practice of gratitude, as all else, cannot be an empty practice, but must be one that connects with feeling. However, as with meditation, it can be a process and experience that one gets better at with attention and in-tention, so that even if one starts out in the beginning with not very much gratitude at all, the prayerful desire to open the heart can begin to have its effect.

As with all other things, one must look clearly and closey at whatever obstacles may be in the way of feeling grateful. Ordinarily, things like judgment, anger, depression, and weariness or fatigue can prevent one from feeling grateful. In more unusual circumstances, encounters with intensely dark energies can cover gratitude so that it feels totally unreachable. The inner emotional attitudes can be dispelled through the ongoing practice of purification and alignment with God. The covering by other energies often requires a period of waiting and patience before the light of one's own soul can be experienced.

For one starting out in this direction, it may seem more convenient to summarize one's grateful thoughts at the end of each day before going to bed. However, this tends to formalize things and, for some, may not touch the individual moments of each day. Another way of looking at the practice of gratitude is simply seeing everything and especially every one during a day as 'gift'. This would include the not-so-pleasant interactions as well as the pleasant ones.

Seeing life as a gift and God as the Source of that gift in all its forms is the essence of gratitude - a state of being that can become as natural as breathing.