Blessing

In recent days it has become even more clear to me the importance of understanding our power to bless. Blessing is a conscious participation in the nourishing and empowering activity of the Sacred, and it is one of our human blessings that we are capable of such participation.

Awhile ago I wrote a short introduction to the art of blessing and included in it an example of a four-fold blessing that I use daily in my own spiritual practice. I would like to offer that material here:

Blessing is the art of being spiritually present to another in a manner that draws out and supports the spiritual resources and energies within that person. The same is true if blessing is directed towards a situation, that it draws out the spiritual potentials that are present to achieve the highest good for everyone in that situation.

Blessing makes use of our expanded nature so that we may be present even to people or situations that are distant in the physical world. The only barriers to blessing exist in our hearts and minds, not in the world.

Anyone can give a blessing anytime and anywhere. You do not have to have special knowledge or be a special person or have special training. The capacity to bless is innate in each of us. All it requires is a loving heart, the intent to serve and help another, and the willingness to link yourself and the recipient into a larger wholeness of life, spirit and consciousness.

There are as many ways to bless as there are individuals to do so. A blessing is a gift we give to another or to a situation from our own unique spirit and our own attunement to sacredness. How we do this depends as much on who we are and the blessing that is needed as it does upon any particular technique.

A blessing not only helps the recipient but also leaves him or her—or the situation—more capable of achieving wholeness. A blessing strengthens the inherent sacredness within another or a situation. It does not impose in a way that would weaken or confuse another or a situation.

With that in mind, we honor and practice three kinds of blessing:

THE BLESSING OF ACTION

There are times when it is obvious what is needed: food, shelter, time, energy, money, an act of kindness and compassion, an act of love. There are times when we simply need to act to help another, times when prayer or good wishes, positive thoughts or loving feelings, while always welcome and always nourishing, are not enough. Then blessing must come through our actions wisely considered and skillfully executed.

THE BLESSING OF ENERGY

When we share our energy with another, it may give him or her just the boost that’s needed to make a difference: to make the alignment with his or her own inner Light, to find the right thought or the inspiration that is needed, to overcome fatigue and low energy to find his or her own healing power. To give energy, though, requires that our energy is clear and clean and flows freely from the highest sources within us and around us; that it not impose upon the other or bind him or her to ourselves; that it not overwhelm the other with more than he or she can handle. A blessing must liberate, strengthen and leave the recipient better off than before. An extra boost of energy shared with wisdom and care can do just that in the right circumstances.

The sharing of our spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical energy may also clarify and stimulate a situation to move beyond obstruction and confusion, but again we must take care and wisdom not to give more that the situation can integrate or use. A blessing is not the same as taking over energetically; it is adding just enough to move the situation to a better place. Too much or the wrong application of energy in the wrong way can make a situation worse.

Sometimes the greatest blessing of energy is no energy at all, letting things settle to find their own way. This is the Blessing of Space..

THE BLESSING OF SPACE

When we bless, we mobilize spiritual resources to create a “blessing space” like an aura of energy around another or around a situation. This space holds the other person or situation in calm and clear attunement to their own highest spirit—or to the highest spirit that seeks unfoldment in the situation—heightening the possibility that that spirit will flow and act to create the blessings which are needed or wanted.
In this form of blessing, unless asked or intuitively guided otherwise, we use our energies to create and hold the blessing space and to assist the other or the situation to find and hold alignment with their own spiritual resources. We do not use our energies to manipulate the situation or to “energize” another. We do not impose our own energies upon another or a situation.

A spiritual resource in this context may mean the sacredness within a person; the presence of the Soul; spiritual allies; the flow of loving, compassionate, life-giving energies; creative inspiration; or whatever enables the person or the situation to move forward in a positive and beneficial way. A blessing enables a person wherever and whenever possible to access such resources for himself or herself, becoming empowered in the process and developing the skills to use such resources more easily and readily in the future.

Blessing empowers growth in spiritual ability for all concerned, including the one giving the blessing.

A blessing can be as simple as extending a flow of loving energy from your heart to that of another; it can be as direct as an act of kindness and compassion done on behalf of another. There need be nothing complex about it.

However, when I think of blessing--and when I create one as part of a practice, I think of it as having a simple structure based on a four-fold relationship:

• The relationship to myself and my own innate spirituality;
• The relationship to the Sacred as the ground of all being, the fundamental connection between me and others, and the source of the impulse for the highest good to emerge in all situations;
• The relationship to the world as the community of which we are all a part, the source of integration, connection, and nourishment;
• The relationship to the other, the recipient of the blessing, and the wholeness of that other’s life.

When we offer a blessing, we can, of course, simply ask that another spiritual source, such as God, bless the person or situation. Our role is then that of a mediator and petitioner. However, in Incarnational Spirituality, we recognize and affirm that each of us is also a generative source of spiritual energy and presence. We need not simply be a bystander or petitioner, but one who actively participates in the act of blessing, drawing on our own spiritual resources. The blessing then becomes a gift from our soul to another, strengthened by our human connection and empathy with the recipient. This has the advantage of flexing and developing our spiritual muscles and adding to our own inner growth.

We are not the sole source of the blessing, however. By attuning to the presence of God or the Generative Mystery within us and around us, in whatever way we are comfortable in doing so, we draw ourselves into the presence of sacredness which is the deepest and most natural power of connectedness between us and another, as well as being the universal source of goodness and the drive to unfold the highest within us. This power and presence then becomes an integral part of the blessing which empowers both the recipient and ourselves.

As incarnate individuals, we are part of the world; in Incarnational Spirituality, we are participants in the life and unfoldment of the World Soul, participants in a planetary consciousness. The world—which in Incarnational Spirituality includes both the physical and non-physical, seen and unseen, dimensions of matter and spirit—is our home, our shared community, the “Commons” that embraces each and all of us and gives us life and form. We find wholeness through our integration with our bodies, nature, life, matter, and the World Soul. A blessing flows not just to the individual by himself or herself, but to an individual embedded in the Commons of the earth, part of an ecology of life and consciousness. Acknowledging this larger wholeness in our blessing helps to integrate its energy and results into the recipient’s life and connections with the world around him or her.

Finally, the recipient of the blessing, in addition to being part of the Commons of the World, is an ecology in his or her own right, a complex interweaving of time and space, biography and potentials, energy and body, mind and emotions, consciousness and soul, spirit and sacredness. Our blessing needs to integrate and become part of the coherency of this personal ecology. We are blessing a whole person who has many aspects that are not visible or obvious to us, who is partly known and partly mystery. We bless on the basis on what we do know and can see, but our attunement and the intent of our blessing also needs to acknowledge the mystery and wonder, the depths and potentials we do not see and do not know.

In our own minds and hearts, we want to acknowledge and honor these four elements. This can be done swiftly, lovingly, organically. We might, for instance, simply picture a crossroads in which these four come together and we stand in the center point to call forth the blessing. We may inwardly (or vocally) call upon each of these four in crafting our blessing. Or, we can find our own unique way of honoring these four relationships which hold the power of blessing within us and for another.

An example of this structure is what I call the four-fold blessing. This is a standard blessing we use in Incarnational Spirituality, usually at the beginning of an activity, but it can be used anytime, anywhere.

• Bless this place in which I am, with honor and gratitude for its presence and its gifts of space.
• Bless my self, with honor and gratitude for the uniqueness of spirit, life, insight, and creativity which I bring to the world.
• Bless others around me, seen and unseen, with honor and gratitude for the gifts we bring to each other, for the creativity and energy that can emerge from our collaboration.
• Bless the activity I undertake, that it may prosper and be a blessing to all my world.

Thresholds

My blogging these days is pretty much confined to a monthly essay called "David's Desk" that the Lorian Association sends out by email. This essay currently is my opportunity to share thoughts and tools for the spiritual journey; they are my personal insights and opinions and do not necessarily reflect the sentiments or thoughts of any other person in Lorian or of Lorian as a whole. If you would like to receive them, you can come on to the mailing list by writing to info@lorian.org. Previous issues of "David's Desk" are posted on our website at www.lorian.org. Here is the latest David's Desk:


THRESHOLDS

I want to tell you about three phone calls I’ve had recently. The first was from a man I know slightly and whom I had not heard from for several years. It was a distressing call as he was facing total ruin in his life as a result of the current economic meltdown. He had just lost his job, was deeply in debt, and was facing losing his home. He was staring into a very scary, unknown future rising like a wall before him towards which he was hurtling, and he was filled with panic. He needed to talk to someone and reached out to me.
The second call was from a man I knew a little better but also whom I had not seen in several years. The last we had talked he had become ill but then I heard no more other than that he had moved with his family from the area. Now he was back, and he told me a harrowing story of his descent through a most dark time of extreme pain, illness, financial loss, and family crisis. His whole life had been turned upside down and inside out and in the process he had discovered resources of inner strength and calm. He had found an inner light and creativity he had not known he had possessed. He wasn’t quite recovered but he could see his way back. Having lost almost everything, he was now discovering and building a whole new life that was more attuned and wonderful than what he had had before.
The third call was from a close friend who had also been going through a very difficult time. I had not heard from him for close to a year and didn’t know the extent of his troubles. But he called not with a tale of woe but with a report that having been on the verge of bankruptcy, his business had suddenly taken off. In the midst of the growing recession, he was unexpectedly and suddenly prospering because his particular skills and services were valuable to businesses that were facing economic problems. And everything else in his life was alchemically coming together as well in a new alloy of joy and wholeness.
These three calls were from people facing, moving through, or emerging from a threshold of transformation. In this they seemed to me to represent the nature of the times in which we live. These are threshold times for all of us as humanity faces profound forces of change at work in the world today.
Interestingly, the threshold in all three calls was essentially the same. It was a threshold of dissolution and loss: loss of power, loss of livelihood, loss of home, loss of habitual ways of doing things, and in a deep way, loss of a familiar identity. The instinct when confronted with such losses is to hold on, to wrap around and cling to all that’s familiar as one is hurtled forward. The river of one’s life becomes frighteningly turbulent as it crashes against unexpected boulders and twists around unforeseen bends, and we grip all the more tenaciously and rigidly to the form of the boat we’ve been riding. But like a birth canal, often the channel of transformation towards which we are racing is navigated most skillfully if we can relax and let go and let the momentum carry us through. Floundering and striking out or fighting back with denial and anger only increases the likelihood of bashing against the boulders.
Not all thresholds are transformative in this way or have to be navigated through loss and pain, but I think given the tenor of the times, we will be seeing more and more of these kinds of experiences. Humanity has accumulated a lot of baggage that it will have to give up to win through to a more humane and blessing-full future, not least of which is its sense of identity as something special for whom the planet is a plaything and piggy bank to do with as it wishes. The current economic downturn is only a shadow of what may happen as we run up against climate change and finite limits to natural resources. This morning the news was full of speculation on the possible crippling impact on the already battered world economy if a full pandemic of the swine flu virus erupts, never mind the potential loss of millions of lives.
I am by instinct an optimist, and my inner experiences are unfailing in giving me faith in humanity’s innate goodness and spiritual capacities. At the same time, incarnation is the soul’s version of an extreme sporting event, one filled with thrills and chills as we measure ourselves against the challenges of evolution and the rush of unfolding new potentials. My oldest son likes to hurl himself off the sides of mountains wearing only a thin set of paragliding wings, and I have friends that like to put themselves in small boats hurtling down river rapids. They deliberately bring themselves to thresholds of challenge because of the expanded sense of self that emerges on the other side. Souls do the same thing with life itself, I’m convinced!
So in addition to my optimism about the future, I think we are at one of those places in planetary and human life where the ride is about to get very fast and very interesting indeed.
If this is so, what can we do?
The first step is not to fear the thresholds. This is easier said than done of course, especially when the threshold threatens to take everything from us that we think of as ourselves, maybe even our physical life, and also when it comes upon us unexpectedly, as such thresholds can do. But fear is additional baggage we don’t need to carry while navigating the rapids of change. The anchor of denial and resistance only makes us less maneuverable, not more.
In talking to the gentleman of the first call, there was little I could do for him in a practical way; he lives thousands of miles away. My first task was to listen as he poured out his fear, anger and despair. And just telling him not to be afraid, I knew, wouldn’t be very helpful as from his perspective he had every reason to be afraid. His fear was a center around which he was coalescing himself; that is, in a paradoxical way, it gave him a sense of stability, albeit a painful one.
A trained counselor might have been able to help him a good deal more than I could, for my perceptions are not psychological but energetic. So I couldn’t give him mental or emotional techniques to help him deal with his fear. But I could ask him to take some time to honor himself and his fear and to deliberately grieve over what he was losing. Part of his familiar life was dying, and to deny it was to lose touch with the transformative energies at work in his life. Taking time to deliberately stop and listen to his fears would, I knew, give the turbulence of his energy field a chance to steady itself and be held by his own attentiveness. Just flailing about mentally and emotionally with a fearful energy doesn’t go anywhere, but focusing on the fear and making it speak coherently and calmly to oneself helps to shift one’s inner experience from feeling helpless to feeling a sense of power, at least the power to listen, which is a start.
As he began to listen and to calm, he began to list positive things he could do, and each time he came up with a fearful objection to doing those things, I asked him to go back and honor the energy of the suggestion he had made. It might not work out but taking a positive step in a helpful direction was better energetically than doing nothing.
What I felt was my most important suggestion was that while looking for new employment he also seek out some form of volunteer work he could do to help others in a similar position as himself. If we can find an inner generosity to help others, it keeps our own creative energy from collapsing and constricting around the hard knot of our personal fears. Such constriction only makes our own process of manifestation much more difficult energetically.
Had his phone call been the last one, I could have told him the stories of the others. Part of his challenge was that he was at the start of the process, just facing the threshold and unsure of himself and his future. But the other two men had gone through experiences at least as bad and in one case much worse than what he was facing, and they had come out the other side feeling more powerful than before. They were different; they had been reborn. And they showed that a threshold is not the end. It’s a passage, not a destination.
In our times, that may be the most important knowledge of all.

EXPERIMENTS

There is a desire among human beings, particularly among those of us who believe in God and the spiritual realms, to see the cosmos as a smooth and perfectly running system. How could the Deity create anything imperfect? Unthinkable!

One consequence of this perspective is that when things go wrong in some way, the fault can't lie in the system as a whole but in some part of it that isn't doing what it should or integrating properly. It doesn't take a wizard to guess just which part is usually assigned the blame in such instances. Us. Incarnate human beings. You and me.

There's certainly justification for this point of view. We know we make mistakes. We just don't assume that God does. Or that our Souls do.

Maybe we should.

Actually, the term "mistake" is not the proper noun here. This implies that there is one right way to do things, and that it's possible to screw it up (and our usual assumption in such cases is that if it is screwed up, a human being is at fault somewhere!). But what if we see the universe as filled with infinite possibilities ("Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations," as the Vulcan Mr. Spock would say in Star Trek). Some of these possibilities, diversities, and combinations work very well together, and others don't. And when they don't, there are repercussions and consequences to the system as a whole.

And there is learning.

When I was a science student, I learned that experimentation was a way of generating new information, a path of discovery. In that context, there was no such thing as a failed experiment, for even if it was not successful in terms of the hypothesis I was trying to prove, it still generated useful and new information. I learned something either way, and that learning when into future experiments.

I think of the cosmos as an engine for generating new information, a means by which the Generative Mystery (or God, if you prefer) discovers and learns (and everything else in creation discovers and learns as well). I don't believe this process is random, though randomness is part of it. There is a guiding will moving within the cosmos, but also a guiding openness, a willingness to allow infinite diversity in infinite combinations even when that may result in events and processes that simply don't work right or go awry in the context of the cosmos as a whole.In short, creation is an experiment. Not in the sense of "Hey, let me try this out and see what happens, and if it works, I'll keep it," but in the sense of "I wonder what I'll learn or what will unfold if I put this and this together!" Sometimes, the result is "Just what I thought!" Sometimes the result is "Wow! Omigosh! Look at that! That's cool! Who would have expected that?" And sometimes the result is "Oops!"

If I want a metaphor for this, alchemy is not far from the mark. Alchemy is a process of learning, but it's also a process that aims for particular results. I happen to believe the Generative Mystery is interested in particular results, though I doubt I can always understand them from my level of awareness. In other words, the universe, like alchemy, is practical, not merely philosophical. It wants results, and some results really are better than others.

Essential to doing alchemy is the container within which I mix my ingredients and within which the reaction takes place. That's the "alchemical space."

I think of incarnation as an alchemical space. We are retorts or test tubes or pots within which elements are mixed and reactions can take place. It's important to honor and take care of the container, for without it, no alchemy takes place. Incarnation--the creation of a personal alchemical space in which new information can be generated, learning can take place, transformation can occur, and something can be added to the wholeness of creation--is a significant, powerful spiritual process. It's not just for being physical.

In particular, we are an alchemical space in which an experiment of combining the vertical and horizontal worlds can take place.

There's plenty of wisdom, learning, and experience already contained in this experiment. "Lucy," one of our ancestors, lived over three million years ago, and our ancestry goes back much further than that. A lot of incarnating has taken place in that time, even though much of it might not look like what we experience today. But the nature of an experiment is that it generates new information. In that sense, your incarnation and mine are as fresh and emergent and open to new discoveries as when the first slime mold made its way from the ocean onto the land.

And openness to emergence also means openness to "Oops!"

A purely hierarchical view of the cosmos, such as one gets with the Kabbalah or in some esoteric systems in which "levels" or "planes" are stacked on top of each other like a wedding cake, doesn't always convey the richness of this experiment or the participation of all the "players."

In hierarchical systems, the higher levels and beings are often considered to be more perfect or "well-designed" and functioning than the lower levels and beings. "Oops" is considered a lower-level possibility, not a higher one; the whole is not seen as an interactive system in which the possibility of error is part of the whole system itself and not confined just to one of its parts.

An ecological or systems view of the cosmos sees different levels of vertical and horizontal beingness as players and partners, interrelated in a variety of ways within the alchemical space of incarnation. If the resulting mixture produces something sweet and wonderful, all the interacting elements contribute to this, not just the "higher" ones. And if it blows up, then the fault lay in the mixture itself and the dynamics of the relationships within it, not with one particular element (usually the "lower" one).

When I think of incarnation, I think of it in just these terms, as a whole system in which various elements of energy and consciousness and various degrees of "verticality" and "horizontalness" are mixed together in a dynamic space (the oerson or the personality) created and held by the will of the incarnating soul. The nature of our current physical consciousness, shaped by our particular culture and moment of history, is that we don't immediately see or experience the wholeness of this system but only its different parts, such as body, mind, emotions, energy, soul, spirit, and so on. And the way in which we see and interpret these parts can obscure the vision and diminish the alchemical power of the incarnational system as a whole.

That, however, is a different topic to be explored in a later blog. Right now, my point is that all of this is experimental. The vertical and horizontal worlds, meeting in us, don't have it all worked out in perfection and smoothness. Glitches can occur, things don't always mesh or integrate well, parts of the system can overload or clog other parts, and "oops!" can occur.

When that happens and life seems to blow up in our face, it's a chance for learning and picking up the pieces. Reflection is important. What isn't helpful is to blame, nor is it helpful to say, "Oh, well, it's all for the best; everything is always perfect." When an experiment blows up and destroys half the laboratory, it's time to put out the fires, bandage the wounded, pick up the debris, and clean things up to try again. It's not time to wax philosophical and say, "Well, I guess it was all for the best. What's one lab or two anyway?" Something went wrong. The experiment didn't work. It's time to find out why.

An alchemist doesn't look at her sulpher or copper or hydrochloric acid and say, "You evil, rotten, dense thing, you! I'll never use you again in an experiment." An alchemist looks at how things combined or didn't combine, what created a reaction that could not be contained or integrated, and what to do about it. It's too expensive to keep repairing labs or building new ones; we do want to perform our experiments more wisely. We want to learn. And we can't learn by assuming that one element is always at fault while all the others are innately pure and refined. The problem does not lie simply in any one element within us but in the mixing of them and the challenge of integration.

The task of learning to integrate the vertical and horizontal worlds is an ongoing human task. We've been at it for millions of years, and chances are we're going to be at it for millennia to come, not because we can't learn to get it right but because it's a continuing source of new information and learning. Incarnation is experimental in itself, which doesn't mean we can't do it better and more wisely as we go along, only that we're not aiming for a product that will shut the experiment down.

Bottom line: when things go "oops!" or "boom!" in your life, it's time for self-reflection and learning. What didn't integrate? What happened? Was there too much of this or too little of that? But don't begin this process by assuming the fault lies with you as a personality or with you as the horizontal, incarnate person who's simply not as wise and good and pure as your soul or other vertical parts of yourself. It might be the soul that screwed up here, after all. Learn to think of yourself as a whole system and see what happens when you approach your personality--your horizontal self--not with blame but with respect as a partner in that system with your vertical self.

Who knows what new learning and transformation may occur from this perspective?

And if you're not sure about it, think of it as an experiment.

WITH-IT MAGIC

A few years back I was a presenter at a conference on the Western Magical Tradition held at the Findhorn Foundation Community in northern Scotland. Both practitioners and scholars of various forms of magic came from all over Europe and North America to attend. Like so many conferences in which there are more speakers than anyone knows quite what to do with, the afternoons were taken up with panels in which five or six presenters are jammed together and given a few nanoseconds each to present the breadth and depth of their knowledge before being exposed to questions. As you can tell, though I've both been on and seen some very good panels, I'm not fond of the form.

At this conference, one afternoon panel provided a bit of unexpected drama, though I imagine not in a way the organizers appreciated. It was a panel for which the theme was "What is magic?" As I recall, there were four or five panelists, and the first speaker was a man who had written a beginner's book on magic and spirituality. His definition was that magic was very simple, a kind of "playing with energies" that everyone could do. This went uncontested until the last panelist had his turn to speak. He was a well-known and respected author of many books on magic, as well as a competent practitioner. He had been quite visibly restraining himself from saying something until his turn came, but then he practically leaped out of his chair in agitation and said, "Magic most certainly is NOT playing with energies!" Then, shaking his finger at the first panelist, he proceeded to verbally demolish him, stating that magic was anything but simple, and that it was a deep and profound discipline that was not for everyone. He let it be known in no uncertain terms that his fellow panelist had no business speaking in this conference if he was going to spout drivel. This in turn led to a shouting match between the two which eventually led to the organizers' coming on stage and shutting the whole thing down.

I hadn't realized till then how much fun a conference of magicians could be!

I have to admit, though, that even after that, the definition of magic remains elusive to me. The word magic is used loosely in a number of different ways and contexts, from the excitement and wonder of a romantic evening to stage illusions to the profound spiritual disciplines of alchemy and hermeticism. If I say I'm a magician, then just exactly how am I describing myself? What really is magic? Perhaps behind the disciplines and the rituals, the techniques and procedures, it does come down to a play of energies innate in all of us, though now I might think twice before saying so on a panel!

I once had a conversation with a non-physical being to whom I asked this question of the nature of magic. He seemed puzzled and asked me what I was talking about. So I explained to him what I had in mind and he said, "Oh, you mean life!" Another being was more helpful, but only just. "When you pick up a glass of water," he said, "for you it's simply an act of will. You wish the water and your body responds by picking up the glass. It seems instantaneous to you. But at the level of your cells, a great deal more goes on in the form of energy exchanges and molecular alterations, all of which you don't experience. What you call magic, with your rituals and correspondences, is to us equivalent to these molecular activities at a cellular level whereas what we call magic--the magic of the soul, if you wish--is like the direct experience of will and its consequences. We will and it is done."

Nice trick when you can do it.

At the heart of what this being was saying was relationship between two states for which will was a bridge. In his case, the bridge was direct, but in our case, the relationship or connections needed to be built up between ourselves and the object of the magic, hence the use of ritual or correspondences. The image was like the difference between teleporting directly between San Francisco and New York on the one hand and traveling from one city to the other through a series of connecting railway links. His point was that as we were able to form deeper and better connections or relationships, our magic would change. It was a matter of the wholeness in us matching the wholeness of the cosmos.

Thinking of magic as relationship and connection has been helpful to me, more helpful than thinking of it as ritual or alchemical processes on the one hand or playing with energies on the other. More precisely, it gives me a starting point in thinking about magic and the making of magic. I can think of it, for instance, not simply as the use of the will to produce effects in the world but as the forming of relationships or connections co-creatively with the world that have consequences, hopefully desired ones.

Why is this important? Because I believe as human beings we need to move to a partnership model of our relationship with the rest of creation, not simply for moral or spiritual reasons but because it works better. It is closer to the truth of things. If I think of magic as the projection and imposition of my will upon the world, whether through the astral light or the etheric plane or some other intermediate dimension, I am acting as a separate agent. I am not really engaging the world. I am acting upon it but not with it. I am making links through corresondences and rituals, but I am not making wholeness. I am not participating. In the end, whatever the success of my magical operation, the world and I remain separate. We remain strangers to each other.

Whatever magic is or can become, I believe it calls us to be not just in the world, or even less to have power over the world, but to be with the world in spirit and in wholeness. It is a "with-it" magic.

THE BOUNDARIES OF GOD

Imagine a world in which prayer works, without fail, all the time. What kind of world might that be?

At first glance we might think it would be a paradise. Who among us hasn't wished at one time or another that a prayer might be reliably answered? We may have prayed for the healing of a loved one--or for our own healing. We may have prayed for help at a time of crisis. When all other resources have been exhausted, how nice to know we had prayer to fall back on to resolve our problems.

But consider this a little more. Suppose some white supremecist living in the hills of Idaho prayed that all people of color turned white, and they did. Or suppose an African-American prayed that all white supremecists would turn black, or in a fit of artistic humor, turned green, or paisley, or purple with orange polkadots and a feathered crest.

Suppose I prayed my kids never grew up and left me. Suppose my parents had prayed that about me, condeming me to eternal life as a ten-year old, always living at home, always following their rules.

Suppose we prayed there was no death. Where would we have room for all the people, all the squirrels, all the mice, all the geese, all the bacteria that never, ever died?

If all prayers were routinely, reliably, perfectly, unquestionably answered, we would be living in hell.

OK, so we may not want a world in which all prayers are answered. What about some prayers? Would it be ok if some prayers were reliably, perfectly, unquestionably answered? But which prayers? Whose prayers? Well, mine, of course... But yours? Can I trust your prayers where I'm concerned? For that matter, can I really trust my own? Am I wise enough, knowledgable enough, loving enough, farseeing enough that I can guarantee that the consequences of my prayers will be reliably, unquestionably good?

I should probably be grateful (and I am!) that God grants some prayers and not others!

But which prayers does God grant? How does God decide? Is there something I can do--a good deed slipped under the table when no one's looking, perhaps--to influence this decision?

A favorite way of thinking about God is that God is omnipotent, the very definition of all-powerful-ness. But in fact, God has boundaries.

At times in my life I have lived in earthquake-prone areas, like Southern California or the Pacific Northwest. I've ridden through a few tremors in my time. It's an odd sensation to feel the earth, ordinarly so stable and placid, suddenly move like the ocean beneath your feet. Even more disconcerting is the realization there is no place to go that will be stable, for in that moment the very thing that normally defines "stable"--the bedrock under you--is dancing and shifting. Unless you could levitate, no place is safe in that moment.

This sense of vulnerability and loss of foundation can affect people in strange ways. I've had friends who long after an earthquake has become memory--and even when it did very little damage--still suffer from stress and fears awakened by that moment when the most stable thing in their lives--the ground on which they lived--became active and unpredictable.

What if the ground of all being were similarly unstable and unpredictable? What if there were Godquakes? What if we didn't know from one moment to the next if we would exist at all or what form we might exist in? What would my life be like if I could be a human now but a minute from now I might turn into a duck or a fish or a parameceum, or if I'm David today but tomorrow I could be Dorothy or Tom or even George Bush? What if at this moment I'm a caring, loving person, but an hour from now I turned into a violent, sadistic killer--or vice versa?

There certainly is change in our lives, and in fact, a loving person can--and sometimes does--fall into rage or fear or insanity and become a monster. But underneath all this is a confidence that our fundamental beingness is secure, held in safety and love by God. In fact, it's testimony to how much the earth is usually seen as the most secure, foundational presence in our physical lives that we use it as a metaphor for the most secure, foundational presence in our spiritual lives: the Ground of all Being.

But unlike the earth, we don't have "Godquakes" in which that foundation is lost. This is not to say we don't go through experiences that can profoundly shake us and upend our most cherished thoughtforms and beliefs, but this is not the same as losing the foundation of our beingness and of our existence itself. I can be shaken and transformed through an experience but even in my transformation, I remain human. I don't become a giraffe.

So God has boundaries. They are the boundaries necessary to provide the ground for our being, for all being. They provide the confidence that I will remain human and the birds outside my window will remain birds. They are boundaries set by the nature of things, by the need of creation for a fundamental stability, coherency and integrity. And God, to be God, cannot abridge or overrule those boundaries (though God can work miracles by acting within the boundaries in ways we might not expect).

I would like my prayers to be answered, but God has to work within boundaries. The latter may prevent the former. There are boundaries I cannot change, but there may well be boundaries I can. And if I change some of the boundaries I have created or participated in creating with others, that may open up possibilities that God can flow through and work what seem to be miracles. My fear or hatred for a person is a boundary to ways we might cooperate and even partner together, for instance. But if I change that boundary to love, who knows what may happen?

That Shiites fear and hate Sunnis or that Arabs fear and hate Americans fuels conflict in the Middle East. Our fears and hates set boundaries for us, and God cannot just remove them without our participation. I can pray for peace all I want, and it will not happen. But if I change that boundary in myself from fear to openness, from hate to love, then a whole new condition exists. Now the boundaries are there to include, not exclude, and in that inclusion, God can indeed work miracles of peace and blessing.

God has boundaries, and more often than not, we are those boundaries. If we want our prayers to be answered, we might begin by exploring the boundaries we can change, which may mean changing ourselves.

NO MUGGLES HERE, Part 2

In my last letter, I said that we are all magic-users, not, to use J.K. Rowling’s term for ordinary mortals in her Harry Potter books, “muggles.” I use the term “magic” here not in any metaphorical sense or as a way of expressing the wonderment of life, but as a statement of fact. Magic describes a way of relating to life, and it’s a relationship we all have and express.

If I believe that the world is only what I can see, touch, hear, smell, or taste and that the appearances of things are the sum total of reality, then this magic won’t make any sense. But it will still operate. I cannot avoid being a magic-user, though I can be an unmindful, unaware one.

A usual (though not the only) way magic is defined in the Western esoteric traditions, magic is as the shaping of events in the physical world in accordance with the will, imagination, thoughts, and feelings of the magician. Other definitions may include partnering with beings and forces of the spiritual worlds, that is, the use of inner allies.

Both these definitions assume the existence of an “inner world,” a world of life and energy existing behind the appearance and surface of things. This is a world our senses cannot directly reveal. Actually, we experience exactly such a world everyday in our thoughts, our feelings, and our spiritual experiences. Magic is based on the simple idea that this world within ourselves is connected to and in fact part of an energy field that is part of the world around us. In effect, like amphibians, we live in two worlds, one that is revealed through our senses and which we can thus call a “sensible” world and one that is revealed through means other than our senses and thus could be called “supersensible.”

Magic can be nothing more or less than the result of the relationship between these two worlds, a relationship we all have. This relationship can be relatively unconscious and automatic, one to which we give little thought or practice, or it can be the focus of our attention, one that we work on to develop skills and capacities to make it conscious and deliberate. Most of what we call “magical training” is designed to do the latter, and it doesn’t have to take place in any kind of esoteric or occult setting. Courses in positive thinking, in motivation, in coaching, in advertising and marketing, all deal with ways of enhancing the power of our attitudes, beliefs, will, thoughts, and feelings to affect not only our own lives but outcomes in the world around us.

It works because we are all interconnected. The inner world possesses a “Commons,” just like the commons of old New England villages, a shared space that all within the village can use and participate in. We each have our “private homes,” our bubbles of sovereignty and subjective identity that are unique to each of us, but these radiate into, and receive from, and participate in the “energy commons” of which we are all a part. We are individualized but not isolated.

The participatory nature of this common energy world we all share gives us great power to affect the world around us, beyond the physical actions we may take. It’s what truly makes us magicians and not muggles. My thoughts and feelings about another person don’t necessarily remain locked up in my own head, for instance, but can become part of a local energy commons that that person shares; they can be taken by that person into his or her individual energy field and have an effect. Depending on the nature of my thoughts and feelings and upon the strength of the other person’s sense of sovereignty and well-being, this could have a positive or a negative affect.

The invisible, supersensible energy world and the visible, sensible physical world are deeply intertwined and are reflections of each other. One is not necessarily the product of the other; nor are they completely hierarchically related. Each affects the other in an ecology of mutual co-creativity. For this reason the nature of our magic is both physical and non-physical. But when magic works, when synchronicities occur, when manifestation happens, when outer things change because of inner changes we’ve made, it’s because a shift in the inner energy world has very likely caused a corresponding shift in the outer visible world. And the reverse is true, that outer changes can cause changes and shifts in supersensible energy conditions.

I am a fairly good natural singer. I can carry a tune, and people don’t run screaming from the room or cover their ears when I sing. I have a friend, though, who is a trained opera singer, a soprano, and the power and range of her voice, as well as its effect on those who hear it, is amazing. My singing is like hers only in the fact that we both open our mouths to let sound come out. She can do things with her voice and produce effects that I can only dream about.

We are all magic-users; we are all part of the supersensible Commons and participate in that Commons in ways that affect our world. But we are not all trained magicians, with developed skills of imagination, will, attunement, and lovingness.. There are many systems of training that a person can engage with to develop the skills and capacities that work with this innate relationship we all have. Lorian offers in its classes one kind of training.

However, a trained magician in the sense I’m using the term may not know any esoteric or occult knowledge but simply have a dedicated and practical sense of participating in a loving, imaginative, and disciplined way in the world around him or her. Some of the best magic-users and manifestors I know, for instance, wouldn’t know an occult lodge from a movie theater and have never heard of any Mystery or esoteric tradition. But they can shape the world around them in loving and blessing-filled ways for the benefit of all who come into their sphere of influence, empowering others to recognize the richness and power of their own individuality. In their presence, the Commons we all share blooms with possibilities and an invitation to success.

What better magic is there than that?

Blessings,

David

No Muggles Here

Hello. My name is David Spangler. I've been encouraged recently to create this blog by my friend Catherine MacCoun. She is the author of one of the finest books on alchemy and hermetic magic I've had the pleasure of reading: On Becoming an Alchemist, to be published by Shambhala Press n January, 2008. She is starting an author's blog, The Hermeticist, and invited me to join her. You can link to that blog from this page. That process led to my creating this blog of my own.

I primarily teach and write for The Lorian Association, a non-profit spiritual educational organization. If you are interested in information about it, there are links for that on this page as well. My primary focus is incarnational spirituality and working with spiritual forces. I'll be writing about both topics--and others--here.

One of the things I do is write an essay, called "David's Desk," every two weeks that goes out to the Lorian mailing list. It's easy to join that list. Just send an email to info@lorian.org. There's no other obligation. If there are questions that result from those essays which I can answer, I will be doing so on our webpage.

I'm starting this blog with the first of these letters, but I don't intend to simply repeat them here. Some letters I'll post here, too, but mainly I'd like to use this blog to explore other ideas as well. If you'd like the letters, contact Lorian and get on their mailing list.

Well, that's all for now. Enjoy the thoughts that follow:

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I don’t know if your family is a fan of Harry Potter. Mine is. As the books have come out over the years, we have enjoyed more and more J. K. Rowling’s engaging tale of the boy wizard and his friends. In fact, my youngest daughter and I have made a ritual of attending the midnight release parties at our local bookstore whenever a new Potter book has come out. When our four kids were younger, we would all gather in the living room and listen while my wife read the latest installment. It was fun and exciting. Rowling tells a great yarn.

In Harry Potter’s universe, the world is divided into magic-users, known collectively as wizards and witches, and non-magic-users, known as muggles. Much of the fun of the books comes from reading the author’s invention of new words and terms; as neologisms go, muggles is about as good as it gets.

The big difference between Rowling’s fictional universe and ours is that, however fun a word it is, there are no muggles here. We are all magic-users.

Now I’m not talking about fantasy magic, the kind that Harry uses or a wizard in a game of Dungeons and Dragons. Stories, while fun, deceive us about magic by turning it into something implausible. We come to think of magic as wizards hurling thunderbolts and flying through the air.

But there is an everyday magic that surrounds us that is so common, even in its occasional unexpectedness, that we don’t pay attention to it. And I’m not talking about the “magic of life” or the “magic of our senses” or any other metaphor for the wonderment we can find in life.
Here are some examples. I’m about to say something, and someone else says the same thing before me. I’m thinking of a friend and she calls unexpectedly. I need to see someone and I accidentally run into that person in a store. I need money that I don’t know how to get and a check arrives out of the blue in the mail from an unexpected source.

Here’s a true story of magic at work. A friend of mine wanted to buy some special bells for her mother but could not find them anywhere. One afternoon she phoned a friend but accidentally dialed the wrong number. The person at the other end turned out to be the clerk in a gift store she had never heard of. More importantly, this store turned out to be the sole importers in the whole city of these special bells.

We call these kinds of events synchronicities, manifestations, good luck, God’s hand, or coincidences. We see the way people long married can complete each other’s sentences, and we talk about them “being in resonance.”

What all these kinds of events and experiences have in common is that something intangible—a thought, a desire, an intent—is having an effect upon something tangible. The immaterial and invisible is affecting the material and the visible. For example, one day I had to give a lecture in the city at a place that is notorious for having very limited parking as one has to park on busy city streets. It was raining, and I was not anticipating a long walk from wherever I could park back to the lecture hall. So I visualized an empty parking place right in front of the hall. When I got there, though, all the parking spaces were full, but on a hunch, I went around the block. Nothing was available, but as I came in view of the lecture hall again, a car pulled out right where I had visualized my parking place. I was able to park conveniently right in front of the hall. An invisible, intangible thought in my head had a visible, tangible consequence.

We can call this coincidence, but it happens time and again in everyone’s life in one way or another. Our thoughts, feelings, intents, desires, wishes, fears, and hopes have a way of manifesting, the invisible world becoming visible.

The evidence is that life responds to us; it configures to our inner nature, to our thoughts, feelings, and spirit. This is real magic.

Why does it do this? How does it happen? What makes this magic work and create a response? Over the centuries, people have come up with different theories: the law of attraction, or the power of thought, of imagination, or of the will. All of these undoubtedly contribute and are part of this magic. At the same time, we all have examples of when they don’t work, of when we thought positively about something and it did not happen or wasn’t attracted or when our will or imagination did not bring about the result we wished.

The point then is not that there is no magic but that it operates more holistically than we may have thought. It isn’t just the law of attraction or the power of thought or the use of the imagination. Other things may be involved, at least some of the time. And if you think about it, this makes sense. Life responds to us as whole beings, not just as thinking beings or feeling beings or imagining beings. What evokes a response at a given moment may be a mystery; we may have to do some attentive observation and experimentation to gain clues about what works for us and what doesn’t. Each of us may come to this magic uniquely, based on our particular individuality; what works for someone else may not work for us because we are different people. But what is certain is that life will and does configure to us. It does respond. Who we are affects and shapes the world we experience. We are the makers and unmakers of worlds. This is everyday magic.

Experiment with this. Try it out. It may not for you be as straight-forward as thinking, “I want that new car,” and it will appear. How magic works for you may operate differently based on your unique relationship with life, the way your interiority and inner nature relates and configures to the world and vice versa. But your magic will work for you and is working all the time. Be a scientist of your own invisible world and investigate to find out how.

The first step into using your magic may be the same for everyone. I believe it is. It consists of simply acknowledging to oneself, “I am not a muggle. I am a magician.”

We’ll look more at this kind of magic in “No Muggles Here, Part 2.”