FATHER WILLIAM'S BLOG

Donna & Hamlet

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:07:50 GMT

Donna & Hamlet

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Sunday, July 19, 2009

Subject: RE: Don’t Push the River

Thanks for the reference. Just today I was talking with a lady who, in the course of the conversation, said "But I don't have to do that now, I'm retired." But she had just referred to her need to have scientific details to back up something she was reading which she didn't fully understand. There is something askew here, when one says she's "retired," but at the same time needs scientific and statistical details to absorb every thesis that comes to her attention! That would appear to me to imply that the lady in question is still mired in Second Age. In the Third Age and beyond, I believe, one finally must advance into the intuitive, not linger in the world of proofs.

From: Father William

Sent: Monday, July 20, 2009

Subject: Donna & Hamlet

I couldn’t agree more – for you and me! There comes a time in Third Age when one chooses to balance dimensions of life, like surgeon Barbara did by realizing she needed to expand her feminine dimension in July’s newsletter. I believe you and I have spent a great deal of time in “the rational “world of proofs” during earlier years, and so we seek balance in the intuitive “world of knowing” now.

Donna, on the other hand, has operated intuitively for as long as she can remember and feels she might move more into “the world of proofs” as part of achieving her unique wholeness in Third Age.

In my 70’s I am spending more and more time in the land of “knowing” and enjoying it profoundly. To have done this earlier would have fed my righteous fundamentalism (about Gestalt, Psychosynthesis, leadership, etc., etc.), but it feels quite different now, especially when I regularly wake during the night and observe my hyper-active monkey mind at play. As I relax into observing all the mental activity, I can see the great foundation that is my Self and rejoice in its peace and calm. How solid it is!

It is hard for me to imagine everyone wouldn’t unfold as you and I are from “proving” to “knowing,” but Donna assures me...

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

“Don’t Push the River”

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:07:07 GMT

“Don’t Push the River”

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009

Subject: RE: Where I Think I Am

To be fully here much more of the time seems to me to require that one should not resist the possibility of a confluence of what is "there" with what is here--in other words that there is always an inflow from what is outside of immediacy into our own here and now. We should regard the river of our lives as being supported by that confluence from what is now outside of our immediacy--to relax into participation is to be fully open to what we don't already know.

From: Father William

Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2009

Subject: Don’t Push the River

I agree – being fully here must mean not trying to be – or not be – anywhere. Barry Stevens wrote a wonderful book years ago called Don’t Push the River (It Flows by Itself). That’s a pretty good way of alternatively defining RIP...

Here’s more info on her if you’re interested...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Stevens_%28therapist%29

Where I Think I Am

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:06:27 GMT

Where I Think I Am

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009

Subject: RE: Forgetting Our Essence

Exactly.

Do you ever wonder where you'll go from "here"? I often do. Then something comes up which redefines where I think I am!

From: Father William

Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009

Subject: Where I Think I Am

This is a very timely question/reflection for me. Just yesterday I was wondering if I shouldn’t stop all outward activity (my radio show, newsletter, internet, etc.) and so any writing/creating I do is only for me (and you, of course) and not audiences.

So the answer to your question is I don’t think about going somewhere from here, but how to be fully here much more of the time. Rod MacIver of the Heron Dance is having an impact on me in this direction. We’ll see.

Forgetting Our Essence

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:05:54 GMT

Forgetting Our Essence

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Sunday, July 12, 2009

Subject: RE: “Checking Your Baggage”

What to do with the essence that we bring to the table of "participation"? I'd say that when we arrive at such a point it becomes necessary to forget the essence if we truly want to participate since that essence will be present for all to see anyway. It's the opposite of what the ego wants to do (to dominate the situation). The ego wants to hide from being perceived, but the essence has nothing to hide because it is reality, it is the genuine.

From: Father William

Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009

Subject: Forgetting Our Essence

What you say about it becoming “necessary to forget the essence if we truly want to participate” rings true for me – it would seem any form of recognizing or remembering the essence would be a signal the ego is still hard at work at “dominating the situation”...

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:54:48 GMT

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THE CENTER FOR THIRD AGE NEWSLETTER – JULY 2009

1. FATHER WILLIAM’S MONTHLY MUSINGS

2. “NO, NO, SIT THERE ALONE IN A ROOM.”

3. “OH, THE HELL WITH THAT, LET ME JUST DO IT!”

4. “PERHAPS HAPPINESS...COMES MOST WHEN IT ISN’T PURSUED.”

5. THIS MONTH'S LINKS

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THIS MONTH’S QUOTE – MARY OLIVER

”Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”

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1. FATHER WILLIAM’S MONTHLY MUSINGS

July Greetings, Good Friends...

We have just celebrated a very wet month including Independence Day here in Warren, Vermont, where the rain stopped just long enough for our parade to proceed and almost finish. There is a mythology about the powers that be not raining on our parade, and it definitely gained strength this year.

Perhaps because summer has yet to begin in our neck of the woods, I reread Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day” and it motivated me to think about what I might do with my “one wild and precious life” in my 70’s. I’m finding guidance and support in many places, and I’ve included three in this newsletter.

The first is Rod MacIver’s most recent “Heron Dance” newsletter. He has been documenting his very personal journey of the last few weeks and has helped me think more deeply about the paradox of BOTH “paddling faster than the current” AND making “an art form of relaxation.”

Next, Bolton Anthony, founder of “Second Journey”, describes how he is using his Third Age maturity to make a difference in the outer world, or, as he puts it, to “contribute in some small way to the ‘coming of the Kingdom.’”

And in the third piece, Pico Iyer offers a glimpse into his choice of trading Rockefeller Center for a two-room apartment in Kyoto and living in “The Joy of Less.”

Even though Rod's, Bolton’s and Pico’s life settings and choices are different to my own, I find echoes of myself in each of their musings. Personally I’m drawn inward toward greater relaxation into the mystery of existence, and as I spend more and more time in solitude, my mind and heart keep presenting me with hundreds of bits from my past to review and reconsider.

These come as distinct images in which I relive the situations and my behaviors in them. The vast majority of these reflections, while causing me a great deal of discomfort, are also proving very freeing.

The consistent emotions I experience are embarrassment and regret I have behaved so badly so often over the last sixty years. This is what causes the discomfort, and I wish I had the opportunity to apologize and ask forgiveness from so many. Writing these musings is a step in that direction.

But dwelling on past negatives is useful only to the extent it can help me be a better person now, and that's where the freeing part comes in, at least for me. As I relive and review these bits of my past, I have to recognize that these were not mistakes at the time. In the overwhelming number of instances, I actually thought I was being “cool”; what I see as very unattractive behaviors now were what I went consciously out of my way to do then. That's what happens when you've modeled yourself on John Wayne, Steve McQueen, James Dean and "The Wild One."

And it is these repeating realizations that are freeing me from that past.

Yes, they are uncomfortable, very uncomfortable, but they help me know and accept I’m a different and better person now than I was in my earlier life. As I see how my motivations and basic values have changed over the years, I take heart. At 71, this old Father William now knows for sure that "the best is yet to be” - and that this wonderful mystery of life can fulfill us forever if we just learn to relax into it. I recently read “Son of a Witch” by Greg Maguire in which the ancient Senior Maunt (read Mother Superior) reflects:

“Wisdom is not the understanding of mystery, she said to herself, not for the first time. Wisdom is accepting the mystery is beyond understanding. That’s what makes it a mystery.”

What’s made it so hard to relax into acceptance is the 40’s and 50’s cultural brainwashing that led me to overvalue my Masculine and undervalue my Feminine aspects. I'm referring here to our psychological, not biological (female/ male), selves.

Perhaps some of you are readjusting the balance of your Masculine (“Make it happen”) and Feminine (“Let it happen”) selves as you move through Third Age. Rod, Bolton and Pico seem to be, too. Old Father William is still working - or, hopefully, not working - on it. And there are certainly no right answers because personal rebalancing depends on the conditioning you experienced in your life. For example, consider this excerpt from Bill Sadler’s “The Third Age” about a surgeon named Barbara as she reflected on her life at fifty-four:

__________

Barbara was very autonomous as a young adult and went through several transformations before she uncovered a fuller femininity after turning fifty…

“I’m changing and continually discovering things in myself that amaze me. One major thing I’ve discovered as a woman is a kind of balance of feminine and masculine elements within myself in a way I never knew possible. My journey has been to go to the edge, and as I do I find amazing dimensions to myself...”

”A major development in my midlife has been to become aware of my feminine side. Recovering a balance—between control and caring, being intellectual and emotional—is one way of viewing how I got out of the trap. I become a much more feeling person. I’ve realized that feelings have a very important part in medicine. You start with knowledge, but in your interaction with patients you need compassion. An emotional level of interaction is perhaps most important in treatment. By discovering my feminine side and expressing it in medicine and with friends, I’ve been experiencing inner movement, an awareness of being feminine and vulnerable.”

Barbara revealed that by becoming a doctor, she had deliberately undergone an identity transformation, repressing feminine qualities and adding masculine ones:

”I used to be tougher than tough. I would never show emotions; I thought that would be a sign of weakness. Now I allow my emotions to show. The biggest risks for me are letting people see who I am. I wanted to be well thought-of and would act to please people. I still want to be well-thought-of, but I’m more concerned to express how I feel as openly as honestly as possible...”

Barbara, a very successful woman in a male world inhibited her Feminine in order to succeed in that world. In her Third Age, she realized she needed to open to and develop her Feminine in order to claim her wholeness.

__________

Do you have a personal story like this? I’d love to have the next newsletter be built on your thoughts – and there’s only room for so much in it. But I do promise to respond personally to all who contribute and to post your messages on my blog. As you experience your personal maturing, how are you addressing your own Masculine/Feminine, Make It Happen/Let It Happen, Paddling/Relaxing, Be Tough/Be Feeling paradoxes?

Like Rod, Bolton and Pico, we live in a time where we can share ourselves, more honestly and openly than ever before. I’m enjoying my own internal learning and sharing process, and I hope this stimulates yours, too.

Until August, Father William

For more of FW:

http://www.fatherwilliam.org/

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2. “MAKE AN ART FORM OF DEEP RELAXATION”

FROM “HERON DANCE” BY ROD MACIVER

Rain. Rain again today. Birds singing in the rain. Their songs sound different bouncing off wet leaves and navigating between raindrops. Rain in the woods gives birdsong fullness and depth. In the background, drops hit the forest floor with a percussive effect. Wind rustles branches. The woods are a symphony in the rain.

I like to walk and paddle in warm rain. Rain invites you inward.

Thank you to all who wrote in supporting the recent experiments at Heron Dance, as well as those who expressed concern. I was paddling faster than the current for a little while. I felt I needed to in order to break through into new territory. I needed to break out of a cycle of struggle and disillusionment, and I built up my energy to do that.

As one example of many, subscriber and songwriter William Renfrow wrote, “Yes, press for greatness, push oneself beyond boundaries, but what about the flow of the river, attunement with nature, quietude leading to an appreciation of beauty, in each exquisite moment?” (We’ve posted William’s entire letter on our website.)

I set that river aside for a little while to venture into new territory. I felt like I was riding a tiger and the excitement combined with nervousness was akin to ecstasy. Ultimately though, the objective is a life of meaning, a peaceful, thoughtful life, but one that also is full, alive and creative. Peace is elusive. Living in touch with calmness is elusive.

I’ve been making notes in my journal about the times when my life has had a deep peace about it. My thoughts first go to early mornings on wilderness rivers and lakes. I think of long, tiring fall canoe trips in the cold and rain followed by a day of warm sunshine.

Wilderness memories are ballast in my life but, to find peace in the human world, something more is needed. Peace comes from knowing what you want out of life, paring down, simplifying, focusing on a few important things. Do works of beauty. Serve something bigger than yourself. Pour yourself into satisfying work. Then, deep relaxation. Make an art form of deep relaxation.

Nurture your friendship with yourself, with your inner world. Minimize the extraneous. Minimize the number of moving parts. Be careful of who and what you let into your life. Protect your time. Do creative work. Be gentle on yourself. Make room for love in your life. Build close friendships with good people. Read. Think. Spend time alone.

“The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.” - James Baldwin

A peaceful life requires a center point, a place of balance. Everything unique and beautiful grows out of the still point, that place of quiet reflection, meditation or prayer.

No matter how extreme my experiments and adventures, everything is fine in my life if I make sacred room for a quiet center. It needs to be nurtured, paid attention to. If I do that, it will guide me through troubled waters. It has guided me through some very troubled waters indeed, including cancer and the early years of Heron Dance. When I lose touch with it, my life spins out of control.

To nurture a quiet center, we sometimes need to be hard on ourselves, hard on our attraction to trivial and insignificant things.

Whenever I’ve been alone for more than twenty-four hours, my mind has become preoccupied with my screw-ups, my embarrassments, the things I should have done differently. There are a lot of those things. I’ve bounced up against boundaries all my life. But others have told me that they experience the same. After three days, a deep peace takes over, but in the interim, I encounter anger towards myself and others — others in the broadest sense, including the systems of power in human world. My mind, operating in a vacuum, is simply looking for something to do, something to focus on. After three days, I’m fine. I’m free.

The human mind solves problems. That’s what it wants to do because that’s what it is good at. It is all about the world out there; it is uncomfortable turning inward. It doesn’t want to be alone with itself in a room or a forest. It wants activity, controversy. Conflict excites it. It is constantly searching for something to worry about, something to fear, something to get excited about. It likes human relationships. It craves distraction from the truths at the center of our lives.

Nothing is more controversial, nothing more avoided, nothing more threatening to our self-constructed narrative, than the truth. We certainly don’t want to be alone in a room or a forest with truth for any length of time.

But art and writing and all creativity, including creating a full, deep experience of life require a relationship with that quiet center. There’s always something more important to do. The house needs cleaning. Bills need to be paid. There’s a great show on television. No, no, sit there alone in a room. Confront that scary silence, that aloneness. Make friends with it.

Your creative work requires that.

Everything beautiful grows out of that.

In celebration of the Great Mystery of Life, Roderick W. MacIver

http://www.herondance.org/Turning-Points-W328C2_webpage.aspx

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3. “OH, THE HELL WITH THAT, LET ME JUST DO IT!”

FROM “EXCAVATIONS IN THREE PARTS” BY BOLTON ANTHONY

The great reward from mining our life experience comes when we strike that vein of purpose and find that the seemingly diffused endeavors and commitments of our life cohere. A hidden pattern is revealed, a “strange attractor” around which the once random trajectories of our life now constellate, disclosed. And we arrive at the place where “everything belongs” — ready, as the poet Yeats says, “to cast out remorse” and “live it all again and yet again” (“Dialogue of Self and Soul”)...

...I remember praying silently that some aspect of my work with Second Journey would contribute in some small way to the “coming of the Kingdom,” the words we use in the Lord’s Prayer. Then, as a postscript, I remember qualifying the sentiment: May I do this good thing. AND may I do it for the RIGHT REASONS. Not because I enjoy the work… which I did, immensely. Not because it taps my creativity… which it did, immensely. But because it will leave the world a better place.

Catholic theology, distinguishing between ethics and morality, holds that the merit of an action depends on the intention of the actor:

“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that you’re giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” (Matthew 6:2-4)

In the incident in question I remember the two thoughts — May I do this good thing. AND may I do it for the RIGHT REASONS. Then I remember a NEW thought, that came fast on the heels of the second thought and that signaled a cataclysmic psychic realignment: “Oh, the hell with that, let me just do it!”

When we act from a place deeper than ego, from the place of our deepest joy, we come into alignment with the divine spark in us and are absolved from asking further questions...

http://www.secondjourney.org/Itin.htm

*“Second Journey” is among a small number of emerging organizations helping birth a new vision of the rich possibilities of the second half of life. That vision sees the Longevity Revolution — the dividend of extra years which in this past century has extended life expectancy by 30-plus years — not as a demographic time bomb threatening the social safety net, but as an unprecedented historic opportunity:

- an opportunity to open new avenues for individual growth and spiritual deepening — so that our longer lives become more meaningful lives;

- an opportunity to birth a renewed ethic of service and mentoring in later life; and

- an opportunity to encourage the growth of new communities — and new models OF community — to support living, learning, and social change for the 21st century.

Captured in shorthand… Mindfulness, Service, and Community in the Second Half of Life.

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4. “PERHAPS HAPPINESS...COMES MOST WHEN IT ISN’T PURSUED.”

FROM “THE JOY OF LESS” BY PICO IYER, THE NEW YORK TIMES, JUNE 7, 2009

“The beat of my heart has grown deeper, more active, and yet more peaceful, and it is as if I were all the time storing up inner riches... My [life] is one long sequence of inner miracles.” The young Dutchwoman Etty Hillesum wrote that in a Nazi transit camp in 1943, on her way to her death at Auschwitz two months later. Towards the end of his life, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen,” though by then he had already lost his father when he was 7, his first wife when she was 20 and his first son, aged 5. In Japan, the late 18th-century poet Issa is celebrated for his delighted, almost child-like celebrations of the natural world. Issa saw four children die in infancy, his wife die in childbirth, and his own body partially paralyzed.

In the corporate world, I always knew there was some higher position I could attain, which meant that, like Zeno’s arrow, I was guaranteed never to arrive and always to remain dissatisfied.

I’m not sure I knew the details of all these lives when I was 29, but I did begin to guess that happiness lies less in our circumstances than in what we make of them, in every sense. “There is nothing either good or bad,” I had heard in high school, from Hamlet, “but thinking makes it so.” I had been lucky enough at that point to stumble into the life I might have dreamed of as a boy: a great job writing on world affairs for Time magazine, an apartment (officially at least) on Park Avenue, enough time and money to take vacations in Burma, Morocco, El Salvador. But every time I went to one of those places, I noticed that the people I met there, mired in difficulty and often warfare, seemed to have more energy and even optimism than the friends I’d grown up with in privileged, peaceful Santa Barbara, Calif., many of whom were on their fourth marriages and seeing a therapist every day. Though I knew that poverty certainly didn’t buy happiness, I wasn’t convinced that money did either.

So — as post-1960s cliché decreed — I left my comfortable job and life to live for a year in a temple on the backstreets of Kyoto. My high-minded year lasted all of a week, by which time I’d noticed that the depthless contemplation of the moon and composition of haiku I’d imagined from afar was really more a matter of cleaning, sweeping and then cleaning some more. But today, more than 21 years later, I still live in the vicinity of Kyoto, in a two-room apartment that makes my old monastic cell look almost luxurious by comparison. I have no bicycle, no car, no television I can understand, no media — and the days seem to stretch into eternities, and I can’t think of a single thing I lack.

I’m no Buddhist monk, and I can’t say I’m in love with renunciation in itself, or traveling an hour or more to print out an article I’ve written, or missing out on the N.B.A. Finals. But at some point, I decided that, for me at least, happiness arose out of all I didn’t want or need, not all I did. And it seemed quite useful to take a clear, hard look at what really led to peace of mind or absorption (the closest I’ve come to understanding happiness). Not having a car gives me volumes not to think or worry about, and makes walks around the neighborhood a daily adventure. Lacking a cell phone and high-speed Internet, I have time to play ping-pong every evening, to write long letters to old friends and to go shopping for my sweetheart (or to track down old baubles for two kids who are now out in the world).

When the phone does ring — once a week — I’m thrilled, as I never was when the phone rang in my overcrowded office in Rockefeller Center. And when I return to the United States every three months or so and pick up a newspaper, I find I haven’t missed much at all. While I’ve been rereading P.G. Wodehouse, or “Walden,” the crazily accelerating roller-coaster of the 24/7 news cycle has propelled people up and down and down and up and then left them pretty much where they started. “I call that man rich,” Henry James’s Ralph Touchett observes in “Portrait of a Lady,” “who can satisfy the requirements of his imagination.” Living in the future tense never did that for me.

Perhaps happiness, like peace or passion, comes most when it isn’t pursued.

I certainly wouldn’t recommend my life to most people — and my heart goes out to those who have recently been condemned to a simplicity they never needed or wanted. But I’m not sure how much outward details or accomplishments ever really make us happy deep down. The millionaires I know seem desperate to become multimillionaires, and spend more time with their lawyers and their bankers than with their friends (whose motivations they are no longer sure of). And I remember how, in the corporate world, I always knew there was some higher position I could attain, which meant that, like Zeno’s arrow, I was guaranteed never to arrive and always to remain dissatisfied.

Being self-employed will always make for a precarious life; these days, it is more uncertain than ever, especially since my tools of choice, written words, are coming to seem like accessories to images. Like almost everyone I know, I’ve lost much of my savings in the past few months. I even went through a dress-rehearsal for our enforced austerity when my family home in Santa Barbara burned to the ground some years ago, leaving me with nothing but the toothbrush I bought from an all-night supermarket that night. And yet my two-room apartment in nowhere Japan seems more abundant than the big house that burned down. I have time to read the new John le Carre, while nibbling at sweet tangerines in the sun. When a Sigur Ros album comes out, it fills my days and nights, resplendent. And then it seems that happiness, like peace or passion, comes most freely when it isn’t pursued.

If you’re the kind of person who prefers freedom to security, who feels more comfortable in a small room than a large one and who finds that happiness comes from matching your wants to your needs, then running to stand still isn’t where your joy lies. In New York, a part of me was always somewhere else, thinking of what a simple life in Japan might be like. Now I’m there, I find that I almost never think of Rockefeller Center or Park Avenue at all.

http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/the-joy-of-less/?ex=1260072000&;en=662530a9293faaa0&ei=5087&WT.mc_id=NYT-E-I-NYT-E-AT-0610-L11

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5. THIS MONTH'S LINKS:

FACES IN THE SAND – UNBELIEVABLE SCULPTURES!

http://www.womansday.com/Articles/Family-Lifestyle/10-Faces-in-the-Sand.html

AMAZING CHOIR (PERPETUUM JAZZILE) USES HANDS TO STIMULATE STORM...

http://www.stumbleupon.com/s/#1U7a36/www.youtube.com/watch?v=05ip-N0H1Ig/

NEED A GOOD PAINTER?

http://poorbuthappy.com/yourthing/post/need---a-good-painter--this-guy-should-qualify/

RACHEL (89 YEARS) & CHARIOT (540,000 MILES)…

http://positivepelham.blogspot.com/2009/06/video-rachel-and-chariot-together-for.html

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Please feel free to use excerpts from this newsletter as long as you give credit with a link to our page: www.ThirdAgeCenter.com. Thank you!

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“Checking Baggage” Enables “Joining the Participation”

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:49:36 GMT

“Checking Baggage” Enables “Joining the Participation”

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Friday, July 10, 2009

Subject: “Checking Your Baggage”

Think of it as "checking your baggage," since, as in an airplane flight, you can reclaim any essential needs upon arrival. In the meantime you bring your essence (i.e., your true Self) to join the "participation," which has always been what you truly wanted to do anyway.

From: Father William

Sent: Saturday, July 11, 2009

Subject: RE: “Checking Your Baggage”

I certainly agree with bringing my essence to join the “participation” is what I’ve always wanted to do anyway, but I no longer have much confidence that airlines will get me and my luggage to the same airport at the same time.

Today seems right for finishing the newsletter. We’ll see…

“The State of Being Alone” = Emptying Oneself

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:47:44 GMT

“The State of Being Alone” = Emptying Oneself

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Friday, July 3, 2009

Subject: James Baldwin's "The state of being alone."

My eye picked out the above, since I think that refers not to only artists but to all those who find that emptying themselves is the ultimate fulfillment. By relaxing into participation we do exactly that. Letting go of baggage is the initial requirement. We bring only an essence into the participation.

From: Father William

Sent: Thursday, July 9, 2009

Subject: RE: James Baldwin's "The state of being alone."

I am feeling a similar guidance to let go so there is only an essence to bring into the participation. And thank you for your guidance – my musings will be very different because of our interaction...

Don’t Load on Notions Like Pursuing/Not Pursuing!

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:45:11 GMT

Don’t Load on Notions Like Pursuing/Not Pursuing!

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Friday, July 3, 2009

Subject: RE: Pursuing & Not Pursuing

Second Journey and "passionate purpose" make a lot of sense to me. However I think this can be done without loading on such notions as pursuing or not pursuing! There is no need for a "driver" on this particular train because by relaxing into participation we become "guided from outside ourselves."

From: Father William

Sent: Saturday, July 4, 2009

Subject: RE: Pursuing & Not Pursuing

Thank you for this input - it's helped my musings greatly. As a result, I'm adding this piece to the other two...

Bill

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2. “MAKE AN ART FORM OF DEEP RELAXATION”

FROM “HERON DANCE” BY ROD MACIVER

http://www.herondance.org/Turning-Points-W328C2_webpage.aspx

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To Pursue or Not to Pursue

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:42:39 GMT

To Pursue or Not to Pursue

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2009

Subject: RE: Acceptance – The Essential for Maturity?

You are absolutely right at the essence of "acceptance," that it is entranceway into participation.

From: Father William

Sent: Thursday, July 2, 2009

Subject: Pursuing & Not Pursuing

I’m working on the newsletter for July and am going to let the two attached articles frame a choice for readers to consider – whether to pursuing or not pursuing is likely to take one further into participation – and I love to have any of your thoughts...

2. EXCAVATIONS IN THREE PARTS

BY BOLTON ANTHONY, FOUNDER OF “SECOND JOURNEY”

http://www.secondjourney.org/Itin.htm

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4. THE JOY OF LESS

BY PICO IYER, THE NEW YORK TIMES, JUNE 7, 2009

http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/the-joy-of-less/?ex=1260072000&;en=662530a9293faaa0&ei=5087&WT.mc_id=NYT-E-I-NYT-E-AT-0610-L11

CTAL Newsletter – June 2009

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:53:15 GMT

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THE CENTER FOR THIRD AGE NEWSLETTER – JUNE 2009

1. FATHER WILLIAM’S MONTHLY MUSINGS

2. INTRODUCTION TO “ILLUSIONS”

3. HERON DANCE – TO LIVE LIFE GUIDED BY LOVE

4. JUNG, INDIVIDUATION & THIRD AGE

5. OLD AGE: JOURNEY INTO SIMPLICITY

6. ELSA & FRED
7. THIS MONTH'S LINKS

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THIS MONTH’S QUOTE – ROBERT BROWNING

   “Grow old along with me!
    The best is yet to be,
    The last of life, for which the first was made...”

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1. FATHER WILLIAM’S MONTHLY MUSINGS

June Greetings, Good Friends...

I know, I know. This newsletter is very late this month. I have excuses like traveling back from New Zealand, attending and over-partying at daughter Kate’s Master’s graduation, selling and moving from our condo and setting up a home to welcome lovely Donna into. I am not good at most of these and would like to whine longer, but I doubt you’ll buy much more. So onto what you may be interested in...

Having worked on my personal “Third Age Transformation” for the last eight years, I’ve come to accept my journey from Second Age to Third lies in recognizing, embracing and living a particular paradox. This entails developing a strong and whole ego so I can then reduce its role in my life. The details follow.

A major work of our Second Age is to complete a healthy development of the ego, that is, to have sufficient life success to feel we’ve done and been “enough” on whichever dimensions we have made important to ourselves. In my case, these included feeling appreciated as personally attractive and strong, feeling valued for my intelligence and wit, and feeling a part of long and loving relationships. Note the over-emphasis on “feeling” here. This is because it is what the ego “feels” or believes that creates its reality – and its sense of success.

You might want to take a moment to acknowledge the dimensions that are important to your ego, even if they’re unattractive to you. I certainly had trouble owning my enormous needs for attention and applause, but, once I did, I could go after what I wanted much more directly.

I remember when this happened for me. I was teaching high school English, and I wanted the kids to think I was a fantastic teacher. Before I could admit this to myself, I was unconsciously over-rewarding the ones who flattered me and subtly punishing the ones who criticized. One day it hit me, and I said to the students, “You know what I really want? As each class ends, I want you all to rise to your feet applauding and saying things like, ‘Oh, thank you, Mr. Idol, you’ve changed my life!’” Now owning up didn’t make me stop wanting this, but, by turning it into a public joke, I gained a much greater degree of conscious choice about how much I’d let it manipulate me. And my admission gave us all permission for greater personal honesty.

So in Second Age my ego insisted on being “A Big Deal.” Fortunately, I realized I could help guide its development by being aware of what it cried out for and helping it find healthy ways to get what it needed. As I turned 60, my ego had evolved enough, thank heaven, to let me open to the possibilities of Third Age.

But opening to possibilities is one thing; following the path of those possibilities is quite another and has taken old FW another eight years.

That’s because my version of evolving into Third Age requires moving from my ego’s “wanting to be recognized as so very, very special” to my Self’s “relaxing into full participation in my total ordinariness.” As you might guess, my ego is having some problems with this.

The Catch-22 is, of course, that the ego resists its relegation from being the “Big Deal Self” to only an agent serving the real Self. The strength of this resistance is directly proportionate to how much of ourselves we’ve put into “amounting to something” as teacher, consultant or ex-President. I certainly put a lot of myself into the many roles I played, and this is why my evolution from ego-identity to Self-identity is taking so long.

Recently I’ve noticed how many levels there are to this journey, and like peeling back the layers of an onion, there are often tears involved. I’m realizing any illusion of superiority occurring in any form is another grasping attempt by my ego to hold on to what it believes it had before. This nonsense includes feeling superior because I’ve become more “ordinary” or because...

“The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made...”

Comparisons, especially “best’s,” are superiority’s bread and butter – take them all with a grain of salt, a sense of humor and a big dose of compassion for your struggling ego.

You’ll find ways to think about all this in Richard Bach’s delightful “Introduction to Illusions” (#2), Rod MacIver’s recent issue of Heron Dance (#3)and an adaptation of Robert Gray’s “Ericksonian Approaches to the Ego-Self Axis” (#4). Each offers a different perspective on what letting go and relaxing into the mundane makes possible. Of course, the Oneness turns out to be both sublime and mundane (since Oneness = oneness) - it takes a great deal of spaciousness to accept such a reversal of Second Age reality...

Happy Early Summer, Father William

PS: As you travel this path to your true Self, it helps to remember these words from “Desiderata”:

“Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should...”

For more of Father William:

http://www.fatherwilliam.org/

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2. INTRODUCTION TO “ILLUSIONS”

A BOOK BY RICHARD BACH

There was a master come unto the earth, born in the holy land of Indiana, raised in the mystical hills east of Fort Wayne.

The Master learned of this world in the public schools of Indiana, and as he grew, in his trade as a mechanic of automobiles.

But the Master had learnings from other lands and other schools, from other lives that he'd lived. He remembered these, and remembering became wise and strong, so that others saw his strength and came to him for counsel.

The Master believed that he had power to help himself and all mankind, and as he believed so it was for him, so that others saw his power and came to him to be healed of their troubles and their many diseases.

The Master believed that it is well for any man to think upon himself as a son of God, and as he believed, so it was, and the shops and garages where he worked became crowded and jammed with those who sought his learning and his touch; and the streets outside with those who longed only that the shadow of his passing might fall upon them, and change their lives.

It came to pass, because of the crowds, that the several foremen and shop managers bid the Master leave his tools and go his way, for so tightly was he thronged that neither he nor other mechanics had room to work upon the automobiles.

So it was that he went into the countryside, and people following begin to call him Messiah, and worker of miracles; and as they believed, it was so.

If a storm passed as he spoke, not a rain drop touched a listener’s head; and the last of the multitude heard his words as clearly as the first, no matter lightning nor thunder in the sky about. And always he spoke to them in parables.

And he said unto them, "Within each of us lies the power of our consent to health and to sickness, to riches and to poverty, to freedom and to slavery. It is we who control these, and not another."

A mill-man spoke and said, "Easy words for you, Master, for you are guided as we are not, and need not toil as we toil. A man has to work for his living in this world."

The Master answered and said, "Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river.

"The current of the river swept silently over them all - young and old, rich and poor, good and evil, the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self.

"Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth.

"But one creature said at last, ‘I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom.'

"The other creatures laughed and said,' Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom!'

"But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.

"Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.

"And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger cried,' See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us all!'

"And the one carried in the current said,' I am no more Messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure.'

"But they cried the more,' Savior!' all the while clinging to the rocks, and when they looked again he was gone, and they were left alone making legends of a Savior."

And it came to pass when he saw that the multitude thronged him the more day on day, tighter and closer and fiercer than ever they had, when he saw that they pressed them to heal them without rest, and feed them always with his miracles, to learn for them and to live their lives, he went alone that day on to a hilltop apart, and there he prayed.

And he said in his heart, Infinite Radiant Is, if it be they will, let this cup pass from me, let me lay aside this impossible task. I cannot live the life of one other soul, yet ten thousand cry to me for life. I'm sorry I allowed it all to happen. If it be thy will, let me go back to my engines and my tools and let me lived as other men.

And a voice spoke to him on the hilltop, a voice neither male nor female, loud nor soft, a voice infinitely kind. And the voice said unto him, "Not my will, but thine be done, for what is thy will is mine for thee. Go thy way as other men, and be thou happy on the earth."

And hearing, the Master was glad, and gave thanks and came down from the hilltop humming a little mechanic’s song. And when the throng pressed him with its woes, beseeching him to heal for it and learn for it and feed it nonstop from his understanding and entertain it with his wonders, he smiled upon the multitude and said pleasantly unto them, "I quit."

For a moment the multitude was stricken dumb with astonishment.

And he said unto them, "If a man told God that he wanted most of all to help the suffering world, no matter the price to himself, and God answered and told him what he must do, should the man do as he was told?"

"Of course, Master!" cried the many. "It should be pleasure for him to suffer the tortures of hell itself, should God ask it!"

"No matter what those tortures, nor how difficult the task?"

"Honor to be hanged, glory to be nailed to a tree and burned, if so be that God has asked," said they.

"And what would you do," the Master said unto the multitude, "if God spoke directly to your face and said,' I command that you be happy in the world, as long as you live.' What would you do then?"

And the multitude was silent, not a voice not a sound was heard upon the hillsides, across the valleys where they stood.

And the Master said unto the silence, "In the path of our happiness shall we find the learning for which we have chosen this lifetime. So it is that I have learned this day, and choose to leave you now to walk your own path, as you please."

And he went his way through the crowds and left them, and he returned to the everyday world of men and machines.

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3. HERON DANCE – TO LIVE LIFE GUIDED BY LOVE

BY RODERICK MACIVER, APRIL 30, 2009

At least two different warblers have arrived over the last week or so in the Adirondack woods: the Chestnut-sided (listen here) and Magnolia Warblers (listen here). Almost all of the birds you hear singing are male but there are at least three exceptions: Cardinals, Red-winged Blackbirds, and Orioles. As they have for about 180 million years, black fly larvae will emerge as adults as soon as the recently cool weather warms — which is anticipated later this week.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to live life guided by love. I’ve got a long, long way to go but every day I’m trying to get a little further down the path. Love is a simple and obviously profound word, and in part that’s why I like it. I need something I can boil right down because I fall so easily off track.

I remember an inmate who had been in prison a very long time saying in an interview — it may even been one of the inmate interviews I did in the early days of Heron Dance — that “I love you” is one phrase we humans never tire of hearing. An Op-Ed article in the New York Times last week, by David Brooks, described a 72-year study of 268 men who attended Harvard College. They were gifted, affluent and apparently well-adjusted. It is a fascinating article (visit here to view), and the conclusion of the man who oversaw the work for 42 years was that “Love is happiness. Full stop.” The degree of happiness in a person’s life depends on the quality of human relationships.

Yes, I agree, but there is more to it than just human relationships. The degree of love we are able to pour into a work — for instance, a creative work — or even a place — for instance, a wild place or a community — affects the quality of our lives. Pouring love into a home even has an expansive effect: — creating a home of peace and beauty, a simple home, a home where others — strangers, friends and family — feel comfortable and at peace, contributes to the quality of a human life.

To build a life around love requires thought and care. You need to be rested. You can’t fill yourself with love when you are overtired and grouchy. You need to live a low stress life, a life with a margin in reserve — a financial margin, an energy margin. You need to put understanding and acceptance ahead of winning conflicts or prevailing in disputes. A life built around love probably involves a fair amount of surrender over relatively minor issues.

You also need to minimize the number of moving parts. When I’m going in lots of different directions or responsible for lots of different projects, I can’t find love inside myself and can’t offer it to others or even to my work. All of these things have some relationship with one’s friendship with oneself and, perhaps, as a part of that, a relationship to time in reflection and quiet meditation.

The Op-Ed piece also contains these observations: “A third of the men would suffer at least one bout of mental illness. Alcoholism would be a running plague. The most mundane personalities often produced the most solid success.” Mundane? We can’t be what we’re not. I’m not mundane and don’t want to be, but I have a very happy life. I love adventure, challenge, and learning. I’m fascinated by life. But balance is another thing. I often struggle for balance. I’m prone to extremes. When I’m living a balanced life — work and play, physical exercise and rest, the paddle down a wild river and then the return home to a quiet evening — I’m most able to find the love inside myself and offer it to the world.

In celebration of the Great Dance of Life,

http://www.herondance.org/A-Pause-for-Beauty-C65_category.aspx

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4. JUNG, INDIVIDUATION & THIRD AGE

Adapted from “Ericksonian Approaches to the Ego-Self Axis” presented by Robert D. Gray at St. Francis College, Brooklyn, NY. June 5,1997.

Jungian theory suggests there exists in each individual a natural direction of personal development. Wilson Van Dusen called this our “Natural Depths.” Every life, from the moment it is born, seeks this potential and is naturally drawn to it. It represents the full realization of our genetic, intellectual, and spiritual potential. Jung called this path Individuation.

WE USE THE FIRST PART OF LIFE TO DEVELOP THE EGO

Typically, the time from birth to adulthood is developmentally aimed at the production of a stable ego, that is, a relatively consistent representation of the Self and the focus for consciousness. Until its stabilization in early adulthood, the ego is driven and drawn, molded and founded in unconscious process.

MATURITY BEGINS OUR PROCESS OF INDIVIDUATION & EGO-SELF SEPARATION

With maturity, each person begins the move towards individuation in which the projections of unconscious process (and with them the possibility of personal growth) are brought increasingly under conscious control. What had been unconscious is now brought into the realm of consciousness and the individual is led to fulfill the potential that lay dormant in the primitive psyche. This is the path of individuation in which the individual becomes increasingly conscious of his own potential and the directions it implies.

If we truly mature, in later Second Age the ego begins to recognize it is not the Self (who we are at the highest and deepest levels) and accepts its role as an agent working for the Self to manage our interactions with the world.

IN THIRD AGE WE FULLY RECOGNIZE & REALIZE OUR TRUE SELF

Classical Jungian psychology held that individuation was the course laid out for the latter part of life. If we can relax into our Third Age, we find there is accessible to each of us a path which represents the highest good and the fullest realization of our potential – a road of maximum benefit for which all of our personal biology yearns and which, when found, moves life into high gear. It is the “Bliss” referred to by Joseph Campbell in the oft repeated, and little understood maxim "Follow your bliss." When we open to and follow our personal paths of individuation, our unique Natural Depths come into full bloom, and we experience life in ways never before possible!

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Peace Is an Incremental Process

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 16:27:48 GMT

Peace Is an Incremental Process

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Monday, April 20, 2009

Subject: RE An Insight into My Enjoying Email

A very good point in your first paragraph about getting into real participation (RIP) by those other means. Also, I like the RIP shorthand additionally since it becomes a kind of code for our "own" communicado!

Yes, I think you have seized upon the meaning of "the demarcated world outside" very well. After all, not every kind of participation is positive--much of what a person finds himself engaged in is actually counterproductive, and sometimes it takes decades of such practices before we find out that an entirely DIFFERENT practice is called for in our lives! Incidentally, the latter is where I think seniors can discover their true "raison d’être."

After just completing the note to you about one's "raison d’être" I got to thinking of how a woman friend of mine here in Asheville, who had many long years of conducting "meaningful" searches, suddenly discovered herself conducting another one of those sessions, and said to herself, "What am I doing here, this is getting me nowhere?" She quit those efforts at once and withdrew from further "participation" until she had thoroughly examined all those years of effort, become a self-styled "hermit," and dropped most of her long established "friends." Fortunately, she and I are still friends, and few others understand what she did, but it is fascinating how that sudden "dawn" can descend on a person, isn't it?

From: Father William

Sent: Monday, April 20, 2009

Subject: “Freedom is an incremental process”

My “sudden dawn” is not so sudden. One of the thoughts in “The Shack” that struck me was “Freedom is an incremental process” which is how I’m experiencing my continuing awakening to RIP (much like the “three steps forward, two back” notion). This does seem to by my "raison d’être" now. It seems the best choices I make have to do with disengaging from counter-productive interactions...

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Subject: RE: “Freedom is an incremental process”

Delightful. Many dawns are shadowings.

From: Father William

Sent: Saturday, April 25, 2009

Subject: A New Baseline of Peace & Love

“Shadowings” are a very apt description for my many “dawns.” I am again struck by how easily my sense of peace and love in and for the world can come and go. The difference now is that peace, instead of disturbance, has become the baseline – the home – to which I consistently return. While sometimes seeming a small and subtle shift, this sense of love’s continuity is, in fact, a great step forward for me…

Slipping In & Out of the Jet Stream

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 16:26:46 GMT

Slipping In & Out of the Jet Stream

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Thursday, April 16, 2009

Subject: RE: Slipping In & Out of the Jet Stream--But, how slippery is it?

Interaction is one of those things that are cumulative, thus guaranteeing you'll have a large block to deal with at a time! The trouble is that if you are in a jet stream there is no place to park such a block. So, you "jet out of here." Somewhat comparable to a cocktail party, you have to escape into the demarcated world outside.

From: Father William

Sent: Friday, April 17, 2009

Subject: A Little More, Please

I’m not sure of all you mean here - please say more about what you mean by “a large block” and “the demarcated world outside”...

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2009

Subject: RE: A Little More, Please

Well, I guess I'm suggesting that "interaction" is a large block in the sense that it's an all involving sort of thing to have to gulp down all at once--at least sometimes, especially when there are a bunch of persons around you who are trying to engage you. At such moments there is little opportunity to withdraw into an introspective mode, and so the individual is forced to go along with something which may not concur with his actual sense of the situation. I believe that when that happens the person does not relax into participation in a desirable way. Under those circumstances I would want to get out of such artificial "interaction" by getting away from it as soon as possible.

From: Father William

Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2009

Subject: An Insight into My Enjoying Email

This makes perfect sense to me, Ed – thank you. And as a person so easily engaged, especially in a teaching sense, I do get very caught up in things “which may not concur with [my] actual sense of the situation.” It now occurs this is why I am so enjoying my email correspondence, newsletters and recorded radio shows – I am able to RIP (I like this as a short hand for our “relaxing into participation”) by getting away from interaction at any time.

I am still intrigued by your term “the demarcated world outside” and don’t feel I fully understand it – are you meaning a world with protective boundaries that allows RIP to occur much more easily?

A World with Much Tenderness & Sensitivity

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 16:25:11 GMT

A World with Much Tenderness & Sensitivity

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Sunday, April 12, 2009

Subject: RE: "The Shack" Makes Marketing Sense

I finished the book. I think it does give quite a bit of entre to another possible world, which is probably the author's intention anyway. What kind of a world does that seem to be? Obviously a world with much tenderness and sensitivity. In a world full of relationships that might be possible but probably only where the relationships were close? For instance, it would not be achievable in city life.

From: Father William

Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Subject: A World with Much Tenderness & Sensitivity

As much as I might wish otherwise, I think you are correct about relationships being less close in more intense environments. I know I am capable of much greater sensitivity living this stage of life in a quiet, remote and beautiful natural setting...

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Subject: RE: A World with Much Tenderness & Sensitivity

Yes, of course, but there are those extraordinary persons who can even be in prison and still be very much into tenderness and sensitivity. How is that possible? I have no idea!

What does strike me as true, is that the possibility of "going beyond" the merely rational remains available to those who don't ever let "vision" depart their environment. I think that you have latched onto the latter in the manner of entering a jet stream and you’re not going to be deterred....I'm supporting you.

From: Father William

Sent: Thursday, April 16, 2009

Subject: Slipping In & Out of the Jet Stream

I thank you for your support, my friend – and I still do go in and out of the jet stream! For example, even though I’ve supposedly been “on retreat” over the Easter weekend with 28 of the most tender and sensitive (23 female) people, I felt way stretched by the structure and interaction and am now finding my way back into the stream. I need very, very little face-to-face interaction at this point...

The Shack Makes Marketing Sense

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 16:23:28 GMT

The Shack Makes Marketing Sense

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Saturday, April 11, 2009

Subject: RE: “The Shack” & The Natural World

Well, I'm not quite through the book yet, but the part that you just referred to (in "the cave") about Sophia the Wisdom personality of all the ages, formulated itself in a real way for me. I think I'm ready to declare a victory for the author (I'm not sure who else!). Since it leaves a total gap, as far as I'm concerned. The rest of the "formulation," is, well, an epiphany of the imagination--for which I allow him as much credit as he seems to need!

I would say that I much prefer the Buddhist concept of the subject/object dichotomy to Wm Paul Young's. I see no need for the Trinitization of things. However, separation as a delineation of modern man I totally agree with. The question is: do we need to go from the plight of separation to that of trinitizing--why bother?

From: Father William

Sent: Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Subject: "The Shack" Makes Marketing Sense

I look upon “The Shack” as being most valuable for helping a great many Christians get a glimpse of - and maybe even return to - the message of Love and Oneness Christ was repeating. That it uses the Trinity to do this makes a great deal of marketing sense to me.

I agree they are many of us who don't need the message filtered and distorted through particular religious frames, but obviously there are a lot more who do. I am grateful to those, like Young, who will do this work. He's reaching an audience I never would...

The Shack & “The Natural World”

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 16:22:41 GMT

The Shack & “The Natural World”

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Monday, April 6, 2009

Subject: RE: Encouragement to Read “The Shack”

I just started the Introduction this afternoon. But I would add to your readers’ comments about this month's Musings, how much I see the natural world, the world of nature, as providing the vessel for all of our "participations". Relaxing into that natural world gives us the foundation from which to explore spiritually. If we start from that premise there is literally no limit.

From: Father William

Sent: Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Subject: “The Shack” & The Natural World

I think you will find the natural world is central to “The Shack’s” concept of spirit, especially when you get to part in the meadow when Mack is enabled to truly “see” – this reminds me of my own experiences with hallucinogenics in the 70’s...

Encouragement to Read The Shack

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 16:21:33 GMT

Encouragement to Read The Shack

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Subject: RE: Re-presenting Christianity via Multiple Channels

Your comment makes me rethink the idea of reading "The Shack." What I'm trying to avoid is the shelving of yet another unpleasant religious (especially the "Christian") type of encounter...I've done more than my share of the latter, I think! But if you're correct that The Shack offers "another channel," then maybe I'll have to reconsider. Could you possibly elucidate what you mean by that (give me encouragement!)?

From: Father William

Sent: Thursday, April 2, 2009

Subject: Encouragement to Read “The Shack”

Your request coincides perfectly with my finishing this month’s Musings:

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THE CENTER FOR THIRD AGE NEWSLETTER – APRIL 2009

1. FATHER WILLIAM’S MONTHLY MUSINGS

2. WHAT DO YOU GET IF YOU DIVIDE SCIENCE BY GOD?

3. US GOVT ASKS EVOLUTIONARY LEADERS FOR HELP

4. MEDITATION GIVES BRAIN A CHARGE

5. WHAT HAPPENS WHEN GEEZERS GO ONLINE?

6. THIS MONTH'S LINKS:

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THIS MONTH’S QUOTE – HOW WE LOST EDEN FROM “THE SHACK”

"When you chose independence over relationship, you became a danger to each other. Others became objects to be manipulated or managed for your own happiness..."

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1. FATHER WILLIAM’S MONTHLY MUSINGS

April Greetings, Good Friends...

I want to make clear this is not an “April Fool’s” issue. I know I run risks in quoting from “The Shack” because of the controversy it has created in the Christian world where many are embracing it as true Christianity and others are damning it as heresy. I do not want to engage, or propose anyone else engage, in these civil wars.

But I do want to use “The Shack’s” personally disturbing re-interpretation of humanity’s original error – our “fall from grace” and consequent loss of Eden – as my focus for this month’s Musings.

Let me tell you how this best-selling book (44 weeks at #1 on TNYT trade fiction list) came to me. I have a very bright, conservative friend in Texas, and we have compared our varying philosophical and political perspectives for decades now. While certainly not always agreeing, we do have great respect for each other. A few weeks ago he sent me this email:

“If you have not already read ‘The Shack’, you should know that I thought of you very often when reading it... I read it in its entirety. I seldom do that with fiction, as I am a slow reader, but this was masterfully done and so thought provoking...”

I’d not been aware of the book before, but got it easily even here in NZ, and would have read it twice except my lovely wife, Donna, absconded with it to Auckland (this is the lady who couldn’t bring herself “to use the G-word” when we first met).

One of its ideas is causing me to deeply rethink my lifelong values of independence and individuality. See if you might find yourself in a similar quandary, especially in these tumultuous times.

“The Shack” offers a new interpretation, at least for me, of how we screwed up things way back “in the garden.” It was in choosing to be independent of, rather than in relationship with, each other and the universe (put God here if you like) that we created – and will continue to create - our myriad problems.

Perhaps some of you don’t see this as such a big deal. But consider the impact on my conservative friend and me. Both of us have been deeply imprinted with the male archetype of independence. REAL MEN ARE NOT DEPENDENT – NO WAY, NO HOW! In my deepest psyche I have always tried to be like John Wayne. What if my choice of such independence - and isolation - is a tragic flaw?

I am not alone. This will require a huge re-conceiving of self for many of my generation, especially as we live longer and age beyond our physical abilities to be “self-sufficient”. But if we can succeed in releasing our addiction to independence, we might well reach another stage in our psychological evolution:

FOUR STAGES OF PSYCHOLOGICAL GROWTH

As we grow in years, hopefully we also grow in maturity. The progression of this psychological growth underlies our movement from childhood to mature adult:

AS A CHILD my vulnerability makes me dependent on my parents, teachers and other adults. This infantile DEPENDENCE is immature over-reliance on the authority of others. It is not adult behavior.

AS AN ADOLESCENT my need to grow creates a counter-dependence toward those I must now break away from. COUNTER-DEPENDENCE means resisting all authority no matter how appropriate or helpful the authority might be. This is the opposite Direction of Error of dependence; it is also immature behavior (although as teen-agers we didn't see it that way).

AS A YOUNG ADULT my accumulated power and intelligence open up new possibilities for independent thought and action. This healthy INDEPENDENCE initiates my capacity for mature self-direction and is part of everyone's movement out of adolescence. But it is not the end-all and be-all of our psychological growth.

AS A MATURE ADULT my experience, maturity and wisdom guide my power and allow an inter-dependence that can truly move the mountains of the world. INTER-DEPENDENCE combines self-direction with cooperation, and results in the ability genuinely relate to others so we can mutually build a world good for all.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? So why don’t I do what seems so reasonable?

Because I am deeply, deeply programmed* to believe independence, individuality and self-sufficiency are “the right way to be.” And in my “right way to be” comes “my right” to judge others who stray from the path of independence I’m so invested in.

But the paradox of judgment is another story for another time. Hope you enjoying the change of seasons wherever you are!

Much Love, FW

*If you’d like a look how our “deep, deep programming” occurs, check out:

http://www.fatherwilliam.org/FW-GL%20Unconscious%201.htm

For this month’s radio show about FW’s life’s seasons:

http://www.audioacrobat.com/play/Wz5PKgns

For more of Father William:

http://www.fatherwilliam.org/

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I plan to order a copy.

I look forward to your responses...

PS: Be patient with the first 75 pages – they develop the plot that has made it so readable for so many, but I found myself much more interested in the stuff that comes once Mack’s meeting with the trio begins...

I'll keep that in mind. Thanks.

There’s something more I’m recognizing about my continuing connection with The Shack. At first I was inspired by the re-presentation of Christianity in ways that match so much of my own spiritual understanding, and I still am. But what has become most important is that my reading of the narrative and dialogue has elevated me to a new ability to “relax into participation.” I now carry another presence in me I can access any time when I remember to do so. This access opens me to “relaxing” and gives me a friendly companion who is much like “the witness self” described in many traditions. What’s so right for me is this “ordinary” companion has a sense of humor while clearly not enmeshed in or confused by my normal world. In many ways, he reminds me of Kris Kristofferson. Of course, he would be seen by most Christians as a Jesus-like figure, but that is still too big a stretch for me. Like you, I am more comfortable in personal frameworks rather than institutional ones.

Re-Presenting Christianity via Multiple Channels

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 16:19:39 GMT

Re-Presenting Christianity via Multiple Channels

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Sunday, March 29, 2009

Subject: Spong on Job

I'm glad for that, and for your understanding of my diffidence! Do keep me informed of your "new and significant thoughts," to which I would be delighted to respond.

I'm sure you will be interested in the attached, written by John Shelby Spong, who is one of the New Consciousness thinkers. His wit and humor bring humans into an altered perspective of how humanity handles the need for the concept of perfectibility.

The Origins of the Bible, Part XXIII: Job, the Icon of New Consciousness

To those outside the traditional religious circles, the Book of Job is probably the best known book in the Bible. It raises the deepest human question and deals with the most ancient of human fears. It examines the issue of meaning through the lens of human suffering and the absence of fairness and justice. As such the Book of Job has a counterpart in every religious tradition of the world. The great 20th century psychiatrist Carl Jung used this book as the basis of his probing the dimensions of human life in what I want to believe is his most profound work, The Answer to Job. Solving the question of why there is evil and suffering has been part of the human inquiry forever. It should surprise no one that these themes find a place in the Bible.

The original story of Job seems to date from about 1000-800 BCE and versions of it can be found among many nations, leading us to suspect that this is a universal human narrative. The biblical version of this story, however, did not get written until the 500s. We can date it fairly accurately, since it reflects elements of Persian religion that came into Jewish awareness during and after the exile of the 6th century BCE. The Book of Job, for example, introduces the figure of Satan into the biblical story, but in this book Satan is not yet an evil figure or even a fallen angel. That would develop later. In Job Satan is simply a part of the heavenly court who acts on God's command. The prologue to this book sets the stage for the drama.

God and Satan are discussing the faithfulness of God's servant Job. Satan suggests that Job's faithfulness is only because he has been blessed with riches and a large family. "Why should he not be faithful?" Satan asks, "since the system of reward and punishment works for him?" Would he still be faithful, Satan wonders, if his faithfulness was not so abundantly rewarded? God defends Job's faithfulness as sincere, but resolves to determine whether God or Satan is correct. God authorizes Satan to test Job for a season. Satan would remove the rewards of the good life from Job in order to determine whether his faithfulness would continue. This is when tragedy sweeps down on Job. His wealth is destroyed, his wives and children are killed and his health is taken from him. Job then tries to reconcile the established wisdom that God rewards faithfulness and punishes evil with his experience. Job is a righteous man. There is no debate about that since even God has certified his goodness in the introduction. Job, however, has now been brought low by these calamities. If calamities result from an evil life, he wonders, how can the righteous Job goodness explain his misfortunes? The stage is set for the entrance of Job's comforters.

Three of Job's friends, Eliphaz, Zophar and Bildad, hear of Job's tragedies and come to console him. The conversation between Job and his friends goes on for some thirty chapters. Supporting their conclusions, Job's friends have the common wisdom of that age, made up of undoubted "truths." God, as a just deity, rewards righteousness and punishes evil. For God to punish a righteous man would not only be inconceivable, but blasphemous. Job's friends buttress their argument by quoting scripture, since the Bible was filled with this traditional interpretation of God. Every defeat that the people of Israel had ever endured was seen by them as God's punishment for their disobedience. The message of the prophets was clear. The Jewish people had been punished with boils when King David conducted a census that displeased God. Moses had been punished with death because he had put God to the test in the wilderness of a place called Meribah. God had rewarded the people of Israe l with the Exodus and the miracle at the Red Sea for the faithful endurance of their sufferings under the oppression of the Egyptians. This idea that if one obeyed the law and worshiped God properly one could count on blessings from heaven was a central tenet in popular Jewish religion. If one did not, the vengeance of God was said to be sure and swift. Deep down this firmly held belief delivered the Jewish people from the threat of meaninglessness. There was purpose, not chaos, in life. This purpose was best revealed in that human behavior controlled the response of God. Human goodness put God on one's side with rewards. Human faithlessness and evil brought God's wrath and divine retribution. Job's friends were confident in the rightness of their convictions.

When they confronted Job's calamities, there was, therefore, only one possible explanation. Job must be guilty of some unseen evil, so they came to help him come to grips with his sinfulness, to beg for forgiveness and to seek the mercy of God. They felt compelled to get Job to see the evil of his ways, believing that to be the only way to bring an end to his tragedy. Theological correctness was thus confronted by human experience and, as so often is the case, it simply did not fit.

Job stood alone against this common theological wisdom. He knew he was not deserving of these calamities. He could not deny the experience of his own character. He knew himself to be upright and honest, one who not only obeyed the law faithfully, but who also paid proper homage to the God of his ancestors. Yet he also knew that he had witnessed the loss of all that he valued â€“ his family, his fortune and his health. In the most dramatic moment in the story, Job is portrayed as sitting on top of a garbage heap, scratching the infected sores of his body with a piece of broken pottery, alone with his inner integrity. None of his calamities made rational sense unless he was deserving of this treatment. The pressure from his friends was to face and to admit these things, to judge himself as evil and thus to make his suffering make sense.

The meaning of life itself was thus at stake in this debate. Only by the admission of his evil could he keep at bay the deep and perennial human fear that maybe there was not a God who was in control. If there is no God then perhaps life was chaotic, ruled only by chance, fate or luck, possessing no purpose, no meaning and no redemptive qualities. If that turned out to be the case then the human alternative was only to hope for the chance of blessing, since one could not earn it, or to endure endless suffering if that was to be his fate, with no further court of appeal. If the common theological wisdom did not operate then Job had to decide either that God was not just or that there was no God. This was the unspoken fear that Job's tormenters were resisting, and like all theological fundamentalists, that was why they pressed their case with such single-minded fervor.

Job, on the other hand, was willing to run this enormous risk because the common theological wisdom simply did not interpret properly his experience. With the unprecedented courage of one seeking a new human breakthrough, he stood against the conclusions of his friends, forcing on them a new alternative.

The Book of Job ends not with a negotiated settlement of this dispute, but with a new vision of God who spoke out of the whirlwind to challenge the inadequacy of every human attempt to state how God works and to discredit every human effort to define the holy. The voice of God reminded Job that the human mind cannot embrace the reality of God. "Where were you when the foundations of the word were laid?" The ways of the divine are not the ways of the human. That is always the fatally wrong theological assumption.

Religion at its core is based on the arrogance of believing that human beings can not only discern the ways of God, but they can also act in such a way as to control the actions of God. The human sense of fairness is read into the understanding of God. The human attempt to control human behavior reinforces the common theological wisdom that expresses itself in a reward and punishment mentality. Heaven and hell are nothing more than the assertion that the mind of God, as we human beings have created it, is still operating to reward or punish us after our deaths. Religion almost inevitably creates God in the image of the human being and then tries to force reality into that frame of reference. That is why there is no religious system that is eternal. That is why when human experience can no longer be interpreted adequately inside the traditional religious framework, the framework itself begins to die.

The death of a religious system is never easy. The fear engendered by the loss of religion, or even what we think of as the death of God, engulfs human life in a sea of potential meaninglessness. Such a death always produces emotional denial or fundamentalist fervor; a killing hostility directed toward that which or those who have shattered our religious delusions. It also, however, always produces emancipation from the evils of religion that many people welcome. It is the evils of religion that force us either into a new religious oppression or the building of a new secular city. The struggle to find a new alternative, however, also stretches our consciousness into new dimensions of what it means to be human and that is where hope is born.

Job resisted the theological conclusions of his day. Job refused to let his experience be interpreted by the categories of the past. He held on until the birth of a new consciousness engulfed him. Job is thus an icon through which we can see the meaning of a profound religious paradigm shift.

Today we are experiencing exactly that sort of paradigm shift. Our experience has rendered the religious answers of yesterday to be inoperative. The defenders of the inadequate answers of the past are anxious. The critics of those answers feel a new freedom. The God of yesterday dies as we struggle to view the birth of the God of tomorrow. Job is thus an eternal symbol of that eternal human struggle.

From: Father William

Sent: Sunday, March 29, 2009

Subject: Re-presenting Christianity via Multiple Channels

Spong makes great sense to me even if his newsletter does seem a bit overpriced. “The Shack” makes the same kind of sense in a similar way – by re-presenting the nature of Christianity – but doesn’t create resistance by framing the redo as “the death of a religious system.”

I do know you support the death of religious systems, but I doubt you and Spong will be effectively persuasive with the vast majority of “Christians” around, so I’m glad “The Shack” offers another channel…

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Subject: RE: Re-presenting Christianity via Multiple Channels

Going Deeper & The Shack

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 16:18:37 GMT

Going Deeper & The Shack

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Saturday, March 21, 2009

Subject: RE: How the Light Gets In

Ah, so, are we looking only for "the cracks in everything"? I think not. What is not "cracked," or crackable, would be, I would say, what we are looking for. What the cracks do reveal to us is that there is something beneath the cracks (as often, darkness rather than light), and that it is through the darkness that we find the light--if we are willing to endure through our own obtuseness.

From: Father William

Sent: Sunday, March 22, 2009

Subject: The “Un-Crackable”

Yes, I see the cracks as only giving us a glimpse of the “un-crackable” and sometimes requiring us to go into the darkness to find that light. I seem to feel confident of finding the light more frequently...

Going “deeper” seems to be on both our minds right now.

I am reading a book you may not be interested in as it initially appears to be Christian based. But about 40% in we learn the Trinity is portrayed with a black mama as God called “Papa,” Jesus as a woodworking good guy out of Northern Exposure and the Holy Spirit as a lovely oriental lass who’s hard to see directly. Jesus says a number of things I like such as – “I’m not big on religions” and “I’m not a Christian.”

The intriguing new notion for me is that our primary error is seeking to be “independent” and thereby “safe.” (Of course, ownership is a tactic for achieving such independence and safety.) While I’m only ¾ done, I think the re-presentation of how we “fell out of the garden” (choosing "independence" and therefore "separation") creates some deep rethinking for conservatives. It certainly is for the conservative friend who suggested it to me. Any interest?

The Shack by Wm Paul Young

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Subject: RE: Going Deeper: Ownership & Independence

Yes, I am interested, so tell me more.

From: Father William

Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2009

Subject: “The Shack”

I’m feeling a bit low energy this morning so here are a couple of reviews of
“The Shack” for you to check out. The first is an attack from a traditional Christian perspective, and this does a good job of illustrating what I find so positive – I recommend you go to the link for the whole thing…

Deceived by a counterfeit "Jesus"

The twisted "truths" of The Shack & A Course in Miracles

By Berit Kjos - February 14, 2008

http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/08/shack.htm

Two books (one new, one old) have suddenly grabbed public attention and captured the hearts of multitudes. One is long and instructional -- a dictation from a channeled spirit guide. The other is a fictional testimony full of tear-jerking dialogue. A Course in Miracles (ACIM) is obviously occult, while the more subtle message of The Shack by William P. Young has been widely accepted in postmodern churches.

The two books share a common message. I saw a stark preview of it back in 1992. Skimming through a magazine called Well-Being Journal, I noticed this New Age "insight" from the author's "inner guide:"

"Many people believe in evil, sin, and dark forces. It is your purpose to teach the opposite which is the Truth: there is no devil, no hell, no sin, no guilt except in the creative mind of humankind."

I heard similar deceptions at Gorbachev's 1997 State of the World Forum. At the time, keynote speaker Marianne Williamson was touting the Kabbalah, not A Course in Miracles (ACIM). While those New Age "insights" would fit both, they are best expressed through ACIM, which Williamson is now popularizing through Oprah Winfrey's weekly radio program.

The Shack calls for a similar denial of reality. Yet countless pastors and church leaders are delighting in its message. By ignoring (or redefining) sin and guilt, they embrace an inclusive but counterfeit "Christianity" that draws crowds but distorts the Bible. Discounting Satan as well, they weaken God's warnings about deception. No wonder His armor for today's spiritual war became an early victim of this spreading assault on Truth...

This one is quite lengthy (even in its short form), but is written by “The Shack’s” author and co-authors – gives a full story of how the book came about and evolved…

http://theshackreview.com/content/TheShackShorterReview.pdf

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Subject: RE: “The Shack”

I read the reviews that you forwarded. It would also be interesting to read "reviews" by someone who is not an obvious evangelical believer! They are so quick (the evangelicals) to come out of their hiding places where only the Word is digested.

I don't think I want to read The Shack--it sounds rather elemental to me, from my early background in the evangelicalism of my mother (something I rejected long ago), and my more recent exposure to the practices of Unitarian-Universalism, which I have likewise come to regard as inadequate. That there is evil in the world I do not doubt, but I don't blame that on the "fallen nature" of humanity like the Bible does.

We each have to write our own "book."

From: Father William

Sent: Saturday, March 28, 2009

Subject: RE: “The Shack”

I didn't think it would suit you - and it is triggering new and significant thoughts in me. When, and if, I make some sense of those, I'll share them with you...

Still Taking Space & “The Cracks in Everything”

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 16:14:57 GMT

Still Taking Space & “The Cracks in Everything”

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Friday, March 20, 2009

Subject: RE: “Effing” & A Question

"Getting more to offer"! Ah, that is indeed the question. Re your question, since our recent dispute over the meaning of a particular concept I have become hesitant to make any claim of overall agreement!

The ineffable seems always to be pristine territory. That's why your suggestion of how to get persons to venture out into same seems so important to me.

From: Father William

Sent: Friday, March 20, 2009

Subject: Still Taking Space

I don’t want you to be hesitant about making any claims you want, especially the more outrageous ones! When I feel I need to push back a bit, I will. Go ahead, my friend, wherever your thinking takes us.

I, too, think helping people experiment with their versions of the ineffable is important, and, if I do return to that work, I’ll be much better for all because of the space I am taking. I just had too much ego involved in the previous work, and the ego strokes I got were too much of the motivation. Unlike Jung, it’s taking me more than four years…

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Saturday, March 21, 2009

Subject: RE: Still Taking Space

And, remember, in the case of Carl Jung he had to go against the inflexible giant of an ego in the person of Freud before he even started his "four years," (at least as I recall). I wonder if that tells us something--that there has to be a time of dark struggle before any light can appear? That "light" also seems to come in like the surf from a vast ocean of discovery before it throws up the sands and shells for us to sift. Perhaps that's the way evolution unfolded itself to Darwin.

From: Father William

Sent: Saturday, March 21, 2009

Subject: How the Light Gets In

I was too rebellious (read that ego-centered) to tolerate another ego like Freud’s for very long, so most of mine is self-constructed. Deconstructing is finally becoming not only easier, but enjoyable!

And these words from Leonard Cohen have been floating around my head for some weeks now...

“Ring the bells that still will ring.

Put aside your perfect offering.

There is a crack, a crack in everything –

That’s how the light gets in.”

Daimons & The Ineffable...

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:16:30 GMT

Daimons & The Ineffable...

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Monday, Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Subject: RE: Daimons & The Ineffable

In the event you find out how to "effing the ineffable" please let me know--that will be ..."beyond?" Which reminds me of a column which appears each month in "Tikkun," titled Beyondananda (a takeoff on eastern philo/religiousity). It's easy to spoof that sort of thing, for much of it is fake. On the other hand, I think an honest appraisal of "spirit" is what you and I are interested in unearthing. Come to think of it I'm not sure you agree with that last sentence!

As for daimon, I somehow gain satisfaction from the word's antiquity. And because I've for a long time thought that ancient Greek philosophy was onto something that unfortunately got squashed by a victorious Christianity, it is necessary to go back to that time period before venturing into something "beyond" where they were.

From: Father William

Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2009

Subject: “Effing” & A Question

Like Watts, my business also was “effing the ineffable." To me this meant helping people gain enough of a rationale for the ineffable to get interested in trying to experience it. That plus offering some simple exercises (like The Gallery of Vision) to help tastes of the experience occur. I may go back into business when I have more to offer.

Why would you think I wouldn’t agree that “an honest appraisal of ‘spirit’ is what you and I are interested in unearthing.”?

“Effing the Ineffable"...

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:15:31 GMT

“Effing the Ineffable"...

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009

Subject: RE: Silence, Glory & Available Grace

Yes, I got the pictures of the urn--beautiful! Apparently, you have a Socratic "daimon" that appears to you at essential moments. Congratulations! So now you know you are on the right path! I want to be in tune with you as you progress.

I'm glad you are able to remain in "the silence." The silence is the ineffable.

From: Father William

Sent: Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Subject: Daimons & The Ineffable

I love the notion of a “Daimon” – Have you read Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy? That’s where I learned about daimons in depth.

I do seem to be pretty solidly located in the light now, and being able to spend longer bits of time in internal silence is the key, I think.

I enjoy Alan Watts’ saying, "I'm in the business of effing the ineffable."

Finding My Path Even Closer to Home...

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:14:58 GMT

Finding My Path Even Closer to Home...

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Thursday, March 11, 2009

Subject: RE: “The Art” = “Receivership of Reconnection”

Today, for no apparent reason, a Christmas song came to mind: "Angels from the realms of glory, wing their flight o'er all the world..." I thought to myself, "how inspiring." I don't believe in angels, but inspiration I do believe in. Is this an example of how the spiritual in concept is transformed into comprehensible form for human benefit? I.e., one doesn't have to believe in something in order to benefit in a very real way!

Did you receive this message?

From: Father William

Sent: Sunday, March 15, 2009

Subject: Silence, Glory & Available Grace

I did get your message, Ed, and apologize for taking so long to reply. I’ve been working on practicing “the art” and think I have mastered a small early step. When my thoughts run on (which they do all the time) and I notice (which is much less frequent), I am able to close my eyes and switch gears into silence for a few minutes. I’m not able to stay long in this peaceful place, but I am able to find it regularly now. I want to continue increasing the frequency of my “noticing” and the length of time I remain in the silence.

Thank you for the lines from the Christmas song. Like you, I am inspired by them, not in a literal way, but as a metaphor of how grace is so available to us all. I see my finding my silence as a part of this inspiration and grace...

From: Father William

Sent: Sunday, March 15, 2009

Subject: Finding My Path Even Closer to Home

In 1975 I had a vision of being in my path moving toward a great sun on the horizon. The light was drawing me toward it, and I knew I was on my path and had been travelling it for some time. I also knew I had gone as far as could and that I couldn’t see over the horizon to where I would go next. I wanted to see what the future held and how get there, but I couldn’t. This was partially frustrating, but mostly I thought it meant a big change to another path I couldn’t quite imagine.

That path turned out to be a quarter century of immersion into the material world consulting and all that brought with it. It was necessary and enjoyable to do at the time, and I’m glad to have finished with it. Since 2001 I’ve slowly retreated from the external world into what I now call “my solitude” where I have plenty of time for all that matters to me. I’m experiencing a relaxation and peace that allows me to open to the internal life. It is a joyous thing!

A new insight revealed this to me. My path didn’t go over the horizon to more in the external world, even though that was what I needed to live out for another twenty-five years. My path, when I was ready, led into the light where I became part of the Spirit it represents, and, once I relaxed into entering and participating within, it was a new path I was beginning. That’s where I am now, and it is such a perfect place at this time in my life. Thank you all who helped it be possible...

“The Art” = “Receivership of Reconnection”...

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:10:30 GMT

“The Art” = “Receivership of Reconnection”...

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Sunday, March 8, 2009

Subject: RE: Once Again You Open a Portal for Me

You're welcome, Bill. Sounds like a good course toward intensifying "the art."

From: Father William

Sent: Monday, March 9, 2009

Subject: “The Art”

It feels like a workable way for me. And I would like to learn more about your experience of "the art"...

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Monday, March 9, 2009

Subject: RE: “The Art”

O.K., so I experience "the art" as coming to me--I don't go to the art. "The art" is the ineffable. IT rejoins us, not we, it. Receivership is the role we have to play in this game. The assignment we have is very simple, that of reception. The suggestion here is that persons, during most of their lifelines, lose connectedness. When opportunity is provided, along the way, to "reconnect", it is something we must seize!

From: Father William

Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Subject: “The Art” = “Receivership of Reconnection”

Yes, yes, yes! And I am slowly but surely developing this art. Mostly it is remembering – in this moment – receiving is what I want to do. When I remember, it is not hard to do. In fact, it may be that the remembering to receive creates the act of reception.

Here’s where my gratitude for what I call in solitude helps. In peace and quiet I remember to receive much more often; when I’m engaged in the world of interaction, remembrances are few and far between…

Once Again You Open a Portal for Me...

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 17:19:51 GMT

Once Again You Open a Portal for Me...

From: Elder Ed

Sent: Friday, March 6, 2009

Subject: RE:

Yeah, Bill, I'm sorry I got us into this "rift." I set out, I now think, to make some comments about what a person goes through when he is in a state of solitude, but I didn't sufficiently explain to you what it was that I was attempting to do. When, after several tries at it which failed, I gave up in frustration! For that I apologize! I don't want the rift to get any bigger so I'll try again to describe what it was that I was attempting to comment on.

I can see how you would react at what appeared to you to be an effort on my part to redefine the condition known as solitude. I, too, am to a degree familiar with that state of being--and I would call it what is known in psychology as an "altered state of consciousness." You might not agree to the latter, but what I've experienced on such occasions is that I am not in the everyday mode of consciousness but in an intensification that transcends the "ordinary." What I was trying to describe to you what how I saw that intensity as an "art form" composed of spiritual connections which are beyond yourself that provide your life with meaning, value, and purpose. The more such connections you have, the more spiritual you are. The strength of those connections determines spiritual intensity. During solitude an "art form" takes shape which is only possible because of its intensity. The reason I call it an art form is that it is the personal product of those intense connections which you experience as transcendent.

From: Father William

Sent: Friday, March 6, 2009

Subject: I’m Enjoying Again!

Thank you for responding so quickly and caringly. What you say makes perfect sense to me, and I will say much more later. Right now I’m struggling a bit to get the newsletter out, and as soon as that’s done, I’ll share my experiences of “an intensification that transcends the ‘ordinary’”...

Much love, Bill

From: Father William

Sent: Saturday, March 7, 2009

Subject: Once Again You Open a Portal for Me

Well, the newsletter is done, and I really liked doing it. Not that it captures very clearly what I’m learning, especially from you, but that it took me a bit further along my learning path.

I couldn’t agree more about solitude being a portal to an "altered state of consciousness" and “an intensification that transcends the ‘ordinary.’” But I am most inspired by your emphasis on those altered stated and intensities being art forms:

“What I was trying to describe to you what how I saw that intensity as an ‘art form’ composed of spiritual connections which are beyond yourself that provide your life with meaning, value, and purpose. The more such connections you have, the more spiritual you are. The strength of those connections determines spiritual intensity. During solitude an ‘art form’ takes shape which is only possible because of its intensity. The reason I call it an art form is that it is the personal product of those intense connections which you experience as transcendent.”

I feel as if I am on the threshold of developing my art as a deliberate practice rather than lurching into those transcendent experiences willy-nilly (which has been my “method” for most of these first 70 years). Your presenting it as a personal art form to be consciously developed takes me forward a good bit in my evolution.

I now look forward to my waking in the night to practice my new art. While still very much a novice, I’ve become pretty constantly confident that it is learnable and I can learn it. This expansion of my reality, that is, being confident these dimensions exist and that I can learn to enter them, is a great step for me – and your particular phrasing is largely responsible.

Whatever additional hints, suggestions and/or methods you can suggest will be more than welcome. Again, thank you...