Author: Sitebeheerder

Soul Journey (2)

 

The four births

  1. Our first birth and home coming happens when we leave the warm nest of the womb of our mother and start the long journey of our life on Earth. Children in their early years still remember the place they come from and why they came. Therefore sometimes, they are very wise and say astonishing things. Mother Earth will embrace the child in a very intimate and deeply concerned way. Children are the children of Mother Earth.
  2. Our second birth is when the child enters puberty/adolescence. Now the ego is sufficiently formed and as a result of schooling the child might have accommodated very much to so called modern life with all the claims of a consumer society. The Earth connection might be broken already. Now the child tries to break out the web of authority figures. It is the time to manifest oneself in the world and the” we” instead of I is very important. Now the ego is the authority in life and the innate deep sensitivity for the Earth and for their own uniqueness might have grown dim. This is a necessary part in the development of a strong personality. Some very gifted children never loose the connection with the Light within. More and more young people are enlightened at a very young age and are prepared to take up leadership for the world and the Earth. The moment of homecoming is when the young adult can enter into the world from his own inner strength and can say: here I am.
  3. The third birth happens when a person really looks into the so called midlife crisis and faces  the  confusion and suffering of it. Sometimes the midlife crisis starts already around the thirties. It was C. G. Jung, who stated that all that happens in a life after the age of 30 is a spiritual quest. A life overpowered by ego will ask for conflicts and strong emotional movements, sometimes deep sufferings and painful losses. One day healing will come, choices are made for a life powered by the light of our Essence and the true call in life, our soul’s life task will become clear. A new love for self, the earth, others, God is there and we have come home again in Essence. It is a true rebirth.
  4. The fourth birth happens when one returns to our eternal home, from where we came. To the unknown land beyond our life on Earth.  And our Earth Mother will receive us once more. We rest in her and we are home.

It is up to us how often we will be born…if we only can be true to our path and do not look away from our weak and dark sides. Just in these times the deep connection with Earth will help us so much. The Earth will teach us how to live and how to die. When we walk on our Mother in truth and respect, she will walk with us. We will not grow into our full glory and stature, without honoring the Earth and all her life. So our soul path is an Earth path, there is no difference between the two. There is no spiritual path besides our common daily life. The path we go is a spiritual path because we walk an earth path and that path we find through the happenings of our soul life. Now all is One again.

May you walk your spiritual path in beauty on this beautiful Earth.

Elly Verrijt, July 2015

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A Christian Response to the Ecological Crisis

In the Beginning

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NASA Pictures, free source

Loosing and Finding Creation in the Christian Tradition.

In the beginning, we know now about 14 billion years ago, God created heaven and Earth, we read in the Genesis story. All that is, all that we as humanity have achieved and have caused comes from that very Beginning. The moment that Gods Dream began to enfold. And as modern sciences have revealed ( esp. in last century, since Einstein and so many others) a continuing process. We have only seen and understood so much. Billions of years passed since that very moment and some four billion years ago the Earth was formed. But as the Genesis Story says, the Earth was still empty, barren, wild, inhabitable.

In a process of more than four billion years everything that we know, has come into existence. Gradually the Earth governed by Gods creative power during all those eons of time developed the processes that prepared the Earth for the appearance of the human. Finally, the human this very vulnerable species, could come and find a beautiful and splen­did home. The Bible describes this Earth as a Paradise, the garden, where God walks with the first humans and gives them the “use” and governance about all that He created.

It is in this garden, that the humans have to find out, how to live in harmony with all the thousands of other-kind, the other creatures that like the humans bear Gods imprint. Only forty thousand years ago, in pre-human forms of life, consciousness developed to such an extent that history of humanity, as we know it, could start.

AII the processes of the Earth, which for billions of years functioned in autonomous ways, now gradually were under the scrutiny of human consciousness and at the mercy of the ways humankind decided to inhabit the “garden”.

From research we know that our ancient ancestors seem to be for the greater part creatures who lived in relative peace and harmony with one another, with other life forms and with Planet Earth. The ancient “wisdom” traditions as they are called. The ways our ancestors lived in harmony with creation, have been a guide for the people, up to today. Humans know, deep down, what an ecological way of living is.

How can it than be, that in the past century alone hundred million people have perished in warfare? An estimated one billion people has died from starvation and malnutrition. As many again have been subjected to torture and incarceration, only in the past decades. And look at what our generation has done to the Earth: the animals, the fishes, the soil, the dumping of all the waste in air, waters, soil and the cutting of most of the forests and depletion of other non-renewable resources. AII what we have done, especially our generation, in the name of economic growth, development and wealth. How come we humans have turned into one of the most barbaric life forms on Earth, bringing forth a world saturated in violence?

When we look at history of human presence on Earth, we see a drastic change with the Agricultural Revolution, some ten thousand years ago. The beginning of the population growth on Earth, because now more people could survive because of more food, changed all. Now the competition for the acquisition and the use of the land began. This also resulted in the first wars.

When we look at the history, we see cultures emerge and disappear again, when the land is no longer fertile and turned into a desert. We are not used to look at everything that happened to the human family from the view point of connection of humans and soil,- air, water etc.

In the great religions we find this deep connection of humans and the Cosmos. When looking at our Christian heritage we see that up to the 16th century the reflection about Earth / Cosmos is an integral part of the Christian life.

In the Bible and the Judeo/Christian tradition we see how God made a covenant with the human God created, and with and in the whole of creation. Gods Shalom encompasses the whole Earth Community. Through the mystery of Incarnation God enters the World and because of that all is sacred . It is St. Augustine who speaks about the two books of revelation. Creation is the First Revelation of God and we need to read the book of creation as much as we read the Bible.

In her summa of Christian doctrine, Scivias, Hildegard of Bingen sees the whole universe imbued with the love of Christ, the sun of justice, who shines with the brilliance of burning charity of such great glory that every creature is illumed by the brightness of this light. In the midst of this marvelous vision stand human beings, “made in a wondrous great glory from the dust of the earth and so intertwined with the strengths of the rest of creation that we can never be separated from this.”

It is in the time of the Reformation that many things begin to change. Through the discoveries of Galileo and Newton a whole new materialistic philosophy develops. This has also a very deep influence on the way we Christians have from there on seen our place in the whole Creation. We have been taken up in a materialistic worldview and have lost the integral vision of the relationship of God and creation and the place of the human in all of this. A mechanistic view of Cosmos, Earth, Earth processes has been the drive behind the ideals of development and progress and the idealization of the industrialization and technological development.

We are living in a world, that being what she is now has been driven in this direction of development, starting about three hundred years ago.Only when we see this, we will come to understand why we have arrived at a situation of the Earth, nature, and the whole community of life, as we find it now. Then we perceive that the crisis of all life on Earth is not a crisis of the environment alone. It is a process of gradual destruction and diminishment of all life on Earth. It is a spiritual crisis, a crisis of values, a growing darkness in the human soul on what it means to be human, to live a good life, to inhabit the God given garden in a responsible  way.

Speaking about Ecology, Ecological Spirituality in the context of our world of today requires that we take a far look and take up the challenge that Jesus poses before us, in his gospel. ” To read the signs of the times”. When you see a cloud appearing at the sky ….. What clouds do we see at this moment, in our own areas? What is happening to the people, to the human soul, to the Christian community? Not alone looking at  it from an anthropocentric viewpoint.  Not only a questioning and examination of where and how human morals fail.

“In the past five centuries the Western soul established its radical alienation from the naturaI  world. Instead of a delight in the natural world and an experience of the Divine in the beauty, wonder and awesome qualities of the world about us, there developed a psychic-spiritual withdrawal from intimate relations with the natural world.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth century this religious alienation from Gods creation left the scene open for the scientific perception of the world as mechanistic and a subject to whatever technological controls humans could invent to make the natural world increasingly useful to the human. Science and technology could take over and exploited the planet because religious persons had abandoned and   “ Ieft the world”.

A next moment of our loss of intimacy with Creation occurred when we left the ever­ renewing organic agricultural economy (a process that is still taking place worldwide) in favor of an industrial non-renewing extractive and exploiting economy; an ever faster dance now of taking from the Earth, making so many products to keep the economy growing and producing the waste the Earth cannot deal with.

Here creation has lost its wonder and majesty, its grace and beauty, its live-giving qualities. Creation, God’s gift to us, has become an object of use. The profound spiritual aspect of the Earth has become almost completely negated. The radiant presence of God is no longer recognized. Creation has become a commodity to be bought and sold, not a planet where humans find both spiritual and physical nourishment.

Christianity and the Ecological Crisis: ” Where are we”?

  • The basic problem before us now is to recover a sense of the sacred . The ecological crisis is about loss of values and the mission of our time is about value radiation.
  • Here we touch at the depth of our call as religious ( people). To seek first the Kingdom of God and to live accordingly, like Jesus did.We cannot save humans, we cannot care for humans, without saving the world in which we live. There are no longer two worlds, the world of the human, their spiritual well being and a world of the other modes of being. There is a single world. This world will nourish us spiritually or we will  be starved for spiritual nourishment.
  • We are at home with the Genesis story, but are we open to make the sequence of transformations through which Creation passed the object of our prayer, reflections, contemplation?
  • When we open ourselves for the intense distress of the Earth and all life on Earth, we can become, the people poised to find the earth again in a wholly new ecological framework and rethink it as an integral part of the vision and work of the Christian tradition .”Adam, Adama, where are you?”Recovering the cosmo-centric power of the fuller Christian tradition puts us in line with our ancient and medieval forebears and fosters the intellectual and moral integrity of our discipline. Not doing so makes our scholarly reflection increasingly irrelevant and worse, irresponsible to the future of this planet. Now, losing creation is not an option. The quest to find creation, this generation’s great intellectual religious adventure , is a matter of life and death.
  • There is hard work ahead. We need to appreciate all over again that the whole universe is a sacrament, vivified by the energy of the Creator Spirit present in all creation as its very animation . The Spirit effects the redemption of both languishing vines and brokenhearted merrymakers: that is, the Spirit’s presence is for ALL species. We need to realize that the destruction of this vibrant, complex natural world is tantamount to sacrilege. And we need to fathom that the human species is embedded as an intrinsic, interdependent part of the magnificence of this universe, not as lords of the manor but kin in the community of life, charged with being sisters and brothers, friends and lovers, mothers and fathers, priests and prophets, co-creators and children of the Earth that is God’ s good creation.
  • Recovering the cosmo-centric power of the fuller Christian tradition puts us in line with our ancient and medieval forebears and fosters the intellectual and moral integrity of our discipline. Not doing so makes our scholarly reflection increasingly irrelevant and worse, irresponsible to the future of this planet. Now, losing creation is not an option. The quest to find creation, this generation’s great intellectual religious adventure , is a matter of life and death.”Summary from an article by Elizabeth Johnson: In ‘ Christianity and Ecology” page 3-18 ISBN 0-945454-20-1Website: www.religionandecology.org

 

Summary by Elly Verrijt, 2017

 

 

 

 

 

Your Earth Story

I am an Earth Pilgrim

We all have an unique story of our life with the Earth. Our story is the Story of the Earth and the Story of the Earth is our story.

Once you realize this and live from this awareness, your life will really change. All that happened in your life derives a new meaning of this understanding. Our life story is the story of a pilgrim: someone who gradually discovers the deeper meaning of his or her path, walked in the intimacy of a shared life with our Mother, the Earth.

So I invite you to start to reflect, write and speak about your life in this context. Here are some guiding questions to choose from.

  • You can start by making a drawing.  Draw the way you saw the Earth when you were five. Preferably with your left hand, if you are right handed. Or the other way around if that fits you most. Just put your memory of the Earth on paper. In colors, lines, symbols. Old Earth memories will present themselves to you, if you allow yourself to just let it all happen.
  • Now you write about a favorite spot, an animal that you loved, a precious tree, a river, a special sunrise or sunset, harvests etc.
  • Write about the moment when you first realized what is happening to the Earth and that the Earth is finite.
  • Write about moments, experiences in nature, landscapes that have shaped your soul. How is the landscape of your home country imprinted in your soul? Imagine who you would be if you grew up in the Antarctic or in a desert or on the moon!
  • Are there times of alienation in your life, when you lost touch with nature? Look at times of crisis in your life. How was your connection with nature, Earth at that moment? Do you see a connection?
  • Are there moments of awakening? How did it happen? How have you responded?
  • Where are you now on your pilgrim path with our Mother? Do you hear the voices that call you to come home? Write about are those voices?
  • What is the Mother Earth inviting you to now?adventure-2178746__340
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  • More about Earth Pilgrim(s)

Experiences: Nature Journal

 

Your journey of connection with the natural world is going to take you into new territory. It will lead you to discoveries, insights, beauty, and new ways of seeing yourself and your place in the world. One of the most effective ways to help yourself along the way is to record your experiences in a journal. Keeping a Nature journal is simple – all you need is a notebook or sketch pad and the willingness to spend a little time with it on a regular basis. So you will record the way you grow in your connection with nature, with the Earth.

What to write about? What will you put in your Nature journal? Just write down whatever you experience, whatever happens, mostly unexpected. What have you seen, what creature draws your attention?  Record your discoveries. Might be you want to make a drawing. Paint the sunrise or the dawn.

As you do this over a period of time, you might feel how you become more attentive, how you begin to notice that nature has to tell you something. You might notice that you can ask a question as you walk in nature. It is a very old way of finding your path in life. In Ancient traditions this is called a Vision Quest. You ask for a vision and in one way or another an answer will be given, if you only open your heart to understand.

May you grow in your relationship with Mother Earth and in this way participate in her healing.

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Elly Verrijt 2017

 

 

To grow in Earth Connectedness

with thanks to Sr. Tess RGS  for editing the orginal text

A place of very deep intimacy is our awareness of being a creature, made by God, like all the other creatures. Speak in your prayer to God our Creator, to Jesus who knows this place so deeply, and to the Holy Spirit, the creative power of God.  Experience God’s tenderness. 

Praying with and for Creation. Find words for this newly awakened mode of relating with Mother Earth. Ask for the guidance of the Spirit that you might be given the gift of prayer, of Earth prayer. “All the trees of the forest will sing for joy; they will sing before the Lord” (Ps 96: 13).  We do not know how to pray constantly, but in oneness with all that is, we will find the way.

Listening.   All has sound.  Each star, the sun, the moon, every being has its own sound. Listen to the sounds.  Through our very own sound we are known by the Earth. She knows us, we are part of her. Hear her words from within. She will tell you what you need to do today in order to reconnect…feel the original oneness of all.

Seeing radiance.  All has radiance from within. In the intimacy with our Creator we become radiant. See how everything in creation is radiant.  The soil is radiant in its ways of giving all it has to the plants we put there and the soil nourishes and sustains. See the radiance and be touched by the immense care of our Creator for everything that is created.  See the capacity you have for radiance.

Feeling the softness of the body of Earth. Feel her strength. She carries us …  you can lean on the Earth, you can be strengthened by her.  Be aware of the energies she constantly gives by each step we take, each time we touch the Earth.

Respecting and honoring.  The Ancients in their ceremonies always pay their respect to even the tiniest blade of grass, worm, insects. This is an attitude we can learn.   Grow deeper into this. Out of the respect comes the true care. You will not be able anymore to waste anything, let something die through lack of attention and care. Each little plant has right to a life in fullness, also the animals we take care of.  See where you can grow in respect for all life and how to practice honoring. It is about knowing our place in the circle of life. It also means that we constantly ask ourselves: This behavior, this way of using my time and energy, does this fit in the circle of all life?

In connecting with the Earth in a deeper way, we have to be prepared from inside. We need to heal, to let go of negativity, let go of old ways of living and doing things. Otherwise we are not open to the sources of wisdom of Earth. We need to forgive ourselves for our alienation from our Mother, the ways we have developed to ignore her, to deny the life of creation and the needs of all other creatures too. We have to know our own deep pain and unfinished business, our woundedness. The ways in which we are wounded, not seen, neglected, not listened to, are reflected in the ways we dominate other creatures.

To know our deep desire for intimacy with the Earth and come home. The human of today has lost this deep connection with the Earth. The human is no longer embedded in the life of the Earth, has broken away from the circle of all life. This causes deep pain, loss of identity for outside the circle of life we do not know who we are and what we are about as humans. Then we look for security and something to still the hunger and satisfy our deep unmet needs by consumption or power, or by living an unreal life, not willing to look straight into the situation of our devastated Earth. Then we have indeed a second, virtual life, far beyond the reality of an Earth in need of healing.  We are the ones needing this healing and when we heal, the Earth heals.

Letting go of our arrogance. Mother Earth is waiting for us to come home to intimacy with the life community, and be healed in that intimacy. Then we will find beauty, rest, sense of identity, self worth, sense of enough and abundance. In this new intimacy with the whole life community we will grow in our understanding of what we can do and how we can help Mother Earth to regenerate.  Then we begin to accept ourselves in a new way, because we are accepted and we do no longer need to spend energy on finding security in a false sense of being. An enormous energy will break through in us.  Earth connectedness will bring strength, creativity, passion and a great warmth and love.

The need for meditation, body awareness as the instruments to practice Earth connectedness. This is a time of paradigm shift – we need to learn so many new ways of seeing, acting, understanding.  How can this be revealed to us if we do not listen carefully to the inner guidance given to us?   We are called to  grow in attentiveness. To care more for ourselves is a step in healing the Earth. We are to cleanse ourselves constantly of negativity, anger, greed. When we meditate daily, alone and together we heal the Earth of negativity, because we are in inner peace. In us Gaia is searching for her balance again. We can help her by meditating. In meditation, ecological imbalances in the world are addressed. Earth and humanity are but one body. What we do to ourselves, we do to the whole. We humans are the Earth that feels, loves, honors, thinks.  If we want the Earth to find back her balance, it has to start in each one of us, by doing everything with less stress, with more calm and alertness, attentiveness and love. This means that we go counter culture.  We are going to breath together with the Earth and our heartbeat has to beat in harmony with the heartbeat of the Earth.

Elly Verrijt

 

Our Call in Evolutionary Perspective

Thoughts and reflections on Conscious Evolution

One of my teachers is Barbara Marx Hubbard. She has enriched my life by her vision that we humans have a conscious role to play in evolution. In 2005-2006 I participated in an online course on Conscious Evolution. It brought me so many new insights and most of all a much deeper understanding of the role of the human in the present time. We are the humans who by our own doing have arrived at the threshold of possible self-destruction. We are also the humans who can wake up in this moment in time and carry the evolution forward to a harmonious and sustainable Earth community, where Love will be the leading force. I offer you some insights and reflections as how to walk this path of consciousness step by step in your daily life.

 

From the beginning of the Universe evolution has developed from an innate dynamism and direction. It was all with a purpose says the human, who can see deep into the processes of the cosmos and evolution.

For most of the time evolution has evolved without any human presence on Earth. When the stars and the Earth were made, there were no humans around. Later on when the fishes opened their eyes and looked around there were no humans yet. When the first birdsongs filled the air, there were no human ears and hearts to enjoy. For most of the time of evolution, cosmos and Earth knew what to do without the presence of humans. The Universe invented revolution after revolution and life went on, also through the critical moments in the history of life and mass extinctions.

Since the humans came to Earth, evolution of life on Earth was and will be deeply influenced by what humans see, understand, decide and how they act. It depends on humans today if in the future there still will be birds and frogs. It will depend on us, if the last trees will be cut. It depends on us which values we teach our children and if future generations will safeguard the Earth and her beauty. If we humans like it or not we have become a partner of Earth in the processes of evolution, says Brian Swimme. This is new in the billions of years history of Life. The human will determine how the process of evolution will go on.

The human is therefore called to consciously participate in evolution. The impact of our presence in this time on Earth is much greater than to solve the problems of our time. We are not just born to be problemsolvers, for us is the path of the cocreator. If we have understood that Creation is a dynamic process, happening every moment, than by our presence we can resonate with the emerging evolutionary process. We can enter into the great mystery of the further becoming of the Universe. We call this cosmogenesis.

Conscious Evolution inspires us to be humbly aware that we are created and called into being as part of an enormous evolutionary process. Now humanity – we as humans – are in a process of transformation to take upon us our role as cocreator. “Millions of us are rising in more universal, holistic or cosmic consciousness in  self -centered world” .   ( BMH) Conscious Evolution is the ability to understand the innovations of the cosmic processes, so that with this new understanding we can look deeply into the ongoing evolution.

Some thoughts to express this in a deeper way I find in the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:

” To see the world not merely as a system that is simply in movement, but as one that is in a state of genesis. Knowledge is not enough to understand the world , but see it, touch it, live in its presence. Drink the vital heart of existence in the very heart of reality”.

“The magic word  “evolution” which haunted my thoughts like a tune: which was to me like unsatisfied hunger, like a promise held out to me, like a summons to be answered”.

“The consciousness of each of us is evolution, looking at itself and reflecting upon itself“.

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Source photo ;internet

The present ecological crisis can be seen and understood as an emotional, evolutionary driver and moves us into action. Calls forth the best in us, in groups, communities. If we look at the dangerous situation in this way, we do not need to sit down paralyzed and in despair but we can find there a great power and deep motivation. To a certain extend we can choose the future we want to have: step by step and with small but conscious acts.

In her book Conscious Evolution Barbara Marx Hubbard writes:

“The capacity for conscious evolution means that our species has become capable of understanding and resonating with the processes of creation itself. Already we can fathom the miracle of cosmogenesis – the story of the evolution of the cosmos-. We can reach into the heart of nature and see the invisible workings of creation – the atom, gene, brain, ecological systems, stars and galaxies. Spiritually we are attuning to the patterns of evolution within us as we begin to transcend the illusion of separation born out of the phase of self- conscious humanity…We rightly stand in awe of the magnificence of cosmogenesis as well as in reverence for ourselves as creatures of this monumental process”.  Page 59

Spirituality of Conscious Evolution

Through silence, meditation, observation we can become more aware of the evolutionary impulse in the whole history of life. We may feel a deep yearning and know of a great vision to connect the meaning of our life with the evolving evolution of ever greater wholeness and consciousness.

Personal spiritual growth leads to an insight of what we can be and urges us to go inside, so that we can get a sense of  the Divine plan of ongoing creation and express it through our personal call. We will begin to discover God as the creative intelligence in all of creation. We experience the creative Power in the universe as a personal power in us. We remember where we have come from and we remember our future with the full potential. Yes, we can “remember” our future. Think about what this means! This power is in every cell of our being. We are gifted with the intuition of what the future will be. And speaking from the insight of the Aboriginals, through us the world is constantly dreamed into being!

In the process of our spiritual growth we might notice that we become more sensitive and aware of the evolution of all life and we see it all around us. We feel the urge to grow, to know and see deeply, to help build a new world, to help the Earth and her life to heal and grow. We sense and feel our aspirations for peace, love and Oneness.

We are created in such a way that in our mind, spirit, soul we can see the patterns of transformation. How the human can become an universal human, aware of being part of the whole. We are being born, through a proces of transformation, as homo universalis, a cosmic human. B. Marx Hubbard describes this process in book  “Emergence”. In fact the medieval mystic Hildegarde of Bingen speaks from the cosmic human, living from a constant awareness of Oneness. This person is constantly guided by the Spirit. Enthusiasm, creative power, inner fire are the manifestation of the Divine. Br. Swimme speaks about the planetary human and says that only the planetary human can make the right choices for the future of the planet.

Persons with an evolutionary call are in a mysterious way drawn toward each other. Nothing happens by chance but through a process of synchronicity, guided by the cosmos, they will find each other in one or another way. Cosmic law of attraction is at work here.

Recognizing the evolutionary call

  • There is a deep sense of being attuned to the whole, in time and space.
  • They grow and are being guided from their Essence.
  • Intuition is strong and they can tap into that source of knowing and they are at the same time very pragmatic.
  • They are guided by the wisdom of cosmos and Earth and are attuned to the deeper intelligence of nature.
  • They have an insight in the present destruction and in the powers of co-creation.
  • They understand why this moment in time is so special.
  • They live more and more from a constant connection with pure consciousness.
  • They carry the present transformation of the world inside of them, like a mother carries her unborn child.
  • They know “the small inner voice in themselves”, the Essential Self.
  • They feel that they are called forth passionately to respond to the needs of the Earth, humanity and see pragmatic ways to do so.

I am homo universalis in the proces of becoming.

Some affirmations.

“I am not separated from the Source of creation. I am an expression of the creation of God, the proces of billions of years of evolution. I am the presence and the process of the divine within me. I am the voice I hear. I am the guide and the follower. I am the cocreator of new worlds, new possibilities for Earth and her life”.  ( words of BMH in her book Emergence. page 19)

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photo: source internet

 

Resources:

  • Emergence: The Shift from Ego to Essence   B. Marx Hubbard ISBN 1-57174-204-2
  • Conscious Evolution: Barbara Marx Hubbard

Elly Verrijt, July 2016

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Affairs are Now Soul Size”

“In the center of the storm

there is an immense quiet.

      Find that place within yourself

and live your life from it-

undisturbed, efficient, at peace”

Handbook for the Evolving Heart. F. Coppieters

 

In the midst of the worldwide ecological crisis, there is a call. This call touches the whole of humanity. Not to do more, but to be more. We cannot save the Earth nor undo the harm that we have caused and that brings disaster after disaster.

Nevertheless the Earth calls us, the Creator touches us, the Divine Mother, who expresses herself in nature and all life, calls us. In the whole of humanity there is a movement, a vibration, a longing, a desire. A love never felt before is emerging. More and more people of all walks of life speak about a mystical life (a life of beauty and love) and their deep longing for spirituality and meaning. Their desire is for what is Holy, for what once was Holy. For what has gone and also for a place to grieve and to pray. The core of this is a call to connect with the soul, our soul. So many have lost the connection with their soul, with the soul of nature, with the web of Life. Life outside this deep connectness is empty and barren and there is deadness inside. Have we forgotten who we are?

There is NEWNESS: the call of today is at soul level. It is no longer about what we should do, but about who we are. How can we respond from our soul to the present situation of Earth?

chrysallis

Photo; source internet

A SLEEP OF PRISONERS

BY CHRISTOPHER FRY

The human heart can go the lengths of God…

Dark and cold we may be, but this
Is no winter now. The frozen misery
Of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move;
The thunder is the thunder of the floes,
The thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring.

Thank God our time is now when wrong
Comes up to face us everywhere,
Never to leave us till we take
The longest stride of soul men ever took.

Affairs are now soul size.

The enterprise is exploration into God.

Where are you making for? It takes
So many thousand years to wake…

But will you wake, for pity’s sake

Affairs are now soul size. It is time to allow ourselves to listen and hear, at the level of the soul. Deeper than our thoughts and emotions.To listen to what is really happening.  One by one we are called, each in our own way and with our own gifts and potentials.  When Thich Nhat Than was asked once, what the most important thing to do is, he answered: “To hear the cry of the earth”. To hear the groaning of creation on its way to completion. Now is the time for great silence and deep listening. In the book of Job is suggested to put your mouth on the earth, if you do not know what to do. To listen to what the Earth has to say. Put your ears against a tree and hear the tree speak, touch the soil with tender love and know what the soil needs. Listen to the birds before they leave us for ever and greet the moon who reminds us of cycles and rhythms. We will discover the unconditional love that is poured out in Creation. Every created being and reality is Love outpoured, if you only can grasp it.

The Earth and her life at this moment in time of the evolution is entrusted to each one of us. It is not a too big affair to accept this responsibility. It is a gift of great joy! Let us give ourselves all the honour and appreciation for how we have responded already to our inner fire that has motivated us. Honour the good things we have been able to do in our short or long life. See it, cherish it and then let go. There is still so much more to come.

Are we ready to meet our soul, to listen to ourselves at the core of our being? Can we meet the soul of humanity today? Imagine that you can hear the soul of humanity speak, what would you hear? And you will begin to trust yourself and know that it is true. You know that you share in the Divine intention that called forth creation. It takes great courage, because you often do not know nor see where you are being led. You will begin to see the connectedness of everything and you knew it all along. Might be for the first time you know that you are guided from within and you will find your way. You see with different eyes and you will ultimately find a source of joy in yourself that is incomprehensible. You will be personally invited in ways you cannot imagine.

You can prepare for hearing the call, by opening yourself for complete new and surprising ways to find God, to name the deep longing in yourself. And one day the barriers and denial will be broken. Not because you can do it, but because you are touched by grace, touched by the benign powers of the universe. We will be shown how our soul looks like, that Divine-like person that we are in the world. And the rivers of praise and prayer will open. In a world that has taken away our deepest peace and rest and presses us in nervous activity as to save what still is left, we need to go deep and listen. We will find the eternal deep cohesiveness between God, the human soul and all life in the universe.

The mystical person speaks a full YES to God and creation. The deeper the yes to our soul, the greater the healing for the whole of creation.

Be not content with reflecting about God in creation, because if the reflection goes away, so does the deep felt intimacy with God. Go deeper than the reflection. The real gift is the deep awakening at the level of your soul. There you find a strength, a beauty, an intimacy with yourself, God and the Whole. With this power you will help transform the world. Now the time has come to open yourself to the guidance of the Spirit, in and through the present moment.

Our time needs people with a deep soul life

Our present time needs people with a deep soul life. People who converse and live with Source, God in the depth of their being. Those who see more than the day to day struggle, who receive visions, inner guidance and light on how to move forward. They are men and women, young people of great wisdom. With strength, power, fearlessness and unwavering in the sight of the confusion and darkness of our time. People who dare to face the most essential questions in the context of the present ecological crisis. Because our soul knows of the great Plan, the greater Purpose in the process of Evolution. Thomas Berry states in his vision on the Great Work of Our Time that the same Power that called the Universe into existence and gave stars and planets their place,  is at work in each one of us.

Now we have invited God in our life to guide us, to make our life most fruitful and fulfilling. And what our souls knows will be unlocked and everything in us becomes a gift for the whole. All we need on our way will befall us. If we realize the gift of the call given to us, the power, creativity, courage and all that is needed is included. We may trust on that. We are in the flow, flowing with the Greater Plan.

Dia 47 OD Op weg naar het licht                                  source: internet

 

“Meditation and service are the pillars of a life dedicated to the Divine.

Doing nothing transformation takes place by itself.

When all seeking ceases

you and the Divine are One”.

From : Handbook for the Evolving Heart F. Coppieters  www.livinglightcenter.com

June 2017, Elly Verrijt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Letter to young Activists

We are made for this time

Mis estimados queridos, My Esteemed Ones:
Do not lose heart. We were made for these times.1

I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world right now. It is true, one has to have strong cojones and ovarios to withstand much of what passes for “good” in our culture today. Abject disregard of what the soul finds most precious and irreplaceable and the corruption of principled ideals have become, in some large societal arenas, “the new normal,” the grotesquerie of the week.

It is hard to say which one of the current great matters has rocked people’s worlds and beliefs more. Ours is a time of almost daily jaw-dropping astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.

…You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so cruel against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking.

Yet … I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is – we were made for these times.

Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement. I cannot tell you often enough that we are definitely the leaders we have been waiting for, and that we have been raised, since childhood, for this time precisely.

…I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able crafts in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind.

I would like to take your hands for a moment and assure you that you are built well for these times. Despite your stints of doubt, your frustrations in arighting all that needs change right now, or even feeling you have lost the map entirely, you are not without resource, you are not alone.

Look out over your boat; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. In your deepest bones, you have always known this is so.…

We have been in training for a dark time such as this, since the day we assented to come to Earth. For many decades, worldwide, souls just like us have been felled and left for dead in so many ways over and over — brought down by naiveté, by lack of love, by suddenly realizing one deadly thing or another, by not realizing something else soon enough, by being ambushed and assaulted by various cultural and personal shocks in the extreme.

We all have a heritage and history of being made weak, and yet remember this especially … we have also, of necessity, perfected the knack of resurrection.

Over and over again we have been the living proof that that which has been exiled, lost, or foundered – can be restored to life again. This is as true and sturdy a prognosis for the destroyed worlds around us as it was for our own once mortally wounded selves.

…Though we are not invulnerable, our sense of humor supports us to laugh in the face of cynics who say “fat chance,” and “management before mercy,” and other evidences of complete absence of soul sense. This, and our having been ‘to Hell and back’ on at least one momentous occasion, makes us seasoned vessels for certain. Even if you do not feel that you are, you are.

Even if your puny little ego wants to contest the enormity of your soul, the smaller self can never for long subordinate the larger Self. In matters of death and rebirth, you have surpassed the benchmarks many times. Believe the evidence of any one of your past testings and trials. Here it is: Are you still standing? The answer is, Yes! (And no adverbs like “barely” are allowed here). If you are still standing, ragged flags or no, you are able. Thus, you have passed the bar. And even raised it. You are seaworthy.

…In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. Do not make yourself ill with overwhelm. There is a tendency too to fall into being weakened by stressing on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails.

We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear. Didn’t you say you were a believer? Didn’t you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn’t you ask for grace? Don’t you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the Voice greater? You have all the resource you need to ride any wave, to surface from any trough.

…In the language of aviators and sailors, ours is to sail forward now, all balls out.

One of the most important steps you can take to help calm the storm is to not allow yourself to be taken in a flurry of overwrought emotion or despair – thereby accidentally contributing to the swale and the swirl. Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.

Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely.

It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts – adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take “everyone on Earth” to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.

…One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times.

The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires … causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these – to be fierce and to show mercy toward others, both — are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.

…There will always be times in the midst of “success right around the corner, but as yet still unseen” when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it; I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate.

The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours: They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here.

In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But … that is not what great ships are built for.

…This comes with much love and prayer that you remember Who you came from, and why you came to this beautiful, needful Earth.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D.  Storyteller, writer , therapist, guide, Earth Elde

1 Do Not Lose Heart, We Were Made for These Times ©2001, 2016,
by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved. The letter may be copied for non-commercial purposes provided it is not added to nor taken from, but run in full as above. Additional Permissions: ngandelman@gmail.com

 

Coming Home to Mother Earth

The Good News

“We are returning to our native place after a long absence, meeting once again with our family in the earth community. For too long we have been away somewhere, entranced with our industrial world of wires and wheels, concrete and steel and our unending highways, where we race back and forth…..

… a feeling of intimacy we now experience as we recover our presence within the Earth community…. Presently we are returning to the primordial community of the universe, the earth, and all living beings. Each has its own voice, its role, its power over the whole….” Th. Berry: Dream of the Earth, chapter 1 ( 1)

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source:internet

This meditation is inspired by words of Thomas Berry in The World of Wonder

  • What do you see when you look up to the sky at night and you greet the moon and see the myriads of twinkling stars looking at you? What are your thoughts when the day fades away or you look out over the ocean or a river in the evening? What do you see?What do you see when dawn breaks over the eastern horizon?
  • Imagine that someone is with you and tells you about an abiding world, a world imaged forth in the wonders of sun and clouds and the stars and planets at night. What is this person telling you?
  • You might have heard that this world is guardian, healer, teacher, sustainer and the origin from which you came and the destiny you return to. Have you ever felt this?
  • A world that is the source of a tremendous strength and power in times of hardship and suffering. Do you feel this strength that comes from the Earth? Especially now in these times of deep crisis?
  • Now you look at yourself in the midst of a cosmic world and the Earth. This is where you belong. Part of one single community: the universe. Do you feel that you are part of the universe, that you are the universe?
  • When Th. Berry speaks about coming home after a long absence, where have we been? Where have we loved and what has filled our hearts with beauty and a sense of connection with the ground under our feet?

We have lost it, this deep intimacy and knowingness about nature. According to Thomas Berry alienation is the oldest and most universal human experience, our not knowing how we belong to the universe. Do you know your place and role in the Earth community?

At our birth we know we have come from a spirit place, with a clear mission. During our life we forget this and the journey of our life is to remember how deep we belong to nature. Yes, we are nature. Now is the time to come back to our deep knowingness and wisdom about life on this planet and our relationship with Mother Earth.                        The good news is that this knowing is not lost, we have only forgotten it!

Coming Home

In our time, all over the world there are voices of the Elders. The council of thirteen grandmothers, ( Earth Elders from all over the World) speak to us: “The Grandmother of all Creation, the One who is the maker of life, The One whom we have forgotten, is calling us. She is not angry with us, she is sad that we have forgotten who She is”.  (2)  She is coming back into our consciousness through prophecy and visions. She brings profound nurturing, a depth of compassion and a deep love for caring for all that is alive.

This power is coming to life in all of us who are awakening to the profound mysteries of the Earth and her community of life. This  feminine energy is awaking in the heart of women and men; it is the energy that will help us to heal the Earth, by balancing our own energies.

More than five hundred years the circle of life was broken the grandmothers say, because the original teachings of the Creator were forgotten; knowing who we are in time and space as children of the Mother. All the grandmothers believe that we must develop a different relationship with Creation itself, otherwise there is no hope both for humanity and the Earth community. Nature is showing us the signs. If we can only see, the Spirit world is so close.

Earth Wisdom

We are born with a memory in our cells: the memory of how nature works, a memory about the wisdom embedded in Creation. Creation stories tell us, that Wisdom ( often personified and called Sofia)  created the Universe. The Ancient people call this Knowingness, Original Thought. Original Thought is insight in the purpose of the Creator in creating and in the structures and patterns that uphold Creation and Evolution.

We live our life mostly driven by certain thoughts and beliefs. It is what education and culture tell us. We consider it as “normal life”. Original thoughts are created from a Divine state of Oneness. They are sacred laws and sacred truths. They can break the chain of the beliefsystems which cause so much devastation in our soul, in the soul of the community of life. The main beliefsystem is that we are made to think that we are separated: separated from God, separated from each other and separated from nature, Earth, the Universe. Original Thought reveals to us that Spirit lives inside of us, that there is a place in our soul where we know the ways and thoughts of our Creator. That we are part of all life, from the Beginning up to this moment. Each created being has a place, a very unique place in the circle of life. If we know this, we see that our life has such a deep meaning.  Love knows no boundaries and forms.

We are called to go deep within and listen in that sacred and holy place and then go out. To see the sacred laws and wisdom in all life that surrounds us. We become learners, we are students in the school of Earth Wisdom. It is a profound and lifelong process. We are the ones to bring back profound knowing and seeing into the world of today. It is only through this way that we will find the ways that diminish life, ways to end domination of nature and to find again our place in the circle of life.

The spiritual power of the Earth and the heavens lies dormant in each of us. It is the time now to allow this power to be released; we will need it badly in our healing work with Mother Earth. This spiritual power will guide us in these challenging times now all life on Earth is in danger.

Why is the Earth our Mother?

Wisdom created the Earth, in perfect harmony the Word that creates. The primordial creative power is feminine, the Divine Feminine, in perfect balance with the Divine Masculine. Wisdom, often pictured as Sophia, brings order in the chaos, she is womb, consciousness, knowingness. The Wisdom of God is the sacredness in all that is. Wisdom is the foundation of the whole creation. All that is bears her imprint.

For millennia, traditional peoples all over the world have believed in an Earth Mother who gives life and receives the dead into her rich soil. The old Greeks called her Gaia, the earthly presence of Anima Mundi ( soul of the cosmos, Earth) , ( Ibu Pertiwi, Indonesia). She gives birth to all there is, this great nourishing being, both material and spiritual together. For the ancient Greeks she was the principal Goddess. Yet the experience of her presence gradually disappeared from ( Western) human consciousness. But she is coming back, step by step.

A new Earth consciousness is rising in people!

There is an interior life in everything that exists and therefore we can say that everything that is created has a soul. From mountain to rivers, from a star to a worm. From a tree to monkey and in each human being. For us, humans, it is a great shift in our lives when we begin to grasp this. It is discovering the face of the Mother, Gaia, Sofia, Ibu Pertiwi in all that we see. Then we begin to sense the wisdom, the order, the ways of functioning of the universe, the natural world. Then nature is no longer an “it”, something outside us, but we begin to realize that we are nature, our soul is nature, our bodies are nature. We are made from the same stuff as the first atoms and stars.

We are all of the same family, we are kin; we are One family of Life. Kinship is the basic pattern of relating in the universe. Then great respect, awe and wonder are born in us.

“We need to awaken again to the grandeur of the Earth processes

and to awaken to the Dream of the Earth.

We have to return to the memory of our cells and the Earth wisdom in our genes.  

The desire of the Earth is in our genes.

We can only be sensitized by what is revealed to us. ”

Th.Berry.  Dream of the Earth.

 

  1. Dream of the Earth. Th. Berry ISBN 0-87156-622-2
  2. Grandmothers Counsel the World  Carol  Schaefer ISBN 978-1-59030-293-4

 

June 2017

 

Mandala: The Green Sofia

 

The Green Sofia

In the vision of Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen is a medieval mystic who live in the Rhineland in Germany ( 1098-1179) From her third year she had visions. Later on many of her visions were expressed in mandala’s. She was a healer, composer, writer. She was an Earth Healer and wrote many books about the use of herbs, health and ways of natural healing. She knew the depth of cosmic laws and the processes of Earth. She spoke about the responsibility of the human for creation. She was an advisor for Popes, emperors, kings.

sofia

Sofia is the Wisdom of Life, of all Life. You cannot know who Sofia is in the life of the cosmos, if you are not deeply connected with all life. Sofia is an inner experience of God. Read the beautiful texts about Wisdom: Wisdom 7:1 -8:1 8:2-9:18.  Wisdom chooses people…

See also Job 28, 23-27: Wisdom is the natural order of the whole creation. She shows us how God has meant creation to be. Wisdom is in the wind, in the flow of the water, in the rain…the way of clouds and thunder. The face of Sofia is creation, Mother Earth.

If you look at Sofia, she has a very great ear: the way to deal and live with wisdom is to listen. Sofia is the one who has learned to listen. The order of creation, the divine laws of creation you can only receive by silence and prayer. See also her very great open eyes…she sees and knows..

Look at the two white tables in her left hand: they stand for the laws of creation, the Divine laws. Her right hand is open and upright: it is the way of passing on the wisdom to others. She receives, understands and passes on. She wears a green robe: the green colour is hope. Sofia in her green robe governs the whole cosmos, community of life from deep within. The robe is long and under the robe are the red shoes. She is the one who brings hope to the whole earth.

Sofia; this figure is every person who lives in deep awareness of the wisdom in the whole cosmos.

Sofia is a very old wisdom figure: she is like a tree who bears fruit and she can create a garden out of desert and chaos. Sofia is the image of Divine Love.  Divine Wisdom is feminine. It is the feminine side of God. ( Bah. Ind: Ibu Pertiwi) She is also an Image of Jesus, not the man on the cross, but Jesus as the wisdom of God.

The OT says, that before anything was created, wisdom already was and She, Wisdom was with God when God created the cosmos and all life.

Wisdom has a relationship to all life. She is like a child, so simple and deep. Not just knowledge, but deep in contact with the mystery of life. Then one understands the great mystery and the connectedness of all things from the Beginning. Wisdom searches for the pure heart and wants to dwell there.

In the picture Sofia is in the center of a big circle: the circle is an image of God, without beginning and end. There are three fields, three parts: the red ( sphere of Christ, the wisdom of God, yellow the colour of Spirit, Holy Breath, Light and white: the sphere of God, the undivided Light. Sofia is in the center of the circle and brings all this together.

On the robe you see the precious stones. It is a symbol of what has been entrusted to us. The beauty of creation.

It is wisdom that will save our Earth. Sofia is the name of the one who together with our creator will save the Earth. Wisdom has her home in the whole cosmos.

Where is wisdom dwelling in you? Allow yourself to be a house for wisdom. Do not grab her……She comes in silence and surrender. Your heart has to be pure, ready and open to constantly to receive her. She is pure gift. Sometimes Wisdom is like an unwelcome guest, brings pain and struggle and shows what needs to be transformed. She can also be called to bear deep suffering.

Sofia makes herself know: text of Hildegard of Bingen

Sofia speaks….

I, the fiery life of divine wisdom,

I ignite the beauty of the plains,

I sparkle the waters,

I burn in the sun, and the moon, and the stars.

With wisdom I order ALL rightly….

I am the breeze, that nurtures all things green.

I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits.

I am led by the spirit to feed the purest streams.

I am the rain coming from the dew, that causes the grasses to laugh

with the joy of life….

I am yearning for the good…

 

Just look so deeply to all creation, till you see the radiance that is in every creature,

There you see the beauty of the face of Sofia.

Living in the spirit and energy of Sofia is to create beauty…make everything beautiful…

 

Sources of Inspiration: Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen, M Fox ISBN 0-939680, 1985

Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen, G. Uhlein, ISBN 0-939680-12-2, 1983

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