Today I embarked on a new journey

A number of weeks ago I rec'd a call from a friend and mentor saying she had recommended me for a telecourse called "Noble Purpose", being offered by the author Barry Heerman. I was intrigued when I learned that Barry had been influenced by Rick Warren's "Purpose Driven Life"

You may recall I spent 40 days of blogs struggling with that book and sharing my thoughts here and so I thought "Shit! I DID miss something". Time to go back and take a second look through someone else's eyes. Well I had my first class this morning and one of the activities associated with the class is journaling so I decided to begin to journal/blog here again and share my process with you ....

So Chapter 1 begins with this quote from Carlos Castenada

"Keep in mind that a path is only a path; If you feel you should not follow it, you must not stay with it under any condition. This is not an affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you to do. But your decision to keep on the path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition. Does the path have heart? ... One (path) makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse life. One makes you strong; the other weak." Hmmmm?
So what do you think, Shea ... does your path have heart? The path itself has heart, more heart than I have ever known in any pursuit but I feel like the the shaft of wheat from the Parable of the sower, you know the one "The sower went out to sow his seed and as he sowed some of the seed fell by the wayside for the whole thing go to Matt 13:2-23. Anyway I feel like the seed that fell among thorns ... "others fell among thorns and the thorns grew up and choked them" not any external thorns though it would be easy to find lots of people, circumstances et al to call my thorns but no. They's all internal ones; all mine! So if the life or heart is being choked out of my path, it is simply because I'm being overwhelmed by the very thing that I am ready to heal. In other words to quote Dr. Eve "You are not co-operatin' with yer own healin' I dont know how many of you will get the reference to Dr. Eve but if you do ... you get to look into the casket with me and say "Betcha didn't think I'd make it did ya mamma!"

So what can I tell you except in Chapter 2 when the little boy stood in front of the GIGANTIC yellow school bus (in my case it was the stop sign at the corner of Yonge and Victoria Sts in Aurora, Ontario in August of 1955)and he was overwhelmed by the scale of life and at that moment the concern about me arose like a fundamental dissonance that has since cascaded through my life. So does my path have heart? Yes but i'm not sure I have the heart for it.

Chapter 3 begins the spiral upward (boy am I ready for an upward spiral)It is the step of initiating a new relationship to the Universe, the Purna of The ALL. To quote Bro. David Steindl-Rast " ... see with the eyes of trust that the cosmos is in fact prepared for us, like a nurturing home. We have a right to feel at home here in the universe. It has been marvellously created to be hospitable to human life ... If we entrust ourselves to that fundamental sense of belonging to the universe, things go well, and we can make sense of even the worst that happens to us."(Music of Silence 110) quoted in Noble Purpose

Sri Aurobindo

It is a little known fact of Ernest Holmes life that one of his last teachers was the Indian mystic sage, Sri Aurobindo. The other night in the Troward class we were talking about the influences on Holmes life, beginning with Emerson at a time when Eastern philosophies were making their influence felt in America. AS a young man, working in California, holmes was inroduced to the lectures of Thomas Troward, the Queen's High Commissioner to India. Trowards work on Mental Science is clearly influenced by Hindu Cosmology. The clarity of his though is somewhat obscured by the Victorian language. A careful and sorry to say repeated exposure to it leads to a richness and a delicacy of thought and language that after repeated readings become like poetry. I have to say I rushed through it in ministerial training as just one more book to read, one more source, one more ...

Having taught the Edinburgh Lectures now ... many times. I love to jusy savour it. Anyway back to Aurobindo. We were having a conversation about all these influences the other day and on Saturday, one of my students who knew nothing of the conversation gave me a book on the "greater Psychology of Sri Aurobindo. Law of Attraction? Certainly not a co-incidence (No such thing). So here was Holmes steeped in the writings of Aurobindo at the end of his life in 1950.

So i've launched myelf into the Greatar Philosophy. If there is anyone else out there reading or thinking or studying Aurobindo ... think about sharing your thoughts with me

Until then ... Yoga hunh? hmmmmmm?

Finally season 5

I may have mentioned to you that I am a fan of “the Sopranos”. For those of you unfamiliar with it, over the last six years HBO has been showing a series on an Italian ‘mafia” family headed Tony Soprano, played by James Gandolfini. The Sopranos really is Tony’s story, of how one is a husband, father, son, friend and … mafia don; a story the delicate interplay of forces in one man’s life. When season 5 finally appeared in my local video store on Tuesday, I was there at 11AM to rent it. I’ve been watching the 13 episodes ever since.

What is my fascination with this story? What is our fascination with stories like this one in movies and on television, in books and on stages since art and literature became part of our cultural experience? What is it about stories, this story, all stories … my story?

Stories are an expression of my homesickness. Novalis, the 18th Century poet philosopher said “Art and story is really homesickness, it is the urge to be home everywhere.” The telling and re-telling of stories and the urge to hear stories is our desire to find our place somewhere, anywhere. Everyone of us is homesick. We are mythically on a journey away from some primal Garden of Eden as we first begin to lose our cherished experiences of lost childhood, move through a life of alienation constantly seeking in the words of William Wordsworth “God, who is our home”.

Stories are the way in to one another and to that mystery I call God. When I watch Tony Soprano struggle with his fears, his guilt and shame; when I see the choices he makes I am forced to say with Moses, Abraham, Isaiah, Mary, Jesus, ‘Here I am.” Art and Literature make me present to myself … to my surroundings …to Spirit …to Spirit present as me and as you.

There is a famous quote from scripture that says “Be still and know …” Sunday I'm really going to get into the role of story in my and it's funny that it leads me back to a spiritual practice inspired by the Centering Prayer of Dom Thomas Keating; a Dom and a Don … all in one blog. Well … you gotta admit I’m eclectic
"Wha ya gunna do?"

Rev.T

A moving Experience

Everybody wants to grow and change but nobody wants the transition. Is that true? Well it is if you think it is. I certainly proved that to myself over the last 2 years or 18 months. It is true that some people didn't want to move and when we hold that belief guess what. We gather around us people to dont want to change. They are drawn to us like flies to ... honey. We then start to feed off one anothers energy. the Universe if you haven't noticed supports change. If you put a lot of living things in a small space with no room to grow they die. The Universe supports change. In this case the change looks like destruction. I am convinced in our last months, year in the Chateau the Universe supported our shrinking because I was afraid to risk growing (me, you, the Centre) I am SO grateful to our wonderful landlord Marcia Cargill for listening to the promptings of Spirit and giving us the boot.

The "moving experience" I refer to is week 1 in Seaquam. I ahve NEVER expereinced the level of enthusiasm for one another and for the spirit of how can I serve that was in the room on Sunday. I felt for the first time in three years that the people had taken ownership of their Centre. We took responsibilty for how it worked, we accepted accountability for everything in our experience that day and we took pride in the fact that we had a community and a Sunday experience that said we believe in growth. I want to let you all know that a group met at Starbucks immediately after we closed everything down to say "Ok what worked?" "What didn't and what can we make better?" Now that is commitment to growth and excellence!!!

Were you moved? I was. Are you moved? I AM.

Watch us grow!

Where we're at NOW!

well ... it been a while since i blogged here. So caught up in so many things. Synchronicity being what it is, I called my practitioner the other day to talk about how stressed I was feeling. The very best thing about getting a diagnosis from your Dr. that you are stressed, if your a Rel. Sc.is that he confirms that it is all in your head DUH!!!

It's one thing to be told you have cancer and be told it all started in your head and so now what are you going to do about it. Thanks Larry Dossey and all of the docs who taught us about heart disease and the connection to thoughts and emotions ... anyway. It is one thing to know your symptoms of liver dis ease and heart dis ease and so on are a result of what you think. It feels sometimes far fetched and a l o n g road back to health. But to told you have stress induced symptoms of heart attack ... well ... get over yourself!

Back to my practitioner ... she let me know that she too was moving her Centre after ...WOW ... 11 years in the same location... nd so could relate totally to where I am emotionally. What's the big deal ... well frankly ... there isn't any. It's all in my head.

Some people have spoken to me about missing my blog and how much they looked forward to reading them. I've been asked where I archive the abstracts of my Sunday lessons so people can go back to them. "It's really useful especially if you are doing a series, like now." "You know the summer school thang." (Thanks Rob) Frankly I'm flattered and ... well ... I enjoy writing them but got kind of side tracked. With the new location and just changes in the wind generally, I'm feeling more centred and ready to share more of what is on my mind ... and heart maybe.

so here goes ... here's the first in the series on Summer School ... Life 101 General Ed.

The next eight weeks of Sunday lessons offer Life Enhancement Courses designed to encourage you to look at where you are in your life NOW. Think of summer as the time when nature is at its most prolific. Yesterday morning a mother mallard duck swam past my window with nine ducklings in tow. Now if that ain’t prolific, I don’t know what is. This is the time for us to be at our most productive as well. It is time to open up your mind to where you would truly like to be.
Last night coming home on #10 Hwy … ALL traffic was stopped in both directions as a yet another mother lead her small brood of seven across the highway to the safety of the ditch on the other side. As I sat watching the spectacle unfolding before me, this bold yet fragile creature braving the danger of these gigantic vehicles and the smiles of delight and wonder on the faces of the drivers, I thought, “what gives this duck its pluck?”
Whatever it was it sure impressed all of us sitting patiently in the twilight of a Thursday evening.
I sat thinking of the fierce power at the centre of my life and how it has constantly pushed me to be more. In New Thought, thanks largely to Ernest Holmes, we talk about the interplay of evolution and involution as the cosmic encoding of our human existence. Holmes says of evolution. It is the passing of Spirit into form. It is the unfoldment of First Cause. Evolution is the time and process through which an idea unfolds to a higher state of manifestation and since ideas are Divine Realities, evolution will go on forever. Mother duck didn’t always have to consider cars on the fens of Ladner but when she had to she did. Involution on the other hand was what I observed on the faces of my fellow travelers that night. It was the dawning of an idea, the rising up of a kindness or a fellow feeling.
I become productive when I approach my life from a place of wonder and excitement; when I invoke involution; when I become involved. As I sat there watching and waiting in that moment of calm, I was involved and I thought …
What is my life about right now?
What do I desire to improve?
Why do I desire to improve it?
What is the experience I wish to have?
What would that feel like?
What am I willing to do to have this experience?
At that point I was aware I had already set something in motion. I had planted a seed of thought in the Creative Mind. Traffic started moving again. Mother duck stood proudly on the shoulder. Her little ones had disappeared into the ditch. And I knew that the evolution of my questions into answers had already begun.

Gotta get back!!

TS Eliot suggested we measure our lives with coffee spoons... I dont remember what poem that was. Some of us measure our lives in books, movies, relationships (hmmmm? certainly has been a reference point for me, 1980??? Oh yeah, I was with _______)

So taday I'm thinking what am I measuring my life in? Seems that i can get lost in this one ... read have got lost in this one in the sense that it's just another place to put my attention which is out of the now. Teaching last night, exploring the idea of "my story" I got to see again what it is I give my attention to and the story is always about the future and how to make it better or avoid disaster and the past how to heal from that and how to hold onto this.

What about now? Can I make this blog just about now and not even about the next sentence and still make sense or does making sense mean I have to situate myself firmly in a space between the past and the future? Is that all the present is ... a time to keep the past and the future from bumping into one another?

It's amazing just how unwilling I am to stay in the present moment. Like I've been working here and looking up every so often to see when the moon will come around from behind my neighbours house ... yikes almost here. WOW!! pretty soon now, I'll experience joy.

What have I been experiencing while I've been waiting to experience joy? Certainly not sadness, but anticipation ... something to keep my past moment and the future from bumping into one another. Yeah but what about what might been happening without anticipation. I keep thinking of Eckart Tolle's "Try thinking about what your next thought will be." Cant do it can you.

Ok now try enjoying this present moment .................................

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Oops! here comes the moon ... gotta go

I won't be kissing strangers tonight ...

I could say i'll be @ home tonight because i'm getting old and i'm not into all the "partying" around New Years but the truth is old or not I was NEVER into it ... and i'm pretty sure most of you aren't either but like Christmas, New Years exerts a powerful influence on us to conform to the obligatory merrymaking. I was thinking yesterday about how difficult Christmas is for so many people. i think we're trapped in a mindset of gotta DO Christmas like in my family. Do you realize how few of us statistically are "in families" these days and yet we want to create this artificial family Christmas thing and drive ourselves crazy trying to achieve it. Rest, comfort and the "peace" Christmas is so famous for are a change of thought away ... aren't they?

Anyway I wont be out kissing a bunch of strangers at midnight tonight. I will be @ home in a place a I love, drinking champagne by candlelight in the bath ... with some one I love and counting my blessings. That's the way I want to end 2004.

I'm thinking. How much is my beautiful float home worth in $$$? How much would I take for it today? What about my partner? If I had to give him up, how much would I want for him? What about my job. Yeah I know how much I earn in a week, a month, a year etc. but how much would I want to really give up the joy, the sense of accomplishment, the feeling of connection, the depth of emotion in seeing a life changed, hope return, relationships healed? What about giving up my eyes; my ability to read and study, or my body ... Oh and with what is going on in in southeast Asia in the wake of the Tsunami ... how much would you take to give up the comfort and security of your life here free from the anguish, pain and death all around you in ... say ... Sumatra, or Thailand or Sri Lanka? I guess you can see where I'm going ... I'm up into the millions of dollars now, probably billions and the list is only just started.

I can see New Years Eve 2005 turning into quite a celebration. Thanks Og Mandino for inspiring my thoughts today ... There is a lot to be thankful for and crass as it may sound putting a $ figure on it really brought it home to me. Gotta go ... Happy New Year everyone ... 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... dont mind me i'm just counting