Dimensioning: Inside the Seed –
[ from Listening: Voices at the Edge - Sheri Ritchlin copyright 1999]
. . .
“Let me give you an analogy that might help you to better understand dimensions. Imagine a section of earth with many different shallow but distinct layers of different material. Underneath this is a seed, which slowly germinates, sprouts, rises up through layers, breaks through the ground to develop as a plant, buds and bursts into blossom. In this analogy, each layer is a dimension. The ground is a compound of dimensions itself and beyond the ground, a very different dimension altogether of air and light. The germinal energy of the plant, like your own germinal energy as an embryonic human, rises effortlessly upward through these dimensions without a distinct experience of dimensions. The germ of life itself is, in fact, dimensioning.
“This is speaking metaphorically, but now let’s speak literally. The germ of life inside the seed moves from one dimension to another in the moment that it emerges in the first shoot. Nothing inside that seed is remotely comparable to or can describe the shoot. If the world existed inside the seed, there would be no possible language among the beings of the world to describe “the life of the shoot to come.”
Every time something new ‘breaks out’ of the shoot, a new dimension, a new unique surface of sensibility comes into being. That sensibility is a primitive perception. To the degree to which it is ‘responsive to stimuli’, it is a form of consciousness. You can see that the plant as an organism is ‘collecting dimensions’; becoming more complex. This collecting of dimensions represents a gradual evolution of consciousness.
“Of course things are dropping away. Things, no longer sentient, at the point of which they are no longer direct bearers of the germ of life. The seed pod. Old leaves. Etc.
“Imagine the huge dimensional breakthrough when the plant rises above the earth into the medium of air and light. This brings forth a new surface of sensibility—the leaf—with a system of processing sunlight and carbon dioxide. But the surface of sensibility, the leaf, must still be bearing that germ of life which is source of its sensibility; that mysterious spark of cosmic energy, that divinity. The leaf has stewardship over that and retains sensibility as the function of that stewardship.
“Every ‘breaking through’ of the development of that plant is a ‘dimensioning’; the emergence of a different apparatus of sensibility, related to the whole, which in higher forms of life will be called perception. This is because the increased numbers of gateways create an increasing reciprocity between dimensions that leads to increased reflexivity. Reflection. Reverberation. Resonance. The essence of stewardship is ultimately that reciprocity between energy and form, self and other, the ‘you here’ and the ‘you beyond’ that can be described as a ‘harmonic of the One’, each sounding the note of a single chord which is increasingly added to through the creativity of dimensioning.
“But let us stay with the simple plant, which has already developed a remarkable degree of reciprocity between dimensions. Spectacular gateways that very particularly ‘receive’ carbon dioxide and ‘offer up’ oxygen.”
The hairs seemed to stand up on the back of my neck at these words. “Wait a minute,” I said. “Is it like— ”
“Yes,” he said. “It is.”
[The Spiritual Posture had been the core of his teaching through our time together: To receive grace with true gratitude of spirit and to offer it to all around you with true humility and love.]
“Even the plant has a posture at the threshold which is a particular form of dedication to the process. This is what a mystic or a saint or a bodhisattva can suddenly experience when looking at the plant. Of course the experience is beyond the five senses in a higher collection of dimensions, with a higher level of focus that sees more deeply. More completely. Has increased reciprocity. Can even briefly experience, at the center, the focus of dimensions. ‘When all creation sings a paean to the Creator.’”
“But you mustn’t rush off from our lowly plant. You’ve begun to sense something important here. Your mind has been ‘blown away’ by the wonder of photosynthesis as of the same pattern as ‘receiving the gift of life,’ the grace of it, and ‘offering it up’ in humility and love. This tells you that any individual who carefully beholds the plant, experiences the reality of the plant, may be struck by an awe which will lead naturally to reverence, gratitude, honoring. The plant itself becomes a gateway to a new dimension of human life. So interconnected, interlaced is it all, that nothing is lowly. Less than or greater than. Near or far.
“Now what about the blossom which breaks out of the bud? If photosynthesis is miraculous, what of this? The rose? The orchid? The Ladyslipper or tiny Forget-me-nots?
“Stop and think, just think, of the import this new surface of sensibility.
He was right. I simply couldn’t.
“Consider the dimensional change, the ‘leap’ between bud and flower. So much more than what you might be tempted to call ‘mere’ photosynthesis. So much more delicate, intricate a level of sensibility. So much richer an exchange, that the sight of the rose opens up a dimension of aesthetic feeling—awe, appreciation—for even the most insensitive human.”
“Where does the stewardship fit in here?”
“Flowering, in this moment, is beyond stewardship. It’s rather the peak of the dimensionalities of the plant. The focus then of all the intelligence of the plant that conspire in a single expression, celebration, reflection that is beauty itself. A peerless singularity.
“This is never lasting, of course, because a changing process is always at work. There is a golden secret held inside the velvet beauty of the rose. A new seed. As if the germ of life in a seed or bulb or womb must rise up as something so exultant and filled with such multi-dimensional sensibility as the rose, before a new seed can be shaped; a vessel that carries this consummated energy forward into a new process. So all along, the rose too had its stewardship after all. A stewardship of maturity and pregnant beauty. The high ripe beauty of mid-summer that fades to fall.
“The human is infinitely more complex and multi-dimensional. But not something ‘higher on a scale’. That’s a grave misunderstanding. Many humans live much longer and more complex lives than a single rose without opening themselves, as the rose did, as a gateway onto the rich sentient dimensions of the universe, ‘reflecting’ its beauty.
“Yet it may help you to sense the mystery of dimensioning and the exquisite role of stewardship that each form takes on as it articulates (through its own dimensions) and passes on the spark of life and light. The divine energy of the cosmos, alive in the seed.”
“Why do you say ‘divine’?”
“Because it is sanctified by the sacrifice of each of the stewards along the way—seed, to shoot, to sepal, to petal. ‘Sanctity’, of course, is part of the human dimension which includes dimensions of the plant. But in your much more creative dimension you have will and choice. You can choose to be a steward. You can choose to worship form and close off your sentience to the flow of life through form; close the gates of perception to the larger dimensions of the universe. You can fail in the work of reflexion and so become less than the rose.
“Or you can open the gates. Receive gratefully. Offer up graciously. But humans, as well as increased capacities, have increased challenges and responsibilities. Receiving the gift of life, of grace—which is the infusion and radiation of life and light in All and ‘offering it up in humility and love’ includes the acceptance also of the falling away of your form in death when the germ of light and life which your body has so honorably served moves on into its new dimension. The one that you, while in the seed’s interior, can never see. But everything you have shaped well inside the seed of this world will move on into its new dimension and develop new surfaces of sentience necessary to that element, even as you were constantly shedding old forms that had served their purpose throughout your life.”
“But I’m confused here. Which ‘you’ is accepting the death of the form and can’t see the next and which ‘you’ moves into the new dimension?”
“It’s all the same you, in one sense. But if you remember the experience of the ‘many selves’ and the ‘puppetmaster’ then you will see how much more complex the human is with regard to dimensioning. I’ve described the miraculous and complex dimensions of the physical human organism. We haven’t discussed the ways in which the physical organism is ‘riddled’ with gateways into the psychic dimension. At the more primitive level (of the human dimensionality), this leads to dimensions of the personality.
“The personality itself is a steward of the germ of energy unfolding as the human being. The focus of its dimensions, its intelligence, is the ego. In the past, I have used the terms mental organizing principle, physical organizing principle and emotional organizing principle to identify the focalizer or intelligence governing each of those dimensions of human experience. If you think of that earlier experience of the puppetmaster and the many selves, the same question arose. You asked ‘which one am I?’ I said that you are the observer who abides through it all. The puppetmaster outside the stage. Exactly. Because ‘you’ are inside the spark, the germ itself—like the ‘you’ of your very first experience inside the stamen of the flower; inside the tunnel, moving forward through its dimensions, shining through its forms. The Puppetmaster and the Spiritual Organizing Principle are basically the same in the way they operate. As I told you, only the Spiritual Organizing Principle can be responsible for the management of the whole being.
“The Spiritual Posture is the focalizer of all the dimensions of human consciousness; its ultimate intelligence working through the mental, physical and emotional orders. You’ve learned with frustration and anguish over these years that it is very difficult to practice. Year in year out, forgetting and remembering, pain and confusion... The human experience.
“To develop the observer, to gather all the threads through a higher ‘intelligence’—a higher ‘organizing principle’—is an example of what I mean by the developing and articulation of a dimension, which is actually a development not unlike the ‘articulation’ of a plant, moved by a mysteriously evolving ‘plant consciousness’ that will reach its peak in the flower.
“It is possible for the human being to go from birth to death without developing very much at all. This is not a failure but it is a distinct limitation--like a plant that weakly develops, is undernourished or over-watered and perhaps fails to produce a flower. Or produces a deformed or sickly one. The process doesn’t end but it is foreshortened. Stunted. Maybe the plant dies in an early stage and is recycled into earth. But earth is still full of dimensions of its own that are moving the spark of life through it. All of it is good, important, serving the life of the Cosmos.
“Nevertheless, new and higher and richer dimensions break forth when the spiritual organizing principle is at work. Hence the breadth of possibility in the dimension of human consciousness with its potential openings into so many other dimensions. In the increased complexity, dimensioning and intelligence of the plant, there is this increasing reciprocity I’ve described. It is particularly obvious in the tropism of the plant and flower, leaning toward the higher energy of the Sun, which is stimulating its higher levels of unfolding.
“This is where God acts in the human dimension (which is why the Sun was so often worshiped and retained as a metaphor in all religions). But the reciprocity between God and the human is much more ‘articulated’ than that between flower and Sun. That articulation is religion: a high form of dimensioning in the human that creates a new surface of sentience as the rose does for the plant. So, of course, does science, art, craftsmanship, skills of any kind. In theory, religion aims toward the highest skill, the spiritual posture. But we’ve talked about this. It may or may not happen at the institutional level.”
“A quick question here. You’re saying that the surface of sentience doesn’t have to be physical? I would think ‘surface’ implies that it does.”
“Where is the physical surface of sensibility that responds aesthetically; loves one piece of music over another? It’s surely not the ear or the ‘sensation’ would be universal to all creatures with ears. But this doesn’t mean that the intricacy of the physical surfaces doesn’t play a significant part. The key is that the complexification of dimensions, including the physical, implies an increased surface of sentience in every case that is increasingly multi-dimensional, therefore not wholly manifest in the less complex dimensional forms. Inside the earth, you only see the roots. Never the rose. Easy to believe, then, that the rose doesn’t exist, even though the roots carry the intelligence of it as the organizing principle of the plant.
“To return to the image of tropism and the reciprocity of God and the human, we were speaking of the spiritual posture in the human as a turning toward this focus of the universe itself as God. That highest intelligence or ‘the central spark’, has to be enshrined as a value in the culture; an idea in the human society. This is fundamental to the nature of the human.”
“But you have described religion as a trysting place with God.”
“I did. All of the description is inadequate. You can think of it as the trysting place at the center— there in the heart of darkness inside the seed or the radiant whiteness and light at the heart of the universe. I have also said that the trysting place with God is the abyss, to give a sense of the precipitous fearfulness that can precede the encounter with the depths of divinity. These are all things ultimately beyond description of any kind. But they are nevertheless intimations of what can be met well in the spiritual posture by the ‘you’ beyond personality; the many, perishable selves which are nevertheless the stewards of your passage through the dimensions of human life.”
“This makes me feel sad,” I lamented. “It seems to me that modern life is a complete preoccupation with personality and attachment to the material forms of things.”
“You don’t need to be simple-minded or morose about it,” he warned. “That, in itself, is a kind of flat, meager-dimensional thinking when an expansion and enrichment is what you’re after. You have to look carefully and honor the explosion of dimensions going on all around you as the development of human knowledge and skill. If we are speaking of new surfaces of sentience, responsiveness to stimuli, consciousness itself has huge potentialities of expansion. But the human interface itself remains essentially unchanged as the focus of intelligence that alone can articulate a new perception.
“The challenge becomes greater and greater as the artificial surfaces of sentience explode in new directions for the human through technology. Exactly like the plant, if any part of the human loses touch with the life energy of which it is the steward, that part dies. In the human, loss of the sense of stewardship over the germ of unfolding light, life and energy—in the individual, the collective, the planet, the cosmos—can indeed lead to destruction or death as well. But this is not addressed through simple-minded thinking, through fear, or even through despair. Remember, each of those is a posture. And none of those is the spiritual posture.”
. . .
“You will have to trust me when I say that the only key for the human in moving through dimensions is the posture. And you must have this expanded idea of perception I’ve described rather than perception as merely the eye’s production. The five senses. These are articulations for this dimension, for perception in this place. Honor, gratitude, love, virtue... These are not refinements of behavior but refinements of perception that in themselves open onto larger dimensions of the universe. This is why virtue is correctly associated with spirituality and all gifted spiritual individuals had access to it and accessed with it. “
Proudly powered by Weebly
[ from Listening: Voices at the Edge - Sheri Ritchlin copyright 1999]
. . .
“Let me give you an analogy that might help you to better understand dimensions. Imagine a section of earth with many different shallow but distinct layers of different material. Underneath this is a seed, which slowly germinates, sprouts, rises up through layers, breaks through the ground to develop as a plant, buds and bursts into blossom. In this analogy, each layer is a dimension. The ground is a compound of dimensions itself and beyond the ground, a very different dimension altogether of air and light. The germinal energy of the plant, like your own germinal energy as an embryonic human, rises effortlessly upward through these dimensions without a distinct experience of dimensions. The germ of life itself is, in fact, dimensioning.
“This is speaking metaphorically, but now let’s speak literally. The germ of life inside the seed moves from one dimension to another in the moment that it emerges in the first shoot. Nothing inside that seed is remotely comparable to or can describe the shoot. If the world existed inside the seed, there would be no possible language among the beings of the world to describe “the life of the shoot to come.”
Every time something new ‘breaks out’ of the shoot, a new dimension, a new unique surface of sensibility comes into being. That sensibility is a primitive perception. To the degree to which it is ‘responsive to stimuli’, it is a form of consciousness. You can see that the plant as an organism is ‘collecting dimensions’; becoming more complex. This collecting of dimensions represents a gradual evolution of consciousness.
“Of course things are dropping away. Things, no longer sentient, at the point of which they are no longer direct bearers of the germ of life. The seed pod. Old leaves. Etc.
“Imagine the huge dimensional breakthrough when the plant rises above the earth into the medium of air and light. This brings forth a new surface of sensibility—the leaf—with a system of processing sunlight and carbon dioxide. But the surface of sensibility, the leaf, must still be bearing that germ of life which is source of its sensibility; that mysterious spark of cosmic energy, that divinity. The leaf has stewardship over that and retains sensibility as the function of that stewardship.
“Every ‘breaking through’ of the development of that plant is a ‘dimensioning’; the emergence of a different apparatus of sensibility, related to the whole, which in higher forms of life will be called perception. This is because the increased numbers of gateways create an increasing reciprocity between dimensions that leads to increased reflexivity. Reflection. Reverberation. Resonance. The essence of stewardship is ultimately that reciprocity between energy and form, self and other, the ‘you here’ and the ‘you beyond’ that can be described as a ‘harmonic of the One’, each sounding the note of a single chord which is increasingly added to through the creativity of dimensioning.
“But let us stay with the simple plant, which has already developed a remarkable degree of reciprocity between dimensions. Spectacular gateways that very particularly ‘receive’ carbon dioxide and ‘offer up’ oxygen.”
The hairs seemed to stand up on the back of my neck at these words. “Wait a minute,” I said. “Is it like— ”
“Yes,” he said. “It is.”
[The Spiritual Posture had been the core of his teaching through our time together: To receive grace with true gratitude of spirit and to offer it to all around you with true humility and love.]
“Even the plant has a posture at the threshold which is a particular form of dedication to the process. This is what a mystic or a saint or a bodhisattva can suddenly experience when looking at the plant. Of course the experience is beyond the five senses in a higher collection of dimensions, with a higher level of focus that sees more deeply. More completely. Has increased reciprocity. Can even briefly experience, at the center, the focus of dimensions. ‘When all creation sings a paean to the Creator.’”
“But you mustn’t rush off from our lowly plant. You’ve begun to sense something important here. Your mind has been ‘blown away’ by the wonder of photosynthesis as of the same pattern as ‘receiving the gift of life,’ the grace of it, and ‘offering it up’ in humility and love. This tells you that any individual who carefully beholds the plant, experiences the reality of the plant, may be struck by an awe which will lead naturally to reverence, gratitude, honoring. The plant itself becomes a gateway to a new dimension of human life. So interconnected, interlaced is it all, that nothing is lowly. Less than or greater than. Near or far.
“Now what about the blossom which breaks out of the bud? If photosynthesis is miraculous, what of this? The rose? The orchid? The Ladyslipper or tiny Forget-me-nots?
“Stop and think, just think, of the import this new surface of sensibility.
He was right. I simply couldn’t.
“Consider the dimensional change, the ‘leap’ between bud and flower. So much more than what you might be tempted to call ‘mere’ photosynthesis. So much more delicate, intricate a level of sensibility. So much richer an exchange, that the sight of the rose opens up a dimension of aesthetic feeling—awe, appreciation—for even the most insensitive human.”
“Where does the stewardship fit in here?”
“Flowering, in this moment, is beyond stewardship. It’s rather the peak of the dimensionalities of the plant. The focus then of all the intelligence of the plant that conspire in a single expression, celebration, reflection that is beauty itself. A peerless singularity.
“This is never lasting, of course, because a changing process is always at work. There is a golden secret held inside the velvet beauty of the rose. A new seed. As if the germ of life in a seed or bulb or womb must rise up as something so exultant and filled with such multi-dimensional sensibility as the rose, before a new seed can be shaped; a vessel that carries this consummated energy forward into a new process. So all along, the rose too had its stewardship after all. A stewardship of maturity and pregnant beauty. The high ripe beauty of mid-summer that fades to fall.
“The human is infinitely more complex and multi-dimensional. But not something ‘higher on a scale’. That’s a grave misunderstanding. Many humans live much longer and more complex lives than a single rose without opening themselves, as the rose did, as a gateway onto the rich sentient dimensions of the universe, ‘reflecting’ its beauty.
“Yet it may help you to sense the mystery of dimensioning and the exquisite role of stewardship that each form takes on as it articulates (through its own dimensions) and passes on the spark of life and light. The divine energy of the cosmos, alive in the seed.”
“Why do you say ‘divine’?”
“Because it is sanctified by the sacrifice of each of the stewards along the way—seed, to shoot, to sepal, to petal. ‘Sanctity’, of course, is part of the human dimension which includes dimensions of the plant. But in your much more creative dimension you have will and choice. You can choose to be a steward. You can choose to worship form and close off your sentience to the flow of life through form; close the gates of perception to the larger dimensions of the universe. You can fail in the work of reflexion and so become less than the rose.
“Or you can open the gates. Receive gratefully. Offer up graciously. But humans, as well as increased capacities, have increased challenges and responsibilities. Receiving the gift of life, of grace—which is the infusion and radiation of life and light in All and ‘offering it up in humility and love’ includes the acceptance also of the falling away of your form in death when the germ of light and life which your body has so honorably served moves on into its new dimension. The one that you, while in the seed’s interior, can never see. But everything you have shaped well inside the seed of this world will move on into its new dimension and develop new surfaces of sentience necessary to that element, even as you were constantly shedding old forms that had served their purpose throughout your life.”
“But I’m confused here. Which ‘you’ is accepting the death of the form and can’t see the next and which ‘you’ moves into the new dimension?”
“It’s all the same you, in one sense. But if you remember the experience of the ‘many selves’ and the ‘puppetmaster’ then you will see how much more complex the human is with regard to dimensioning. I’ve described the miraculous and complex dimensions of the physical human organism. We haven’t discussed the ways in which the physical organism is ‘riddled’ with gateways into the psychic dimension. At the more primitive level (of the human dimensionality), this leads to dimensions of the personality.
“The personality itself is a steward of the germ of energy unfolding as the human being. The focus of its dimensions, its intelligence, is the ego. In the past, I have used the terms mental organizing principle, physical organizing principle and emotional organizing principle to identify the focalizer or intelligence governing each of those dimensions of human experience. If you think of that earlier experience of the puppetmaster and the many selves, the same question arose. You asked ‘which one am I?’ I said that you are the observer who abides through it all. The puppetmaster outside the stage. Exactly. Because ‘you’ are inside the spark, the germ itself—like the ‘you’ of your very first experience inside the stamen of the flower; inside the tunnel, moving forward through its dimensions, shining through its forms. The Puppetmaster and the Spiritual Organizing Principle are basically the same in the way they operate. As I told you, only the Spiritual Organizing Principle can be responsible for the management of the whole being.
“The Spiritual Posture is the focalizer of all the dimensions of human consciousness; its ultimate intelligence working through the mental, physical and emotional orders. You’ve learned with frustration and anguish over these years that it is very difficult to practice. Year in year out, forgetting and remembering, pain and confusion... The human experience.
“To develop the observer, to gather all the threads through a higher ‘intelligence’—a higher ‘organizing principle’—is an example of what I mean by the developing and articulation of a dimension, which is actually a development not unlike the ‘articulation’ of a plant, moved by a mysteriously evolving ‘plant consciousness’ that will reach its peak in the flower.
“It is possible for the human being to go from birth to death without developing very much at all. This is not a failure but it is a distinct limitation--like a plant that weakly develops, is undernourished or over-watered and perhaps fails to produce a flower. Or produces a deformed or sickly one. The process doesn’t end but it is foreshortened. Stunted. Maybe the plant dies in an early stage and is recycled into earth. But earth is still full of dimensions of its own that are moving the spark of life through it. All of it is good, important, serving the life of the Cosmos.
“Nevertheless, new and higher and richer dimensions break forth when the spiritual organizing principle is at work. Hence the breadth of possibility in the dimension of human consciousness with its potential openings into so many other dimensions. In the increased complexity, dimensioning and intelligence of the plant, there is this increasing reciprocity I’ve described. It is particularly obvious in the tropism of the plant and flower, leaning toward the higher energy of the Sun, which is stimulating its higher levels of unfolding.
“This is where God acts in the human dimension (which is why the Sun was so often worshiped and retained as a metaphor in all religions). But the reciprocity between God and the human is much more ‘articulated’ than that between flower and Sun. That articulation is religion: a high form of dimensioning in the human that creates a new surface of sentience as the rose does for the plant. So, of course, does science, art, craftsmanship, skills of any kind. In theory, religion aims toward the highest skill, the spiritual posture. But we’ve talked about this. It may or may not happen at the institutional level.”
“A quick question here. You’re saying that the surface of sentience doesn’t have to be physical? I would think ‘surface’ implies that it does.”
“Where is the physical surface of sensibility that responds aesthetically; loves one piece of music over another? It’s surely not the ear or the ‘sensation’ would be universal to all creatures with ears. But this doesn’t mean that the intricacy of the physical surfaces doesn’t play a significant part. The key is that the complexification of dimensions, including the physical, implies an increased surface of sentience in every case that is increasingly multi-dimensional, therefore not wholly manifest in the less complex dimensional forms. Inside the earth, you only see the roots. Never the rose. Easy to believe, then, that the rose doesn’t exist, even though the roots carry the intelligence of it as the organizing principle of the plant.
“To return to the image of tropism and the reciprocity of God and the human, we were speaking of the spiritual posture in the human as a turning toward this focus of the universe itself as God. That highest intelligence or ‘the central spark’, has to be enshrined as a value in the culture; an idea in the human society. This is fundamental to the nature of the human.”
“But you have described religion as a trysting place with God.”
“I did. All of the description is inadequate. You can think of it as the trysting place at the center— there in the heart of darkness inside the seed or the radiant whiteness and light at the heart of the universe. I have also said that the trysting place with God is the abyss, to give a sense of the precipitous fearfulness that can precede the encounter with the depths of divinity. These are all things ultimately beyond description of any kind. But they are nevertheless intimations of what can be met well in the spiritual posture by the ‘you’ beyond personality; the many, perishable selves which are nevertheless the stewards of your passage through the dimensions of human life.”
“This makes me feel sad,” I lamented. “It seems to me that modern life is a complete preoccupation with personality and attachment to the material forms of things.”
“You don’t need to be simple-minded or morose about it,” he warned. “That, in itself, is a kind of flat, meager-dimensional thinking when an expansion and enrichment is what you’re after. You have to look carefully and honor the explosion of dimensions going on all around you as the development of human knowledge and skill. If we are speaking of new surfaces of sentience, responsiveness to stimuli, consciousness itself has huge potentialities of expansion. But the human interface itself remains essentially unchanged as the focus of intelligence that alone can articulate a new perception.
“The challenge becomes greater and greater as the artificial surfaces of sentience explode in new directions for the human through technology. Exactly like the plant, if any part of the human loses touch with the life energy of which it is the steward, that part dies. In the human, loss of the sense of stewardship over the germ of unfolding light, life and energy—in the individual, the collective, the planet, the cosmos—can indeed lead to destruction or death as well. But this is not addressed through simple-minded thinking, through fear, or even through despair. Remember, each of those is a posture. And none of those is the spiritual posture.”
. . .
“You will have to trust me when I say that the only key for the human in moving through dimensions is the posture. And you must have this expanded idea of perception I’ve described rather than perception as merely the eye’s production. The five senses. These are articulations for this dimension, for perception in this place. Honor, gratitude, love, virtue... These are not refinements of behavior but refinements of perception that in themselves open onto larger dimensions of the universe. This is why virtue is correctly associated with spirituality and all gifted spiritual individuals had access to it and accessed with it. “
Proudly powered by Weebly