Happy Feast Day of St. Hildegard!
In the spare hours I get to write a book, I am progressing nicely with the clarity that this year's trials have brought me for what has happened to the Earth and where we need to go. Enjoy the following excerpt, and may you find sustenance in the rich meal that is your daily balance of creation's energies!
love,
Carl
Chapter 5: Surviving the Lovacalypse
The apocalypse of love - the “lovacalypse” - will rend open your sacred heart, turn inside out your mind, and anchor your immortal soul in your human body, which you will realize in new ways is both eternal and divine. Your own life will become both achingly familiar and startlingly new; you will be faced with what you always sensed might actually be true. This will make you extremely sensitive to what is safe and harmful the world, and what is true and false, thus compelling you to work for Heaven on the Earth beginning with what you have deep in you to do. To survive this total transformation, you will require more support and assistance than you may be accustomed to acknowledging was available to you in this life and world, but then that would be the point, wouldn’t it?!
The nature of eternal life must be discovered in the world today. We are experiencing the destruction of the old structures that were not built to last, while the infinite Spirit calls us deeper still and onward to the future that was always real and true. Sustainability is more than an ecological concept after all, it is most dearly spiritual. Just as we can hold in our hands the lovely fragrant blossom which will soon go to the seed from which the whole plant will rise again, so too we can embrace our divine essential self to be the flower of creation which contains both the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega, the miraculous eternity which conceives of itself ever anew. To be forever means to be the energetic pattern which sustains and reflects the whole, by caring for the balance of all-benefit which nurtures universal growth.
The glory of the infinite in eternal balance is elegantly depicted in the ancient metaphor known as the net of Indra. In third century Buddhist scripture, the Vedic god Indra drapes an amazing endless net at the cosmic center which connects heaven and earth; it is the web of life itself. At each intersection point of the net is strung a precious pearl, so finely polished that in it may be seen reflected every other pearl and the whole of the net itself. So too each refined perfected individual may contain and sustain the structure of all creation.
Cosmic metaphors are not merely invented by human imagination, they exist objectively as well. Modern science has given us the hologram. Holography is a startling photographic technique for recording the light scattered by an object into a material in such a way that the material’s surface does not by itself contain any recognizable pattern, but when light interacts with the hologram then the original three dimensional view is visible again. We can actually move our head back and forth to see the object appear to move with us, because multiple viewpoints have been stored in the structure. What’s most remarkable and unexpected about the hologram is that every fragment contains the whole; cut a hologram in two, and you have two smaller windows on the entire original scene. This is totally unlike a flat photograph, which with each cut is reduced to separate pieces of a puzzle. The property of a hologram to contain the whole in each piece demonstrates by light that each and every soul can retain the entire perspective of the universe, and thus have God inside.
From the pure realm of mathematics we can further grasp eternity by contemplating the fractal, a surprisingly simple equation that gives rise to infinite complexity. Fractals are a rather recent discovery that require easy repetitive calculations to view, thus computers are well suited to make them visible. Computer graphics make good use of fractals to generate landscapes that appear natural with lots of nooks and crannies, waves and clouds and trees, because nature also develops by locally simple rules that give rise to endless global detail. So the classic fractal image may be tunneled into from any point like a spaceship on a journey, whose view explodes into unending related intricate patterns, hauntingly familiar but with twists and turns that never quite repeat. This too shows how every human soul is a unique entry point into the infinite creativity of God. We are each given a unique path to follow, one that evokes the whole while offering a richly personal experience of that which never ends.
Eternity thus begins in the here and now, and the infinite is held most beautifully in the heart of the finite ideal. Earth is absolutely capable of sustaining heaven, and the body is eternal and divine. There is no reason to assume that the material world is not as holy and divine as the most immortal pure conception of God, only thinking has made it so. Our planet is as sacred or profane as you treat it to be. Dualistic philosophies which proclaimed that the flesh is a sinful place are really exposing the mind that is trying to purge itself of a problem by the problem itself, thus throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
In fact the brain is glorious, capable of stretching for a wider view outside of space and time, while the body anchors us in the sequence of its steady growth, so it takes the sacred heart to bridge the two and carry on. Those who believe in the power of love by opening to its transformative experience can feel that the relationships of loving are eternal and infinite in consequence. Thus they do not fear the changes of the body but become fond for the signatures of each passing season, in the full confidence and benefit that the best moments to practice each form of love again will always return. Earth is precisely the place where endless love can show itself and share.
Thus there is the ancient view of time as cyclical, with seasons ever coming round again. This may seem quaint today in a world that has made so very much progress by measuring time more by the differences of each passing age than by the similarities. We’ve straightened time into a line for the purpose of hurtling ourselves forward to a bigger change that we can even comprehend; could that too be a cycle?
We have felt superior to our yesterdays, preened ourselves with increasing God-like manifested powers, even as the toxicities accumulate from our unsustainable lifestyles, however well-intended they may have been to improve ourselves and benefit one another. Now as we stand on the brink of far more loss than gain, as we fear that apocalypse could spell the end of life on Earth by man-made or natural disaster. We do well to reach for cycles again, and reacquaint ourselves with ourselves in the past and future of a deeper sacred nature.
Human dreams have not changed; we have always chiefly longed for the security to love, to make our lives more beautiful and full of grace, to be the gifts to one another. And the source most secure for a more perfect creation is that which we call divine: the eternal good and true, wise and just, immortal and pure. Such ways and places surely do exist, for they motivate us far more starkly than the passing of a suffering, to love one another and confess that we can live no other way, than to know that our love is forever here, on an Earth as in the Heaven we can yet attain.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Friday, August 26, 2011
the coming "Lovacalypse"
On the discussion board for my meetup group at CosmicDocent.com I posted more information about twin flames and soulmates, with important concepts especially for those who have suffered in relationships. It's not a lonely hearts club we're forming after all, but a group that aspires to know and love the divine self, around which the perfect life can form. There are a lot of theories as to what will happen when the chakras open in December 2012, and my precaution is along the lines of the "Lovacalypse". People's hearts are going to open wide to a spectrum of relationships and projects with their soulmates and twin flames, in ways that demand the full incarnation of their soul energy. Not everyone will be in sync or willing to become so tender and vulnerable as to give the yes that the heart requires.
Psychologist Dorothy Tennov estimated from research for her 1979 book "Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love" that 11% of the broken hearted in relationships that end badly attempt suicide. That is a tragic loss of the ones who were willing to feel and try to be present with something more powerful than they could deny. Love has been shallowly defined in our culture as primarily romantic pleasure or parent-child bonding, but what happens when people really deeply feel from their eternal souls the love of serving the Earth together, by all manner of divine assignments that really make the difference to One spiritual planet? Some are going to say no to things they were born to do, and others will take that free-will resistance to their presence as a deep rejection of their very essence. Self-esteem will plummet, and some of the best people will feel so unwanted and isolated they will consider dying. Those on the darker path will consider harming the object of their affections, which is one reason why so many fear opening to being loved in the first place, they don't trust what will be done to them. We need to save more hearts and lives!
Learning to get beyond the existential crisis of unrequited love with deeper tools of self-knowing is a primary skill for becoming the stronger truer self who can be there and endure for the world as it wakes up. It is an angelic quality that we need in order to survive the pain of egos growing up. Think how many times you must have refused the comfort and wisdom of an angel. Karma will require that we revisit many people we have known in past lives who will say no to who we are before we can move on to the ones who are saying yes. The call to honest self-sacrifice is required to give the lost ones that chance to change their minds, and we must not suffer for it nor perpetuate the harm. Suffering is pain that never ends. Pain cannot be avoided on the planet at this time, but by transforming it to love we change reality.
http://www.meetup.com/The-Cosmic-Docent-Soul-Training-Course/messages/boards/thread/15219561
Psychologist Dorothy Tennov estimated from research for her 1979 book "Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love" that 11% of the broken hearted in relationships that end badly attempt suicide. That is a tragic loss of the ones who were willing to feel and try to be present with something more powerful than they could deny. Love has been shallowly defined in our culture as primarily romantic pleasure or parent-child bonding, but what happens when people really deeply feel from their eternal souls the love of serving the Earth together, by all manner of divine assignments that really make the difference to One spiritual planet? Some are going to say no to things they were born to do, and others will take that free-will resistance to their presence as a deep rejection of their very essence. Self-esteem will plummet, and some of the best people will feel so unwanted and isolated they will consider dying. Those on the darker path will consider harming the object of their affections, which is one reason why so many fear opening to being loved in the first place, they don't trust what will be done to them. We need to save more hearts and lives!
Learning to get beyond the existential crisis of unrequited love with deeper tools of self-knowing is a primary skill for becoming the stronger truer self who can be there and endure for the world as it wakes up. It is an angelic quality that we need in order to survive the pain of egos growing up. Think how many times you must have refused the comfort and wisdom of an angel. Karma will require that we revisit many people we have known in past lives who will say no to who we are before we can move on to the ones who are saying yes. The call to honest self-sacrifice is required to give the lost ones that chance to change their minds, and we must not suffer for it nor perpetuate the harm. Suffering is pain that never ends. Pain cannot be avoided on the planet at this time, but by transforming it to love we change reality.
http://www.meetup.com/The-Cosmic-Docent-Soul-Training-Course/messages/boards/thread/15219561
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
surviving the twin soul
(end of 2012 Note: this post has turned out to be so pivotal, with many people contacting me about it. I have thus gone back to clarify the terminology a little. Twin soul, twin flame, and soulmate get used different ways by different people, and that's fine as long as we know what kind of relationship each other is referring to. Here then are the definitions that I've settled on, although my older writings may still blur the distinctions. Also, some friends of mine perfectly switch the terms around for the same concepts, which makes it tricky to quote their ideas. For example, Ahtun Re calls a soulmate a twin soul, and a twin soul a soulmate! That's why we have to think about what we mean when we say the words, to hold the vibration and not just sling jargon.
Soulmate = Any significant other soul, probably from many past lives together. We meet them again and again to exchange gifts and hopefully improve the relationship, which could be smooth or rocky in emotions, short or long in duration. If the word "mate" throws you into romantic illusions, think more "crewmate" or "shipmate".
Twin Flame = A parallel soul, someone who has become very compatible by their own evolutionary choices. We may or may not have had many past lives together, but they definitely would be wonderful to meet and work with now. A serious candidate for lifelong mating and partner growth! Just don't forget to respect freewill choices and perceptions, as the human personalities get involved. Even the best twin flame potentials can come and go, at least until a fully conscious shared commitment is attained.
Twin Soul = The one other soul with whom you were originally created by the infinite mother/father God, who creates souls in perfect pairs so they may learn duality in harmony. You and your twin soul will always balance off each other, so that even though you two share values and goals you will represent opposing views and complementary methods. (My friend Walter Semkiw refers to twin souls as dipoles, to emphasize the perfect polarity which must be resolved for better or worse.) When twin soul incarnations meet there is an explosion of self-realization and growth, but any assumptions that this makes you ideal mates or colleagues will be tested and probably prove false. Most twin souls do not and cannot stay together long, which will result in hard feelings only as much as the wholeness and balance within each twin is not cultivated. We are after all each complete divine eternal beings.
And if I just say twin, I'm probably referring to the twin soul, but context should make it clear. Now back to my original post, with terms corrected for consistency according to the above definitions...)
I am relieved to know – definitely not happy, but relieved – that untimely separation from the ultimate mate of the soul (the so-called twin soul, that unique companion of eternity with whom we were made by God) can and will be SURVIVED. Since I opened just last year to the magic and miracles of actually meeting my own twin soul - the embodied twin of my immortal soul, the one my dreams had long foretold and I’d been praying for! - I have wondered a) why there was a deep recurring agony in me of something broken that wasn’t getting healed though it could and should be any day now, and b) how I could ever hope to reach and inspire all these people who seem tragically alienated from the infinite joy of the twin soul experience which I could not cease from recommending and describing.
It turns out that it’s actually very rare for twin souls to meet, and rarer for them to get along, romantically or otherwise; perhaps few were designed to be conventionally coupled, but all are most deeply born to co-create something new and wonderful for the next stage of humanity, when the time is right. The estrangement of twin souls simply cannot be divine, since these original soul comrades, these unique creation partners, are the most visible gift from God that we may ever hope to celebrate and receive as a species. Twin souls are invested with the powers to heal and change the world, as suggested by famed pairs as diverse and incomparable as Magdalene and Jesus, who most brilliantly rekindled the promise of a new human covenant with God (end of 2012 note: I now see that Magdalene and Jesus were twin flames, and Mother Mary and Jesus were the twin souls), Sri Aurobindo and Mirra Alfassa, who taught as an unexpected guru pair that spiritual evolution was now calling for our direct and conscious participation, and Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who in the midst of unenviable human frailties founded a nation never before seen to lead the future dream.
The current state of sad affairs (so to speak) with separated twins is a symptom of the planet now, which as we all know is in the final stages of the most significant transformation in at least many thousands of years: some would say since Atlantis, others would say ever. And my encounter with the phenomenon of unhappy twins was inevitable given the nature of my soul’s essential service, which is evident from my visionary lifetimes as the mystic Hildegard of Bingen and more, in that I help to lead the manifestation. I point the way to the divine destiny which is beyond the belief and experience of most people currently alive, and my writings get fortunately preserved and only really treasured and vindicated in the centuries that follow. I’m a bit ahead of my time, much to my recurring dismay. You'd think I’d learn and be glad of it, but you can see how it can be a hardship to really know what absolute greatness the human condition is meant to enjoy and as yet has not and shows few signs of ever getting there.
It is vital now that when twin souls meet and one awakens in their heart much more or differently than the other, so that when the near-inevitable separation comes they despair of ever being fit to live again, they not die of their heartbreak but join the company of other souls in a similar predicament. I was blessed by the universe with the return of a great karmic friend, a shaman soul whose experiences so parallel my own, to nurse me from the tragedy of my twin soul not being ready to stay and grow further in my direct and grateful company, despite how much we were both so happy to have met and helped each other activate and change our lives as only twin souls can. There is a kind of purgatory for abandoned twins that is forming now, and it is not so bad, though I will warn that I had to experience a shamanic death to enter it. My heart chakra literally died and was replaced after my twin gave their final notice; I didn’t know this and it’s rare, but chakras can fall off and grow back, as one woman I know had it happen to her third.
Feel free to contact me at returnofhildegard/at/gmail/dot-com if you are in the pains of knowing who is your twin soul and not being welcome there (notice I just spelled that out a bit to stop spammers). It is essential that you receive the support you need to survive. God has not abandoned you, and in fact the future is immeasurably grateful to your sacrifice which shall be rewarded beyond your imagination, though you may rightly not conceive of a life of love again. You will survive and thrive in a whole new way that will change the course of history, for you are strong as God, and your strength is greater than any army or this most potent poison you have swallowed or the beauty of that most singular flower whose fragrance you have inhaled. You were created for this moment which remains breathlessly poised upon the threshold of eternity, and your courage to carry on will see the future dream reborn. You must believe in yourself half as much as all the angels beg you to, for they know of the depths and height of the challenge to which you have been raised. The universe is just beginning now, and you must remember that the pain you will survive is a window for the world. Your soul is in your body now.
Update 1/3/2012: I am understanding the topic better now, along with feeling healed. Because they are born from each other, twin souls are in essence each other's parent and child simultaneously. Their meeting returns each other back to the Source and retrieves each other's soul only as much as each is ready to experience, so a balance of joy isn't guaranteed even if unconsciously a mutual benefit is exchanged that will unfold in time. Free will must be respected here in order to not suffer. And then the individuation will take place, just like children growing up, so twins will part ways naturally. You're ready to explore the world with your activated soul and find your own conscious preferences after reuniting with your twin. I am going to follow now some teachings which distinguish between the twin soul as the one who gave birth to you and you to them, versus the twin flame who is any truly infinite compatible partner (you carry a torch for each other).
So I was incorrect in my romantic assumption that Mary Magdalene and Jesus were the twin souls, no, they were perfect mates with compatible kundalinis to explore the universe together, better called the flames. Mother Mary and Jesus were the twin souls. I'm not sure about many other examples either, still researching, but I do know one rare twin soul romance was the poets Elizabeth and Robert Browning, and whether they might not still individuate apart in future lives is unknown to me.
Update 5/7/2013: For my latest blog post on this topic, see here: http://newearthlight.blogspot.com/2013/05/latest-advice-on-twin-souls.html
Soulmate = Any significant other soul, probably from many past lives together. We meet them again and again to exchange gifts and hopefully improve the relationship, which could be smooth or rocky in emotions, short or long in duration. If the word "mate" throws you into romantic illusions, think more "crewmate" or "shipmate".
Twin Flame = A parallel soul, someone who has become very compatible by their own evolutionary choices. We may or may not have had many past lives together, but they definitely would be wonderful to meet and work with now. A serious candidate for lifelong mating and partner growth! Just don't forget to respect freewill choices and perceptions, as the human personalities get involved. Even the best twin flame potentials can come and go, at least until a fully conscious shared commitment is attained.
Twin Soul = The one other soul with whom you were originally created by the infinite mother/father God, who creates souls in perfect pairs so they may learn duality in harmony. You and your twin soul will always balance off each other, so that even though you two share values and goals you will represent opposing views and complementary methods. (My friend Walter Semkiw refers to twin souls as dipoles, to emphasize the perfect polarity which must be resolved for better or worse.) When twin soul incarnations meet there is an explosion of self-realization and growth, but any assumptions that this makes you ideal mates or colleagues will be tested and probably prove false. Most twin souls do not and cannot stay together long, which will result in hard feelings only as much as the wholeness and balance within each twin is not cultivated. We are after all each complete divine eternal beings.
And if I just say twin, I'm probably referring to the twin soul, but context should make it clear. Now back to my original post, with terms corrected for consistency according to the above definitions...)
I am relieved to know – definitely not happy, but relieved – that untimely separation from the ultimate mate of the soul (the so-called twin soul, that unique companion of eternity with whom we were made by God) can and will be SURVIVED. Since I opened just last year to the magic and miracles of actually meeting my own twin soul - the embodied twin of my immortal soul, the one my dreams had long foretold and I’d been praying for! - I have wondered a) why there was a deep recurring agony in me of something broken that wasn’t getting healed though it could and should be any day now, and b) how I could ever hope to reach and inspire all these people who seem tragically alienated from the infinite joy of the twin soul experience which I could not cease from recommending and describing.
It turns out that it’s actually very rare for twin souls to meet, and rarer for them to get along, romantically or otherwise; perhaps few were designed to be conventionally coupled, but all are most deeply born to co-create something new and wonderful for the next stage of humanity, when the time is right. The estrangement of twin souls simply cannot be divine, since these original soul comrades, these unique creation partners, are the most visible gift from God that we may ever hope to celebrate and receive as a species. Twin souls are invested with the powers to heal and change the world, as suggested by famed pairs as diverse and incomparable as Magdalene and Jesus, who most brilliantly rekindled the promise of a new human covenant with God (end of 2012 note: I now see that Magdalene and Jesus were twin flames, and Mother Mary and Jesus were the twin souls), Sri Aurobindo and Mirra Alfassa, who taught as an unexpected guru pair that spiritual evolution was now calling for our direct and conscious participation, and Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who in the midst of unenviable human frailties founded a nation never before seen to lead the future dream.
The current state of sad affairs (so to speak) with separated twins is a symptom of the planet now, which as we all know is in the final stages of the most significant transformation in at least many thousands of years: some would say since Atlantis, others would say ever. And my encounter with the phenomenon of unhappy twins was inevitable given the nature of my soul’s essential service, which is evident from my visionary lifetimes as the mystic Hildegard of Bingen and more, in that I help to lead the manifestation. I point the way to the divine destiny which is beyond the belief and experience of most people currently alive, and my writings get fortunately preserved and only really treasured and vindicated in the centuries that follow. I’m a bit ahead of my time, much to my recurring dismay. You'd think I’d learn and be glad of it, but you can see how it can be a hardship to really know what absolute greatness the human condition is meant to enjoy and as yet has not and shows few signs of ever getting there.
It is vital now that when twin souls meet and one awakens in their heart much more or differently than the other, so that when the near-inevitable separation comes they despair of ever being fit to live again, they not die of their heartbreak but join the company of other souls in a similar predicament. I was blessed by the universe with the return of a great karmic friend, a shaman soul whose experiences so parallel my own, to nurse me from the tragedy of my twin soul not being ready to stay and grow further in my direct and grateful company, despite how much we were both so happy to have met and helped each other activate and change our lives as only twin souls can. There is a kind of purgatory for abandoned twins that is forming now, and it is not so bad, though I will warn that I had to experience a shamanic death to enter it. My heart chakra literally died and was replaced after my twin gave their final notice; I didn’t know this and it’s rare, but chakras can fall off and grow back, as one woman I know had it happen to her third.
Feel free to contact me at returnofhildegard/at/gmail/dot-com if you are in the pains of knowing who is your twin soul and not being welcome there (notice I just spelled that out a bit to stop spammers). It is essential that you receive the support you need to survive. God has not abandoned you, and in fact the future is immeasurably grateful to your sacrifice which shall be rewarded beyond your imagination, though you may rightly not conceive of a life of love again. You will survive and thrive in a whole new way that will change the course of history, for you are strong as God, and your strength is greater than any army or this most potent poison you have swallowed or the beauty of that most singular flower whose fragrance you have inhaled. You were created for this moment which remains breathlessly poised upon the threshold of eternity, and your courage to carry on will see the future dream reborn. You must believe in yourself half as much as all the angels beg you to, for they know of the depths and height of the challenge to which you have been raised. The universe is just beginning now, and you must remember that the pain you will survive is a window for the world. Your soul is in your body now.
Update 1/3/2012: I am understanding the topic better now, along with feeling healed. Because they are born from each other, twin souls are in essence each other's parent and child simultaneously. Their meeting returns each other back to the Source and retrieves each other's soul only as much as each is ready to experience, so a balance of joy isn't guaranteed even if unconsciously a mutual benefit is exchanged that will unfold in time. Free will must be respected here in order to not suffer. And then the individuation will take place, just like children growing up, so twins will part ways naturally. You're ready to explore the world with your activated soul and find your own conscious preferences after reuniting with your twin. I am going to follow now some teachings which distinguish between the twin soul as the one who gave birth to you and you to them, versus the twin flame who is any truly infinite compatible partner (you carry a torch for each other).
So I was incorrect in my romantic assumption that Mary Magdalene and Jesus were the twin souls, no, they were perfect mates with compatible kundalinis to explore the universe together, better called the flames. Mother Mary and Jesus were the twin souls. I'm not sure about many other examples either, still researching, but I do know one rare twin soul romance was the poets Elizabeth and Robert Browning, and whether they might not still individuate apart in future lives is unknown to me.
Update 5/7/2013: For my latest blog post on this topic, see here: http://newearthlight.blogspot.com/2013/05/latest-advice-on-twin-souls.html
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Ascension poetry from Jane Ward Leade
...I posted the following in my meetup at CosmicDocent.com If you're in the Boston area, you might want to join, as we're discussing monthly now the secrets of the eternal life of love divine. Don't worry if you can't attend of course, everyone learns sooner or later. :-)
A mystic truly after my own heart (or should I say before?) wrote this over 300 years ago (excerpted from The Heavenly Cloud Now Breaking by Jane Ward Leade)
The Mystic Ladder of Ascension High,
Is fixed for near Communion with the Sky;
Angels Ascending, and Descending free:
Such now shall Mortals be.
Who on Cherubic Wings of Faith and Love,
At will through Earth and Heaven shall freely rove,
Emptying below their upper Springs of Bliss,
And make Earth Paradise.
... you can read more about Jane, here's a good little bio
http://www.enotes.com/literary-criticism/lead-jane-ward
... and her uncommon writings online
http://www.passtheword.org/Jane-Lead/
... and even how her meetup used music and dance to commune with the angels
http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeIV/Harmonic.htm
You might say she's the Hildegard von Bingen of 17th century England, and she was born the year that Jakob Boehme died. I love a good history lesson. ;-)
A mystic truly after my own heart (or should I say before?) wrote this over 300 years ago (excerpted from The Heavenly Cloud Now Breaking by Jane Ward Leade)
The Mystic Ladder of Ascension High,
Is fixed for near Communion with the Sky;
Angels Ascending, and Descending free:
Such now shall Mortals be.
Who on Cherubic Wings of Faith and Love,
At will through Earth and Heaven shall freely rove,
Emptying below their upper Springs of Bliss,
And make Earth Paradise.
... you can read more about Jane, here's a good little bio
http://www.enotes.com/literary-criticism/lead-jane-ward
... and her uncommon writings online
http://www.passtheword.org/Jane-Lead/
... and even how her meetup used music and dance to commune with the angels
http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeIV/Harmonic.htm
You might say she's the Hildegard von Bingen of 17th century England, and she was born the year that Jakob Boehme died. I love a good history lesson. ;-)
Monday, August 15, 2011
sorry, heaven is taking a little longer...
If people knew what it was costing them, to keep slogging on with their all-too-common distanced approaches to daily living that would seem to fall safely short of what might be called sins, in the comfort of defenses against feeling that appear good for maintaining status quos at the tolerable risks of a little spiritual monotony, which can always be relieved as needed by voyeuristic reactions to the more violent delights in the world than they would themselves sanction but which they seem helpless to cease – if they knew all they were forfeiting to avoid the truly safe lives of eternally unfolding and sharing their soul’s greatest joys with their own immortal beloveds and friends, most of whom remain only half-imagined but never forgotten in the rarest peak moments of that somnabulent thing which they call daily living - then people would realize the hells they had created for themselves and each other, and try anything to change overnight, including feeling more divinely protected, beloved and guided than they ever thought possible. Feeling that limitless depth they would indeed love and change the world overnight.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
eulogy for Beth
delivered by Carl J. Schroeder, 11am Pine Plains, NY, July 30, 2011 Peck & Peck Funeral Home
Each of us is so much bigger than we know. Human beings are vast beyond imagination. When we are born, we are given finite lives in which to feel infinite love. This is not possible, it doesn’t seem fair! Time and again, we are both condemned and privileged, to experience the openings to boundless love followed by the limits of incalculable loss of that love. It is both the greatest joy and the hardest pain we will ever know, to so love and lose love, and still, at least for now, this is the way we must go.
When we gather to remember a life as beautiful as that of my sister Beth Schroeder, Steve’s wife Elizabeth Ashton, your friend Beth, the heart aches and the soul longs to have her still here with us in the physical body. But Beth has made the leap into pure spirit, she is energy now. And because of the infinity of who we each are, we can also experience, each in our own ways, that Beth is still here with us, just as we were always together with her there, in that infinite place from which we all come. Trailing clouds of glory, as the poet once said. You are glory bound, as my sister once wrote, and sang to each of us with her open heart.
Beth was close to everyone and everything, that is who she was and always will be. A shining good soul of service to this vast universe, greater than we or even she will ever know. Humble and strong, unjudging and true, Beth felt her own way through life as we all stumbling do. As signs of her closeness to our parents, she was diagnosed with cancer on the day of our father’s funeral, and then she lived 11 more beautiful years with us all. Beth entered that change we call death on the day of our parent’s wedding anniversary, which was two days before the day that our mother died. Beth’s life was pure magic this way, and still she did not know fully who or what or how great she was. None of us do, and yet we live and love on.
I grew up with Beth, we were just 3 years apart. So I was a little bit older and wiser perhaps, but we’ve always been close. All of my life, I have felt a great presence that was guiding and encouraging me to live my own dreams, often quite literally, and time and again I would be amazed to discover that this presence was Beth. For I am a mystic, I like to push the limits of eternity in the physical form, I want to know God and that source of the infinite love as clearly as I am by divine grace allowed.
When you’re young you don’t know who or what you are, so Beth and I looked forward to the future together, equally eager and confused by it all. As I worked out my mystical path, I had experiences that made me an absolute freak to most people, there were so many things that I could not talk about. And always Beth heard me. She was my longest most trustworthy confidant, and she would never judge. As I figured out how the universe worked, she would say oh Carl, that’s so incredible, you make me feel so ordinary in comparison. And I would say Beth, but you’re right there as well, you just don’t even know.
Well now sister Beth knows. She knows more than all of us put together, because we’re still limited to our physical forms, and she is free and beyond all that pain she was enduring just to stay a little longer and brighten our lives. When the body becomes a shell, and the spirit needs to expand, we are given that freedom to go. And actually, it was a miracle and a blessing that Beth lived largely pain free and far beyond her medical prognosis, even up to the last big bluegrass party that Beth and Steve had in their backyard just 7 and a half weeks ago.
All of us expected to live long happy lives with Beth, each in our own ways, and now she is gone and transformed. But I have to tell you, that this is what she does, she’s done this before. Until the world is ideal, until there is heaven on earth, Beth is one of those shining ones who focuses us on the months and days that we still have together, so that we may make the most of our precious time in the body. For too many years we have known that Beth might not be around much longer, and so we cherished and shared with her even more. She had a way with all life. She tended her gardens, her cats and her dogs, and she tended to all of our very own souls.
On the morning of Wednesday July 27, I awoke a little before 7am with a song in my mind. I was expecting to go drive to see Beth in her final days, after having given a talk in Cambridge the night before on spiritual love. The talk had gone well and was another great step for my dream career, just as Beth had always encouraged me to develop. Beth believed in people and the power of love, and she was as I said a great presence in my life for me finding myself.
So I’m not saying this is the best song for you all to enjoy, it’s rather punky and rebellious and mystical from my college days. It’s by Pete Shelley who was known for pushing gay rights, which as some of you know was just one of the many social justice concerns that Beth held. As I resonated with some of the lyrics about the needs for more love and change in the world, I cried that morning way way beyond my expectations, and I didn’t know why. Then Steve called me to say that Beth had just passed in his arms. So I posted these lines on my facebook page, because I knew that Beth had spoken to me as she was leaving her body in these words of this song:
I have a feeling, and I know it will never die
It’s part of the answer for asking the reason why
Out of the darkness the bright light surrounding me
I’m a part of everything I touch and see
I feel the sound of thunder and laughter
It’s tearing me apart
I hope that you will remember
The echo of my heart
Witness the change
Witness the change
Witness the change
Witness the change
Both Beth and the world are changing in ways that we can barely imagine, to make humans more free. Beth has gone ahead of us, because her soul is so very big, and her body could no longer contain all that she needed to be. To the very end I was learning more about my sister, and how much she loved. Just a couple weeks ago I was blessed with a final weekend’s visit with Beth, and she spoke of how proud she was in her job as a New York state town clerk that by law all couples would now be able to marry here. She said she would leave her job soon though, because she wanted other people to have to hand out those marriage licenses, it was too easy for her to not judge. For Beth it was easy to celebrate love.
I apologize if that issue presses your buttons, I have to say that I felt Beth wanted me to mention it, that’s all. She was and still is an activist for a more compassionate world on so many levels. Her close love of nature and ecology is huge of course, so if you want to remember Beth, be good to a plant, a garden, an animal, yourself. Enjoy music and art, because she shared that with us as well. Many of you know and treasure her original songs, she had a beautiful voice, the voice of a soul and the lyrics of a seeker after that soul. Her humility was in being both lost and found, not rising above anyone else, and serving human needs as they came to her. She was the family caretaker, she helped my father and mother and grandmother to pass at the end of their struggles with cancer, now she is free of her own.
One last story that I don’t think she’s ever told anyone, I hadn’t heard it before. On that last visit day, I told Beth how I’d had another one of my mystical dreams, in which a melody from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake came to me. I was so profoundly moved by this dream, and because I’ve long held mystical feelings for Russia, and had the amazing experience of adopting one of my beautiful sons from there, I speculated that in a past life I had heard this song at an original performance of the ballet in Moscow. To my surprise, Beth said oh, which melody. I sang it, and she said oh my god, that’s the one! When I was a little girl, I loved that song so much that I choreographed my own dance to it, but when I went to dance it at a recital this girl who hated me broke the record, so I had to dance it without music. That was difficult, but I did it, I was so proud of myself! So I was amazed as Beth and I found and played the song again for each other on her computer, because this was yet another example of how when you least expect it, Beth will be there, to encourage your dreams and share the way.
So now, I would suggest as a kind of meditation, I’m going to play this short song from Swan Lake. Let’s imagine that this time to dance her dance, Beth has the music, but not the physical body. Close your eyes, and see Beth in your mind, and open your heart. Beth has a new body of light, it is graceful and it goes everywhere that she is called to love and serve. You know how much she always wanted and expected to be here with us for more years in this life, it’s just that her body was tired and could no longer contain the great soul that Beth was and is and shall ever more be. Thank you God, for the many blessings we know as Beth.
(played Swan Lake act 2, final scene, the piece that is about 2 1/2 minutes long)
Each of us is so much bigger than we know. Human beings are vast beyond imagination. When we are born, we are given finite lives in which to feel infinite love. This is not possible, it doesn’t seem fair! Time and again, we are both condemned and privileged, to experience the openings to boundless love followed by the limits of incalculable loss of that love. It is both the greatest joy and the hardest pain we will ever know, to so love and lose love, and still, at least for now, this is the way we must go.
When we gather to remember a life as beautiful as that of my sister Beth Schroeder, Steve’s wife Elizabeth Ashton, your friend Beth, the heart aches and the soul longs to have her still here with us in the physical body. But Beth has made the leap into pure spirit, she is energy now. And because of the infinity of who we each are, we can also experience, each in our own ways, that Beth is still here with us, just as we were always together with her there, in that infinite place from which we all come. Trailing clouds of glory, as the poet once said. You are glory bound, as my sister once wrote, and sang to each of us with her open heart.
Beth was close to everyone and everything, that is who she was and always will be. A shining good soul of service to this vast universe, greater than we or even she will ever know. Humble and strong, unjudging and true, Beth felt her own way through life as we all stumbling do. As signs of her closeness to our parents, she was diagnosed with cancer on the day of our father’s funeral, and then she lived 11 more beautiful years with us all. Beth entered that change we call death on the day of our parent’s wedding anniversary, which was two days before the day that our mother died. Beth’s life was pure magic this way, and still she did not know fully who or what or how great she was. None of us do, and yet we live and love on.
I grew up with Beth, we were just 3 years apart. So I was a little bit older and wiser perhaps, but we’ve always been close. All of my life, I have felt a great presence that was guiding and encouraging me to live my own dreams, often quite literally, and time and again I would be amazed to discover that this presence was Beth. For I am a mystic, I like to push the limits of eternity in the physical form, I want to know God and that source of the infinite love as clearly as I am by divine grace allowed.
When you’re young you don’t know who or what you are, so Beth and I looked forward to the future together, equally eager and confused by it all. As I worked out my mystical path, I had experiences that made me an absolute freak to most people, there were so many things that I could not talk about. And always Beth heard me. She was my longest most trustworthy confidant, and she would never judge. As I figured out how the universe worked, she would say oh Carl, that’s so incredible, you make me feel so ordinary in comparison. And I would say Beth, but you’re right there as well, you just don’t even know.
Well now sister Beth knows. She knows more than all of us put together, because we’re still limited to our physical forms, and she is free and beyond all that pain she was enduring just to stay a little longer and brighten our lives. When the body becomes a shell, and the spirit needs to expand, we are given that freedom to go. And actually, it was a miracle and a blessing that Beth lived largely pain free and far beyond her medical prognosis, even up to the last big bluegrass party that Beth and Steve had in their backyard just 7 and a half weeks ago.
All of us expected to live long happy lives with Beth, each in our own ways, and now she is gone and transformed. But I have to tell you, that this is what she does, she’s done this before. Until the world is ideal, until there is heaven on earth, Beth is one of those shining ones who focuses us on the months and days that we still have together, so that we may make the most of our precious time in the body. For too many years we have known that Beth might not be around much longer, and so we cherished and shared with her even more. She had a way with all life. She tended her gardens, her cats and her dogs, and she tended to all of our very own souls.
On the morning of Wednesday July 27, I awoke a little before 7am with a song in my mind. I was expecting to go drive to see Beth in her final days, after having given a talk in Cambridge the night before on spiritual love. The talk had gone well and was another great step for my dream career, just as Beth had always encouraged me to develop. Beth believed in people and the power of love, and she was as I said a great presence in my life for me finding myself.
So I’m not saying this is the best song for you all to enjoy, it’s rather punky and rebellious and mystical from my college days. It’s by Pete Shelley who was known for pushing gay rights, which as some of you know was just one of the many social justice concerns that Beth held. As I resonated with some of the lyrics about the needs for more love and change in the world, I cried that morning way way beyond my expectations, and I didn’t know why. Then Steve called me to say that Beth had just passed in his arms. So I posted these lines on my facebook page, because I knew that Beth had spoken to me as she was leaving her body in these words of this song:
I have a feeling, and I know it will never die
It’s part of the answer for asking the reason why
Out of the darkness the bright light surrounding me
I’m a part of everything I touch and see
I feel the sound of thunder and laughter
It’s tearing me apart
I hope that you will remember
The echo of my heart
Witness the change
Witness the change
Witness the change
Witness the change
Both Beth and the world are changing in ways that we can barely imagine, to make humans more free. Beth has gone ahead of us, because her soul is so very big, and her body could no longer contain all that she needed to be. To the very end I was learning more about my sister, and how much she loved. Just a couple weeks ago I was blessed with a final weekend’s visit with Beth, and she spoke of how proud she was in her job as a New York state town clerk that by law all couples would now be able to marry here. She said she would leave her job soon though, because she wanted other people to have to hand out those marriage licenses, it was too easy for her to not judge. For Beth it was easy to celebrate love.
I apologize if that issue presses your buttons, I have to say that I felt Beth wanted me to mention it, that’s all. She was and still is an activist for a more compassionate world on so many levels. Her close love of nature and ecology is huge of course, so if you want to remember Beth, be good to a plant, a garden, an animal, yourself. Enjoy music and art, because she shared that with us as well. Many of you know and treasure her original songs, she had a beautiful voice, the voice of a soul and the lyrics of a seeker after that soul. Her humility was in being both lost and found, not rising above anyone else, and serving human needs as they came to her. She was the family caretaker, she helped my father and mother and grandmother to pass at the end of their struggles with cancer, now she is free of her own.
One last story that I don’t think she’s ever told anyone, I hadn’t heard it before. On that last visit day, I told Beth how I’d had another one of my mystical dreams, in which a melody from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake came to me. I was so profoundly moved by this dream, and because I’ve long held mystical feelings for Russia, and had the amazing experience of adopting one of my beautiful sons from there, I speculated that in a past life I had heard this song at an original performance of the ballet in Moscow. To my surprise, Beth said oh, which melody. I sang it, and she said oh my god, that’s the one! When I was a little girl, I loved that song so much that I choreographed my own dance to it, but when I went to dance it at a recital this girl who hated me broke the record, so I had to dance it without music. That was difficult, but I did it, I was so proud of myself! So I was amazed as Beth and I found and played the song again for each other on her computer, because this was yet another example of how when you least expect it, Beth will be there, to encourage your dreams and share the way.
So now, I would suggest as a kind of meditation, I’m going to play this short song from Swan Lake. Let’s imagine that this time to dance her dance, Beth has the music, but not the physical body. Close your eyes, and see Beth in your mind, and open your heart. Beth has a new body of light, it is graceful and it goes everywhere that she is called to love and serve. You know how much she always wanted and expected to be here with us for more years in this life, it’s just that her body was tired and could no longer contain the great soul that Beth was and is and shall ever more be. Thank you God, for the many blessings we know as Beth.
(played Swan Lake act 2, final scene, the piece that is about 2 1/2 minutes long)
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Ask Carl
Oh this is just so sweet. Someone asked me on facebook such a wide-open heartfelt question, like something you'd ask a guru, that I thought, what am I supposed to say to that? But then I said it, and I liked the answer that came to me, so let's post it here on the blog! It's been an intense day, number 2 of a 5 day workshop I'm taking on Vortex Healing, which is basically an enlightenment healing modality. The class is wonderful, full of the language of awakening experiences that I can relate to from my own journey thus far. So I'm grateful to the universe for this opportunity to play teacher after playing the student all day, and many thanks to Wilma for the brilliant question!
Q: What do you do to get your vibration up and the world a better place? Or isn't that the purpose or meaning of ascension? Sorry, but I am really a beginner in this and have a lot of questions.. Thanks in advance. Love, Wilma..
A: Hi Wilma! To get vibration up and make the world a better place, boy that's a big question! I would say the most important guidance I use is sustainability. The world is so full of advice that doesn't really feel good in the long run, like the idea of good and evil both need to exist and remain in balance. What, who says that? Just because there's evil today, I don't want it still here a thousand years from now. I'd say that evil is tiny and stupid and on its way out. Still dangerous of course, so use common sense, and ask angels and guides what to do when you run into some. Stuff like that, just question authority and decide for yourself what would make the world a better place, then live from those beliefs and see where they take you. Good luck, and feel free to ask any more questions!
Q: What do you do to get your vibration up and the world a better place? Or isn't that the purpose or meaning of ascension? Sorry, but I am really a beginner in this and have a lot of questions.. Thanks in advance. Love, Wilma..
A: Hi Wilma! To get vibration up and make the world a better place, boy that's a big question! I would say the most important guidance I use is sustainability. The world is so full of advice that doesn't really feel good in the long run, like the idea of good and evil both need to exist and remain in balance. What, who says that? Just because there's evil today, I don't want it still here a thousand years from now. I'd say that evil is tiny and stupid and on its way out. Still dangerous of course, so use common sense, and ask angels and guides what to do when you run into some. Stuff like that, just question authority and decide for yourself what would make the world a better place, then live from those beliefs and see where they take you. Good luck, and feel free to ask any more questions!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)