I’ve been reading Cynthia Bourgeault’s book, The Wisdom Way of Knowing. I’ve read it before, there are underlinings, but this time through something made much more sense to me. Here are some quotes from Chapter VII: Seeing with the Eye of the Heart:
Along the whole spectrum of consciousness … things are in a state of perpetual motion, a dance of becoming. There is always a kind of cosmic ‘downloading’ going on, as the divine qualities seek new streambeds to flow through; the imaginal realm presses against our physical one in an alchemy of transformation, aching, it seems, to come into finitude. …
Materiality, it seems, is really built out of vibrating, pulsating intelligence. … Creation itself belongs to the divine. Our role is more a creative midwifery that has to do with intuiting the new patterns as they arise in the imaginal and helping birth them into form.” pp82-3
I don’t know what made me pick up this book, it was buried in the many stacks of books piled around my apartment — attesting to my inability to organize and how easily I’m distracted in this time of COVID. I’ve been looking for a deeper way into my soul. Reading passages like the ones quoted above helped me see how I have done just that, been a “midwife” to energy of the divine that wants to manifest. This is what the Quakers call a “leading.” It was certainly the energy that built Neskaya. I wouldn’t have said that I felt the energy of the divine coming through me, but I remember my many prayers to the “Spirits of Franconia Notch,” my chant to the Bodhisattva of Compassion while the concrete slab was being poured. I often say of Neskaya that it’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever done, that it’s what my heart most wanted to do. But now I see that Neskaya came to be more than I ever had any idea of: a container for healing trauma, a temple for sacred dance, a place where everyone feels at home. And clearly blessed by the Bodhisattva of Compassion.
There have been other times in my life when I have felt divine energy working through me. Sometimes I recognize it, like when I was part of a Prayer Call for those in India dying of COVID. But now I’m also seeing that Journey into Courage was the divine working through me. I’m seeing the fact that there’s no ego in how I teach Circle Dance and Astronomy indicates that this is the divine working through me too. Like building Neskaya, I feel like it is the utmost selfishness: I get to share something I love with people who want it, and it makes me totally happy. Another time when the divine worked through me was Painting from the Source.
This is from an earlier post about a conversation I had in a writing exercise. Ereshkigal is a Sumerian Goddess of the Underworld, and she is speaking to me: The reward is great depth of perception, great power in expressing what you see, and the glorious moments of bringing through a truth from the shamanic world.