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The Festival of the Soil – A Dream
I’ve been wondering how to approach the soil to be in union with Her. Not so easy and I tried, but a division still existed between us so I could only discover my inner response to soil’s presence, not a unified “soil consciousness”. I could not get out of a “consciousness of soil”. Then Soil came as a dream – and a dream image is both perceiving a reality while at the same time the creating of that reality: The dream. The dreamer stands within a very large open area of Nature. The area exudes the sweet, sweet smell of soil. Beautiful, and accompanied with a sense of having been invited to some kind of festival. The dreamer thinks this must be a Fall festival. Initially, no one else is around, but there are several places where there are mounds of soil. All of a sudden, one of the mounds bursts open and soil joyfully flys into the air --- and at the same moment a presence dances around the joyful soil. The dreamer recognizes one of the presences as his wife, Cheryl, who died 5 years ago. And another dear fried, John Lee, who died about 5 months ago. And others, as if they are of the soil, coming from the soil, are the ‘withinness’ of soil. Then, on the left, another mound of soil, with thick piles of leaves on it; it begins to swell from within and then moves, as if shaking itself, and the leaves moves forming multiple images, as if some kind of writing, certainly a patterning, but unrecognizable. And another bursting move of joyful soil. I do not want to say anything about the dream as the dream inherently speaks. I do want to point out something that is probably obvious – that soil and dirt are quit different. Life comes from the soil and exists in a variety of ways within itself, while dirt is dead. Soil is death-as-living, while dirt is death as if exiled and completely shut off from life, as if isolated. And a comment on the word “soil”, because it is a multiple-word. The word ‘soil’ originated in 1300, in France – as indicating ‘place’, ‘seat’, ‘place of ones’ nativity’. But, the word ‘soil’ also alludes to ‘filth’, ‘refuse’, ‘matter’, ‘to make dirty’, ‘to defile or pollute with sin.’ Our body as the soil of life? The sweet smell of death becoming life? The sweetness of death becoming life?
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 Nightingales and Mary
"The mystery of the nightingales lies in the fact that, like a perfect mirror, they reflect the presence of Minne (heavenly love). Someone once said that, as long as nightingales sing on earth, the world will not die. Nightingales are the indirect confirmation of the presence of an anointed one in the world, and of his sons and daughters who strive with their prayers and hearts towards divine love." - John Bogomil When Jesus died, Mary went to live on Mount Koressos, near Ephesus, in Turkey. Her house is still there. The Greek word “Koressos” translates as Nightingale. That is, her home is located on Nightingale mountain. Connecting where Mary lived and where she is still present with the nightingale bird is not at all accidental. Not when the sense of the Spiritual-Earth lives within you and becomes more and more a manner of sensing and perceiving rather than just a concept. When seemingly instantaneous “associations” such as this one between the nightingale and the presence of Mary occur, it is not a matter of making a sequential connection – “oh, I saw this and it reminded me of that, and the second part showed up.” Such explanations take one further and further into an infinite mental regress, trying to understand mysteries that are to be lived rather than understood. The events – the nightingale’s song and Mary’s home are not even simultaneous, two things occurring together, as if alongside each other; they are the same event, expressing in two different modes. The “organ” for sensing reality-in-wholeness has to be awakened. Heart-awareness (The full practice is described in my book “Heartfulness”.) is one way of awakening to Earth-Nature-Human oneness and prepares us for yet a second awakening that will happen once this one is fully absorbed and allowed to change our very being. And other transformations after that. But, to name them now would only necessarily be mental and conceptual rather than immediate, sensory, perceptual, and thus bodily. None of these posts of Earth experience are intended to be read and felt through our usual sleepy consciousness – that is, sensorily, perceptually encountering something “out there” and then responding or reacting to what was sensed. In sleepy consciousness, we have come to automatically divide what is sensed/perceived, from what seems to be the feeling or emotional response to the sensed/perceived. For example, the description in a past post of the falling snow and the snow on the ground as Earth's silence and stillness becomes egotized when I take silence and stillness as what happens to "me" when I experience falling and fallen snow. Silence and stillness belong to the snow -- of which the perceiving body is also an aspect. The little posts of Nature’s experiences (note that I do not here say “our experience of Nature”), do immerse Nature in something she is not yet so familiar with – human language! These kinds of language-descriptions do, in a way, assist Nature by voicing, something She yearns to do just as we yearn for her Beauty; both yearnings are the expression of love. But, even more, these little instances of Nature’s expressions help us to perceive Nature more fully – namely as Spiritual-Earth in Her expressing. These kinds of descriptions are certainly not the only way Earth qualities can express – poetry, for example, can do so, and also certain kinds of art, but these two forms of imaginal expression, too, have become detached, and are taken to be creative depictions of the experiences of artists rather than moments of the yearning love between Earth and humans that unite them into One. "Earth, isn’t this what you want: to arise within us, invisible? Isn’t it your dream to be wholly invisible someday?–O Earth: invisible! What, if not transformation, is your urgent command? Earth, my dearest, I will. Oh believe me, you no longer need your springtimes to win me over–one of them, ah, even one, is already too much for my blood. Unspeakably I have belonged to you, from the first. You were always right, and your holiest inspiration is our intimate companion, Death." From -- Rainer Maria Rilke Ninth Duino Elegy  Flowers
This post primarily consists of a quotation from Mirra Alfassa, known as the Mother, partner of Sri Aurobindo. The quotation is from the book, “Flowers and Their Messages”, and contains more than eight hundred flowers arranged alphabetically. She says: A deep concentration seized on me, and I perceived that I was identifying myself with a single cherry blossom, then through it with all cherry-blossoms, and, as I descended deeper in the consciousness, following the stream of a bluish force, I became suddenly the cherry-tree itself, stretching towards the sky like so many arms its innumerable branches laden with their sacrifice of flowers. Then I heard distinctly this sentence: “Thus hast thou made thyself one with the soul of the cherry-trees and so thou canst take note that is the Divine who makes the offering of this flower-prayer to heaven.” When I had written it, all was effaced; but now the blood of the cherry tree flows in my veins and with it flows an incomparable peace and force. What difference is there between the human body and the body of the tree? In truth, there is none; the consciousness which animates them is identically the same. Then the cherry-tree whispered in my ear: “It is in the cherry-blossom that lies the remedy for the disorders of the spring.” There are certain illnesses – which the Japanese cure with teas made from cherry-blossoms. I did not know this when I had the experience. Life must blossom like a flower offering itself to the Divine. Each of the posts in this little series of the soul-expressions of Nature are fashioned from the kind of identification with Nature described here by the Mother – that is, the mind is quieted, the presence of an expression of nature – water, or trees, or ever-greens, or space, … and so on, are bodily intensely sensed so that the heart fully opens and is filled with the physical, soul, and spirit of each expression of Nature. The intent of the resulting descriptions, or the result of this sort of identification is to come again to experience fully what it is like to be a physical-soul-spirit being of Earth. The deeper intent is to remember that the body always, always, lives within a geocentric cosmology. A cosmology expresses how to live and move intelligently within the whole universe. Up until Copernicus, in about 1508, proposed that it is the sun rather than the earth that is the center of the universe, we lived as full Earth beings, receiving the Love from the Divine and longing to be with the Divine. Copernicus’ cosmology is indeed higher than a geocentric cosmology – more mind centered, and it is more abstract than being body-centered. Living abstractly continues to develop, while the fact that the human body is far more than an assemblage of physiological process is forgotten and we continue to lose presence with the holiness of the body, which now been handed over to the coming time of technocracy. Only re-membering the body will halt the human being from becoming united with artificial intelligence – the so-called singularity. If singularity comes about, earth will continue to become a dump ground and the artificial human being will take up residence on another planet in order to continue a kind of “life” in the absence of the Divine. It is so strange, so very strange, that I have to speak this message via the internet, which wipes out bodily presence altogether – unless something like these little practices are bodily felt and heart-intelligence developed. Then human presence can perhaps flower once again. I hope you wait, listen, hear, and develop your own practices. |
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Robert Sardello
The School of Integral Psychology
417 W. Doyle
Granbury, Tx 76048
spiritualheart@heartfulsoul.com