House of Heron

explorations of spirituality

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  • The Teachings of Great Blue Heron – Post 1

    Returning Home

    When I was a child, Nature was in many ways my best friend, my greatest teacher and also a wise, loving mother. I loved to be in forest and field with the flowers, birds, insects, animals and waters. I didn’t just love them, I could feel that they loved me, too. I remember the smell of the sun-soaked fields sheltering wild strawberries below. I remember the awe and delight of finding a box turtle with mottled yellow and brown mosaic shell. Every creature had a personhood, a sacredness, a meaning and message that landed in the heart, not the mind. I once watched yellow jackets flying in an out of their home, which they made next to ours. I knew it as sacred, though I couldn’t explain why. I was confused when my mother told me to stop. In retrospect, she was of course worried I might get stung.

    Every place had spirit as well. The alcove beneath the yews, the natural seat up in the maple, the place where the stream slowed into a wide pool and bluegills darted below the surface. It was like being among friends, being among caring and protective family.

    As a child, I witnessed Nature with eyes that as an adult grew dim. With time, and involvement in the business of school and later performing as a responsible adult, I spent less time in Nature, heard less of her intelligence, and noticed less of her spirit; but I never lost my affection for her, nor reverence.

    In my middle years, I returned to Nature. Though having searched high and low, my thirst for truth was yet unslaked. Something was missing amongst all the philosophy and scriptures of all the major religions and schools of thought which I had read. Maybe it was with the trees, in the mountains, flowers and seas. I returned to the forests and listened, as best I could. What was the wisdom I once heard? What did the ancients and indigenous people know?

    The insanity of human greed and violence against her enraged me, and under the rage, broke my heart. Nature is not voiceless, but her language is no longer understood. She has no self-defense against those who would destroy and exploit her—at least not against the immediate attacks. In the long run, because we are of her, our destruction will come back to do great harm against us. We already see that happening. Filled with grief and anger, hands and knees in the loamy soil of the east Pennsylvanian forest, I pledged to her, “I will be your hands and your voice. I submit my mind, heart and work to protect and bless you. I invite you to work through me.”

    She heard me. She answered. This is her story, her voice—the voice of my mother, and your mother, my brothers and sisters, and your brothers and sisters.

    Basking

    The first lesson Great Blue Heron taught me was to bask, to do nothing at all other than absorb the warm rays of a deeper sun on a cold winter day of the soul.

    *                      *                      *

    For about a year preceding, I had intentionally been pursuing personal experience of the form of consciousness enjoyed by those of ancient animistic cultures. It was clear to me that the ancestors of this ancient, nature-oriented wisdom were not merely thinking about different things, they were thinking about things differently. The animistic mind, I believe, is organized in a way so radically different, that it is knowable neither to the physicalist nor monotheistic mindsets prevalent in the West, the paradigms which held tight control over my own perceptions and thoughts. From the prevailing worldviews of the West, the ancient beliefs and thought patterns are considered either nonsense or, at best, quaint and antiquated. However, having explored multiple ancient cultures, I wanted to enter into and know from within that other state of consciousness.  

    Perception of the living Spirit within each thing in Nature, the divine majesty hiding in the mundane was the water and food for which I thirsted and hungered. Throughout my life, I have insatiably devoured all I could find in search of a metaphysical paradigm that would answer to the spiritual emptiness that drove me to seek, knock, and ask. Buddhism, Hinduism, existentialism, esoteric and mystical Christianity, liberation theology, Judaism, Islam, Taoism—I learned about them all, and dove deep into several. I gained a great deal of wisdom from every source, but still I hungered. I was also was driven to reunited with Nature by a zealous love for life. I stand stunned by her astonishing life, beauty, abundance, strangeness and diversity.

    So I began venturing into the woods as often as work and family allowed. I began by employing a language of symbol described by 18th Century mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. He writes about how all things of the created universe are symbols of spiritual and psychological realities. All things reveal the nature of the Divine. Reading his works, I had a sort of glossary or dictionary of symbol in my head which I employed. It was a starting point from which I extrapolated a more detailed and comprehensive system for perceiving the secret language of Nature.

    However, this method of knowing Nature employed the same sort of thinking that I was working hard to leave behind. It required analysis of form, internal processes, relationships with the surrounding environment, service to other entities and the whole, growth patterns and cycles, and so on. It was valuable in training the mind to mimic what I was looking for, and so move closer to it, but it could not deliver me into actual perception. A monkey can wear a vest and cap, and be trained to behave in human-like ways, but it remains a monkey. The lower mind can simulate spiritual awakening, can lumber about awkwardly to create a semblance of higher consciousness, but it can never actually enter or know it so long as it is immersed in linear logic, language, egoic focus, and earthly longing.

    I increasingly perceived meaning and messages from the various forms and entities of Nature. Sometimes the messages were personal, speaking to active issues in my life; sometimes they offered universal spiritual truths; and sometimes the experience was more like meeting with a friend, a sort of communion. Almost always there was a very warm, affectional quality to the interactions. Underlying all the more cognitive information was an unerring communication of love and goodwill for me and for all life. We are all profoundly loved by Nature, and also the Great and Holy Spirit.

    The communications do not arrive as words but as perception. When seeing, the form itself is the language. When hearing, I sense the spiritual personhood of the entity and I perceive a message as an intentional communication that I may not be able to readily tie to any particular feature or aspect of the other being.

    To communicate them to others, I have to translate the meaning into English. The words you read in the Teachings and Songs below are crafted by me in an attempt to reflect the affectional flavor, the poetic beauty, the volitional vibrancy, and the intellectual content of the messages. It is like I am painting a picture of dream, or trying to convey an emotion in music. I didn’t create the dream or the emotion, but I choose the colors and the notes.

    When in the most receptive states, I sensed spiritual presence, the personhood and spirit of forms, and not just symbolic meaning. I felt as if I was reuniting with a long lost family. I was finally home. My hunger was finally fulfilled.

    I constantly doubted myself and for months wondered if what felt like perception of a deeper layer of reality was really just delusional imagination. How could I not? These experiences were in abject opposition to the reality had been trained up in since birth and which shaped all prior experiences. However, whenever those doubts grew loud, some event would occur to quiet them. For example, I was in a soggy part of the woods and a swarm of hungry mosquitoes surrounded me and began to bite. I asked Nature, which I had come to appreciate as Mother, if she could cause the mosquitos to leave me alone. Within a few minutes, the insects dispersed.

    There were many similar little affirmations that Nature is sentient, intelligent, and interactive to the extent we are willing and able to know her as such. I have come to appreciate that these mini-miracles or signs are foremost for my benefit, and mostly not for sharing. However, one among them is, I believe, as much for public witness as for my own benefit. I will share more about this in detail deeper into the book where context provides it a proper home.

    *                      *                      *

    Back to Great Blue Heron. With increasing but sporadic ability to hear Nature’s songs, one wintry afternoon I wondered: Do I have a spiritual animal guide?

    Though several people in my life spoke about their spirit animals at a drum circle I occasionally attended (mostly before the concept of cultural appropriation entered general public consciousness), through the years, I never felt such a connection. Now that Nature was beginning to communicate with me, or rather, I was beginning to listen to Nature’s songs, on that wintry afternoon, the question popped into my head: I wonder if I have a spiritual animal guide?

    Immediately, the path turned and opened up to view a creek, and there, straight in front of me, was the Great Blue Heron. I had to laugh, so immediate and obvious was the answer, and so joyful the thought of gaining an animal spirit guide. Also, I loved great blue herons! I gazed at it for some time. The only message I heard was: come back.

    So I came back the next day. There he was, on the sandy shore of the far side of the creek. With eyes closed, neck curled in an S-shape, and one leg pulled up, he stood in utter stillness doing nothing but absorbing the warmth of the sun on that cold winter day.

    The Teaching:

    There is a need that precedes all needs

    It is subtle and often forgotten

    It cannot be found in the flow of daily life

    It cannot be chased and captured,

                Consumed or devoured,

    No effort avails it or amplifies it,

    It cannot be heard,

    It has no object or objective evidence to locate, to see or grasp.

    It can only be felt and received.

    Active and effortful, it goes unnoticed.

    Passive and receptive, withdrawn from the world and from thoughts,

    It becomes everything, bathing the whole mind and being

    It is the warmth of divine love,

    Ambition and achievement cannot long warm,

    Without the warmth, ambition misses

    Bathe in the immediate presence of the One above who loves with perfect love. 

    Bask and know your infinite worth

    ____________________

    Since then, every morning, I enter the shrine of my communion, close the door to all else, and soul-bask.

    What a wonderful and needed first lesson from my teacher. Without Heron’s teaching, were I to write a spiritual guide, I’d not have thought of this lesson, and yet it has had a profoundly positive impact on my life. To soak in the vital heat of Divine Love is to be empowered to survive the spiritual cold of modern society. So many of us walk through our days feeling isolated from one another, estranged from God, cold, alone, and questioning our worth. But the Great and Holy Spirit, our true Father, has no constraints and requires no payment for his infinite love.

    You may wish to try: Every morning (standing in the warmth of the physical sun if available), close your eyes and repeat: I am infinitely loved by my True Father; or simply: I am infinitely loved; I am infinitely loved.

    When Great Blue Heron basked, his long neck was curled, his eyes were closed and he stood on one leg in complete and still contentment. He withdrew from all stimuli, high and low, and was wholly absorbed in the moment of warmth.What is the warmth of the spirit but love? And what the light but clarity and truth? The soul has its landscapes, skies and living things, too. The spirit moves among these things, finding its way. The land of the soul also has its sun, the source of love and love’s own truth. Some call it Source, some God, some the Sun of Heaven, and some the Great and Holy Spirit. He is our Father. Regardless of what some religions say, our Father has nothing but pure love for all life and each life.

  • The Teachings of Great Blue Heron – Part 2

    Vision

    The great blue heron is the only known animal to possess “zoom lens” eyes. They have specialized retina architecture that includes two fovea (depression where light from the lens is focused on the retina) in each eye, and unusually strong cilia muscles to alter the shape of the lens. Using these muscles and retinal features, they can switch from macroscopic scanning to telescopic focus for a strike in an instant. With vision many times better than human eyesight, they are highly successful hunters—about 80% success rate per attempt. They also have excellent night vision, allowing them to fly and hunt at night, just as comfortably as by day. Heron teaches us how to be effective spiritual healers. To become effective spiritual healers, we must gain the ability to see both macroscopically and telescopically, both in the day and at night.

    They are comfortable flying and fishing in the dark. An effective healer can also see in the dark, meaning, they have come to recognize that just as both day and night are necessary for life to flourish, confusing, dark and unhappy states are just as important for the journey of life as the happier and clearer states. Great blue herons are equally comfortable observing from a very high perspective and wading in the water of life.

    Just as Heron can adjust her eyes to see in different ways, human beings enjoy several sets of eyes. Each has its own role. When properly organized, they work in concert and produce good. When the higher eyes are shut, the lower eyes misperceive.

    The first set are the physical eyes. They are there to serve us in navigating the physical world and to enjoy all the visual beauty there.

    Going deeper, we have the eyes of memory, which allow us to see and explore the store of knowledge and events that otherwise lie dormant within us.

    The next set of eyes is logic, which furnishes us with the ability to see order, patterns, mechanisms, and laws by which things both physical and abstract operate.

    We also have the eyes of imagination, which allow us to see non-logical and non-linear relationships between things, envision possibilities, and sometimes see ideas and dreams that seem to arrive from somewhere beyond our own mind.

    Borrowing some aspects of logic, and some of imagination, we have symbol eyes, which enable us to see deep truths hidden within the mundane. They see the world in terms of parable, allegory and symbol. Myths, religious iconography, and ritual come into view when viewed through these eyes. Nature also comes to hold deep meaning when seen through these eyes. A tree is no longer just a tree, no longer lumber for profit, no longer mere biomechanics arising from evolution, no longer even only a precious place holder in the web of life. The tree is a great teacher of spiritual truth.    

    Finally, we have the eyes of the heart—empathy, the most penetrating and true eyes we have. By empathy, we see the soul, the essential state of others, human and non-human alike. The eyes of love see others from the inside out and so gain profound understanding and ability to benefit and heal. Empathy goes beyond seeing spiritual and psychological wisdom in Nature through symbolic interpretation. Empathy sees the soul of things.

    What motive and mindset we bring determines which eyes we are using. When we are stuck in egoic fears and goals, our higher sets of eyes are closed. We only see the surface of reality. When we are lifted higher, above ego for ego focus, our vision expands to see a secret world far richer than what we thought we saw.

    What if the universe is alive? When we gaze at the stary night sky, what if what greets our eyes is not just the downstream stuff of some original grand explosion, but the growing, developing body of a living being? If this seems radical, it is only because the big-bang, mechanical universe paradigm is so dominant and pervasive. A little consideration shows that the living being model resolves some persistent mysteries of physics. Why is the universe so perfectly balanced on every axis? Why did order arise out of the chaos of an original explosion? Why does the orderliness of the universe keep increasing with time? Why does each step in orderliness include an assembly of parts that lead to something fundamentally more useful than the parts on their own?  Why is there evolution? Why do all the parts of the universe and the earth work in such splendid harmony? If the universe is an organism, all of this makes perfect sense.

    Physics and chemistry are wonderful descriptions of the mechanics of the universe, but they map out only the most external surface of something that is organized by a purpose of a higher order. The human body has mechanisms by which it operates, but a human being is much more than chemistry. Why not the universe, with its own versions of systems, organs and cells?  This seems entirely plausible to me, even likely. An organelle within a skin cell on my knee probably has little or no awareness of me as a living, conscious entity. Likewise, we human beings, as the tiniest of micro-subsystems within the universe, would likely not readily know the universe as a living being. It strikes me as incredibly far-fetched or naïve to think the universe, growing in size, complexity, orderliness, beauty, livingness and consciousness is just happenstance. It makes much more sense that these attributes arise because the universe is an organism. Life is the fundamental driving force within all reality.

    A premise inherent in a physical, or physics-only vision of the universe is that it has no inherent meaning or purpose. The idea that the universe is alive suggests that the universe, its structures, its order, its ever-evolving nature and its beauty all have a cause and a reason—life. And the purpose of life seems to be to house consciousness. Consciousness is completely superfluous to functionality, yet life is moving ever towards deeper forms of consciousness. Life and awareness go hand in hand. Lower orders of life have less awareness, and increasingly complex organisms have increasingly higher levels of consciousness.

    This leads to an even more intriguing thought, which is that perhaps the natural universe is nothing more and nothing less than the architecture of consciousness. What if the universe houses a consciousness much the way our body houses the consciousness which we experience as me? What if each stratum of more or less self-contained mechanical systems houses a certain type of consciousness, each with its own sense of scale and rhythm, space and time. Each cell in your body has its own version of consciousness, each organ its own, each ecosystem its own, each planet, each solar system, galaxy, the universe as a whole, and even each atom has its own version of consciousness specific to the unique assembly of parts, functioning and interactions. Each of these different strata of consciousnesses are so radically different that they don’t easily communicate or recognize one another as such, but all are embedded within, and are a part of a singular universal consciousness. In other words, the consciousness of the atoms within you cannot be recognized by your own due to the fact that they are operating in a completely different sense of scale, time and purpose, yet collectively their consciousness supports the consciousness of molecules, and they in turn of cells, and they in turn of organs and systems, and they in turn your own consciousness, and you in turn, that of the ecosystems in which you are embedded, and each ecosystem in turn the consciousness of Earth, and Earth’s consciousness in turn a part of the consciousness of the solar system, and so on until one arrives at the universal singular consciousness, which is fractal in structure, yet whole and self-contained.  

    We have been trained to think analytically and groomed to live materialistically. It is analytical thought that has delivered us the physics and materialism paradigm. What if such thought is limiting? What if looking at reality according to math equations and verbal descriptions is not the best lens for seeing reality? If we exist as biological conscious beings embedded within a fractaline universal biology of consciousness, perhaps gratitude and empathic partnering deliver us closer to the truth. I believe we are using our consciousness in perhaps the least effective way possible. If we are indeed subsystems within a singular universal, fractaline consciousness, then love, goodwill, gratitude and empathy are a much superior way to connect, learn and know. How do we develop a good relationship with a friend, and so find out who they really are?—through love and empathy. These same senses of the heart, when compared to materialism and physicalism, without doubt cause us to become better human beings, yield better cultures, and create better goals. A tree is known by her fruit. A worldview is known by its outcome. This book offers a vision of reality that is new to our current culture, dominated by materialism, Abrahamic religions, and scientific physicalism. Yet the worldview presented does not contradict Abrahamic religions or scientific truth, rather it modifies both. 

  • Teachings of Heron – Part 3

    The Song of Sun

    All the 10,000 things begin to sing together,

    The Song of Songs,

    The Song lifts the mind and the mind sees the shining, golden light of pure love.

    And there, is all there is, merging into a Oneness, “I AM;”

    But to stare into the divine brilliance is misguided and is to go blind.

                It sings: By this brilliance, look back to the beauty of the 10,000 things!

    Love Sun by loving Sunflower,

    Love Source in loving others.

    All the physical world is symbol.

    The sun of this world is not the source of sun’s meaning, sun’s song;

    Meaning, the Song, gives rise to sun.

    All the 10,000 things have a song,

    The Song of Songs sings the myriad songs,

    The songs sing the 10,000 into being.

    To see the symbol as its own source results

                from forgetting the Song;

    The forgetting of the Song arises from a desire for control.

    The desire for control arises from the delusion of separate self.

    Science will chase understanding, logic will plum for meaning,

    The mind will search deeper and deeper,

    But the edge never can reach beyond its own border;

    The fractal is endless but never arrives, never escapes its own confines.

    Such is materialistic and self-driven logic.

    Where such logic ends, there life begins.

    Wading

    After basking, my teacher lowered his leg, stretched his neck, and meditatively strode to the water’s edge. Methodically, without rush, he stepped into the creek and waded into the deeper flow. The current, though significant, streamed seamlessly around Heron’s tall, skinny legs, which posed almost no resistance. Close to midstream, he stopped. I watched in anticipation of the hunt, but had to wait. My teacher simply stood, completely at peace.      

    The Teaching:

    Know the earth, feel the current,

                But rest on a higher truth, secure and undisturbed

    Observe from above.

    Without elevation, there is no stability,

                The current sweeps away the value

                The effort ends in futility.

    Let all things flow past without grasping

                Leaving no hold to snag or drag down.

    The sage is not concerned with possessions or position,

                And so the water cannot possess or move him out of position.

    The sage is not interested in control,

                And so the water does not control her.

    ___________________

    One of the marvelous features of the Great Blue Heron is very tall and very thin legs. What provides elevation above the currents of life that might otherwise drag us downstream? Spiritual truth. Spiritual ideas have the power to elevate the receptive mind to higher values and higher vision of things. If spiritual truth is one leg, the other is spiritual practice—meditation, mindfulness, gratitude, and service.

                Gratitude requires humility and so cannot exist within an ego-filled mind. Practicing gratitude elevates us above grasping and craving. Acts of service do not readily appear to lift the mind above the fray of desire and drama of life, but serving the wellbeing of all life cultivates the higher will and so lifts us up above egoic volition. Seeking the benefit of all beings raises a higher perspective. Detachment from egoic engagement in the world is ultimately inseparable from engagement in the world with selfless love. Indifference is a form of selfish engagement. The heron snaps up the fish to feed her family. The sage takes opportunities to provide for the wellbeing of others. That is the food of the soul.

    How do I know that what I know as true is not false, and how do I know that what I know is good is not bad? The world was flat and the sun orbited it, until it wasn’t and it didn’t, and great atrocities have been committed in the name of justice and good. Leaving off reliance on intellect and personal willfulness, we find that we stand on the tall, thin, but sturdy and strong legs of trust and gratitude.

                Heron is like a tree—reaches high, but is grounded and feeds others.

    We must stretch upwards to learn a lot about spiritual reality and higher truth. Again, we can look to trees. They too reach up to catch as much light as possible. If we want higher truth, we won’t allow a single path to restrict us. It is obvious that just because we are born into a religious tradition doesn’t make it exclusively right or best. Just because others say it is exclusively right or dangerous to think outside the box doesn’t mean they are right. Just because the scriptures of some tradition claim exclusive rights to God doesn’t mean they are true. In fact, the more anyone or any book claims to be the only source of truth and goodness, the mores suspect it is in the same way a person who claims to be better than everyone else is—by that very statement—more likely worse than most.

    Truth is broad and for everyone. Our Heavenly Father has many children and He loves each one of them. He reaches out to communicate to all of them in different ways. It isn’t a competition, faith is a celebration. It isn’t an exclusive country club, heaven is an expansive land that welcomes all who are willing to make love and wisdom more important than self and rightness.

    So we explore truth everywhere we can find it. We seek wisdom in all things, all people, all books, and all places. If we are honest, we will soon see that wisdom is of love, and love is of wisdom. Therefore, to develop tall legs, we also will learn how to love better and better. We will practice what we learn and in the practicing, we will find that we are being given a higher and higher perspective on life, one that makes wading through life’s ups and downs easier and easier, more and more enjoyable. The fact that you are bothering to read this book indicates you are looking for higher things and are willing to look in unusual places for it.

  • Teachings of Heron – Part 4

    Preparing the Way

    After the better part of that first year, of trying to awaken to the voice of the forest, before I encountered Heron as my teacher, the first breakthrough occurred. I was walking a path along a post and rail fence, demarking forest from field. Lost in thoughts about financial concerns, I didn’t initially  notice that squirrels, now behind me, were chattering loudly and insistently, as if to catch my attention. I turned and laughing at the absurdity of my response, asked: “What?” Immediately, my mind was flooded with a message that was in complete opposition to where my mind had been: Do not be avaricious. Do not worry about money. Do not focus on money. The message was clear and I did not feel as if I generated the thought with my own mind. It landed in my heart as a knowing, but quickly enrobed itself in words.

    The message to avoid avarice was at odds with what I thought I knew about a squirrel’s likely spiritual message. My conception of squirrels was that they themselves were avaricious, squirreling away food and always on the hunt for more. Returning home, questioning the strange occurrence, I researched what squirrels symbolized to the Lenape, the original people of the land I walked. Fascinatingly, I learned that the Lenape have a legend in which a gigantic squirrel wreaks havoc on the people and the forest with its insatiable greed. To solve the problem, the Creator made the squirrel very small, after which it no longer disrupted balance.

    The message of the legend is clear: Avoid avarice. I also learned that squirrels leave 75% of the nuts they bury. Some scientists suggest that the squirrels forget where they buried the nuts. I prefer to think that they are stewards of the forest, helping to plant trees each new year—the opposite of avarice.

    In retrospect, I see that this message has to be the foundational groundwork for awakening. Focusing on wealth and seeking it are at odds with hearing the songs and teachings of Nature. When money is the god, all else, including the wellbeing of Nature, becomes less important and will be sacrificed on the altar of wealth.

                More fundamentally, the way the mind operates when focused on wealth is incompatible with hearing the spirit of things. It is like trying to open an audio file while running an incompatible operating system. It is like trying to hike up a mountain while insisting on carrying a safe full of gold. Or it is like trying to see a sunrise without being willing to leave the basement. It can’t be done.

    Perhaps five minutes after this encounter with the squirrel, I saw a dove above in a low hanging branch. I paused and focused on hearing her message. Though it did not pour into my mind in the same way, I did sense a message: Avoid sensualism—gluttony and lust. It was not a warning against enjoying food and sexuality, but a caution against letting those things take primacy over higher values, like respect, empathy, balance. Again, in retrospect, it only makes sense. These first messages were about preparing the ground. Before I could hear, I had to clear my life of all those things that inhibit receptivity. The dove flew away, showing the path forward. Retreat to higher things.

                The third in the series, all the same day, was darker and stranger. I was in a quiet, secluded, and more shadowy part of the forest. felt a presence. It did not offer a warning, but an enticement: Power. I was being given a choice—I could either give myself over to the pursuit of dominance and control, or I could let go of those instinctive goals, and instead trust the flow of life. I could either make my own ego the ruler of my life, or I could become receptive and at peace with a way that is higher than the self. The presence I felt, I now believe, was an externalized awareness of my own ego—everything of me that focuses and serves me over and above anything else.

    The term “monkey king” arrived with the feeling of this presence. Arriving home, I did a search for “monkey king” on the internet. There is a Chinese legend of a monkey who defies the gods and causes cataclysmic damage to the order and balance of things. It checked out. That is what the ego in service of the ego does. That is the heart of darkness. It is not an easy thing to relinquish.

    Desire for status, power, voice, hurt feelings. I am all too familiar with all of these and many other forms of ego serving ego. I can say, though, that to the extent I am in a state above the ego, to that extent I am awake and able to hear the voices of Nature; to the extent I am immersed in egoic concerns, I cannot.

    The ego, the sense of self, is not bad. In fact, it is the most wondrous gift we are given. Only because of a sense of self can we participate in love. Love is something that is shared. Without a self to share, there can be no love. Ego is not bad, but it must be tamed and put into service, not of itself, but the betterment of all, the balance and wellbeing of all. That is its rightful purpose. In becoming servant to the good of all, it finds its kingdom. In seeking to be king, it drags all into hell.

    Stillness

    Having watched Heron bask and then wade into the water, I eagerly anticipated the moment he would strike and triumphantly lift a fish up out of the water. I waited. He stood still. I waited some more and he still stood still. I began to feel bored and wanted to move on, but because I felt called to be a student, I waited some more. He did nothing. Eventually, thanking my teacher, I left.

    Arriving at the same spot the next day, I was delighted to find my teacher, already in the water. I was excited to see what today’s lesson would be. I waited and watched. Heron stood there, looking into the water. He took a few steps. He sees one! I thought, He’s going to catch a fish!

    He stopped and stood. He kept standing. He kept watching the water. I kept watching him. And as before, I grew bored and after thanking my teacher, eventually left. I came back again a few days later when I had a chance. He was not there, so I extended my walk and was happy that a bit further downstream, encountered Heron yet again. He was still standing, watching, and generally doing a lot of nothing. As before, I eventually left. My offering of thanks was less heartfelt. This is getting boring and pointless, I thought somewhere inside. I again heard the message, though, “Come back.”

    Though I came back, Heron did not. Nor was Heron there the next time I returned. I began to doubt that I was assigned to be a student of Heron. I knew how crazy that sounded. One evening, I was contemplating these recent events, and as I stepped out into my backyard, I thought to myself: I am probably deluded. Heron probably is not my spiritual teacher. Just then, not two seconds later, a great blue heron flew low overhead. I have never before or since seen a heron flying across my small backyard in my dense neighborhood. I smiled and I believed.

    Something very similar happened at another time. Walking along a wooded path that traced a high ridge, I stopped to look out over the creek. So strange all of these experiences were, I repeatedly questioned them. Do I really have a spiritual bond with the great blue heron, or any of nature? Am I am just imagining things?  At that very moment, a wind began to flow from across the valley. It grew stronger and stronger, but was very steady. Late autumn leaves let go and tumbled down. Looking up, I saw a lone great blue heron high overhead. It traced a wide circle before gliding out of view. When a need arises, the river of life provides.

    The first such encouraging encounter occurred before the first meeting by the creek. My wife and I were walking at night. Something silent slipped mysteriously across the silvery full moon. I felt astonished. It wasn’t an owl. It wasn’t a plane. I thought it might be some strange drone, but it had no lights and I heard no sound. Then it flapped its wings and I at least knew it was some kind of bird. What kind of bird flies at night besides an owl? I wondered.

    The next day, at the church’s weekly men’s breakfast, I talked about the strange night traveler, and one of the men knew exactly what it was—a great blue heron; “They sometimes fly at night,” he said. I say this was a confirmation before I actually felt bonded to the Heron because of the way I felt in seeing it glide overhead that night—awe. The magnitude of my reaction, even at the time, surprised me. It was not long later that GB Heron appeared at the creek when I wondered about my animal guide.  

    So now I believed, but that didn’t make me a good student. In not appearing, I began to get irritable, and eventually, actually angry. I found my mind filled with thoughts such as: Fine teacher you are! Don’t show up for class! The emotion accumulated until the thoughts were loud enough and aggressive enough that I realized how silly I was being, and how impatient despite the lesson of wading in the waters of life with non-attachment. I offered up an apology in my heart and laughing at myself, let go of the negativity.

    I finally learned the next lesson, to wait, to have patience, to be still, because when I came back the next day, Heron was back, and every time I returned, Heron was there. He still wasn’t doing anything more than basking, wading, and waiting, but rather than feeling impatient, I now enjoy these times of communion.

    I often came with my good, patient, and aging dog, Jada, but Heron seemed to care not at all. We’d come down to the creek bank and Heron would just stand and wade, not more than 30 yards away. Jada knew to be calm and quiet and remained by my side (she was a more ready student than me). She would sometimes wade into the water and lie in the shallows to cool off, even then Heron was unperturbed. At one point, Jada grew so old that after having walked into the forest, I had to carry her out much of the way. It turned out she had bone cancer. She didn’t last much longer. I am glad she was a part of these experiences with me.

    So in these ways my teacher taught me to wait, to be patient, and to watch—just as he does when in the water. My nature is to strive, to set goals, and do whatever is required to achieve them. Because it is one thing to learn intellectually by observing, and a much deeper thing to learn into living by experiences that require the lesson, and because this lesson—patience—does not come naturally to me, my teacher knew he had to teach me by a deeper method than example.

    The Teaching

    Scratch about and the waters grow muddy,

    Chase after the fish, it darts away.

    The lower mind has its small plan and stirs things up to make it happen.

    All that happens is that the true food of the soul is harder to see and farther away.

    The higher mind rests in the great flow of life

                Neither striving nor fearing,

                Ever trusting the provision of the Great and Holy Spirit.

    The higher mind knows that when it is right,

    The great river of life will provide what is needed.

    The higher mind knows that when the fish is in sight,

    Hunger will not betray, but will strike,

    And the family will be fed.

    ________________________

    The stiller Heron remains, the clearer the water becomes to see the fish, and the more likely are the fish to swim near and provide for Heron.

    Taoism focuses on this concept and encapsulates it with the term wu-wei—effortless work. Taoist sage is one who comes to see that the perspective of the self is so limited, that what it believes is true may in fact not be true, and what it believes is good, may in fact be bad. The sage abandons reliance on the perspectives and ambitions of the self, and instead learns to trust in the Toa, the great unseen flow from which all things arise and to which all things return. The Toa leads all things and provides for all things, similar to the idea of the Great Spirit in Native American traditions and the Holy Spirit in Christianity. The primary name for God in Judaism and Christian traditions is YHWH, meaning I Am That I Am—Isness Itself, we might say.

    There is a great, unseen force that gives rise to all that is, sustains all that is, guides all that is, and embraces all that is. It gives rise to order and beauty and the animating life within each thing is of this spiritual force, expressed according to the recipient form. The Taoist sage, Zhuangzi, illustrates this as a great wind that blows through a valley.  Every object in the valley—bamboo, divots in the rocks, alcoves in the cliffs, and hollows in the trees—sing forth in a unique song according to the shape of each, but the breath of the song is shared and is one—the wind.

    The sage learns to trust this universal Spirit over and above the planning and ambitions of the ego. The sage releases the expectations and demands of the self in favor of resting gently with trust in the Tao, the Great and Holy Spirit. In so doing, the sage does without doing, a poetic way of saying that they do exactly what needs to be done for the greatest benefit to all, without having to plan and implement a great deal of difficult effort. The Tao shows them what to do in the moment, and what to say at the right time to say it. This perceptive responsiveness to the need of each moment can only occur when the lower self isn’t muddying up the waters with cares, demands, selfish ambitions, and concerns.

    The Great Blue Heron is a beautiful symbolic example of the Taoist sage. Unlike a Buddhist or Christian monastic who works to disengage or transcend the natural world, the Taoist sage is fully engaged and present in day to day living. Heron is in the water, with the water, and looking intently into the water. Heron accomplishes what he or she needs to accomplish to provide for their family without planning, scheming, fretting, chasing about or putting in a lot of work and effort. Instead, Heron trusts in the flow of the river.

    Heron also trusts in herself or himself. They know that when a fish arrives, their hunger and instinct will kick in and do what needs to be done to catch the fish. Sometimes we might trust in God, but we don’t trust in ourselves—we don’t trust that we’ll know when opportunity knocks, or that we’ll have what it takes to respond, or we’ll be willing to respond. But if we are hungry for goodness—to be a blessing to this world, we don’t need to worry about any of that. On the other hand, we may trust in our ego but not in God. We feel that we can rely on our plans and instincts, but not on the flow of life and the whisper of Spirit.   The only thing we need to do is not follow the urges of the lower self to chase about after fruitless endeavors and in so doing muddy up the waters of mind so that we actually do miss the opportunities to do something great for another person, or for Mother Earth or Heavenly Father (even something simple in service of goodness is something great).

    This is wu-wei. We trust with patience, wait and watch, and in so trusting with passivity, great things will get done through us in the benefit of others, human and non-human alike.

  • Teachings of Heron – Part 5

    The Song of the Brook

                  I honor you. I am grateful for you.

                   What is your song?

    (There was silence for some time as I continued to thank her and listen. Eventually, she spoke.)

    You worry about direction, and about arriving, and time.

    You see that I flow steadily onward, in freedom.

    And yet there are banks on both sides that show me the way.

    Beneath is the slope that tells me the speed.

    They guide me to my destination,

                   What is there to worry about?

    So is your life guided and brought forward to your purpose,

                   At the right pace, at the right time.

                   What is there to worry about?

    You see the sun sparkle on my surface as I move over rocks.

    Your moving forward through life,

    Growing, serving, reflects the Divine.

    Absence is Presence

    In addition to the lesson of patience, the absence of my teacher included a second, perhaps even deeper spiritual truth: that absence is presence and that the absence of a lesson is a lesson. When Heron was absent physically, she was still teaching (unbeknownst to me), and in that teaching, present. Alongside wu-wei, the value of emptiness and absence is also a core principle of Taoism. Chapter Eleven of the Tao Te Ching reads as follows:

    Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub;
    It is the center hole that makes it useful.
    Shape clay into a vessel;
    It is the space within that makes it useful.
    Cut doors and windows for a room;
    It is the holes which make it useful.
    Therefore profit comes from what is there;
    Usefulness from what is not there. (Translated by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English)

    In fact, wu-wei is the natural result of the value of emptiness. Only when empty can the sage be filled with the motion of the Tao and so participate in wu-wei. Only when we remove our ego can Spirit fill, guide, and animate us.

    The vital importance of absence, and absence as a form of presence was a focus of several other concomitant incidents and lessons which I received from Father and Mother during this period of heightened communion in, with, and through Nature. Unlike other lessons which I felt before being quickly translated by my mind into verbal expression, the most important lesson about absence arrived as an opaque, enveloping inner fog, the meaning of which didn’t fully descend into verbal understanding until days later.

    I was sitting in a section of the woods I did not often visit, just opening myself to hear, perceive and receive as best I could. A feeling of potent presence came over me, and with it, mild dread—it was a kind of awe that made me realize my insignificance and impotency before something I was not fully aware of before. It was Mother herself. I had been hearing the songs of various forms of the natural world, but this time, I knew, I was being overshadowed by the spirit of Mother Earth herself. She did not have ill-will, but she was also, in this moment, no-nonsense, and not here to simply comfort or uplift. I felt mentally stunned such that I wasn’t having any thoughts, just held in a sense of being in deeper than I could handle, and closer than I probably should be.

    Her teaching was on the importance of apparent absence—absence of both Father and Mother as sentient, powerful and real beings. Were you to, as you seek, keenly know and feel our presence, Father above you, and Mother below you, you would be annihilated. Imagine if you were able to experience the truth of being held from above and below by forces of perfect order, love and power? You would no longer feel free because the good and right choice in every situation would be so obvious. You would therefore resent us for robbing you of freedom. You would no longer have any sense of autonomy or power or life. You would no longer have any sense of purpose or meaning. You would have no self or even sense of self. Therefore, we hide ourselves, cloak ourselves.

    When I feel lost, alone, distant from Spirit, I now know why—for my own good. In a sense, the disconnection is grounded in the unconscious choice of my soul so that it can remain alive. The absence of Father is the evidence of Father. The lack of perception of Nature as an intelligent, responsive, loving Mother is evidence of her intelligent, responsive love. This lesson has profoundly changed my experience of life and is closely tied to the prior lesson of patience and wading. Feelings of isolation do not mean something is wrong with my life, or that I am lost, it just means that this is the place I need to be experiencing at this time to preserve my life. I am not being punished, Spirit is fulfilling the tacit request of my soul to know that it exists and is valuable. It isn’t my favorite way of knowing the presence of Spirit, but absence truly is presence, and lack of lesson is truly a lesson.

    Calmness in trial, patience with lack, stability on an invisible higher ground when the mind and events are turbulent are interconnected values of this lesson. This lesson also weakens the tendency to question the veracity and love of Father when he seems absent. These in turn allow us to be stronger for other people, wiser in our communications, and more clear-headed when others are in confusion, more healing when others are in pain.

    In most mystic traditions, the self is an illusion, and the goal is to see through that illusion until Oneness is all that is left. What I have been taught is different from that. What I have been taught is that the goal is to, after seeing through the illusion of autonomy and separation, to return and embrace the illusion of separation and individuality because it is absolutely essential to life and meaning. Love is only real when there are separate entities to give, receive and share love. Father is Divine Love Itself; Mother is Divine Love actualized and reified by means of the sense of separation and autonomy that arises from time and space experience. In one sense, it is illusion, there is only Oneness, but because love reified in specific forms between the appearance of individualized entities, that realized love between them causes the appearance of entities to become actual.

    To the extent we participate in loving interactions, to that extent we become actual beings, made real by the unique forms of love that have arisen through and as us. Mother, and all her children are therefore real, and just as vital as Father, just as worthy of our honor and adoration as Father. The fourth  commandment (or fifth depending on how you count) says: Honor thy Father and they Mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God is giving you. The land is spiritual real estate of peace and happiness. If we do not know that land, then our disturbed and desperate minds create chaos in the external world and our days on the physical earth are also numbered.

    Here, too, we see the same lesson, that absence is presence. T.D Suzuki and Paul Carus translates the last line of Tao Te Ching, chapter 11, as,

                   “Therefore, existence renders actual, but non-existence renders useful,”

    and Kari Hohne as,

    “Therefore, something is shaped into what is; but its usefulness comes from what is not.”

    Pure white light without any mediation or reflective object is blinding, and without contrast, is indistinguishable from darkness. Therefore, alone, it is effectively the same as darkness, nothingness. Colors come into being by means of the absence—the absence of all other wavelengths of light. Aristotle and Goethe suggested a theory of color that was displaced by Newton’s. They believed that colors arose by varying combination of light and darkness. They were not wrong. Red is the light of the longest wavelength, and the absence, or darkness of every other color. In this way, as the quote above explains, the existence of light makes it actual, but the absence of it makes it useful.

    An identical phenomenon is the foundation of life. Every piece of DNA within any particular organism encodes every last necessary detail for the entire organism, regardless of how large or complex. It gives existence to the being. However, DNA and the information it holds is entirely useless except that uniquely within each cell, depending on location and function, all other elements of the DNA are deactivated apart from what is needed for the particular expression that is that particular cell. The absence of expression, the non-existence of expression of the majority of the information within the DNA is what makes DNA useful, what makes the organism to be what it is.

    The universe is the same way in relation to God. Divine Love has within it the potential for all that could ever be. Everything within the cosmos is experienceable because all the potential of Divine Love that is not that particular entity is deactivated, is absent. Therefore, as the quote explains, existence provides actuality, but non-existence provides usefulness.

    The separate entities that come into being as the result of absence, or deactivation, are able to enter into relationships of care with one another. The love that comes to exist between two unique entities is real, and the unique shape or quality of that shared love is also real—a kind of reality that did not previously exist, and cannot exist by means of Father, or God, alone. Mother is just as important and worthy of honor and adoration. Mother is all that is not-Divine, not-God.

    Heron is not the only teacher. Every plant and animal has a lesson, possesses wisdom. Just as a healthy ecosystem has all manner of plants and animals, each fulfilling a role, so human society needs people of all kinds. The bear, the fish, the mink, the chipmunk, the sparrow—all have a teaching, all have a song. Each of us will resonate differently with these many notes in life’s symphony, with these many songs in the Song of Songs. We each have a niche in the family of life and a song to sing.

    In the book of Genesis, we read that Adam names his wife Eve because she is the mother of all living. Eve means “Living One,” or “Source of Life.” She is taken from Adam’s rib, as the narrative goes, but she is not just an extension of Adam. She not only has her own life, and independence, she is described as the mother of all the lives, source of life. We might imagine that in the Bible this title might be reserved for God, but we’d be wrong. The universe isn’t just the body of God as the body’s spirit. Were this true, there would be two aspects of God, but that would leave us with just God and because reality depends on relationship, if the universe isn’t actually other, and not-God, then God is not.

    Love is life. The Cosmos, or Nature, is the Mother of Life because she is where relationships and so love becomes real. Love not only becomes real, it also adopts a particular unique shape based on the personality or quality of the beings participating in a loving relationship. The substance is from Father, the form is from Mother. In this way, the universe is no more just an extension of God than Eve is just the rib of Adam.

    In the West, as inheritors of the Abrahamic, paternalistic monotheism without any feminine counterpart, we tend to think of the not-Divine, or not-God as less than the Divine. That is no more true than saying the functioning body is less important than DNA, or that color is not as beautiful, wonderful and important as uniform white light. We can even see how these false ideas lead to the terribly destructive and false social ideals that elevate uniformity, so called “racial purity” and “superiority” of one group over another.

    The light and heat of the sun, without a non-solar recipient, is functionally the same as darkness and cold. These attributes find life-giving meaning in conjunction with Earth. Conversely, Earth is lifeless except for the sun. Only when together do either Sun or Earth have meaning and purpose. God and Cosmos, Father and Mother, only make sense and only have meaning together. Earth is not lesser than the sun, just different. The universe is not lesser than God, just different.

    Because we have for so long diminished the beauty, meaning, and value of the realm of difference, division, individuality and finitude, we have come to think of it as a machine. We are constantly fed a steady stream of paradigm propaganda that the universe is a system of mindless mechanics of physics and chemistry. There either is no spirit at all—physicalism and materialism–or if there is spirit, the three major Western religions explain that the universe does not possess it, and is evil, or an illusion, or minimally, less than. Physicalism and materialism may be the inevitable result of paternal monotheism. Among the stereotypical male characteristics and values, power is perhaps at the top. A god of power leads worshippers to adore power, and in emulating their god, seek power. Technology reveals the power of physicalism.

    However, after 1187 chapters of the Protestant, and 1332 chapters of the Catholic, the last two chapter of the Bible, representing less than 0.5% of the total verbiage, an entirely new reality is introduced: discussion of a glorious femininity that is equal in importance to God; indeed, she is the Bride of the Divine. She is introduced immediately after the words, “I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.” This is not referring to the literal earth and heaven, but to the old paradigm that did not include woman or femininity as of equal importance to man and masculinity, did not appreciate the realm of differentiation, form, and definition as equal to the Divine. The heaven that passes away is the old concepts, and the earth that passes away is the old functioning, the old society—the one we are in now and which is at this very moment crumbling away under its own unsustainable weight of wrongness.

    I’m not saying the Bible is wrong, I’m saying we haven’t gotten to the end yet. I’m saying that the end is when we wake up and come to understand it, and everything else, in a new way, a way of balance, harmony and honoring of not just Heavenly Father, but Mother Earth as well.

    I don’t worship Mother Earth, but I adore, revere, and honor her no less than I do Heavenly Father. Neither has meaning or any real existence except in relation to the other. Without Father and Mother together, life does life exist. Platonic perfection pales in comparison to the imperfect messiness of relationships and life on Earth. The Divine is perfect, and therefore imperfect. The Cosmos is imperfect, therefore she is perfect.

  • Teachings of Heron – Part 6

    The Words of Mother Saying Goodbye

    Sit here.

    Contemplate not a Brother, not a Sister – none of my children.

    Sit here, and contemplate me as a whole.

                            (I obey, and sit, and observe.

                            I hear the sternness in Her voice,

                                        different than any other time.

                            I wait to discern the cause,

                            In stillness, it emerges.)

    Between Father and Mother,

                Spirit and Nature,

                Heaven and Earth,

    There you are.

    Spirit is perfect, I am perfect,

                We are One.

    There you are in the midst of Us.

    Do you fear?

    Do you feel the oppression?

                            Ah, yes, Mother, I feel the oppression.

    And that, my Child, is where you fall,

                You lie between and amidst Us.

    How can you be other than Us, if all is Us?

    How can you be, if all is but Divine Oneness?

    Do you see?

                            Yes, Mother, I see.

    This is why you sleep—why you must sleep!

    You must be blind, lest you drown in us,

                and losing yourself, hate us.

    This is why your mind gravitates (and must for a time gravitate)

    downward,

                away from truth,

                away from Light,

                away from knowing,

                away from stillness,

    away from love,

                away from the Way,

                away from Being –

    This is the Fall, the great lie that must be.

    This is the great delusion, so that you might find yourself,

                find your freedom,

                find your way

                find your being.

    This is the Returning,

    You will struggle,

    You will flail!

    You will know nothing, and fear everything.

    You will yearn to be nothing, to be no more, to never have been.

    You will wage war, and you will fail.

    You will wage war, and that is failure.

    You will become duplicitous, and vile.

    You will seduce and deceive,

    You will be a glutton,

                devouring all you desire,

                desiring everything you see,

                seeing everything as if it weren’t Me,

                as if it weren’t already you.

    You will suffer, my Child.

                            I see.

    Do you see?

    You must leave from here.

    I do not want to leave.

                            I have suffered!

                            I have flailed!

                            I have failed a thousand times!

                            I have now returned, and I wish to stay!

    Yes, my Child, you have returned,

                And we rejoice in your joy!

    Nevertheless, you must leave.

    You will leave.

                            If you rejoice, then why must I leave, again?

    There is work to be done.

    You bring Us with you.

    We have never not been with you.

    We know your suffering,

                It is Our suffering,

    For We love you such that we enter

                And entering forget Us,

                That we might know you—Know you as you.

                            Why did You summon me,

                            Why did You awaken me, only to send me away?

    We do not send away; We have never sent away!

    It is simply the Way.

    There is no other.

    Yet even the suffering is made to shine upon the Returning,

    A rainbow in the clouds.

    The light shines, and nothing is dark.

    Suffering and failure are of the great teachers!

                Humility,

                Hoping,

    Seeking,

    Empathy,

    Forgiving,

    Ahimsa,

    Meekness,

    Gratitude

    Goodwill

    Gentleness,

    Generosity,

    Self-restraint,

    Non-attachment,

    Enlightenment,

    The Returning,

    Awe,

    Joy,

    Oneness

    These are the blossoms growing from roots

                embedded in suffering and failure!

    Without the Fall, the great delusion, these cannot exist long.

    Light is known because of dark;

    High by low;

    Warmth by cold;

    Beauty by ugliness;

    Wisdom by blindness;

    Good by evil.

    The Beauty of it, the Fall and the Return,

    Is that by it, love is given, one to another,

                no longer from above, but from within,

                and that love is new.

    That love is not false, not blind, not taken for granted, not simply the way of things,

    not untested, not without freedom.

    It is not attached to Us, but is your own,

    Forged in the crucible of your suffering and your failure,

    Thus from humility,

    And from humility, gratitude,

    And from gratitude, love and goodwill,

    And from love and goodwill, service and healing.

    Without effort, there is no failure.

    Where there is no faith or hope, there is no effort.

    Be still, and do the work.

    Be silent within, and the words will come.

    Be concerned with prudence, jurisdiction, sincerity of effort,

    And unconcerned with outcome,

                then success will find you.

    You see the Light,

    You know the Way,

    You know Life, Oneness, Joy.

    You must use the Light to walk the way of life.

    Within the Returning,

                You must return to help others.

                This is the Way.

    You must be You, and not Us.

                            Will my eyes still be given to see?

                            My heart opened to You?

    Your heart will descend and ascend upon the many rungs of consciousness,

    and your eyes will see what is there.

    You will return and you will go, as your heart requires,

                That you might be You, and not Us.

                            Will I be a wanderer forever, without a home?

    With each return, you bring the Light,

                The Way, Spirit, Oneness, with you.

    It enters you at your request, your diligent search.

    As much enters as your heart needs to live, and no more—

    lest you be destroyed

    And when the heart languishes for lack of alterity,

    It descends, but within, is Us, Heaven.

    It is yours, it is You, for the first time You.

    When the heart grows weary of the dross and the low,

    It again yearns, seeks, rises, returns, knows and finds Oneness.

    So it is forever, each time there is less suffering, less delusion.

    Each time, what is higher gives meaning to lower,

                Light to dark,

                Joy to suffering.

    And when the heart is ready, everything is illuminated, and the Return is complete.

    The going and coming, and the stillness, are then known as One.

    It is a chosen Oneness, and so does not destroy,

    Nor does it take away sense of self, or freedom.

    When I say, “you must leave,” it is not a command,

                It is a truth which I see, but you do not.

    I know your heart, and I see that it is yearning for leaving,

                even as you yearn to stay, your heart will not let you.

    From a lower level, “You must leave,” because the heart demands to leave, that it might not be destroyed in Oneness, that it might know that it has freedom, and so is real.

    From a higher level, “You must leave,” because it is the Way.

    That you may choose to leave proves that when you return and when you stay,

    you have chosen it freely. That is the joy.

    That is Life.

    When this Life is in you, then you love one another.

    Loving one another is something outside of Us, your Parents.

    It is yours, truly.

    This love becomes your true Home.

    This love becomes your true Joy.

    This love becomes your true Life.

    It is not outside of love for and from Us.

    It is not Ours, but it is not outside of Us.

    You cannot love one another if you do not love Us.

    You cannot love Us if you do not love one another.

    Your love for one another receives of Our life,

    And there is Oneness.

    A Prayer of Gratitude

    Thank You, Mother; Thank You, Father;

    Bless me on my journey – I know you will, have always.

    I embrace the Way,

    I embrace the ascending as the Returning,

    I embrace the falling as the Way of the Returning!

    Let me do no harm.

    Let me not do harm to my Brothers, to my Sisters,

                great and small.

    Let me be a servant to the Way,

                Uplifting all I encounter,

    Let Your joy be in my voice,

    Your voice be in my words,

    You words be in my thoughts.

    Let Your Light shine in my eyes, to give hope—

                That there is a purpose,

                That there is a place of stillness.

                That there is a Way, a Light, and Life,

                That there is Oneness, who is our true Being.

    Let Your teachings find first my ears,

                And then my mouth (lest I act the fool and lead astray).

    Let Your unfathomable love find first my hands,

    And then my heart (lest I wait and delay the purposes the Way).

    Let me remain ever still in the unknowable perfection of the Way,

    Let me remain ever active in the doing of the Way. 

    Be with me.

    The Big Catch

    And then it happened. Jada and I were walking along the creek towards our usual spot, the spot that Heron like to occupy since his return, since my learning the lessons of patience, the lesson of no lesson, and the presence of absence. There he was, but he was not just standing there. He hopped up onto a log jam wrapped around a couple of big midstream boulders, and a moment later, he pounced so fast that I nearly missed it. When he raised up his long neck, there, glistening in the sun was a stunning fish—the biggest fish I have ever seen in the Pennypack Creek. It was exhilarating to watch that triumphant moment.

    His patience paid off. But the event was far from over. As the fish flapped back and forth, BG Heron periodically, skillfully, opened his beak and flipped the fish further into his long beak, and then changed the angle of the fish so that the head was now ready to slide down his neck, followed by the tail. All of this took some time. And then he opened his beak into the air and the fish began to enter his gullet. But the fish was huge, and didn’t just slide in easily. Heron had to repeat this motion several times before the tail of the fish was no longer visible in his gaping beak.

    Still the event was not over. The neck of Heron was warped with the bulge of the fish which did not slide down to the stomach, but stuck in the throat. Heron took his time. He sat with neck mostly erect, waiting patiently for the inevitable to happen. Occasionally, Heron would stretch and move his neck, causing the fish to slide a little bit further down, until finally, the neck returned to its previous form and the fish was securely in the belly of the bird. I could sense the happiness and satisfaction of the Heron, and also the fact that it had known about, and had been awaiting this particular fish for days. 

    The lesson? Watchful patience upon tall skinny legs that aren’t sucked in by the torrents and temptations of life pays off—big time. Jesus employed many fishermen to be his closest friends and disciples. He told them that he would make them fishers of humanity. These words are often interpreted as meaning he would teach them to catch people up to become his followers. What if his intended meaning was that he would teach his disciples, his followers, to learn how to catch and draw out the true humanity within others? Under surface of each person we meet, there is a humanity waiting to be seen, appreciated, and drawn up out to the surface.

    Jesus was all about love. He abhorred condemnation, judgment and hypocrisy because these do the opposite of his goal—to draw out the true humanity in all people. They not only cripple the wellbeing of those who are judged, they calcify and collapse the humanity those who are judging. Both parties are victims of a socio-psycho-spiritual parasite. Blame lies in lies, not in people. Judgment falls on false paradigms and values, not on their victims.

    The reason sin is sin is that it inhibits our true humanity, and so our happiness, wellbeing, and connectedness to Father, Mother, the human family and the non-human family of Nature. What is true humanity? We are made in the image and likeness of God, who is Love Itself and Wisdom Itself. Love is what makes us truly human, and without wisdom, love is unproductive. Therefore, our true humanity is that we love and we acquire wisdom.

    If we follow the lessons of Great Blue Heron, we will become excellent fishers of humanity. Rather than grasping about at what we think we want, when we stand still, wait patiently, watch carefully, and remain above the swirl of life, we will see clearly into the heart and spirit of others and it will be easy to see the humanity there, the love and the wisdom that is unique to the person in front of us. We will see through all the scars and trauma. We will see past all the defensiveness and fear. We will see beyond the social masks and we will know exactly what to say and when to draw out the very best of whomever we meet. In doing so, we will become a true healer. We will find that those who spend time with us are surprised at themselves as they learn to know their own humanity in a way they never had before. Jesus was, above all, a healer. He healed bodies, but more importantly, he healed minds, hearts, social systems, and ultimately his goal is to heal the world of all that inhibits us from loving and living in harmony with Father, with Mother, with one another, and with all things of Nature. What else could salvation mean?

    The fish took a very long time to even get to the belly of Heron, and then of course, digestion would need to occur before the catch would be ready to nourish the bird, or likely, the young ones up in a tree, awaiting dinner. It is interesting how true this image has played out in my life and my pursuit to offer the world some meaningful food for the soul. As the experiences and ideas presented in this book arrived, the big fish, so to speak, I was extremely eager (and impatient) to present them. I wrote a book that smashed together a few disparate pieces of writing I was engage in at the time—part academic thesis, part poetic personal journal, and part instruction manual. I tested the waters with a few readers and quickly came to understand that this was not a digestible format for the messages which I was excited to share with others. The fish was only partway down the hatch. There was nothing I could do other than wait for the experiences and ideas break down and reassemble into a format that was clear and palatable.

    The young ones up in the tree are in part the desire to be fully fed spiritually. Young herons squawk, squabble and carry on to get the food, and I felt that impatience within me. I wanted more and deeper connection with Nature and Spirit, and I wanted to fill the belly of my need to communicate these ideas with others. The young ones up in the tree are also the elevated or spiritual needs of others, who are genuinely hungry. I sensed that the food I was receiving in the forest by the creek was the food that I had always been looking for. I very much wanted to share that with others who might also be hungry in the way that I was.

    In startling contrast to the utter stillness I had witnessed of my teacher in all that preceded this moment, I was astounded at how quickly he struck when finally the time was right. It was so fast that I actually sort of missed the show. After watching for a while, I decided to get a closer look from a better angle. As I moved slowly forward, he struck the fish right as I a tree trunk obscured my view. It was clear, though, he didn’t just strike with his neck. In this incident, he leaped powerfully with his whole body to catch the fish.

    The lesson I take from this is that the kind of passivity, detachment and stillness Heron teaches about is different from nonchalance, from escapism, and from that kind of spirituality that minimizes the importance of life on earth. Ever since high school, I have spent a lot of time pondering the relationship of peace with passion. Both seemed good and valuable, and yet I couldn’t figure out how to hold both. If I am at peace, I lose passion. If I am passionate for some good cause, I don’t feel peace. The paradoxical dichotomy of stillness and speed, detachment and engagement isn’t actually about knowing the right time for each, as it is with Heron, it is more about knowing how to do both at the same time and in the right way.

    Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. displayed a calmness of spirit, and ability to remain detached and above the fray of insults and violence aimed at him and his people, but he also was powerfully engaged and knew when and how to strike with his beautiful words in order to feed the spiritual hunger of a whole generation and many to come. The same is true of Mahatma Gandhi. Though often misattributed to be a quote of Jesus, “Live in the world, but not of the world,” is still a good perspective on his message and certainly excellent advice.

    We get pushed over by the current when we live by the concerns of the lower self, but have peace when we don’t. On the other hand, escapism, nonchalance and minimizing the importance of the world make it so that we fail to strike and make a catch. Only a motivation of selfless love is able to be both at peace and filled with passion, still and lightning quick at the same time. Love does not grasp at the world, but it will seize every opportunity to better it. Love does not escape the sorrows and trials of the world, but it is firmly grounded in a deeper wisdom that is able to retain serenity anyway. Love itself knows when and how to strike when opportunity arises.

                Herons have a remarkably high catch rate—anywhere from 70 to 90 percent of attempts result in success. The young begin by catching insects and move towards more challenging prey until they are ready for the big fish. Learning how to live with peace and passion at the same time seems to follow a similar arc. Rather than trying to save the world, we simply do what we can when opportunity presents itself—maybe something as simple as offering a smile to the checkout lady. If we practice listening to each moment and  noticing how to benefit them in little ways, we are prepared when life calls on us to step up for a bigger task. Unlike if we are always trying to figure out how to save the world, we retain inner peace by just doing the next right thing. Neither King nor Gandhi set out intending to lead great and successful social movements. Both of them used their talents to serve justice in whatever way each day called for. Their passion for justice knew when and how to strike. Their trust in a higher reality, Truth, God, allowed them to retain peace.

                The lesson I receive from my teacher’s big catch is strike when it seems possible to do something of value for the world, but retain the peace of trust in the guiding current of Spirit. Don’t neglect little things, like picking up the pen that someone dropped, and don’t overfocus on accomplishing big tasks. The little ones prepare us for the big ones. Focus instead on being sensitive to the needs of the here and now. Finally, when the big opportunity does present itself, do not hesitate and do not half-heartedly engaged—Heron threw his whole body into the effort and so was successful. Trusting in the Divine current of love does not mean that when beneficial work presents itself, we just relax, put in a little effort and see what happens; if we do, the answer will be: not much.

                I wrote a book, I tried hard. I missed. I am trying again. Maybe this one will succeed, maybe not. Either way, I’m trying to throw my whole being into the task, while still being at peace, regardless of outcome.

    The Teaching:

    Come with stillness

    Observe

    Do not manipulate or chase

    In stillness and clarity of mind, perceive the true Spirit of all.

    When you see the true humanity beneath the surface,

                Let your hunger for the benefit of all beings strike,

    And lift up what is good and true.

    Be hungry.

  • Teachings of Heron-Part 7

    The Sign

    Stretching out over more than two decades, I was sporadically moving closer to a Master of Arts in Religious Studies. Life kept taking surprising turns that interfered with the usual timeline. At age 49, not having thought about it in years, I realized it would be worth finally completing the journey. All that lay between me and the finish line was a thesis.

                I re-enrolled in college. Having heard Nature’s songs through the prior year, the topic was inevitable: What metaphysical framework leads to an environmentalist spirituality? I chose three cultures that live or lived in harmony with Nature, and explored their beliefs, values, and social organization. These were Taoism, the Lenape of Pennsylvania, and the A:shiwi of New Mexico. Comparing them, I identified commonalities and from them synthesized a spiritual worldview. I employed the comprehensive and systematic theology of the Christian, Enlightenment-era mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg, to offer rational explanations within ancient beliefs which otherwise are typically seen as ignorant and naïve by the Western mind.

                The conclusion of the thesis, in briefest form is this:

    Reality exists simultaneously across two poles

    One pole is Essence, Being, Divine Love,

    unmanifested, infinite, eternal, uncreate, unknowable, nameless, undifferentiated.

    Alone, this pole is formlessness and without relationship,

    Being without relationship it is meaningless and non-existent,

    for without relationship even Divine Love is not real.

    The other pole of the same reality is the universe—

    The place of differentiation, form, identity, manifestation, limitation, named, knowable, created, finite, temporal, dying.

    Alone, this pole cannot exist any more than touching can occur without a hand,

    Or art can arise without an artist.

    They are necessarily, symbiotically, One,

    Counterparts in an eternal dance from which all life, all meaning, comes into being.

    Their relationship one to the other is mutually interdependent,

    but not in the same way.

    To be meaningful, meaning requires words,

    To come into being, words require meaning.

    There are strata of reality, like rungs on a ladder,

    That span between these two poles;

    The higher the level, the less independent and defined the beings, but the more potent;

    The lower the level, the more independent and defined are each being,

    They are less animated automatically by Divine Love, less potent.

    The human spirit and mind has corresponding levels;

    Fulfilling our full spiritual potential includes

    becoming an open conduit so that the Divine is seen in the physical world,

    and the physical world is known as the partner of the Divine.

    Though yin and yang forces exist in equal measure in both poles,

    Singular essence and manifold manifestation,

    In relationship to one another, essence takes on the role of yang, active, Father,

    And manifestation takes on the role of yin, passive, Mother.

    Father is like DNA, Mother is like body.

    Father is like white light, Mother is like colors.

    Like Father, Mother has sentience, intelligence, wisdom, love, spirit, and is interactive.

    The imbalance of the current dominant global culture arising from western views and values is a faulty understanding of this relationship.

    Western monotheistic adoration of Father

    while blind to the sacredness of Mother

    leads to destruction.

    Exclusive adoration of Father lifts up male virtues of force, power, combat, competition, victory, personal achievement, individualism, and so on.

    The pursuit of power as primary leads to physicalism because physicalism is a paradigm that offers great predictability and power.

    Physicalism leads to materialism.

    Materialism knows no Father and no Mother,

    and the human will becomes God.

    Utter destruction follows.

    To restore sanity and balance, we must understand that Mother,

    though finite, is no less than Father.

    She is sacred and worthy of honor and adoration.

    To love Father truly is to love Mother,

    and to Love Mother truly is to love Father.

    The attitude with which we approach and view life determines how life will interact with us and so what we will see.

    Humility and gratitude are the doors which open the mind and heart

     to see and hear the truth,

    and open the hands to serve, to heal and bless.

    When we hear with a humble, grateful heart,

    Father and Mother will speak to us,

    They will sing to us,

    and the physical world will no longer be perceived as mechanical and unyielding, something to exploit and manipulate,

    but communicative, interactive,

    full of spirit, wisdom, love.

    I report this here because these ideas are entwined in the meaning and timing of a physical sign that came into being within my hands.

    As I began gathering materials for research, I went on one of my walks with Nature. Having entered into a receptive state of mind, I felt a subtle nudge to pick up a stick that was lying close to my feet. Listening to the prompt, though uncertain of the reason, I picked up the deep, dark, elegantly curved stick from the millions more strewn across the forest floor. As was my custom, I meditated on the stick, blanking my mind of thoughts and opinions, and just sitting with it, being to being, listening, appreciating.

                The meaning I heard, the spirit I sensed, was unlike everything else of Nature that had ever spoken of sung to me. This stick did not offer a psychological or social insight, did not reveal a deep spiritual truth, or answer to any personal issue I was facing. The message I heard from the stick is that it was a symbol for the natural universe, Mother Nature.

    I found this peculiar. I took the stick home and place it on a shelf above a chair in our bedroom. Other than a few feathers, this was the only object from the woods which I had brought home, the only object I felt told to pick up and take home. A couple more times, I took the stick down and meditated on it again, and both time, again, the message I heard was that this stick was a symbol of the natural universe. Curious.

                Six months later, with the research done and the rough draft of the thesis complete, I was again in the woods, near the same spot, walking along a deer trail with Jada. I was surprised to see a stiff but malleable wire across the way. It hadn’t been there less than 24 hours prior when I walked this same deer path, so puzzled how it could have arrived there. I was about to step over the wire, but realizing a deer might get tripped up, I stopped and coiled the wire into my backpack.

    A step later, I saw a three-pronged antler amongst the forest detritus. Being late May, this was late for finding deer antlers. I thanked the forest and the unknown deer, and took the antler. Finishing the walk to my favorite spot where I sat and meditated the antler. I was not getting a clear sense of the meaning when something made a noise nearby, so I opened my eyes. There was a deer, not 15 yards away. I watched it, it watched me. It snorted several times. This lasted what felt to be about four or five minutes. I tried to stand up to see if it would allow me to draw closer, but it scared off into the woods.

                Taking the antler, it found home next to the stick on the shelf above the chair. Now I had two gifts from the forest. It was not long later that I took the two down and held them in my two hands. They were exactly the same height and general size. The graceful curves of the stick seemed to compliment the curves of the antler and I brought the two together. To my amazement, they clicked together like puzzle pieces so that if I held the stick, the antler remained in place, and if I held the antler, the stick did not fall away. The tips met, and the bases met to a point.

                Later that evening, I gathered my family to see this amazing coincidence that the stick and the antler—the only two things the forest had given me—happened to fit together and hold in place. As I demonstrated, I was again amazed to find that the new created object stood on end, without support on the ground.

                The import suddenly struck me. This object, black and white, Mother and Father, yin and yang, entwined, was the perfect symbol of the worldview presented in the thesis. It came clear why the stick did not have a spiritual meaning, but symbolized the natural world. I was told that truth before I could understand why. Apart, the pieces fall to the ground. Together, they stand in beauty. I took the object as a sign, a divine nod that the ideas I had discovered were true. The object was also manifest evidence of the suggestion within the thesis, that if we approach Nature as a wise Mother rather than as a machine, she will communicate and interact with us as an intelligent and loving being. Finally, the object was a marriage of the spiritual and the natural in that it was a physical object that represented a spiritual metaphysics.  The object is symbol, sign, embodiment, and physical evidence of the spiritual worldview that arose in the time period bookended by the appearance of first the stick, and then the antler.

                The worldview and the sign, the gift, have satisfied the theological hunger of my heart. I am seen. The thoughts of my mind are seen. The desire of my heart is heard. My physical whereabouts is witnessed. My hand is guided. What is needed will be manifested. Spirit walks with me, for where does Spirit not walk? What have I to fear? I am no longer an orphan. I have a Mother and a Father who know, love, and guide, not just me, but all life.

    This is my big catch. It is my duty and pleasure to break all the ideas down into a palatable, digestible communication, and feed any mouth hungry for this food.

  • Teachings of Heron – Part 8

    The Song of the Whirlwind

    Wind moves, but cannot be seen;

    Fallen leaves are seen, but do not move.

    Both together, the whirlwind is known.

    So are Father Spirit and Mother Earth.

    Flying Upstream

    After the big catch, whenever I went to visit my teacher, she would immediately leave. She would fly away, always upstream. I tried leaving Jada at home, but still she flew away. I felt a little sad and abandoned. I wondered if my state of mind or something I was doing was interfering with her willingness to teach.

    In time, I came to realize that the flight was the lesson. The invariable consistency of the act, always on my arrival, helped make that point clear. Upstream, towards the source. At the time, and most of the time before and since learning from Great Blue Heron, my natural inclination is towards action, to do all I can to make the world a better place. This instinct has powerfully shaped the course of my life. Ever since a child, the parable of the talents, and the warning not to bury them sat on my shoulder, driving me to do what I could with what I have been given. As Nature began to open up to me and I began to hear the song and spirit of the many beings of Nature, I felt a constant pressure to write, to communicate the events and insights that were unfolding for the benefit of humankind. These upstream flights were telling me to do something else—to go upward and inward, to the Source.

    One of the topics Father and Mother were revealing to me throughout this time had to do with the structure of mind. We have a doing mind, a thinking mind, and a being mind. I was shown a duck to illustrate this point. Ducks have legs that pedal around under the surface of the water with a lot of motion. They also have a body which glides through the water, displacing the water and creating a wake that trails behind it. They also have a head, which rests, still as could be, above all the rest, interfering with nothing and leaving  no wake.

    The doing mind, constantly active, highly interactive with the current and flow of life unfolding around us, and lowest level of our consciousness, is represented by the feet propelling the duck through the waters by means of a lot of movement. The thinking-mind is above the doing mind. It is influenced by the world and influences it, but it also enjoys a higher, more detached perspective on the doing-mind and the external environment. It is represented by the body of the duck.

    The being-mind is still higher. It does not occupy a realm of words, thoughts or numbers, and so descriptions can only point in a direction, but not deliver the mind there. To experience the terrain, the traveler can’t be focused on the map.

    Being mind enjoys a kind of perception and knowing that defies physicalism. being-mind transcends egoic sense of self, and so senses oneness with other. It can therefore hear the truth of others, even if it has never been spoken. It is being-mind that is able to hear the songs and spirit of Nature and all her children—the ten thousand things. This highest level of mind is symbolized by the duck’s head—perfectly still, completely above the flow of time and space phenomena, and so above ground-level power-struggles. being-mind perceives, receives, loves with gratitude, and knows intuitively. It does not engage in any effort to manipulate or achieve any goal. It leaves no wake.

    One thing I learned quickly is that doing and thinking minds abhor relinquishing consciousness over to being mind. The lower levels of mind kick up all manner of reasons and resistance to the idea of spending any amount of time in being-mind. This only makes sense given doing and thinking mind, at least from their perspectives, will die when in being-mind consciousness. No thought. No interactive grappling with external reality. Ego death. Just perceptive, receptive being.

    Despite being a long-time meditator, I found tremendous resistance to the suggestion that I let go of my ambition to write a book, and instead simply focus on being, on observing both the internal and the external worlds, not with thought and analysis, but raw, agenda-less receptivity.

    I traced this resistance to a number of causes, some better than others. A book was a way of giving back to Mother, to helping her cause and defending her health. A book was also a way of bringing something valuable and enriching to people’s lives—a way for them to adopt a more fulfilling worldview. A book was also a way of obtaining status and wealth, which in turn would amplify my freedom to do what I wanted, go where I wanted, when I wanted. A mixed bag of motives. Mostly, I felt so excited by what I was perceiving and receiving that all I wanted to do was write about it and share.

    But the lesson was clear: go upstream, towards the Source. God, the Divine, the Great and Holy Spirit, the Tao, Source, however you want to call it, is not best known by the doing- or even the thinking-mind. It is known best by the being-mind. It is not a verbal knowing, it is more an experiencing and resting in a palpable sense and presence of the Great and Holy Spirit.

    This can flow down into thought and construct some verbal likeness of the experience, but the words are more like a graven image of the actual experience. “Thou shalt not make any graven image or bow down to them,” is the general gist of what is considered either the second or a part of the first commandments received by Moses. I understand this to, among other things, be a warning against mistaking theology and doctrine for the actual truth of Spirit. We are not to get so tied up in knowledge and faith that we fail to focus on an actual experience of Spirit.    

    “But, but but…” my mind had so much resistance. Most of the time, I found it almost impossible to escape the constant chatter of inner dialogue and concerns. If I was a poor student at the lesson on patience, I was even worse at this lesson; so poor, in fact, I’m not sure I have actually learned it yet, 20 months later. After all, here I am, writing a book; nor did I ever, for any meaningful length of time, stop being focused on writing this book.

    I have had a sense that were I to submit to this lesson, let go of all urgency and concern about everything, I would be invited to a special place, a much better place of mind. I have sensed that this state of mind would be one of empathic knowing and ability to respond to the moment wisely and intuitively, to bring healing and blessing. It is a stress-free place because the perception of being right with Father and with Mother would neutralize and override any kind of upset kicked up by external events and their effects on the lower levels of mind. And yet my thinking-mind resists as if it were resisting execution.

    There is no way of coming to an agreeable submission to being-mind from within the lower two states where we are trained to spend almost all of our time. On those occasions where I have slipped into being mind, it inevitably brings about peace, expansive gratitude, perception of unity with all, intuitive knowing, and skillful ability to be, do and say what is needed to help whoever or whatever is in front of me.

    This is all possible because being-mind is above ego. In its desire to be important, ego is unable to be receptive to Spirit because perception of Spirit reveals a motive, a knowing, and a wisdom that does not arise from or cater to ego. In a state removed from ego, Spirit can enter and bless us. Ego-anchored doing- and thinking-minds are unable to understand how a book might be written through it if it isn’t focused on writing. The lower mind also doesn’t like the idea that maybe a book isn’t the final purpose. It doesn’t like the thought of in-the-moment positive influence as the only goal, in part because it doesn’t seem as potent as a successful book (though it probably is more so on a deeper, hidden level of human society) and even if it is more effective for positive change than a book, there is no glory or wealth involved in live-in-the-moment impact.

    Jesus never wrote a book, sought office, or did anything normally associated with achieving great positive change in the world, and yet his in-the-moment life of pure, unflinching love for all people has changed the world more profoundly than any other life or book. Similarly, the second-most influential person to have ever lived—the Buddha—never wrote or ascended to a seat of power. Instead, he was good to everyone he met and spoke to them about a path of blessing and peace.

    There are many less famous people who spend a lot of time in being-mind. Good therapists are able to turn off their analytic and verbal mind so that they can be fully, empathically present with the person or persons who are with them. A good religious leader spends time empty of themselves so that they can be absorbed into the experience of Spirit. Healthcare workers and people who work with other humans of all kinds also often spend time just being present and empathic with others.

    The truth is that thinking and doing don’t stop. These lower levels of mind don’t come to an end; rather, they find their rightful role. The right thoughts and words well up at the right times. The right actions are taken according to the needs of the moment. The difference is that we aren’t trying to be the one in control. Rather than on a specific outcome of love, when we focus on Divine Love itself, Spirit, outcomes follow naturally.

    The problem with this student is that I find it so difficult to let go of a specific desired outcome: this book. This is in part because ever since my early twenties, at which time I was given a life-changing spiritual experience, I have felt an unyielding call to write a book that spells out a new paradigm for understanding life. After dozens of attempts to write through the years, and after many attempts to ignore the calling to write, the thesis and these recent experiences with Nature have added new inspiration and new content. Now feels like the moment where this calling is finally going to find its fruition.

    Nevertheless, even if that’s true, the book will be truer and more effective if I focus not on writing and format, but on spending time in being-mind. I do spend time everyday within my place of worship working with effort to be in being-mind. However, work and effort are of the lower mind and cannot achieve being-mind.

    So, usually, I spend that time in what I’ll call highest-order thinking mind. By highest order thinking mind I mean employing thought from a sense of self for the highest possible purposes. To me, this means spending time every day expressing gratitude towards Mother and Father, and praying for the wellbeing and healing of all being, loved ones and for Mother Earth. Using thinking-mind in this way  leaves the door open for a being-mind experience.

    Sitting meditation was for many years a practice I employed to enter into being mind. More recently, since my experiences with the woods, sitting meditation sometimes feels right, but sometimes feels artificial. I have come to prefer spiritual practices. The first is to spend time in Nature with nothing but  gratitude and appreciation, not so much in words, but in heart. I just let gratitude soak in all the forms and beauty of Nature and let each thing sing to me their song. Sometimes I can hear more clearly than other times.

    I also have engage in personalized ritual. As the woods began to speak to me, step by step, a practice of adoration and honoring of Mother and Father has developed. The ritual has felt given to me, father than the result of plan. My shrine-time has increasingly come to lean towards ritual, symbolic activities, dance, and chant.

    Different levels of mind are appropriate for different tasks at different times. If I have to create a blueprint for a bridge, I can’t just zone out and be empathic and grateful. I have to employ thought actively. Part of honoring and trusting being-mind is trusting that it will delegate tasks to doing- and thinking-minds as need arises. A sign that ego is trying to run the show is agitation, anxiety, frustration and so on. Thinking- and doing-mind can operate much more efficiently when being-mind is primary because these negative emotions don’t interfere. Being-mind is above the fray of day to day upsets. This is wu-wei.

    Heron flew upstream. I’m trying to follow. Heron is infinitely patient. I am grateful.

    The Teaching:

    Go to the Essence and Source.

    Let go of attachment to achieving,

    Let go of attachment to analyzing,

    Let go of attachment to control,

    With a heart overflowing with gratitude and a mind empty of agenda,

    Receive, perceive, and right words and right actions will flow out effortlessly.

    Enter being-mind and know highest truth from the inside out.

    The Song of the Pine on a Still, Misty Morning

    I am unto myself;

    I am.

    I am, of my own being, Being.

    I need nothing, seek nothing, am disturbed by nothing.

    I am meditation.

    I am.

    The Song of The Prickly Woods

    Will you listen, or not be bothered?

    Will you believe that a place is sacred, or pass by?

    Will you listen to the whispers, or are you without eyes and ears?

    The decision to transform one’s consciousness

                is not to be taken lightly,

                            nor can it be.

    It requires a complete leaving off of all that was known,

                believed, and trusted.

    It requires becoming indifferent to much of culture,

                the expectations of others,

                and the praise and condemnation of others.

    It is the purpose, cause, and fulfillment of the yearning within,

                to adventure,

                to discover,

                to be victorious,

                and to fulfill destiny.

    It is the subject of the ancient tales of the hero.

    The adventure is within.

    One must set out carefully and deliberately,

                carefully considering what one seeks in consciousness,

    Who one wishes to be,

                By what to define reality,

                            And what virtues one wishes to honor.

    The old self will die,

    There is no possibility of rebirth without first death;

    And so the decision must be determined

    with wisdom and knowledge.

    Heaven, Paradise, Shambala, Nirvana, Surga, the Tao–

                These are names of a state of mind.

    This is the form of consciousness that is worth the pursuit,

                And worth the sacrifice.

    It is not impossible to find,

                But it is incompatible with mundane consciousness.

    There is no possibility of bringing the mundane into heaven,

                But from within the Tao, all mundane things get done—

                Heaven enters into the mundane, and makes it Tao

    This is the consciousness worthy of pursuit

    This is the consciousness worthy of sacrifice.

    This is the consciousness worthy

                of the death of the self who seeks it.

    This is the way of the Healer.

    The Song of the Sparrows

    Listen here, listen over here!

    It is unseemly to boast;

                Make yourself small, and humble.

    Do not sing for the attention of others,

                Humility does not seek anything from others.

    Sing only for the joy of singing.

                In all you do, do it only for the purpose itself,

                            and the doing of one’s own joy.

    Do not seek to impress, or to champion anything,

                Champion only this:

    To be self-contained,

                To sing not for ears, but for the joy of the Song, and singing;

                To do, not for recognition, but for the joy of doing.

    This is the secret of happiness.

    The Song of the Mallard Pair

    Above materialistic consciousness

    is symbol-consciousness and song-consciousness.

    Above symbol- and song-consciousness

                is Being.

    Symbol-consciousness sees meaning and message.

                It hears the songs, and is not deluded.

    Being-consciousness is communion of soul with soul with Soul,

                Of all with All,

    One hears the songs,

    Then hears the Song of Songs;

    And the Song of Songs ushers in the highest state:

    Pure Being.

    And Being hears its own Song.

    There is no self to hear and other to sing,

                Singer, song, and hearer are parts of One.

                This is the highest state.

    Integrity, stillness, adoration:

    These return a mind to Being.

    From Being, the Song arises;

    From the Song, songs arise;

    From the songs, the 10,000 things.

    The feet are moving under the surface,

                But there is no burden or labor,

                They do as they do for their own joy.

    The body glides in stillness,

                brushing against water,

                causing a wake.

    The royal emerald head is in complete stillness;

                It makes no mark;

                Makes no change.

    These are the three levels;

                Doing, Knowing, Being,

                All must coexist,

    When one knows neither symbol nor Being, 

                One labors under the surface.

    When one has become still, and knows Being,

    Hearing hears,

    Doing does, And all gets done.

  • Teachings of Heron – Part 9

    To the Trees

    Just as few birds are able to stay aloft forever, it is difficult for us to remain above thought forever. Eventually, we must land. At some point, not seeing Heron anywhere in the water, I looked up, and there the teacher was, sitting atop a tree that towered over the slow-flowing stream. How I was inspired to look up right at that tree right at that time is a question I cannot answer, but there she was, preening her feathers, just taking care of herself.

    Trees reach into the sky, opening up to receive the radiance of the sun—they are built to bask. Basking is their primary function, and in basking, they give immeasurably to all manner of life with shade, with soil security, homes for insects and creatures, and oxygen for all. To humans they also provide fuel and material for building everything from a bridge, to a toy, to a home.

    Trees respond to the warmth of the sun, bringing out leaves in season, but unlike Heron, they bask primarily for light, not heat. Trees are that part of our mind that reaches up to understand the highest and most ethereal forms of spiritual truth which offer a way to understand meaning, life, and purpose.

    This is a place important for us to spend some time so that we can nourish and provide for the other areas of our life. If we live without any sense of meaning or purpose, contentment and peace will be illusive. With a clear understanding, or even perception of life’s meaning and purpose, Love, no matter where we are or what situation we find ourselves in, we know what to do.

    Catching spiritual light, we also come to know a reality that is transcendent of all the problems we face on earth. Love is the essence within all that is, and love’s own wisdom is the order and design that all the universe. This love and wisdom are uncreate and are transcendent of space and time. When love adopts a specific form in the natural universe, with unique characteristics and colors, then that specific form of love necessarily has an eternal life. The soul of each thing is its essential, eternal purpose of love. Each thing reveals some aspect of timeless wisdom.

    When we love someone or something with gratitude and a desire to bless, Divine Love finds a new unique form within us with its own wisdom. That form, being of love, comes into eternity. In a sense, therefore, every time we engage in an act of selfless love, we serve as a midwife for the birth of an angel. That angel will forever be with us and aid us forward.

    When a person dies, all the forms of love which they have ever participated in or given birth to are collected into whole which adheres seamlessly as one human form, one image and likeness of divine-human love. That is the angel we each become.

    With such a worldview, it is impossible to feel completely hopeless. It is impossible to feel useless. It is impossible to feel that life is meaningless.

    Different trees have different shaped branches and leaves, representing different ways people reach up and out to know meaning, to access answers to the deepest questions in life. Some reach up straight and tall, straight towards God. Horizontal reach towards others is an afterthought. Such people often gather in faith-communities. They can be prickly with judgment, austerity and a desire for conformity. They are like a grove of pine trees.

    Others spread their branches wide, as if to know and understand what lies around them, just as many people gain meaning by seeking to understand and empathize with other people. They want to offer shade and comfort to people who are life-worn and weary. In this lateral effort of love, they also grow tall and receive the wisdom of the sun of love, without necessarily focusing on meaning-making.

    Establishing meaning and purpose, either in the heart or in thought, is essential. Heron spends a lot of time in trees during the warmer months. That’s where a bonded pair rears their family.

    The Teaching:

    Spend time resting your mind on the higher truths that brings

    peace, contentment, and joy.

    Take care of yourself there.

    The Song of Tree

    Turn your mind upward, my Child, young to wisdom.

    Reach up to know that true Light which nourishes your soul,

    Which feeds your spirit with good things.

    Dig down into the soil of the past,

                Of mistakes and sin,

                Of sorrows and pain,

                Of love and joy.

    It is all the anchor for your resolve and strength

                to reach upwards towards Spirit.

    Know the truth of your own delusion

                that you might grow up out of its soil,

                and breathe, and know Light.

    Bring forth thoughts that catch Divine Light,

    And let these leaves, be the healing to your soul,

    The healing of the nations within, and the nations without.

    Let the beauty and wisdom of your life give shade to the weary.

    Let your branches, your activities, your ambitions,

                reach out strong to touch the lives of others, to bless them.

    You will be a being of beauty and blessing.

    Let yourself bear sweet fruits of loving-kindness and service.

    You are stronger than you know,

    More beautiful than you know,

    More precious than you know.

    Let patience be your companion.

    Is a tree born from a seed in one day?

    In turning upwards towards Spirit, towards Oneness,

    Just in existing you breathe life to all that lives.

    Your being itself is blessing.

    All is good,

    All is blessing.

    You and I, and all, We are One Tree.