In my last blog I shared with you the dream I had about the Mystery of Change.  The mystery of change is also the mystery of evolution.  And, how we embody not only physical evolutionary change, but also the shifts and changes that awaken our consciousness.

We are spiritual beings housed in physical bodies.

Mystery teachings around the world suggest that in this process, spiritual experience moves from subtle energetic states of being into more and more dense forms of experience.  Spiritual energy is perceived through our intuition.  As the energy becomes more dense it takes the form of thoughts.  Thoughts are also reflections of emotional feelings, and the most dense form is physical experience and physical, material reality.  We are young in discovering how to be conscious in each of these worlds of experience.

Coming into physical form brings with it a focus on the material world.  In the process, we forget less subtle realities.  A forgetting of where we come from and who we are.  We experience this as a ‘separation’ from Spiritual realities.  The experience of separation from spirit brings with it emotional pain (in emotional worlds) along with a distortion in one’s thinking (in the mental world).  Life is not only about “forgetting”.  Life in physical form is about remembering.  Reflecting and remembering what this divine mission is – We are born to awaken to our true nature – to embody one’s essential spiritual nature while living in a human body.  We are evolving in to becoming humane beings, not just human animals living in a physical body.

I’m curious  –

• How do you experience the mystery of change?
• What are your reflections on our evolutionary process?
• In what ways are you conscious of your physical reality as a reflection of your spiritual reality?
• How are you experiencing your evolution of becoming a more humane being?

I had a dream the other night… In my dream I was teaching about the Great Mysteries in a retreat setting, facilitating a workshop with all of my mentors, and we had a group of around 40 participants.  In the morning session of the first day, one fellow shared a dream he had.  In his dream, he kept changing into different animals—first he was a fish, then he became a lizard, then he became a bird, then he became a panther.

I asked him to act out each of these changes, noting his movements as he transitioned from one animal to the next—how he morphed from one form to the next.  And then I asked each person in the class to move and mirror these changes to him, to morph and change into each of the animals.

This brought forward a teaching—a teaching of how life is change.  The key to the Great Mystery is about responding to change—that we change, and how we change, and what creates change.  We tend to respond to the mystery of change with “uncertainty” —an existential crisis that creates doubt, helplessness and fear.  Mystery itself is without fear; rather entering into the mystery inspires awe.

What would be different if we responded to uncertainties in our lives with a sense of great Mystery and Awe?

It’s summertime where I live.

In Calgary – the place I call my home – we have four seasons.  And, although, I am sometimes challenged by the extremes of this climate—like long dark winters and summer sunsets at 10:30 PM—the seasons as I experience them at 51 degrees northern latitude offers important learning. . . I appreciate that they remind me of how our lives are made up of seasons as well.  Spring, summer, autumn and winter are the continuous cycles of death and renewal that I experience here, in my small corner of Mother Earth.

Each one of us has a different natural rhythm that distinguishes our personal growth cycles over the course of a year.  Each one of us, no matter where we live, experiences seasons, and has a time to dream, to plan, to produce, to play, to rest, and even to worry.

Do you know what Season you are in?

Are you able to recognize your personal growth cycle?

How does each of your Seasons make you feel, and make you act?

My mother died a year ago.  This last week, on July 2^nd my brother and I made the sojourn to her grave.  This was the anniversary of her burial.  It also happens to be the day she was born into this world in Philadelphia, on July 2, 1929.  While at the cemetery, after talking to our mother, we also visited with her mother and my father, as well as my father’s parents and grandparents.

Honoring ancestors is part of the Jewish tradition—the tradition I was born into in this life-time.  As my mom began to decline in health, and ultimately release herself from this world, I witnessed ancestral patterns play out; confirming what I have known since childhood: like rivers flowing to the sea, every relationship finds its own level.  Some may be strong and deep.  Some may be white water rapids.  Or shallow streams.  Stagnant pools.  Or fresh artesian springs that quench our thirst.

Being related by blood does not automatically award a sense of ‘belonging’, friendship or camaraderie.  These qualities come from within one’s heart; and we recognize the truth of our bonds with another as we experience a resonant bond of love that is shared (or not).

Ultimately all bonds, including the limits we experience in relationships, are expressions of love; and sometimes the best way to express love is to allow for distance.  That being said, I accept the limits of my relationships with each member in my blood-line, both in our immediate family—my siblings, my parents’ siblings (my aunts and uncles)—and all their offspring, and beyond into the ever expanding circle of cousins, kith and kin.

My family has been the family of humanity for some time, and the four winds and trees my sisters and brothers.  When we expand our relationships to all our relations, to all of Life, we discover that there is a place for each of us—wherever we are, and however we are, just as we are—each growing and evolving into whatever it is that Life has in mind for us . . . which often means letting go of what and how we believe Life should be.

On the other side of mourning—as we continue letting go into the experience of death—all that remains is the love; love that was, is, and continues to be shared, into eternity.