Mystical Musings

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2012 is finally here, and it gives us the opportunity to step forward as mystics who are willing to participate in making this a year of great positive transformation for the entire world and all her kingdoms. In this we will be joining spiritually-minded people all over the world who hold the dream of a New Earth based in compassion and cooperation, rather than greed and competition. We launch the 2012 Mystical Musings by looking at ways that we can, with just an adjustment of attitude and self-perception, make our contribution, as a community and as individuals, toward bringing about these great changes.

What are the changes we wish to see happen in this monumental year? How as mystics can we help to create them? We get inspiration and guidance by looking at some discoveries of quantum physics and applying them to our desire to help bring about the 2012 transformation. Surprisingly, we can have very powerful effect on the world, on its heart and mind, instantaneously and with very little effort. We can do this individually and as a community. Our prayers together in this Musing can be of the "quantum-think" sort and together we can bless the Earth and all Her kingdoms in a joyful and unified and very powerful way. Please join us and we will bless the world together.

In this time of exceedingly rapid evolution of consciousness, we experience often unexpected extremely challenging times, and also sudden states of expanded joyful realization. When we put both of these experiences in the context of the collective, of the Oneness, we find that knowing our participation in the healing of the planet in both the difficult and the joyful times takes on new meaning. And this knowing leads us, first, to take things less personally, and, second, to bring into awareness our willingness to help evolution along by welcoming the universal healing that comes with both the contractions and expansions. We will talk not only about attitudes that are helpful in these times, but also techniques for making our experiences support the common good.

Floods, fires, infestations, political standoffs and strife: chaos abounding outwardly and inwardly as well. What's a good mystic to do? If the mystic path is about anything it is about love and compassion, which have been abundant in the face of the Texas floods as well as the many wildfires plaguing the nation; there are so many examples of ordinary people rising up extraordinarily to help their fellow citizens. Compassion seems to be part of our genetic code and is thus a great practice in these chaotic times. And of course compassion is for others but also for ourselves, especially those dark corners of our childhood woundings that now more than ever need the light of our love to help ourselves consciously evolve, deepening our mystic practices. Michaelangelo said in late old age, I am still learning. And so Curiosity about even Chaos as well as Compassion is a foundation for all of our contemplative work and will thus be our parting gift to our fellow mystics, curiously exploring body, mind, heart, spirit.

How do we keep our mystic boat afloat in turbulent waters? How can we keep our sense of oneness in such polarizing and divisive times? In time for our Mystical Musings hiatus until September 17, we explore some fundamental strategies for evoking our mystic presence and for cultivating our mystic practice.

The message that Jesus brings is Love. The magic and power of Easter is that Love returns, embodied. The message is Love! not just the Law, not the power-of-the-strongest, but Love! and not just when it is convenient and easy and flowing, but also and even especially when it is difficult and challenging. Herein our mystic passion is being forged. In a culture of conformity, the iconoclastic mystic faces challenges with and from the status quo. Remaining oriented toward Love, our mystic paths are our refuges- along with community and the Avatar- amid the stormy evolution. Easter reminds us and evokes from within us the Christ-spirit, Love ongoing. These are transformative times as institutions, cultural touchstones and some individuals are crumbling, others rising anew, resurrecting. As the mystic core of love and union guides us through...we ourselves are resurrecting, an embodied resurrecting, renewing and transforming, ever-deepening and expanding our capacity to Love.

With a collective sense of humanity in America, and to some extent the world, being anxious and uncertain amid the rapidly evolving political and environmental scenes, we need as never before to access our genetically encoded sense of joy/peace/love; we need this access as a daily mystic practice to help heal what is ailin' us. And Hey! it's Springtime, a significant return of the basic codes of our earthly existence, offering us cyclical renewal as a balm for the oppression of current events and unfolding planet-wide changes. With renewal comes fresh perspective, new opportunity and new ways of living our lives and maybe, just maybe, irrational exuberance. Join us for our Spring Equinox Mystical Musings.

In terms of the daily living of our lives, perfection is the enemy of the soul. Kindness, lovingkindness toward one's family and friends, tribe and worthy opponents, and towards oneself, is a mystic practice in great demand right now. The Japanese philosophy of WabiSabi is a paradigm founded on the Buddhist three marks of existence: impermanence, suffering and emptiness, which cultivate kindness through compassion. The WabiSabi aesthetic includes simplicity, intimacy and deep appreciation of the ingenuous integrity of the natural world. Let us find our way toward deepening lovingkindness, together in this next Mystical Musings.

Do we lose our innocence or just misplace it? Does innocence end because of the seemingly inevitable effects of growing older or does it get transformed, so that we often don't recognize it anymore? In this complex and challenging world is access to innocence even desirable? Innocence is our true inner sense; we are born with Buddha nature, with purity, presence, wonder and joy. Innocence/Inner Sense is our platform for our being human and for learning anything especially the spiritual art of the mystic. Please join us as we begin our fourteenth year of Mystical Musings as we celebrate what feels to us as an unfolding of a whole new cycle of endeavor personally and collectively.

Such love does the sky now pour, that whenever I stand in a field, I have to wring out the light when i get home. -St Francis of Assisi The inner journey in nature, no matter time of year, offers opportunities for letting go, for deeper presence, absorption, sometimes even rapture or ecstasy. And so we wring out the light with the utter delight of deeply knowing that God is Love, Love Is, and I am Love. Wringing out the Light, we go deeper, we open more deeply than ever to the Light and to the Dark, the Great YinYang of the felt universe. We wring out the light when we are consciously living on our growing edge and work with whatever arises emotionally, spiritually, energetically. Let's wring out the light together at our next Mystical Musings.

Silence, stillness and darkness give us a chance to disconnect from our wired world, from the external, from the cacophony of everyday life, the onslaught of information and the chaos of noise pollution. Stillness is the silence of our habitual unconscious body movements. Darkness is the silence of sight. For some the disconnect of silence is emptiness, for others it is fullness. Silence breeds insight as we let go of the familiar and open to the depths. Silence cultivates deeper listening, an active listening. Silence invites a deepening of our inner life. Silence is the potentiated field of possibility. Silence opens the door to the vastness of our Being. Silence is the playground of the mystic. "Silence holds with its gloved hand, the wild hawk of the mind."

Isn't a whisper how sometimes spirit speaks? Not the loud, authoritative, powerful voice necessarily but the still, small, voice, a whisper speaking spirit. Whether it is your name being called or your power being called back into your heart and soul, a whisper is what often guides the mystic. But what of eternity? Other than that it is a very long, long time? How does "eternal" interface with daily reality? Is it only awe or does it include practicality as well? Whispers are not only sounds, but with a little synesthesia-imagination, a feather-touch could be perceived as a somatic whisper; or if there is a waft of an exquisite fragrance, this too could be an olfactory whisper. Doesn't elusive happiness whisper to us? Our embodiment whispers often on many different levels, intimating whispers of eternity. We will offer Musings on eternity whispering. Please join us.

The dark events of the summer are enough to make pessi-mystics of us all! No one needs to be told that there is currently conflict and confusion, widespread anger and deep grief in the collective. Add the weather to the mix and we can be almost depressed! But there is work for the mystic to do that can make a huge difference in all that's going on. What we might not give thought to is how we can help the situation and how we can learn from it. And the chaos can also help us grow deeply and rapidly. We don't want to miss the opportunity. Many believe that this time is the dark night before an awesome dawn, but this time has intrinsic value and is an invitation to service for all the spiritual communities on earth. We also point out while alarming conflict and confusion reign in the outside world, we are being infused by a gargantuan amount of Light. We await the dawn while we do what only spiritual awakening people can do: send powerful showers of Love and Light to everyone on the planet. We also look at what we can learn as we go about the task of lovingly caring for the world, and how we can use all the darkness to illuminate places in ourselves that need attention. We look at how, underneath it all, there is brilliant Light shining on us as spiritual beings. Please join us midway in our thirteenth year for this first Mystical Musings of the 2016-17 season.

In the face of a religious and cultural dominance built around doctrine and sectarianism, it takes courage to be an outsider, a mystic who looks within to the ultimate authority, not to dogma nor religious teachings- a very different perspective from those adhering to a creed that someone else has written and many follow. The Mystic takes the "road less traveled", and dares to be different from so many others. The mystic is an outsider who knows about persecution through the ages of those of a similar stripe, and courageously moves forward even though the threat of exclusion or misunderstanding can follow. With the cultural onslaught of the superficial and the glamorous, the mystic finds heart to move into the depths of Being guided by spiritual intuition, un-dazzled by the world of appearances. In the face of our living in "interesting times" it takes courage to integrate the indeterminacy of a volatile outer world, and to aim ourselves toward a peaceful inner life. In the face of fear, it takes big-hearted mystical courage to confront the demons within us so that, with perseverance, we might eventually find deepening wisdom and empowerment and meaning in our suffering. Mystics dare to say an unconditional "Yes" to life, despite its perils; even allowing the Yes in despair, resentment and collapse. The mystic aiming toward Oneness takes full responsibility for all that unfolds in life, conscious or unconscious, whether by our own agency or that of another, finding in ourselves Courage, finding in ourselves Heart, finding in ourselves the alchemy inherent in This, Here, Now.

The mystic develops skills that are specific to a Path of Awareness, Compassion, and Embodiment of Spirit. Among those skills are the ever-increasing ability to find silence within, to know deep peacefulness, to practice unconditional love, and to take responsibility for all the events in one's life. The mystic seeks embodied experience beyond the surface and the cultural in order to overcome habit, conditioning, unconsciousness, and ignorance. Mystic skill looks to daily life not as distraction or busyness, but as opportunities for deeper and deeper realization. Mystic skill reframes our tendencies toward glamour and avoidance, and chooses instead deep presence and compassionate love, joy and wonder. Please join us for our (playful) celebration of mystic skill.

This Sunday for the Musings is the sacred Palm Sunday holiday for Christianity and is sacred as well at the Spring Equinox for the earth-based religions. We honor these religious celebrations and will create together our own sacred Sunday mystic event, by exploring the fundamental value of Playfulness as a way of deepening into the Mystical. This can sound oxymoronically outrageous as we so often think of the intense suffering the mystic has to endure in order to awaken to the Divine Presence. But then we think of the great masters Nasrudin (a Sufi writer who is a hilarious spiritual teacher) and of course Hafiz (another early Sufi mystic) with whom we have laughed many times in our Musings together. So we have learned that even the deepest teachings can be expressed with humor and delight. This Sunday we continue our exploration of the New Spirituality and we learn the profound value of bringing playfulness to our prayers and meditations and affirmations and of having a playful attitude toward everything that we can during the day. The energy and effectiveness of this is quite astounding. We want to share with you the joy we have found using this attitude. (We have even applied it to tax preparation!) Come and share some Divine play with us, while learning what we can do to make life lighter and easier!

In our fast-paced modern culture the mystic faces the challenge of daring to live life in a slower, more contemplative way. This requires a focus on Being, more than on the constant Acting we have been conditioned to do, and is supported by being in the moment, slowing down our breathing, our thinking, our feeling. We meditate, pray, self-reflect, and deeply appreciate the beauty all around us by letting-go and relaxing into the Divine Presence. We allow life to flow at it own pace without feeling compelled to push forward. In this Musing we suggest ways of slowing down the body, the mind, and the heart. We recommend taking a fresh look at our to-do lists and eliminating what is not necessary in favor of using the time to serve ourselves, our communities and the world. We invite you to join us as we discuss some useful techniques for taking undue pressure off our lives and learning to live a slower, more awakened, more graceful, and more grace--filled life.

Mystics have long taught that the Divine Presence can be felt in the heart, mind, and body of anyone who asks for it. The felt sensation is one of warmth, comfort, true love and unconditional support. We can bathe in this in good times and bad, and it never fails to soothe the soul. We often forget that this is always available and so sacrifice the opportunity for the rich reward of feeling cared for at the deepest level. In this Musing we discuss how to call for that gift from our Guides, Angels, Avatars, and the Divine Source itself, and how to revel in it. Please join us for our New Year celebration of Divine Nurturance.

Our non-denominational Christmas Musing asks the question, "How can we find joy in such a difficult time?" The first thing to know is that joy and happiness are not the same. Happiness is fleeting, joy is constant. Ultimately true spiritual joy is attained when we welcome all the feelings and all the experiences of our lives and know that they come to us for our own growth and enlightenment. Joy is the deep knowing that all is well and all is going according to plan for us each. Joy is only possible when we have a felt sense of the benevolence of the Divine Presence. Joy knows the depth of us, knows the yin and the yang, the light and the dark and is able to hold the opposites in the vastness of our awareness. Even in our most challenging times we are able to find the joy of our spiritual lives. We will celebrate joy by singing traditional carols, and praying together for the relief of suffering on our planet. Please join us for this holiday gathering!

So many of us live our lives as a simple prayer, the prayer great mystic Meister Eckhart values above all others: "Thank You". We walk in gratitude because we know our blessings and notice how often they come, even in times of darkness. Using the phrase "Thank You" as a mantra yields beautiful results. Just the simple phrase, rather than Thank You "for". It is easy for us to make lists of what we are grateful for, and it is also a very powerful prayer. But leaving off the "for" and simply saying "Thank you" throughout the day elevates and enlivens us. It is hard to say a simple "Thank You" without smiling. Saying the phrase seems to gladden the heart each time we say it. It is an interesting experiment to think of something painful and simply say "Thank You": you will notice that it lightens the spirit. Saying it in any mood brings joy. Other simple mantra prayers are "God bless you", "May all beings be free", "I cover the world with the violet flame of transformation". In this Musing, we explore the power of simple prayer said in many situations, in many tones of voice, and it various moods. Please join us as we say simple prayers together and notice the effect it has on our bodies and our hearts, and on our community. This is, not unsurprisingly, our Thanksgiving gathering. Please celebrate it with us!

True art reflects and enhances the whole of human life. It illuminates our joys and our sorrows. It makes everything beautiful, no matter how dark and difficult. And it often reassures us that all will end well. It brings us peace. It brings us a deep knowing, a knowing that cannot be spoken of except in the language of the poet. Great art is the product of the mystical impulse of the artist and therefore speaks most deeply to those of us who have those impulses also. As it is true that great artists are a variety of mystic, it is also true that self-proclaimed mystics often create great art: the sacred music of Hildegard von Bingen, the sacred poetry of Meister Eckhart, the poetry of Rumi and of Kabir and Hafiz. Mystics and artists are inspired-"inSpirited"- and know and deeply feel the wonder and majesty of the Divine Presence. As that Presence cannot be directly spoken in ordinary language, art is the result of the need to express in form the language of the Divine. Please join us for a day of wonder and joy artistically and mystically co-created.

The Halloween-time of the year has for many centuries been considered a time when the veil between heaven and earth is very thin indeed. We can, it is said, most easily at this time access other dimensions of consciousness. This is an exciting time for mystics all over the world because we know that spiritual growth often involves moving into exalted states of awareness (other dimensions of consciousness) for transformational information and bringing it back to be used in everyday life. In 2012 we focus particularly on the mystical dimension of Positive Expectancy, especially for the collective Birthing of the Winter Solstice but also for our personal healing, learning and transformation amid the turbulence and peace of this profoundly changing time.

In this Musing we explore gratitude as a mystical state of being, rather than a compendium of practices. Mystics have a natural gratitude born of the experience of God as a benevolent, all-loving Creator, and of Life as a meaningful and blessed journey. And we have daily practices of expressing that gratitude in prayer and spoken appreciation. We also have silent gratitude as we stand in awe of the beauty of nature, the beauty of artistic creations, the holding of a newborn, the intimacy of being with loved ones. Some days we are aware of our blessings, some days not. Sometimes we say "thank you", some days we forget, but when we move fully into the gratitude as a state of being, there are no off days and on days--we LIVE the gratitude. This Sunday we offer suggestions (and one key "doing") of how to move into a deepening state of thanksgiving.

In this Musing we speak of the value and the joy of direct experience of Gaia, Mother Earth. This experience is most available by connecting with Her heart to heart. We will offer easy and powerful techniques for making this important connection. And we will discuss how this interaction is needed as balance to the connection with "Father Sky". We will also speak of the unique gifts she has to offer us, and of the way our life is changed by incorporating Her into our individual energy-bodies. She is the earth-mother, the source of groundedness,the provider of health, and the great nurturer of our souls. Please join us as pay tribute to Earth Day and Water Day by invoking the Spirit of the Great Mother who dwells in and on the sacred earth and is the Earth Herself.

Curiosity for the mystic is grounded in humility, grounded in the knowledge that each day we leave behind the old and awaken to the new. The Divine is Infinite and always has new treasures awaiting us. Without curiosity we leave the realm of the spiritual and enter into the realm of religion, which preaches its doctrine of absolutes. Commitment is based on a direct experience of the Divine which asks us to commit again and again to a life of love. So curiosity and commitment are "natural" on the mystical path. And at this point in our collective evolution we are asked to become more consciously aware of them both and to listen to the call to seek and maintain an openness to transformation and an eternal, ever evolving Love.

We are slowly going deeper in the portal of our mystic practice, deeper and closer with Creator, with Source, with God, with the Beloved especially when praying, meditating, connecting ourselves heart to Heart in a beautiful intimacy with the Beloved. We are moving together from feeling the transcendence of Divine Presence to the feeling of immanence of Spirit. Metaphysically this involves thinking about the Beloved not as a Being, but as Being itself. Embodied Being focuses on deeper, continuous breathing and more skillful micro-movements. We live in a world that is made up entirely of Divine Being. This includes us, and everything, and everything is us! We know on an e-motional level, our Oneness with all that is. Let us explore together some ways of coming closer to Creation, some ways of coming closer to ourselves.

The portents for this year are of creativity and manifestation. One such creative endeavor is the opening of portals between dimensions, between people, among all the earthly kingdoms, between heaven and earth. In this Musing we speak about how we can create portals of all sorts, how we can maintain them, and how we can close them. The creating of the vortex of energy that we call a Portal happens every time we pray, meditate, are intimate with another or with Spirit Guides and other divine beings, or open to receiving the grace of the Creator. We will have fun consciously portaling together! We hope you will join us!

Appropriate for mystics of all faiths, with this Musing we invite our Christian and Jewish and Buddhist members to join us along with people of all other religious and non-religious backgrounds and practices. Focusing on the miracle of "the Word becoming flesh", we speak about that sacred alchemy in the context of our present day evolution. We suggest simple practices to achieve that alchemy using the example of the Christmas story. Our contemplation will synchronize with the themes we have been focusing on in the last few Musings, and lead us to a deeper understanding of the incarnating of Spirit. The Musing will celebrate the joyous news Jesus of Nazareth brought to us of Love and the possibility of the sacred transformation into Oneness. Along the way we will sing some carols and celebrate together the good news of the Christ event. It will be a festive and joyous time with one another. Please join us!

We seek to mine the riches of the dark sides of life in this Musing. There are more gifts than we may have noticed in the down times. We already know that we go through these passages for cleansing and self-knowledge, and that we have experienced great awakenings following these difficult events. While we will comment briefly on these issues, we are more interested in investigating how we navigate the light/dark dialectic in our daily lives. We look at how our attitudes about the relationship between the yin and the yang can make a huge difference in how we choose to live our lives. And we talk about the fascinating mystery of it all, and what it can mean to us to invite the mystery into the depths of our being.

What attitudes and perspectives do we need to add a sense of lightness in our lives? What is the benefit of bringing lightness to our spiritual path? What are the obstacles? There are several steps that lead to the lightness (and to the Lightness) of our journey at this disturbing time in human evolution that we will share with you. We will also speak about lightness in relationship with yourself and with others. We ask, "How can we bring a light touch to prayer and meditation, and to the practice of manifestation?" We ask also how to process difficult feelings in a less heavy and less serious way. We will offer some a practical teachings for bringing lightness to our everyday lives. Please join us for an uplifting Mystical Musing.

In our day, with Guidance so available to us, we can streamline our prayers and practices by intending rather than efforting. We can allow and not labor. What often complicates matters is the chattering mind and the fearful inner child. We delay the manifestation of daily expansion by making too big a fuss over the hows and whys of personal co-creation and by succumbing to doubt. We will discuss how we can let go at a very deep level. This is an era of exciting and relatively easy creation with the assistance of Divine Presence, now with us in a way that can be felt by the whole of us in the moment of making choices, focusing on them, and allowing them to come forth in joy and ease. The more relaxed we are, the easier it is for the desires of our hearts to come into actualization. We can relax more these days because we know more deeply than ever before that the evolution we are going through has been in progress for millennia and that we are inevitably moving from a world-experience based in fear to one based in love. (We will speak about the inevitability of positive forward movement.) Please join us for a celebration of the Splendor of the Simple.

Mother Earth, Mother Mary, Mother Love, Male Mother, Quantum Mother: We will look at these and perhaps other manifestations of the Divine Feminine in the context of the radical evolution we are experiencing. And we will ask if there is emerging in 2012 a new role for the Mother--and we do think there is!

The Halloween-time of the year has for many centuries been considered a time when the veil between heaven and earth is very thin indeed. We can, it is said, most easily at this time access other dimensions of consciousness. This is an exciting time for mystics all over the world because we know that spiritual growth often involves moving into exalted states of awareness (other dimensions of consciousness) for transformational information and bringing it back to be used in everyday life. In 2012 we focus particularly on the mystical dimension of Positive Expectancy, especially for the collective Birthing of the Winter Solstice but also for our personal healing, learning and transformation amid the turbulence and peace of this profoundly changing time.

We are emptying ourselves that we may receive the bounty promised in the coming shift of consciousness. What do we do with this abundance in terms of blessing the world especially in the face of such recent devastation and tragedy in our country? What is called for now is evoking radical grace through inner silence and meditation and at the right time, right action. Join us in exploring mystic practices for the giving of the gifts we receive. How do we up-level our practice of Spiritual Generosity? Please allow us to share a quantum way of praying for others, an elegant technique involving mystic giving, and balancing spiritual receiving and spiritual giving. This and more comprises our preparation for Winter Solstice 2012.

We are, in every moment, the sum of the resonances of body, soul, mind, and heart. We are also the resonances of our masculine and feminine sides. As we grow, all these components of being are shifting and coming into harmony. The cycle of harmony and disharmony is the way we move forward on the spiritual path. In times of harmony there is a coherence among all our parts. This is when we feel strong and compassionate, peaceful, joyful, and optimistic. When coherence is lost, we are singing the "transformational blues". We all know these cycles well. In our time, these cycles occur very rapidly. It can be disconcerting, but it brings with it the promise of New Consciousness: the Consciousness of the perfectly coherent harmonizing of the yin/yang, the individual and the collective, the new Light and the new Dark. This is Unity in Diversity: the goal of the "ascension". We speak in this Musing of ways we can encourage coherence and make the best of the times of incoherence and disharmony in our quest to bring about the New Era.

The great mystic secret of the Easter event is that Jesus returned not as a vision but in a body. What was he trying to teach us about ourselves in making a physical return? We discuss this in a new light because of recent revelations, and we extend our thoughts to questions about how each of us as well as the earth herself is experiencing resurrection. All is being made new in the New Era, and the Easter event contains more transformational information than we have known before. The information is extremely exciting and leads us to very practical ways of using the new knowledge in our everyday lives. And it gives us a new way of understanding how all the kingdoms of the earth--the devic, the animal, the plant, and the mineral kingdoms--are experiencing resurrection.

The radical transformation afoot today is a global initiation of tremendous significance for human civilization. Initiation is a nodal point in collective consciousness, a moment out of history, a leap out of time into Deep Presence, leaving behind belief systems, emotional trauma, mental frameworks and even spiritual limitations. Initiation is a trust-based leap into the Great Unknown. Many of us in our community are experiencing Initiation with all its promises and demands. We will Muse about Initiation, along with its gifts and challenges and offer a brief community Initiation ritual.

At this time of the year we celebrate the wonders and joys of love, for others, for ourselves and for the Creator. We celebrate romance and we celebrate love beyond romance. The love that we honor honors all of us in all the ways that we love, from our unique ways of being ourselves to our unique way of loving what God is for us. We will suggest some ways of holding our own hearts , and our own inner family, that enable us to hold in love the hearts of others. When we appreciate ourselves as a miracle of the Benevolent Creator we can truly appreciate and hold in love those around us. Please join us as we discuss the deep intimacy we can have with ourselves, and others and with Divine Presence.

The SHIFT has begun, as so many of you know! very exciting indeed! We are right now in the backsplash of the 2012 Solstice, feeling very transformative, sometimes a roller coaster, sometimes the peace beyond understanding. To understand it better, and to have some words for it, we will look at some metaphors of radical change such as the serpent shedding his skin. We will also offer a 2012 version of the search for the Holy Grail. And we will bid a grateful farewell to the cycle we are leaving, opening our collective arms to the New Beginning given us at this momentous time in human history. As One, we will send blessings to our beautiful world, in the midst of our extraordinary collective and personal birthing of a new order of Human Awareness.

As mystics we are committed to leading a conscious, intentional life. We learn to balance a dependency on Grace with creating what we want in our lives. In this Musing we will speak of a new formula, appropriate to our New Era, for manifesting what we want on all levels of our being, utilizing the energy of the fullness of Love and a Sacred Resiliency.

The focus of this Musing as well as the core of the many beautiful teachings received by the Mystical Musers who traveled to John of God in Brazil in March 2013 NE (ie New Era). Finding new ways to use personal will to support others and self, Myron will speak for the group, emphasizing New Era empowerment of sacred volition. We will look at the differences between mystical willing and secular willfulness, personal will in the context of surrender to the Divine Will and embodied will in daily life.

January is a time when we let got the old and welcome in the new; a wonderful time to practice what Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki calls Zen Mind, Beginners Mind. He recommends a daily practice of releasing our minds to the winds, cleaning the slate, a mental state he calls "not-knowing". This puts us into clarity no matter what comes up (on a good day, that is). And what comes up, we recognize, is often something, pleasant or not, that we have dealt with before, because all our issues seem to recur in cyclic fashion as we grow older, and thankfully a bit wiser. Our growth happens in a spiral fashion--we don't just leave behind the issues that we have worked on before, as they keep coming back for more refined processing. And that processing is most efficiently done by addressing the matter with "beginner's mind". We have some practical suggestions for help in doing this. Please join us as we start our path anew in 2014.

Our holiday gathering in which we honor the Christ event and its message of Oneness and Joy. We will sing carols, listen to live music, enjoy deep silence together and muse on some New Era definitions of Christ Consciousness and how to attain and sustain it. This is a non-sectarian celebration, as always, and so we welcome everyone who wants to expand awareness during the holy season of Christmas and Hanukkah. We will also suggest some ways we can give to ourselves spiritually and emotionally while giving to others during this special time of year. And together we will send blessings of Divine Love to all the world.

The New Era offers us the opportunity to call for joy to be our basic state of being. We are deeply supported in this request by the evolution toward Light that we are experiencing. This state of joy does not eliminate times of challenge, frustration, and impatience, nor does it erase all fear, anger, and grief. Despite the exuberance we can feel in this moment, we are still living in the illusion of separateness, and that causes pain. The question we address in this Musing is how to face dark times in a way that preserves the underlying state of joy, and ultimately contributes to the expansion of consciousness in ourselves and in our world.