When you live at the periphery of your being, your thoughts are often scattered, pulling you in different directions, and draining your energy. Too much mental activity leads to overload and, oftentimes, burnout.
When you take the time to ‘go within’ each day, by breathing deeply and fully, feeling the ‘space’ inside yourself, and witnessing your thoughts and emotions without judgment, you return to a very natural, deep sense of aliveness, which is actually your true nature; then your thoughts naturally slow down, and simultaneously gain more power and cohesiveness.
Photo: Nelson Ashberger
Think of the small, choppy waves that dance across the surface of the ocean; these represent your scattered thoughts.
Then visualize the huge waves that rise up from underneath, much like the giants the pro surfers ride. Note the difference in power.
~ Jaime Tanna
It [the struggle with evil] makes us strong, patient, helpful men and women. It lets us into the soul of things and teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.
My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good, that it may prevail.
“Tree Hugger” by Tobey A. Ring
~ Helen Keller
Become subtle enough To hear a tree breathe.
Succumb to warmth in the heart Where divine fire glows.
If we open our hearts, we will also find open hearts – it is always mutual.
~ Abbot Leo von Rudloff
… love is at the core of our being, and yet we search for it everywhere, so often causing our self pain in the process, losing our way, becoming entangled in our desires and all our images of love. Then, one day, something makes us turn away from the outer world to seek this truth within us…..
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done — then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago.
~ Frances Hodgson Burnett
That’s what causes all the pain on this earth, including the fact that the ecosystem is turned upside down. All of that comes from people not making friends with themselves and never being willing to communicate with the one they consider to be the troublemaker. That’s how we stay caught in this battleground, this war zone.
~ Pema Chödrön
We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we are so deeply interconnected with one another.
Though winter’s not always a season we welcome, it has valuable things to teach about cycles and life. Its revelations can be as subtle and indistinct as the image of this little squirrel through the glass, even though its outer manifestations can be startling and powerful.
In her Divining the Muse newsletter, writer Paula Chaffee Scardamalia suggests that “The Snow Queen” of winter offers us “an awareness of time and impermanence, of struggle and endurance, of ingenuity and insight.” We can benefit, she notes, by appreciating the invitation that winter sends us “to enter the stillness and silence of creative potential”.
Author Linda Leonard writes, “A major obstacle to creativity is wanting to be in the peak season of growth and generation at all times … but if we see the soul’s journey as cyclical, like the seasons … then we can accept the reality that periods of despair or fallowness are like winter – resting time that offers us a period of creative hibernation, purification, and regeneration that prepares us for the births of spring.”
Writer Penney Peirce has shared an interesting perspective on inner cycles in her book, The Intuitive Way, where she describes a three-part process in which we first become centered in our own being, which then enables us to be inspired by forces greater than ourselves toward taking action and doing, which eventually leads us to achieving or having.
Once that tri-part process reaches its final stage in the cycle, we notice a lessening or fading of our energy, which she calls the signal and reminder that it’s time to do what our very cells know they must do: return to that centering in our being again. That’s when it’s time to rest, recharge, and be restored again to a state of being that’s ready for the next cycle of doing. That’s when it’s time to rest, and receive.
Cells do not restore their own energy after they’ve expended themselves in their task. They are restored by something beyond themselves. Cells seem to know innately the wisdom of returning to their fullest being through the “re-sourcing” of what it is that truly sustains them.
Doesn’t it seem, outwardly and inwardly, that this is what winter is inviting us to? To discover that, as Rumi said, “The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.”
As The Munich Girl’s fifth publication anniversary rolls around this fall, life brings me many opportunities for reflection.
I’m reminded of words from author Norton Juster that I first encountered in grade school when I read The Phantom Tollbooth:
“So many things are possible just as long as you don’t know they’re impossible.
“Expect everything, I always say, and the unexpected never happens.”
My heart’s goal for the novel has always been that it serve as a tool for discussion about some of the vital issues facing us on humanity’s path. These certainly include human equality, and how we build what unites us rather than feed the things that divide us — and demean us.
My hope for this story has always been that it can raise the sort of questions that invite reaching deeper into ourselves for the vision that sees beyond the misperceptions that veil us from the living reality of oneness in which, and for which we’ve been created
When I heard from author Arlene Bice, who had read and reviewed The Munich Girl very thoughtfully, I was grateful to learn that she’d also decided to have a follow-up discussion about the novel with some book group friends. Then she was generous enough to share a blog post about it afterward so that I could “listen in.”
“We particularly discussed the many relationships in the book,” Arlene noted. “The intricacies of a friendship, even one that is only renewed every four years and holds secrets. … The discussion spread to our political situation today, with many comparisons made about what we, as Americans, are facing today.
“We talked about how the women of today have so much more power and the avenue to use it than in the ’30s and ’40s. Hopefully, more women will go into the political arena and truly change our country for the better.
“We spoke of how the brave women of today will no longer tolerate sexual coercion from powerful men and put shame on the shoulders of those who have taken advantage of their power.”
As I reviewed Arlene’s words, I realized that back in November of 2015 when this book published, I couldn’t have imagined all that would be current before us in these days, and the parallels readers would draw between that and themes in the book’s story. Certainly, it is set in a very tumultuous time for both Germany and the world, a time I’d venture to say we may not have explored quite deeply enough yet.
With the return of each day’s light comes an invitation to investigate, throughout the span of that day, rather than imitate the past.
Do I accept it, and apply myself to what it invites?
It arrives in a world of imperfection, one that can easily draw negative reactions from my lower nature, which must find its way in that world.
Autumn Landscape with Four Trees – Vincent van Gogh
Yet I’ve surely had opportunity to learn that dwelling on imperfections, berating myself or others for them, serves only to increase my perception of them.
It’s a circle of suffering I draw for myself. It saps my time, energy, and attention (those aspects of life over which I have choice) when I could instead offer them for something that is always calling, if softly, at times: the building of the good that I’m invited into each day.
Responding to that call, I discover how very much there is to become aware of and relinquish—how much preoccupation with negativity surrounds my life and can fill my thoughts and absorb my personal resources.
This, in many lives, is the debilitating presence of blind imitation of the past, including the kind of thinking that was born in earlier, fearful experiences and has led to attitudes, behaviors, assumptions, and beliefs that have no basis in reality—nor, indeed, anywhere near it.
My encounter with imperfection extends an invitation, too—one urging me to recognize and accept how much I don’t know, or can’t change, yet I can always discover the limitless possibilities of love in the most essential kind of response I’ve been designed and equipped to make. Rather than exercising my survival-driven instinctual reaction to fight imperfection, or try to escape it, I can turn toward an innate, indwelling response—the possibility of it—that is better-aligned with the purpose for which I’ve been created.
As it invites me into the freedom of not fighting any one or any thing (including myself), it also reminds that every human interaction (including with myself) is either an act of giving or an act of receiving. By asking questions that encompass both giving and receiving, my sensitivity to my own true needs and those of others is increased daily. Each part of this questioning is equally important, because giving depends on someone willing and capable of receiving from me, and receiving depends on someone willing and capable of giving to me.
The following two service questions were created as a way to help us focus on and clarify reality for ourselves in the course of the countless decisions we are called upon to make each day. Those junctures of possibility arrive moment by moment, and as I seek to draw away from blind imitation of the past toward the true investigation of my own and others’ deepest reality, I return to these questions again and again:
At this moment in time, what is the act of service I am capable of giving that the other person is capable of receiving?
At this moment in time, what is the act of service I am capable of receiving that the other person is capable of giving?
Adapted from With Thine Own Eyes: Why Imitate the Past When We Can Investigate Reality?
Twelve years ago, I made a bid on an eBay item that would change my life in ways I couldn’t have imagined at the time.
Something within me was strongly drawn to it, though I didn’t yet understand why. It was a portrait of Eva Braun drawn by an artist who never gained acclaim for his work — though his infamous name is branded on history forever. Eva Braun chose to die with him 75 years ago this spring.
That portrait is at the heart of everything that became a part of my novel’s story, set largely in the Germany of World War II.
The experience of writing The Munich Girl showed me that, rather than being something I “do”, writing is a process that acts upon me, strengthening my sense of connection with my own wholeness.
My responsibility, I feel, is to listen and watch, rather than impose ideas or plans of my own on what comes forth as a story.
Albert Einstein described the intuitive mind as “a sacred gift” and the rational mind as “a faithful servant.” We have, he said, “created a society that honors the servant, and has forgotten the gift.”
Creative process invites me to find a balance between — a marriage, even — of that intuitive mind, which encounters the unlimited and the unknown, and my rational mind, whose tendency toward structure is what ensures that a story will be cohesive and accessible.
People often hurl themselves at creative process “head first” with the rational mind, trying to force or control things. My experience is that in creative process, intuitive mind is waiting for me to meet it, so that it can help me know and understand in new and wider ways.
Gertrude Stein expressed this beautifully: “You will write if you will write without thinking of the result in terms of a result, but think of the writing in terms of discovery.” She gets straight to the heart of what allows writing process to be a revelatory power, and a bestower, rather than a distraction or plaything.
The difference, for me, is a willing surrender into seeking and unknowing, rather than a presumed knowledge of any kind.
I know I’m immersed in that when things begin to strike with notes my inner ear can hear, when my crown and scalp suddenly tingle. But first, I must surrender to a great blankness that can seem as though it will never yield, no matter how I push or try to break through it.
And that is because I’m the one who’s meant to do the yielding, so that intuitive mind can impart its secrets to me.
This was reinforced for me one afternoon while I swam with a friend, and recognized that in order to swim, I must meet the water on its terms. I must yield to and merge with the way it envelops and supports me.
On the pathway that the portrait of Eva Braun opened before me, every aspect of the story in The Munich Girl, every theme, revelation, and scene, came to meet me in a similar way when I was ready to receive it, after I had immersed myself in its atmosphere and waited, listening, watching. Trusting.
Believing that I “know” anything about a story before it has fully shown itself is the only “writer’s block” I’ve ever created for myself. When I yield to and receive what intuitive mind wants to offer in the creative process, I am met by what I’m able to receive and integrate on the deepest levels.
I’ve come to believe that the rational mind serves best when it’s not trying to lead, or force, but to follow, when we’re seeking to discover what we don’t yet know. When we are willing to do that, the revelations that arrive via our intuitive mind will often surprise and delight us, both because they feel so inevitable, and also because they are beyond anything that rational mind, whose scope is confined only to previous experience, could imagine or predict.
The magic in the process is that when we open up to meeting the greater possibilities of what we don’t yet know, we’ll be repeatedly astonished that what comes to meet us is disarmingly precise, unfathomably generous, and remarkably right.
Deep in each of our hearts, we already know oneness, because we are created in it.
Every atom of existence embodies and reflects this truth.
More than a century and a half ago, Baha’u’llah, in the gift of a revelation intended for each and every soul, wrote:
“The incomparable Friend saith:
‘The path to freedom hath been outstretched; hasten ye thereunto.
The wellspring of wisdom is overflowing; quaff ye therefrom.
Say: O well-beloved ones! The tabernacle of unity hath been raised; regard ye not one another as strangers.
Photo: N. Augusta Vincent
“Ye are the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch.
“Verily I say, whatsoever leadeth to the decline of ignorance and the increase of knowledge hath been, and will ever remain, approved in the sight of the Lord of creation.
“Say: O people! Walk ye neath the shadow of justice and truthfulness and seek ye shelter within the tabernacle of unity.”
~ Baha’u’llah, The Tabernacle of Unity
“Through the power of Baha’u’llah all will be united. He upraised this standard of the oneness of humanity in prison.
Artwork: Jeannie Hunt
“When subjected to banishment by two kings, while a refugee from enemies of all nations and during the days of His long imprisonment He wrote to the kings and rulers of the world in words of wonderful eloquence, arraigning them severely and summoning them to the divine standard of unity and justice. He exhorted them to peace and international agreement, making it incumbent upon them to establish a board of international arbitration — that from all nations and governments of the world there should be delegates selected for a congress of nations which should constitute a universal arbitral court of justice to settle international disputes. He wrote to Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, the Czar of Russia, the Emperor of Germany, Napoleon III of France and others, inviting them to world unity and peace. Through a heavenly power He was enabled to promulgate these ideals in the Orient. Kings could not withstand Him. They endeavored to extinguish His light but served only to increase its intensity and illumination.”
~ Abdu’l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace
The spiritual nature has a value system that places priceless relationships above any object or hoped-for outcome.
But the human nature, if left in charge, does not.
The sign that we’re in a situation that requires a shift from the eyes of our human nature to the vision of our spiritual one is when we find ourselves focusing on the imperfections of others to such an extent that we experience an increasing intensity of negative emotions that, in turn, causes deterioration in personal relationships.
The only escape from this vicious cycle is to change what we see, to elevate our perception, and to begin looking at others with the sin (imperfection)-covering eye of the spiritual nature.
The spiritual nature doesn’t dwell on perceived imperfections but instead seeks the missing spiritual attributes that the situation is calling for and creates an act of service designed to release those latent virtues, which exist within the heart of every soul.
When that happens, the destructive negative emotions and imperfections begin to dissipate. They are, after all, merely perceptions and `decisions’ of the mind or human nature, and the resulting emotion is the energy of those thoughts in motion.
Image: Cary Enoch Reinstein
However, in the survival-motivated blind imitation that is the human nature’s customary behavior, our mind and emotions can liken our current experience to one that has registered as negative in the past. In order to truly investigate the reality of the matter, we need the spiritual nature and its vision to come into the driver’s seat, to interrupt this reflexive imitating of what happened — or what we perceive to have happened — in the past.
If we are unwilling to do this, we will remain prisoners of that past, and of what, in essence, is actually an imagined past, the perspective of the mind alone.
A sign that we’re progressing away from imitation towards investigation is that negative emotions we’ve experienced are replaced by positive ones, and there is also a noticeable improvement in the way we feel, and within the tone of our relationship with others.
Excerpted from With Thine Own Eyes: Why Imitate the Past When We Can Investigate Reality?, from George Ronald Publisher:
“I must pray more and more for courage, as I certainly have neither the courage or strength to follow the path that is certainly my duty now.
With the fears and rages, that possess many confused people, if I say things that seem to threaten their interests or conflict with obsessions, then I will surely get it.
I need patience to listen, to learn, to try to understand, and courage to take all the consequences and be really faithful.
This alone is a full-time job.
I dread it, but it must be done, and I don’t quite know how.
To save my soul, by trying to be one of those who spoke and worked for peace, not for madness and destruction.”
~ Thomas Merton, November 12, 1961
Image courtesy Judy Wright
“Man has two aspects: the physical, which is subject to nature, and the merciful or divine, which is connected with God. If the physical or natural disposition in him should overcome the heavenly and merciful, he is, then, the most degraded of animal beings; and if the divine and spiritual should triumph over the human and natural, he is, verily, an angel.
The Prophets come into the world to guide and educate humanity so that the animal nature of man may disappear and the divinity of his powers become awakened. The divine aspect or spiritual nature consists of the breaths of the Holy Spirit.
The second birth of which Jesus has spoken refers to the appearance of this heavenly nature in man. It is expressed in the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and he who is baptized by the Holy Spirit is a veritable manifestation of divine mercy to mankind. Then he becomes just and kind to all humanity; he entertains prejudice and ill will toward none; he shuns no nation or people.”
~ ʻAbdu’l-Bahá, Talk in Washington, D.C., April 21, 1912
“The foundations of the divine religions are one. If we investigate these foundations, we discover much ground for agreement, but if we consider the imitations of forms and ancestral beliefs, we find points of disagreement and division; for these imitations differ, while the sources and foundations are one and the same. That is to say, the fundamentals are conducive to unity, but imitations are the cause of disunion and dismemberment.
Whosoever is lacking in love for humanity or manifests hatred and bigotry toward any part of it violates the foundation and source of his own belief and is holding to forms and imitations.
Jesus Christ declares that the sun rises upon the evil and the good, and the rain descends upon the just and the unjust—upon all humanity alike. Christ was a divine mercy which shone upon all mankind, the medium for the descent of the bounty of God, and the bounty of God is transcendent, unrestricted, universal.” ~ ʻAbdu’l-Bahá, Ibid.
The ways in which each of us chooses to show love, receive forgiveness, and express other attributes is our own spiritual fingerprint.
And just like our physical fingerprint, it is unique to us.
Nobody in the past, present, or future will love exactly the same way that each of us does.
Each time that we give or receive — especially in sequestered times like these — an attribute of God, a facet of the infinite jewel, is revealed.
In this way, we make an invaluable contribution because we have added to what can be perceived of divinity.
And because we are all capable of making such a contribution, this means that each individual is absolutely indispensable.
When we give or receive acts of service, we become engaged in the process of investigating our own reality and gradually, more is revealed about who we really are. And about the great mysteries of truth.
In this process, we gradually disperse the dust and veils of an illusory identity that has been formed by living in a culture that is immersed in blind imitation of the past.
That illusory identity of our human nature takes form, and is reinforced, through the ways in which we allow cultural conditioning, worldly attachment, and fear to determine what we see, feel, believe, and choose.
Curiously, the higher, truer perception from which, and for which, we are created is unfailingly and limitlessly generous and kind. If we choose it. And it appears that the “clock” and schedule for doing this, while we live on this earthly plane, is a daily one, often appearing hour-to-hour, moment-to-moment.
If anything seems called-for in a time like this one, it is N-E-W (non-ego-willed) awareness that can open the way to possibilities and solutions we haven’t yet been able to envision. That awareness will also bring the humbling grace of helping us to perceive and come to understand what has never been true, but has succeeded in keeping us from our highest reality.
Once those veils are lifted, we encounter and discover our true and unique individual identity.
The process can begin in any moment, with a genuine act of service that is always motivated by the attributes of God that are latent within each of our hearts.
It is our free-will decision that brings forth these “gems of inestimable value”. And these gems will light our way, in this season of change, growth, and renewal.
Portions excerpted from With Thine Own Eyes: Why Imitate the Past When We Can Investigate Reality?
Leaf of the Tree 
