Foundational Incarnational Exercises David Spangler

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Foundational Incarnational Exercises

David Spangler Foundational Incarnational Exercises

Edited by Jeremy Berg

Cover Art by Deva Berg

Published by Lorian Press 2204 E Grand Ave. Everett, WA 98201

Spangler/David Foundational Incarnational Exercises/David Spangler

Private Edition

Printed in the United States of America

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 www.lorian.org Contents

IS-1THE STANDING EXERCISE...... 5 IS-2 SELF-LIGHT ...... 6 IS-3 ZONES OF IDENTITY ...... 8 IS-4 WHERE STARS MEET ...... 10 IS-5 THE SWEET SPOT...... 10 IS-5 SPACE AND SPACIOUSNESS ...... 12 IS-6 BODYLIGHT ...... 15 IS-7 INCARNATIONAL LIGHT...... 16 IS-8 SOUL LIGHT ...... 16 IS-9 SELF-LIGHT (Version Two) ...... 17 IS-10 GENERATIVITY...... 18 IS-11 HOLDING (The LAP Exercise) ...... 19 IS-12 SELF-LAP ...... 20 IS-13 GRAIL SPACE EXERCISE ...... 21 IS-14 EMERGENCE ...... 24 IS-15 LEVELS OF GOD ...... 26 IS-16 THE FOUR FOLD BLESSING ...... 28 Foundational Spiritual Exercises

INTRODUCTION

In our Lorian classes and programs, much of our practical work revolves around doing exercises. Some of these exercises are simple mini- rituals; others are more reflective or contemplative. Some are intended to stimulate a particular kind of energy field around or within you, or connect you energetically with the world in a specific way. All are concerned with creating a state of mind, a felt sense, within you. In all cases of establishing connection with energies and forces emerging from states of mind or domains of life beyond the ordinary, five- sensory world we live in, some process of beginning and ending, opening and closing, and of respecting the natural boundaries between the differing worlds of consciousness is important. Equally important is the ability to stand in and hold one’s own identity, power, integrity, sovereignty, and wholeness.

IMPORTANT POINT #1

The exercises you will be given in any of our classes are just suggestions. They are not cast in concrete. If you understand the purpose of the exercise, then you can feel free to redesign it and adapt it to your particular style and needs. Indeed, I encourage you to do so, so that you can make the exercise your own. An exercise is a living thing, filled with spirit, and it should blend with you in a way that honors and fosters your own spirit. In doing the exercise, it should emerge from you as much as from me and transform itself in any way that is needful in order for that to happen. It may contain elements that you may not wish to do or that seem too elaborate or just not your “style.” All I ask is that you understand and honor the purpose behind the exercise, the spirit it is intended to embody. Then feel free to change it or adapt it as you need. To paraphrase Jesus, you were not made for the exercises. The exercises are made to serve you. So try each exercise once as presented, but please feel free after that to modify the form of the exercise to configure it to your unique needs and style but in so doing be sure to retain the integrity of the basic objective and intent. 1 IMPORTANT POINT #2

If at any time in doing an exercise, you feel discomfort of any kind, tiredness, restlessness, or a sense that something is amiss, then stop doing it. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve come into contact with something dangerous or harmful, only that for some reason which may or may not be evident, your energy in the moment is not or is no longer compatible with what you’re doing. Change your attention completely. Do something physical to shift and change your energy. Do something fun that makes you laugh, which is also an excellent way to change your energy. If in doing an exercise, you get an inner “No!” then please stop doing it. If you are in one of our classes, please let the teacher know. It may be a matter of timing, it may be that you are tired, or it may be that this exercise is not for you. As I said above, make the exercise your own. If need be, adjust it so you feel comfortable with it, or find a substitute. Remember, if this happens, it may only be a matter of timing or that you are tired. Unless you have a strong inner sense not to do so, I would recommend trying the exercise one more time later. If the sense of disturbance or uneasiness continues, then definitely this exercise is not for you. Either change it or find some equivalent or simply skip it entirely. In doing inner work of this nature, the rule “No Pain, No Gain” most definitely does NOT apply!

BEGINNINGS

There are many ways an exercise can begin, and the exercise itself may give specific guidelines. However, there are also some generic steps that you can and should take.

• Make sure you have a suitable environment at a suitable time. When working with subtle energies or inner forces of spirit, you need to be able to pay attention and observe or listen without the distraction of your environment getting in the way and without feeling harried or rushed. • Take some time to quiet yourself. Same idea as above but in this case applied to your inner psychological environment. If your thoughts and feelings are harried or busy and divert your focus, your attention and energy will be scattered and unable to enter the exercise gracefully and

2 cleanly. • Be clear on your intent. Know what you’re doing and why. Rehearse the procedure a bit in your mind so you’re clear on what you need to do and what the objective is. You are going to give yourself to the exercise, so to speak, and see what unfolds, but you want to start from a place of clarity and understanding. In this way if the process of the exercise as you do it begins to move in unexpected directions, you can have a better idea of whether to go with it or to bring the process back to your intent and keep it on track. • Connect to what gives you a sense of security, groundedness, familiarity, and peace, a sense of being loved and supported. Any spiritual exercise can take you into the unexpected. It may bring experiences or energies that are wonderful and benevolent but unfamiliar nonetheless; or it may present you with more inspiration, stimulation or energy than you were expecting, all of which you will need to integrate when you’re done. You want to feel comfortable with this possibility, and that means feeling confident and safe as you proceed. • Do an energy check. This means making sure you feel good as you undertake the exercise. It’s much better if you feel rested and energize instead of tired; low physical, mental or emotional energy can affect the exercise and your ability to do it. After all, it’s a form of inner work and demands energy as much as any other kind of work

ENDINGS

There are many ways an exercise can end, and the exercise itself may give specific guidelines. However, there are also some generic steps that you can and should take. • Take a moment to collect yourself and for quiet reflection on whatever you have experienced. Don’t try to rush back into your everyday life and affairs. Give yourself a time of transition from the contemplative activity to whatever else you need to do in your day. After you’ve had a moment or so of quiet, then you may wish to record whatever you experienced in a journal or notebook. • Ask and inwardly fully intend that any and all doors to the subtle inner worlds opened during the exercise be appropriately closed or integrated into the wholeness of your everyday physical life. • Reconnect yourself to your everyday life, to your body, to your

3 surroundings. Affirm, honor, and give love to each of them. • Offer gratitude to any spiritual allies whom you may have invoked or encountered, or to any source you feel was helpful and enabling in the experience of the exercise, including your immediate environment. After all, it held you in its energies while you engaged with the subtle worlds. • Do an energy check. Are you all “back”? Does everything feel ok? Does anything feel off or strange? If so, attune to your inner source of benevolence and sovereignty, holding yourself inwardly in the presence of sacredness and the wholeness of your identity. Feel yourself fully entering the integrity and coherency of your unique life, grounded into the earth. Do something very normal and familiar and if possible, something that you enjoy and that brings you pleasure at being alive, in a physical body, and part of the earth.

4 BASIC EXERCISES OF INCARNATIONAL SPIRITUALITY

IS-1THE STANDING EXERCISE

This is a core exercise in the practice of Incarnational Spirituality. It’s an exercise of attuning to one’s own uniqueness, one’s own sovereignty. This exercise has physical, mental, emotional, energetic (or “magical”) and spiritual aspects to it. These aspects are designed to be done all at once, but I’ll present them as separate categories.

Physical: The physical action of this exercise is simple. From a sitting position, you simply stand up. Be aware of the physical sensation and felt sense of standing. Feel the work of your body, the power of balance that keeps you upright. If you are already standing, become aware that you are standing and be mindful of the felt sense of standing. If you are physically unable to stand, you can still assume an inner attitude of standing, perhaps simply by straightening your spine as much as possible.

Emotional: Feel the power of being upright. Feel the strength of rising up against the gravity of the earth. Feel how standing singles you out and expresses your individuality. You stand for what you believe you stand up to be counted. Standing proclaims that you are here. Feel the strength and presence of your identity and sovereignty.

Mental: Celebrate your humanness. You are an upright being. You emerge from the mass of nature, from the vegetative and animal states into a realm of thinking and imagining. In standing, you hands are released from providing locomotion. Feel the freedom of your hands that don’t have to support you but can now be used to create, manipulate, touch, and express your thoughts and imagination.

Magical: When you stand, your spine becomes a magical staff, the axis mundi

5 (center) of your personal world, generating the field that embraces you. The spine is the traditional wizard’s staff along which dragon power flows and the centers of energy sing in resonance with the cosmos.

Spiritual: Standing, you are the incarnate link between heaven and earth. Your energy rises into the sky and descends into the earth. Light descends and ascends, swirling along your spine in a marriage of matter and spirit. This energy is both personal and transpersonal, giving birth to something new, something human, individual and unique. In doing this exercise of Standing, you physically stand if you are able. If you are not able to do so, then be as upright as you can be in your physical situation and “stand” mentally and emotionally. As you do so, work through these levels of sensation, feeling, thought, energy, and spirit, appreciating the power, the freedom, the sovereignty, and the presence emerging from the simple act of standing.

Here are three basic Self-Light exercises.

IS-2 Exercise: SELF LIGHT

There is a spiritual presence and radiance that is generated by the act of being a unique self, an individuation of sacredness. It is a Light that is born from the love and will behind your intent to manifest as an individual upon the earth, an intent that whatever its other specific characteristics may be reflects and expresses the primal will-to-be of the Generative Mystery. I call this your “Self-Light.” Discovering and coming to know your Self-Light—your own unique embodiment and radiance of spirit—is a life-long process, one that can bring great joy, wholeness, and peace. There are many ways this can be done. Here is one simple exercise: Let your attention and consciousness move into what you experience as the center of your body. This might be your heart, it might be some other area. Feel yourself surrounded by the millions and millions of cells whose individual lives make up your life. Feel the power and wonder of those lives all blending and connecting to support your own. You are immersed in a community of life. Feel the force and light of a presence that pervades this community,

6 drawing it into unity, giving it one identity. This presence is you. It is the presence of your Self. It makes you one being, one identity. Its light fills all your cells and all the activities that unite them. Let your attention and consciousness move more deeply into this presence, moving into a sphere of Light that radiates the energy which forms into your physical body. Just rest in this Light of your unique body and the Self that forms it. What does it feel like? When you are ready, let your attention move more deeply into this Light, as if you are moving towards the source of this Self-Light. As you do so, you become aware of a deeper Light and presence that holds and empowers your Self-Light. This in the Light and radiance of the Will-to- Be emanating from the presence of Sacred, the Generative Mystery, a Light that fosters all incarnation. Through this Light of incarnation you are part of the community of the cosmos, the community of all incarnation, part of all that is. It is the root of who you are, but it does not consume you. It supports the principles of identity, boundaries, engagement, relationship, and emergence that allow you to be your unique self. You are an emergent form of this greater incarnational Light, bringing into the universe the creative potential of your unique self and the discoveries and learning it can experience. Expressed through your individuality, this universal Light becomes your Self-Light. When you are ready, let your awareness and attention move back from this deep Light into the radiance of your Self-Light. Feel the wonder and magic of being who you are, manifesting a unique and powerful will- to-be. Feel your lineage with the Light that runs through all creation and the way you individuate it. Let your Self-Light flow into your boundaries, supporting their integrity and power and nourishing the space they create that holds and protects your unique identity. Let your awareness return to your body. Feel your Self-Light permeating and uniting the presence of all your cells. Feel the wonder of your physical incarnation, of your mind and heart, your ability to think, feel, and to make choices. Feel the wonder of your spirit. Let yourself be surrounded by this Self-Light forming around you your personal aura of grace and blessing.

Standing in this Self-Light, go forth to meet your day.

7 IS-3 Exercise: ZONES OF IDENTITY

This is an exercise of alignment. In it you move through different states of mind, awareness, imagination, and attunement. I’m calling those states “zones.” These zones are abstractions of inner states; they are conveniences to use to think about the states involved. They have no reality on their own as such. In the exercise, you move from Zone 1 to Zone 5 and then back again. In this process, you are going from a very specific and particular state, represented by Zone 1, to an expanded, transcendent, universal state represented by Zone 5. Then you reverse the process, bringing back into each more specific state the qualities you found in the more expanded zones, aligning the zones together into an ecology of wholeness. Through this process, Zone 1 may be—and should be—different for you when you end than when you began.

Zone 1: Present Moment Attune to your present moment. Pay attention to whatever you’re feeling and thinking right now, to the sensations in your body, to where you are, to whom you’re with, to what is happening around you. What is your identity right now? What is your sense of self in this moment? What are you experiencing?

Zone 2: Body Attune to your body. Think of the millions and millions of cells that are part of you, each a tiny life embodying its own sacredness, each serving your wholeness. Think of your body as a whole entity, giving your awareness a place of focus and locality, allowing you to engage with the world. Think of your body as an expression of your presence, your sovereignty, your uniqueness, the physical manifestation of your soul’s love for the world. Feel its physicality, its texture, its size, its suppleness, its movement, its stillness. What is your sense of self in your body? What is your body-identity?

Zone 3: History Attune to your life history, your body’s history, your autobiography. Think of yourself extending through time from the moment of conception until now. Although “you” have taken many forms throughout that time span from infant to the person you now are, there has still been a consistent

8 sense of identity linking all your days and months and years together. During this time you have experienced many things that have become part of you, some very positive, perhaps some negative and wounding, most just neutral. Attune to yourself as a being of time; What is your time- identity? Who are you in your autobiography? Who is the you that extends across the span of your life? This you is more than your body, more than the present moment.

Zone 4: Soul Think of your history extend back before your birth into a place beyond time as we know it. Think of the line of your life extending forward after the death of your body into a place beyond time as we know it. This is the place of your soul. Imagine your physical self and identity as part of something larger and more complex, a field of light and presence that holds you in existence and in love even as it transcends the present moment, your body, and your history. Imagine yourself as soul. What is this identity like for you? What do you experience?

Zone 5: Sacred Now imagine a universal Light and presence, a love and benevolence that holds your soul in existence even as your soul holds your personality and body in existence. Attune to the roots of your being that are in the ground of all being. Attune to a source of spaciousness, wonder, upliftment, empowerment, love, and blessing that holds all creation in itself. Who are you in this presence? How does it fill you? How does it become one with you and you with it?

Return From this place of universal Light, embrace your Soul, the spacious, loving, transcendent part of yourself. From the Soul, embrace your Self, the personality that extends through time and holds your autobiography; From this Self, embrace your Body, the physical part of you that locates you in this specific time and place and gives you the means to engage the physical world. From your Body, embrace this particular moment and place in which you are right now. Experience the unbroken line of Being that extends throughout these five, from one “Zone” to another. You are the safety, the security, the sovereignty, the presence of that unbroken line. What does that feel like? Who are you as this line of connection and

9 alignment? Who are you now in this present moment? How does this present moment change in response to this sense of extended identity? From this identity, bless this moment, bless yourself, bless your body, bless your history, bless your soul, bless the sacred, and feel their blessings pour back to you. Stand in your sovereignty and your own Self-Light.

IS-4 Exercise: WHERE STARS MEET

Imagine a spiritual star at the center of the earth. It’s a green star radiant with the power of planetary life. Imagine the light from this star rising up through the earth, surrounding you, bathing and nurturing the cells of your body and forming a chalice around you.

Imagine a spiritual star within the sun in the sky. It’s a golden star radiant with the power of cosmic life. Imagine the light from this star descending from the heavens and pouring into the chalice of earthlight that surrounds you and fills your cells. Where the green and golden lights of these two stars meet in you, a new star emerges, a radiant star of Self-Light, born of the blending of the individual and the universal, the planetary and the cosmic, the physical and the spiritual. This Self-Light surrounds you and fills you, radiating back down deep into the earth and out into space, connecting with the star below you and the star above you. You are a Chalice of Self-Light within a pillar of spiritual energy rising from the earth and descending from the cosmos.

Take a moment to feel the star of this Self-Light within and around you. It is your connection to the earth, your connection to the cosmos, your connection to your own unique and radiant Self. Take a deep breath, drawing this Light into and throughout your body; breathe out, sending this Light out into your world. Filled with this Light of Self, attuned to heaven and earth, go about your day as a star of blessing.

IS-5 Exercise: THE SWEET SPOT

The Sweet Spot of your life is where you can stand in yourself and feel a sense of appreciation, joy, honoring, power, even excitement and enthusiasm at being who you are.

10 One thing to keep in mind, though, is that this Sweet Spot is not simply an activity that brings you happiness or pleasure. It’s not, for instance, going bowling, though that might be part of it. Nor is it any one thing you do or have in particular, though that thing may contribute to it. Instead the Sweet Spot is a state of mind, an inner condition in which, for a variety of reasons, you feel positive energy about your self and from yourself. It is, as I said, where you feel joy in being you. How you find this Sweet Spot is largely up to you because it’s unique to each person. However, here is one suggested way you might approach it.

STEP ONE: Begin with the Standing Exercise. Gain a sense of the power inherent simply in being in general and specifically in being your self. STEP TWO: Call to mind up to three activities or skills that you do well and enjoy. Remember what you feel like when you are doing them. STEP THREE: Call to mind up to three accomplishments of which you are proud. It doesn’t matter how “great” or dramatic they are; the only qualification is if the accomplishment made you feel proud of being you. Remember the felt sense of this inner pride. STEP FOUR: Call to mind up to three relationships that bring you joy. Remember the felt sense of this joy you feel when with the people involved. STEP FIVE: Call to mind up to three things you own that bring you delight. Remember the felt sense of the joy they bring you and the joy you have in having them as part of your life. STEP SIX: Call to mind anything about your job or work that brings you pleasure and joy. Remember the felt sense of that pleasure. STEP SEVEN: Call to mind anything about where you live or the land around you that brings you pleasure and joy. Remember the felt sense of that joy. STEP EIGHT: Call to mind any spiritual experiences you’ve had that give you a sense of joy and love about yourself and a sense of joy and wonder in being alive and being part of this universe. STEP NINE: Call to mind anything else you wish that makes you feel good about yourself and your life. Let this good feeling fill you from head to toe. STEP TEN: Gather all these good feelings, thoughts, and sensations and bask in them. Let them coalesce into a single felt sense of joy in being

11 who you are. Let them form your Sweet Spot. STEP ELEVEN: Take this Sweet Spot and locate it if you can in your body. Where does your Sweet Spot reside in you? What is the felt sense of it there? Remember this so that you can return to it. STEP TWELVE: Your Sweet Spot exists in your personality. It is an incarnational phenomenon. However, as icing on the cake, you can align it and fill it with your Self-Light. Attune to your Self-Light, the spiritual energy you innate generate by being alive and by being a person; let this Self-Light surround, fill, and enhance your Sweet Spot, making it all that sweeter. What is this like? Remember the felt sense of this.

IS-5 Exercise: SPACE AND SPACIOUSNESS

This exercise is an exploration of space and spaciousness. You will need a floor to move around on and some small pieces of paper to write on; 3X5 cards are ideal. This exercise has two options.

OPTION ONE (The simple form)

Sit on the floor. Take eight to twelve small pieces of paper or 3X5 cards and place them all around you in a circle, making sure you have room to sit comfortably in the space and to stand up within it as well. Take a moment just to be aware of the space you’re in, the space defined by the cards or paper around you. Feel the energy of this space. Now be aware of the space around you outside the circle. Stand up. Take a moment again to be aware of the particular space you are inhabiting, the space delineated by the boundary of the cards or paper, and how it feels different from the space around you outside that boundary. Step over the boundary into the larger space. What does that feel like? What does it feel like being in the larger space? How is it different from being in the space within the boundary? Walk around a bit in the larger space, experiencing its freedom and expansiveness. Then go back and stand beside (but do not enter yet) the circle you created with the boundary of cards or paper. What does it feel like to look at that space from the outside now? Step back into the smaller space. What does it feel like now?

12 Notice that whether you are in the small space within the boundary or in the larger space outside the boundary, it is still Space. The quality of Space—the capacity to hold—is the same in either place. Both the small space and the larger space are contained in the Space of the room you’re in. The small space is both defined and is a particular area AND it also contains the quality of Space itself, a quality of spaciousness. The space within your circle resonates with and shares the quality of the larger space outside the circle, and both are part of the space of the room itself. Pay attention to the particular quality of the small space and what it feels like to be held by it. Then close your eyes and imagine yourself being held by the larger space, by the whole space of the room Open your eyes and see yourself in your small space; then shift your perspective and see or feel yourself in the larger space of the room. Can you hold both these perspectives simultaneously, that you are in the spaciousness of the room yet also in the smaller space within your boundary? If so, what does that feel like? Perhaps you can feel that your bounded space is contained and small but it is also spacious (partaking of the larger space) at the same time. If you want, you can play with this in other ways by removing part of the boundary—take away some of the cards or papers—so that you are in a half circle. You are still in a particular space, partly defined by the half-circle but it is open to the larger space of the room. What does this feel like? In this exercise you’re exploring both the power of boundary to create and define a space and the interesting dual nature of space itself. When inside a boundary, a space takes on a particular character and can hold a specific activity that is protected and defined by that boundary. Yet the space itself is one with all space; it shares the quality of space itself, whether it’s a large space or a small space. Space has the quality of being spacious, of opening out into the spirit of space itself, so to speak. That is what I’d like you to experience. In the circle, you have the simultaneous presence of particularity and universality.

OPTION TWO (the more complex form)

In this variant of the exercise you just did, take your pieces of paper or 3X5 cards and on each one, write a word or sentence or draw an image

13 (or you can cut out and paste images from magazines if you want to be very creative with this) that represents some part of you and your life. Include some autobiographical elements, some accomplishments, some values or thoughts that are meaningful to you and that guide you in your life; you want both physical life elements and psychological and spiritual elements, may two or three of each. What you want is a small set of cards that represents you and your life, your incarnation so that when you look at them and see them or read them, you have a concrete sense of your life. So, for instance, if I made a deck of eight cards, let’s say, they might look something like this:

1. Ohio (where I was born) 2. Morocco (where I grew up) 3. Only child (my family situation growing up) 4. Spiritual Teacher (my profession) 5. Julie (my wife) and Johnny, Aidan, Kaitlin, Maryn (my kids) 6. Issaquah (where I live now) 7. Incarnational Spirituality (what I teach) 8. Love (what I seek to embody) These are just examples, and I could pick 8 different ones. But these represents elements from my past, my present, my work, my thinking, and my values. They are all specific and unique to me in this combination. No one else on earth has this exact same combination of elements. So when I lay these cards around me, they instantly and graphically represent me and my incarnation. When you have your cards made, then repeat the Option One exercise using them. But this time when you’re in your circle surrounded by these elements of yourself, think of this not as an abstract space on the floor but as the space of your life, your incarnational space and field. What does that feel like? When you step into and out of it, what does that evoke for you? What do you experience? What does it tell you about the space and spaciousness of your life?

14 IS-6 Exercise: BODYLIGHT

Introduction

One of the characteristics of physical life is that we have bodies that are essentially communities (or hives). The number of cells in our bodies is estimated at around 50 trillion (some scientists say it’s twice that number)! That is more stars than we see in the sky at night. Imagine all those lives within you and each of them is an incarnation in its own right. Each of them has at its core a radiance of life and light, a touch of sacredness. Each is a portal for the Generative Mystery. That is the basis for this exercise, that physically we dwell in the midst of a community of light.

Exercise

Step One: Let your attention and consciousness focus on a cell in your body. It doesn’t matter where it is or what kind of cell it is. It’s only a starting point. Just imagine yourself in touch with a single cell. Step Two: Feel the life of this cell. Feel into its intelligence, its life, its connection to thesacred. Feel into the light, the radiance within it. Just take a moment to sit with this cell, communing with the Light within it. Step Three: Now broaden your awareness to other cells in touch with the one upon which you’ve been focusing. Let your awareness follow the threads of connections between the single cell and other cells in your body, and where your awareness goes, the Light within these cells goes as well and is heightened. Step Four: Let your awareness broaden still further, moving more widely through your body, being aware of the Light emerging from the life of your cells. As your attention moves, so does the Light move and spread and brighten.

Step Five. Let your awareness fill your whole body and rest in the Light emerging from all your cells and their connections within your body. Appreciate the living energy of your body, the Light carried in the cells, the sacredness they each embody. Just sit in the midst of the Light, your physical body of Light.

15 IS-7 Exercise: INCARNATIONAL LIGHT

This exercise builds on the previous one.

Introduction

Incarnation may be thought of as the creation of a space (the image of the chalice) that can hold the specific characteristics and energies of a particular realm (in our case, the physical). This space is itself a specific domain—our personal self—and is shaped by particularizing forces drawn by the will of the soul. The action of these forces generates its own radiance, which I call the “incarnational Light.” This exercise is about attuning to this Light as it manifests in and around our bodies.

Exercise

Step One: Attune to your bodylight as per the previous exercise. Step Two: Feel the energy and light of a presence that pervades and shapes this community, drawing it into unity, giving it one identity. This presence makes you one being, one identity. It is the light of your incarnational will. Its light fills all your cells and all the activities that unite them. The light of your cells, your bodylight, is the substance, the resource it uses to create a single radiance, a unique body of light, the light of your personhood. Step Three: Let your attention and consciousness move more deeply into this presence, like moving into a sphere of Light within and around your body. Just rest in this Light of your incarnational will. What does it feel like?

IS-8 Exercise: SOUL LIGHT

Introduction

Each of us is really a convergence or an ecology or several sources of radiance, several lights or fields of energy. One of these is the light of our physical bodies the light emerging from our cells. One is the energy, the light, generated by the will that shapes our

16 incarnation. One is the light that emerges as we engage with the world, the light that emanates from within the chalice as we hold the world within ourselves and are in turn held within it. It is our self Light, but specifically the Light of the self that emerges from the incarnational relationship, connection, and engagement with the world. Behind these three is the Light that comes from our deepest self, our sacredness, our soul and spirit. This is also our self Light, the Light of our “I”, the Light of the Generative Mystery within us. For our purposes, I’ll call it our “soul Light.” In this exercise, we attune to this soul Light.

Exercise

Step One: Attune to your bodylight. Step Two: Attune to your incarnational Light. Step Three: When you are ready, let your attention move more deeply into this incarnational Light, moving towards its source. As you do so, become aware of a deeper Light that holds and empowers your energy of incarnation. This is your soul Light, and it emanates from your rootedness in the Generative Mystery. What is this like?

IS-9 Exercise: SELF-LIGHT (Version Two)

Step One: Attune to your bodylight. Step Two: Attune to your incarnational Light. Step Three: Attune to your soul Light. Step Four: Let your awareness move to where these three Lights come together in a unique blending and engagement with the world. This is a place where their radiance supports and augments each other, a place where a new Light emerges. This new light is the Light of your incarnational self, your unique self-light that radiates from you throughout your incarnational life. What is this Light like? What is the felt sense of it within you and around you?

NOTE: These four previous exercises ask you to discern between subtle energies. If it’s a help, think of them this way.

17 Bodylight: the light of your specific physical self. Soul Light: the light of your universal self. Incarnational Light: the light that links and blends the first two together. Self Light: the light that emerges from this blending.

IS-10 Exercise: GENERATIVITY

There are many ways we can experience ourselves as a generative source. Here is a simple one.

Step One: Enter into a felt sense of your own self Light. Step Two: Imagine this Light, radiating throughout your body, focusing into a single radiant source, like a star, within you. You can center this wherever you like in your body. Step Three: Imagine yourself entering in to this Star within you and feeling its power, its Light, its energy. Just take a moment to be in this inner Star within your body.

Step Four: Now imagine this Star expanding and radiating, sending out a clear, pure Light into your immediate surrounding. See this Light touching and engaging your walls, your floor, your ceiling, the things in your room, whatever is around you. What is the felt sense of this? Do you sense any reaction or response from your environment as you do this? This Light from you does not impose. It simply is, like sunlight from the sun. The world can bathe in it, absorb it, be empowered by it, or it can ignore it. Radiance does not insist on any results or outcomes, it simply shines. Within the world around you, similar stars burn within all the people, animals, plants, even the minerals and stones. All existence has this radiance within it, the radiance of an Incarnational Light. You live not only in a galaxy of physical stars in space but in a galaxy of stars of life and light in the world around you. Step Five: As you radiate, feel your radiance meeting and engaging a radiance within the things around you in your immediate environment. Your Light radiates to support their Light and vice versa. Step Six. If you wish, imagine your star-like radiance encompassing

18 your loved ones, your family, your friends, your neighborhood, your town, your city, your nation, the world. See it encompassing your enemies, strangers, those who are different, those who may make you afraid, those who are in lands far from your own. Place no boundaries on your radiance. Just let it shine into the galaxy of incarnation.

When you feel complete, tired, or restless, let your awareness return to the star within your body, carrying with it whatever blessings you may have felt or received in communion with the light of creation. Then let this star relax and melt, its radiance filling all your body, all your cells, merging and blessing with the light of your body, the light of your incarnation, the light of your soul, the light of your self.

Light-filled, go forth to meet your day.

IS-11 Exercise: HOLDING (The LAP Exercise)

Like the first exercise on Standing, this is also a physical exercise. But this time it involves an equally familiar and simple procedure: sitting down and forming a lap. A lap is a physical form of holding. It is the form of a cup, a bowl, a cauldron, or a grail. Imagine kids climbing into a lap: it is a place of love, comfort, healing, and transformation. In this exercise, simply sit down and form a lap. Go through the following elements as you do so, exploring the felt sense of each. Inherent in the lap is your power of holding which is at the heart of blessing. Also, be aware that when you create a lap, you are also manifesting boundaries, which are the extent of your lap. Your physical lap is not infinite, though your love may be!

Physical The physical action of this exercise is simplicity itself and the opposite of the Standing exercise. From a standing position, you simply sit down, allowing your legs to form a lap. Be aware of the physical sensation and felt sense of being a lap. Feel the relaxation of sitting but at the same time the power and receptivity of forming a lap. Explore the felt sense of the space that is created in front of you, around you, and within you when you sit and form a lap.

19 Emotional Feel the power of being a space of holding. In your sovereignty, you are forming a space of comfort, a space of healing, a space of encouragement and upliftment. In this space, negativity can be received and transformed as you hold a presence of peace, of love, and of strength.

Mental Your mind is also a lap. It is a cup that holds your thoughts. As you sit, let your mind go beyond the contents of any thoughts you may be holding. Let it simply appreciate the space within it. Let your mind fill with that space. If thoughts come within it, simply welcome them and let them sit in your mind-lap for a time, then move on. Remember, you are holding them, they are not holding you. You create and own the space they occupy. Sit in that space, be at peace, and feel the power of your mind to be a lap.

Magical The cup is the oldest of magical images. It is the grail of the sacred, the cauldron of magic and wisdom, and the cooking pot that creates nourishment, the womb of life, the space that holds the cosmos. Your lap is this space, this grail, this cauldron, this womb, and this cup. When you sit and a lap is formed, you are in resonance with the place where transformation can take place and new life is born.

Spiritual Sitting, your lap is the presence of the sacred. It is a place of love, a place to receive and comfort pain and suffering, a place of healing. In the space of your lap you are in resonance with the primal space that holds all things and allows them to be. God is a lap!

In doing this exercise, you sit and as you do so, work through these levels of sensation, feeling, thought, energy, and spirit, appreciating the power, the freedom, the sovereignty, and the presence emerging from the simple act of forming a lap.

IS-12 Exercise: SELF-LAP

This exercise is a variant expression of the Lap exercise, focused on

20 your self.

Step One: Repeat the Lap Exercise, creating a lap both physically and inwardly as a state of mind and being. Let yourself enter a condition of holding. Step Two: Place your self in your “lap.” Hold yourself. Gather all the parts of you that you can think of, including those parts that you may not like so much or feel cause you problems. You are not doing anything to these parts or selves; you are just holding. In so doing, gain a felt sense of the will that holds you together, so to speak. There is in each of us that which is willing to be incarnate, willing to have parts, willing to have a personality, willing to have a body, willing to create a space and allow and hold all that makes us up. How do you experience that? What is the felt sense of it to you? Just let yourself be held and honored by yourself, by the will that holds, by your own inner lap. When you feel this is complete, just stand up and let your lap dissolve. But remember that you continue to hold yourself. As you go through your day, encountering things in your environment that would snag and pull you apart or things in yourself that would divide you and pull you apart, remember the will that holds. Remember your lap. Remember to hold yourself again.

IS-13 Exercise: GRAIL SPACE EXERCISE

This is an exercise of engagement and emergence.

Overview: Grail Space

I use the term “Grail Space” to mean any space that holds sacredness, just as in legend the Holy Grail held the transformative blood of Christ. We live in Grail Space. The entire cosmos is the original Grail Space holding the sacredness of the primal Generative Mystery which I call the Sacred. The Grail Space of the cosmos holds and radiates the Incarnational Light emanating from that act of incarnation by the Sacred which brings creation into being. Our personal Grail Space holds and radiates the Incarnational Light

21 emanating from our own act of incarnation; I call that radiance our Self- Light, our individuated expression of the Incarnational Light. The practice of creating Grail space is one or standing in our own Grail Space and Self-Light and engaging the immediate environment around us and everything within it to evoke more fully the sacredness of the universal Grail Space within all things. Fundamentally, this is a practice of extending love to everything around us. It is an act of honoring and relating to our environment in such a way that it responds energetically, expressing its own Grail capacities. It is the act of turning the environment, with ourselves in it, into a Grail in which sacredness may shine forth. The creation of Grail Space is a reciprocal act, not something we do to something else. It is an act of extending an invitation into sacredness, allowing the environment to respond as fully as it can in the moment. Grail Space is born of relationship and mutual engagement based on honoring the sovereignty and identity of all involved.

Creating Grail Space

Take a moment to survey your immediate environment, taking note of all the things that are in it. Do so as a witness in a non-judgmental way, as if seeing these things for the first time with beginner’s mind. Everything in your immediate environment is an expression of the Generative Mystery. Everything manifests the original Will-to-be of that primal Source as well as its own individual will-to-be. Everything holds and expresses Incarnational Light, the Light of the primal act of incarnation out of the Generative Mystery. With this in mind, honor everything you see that is about you. You don’t have to like it or want it, but you can honor it for the sacredness that is at its core and for its own act of coming into existence, its incarnational act. If in your mind and heart you can move from honor to love in the process of this exercise, then do so. If not, then remember that honoring is the simplest form of love and is very effective in its own right in calling forth the deeper energies of that which you are honoring.

• Honor all the objects that you see, the things that humans have created. • Honor all the minerals that you see, the rocks and stones, bricks

22 and mortar that are in your environment. • Honor any plants that are present. • Honor any animals or insects that may be present. • Honor any people that may be present. • Honor yourself.

Now, drawing on the practices of attuning to your Self-Light, enter your own personal Grail Space. Fill yourself with the felt sense of being a source of spiritual power and love. Fill yourself with the felt sense of your Incarnational Field. Feel the resonance that your acts and process of incarnation has with the incarnational act of the Sacred that brings creation into being. From this inner space, acknowledge that everything and everyone about you is a Grail Space as well, and together we all participate in the Grail Space of the cosmos. From the felt sense of this place of acknowledgement and insight, once again honor everything and everyone around you. As you feel this honoring, now take it a step further if you can and feel the love that proceeds from the heart of the Generative Mystery. This same love embraces and fills you and your personal Grail Space. It is the energy that underlies your Incarnational Field. You are a source of that love. Acknowledging your identity as a source of love, radiate love as a sun radiates light to everything around you. Acknowledging your identity as a source of an incarnational Light, radiate this Light to everything around you as a star radiates its presence into the galaxy. You are not projecting or imposing any kind of energy upon anything or anyone. You are acknowledging them as fellow stars, sources of incarnational Light in their own right. In your mind’s eye, see everything around you enveloped in its own unique Grail Space, like an aura surrounding them. Imagine your own Grail Space as a sphere of encouraging and supporting Light surrounding you, the loving light of your Incarnational Field. Acknowledging your own boundaries and keeping them intact as an expression of your sovereignty and integrity, let this sphere silently expand out from you to fill your immediate environment. See it embracing and connecting with the individual Grail Spaces of everything around you. It does not impose anything upon these other Grail Spaces, but it invites

23 them to join with you in co-creating a mutual Grail Space within your shared environment. This larger Grail Space resonates with the Grail Space that is the cosmos itself and with the sacredness within all of you. It is a source of blessing, encouragement, empowerment, and support for you and everything and everyone else in your environment. Feel your Grail Space and that of everything around you melt into a shared space of loving sacredness, the larger Grail Space that holds you all. Let your own Grail Space participate in and hold this larger Grail Space. Let your own Grail Space in turn receive energy, blessing, and support from this larger Grail Space. Let it hold you as well. Experience the felt sense of this shared Grail Space and the blessings it brings you and everything around you in your environment. When you feel complete, let your own Grail Space withdraw into your own boundaries and integrity, melting into your sovereignty. Honor and give thanks to the environment around you and everything in it, acknowledging them as your inner Grail partners in this exercise. Then carry on with your life, knowing that your Incarnational Field is always a Grail Space, carrying sacredness in your own unique way.

NOTE: This sample exercise is meant to be done in silence as an inward act; nothing need be said to anyone else in your environment. You are not doing anything to them other than creating an environment that can be supportive and nurturing to them.

IS-14 Exercise: EMERGENCE

Introduction

Emergence is the appearance of something new. It can take the form of learning, of new insights, new awareness, new behavior, or it can be a new form or structure or process of some kind. It is fostered by relationship, openness and an ability to transcend habit, familiarity, and the patterns of the past when necessary. Every relationship has the potential of being a source of emergence, of bringing something new into the world. In Incarnational Spirituality, every relationship has the potential of opening a path for sacredness to emerge more fully or in new ways into the world. The idea of Emergence is also an affirmation of our ability to remain fresh and new in our engagement with the world. The Greek philosopher

24 Heraclitus said that we can never step into the same river twice. Time moves on, everything is in motion and life changes. Each day really can bring new possibilities, new potentials, and new opportunities. I should add that Emergence is not simply about novelty per se. It is as much about being open to a flow that keeps one’s energies fresh, avoiding stagnation and stuckness; it is about renewal as well as newness. The following exercise can be done anytime, but if you do it in the morning when you first get up, the day will feel new and fresh and thus supportive of the felt sense you are seeking to engage. You will feel more new and open yourself.

STEP ONE: Begin with Standing. Step into the felt sense of your Sovereignty. Take a moment to honor yourself as a unique, embodied expression of sacredness. STEP TWO: As you stand, be aware of yourself as a space opening to life the way a flower opens to the sun. Feel spaciousness fill you. However full your thoughts and feelings may have been, in this moment let them fall away and just feel yourself emptying out, becoming an open space within which your life, your mind, your heart, your soul can unfold in new ways. What is this like? What do you sense? STEP THREE: Imagine your skin turning into energy, into Light so that you are within a field of life rather than within a body. Imagine this living incarnational field expanding around you, touching those objects immediately around you in your environment. As you touch their energy, their presence, a new space opens up between you and around you. What can emerge in this space? What newness can your relationship with your immediate environment bring into being? Any relationship, even with something inanimate, can be a source of emergence, a portal into newness and the unexpected. It can be a portal through which the ever-renewing spirit of sacredness may manifest. Appreciate the power of your environment to open you to newness and emergence. STEP FOUR: Think of people with whom you are in relationship or with whom you work. Imagine your incarnational field expanding to touch their fields wherever they may be. What opens up between you? What new field emerges? What possibilities may unfold that were not there before? How might your mutual sacredness manifest through your relationship? Appreciate the power of others to open you to newness and emergence.

25 STEP FIVE: Let your incarnational field become your body again. You carry the potential of emergence with you at all times wherever you go, wherever you are, whomever you’re with. Feel the power of this within yourself. You are a mobile space of emergence through which sacredness can make all things new and renewed. Take into yourself the essence of the statement, “I make all things new.” What does this feel like? You are a gift of emergence to the world. It is a gift of emergence to you. Breathe in the power of this and bring this exercise to a close by stepping forth to be and to bring your gift into the world.

IS-15 Exercise: LEVELS OF GOD

Introduction

With this exercise, we’re shifting focus a bit away from home and self and towards our images of the sacred. My position is that we can never wholly define the sacred; that’s why I think of it as a Generative Mystery. But we can and do create images of the sacred which mediate that Mystery within us and within the world in one way or another. Just as importantly, our images of God shape our images of ourselves. If I think of God as a parent, then I’m bound to think of myself as a child. If I think of God as a Beloved, then I think of myself as a lover of God and potentially as a partner. As it happens, I think of sacredness as a natural force like gravity. No one yet understands the nature of gravity but that lack of understanding doesn’t prohibit us from experiencing it or using it. In a way, this text is about learning to use the natural force of sacredness, one of whose manifestations is the creation of a condition of wholeness and connectedness that I’m calling “Home.” And one way towards attuning to this natural force is to consider some of the ways we think and feel about it. That’s the objective in this exercise. In this exercise, I would like you to reflect on what comes to mind or what arises in you as a feeling, a sensation, an image, or thought, as you consider different possible levels of the Sacred.

Exercise

STEP ONE: Consider the Sacred in the most abstract manner that

26 you can. Consider the Sacred as void, as emptiness, as the primal nothing-ness and mystery from which the universe emerges. What is the felt sense of this sacredness to you? What images or thoughts arise? Most importantly, who are you in relationship to this image? What happens in you when you consider the Sacred in this manner?

STEP TWO: Consider the Sacred as an active principle or natural force, an impulse within the cosmos (such as an impulse towards organization or an impulse towards wholeness or connectedness). What is the felt sense of this sacredness to you? What images or thoughts arise? Most importantly, who are you in relationship to this image? What happens in you when you consider the Sacred in this manner?

STEP THREE: Consider the Sacred as a presence, an Intelligence or Beingness, the source of creation. It is a presence with which you can have a relationship. What is the felt sense of this sacredness to you? What images or thoughts arise? Most importantly, who are you in relationship to this image? What happens in you when you consider the Sacred in this manner?

STEP FOUR: Consider the Sacred as a force within nature, as the life force flowing through this planet, fostering, nurturing, unfolding. This is the sacredness of the world and of all things within it, the Light that is within all things. What is the felt sense of this sacredness to you? What images or thoughts arise? Most importantly, who are you in relationship to this image? What happens in you when you consider the Sacred in this manner?

STEP FIVE: Consider the Sacred within you, as a force or presence within you. Consider the Sacred as you or yourself as an expression of this Mystery. What is the felt sense of this sacredness to you? What images or thoughts arise? Most importantly, who are you in relationship to this image? What happens in you when you consider the Sacred in this manner?

STEP SIX: Is there a thread you feel weaving through these five images of the Sacred? Is there a felt sense of connection? If so, what is that for you? How do you experience that?

27 IS-16 Exercise: THE FOUR FOLD BLESSING

This is not an exercise per se but rather a blessing that you can use to start any kind of outer or inner activity. It encapsulates many of the principles of Incarnational Spirituality and the incarnational worldview.

• Bless this place in which I am, with honor and gratitude for its presence and its gifts of space. • Bless my self, with honor and gratitude for the uniqueness of spirit, life, insight, and creativity which I bring to the world. • Bless others around me, seen and unseen, with honor and gratitude for the gifts we bring to each other, for the creativity and energy that can emerge from our collaboration. • Bless the activity I undertake, that it may prosper and be a blessing to all my world.

This exercise is another approach to appreciating and attuning to your Self-Light and appreciating as well its connections to larger, spacious, more universal presences.

28 About the Publisher

Lorian Press is a private, for profit business which publishes works approved by the Lorian Association. Current titles by Dorothy Maclean and others can be found on the Lorian website www.lorian.org, at www.dororthymaclean.com, and at www.lorianpress.com/maclean.htm

The Lorian Association is a not-for-profit educational organization. Its work is to help people bring the joy, healing, and blessing of their personal spirituality into their everyday lives. This spirituality unfolds out of their unique lives and relationships to Spirit, by whatever name or in whatever form that Spirit is recognized.

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