A Spiritually Empowered Way to Respond to Environmental Catastrophe

Thank you too Cathy, lovely to connect with your limitless energy!

Much love xx

And I feel your loving heart too Cathy - very much so. And your passion for enlightenment – it’s inspiring :) I do hope we will meet sometime down…well… the flow.

You say: “Even though it's evident to me that industrial civilization is collapsing and is necessary for spiritual realignment. There is great love in planting that apple tree even if it were the last day on earth, as Martin Luther King said.”

I say: “Yes, I’m with you! Beautiful!”

Cathy, ha! Pump the volume of your frequency up even more for me please, sky is no limit! You /we are limitless…

Limitless (Danna Faulds)

Sun says, “Be your own
illumination.” Wren says,
“Sing your heart out,
all day long.” Stream says,
“Do not stop for any
obstacle.” Oak says,
“When the wind blows,
bend easily, and trust
your roots to hold.”
Stars say, “What you see
is one small slice of a
single modest galaxy.
Remember that vastness
cannot be grasped by mind.”
Ant says, “Small does not
mean powerless.” Silence
says nothing. In the quiet,
everything comes clear.
I say, “Limitless.” I say,
“Yes.”

love xx

Cathy

These words really resonated with me

'I have often feel like a misfit here in 3D. Like my frequency is too high. Like I 'should' turn down the volume. Which is what I've done many times in my life to cope. No longer, I declare!'

I have often felt that I have had to dim my light for the sake of others, and only last night during a guided meditation chose to let go of that, and to allow myself to be as bright as I am, in any moment, regardless.

Thank you for the reminder as I ready myself to enter the real world again tomorrow x Julie

Aspasia!

Thank you for further exploring with me. This comment stands out for me:

"...I feel that 'the divine' does not exist as an independent truth out there."

The feeling of 'Oneself' as Absolute Presence knows without a doubt that there is no separation from Oneness! I know this feeling well, but it is still fleeting and comes and goes with the challenges of living in the matrix. However, I take heart from Open's assurance that we are seeded for Nirvana. All I have is one moment at a time to self-realize as the One.

“Where are you? Here
What time is it? Now
What are you? This moment.” ~Peaceful Warrior

I love this:

"So, Holy Erotic Love with Nature/oneself/other/world sacralises through the idiosyncrasies, the particulars, the “quirky quirks and unique imperfections” in all their glory. Love universalises, is holistic, it binds and dissolves the self in oneness. Love and Holy Eros together with Compassion (feeling the suffering of others as our own) plus Equanimity – for me- are the components of a freer life that I deepen into gradually."

I feel your loving, passionate, and compassionate heart, Aspasia. I, too, am a passionate and compassionate soul who feels the suffering of others very deeply. Increasingly, I am aligning my heart and soul with love and compassion for myself and others, gradually releasing guilt and self-judgment for perceived failings. Acting on what feels right deep within to help manifest respect and social justice for all life. Even though it's evident to me that industrial civilization is collapsing and is necessary for spiritual realignment. There is great love in planting that apple tree even if it were the last day on earth, as Martin Luther King said.

I feel the energy of "Holy Erotic Love" very deeply. When my babies were born, I couldn't hold and touch them enough. So much beauty around us to see, feel, touch, taste, smell, to merge with. The stars shining through the dark night. The heavenly fragrance of a rose. The divine taste of chocolate! The erotic pleasure and bliss of sexual union!

I have often feel like a misfit here in 3D. Like my frequency is too high. Like I 'should' turn down the volume. Which is what I've done many times in my life to cope. No longer, I declare!

How blessed I am to no longer feel like a misfit and to 'fit' with the Openhand family! Right fit!

Much Love,

Cathy

Cathy,
Love your free-wheelingness and I am grateful you are inviting me in it. I very much appreciate your sharing here, it feels that this has been an important and pivotal part in your spiritual journey.

I can see how such ways of seeing oneself/the world etc like ‘All is Love etc’ can be imprisoning and causing lots of suffering as opposed to liberating/expanding and reducing clinging. Your experiences I hear/read, honour and acknowledge as evidence to this. And I agree with all the sentiments you put forth – all very clear and make sense. I personally have recently met a couple of people who abide to this way of perceiving, which I understand adheres to the New Age camp. I don’t have practical experience of New Age approaches, so I can’t comment in depth. My camp, if you like, is Buddhist-oriented traditions and the meaning of love, compassion and eros there is very different to what you are describing. It is also very different to how I feel and perceive. So, I can only share my truth reinforced with a Buddhist-oriented perspective.

Let me just share first: For now, I feel that there is no objective reality out there, which is separate from the way one perceives. So, everything I perceive depends on the way I perceive it and does not have some independent existence. There are openings of sensing and perception which become skilful ways of looking because they release clinging and liberate more. I consider spiritual practice as ‘the opening of perception’ towards ways of looking at experience that are more liberating, construct less self and there is more letting go. In fact, saying this, the very first thing that caught my attention in the Openhand approach when I first watched the 5 gateways documentary was the word ‘open’.

In view of the above, you say: “I've come to better grasp that the divine is in love and in hate but is not those things. The divine is beyond all judgment, beyond all definitions and identities.” I do like this and - to me - this is a way of sensing/perceiving that offers more freedom. However, personally, and currently, I feel that ‘the divine’ does not exist as an independent truth out there. It is a perceived truth because of the way I am perceiving and therefore I make real. Now, this may be a difference in ontology that we may have and that’s ok. What matters to me is what this way of perceiving does to my sense of self, other and the world. Does it embrace, open, is of service to the world, lessens suffering or not?

Divine, Love, Oneness, Source etc etc are the narratives that accompany ways of perceiving. So, for me, oneness/divine refers to interdependence, in that nothing has an independent existence – not even God. When this really sinks deep, then one has an erotic relationship to the world/nature etc that propels him/her to action. This sank about 7 years ago at a certain degree. Then at the New Year retreat with Openhand, it sank deeper (multidimensionally) and my way of perceiving opened more. As a result, my life which is all about activism in many forms has deepened and become more effective.
I love this quote by Wendell Beery,a philosopher/activist, which I recently discovered. It refers to activism.
“Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence”.

So, Holy Erotic Love with Nature/oneself/other/world sacralises through the idiosyncrasies, the particulars, the “quirky quirks and unique imperfections” in all their glory. Love universalises, is holistic, it binds and dissolves the self in oneness. Love and Holy Eros together with Compassion (feeling the suffering of others as our own) plus Equanimity – for me- are the components of a freer life that I deepen into gradually.
:) Thank you again Cathy for catalysing this beautiful exchange of inquiry.

With gratitude xx

Aspasia,

Here goes with some free-wheeling, meandering exploration!

When I'm out and about connecting with those who are on a spiritual path in my community, I frequently hear, "God is Love. The One is Love. I am Love." A few years back in this Openhand forum, I was struggling to grasp how I could possibly connect and become the One when I'm so imperfect and flawed in body/mind/spirit. Specifically, I asked, "If I freed myself from all distortions, would I manifest a whole body?" In this incarnation, I have chosen a disabled body, so I was feeling unworthy of experiencing the Oneness of Presence. Open and Trinity engaged with me at that time and their insights were such a welcomed illumination. A flash of expanded consciousness. What stood out was this: The One is in all things but is not those things. The One doesn't judge me because I'm disabled. It may be my karma to continue experiencing a disabled body in this lifetime. What is being invited is to expand my consciousness so it simply doesn't matter. To go beyond defining myself as a person with a disability. True enlightenment is to be enlightened in all things and all experiences. Another Openhand gem that resonates more and more deeply as I journey on.

Since that initial exchange with Open and Trinity, I've come to better grasp that the divine is in love and in hate but is not those things. The divine is beyond all judgment, beyond all definitions and identities.

I'm feeling the belief that God is Love and that we are Love leads to separation from Source since it's a belief based on rejecting, denying, and judging all those experiences and feelings where love is not present. The temptation is then to escape in a false Love/Light bubble based on suppressing any emotion that doesn't feel like love. I've been there. When Mr. T. came into power, I was seeing many social media posts extolling the virtue of sending love bombs his way. Meanwhile I was recoiling from the distorted, hateful energy he was expressing big time. Sending love bombs (i.e. all we need is love) felt like non-judgmental discernment gone mad, devolving into a wishy-washy, anything goes mode. As Open has said: It's important not to lose the discerning part of non-judgmental discernment. A rose is still a rose and a thorn is still a thorn. At the Absolute level, love is unconditional but while we're here having experiences in 3D, it's important to honour and accept how we feel about the social injustice going down and then move into action from that deep sense of aligned rightness within, in the flow of benevolence. We don't have to love oppression and exploitation.

Of course it's one thing to grasp an abstract concept of the One on an intellectual level and a whole other thing to fully feel, experience, and embody Absolute Presence while we're having experiences of both duality and non-duality as unique sparks of the divine. Every experience of the pain of existence, every experience of separation from the One is an opportunity to ride the wave of the soul back to Source, to self-realize as the One Absolute Presence. This I know! What's helping me hugely these days to transcend my limited, small, identified self to the limitless One is Open's breakthrough meditation, which I do several times a day. I can only imagine how it feels to feel the way I do during my meditations on a full-time basis! In the meantime, I keep on practicing and am getting better at accepting my quirky quirks and unique imperfections that makes me. Me.

x Cathy

Cathy,

I am also reminding myself again and again and as I write it :) And if I may share, I feel immense grief, some of it is contained, some of it felt through and some of it is consciously being repressed. I'm fine with it all :)

Thank you for your insights to my reflections and living experience (on going!), I feel supported and connected. And you say: "I'm feeling the energy of Eros as an expression of the One, loving everything and nothing at the same time. The divine paradox of Unidentified Absolute Presence. Beyond love. Beyond all definitions."
Wow! Let me feel through this one! Gorgeous!

With gratitude xx

Aspasia,

Thank you for your reflections, which I feel as an invitation to expand beyond my grief to connect with my true essence as a unique, cosmic expression of the divine, one with nature in all it's multi-dimensional relationships without identifying or attaching. One with the earth and all God's creatures both great and small. One with the stars. The sun and moon. With all the cosmic vastness. Honouring as you put it "...a need in the world to sense Nature and the cosmos differently: to open up the sacredness of both, which is liberating. It instigates a letting go, a sense of trust and a living life to the fullest."

Thank for this reminder. To let go of experiencing and loving Nature in limited ways, expanding beyond to the limitless.

I'm feeling the energy of Eros as an expression of the One, loving everything and nothing at the same time. The divine paradox of Unidentified Absolute Presence. Beyond love. Beyond all definitions.

x Cathy

Cathy, I hear you/read you and feel you. I resonate with the grief, the tears and the pain on many levels. I try to take a stand for the Earth through the heart. This means that the heart’s natural response to this tragedy of loss is grief and it needs skillful ways to be with indeed – ways like the Openhand way. The song really captures this paradox! Thanks for sharing.
Yes, it’s not ‘spiritually sexy’ to talk about environmental catastrophe etc though I feel Climate change is a call to returning to an erotic relationship with Nature (the cosmos, ourselves and each other). I would like to share some reflections:

Climate change is a crisis of values/sensibilities and not just a crisis of technology, politics, economics, capitalism etc. In other words, it is a crisis of relationship: a lack of eros.
For me eros (well, here is another greek word) goes beyond enjoying nature, it seeks to connect more, to expand the knowing of Nature. It opens up to Nature as an expression of the divine (this includes her shifting to the 5D) – it activates more connection. Eros is infinitely expanding and boundless. It expands the experience of Nature multidimensionally. So, to me, there is a need in the world to sense Nature and the cosmos differently: to open up to the sacredness of both, which is liberating. It instigates a letting go, a sense of trust and a living life to the fullest. I therefore, take refuge in the dynamic of eros, also because:
“Eros moves us towards enlivening connections and ignites our desire to make a distinctive contribution to the world” (Whitehead & Whitehead, 2009. “Holy eros: towards recovering the passion of God”).

Thanks for re-posting this article, Open. As you say, it's certainly not spiritually sexy to talk about the end of our existence here on planet earth as we know it. And it is, indeed, immensely painful and a helluva challenge to process in our consciousness.

Tears stream down my face so often these days at the smallest of things. Sweet music of birdsong. Wind whistling through trees. Glittering sunlight on water. Carefree laughter of children. Precious memories of so much love shared. The beauty that abounds fills my heart with joy and yet breaks it at the same time as I grieve for the fleeting transience, letting go and giving up "the struggle of fruitless control."

This emotive song by Billy Boyd called "The Last Goodbye" from the film "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies" soothes my heart and soul and captures so well the mix of emotions I feel about continuing to bid farewell to holding on to all I love.

"We came all this way
But now comes the day
To bid you farewell..."

https://youtu.be/Fg4koastMuM

x Cathy

Thanks Open, and Trinity-behind-the-camera :D

It's like experimenting with one's reality to see what we can do with it, what happens and what it can show one, right?
Or should that be 'One'? :)

I look forward to reading the book.

Love Peace & Freedom.
Rich.

Thank you for this article Open...grateful you are sharing as I would not have had much awareness around any of this if not for your directness...before coming to Openhand I had pretty much stopped being on any news - even alternative news...it was another form of head in the sand. I embrace the opportunity to let the truth be a catalyst.

"What if we could stop trying to manipulate the external landscape, and simply embrace the natural flow of life as it speaks to us through our soul?" thank you for this question...I am writing down in big letters in my journal =)