Please enjoy this week’s spiritual service.
Isaiah
Hope in the Cataclysm
Anchoring Your Own New Earth
“For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth;
and the former things will not be remembered or come to mind.”
Isaiah 65: 17
There can be no doubt, a new world is coming into being. We may hope, and wish, and dream, that the new world is the material world in which we are living – that human beings will finally get their shit straight, coming together and bringing forth a new age of peace, love, and harmony. I’m not, however, laying any bets on this one. I’m still hoping, but I’ve also come to understand that the “new earth” that has been prophesied may have much less to do with what is outside of us, and everything to do with what is within. Over the former we have no control, but we do have the power to choose the world we know and live from within ourselves.
Isaiah’s prophecy was made close to three-thousand years ago! The author of the Book of Revelations borrowed these words to reiterate the same. Not much about humanity or the way humans live their lives has changed in all these many years, and I haven’t yet seen Christ descend from the heavens on a cloud to usher in the new age (for the record, I don’t believe the “second coming of Christ” has anything to do with men descending on clouds). Instead, both Isaiah’s words and the words of the Revelator may more appropriately be interpreted as relating to our own inner personal journeys. (See my Victory of the Holy Bride – the Book of Revelation class for more on this.)
The inner journey and cultivating an inner world of peace, contentment, compassion, and joy, has been the focus of my personal journey for the past thirty years. This work is anchored in my daily spiritual practice which has ultimately become an all-day, everyday practice. Life itself has become my practice. As this practice has grown and deepened, additional tools have been added to help me further anchor my own new world. These are the tools I share with those who are open and willing to learn. For none of these tools can I take credit as I either learned them somewhere else (Ignatian Exercises, Tonglen, Ho’oponopono for example), or they were “given” to me while in meditation by a Source deep within (what some might perceive as outside) myself.
This Sunday, I was given a new tool to add to my arsenal of spiritual resources. While deep in meditation, I saw a large piece of green tourmaline being placed in my hand. I was told to use this stone to help anchor my new world.
In crystal lore, green tourmaline:
provides one with a heightened sense of awareness and is here to help you grow into an image of your higher self. Its vibrations push one’s mind to follow their heart and desires. One’s focus becomes laser sharp and actively pushes you to move towards the direction you need to go in. There may be many distractions in your life each day, but Green Tourmaline will provide you with the tunnel vision needed to continue pushing forward. (www.thecrystalcouncil.com)
Green tourmaline is closely connected with the heart chakra and is both a cleansing and an activating stone – helping us to release anything that blocks our ability to know and live as love. Equally, it opens the channels to knowing and being love. I can think of no better stone for helping us anchor our own new world.
Because I’m a rock collector, I was first tempted to go out and find myself a green tourmaline specimen. When my search because daunting, I was reminded, I don’t need the physical stone to activate its intention. So instead of laying down cold hard cash on a new stone to add to my collection, I simply sat in meditation with the stone. As I did, so, an even deeper meditation presented itself. While meditating on the stone, I saw myself within the courtyard of the spiritual fortress that recently presented itself (see more about that here) and in the center of that courtyard was an enormous pillar of green tourmaline that reached from deep into the earth into to beyond the walls of the stone fortress. This image became my meditation and what I share with you today.
Go back to the inner fortress you constructed and imagine, in the center courtyard of your fortress, a giant pillar made of green tourmaline rising from deep within the earth into the heavens. Allow this image to be the focus of your meditation. Imagine the fortress as your place of safety, protection, and groundedness, and the tourmaline as activating your own new earth – the one that right now is taking root within your being. Allow this image to be the touchstone that you can return to again and again and again as you find yourself anxious, afraid, distracted, restless, angry, impatient, and frustrated as the material world around us struggles through its death throes. While that world is busy with its dying, you can be about the business of creating your own new world.
And who knows, maybe if enough of us find this world of Love within ourselves, the world outside of us may in fact begin to change.
What Comes After “The End?”
In this week’s gathering of the Magdalene Membership community, we explored the question, “What is on the other side of the end?” Taking inspiration from Isaiah 64, we dove deep into our own experiences of endings and what came after? Or rather, how did we survive them?
Isaiah 64, penned not by the prophet Isaiah himself, but by a disciple of his teachings, identified by scholars as “Third Isaiah,” unveils the confusion, heartache, and sense of hopelessness and lack of direction experienced by the Hebrews as they were released from their exile in Babylon and were returning to Israel. The home they had once known had been destroyed. The temple had been torn down, obliterating all they thought they had known of their “God” and their relationship to “Him.” The beliefs and practices that had been the center of their existence were no longer. The slate they were left with was blank and they were forced to be present to unknowing, unbelieving and the feeling of having no guidance to draw from.
Third Isaiah gives expression to all the many layers of bewilderment and in doing so, affirms and validates the experience of the Hebrews while attempting to give them hope in the possibility of something not yet known.
In short, Third Isaiah reminds the Hebrews that in the no-thing (Ain-Sof)
is limitless potential.
When the end has come and we are left with nothing, we can be certain that there will be something on the other side of the end. Getting to that other side, however, is everything but easy! In order to get to the other side of the end, we first have to be willing to let go. Not just “let IT go,” we have to LET IT ALL GO. We have to let go of our attachment to everything we thought we knew, thought we believed, and hoped for of our life before the end. We have to let go so much that there is literally nothing left – including (especially) our need to control.
As we are letting go, we have to grieve. We must grieve every loss, every old belief, every past relationship, every goal and every hope. In the grieving, we are supporting ourselves in healing from the loss and inner sense of betrayal that happens as we approach the end. Further, grief allows us to continue our emptying.
We must be fully empty, and fully immersed in the VOID before we can begin to receive anything new. In order to be immersed in the VOID, however, we first have to move through the sheer terror that comes with the VOID – and this is no easy feat!
As it turns out, our greatest fear is not of death,
but of the possibility that after life there is NOTHING.
This is the fear we encounter as we approach the void. When we allow ourselves to be fully present to that terror, we find comfort in the state of nothingness. It only in finding this comfort that we can begin to be open to something new.
This is what the Hebrews experienced in their return from exile. In being present with the no-thing, they began to be open to the Mystery revealing itself and to simply being present with what is in this moment. This is where we too are invited when facing the many endings of our lives – learning to be present to what is and simply being present to the mystery of life. This alone, we eventually discover, is really all there is, and it is enough.
Lauri Ann Lumby 