Advanced / Entering the Castle: Overview
| Dates: | Location: |
| • Feb 26 - Mar 1, 2009 |
Oakbrook, IL |
ADVANCED / ENTERING THE CASTLE
Dear All you wonderful Mystics without Monasteries,
I thought I would send out a letter describing the theme for our next ENTERING THE CASTLE class. You can never come to the end of exploring the mansions of your soul, as you have no doubt already discovered. But you certainly have also become skilled at the journey of entering your interior Castle in your own way, during the quiet or not-so-quiet moments of your life. So now we must encounter the same challenge that many emerging mystics had to contemplate, which is, “How shall I be of service to the world now that I can envision the world from within my soul as well as externally?” You must not, even for one second, discount the profound significance of what you have learned and how that has empowered you as a vessel of Light in this world. Once you engage the inner resources of your interior Castle – the power of reflection, the capacity to utilize the grace of illumination, the great gift of knowing how to channel grace to someone or many in need – you are compelled to ask, “How shall I be of service in these rapidly changing and chaotic times?” After all, it was into these times that you have been born. Mystics are participants, agents of change, not observers who sit on the sidelines, watching and waiting as other human beings take charge or lose control of the world around them.
Let us call this next step “mystical activism” – learning how to transcend the personal soul and merge with the Divine for the good of the whole. For many mystics, such a commitment was done privately, behind cloistered walls, through a devotion to prayer for those in need. That remains the charism or devotion of the Carmelites still to this day – they are a community of nuns, priests, and monks who are devoted to prayer for the sake of all humanity. To be a mystical activist means that you are conscious of the power of actions generated by and from your soul for the sake of others. Your motivation for action becomes more impersonal, or transcendent of your personal concerns alone, whether in the form of silent prayer for others, feeding the hungry, or taking a more direct role in social change.
It’s important to note the difference between the hardcore social activist and the mystical activist, as I lead you as mystics without monasteries into the world in this e-mail. So often the idealist or the social activist self-destructs because he or she believes in illusions, among them: one, that an ideal world can and must be created and that it must be created right now; two, that they are the good guys and that the only way to accomplish goodness is the “get” the bad guys; three, that if they don’t succeed, all else is doomed. Given those erroneous beliefs, it’s no wonder people who hold to them burn out so quickly and become so easily disillusioned. How should you, as a mystical activist, view the same world? Given the same situation, what would you perceive, as mystical insight is about inner perception as opposed to merely responding to five-sensory information.
Take a good look at the world we are living in. Just pause for a moment and reflect (I love that word), on all that is happening in and around the world we are living in. Consider for one moment everything that takes place within the world in one day. You hardly know where to cast your attention, much less how to begin such a task of reflection. What, exactly, do you choose to reflect on? And how shall this reflection unfold? And toward what end – what is the purpose of such an act of reflection?
Let’s explore reflection within a contemporary voice via the Castle, in response to these rich questions.
Everything in the news and in conversations around us is focused on the energy crisis and how this crisis is reshaping our lives. (Not that we haven’t had sufficient warning for years, but hey, why not wait until the last moment, right?) You might think this is an odd issue to reflect on, but in fact it is exactly the type of issue that one should bring a mystical position to bear upon – particularly for someone who has been schooled in mystical theology as all of you have for so long. How and where would you begin such a task? Why is the subject of energy so perfect for a discussion of you and your role as a mystic in the world today? Because the energy crisis is everywhere, affecting everyone – including you – and most of the effects are, for the most part, generating fear. Our nation is at war because of the energy crisis.
Reflection begins by taking the energy crisis and repositioning it on as many levels of reality as you can, asking the critical questions of the logical mind weighed against the mystical perspective: The energy crisis is occurring now for a myriad of earthly reasons, all of which can be easily listed, but beyond all of the political and economic reasons, the greater overriding fact is that we are coming to the end of the fossil fuel age. This is not a small fact – it is a great, big, huge fact that has such phenomenal implications that will transform the whole of life itself as we know it. This is a time of the shifting of paradigms of power from heavy, fossil fuel power to solar, energetic power. We are leaving the age of the dense five-sensory human being and entering the age of the energetic, multi-sensory human being. We are entering the Age of Ecology and the Solar Age, the Age of Energy Medicine and Energy Consciousness – but one age does not begin without the other age having to be dismantled.
If that is not something to reflect upon – rather than just react to – I don’t know what is. To be alive at a time of profound transformation is such an extraordinary realization that you cannot comprehend the significance of it in any way as you have no way of knowing the full measure of the transformation that we have begun, much less all that we shall experience or how humanity shall cope with the ending of one age of power. Yet, you must reflect upon the fact that you are alive at this time and thus your life has purpose in this hour of monumental, irrevocable transformation into the next era of power.
Ask yourself: Why am I alive at this time? What is my greater path of service during this time of transformation?
And then at the symbolic level: What is the most insightful way that I can view the chaos unfolding in the world at this time? How should humanity cope with the end of an era of power and the emerging of a new power paradigm? Through what lens? What is the role of grace in the midst of this change?
Consider this mystical insight, for example: The ending of this era of fossil fuel simultaneously represents the ending of humanity as a ground-based creature, relying on only five senses to determine the whole of reality. The emerging new template of humanity is fundamentally one in which human beings have awakened to their multiple senses – a capacity to read data in energy fields and in the emotional and psychic realms. Further, this template resonates to a human being who is capable of a more responsive and receptive interior life, who can interpret the symbolic meaning of events, even while living through and within them. Most if not all of you belong to this new template and would therefore easily grasp the value of taking a contemporary crisis that you are very much a part of, like the energy crisis, and reflecting upon its symbolic significance so as to discern why and how chaos will unfold. In doing such a practice, you transcend the ordinary thought – that is, to view the chaos of the energy crisis not as a product of OPEC or Middle East conflicts and U.S. politics, but rather as something that was inevitable because that is the nature of change.
Yet, that perspective is hardly enough. It is still on the surface and it does not include insights into the changing nature of power, that is, the difference between the symbolic nature of “fossil” power and the emerging meaning of solar or “interior sunlight” – mystical power. And you have yet to examine questions about your role, to delve deeply into your Interior Castle to seek that depth of guidance.
The next step for all of us is to learn to interpret the events of the world around us through our interior Castles and then discover how we can best respond to those around us, offering wisdom, insight, grace, and illumination. Just to be able to explain events through a mystical perspective is a great gift of grace for someone, perhaps even for yourself.
And so, my wonderful Castle mystics – I hope I have provided you with enough of a sample of the work we will be doing in our next ENTERING THE CASTLE workshop together – simply put, we are going to do the practical, grounded work of being a mystic in the world today, taking the challenges of the world and entering the castle to utilize the profound grace of illumination and transcendence for insight, wisdom, and action-directed guidance.
For all you have learned, please come to this vital workshop as the theme is now your work in the world.
All my love,
Caroline