The  Tree  of  Life

from  Rise Up in Consciousness

Anne Blaney   December 20, 2015

The tree is a lovely image to describe the reality and experience of the One Being, the Being in which we live and move and have our being. “I am the vine, ye are the branches,” is an image used by the Master Jesus when He was on earth. In the book of Genesis in the Bible, the tree image is central—placed by the Lord in the center of His Garden, Eastward in Eden.

It’s essential to remember that the garden was the Lord’s, not man’s—“The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.” In the center of that garden there was one tree, but that one tree could appear as two different trees. One could see either the Tree of Life, or the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The essential statement for everyone to know and say is: I Am—in the Tree of Life.

A characteristic of the Tree of Life is that it describes change. Life is always changing, moving. In our personal experience of being alive, we know our thoughts change, feelings change, and our bodies are always changing. Life is dynamic, ever-changing. This change is made up of many levels of movement of substance, some in the higher, finer range, even invisible, and others which are slower, heavier, and visible. Another way to describe this thing called Life is to call it The Creative Process.

Man is a sentient creature. We are highly sensitive to visible and invisible factors involved in the experience of life on this planet. This is a fabulous capacity, which seems unique to humans. We are aware of Life itself, and that we are Life itself. This sentience can be a source of creativity or destructiveness. One clue is that as sentient beings we should be comfortable with ever-changing conditions in the Creative Process.

But constant change doesn’t mean confusion. Our sentience becomes destructive when it is overtaken by the distorted patterns in the present world. This is the opportune time to consider which Tree is in focus. If at this point, one chooses to struggle, grapple and try to change what is being felt, try to manipulate, then it’s certain that the wrong tree was seen and the forbidden fruit has been eaten. It’s certain, then—and we’ve all been there—that one is trapped in the world of mirrors, governed by the world of effects, by the fruits of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It’s a huge comedown for man who thinks that it’s his right to know everything, but man simply doesn’t have to get involved at this level; it’s not his job in the Whole. He is meant to participate in the act of creation, but creation does not get initiated from reaction to effects.

We can trust that any information we require to create will be revealed in a timely fashion to a consciousness centered in The Whole. And the magical ingredient that comes with that is the element of design. The Whole is complexly, intricately, thoroughly imbued with design and coherence, and Love. Because the factors in Heaven and in the Earth are constantly changing, usefully we only really receive the next step or steps in the creative process that are pertinent to us in the Creative Process. This is an amazing gift, and one that we never seem to fully receive. The dynamic is similar to the GPS function in our cars, which entails constant recalibration of the journey. If we are open, and there are enough connecting points in our consciousness, the design features of the Whole will come into our awareness. We just need to let it happen, not prejudge it, or manipulate it into consciousness, but let it be revealed.

What we can do is make sure there is a clear and rich field of receptivity.

A recent job that David and I had was property management for a complex that had 80 suites for rent. The objective was to rent the suites as quickly as possible. That was how it was viewed from a financial perspective. But from another perspective, and one that I resonated with, we were renting spaces in which people might create a home—a whole other perspective. Both perspectives describe substance, one financial substance, the other life or living substance.

I think all of us are familiar with the concept and experience of generating invisible substance, hopefully of the creative kind. You might describe that invisible substance as light. We use the phrase, his presence lights up the room, or, when I think of her I feel instantly lighter. Humans have this ability to generate this stuff and discern it when it’s present, when spiritual substance is present. We are sentient to that level of vibration.

Getting back to this job and using it as an analogy, I loved cleaning the suites and preparing them for people to live in. As I did this I became aware that I was participating in a creative process. I was working with both spiritual substance and physical substance, and to be honest, I enjoy working with both levels of substance. The process began with the person who was vacating the suite. Looking at the space with the tenant, it usually became evident that significant cleaning was necessary before it would be appropriate to put it on the market. So I entered into a process with that person, gave them a list of what to cover, went the extra mile and lent tools and sometimes products. Sometimes it was humorous that I was showing people how to clean. Most of the people were quite willing to participate in my little exercise with them. It was fun to watch them as they did this; they discovered something. Often there was an enthusiastic showing of the suite after they had worked on it, because they were genuinely proud of what they had accomplished and probably were thinking they wished they had done this when they were living in the place!

Next, either I, or our cleaner, would step in and carry it to the next level. If I could, I loved to get involved at this stage. When I did, and David and I talked about this, I was aware that we were involved in a process of a type of exorcism. There were spirits present that needed to leave, to be cleansed literally and figuratively, sometimes with hard work, but always rewarding. There was also the alchemy: shifting or lifting the substance that was present to a higher level. A lot of that involved lifting in my own consciousness. I found as I worked I would find features that were exceptional to that particular suite—something I could get excited about, something I could appreciate, something I could love. I want to mention that the entire process was done in the spirit of Love on a number of levels. I loved the physical aspect of great exercise, but I also truly loved creating a space for people to live in. There’s a certain love that we feel creating beauty and order in our worlds.

Renting of the suite was a creative process of its own. There were adjustments to be made, different delivery styles, different approaches with different people, making sure I was not overstepping my boundaries, making sure they could see the beauty of the particular suite I was showing them. A lot of people came, saw nothing special, turned and walked away and I would never see them again. But ultimately, as each step unfolded, I found the perfect tenant would walk in, look around, and say, “I love it, I want it, what’s the next step.”

I also noticed in this process, that one of the biggest pitfalls was if I started to get worried: I wasn’t doing it right, I wasn’t going to rent the suites, and various angsts might arise. And when this happened, invariably everything would fall apart. I would be off my game, I would get rattled, and I wasn’t very convincing! I wasn’t having fun either. This was the time for personal sanctification, pausing, and standing still. I would then be able to return to the process with a different spirit. I realized that when I fell into worry, I had fallen into reactive thinking.

With this job I saw how, along the way, each step had become obvious. As I worked and created substance, I noticed how the next thing would fall into awareness. I think we’ve all had that experience in our living, that if we are still, we are better able to prioritize. This is an example of a much more profound principle. Mercifully, we only need to receive one step at a time in the Creative Process. If we were to receive a whole lot of information, we would get rattled and confused, try to manipulate and change things, and this would no longer reflect the reality of Life, which is constantly changing, recalibrating, and always in design.

I share these stories in order to describe some key principles that came into graphic sight for me. In the Bible we find another story of someone preparing a space for people to live in for a while: Noah, who built an ark of safety. I note that the ark was built with physical action, the design revealed step by step, and that space was full of substance, pairs of substance in this case.

Both these descriptions describe what is necessary in our daily lives, to fill our consciousness with the Light of Love for the One in whom we live and have our Being, to generate the finest quality of substance, through which His design can be seen moment to moment. This is the role of sentient aspects of the creation, and as such, we participate in necessary cleansing and allow, let, the unfolding creation to continue and manifest through beings in human forms.

archangelicbody.org

The  Resurgence  of  Cosmic  Storytellers

Brian Swimme

We find ourselves in a world with 50,000 nuclear warheads, with ecocide underway on every continent, with massive starvation and torture and cruelty. How do we get out of this? How do we make our way into health and vitality? My proposal is that we tell stories. In particular, we must tell the many stories that make up the great cosmic story. This storytelling activity may be the most important political and economic act of our time.

I understand how superficial such a remark might seem. Stories are told to children to put them to sleep. Stories are what we put on TV to help us forget our harried day at the office. Stories are make-believe, whereas The Wall Street Journal is what the world is really about. But there is a different and deeper story, one we rarely encounter in our mechanistic, patriarchal, materialistic, consumer-oriented culture.

A cosmic creation story answers the questions asked by children. Where does everything come from? Why do things die? Children want to understand their place in the universe. They wonder about their roles. They have an inherent need for a cosmic story...

Though all civilizations and cultures told themselves stories, none of the industrial countries taught cosmic stories. They focused entirely on the human world. The universe and the Earth were only backdrops. The oceans were large, the species many, but these immensities were just sets on the human stage. All our disasters today are directly related to the fact that these cultures ignored the cosmos to focus on the human. Our use of land, our use of technology, our uses of each other, are flawed in a million ways but all are fundamentally due to the same mistake made at the start of things. We have failed because we were never initiated into nature’s sacred activities. We have failed because we have no

cosmic story...

Instead of poets, we have had one-eyed scientists and theologians. Neither of these high priests nor any of the rest of us has been capable of celebrating the cosmic story. It is no wonder then that all of us are sick and disabled, that the soils have gone bad, that the sky is covered with soot, that the waters are filled with evil. Because we had no celebrations inaugurating us into the universe, the whole world has become diseased.

Brian Swimme

storyoftheuniverse.org

The  grim  news

The grim news has come to my attention

that something in the world has come unfixed —

owls no longer haunt the fir-lined alley

appearing out of dreamtime as we pass,

indeed, whole souls are missing, as if being

has itself gone dim — like an old man's seeing.

A vital light is missing from this world, by which I mean

that ephemeral gold that spins the seen

and unseen worlds together. In my life

I don't expect to see a springtime swelling

of the shriveled nut so many human spirits

have become. What's to be done?

This is the winter solstice of an age,

although the season's worst is yet to come.

What's delicate and true has come undone:

is the only fitting answer

a pure and focused rage?

Today I wove a wreath of bone and fir

and filbert withes; twined in sacred holly,

incense cedar from an ancient tree.

I wove, affixed a star, and spoke a spell:

"Let this circle stand as the gate of winter-

sure passage to the days of lengthening light."

And then I whispered names in the fragrant bough

Lacing love like a scarlet ribbon through the fronds.

Long I wove and dreamed back friends and kin,

each great soul calling back the sun.

I thought at last, "My life here is not done."

and some bright star rekindled from within.

Sandra Brown

Light in the Sky

Don Hynes

You seem so far away;

when I call you

my voice echoes

in a cavern of stone,

words thick, clogged

with the refuse of belief.

I struggle with deception

the way I'm fooled

by hunger and despair.

I see you in the distance

coming toward me

with the old familiar look

the voice of a friend;

you weren't so far

except through

the glass of the world.

This is the morning

your words say,

ringing off the sky

into the deep clear blue.

donhynes.com/blog

Dr. William Bahan, DC

a new web site

billbahan.org

Book of Life - Healing For The Whole Man

Sacred  Marriage — Sacred  Dance   

David Barnes

translated  simultaneously  by

Jae Hyoung Lee

seminar  at  Samdongwon,  South  Korea  2002

Whenever I have an opportunity to stand before you and to speak I always feel very humble, and at the same time I feel very strong. I feel the strength of my own God Presence before you; but I also feel a great humility in that, before you.

Yesterday morning, I spoke a little bit about the One Law of Love—the positive radiation aspect of Love and the negative response aspect of Love. Our response has to be a love response. It can't be forced. It is a natural upwelling of response in love. If I am standing here in front of you and representing, now, the positive radiation of Love, I cannot demand your response. It is a very personal thing, isn't it? The response is on the inside. I can't force you to be open, or to respond to the spirit of the things that I would say. It has to be natural and real within each one of us. But there is one thing I know, and that is that the true God Self within this Body Temple, the One that I Am in reality, is present here now. And this is true too, for each one of you. The true Self, the God Self that you are in reality, is present here now. God Self to God Self, we are present together in this room this morning.

The true God Self has been called by many names in many spiritual traditions. Some speak of the Master within. In both the East and in the West that true God Self has been called the Lord—we may speak of Lord Buddha; Lord Krishna; or Lord Jesus. Others speak of the Soul or the Atman. The Master Jesus said: The kingdom of heaven is within you. Heaven is within you. And He spoke of the Father within. It is all the same thing—the Father within, the Lord, the Master, the Soul—referring to the true God Self within every human being. So, when I have opportunity to stand before you and speak in the current of the living spirit now, I am inviting a conversation between this true God Self and that true God Self—each one of you sitting here before me. It is not a conversation between my mind and your mind, though we use our minds in order to have a coherent conversation. It is a conversation God Self to God Self. And we use our hearts to feel and release textures of spirit into the conversation, though it is not a conversation between our hearts so much as it is a conversation God Self to God Self.

What a beautiful mind we have; and what a beautiful heart we have! And this body—what a beautiful body we have! These facilities for incarnation were made by the true God Self to enable the One that I Am and that you are to express, and to create here on earth. As a God Being, you created your body and your mind and your heart through which to bring Light and Love and Life into the world. And so did I.

There is a popular book in America, which has recently been translated into Korean, called Conversations With God. The title of the book emphasizes what we are here to do—have an ongoing conversation with God. Here, we are interested in opening the way for that conversation which goes on between true God Beings on earth. This is a vast conversation! For the most part it goes on in the silence. It is a very gentle, but also a very strong conversation. There is strength and there is power in it. There is also compassion, and gentleness and Love in that conversation. There is Light, and tenderness, and understanding. And there are also those things which challenge the way we have been thinking and the way we have been living! I would like us to consider what transpires in the remaining time of our Attunement Seminar as opportunity for an ongoing conversation with God—God Self to God Self. In this conversation, there is always something to learn. There is always more wisdom to come into our hearts and minds as we engage one with another.

If we are going to participate in both giving and receiving attunement, we need to be very interested in what the Master Jesus spoke of as heaven. He reminded us that heaven is within each one of us. He reminded us that heaven is here now. And what He was indicating is that heaven is the home, the dwelling place of the true God Self. During this little time that we have been together, we have been emphasizing atmosphere, and the spirit that is present in the atmosphere, the environment that we create together. Yesterday we showed some slides, some Kirlean photographs, which portray something of the atmosphere, or the aura, the energy field which is present around all living things. These slides gave us just a hint of the colorful nature and texture of the heaven of these forms. They offer us a visual representation of the atmosphere, the light, the radiance, around and interpenetrating all living form. This is the heaven of the form. And it is not just around the form, it is actually within and interpenetrating all aspects of the design of that form. It is around and inside every cell of the body, every cell and atom of all form, no matter how dense or how light it is. This auric field thoroughly interpenetrates the form. It is the heaven, which is here now, within and without. A consciousness of the quality of the heaven, the atmosphere, is essential if we are to offer attunement.

If we are to share attunement together, we have to be very sensitive to the quality of the atmosphere. The atmosphere can, if we care for it well, reach such a point of clarity and richness and beauty that is like fine crystal. You have probably all seen a finely crafted piece of crystal, that is quite thin, clear and transparent. Our atmosphere, that we create in our personal life as individuals, can be like that, if we are really interested and if we are careful about how we live our life. It is actually quite easy to create such an atmosphere, especially when you are living alone, in your own quiet, sacred space. We make sure that the atmosphere in our own home is one of beauty and fineness, of light crystalline texture. As God Beings we have the ability, and the responsibility, to create our own atmosphere. This heaven, this atmosphere, is the pneumaplasm that Tony Palombo introduced us to yesterday. This is the energy field that we each create in our life. Pneumaplasm—spirit substance—and it is created through this beautiful Body Temple, by reason of these seven sacred centers in the Body Temple through which spirit expresses physically, mentally, emotionally, through the heart, consciously and unconsciously. It is the expression of the true God Self, outward through these magnificent doorways for the release of spirit, that creates the crystal clarity of the heaven which is our home. Seven doorways. During this seminar we have been offering you some keys to the opening of these doors. Some of you already have in your possession and expression some of those keys, and some of those doors are already open in you. But there are more keys and there are more doors to open in all of us.

However, great care and sensitivity is required if these doors for the release of spirit are to be opened in each one. You know what it feels like if somebody turns the key in a door, opens the door, and comes smashing into a room, making a lot of noise, insensitive to what is already happening in that room before they came barging in. And so it is emphasized for us, that when we begin to use these keys, and discover that new doors in consciousness are beginning to open up, we enter with great care and gentleness and quietness of manner, observing what is already present in that new room. It is new to us. It has always been present, although unknown to us until now. We learn to be vigilant and one-pointed about how we care for the atmosphere of heaven, which is our responsibility, and our home. And if at times we are a little rough or coarse within a fine-textured atmosphere, we can notice that and make adjustments. If we make a mistake, and we get rough and disturbed, then we can draw back into the place of sensitivity and tenderness and allow the atmosphere to become still and calm, crystalline, once again.

As I mentioned, it is relatively easy to tend the garden atmosphere—I call it a garden; it is like caring for a garden—it is relatively easy to care for that garden at home alone by oneself. But when we get together in a grouping, perhaps especially among those who don't know each other all that well, it is a little more delicate and it takes a little more conscious care and alertness to tend the shared garden atmosphere and keep it rich and clear. But without a calm, clear, rich heaven there will be no attunement with the spirit of God. There will be attunement with other spirits, but not with the spirit of God, not with the spirit of Love. There will be attunement with destructive forces, not with the creative forces which come from the center of the true God Self. And we may be deeply interested in—responsive to—keenly interested in attunement with the spirit of God within this Body Temple.

The God Self that you are and the God Self that I am are already in Love with each other. This is the dance of the living Law, the dance of the One Law of Love. The positive radiation aspect of Love and the negative responsive aspect of Love—it is all Love moving and dancing and flowing within the context of a great marriage which is taking place on the inside. It has been spoken of as the marriage between the Bride and the Beloved. It is the Sacred Marriage. It is the Divine Romance. It is the great cosmic dance between Shiva and Shakti, embodied here and now. It is the loving, devotional interplay between Krishna and Radha. It is that wonderful divine interplay that goes on on the inside when the atmosphere of heaven is rich and clear. And it is the same wonderful interplay that can go on between each one of us. Once the Sacred Marriage has been consummated on the inside for each one of us as an individual, then we are available to share that union in a true way with others, and especially with those others who have also allowed the Sacred Marriage to be consummated within themselves.

This is what is potential, and indeed it is what is actually happening in the room as we interact together through this Seminar. And this is why I say that when I stand before you I feel very strong—because there is an alignment in truth that is present within me, and I am aware of the presence of the God Self that I am. And I also feel the strength of the God presence within each one of you, ready to engage with me in a clear and honest way. But there is that part of me too, which feels very humble before all that strength and all that power, within me and within you. This Body Temple, with its mind and its heart, is humble before the Lord of the Body Temple.

If our minds and our hearts are going to respond to the true God Self there must be a great depth of feeling for these things. We cannot understand it all with our conscious mind; but our hearts can feel the immensity! The strong and gentle hand of the Lord within lifts up the Body Temple, and says, "Come and be with Me. Come and be with Me." And there is a great healing that takes place. And there is a happy marriage that takes place. And within that marriage, the invisible Lord comes forth through the Body Temple and becomes visible on earth. The Body Temple itself, drawn into radiant union with the Lord, becomes filled with Light, one evidence of the great Temple of Light now appearing in the earth.

And this is attunement. This is attunement. And it is a process. It doesn't happen all at once. It is a process of marriage and emergence. It takes time. The Lord within the Body Temple has eternity to allow it to happen, gracefully. But our mind and our heart—let us let them respond quickly, quickly! And passionately. The Lord within says, "Come quickly!" It is like running to meet your lover. You hear the word and you come quickly. "Come quickly!" says the lover. "Let's not waste time."

Each of you think for a moment. There is someone that you love in your life—another man or another woman, right? There is some one that each of us loves very specifically. Even if, in the story of our life, having been husband and wife, or partners, or lovers, and having been a little harsh with one another, there is still that original love present at the core, is there not? And the spirit says, "Come! Come quickly, and be with Me." We have only a little time on earth—"Come quickly, let's be together! Let us not waste this precious time." This is the word and the dance of the Law of Love, living now through each one of us, and through all of us together. And the response is on the inside. It is not so much you responding to me, and me responding to you. The beautiful dance of the Law, the dance of polarities in balance, goes on—on the inside, and we learn to stay in attunement personally, individually. And then carefully, when it is the right time, we find that it is easy to be with others in that dance. But if it is not yet, then we don't have to. We stay the right distance away, we don't impose, we don't force anything. Let the heaven build. Space is important, sacred space maintained. But gradually, throughout our life, we will discover those people that we have been put together, by God, to be with. Maybe there will be just a few, maybe more; we don't know. It will be different for each one of us. But as I emphasized at the beginning of this session, it is a very graceful, gentle and humble process. No forcing. No imposition. No demands.

So, let's tend the garden, care for the pneumaplasm, and be sensitive to the atmosphere of heaven. As we move together, let's be alert to see who we are really with, and let's be careful with all things, and careful about how we move and interact with each other. Let's be in attunement together. And there will be so much that we will learn that is new in every moment as we stay in attunement. When I stood up here in front of you I really had no idea what I was going to say. I didn't know that we would be speaking of these things in this way together. But I can feel that there is something rich that has been occurring, and my heart is very pleased. And I feel the pleasure in the heart of God because of what has transpired between us all this morning.

What we have shared in this hour is the result of all the generation that has gone before, everything, all that everybody has offered. Each one of us has brought something very specific that has allowed for the presence of the fine atmosphere that we have shared in this morning. The word that comes in my heart now is, Glory to God in the Highest. Glory to God in the Highest. The whole design of God, of Love—Glory to God in the Highest! Glory to God in the Highest, and when that is done there is peace on earth. When, in our living, there is Glory to God in the Highest, then there comes peace on earth, peace in heaven on earth; and then there is good will between men and women. We can't have good will between men and women, we can't have peace on earth, until the atmosphere of heaven is right in the earth of our lives, until the word of our living is Glory to God in the Highest. Glory to God in the Highest and, on earth, peace and attunement for all.