I have been reading James Redfield's new novel: the Twelfth Insight. Without reading any reviews, I can predict that the reviewers say the novel was too much a regurgitation of his previous three novels. Perhaps a fair complaint. I do think that for those who have been troubled by wars fought for religious reasons and with concern for the Middle East they may find interesting his ideas about the shared roots of religions as a ground for connection. (Although this too is not the most original idea.)
While I certainly enjoyed revisiting what Redfield has to say about synchronistic events - always significant in my own faith life - what I did find interesting was Redfeld's idea that we can use intuition predicatively. In this novel as the main characters learn/remember to tune into syncrhonicities and the common bond between all of us, they learn when contemplating a possible step to see if they can picture the two most likely possibilities and to use the feedback loop of what they can picture and what they cannot as Light from the
Universe shed upon their path.
This has been helpful to me as I have been recently contemplating one of those places where the spiritual tradition I grew up in goes bump with the beliefs I have come to learn and trust in my adult life. So my tradition teaches me that when we consider a possible action, to listen in the silence for The Holy Author's divine guidance as to whether this is a right course of action for us. Certainly within the Christian tradition it frames God as having power over us, although I long ago released that belief for one that is more mutual and collaborative. There are models out there that talk about a co-creation process with God. That does not seem quite right either because it implies we know as much as the Creator which is far from my experience. But in my experience there is our own will and there is the Creator's intent for all life, and yes I like to believe or experience an intention for each of us as well. Perhaps that is simply our own soul's work and what we have come to do which can place us either in alignment with Spirit or out of alignment with Spirit.
I have written much in other entries about the delicate process of "listening" to God and how the Divine often speaks in symbolic language, metaphor, or in synchronicity. But this sort of begs the question of how we "plan" our lives. Christianity would suggest we should not plan our lives but listen for and be "obedient" to God's intention for our lives. (Or in some strands make our own choices while being obedient to Biblical directives). Some strands of new age thinking such as The Secret would seem to suggest that we put out our intention, vision or desire out to the Universe and just manifest that which we wish. I have deeply appreciated Neale Donald Walsch's attempt to readdress the messages from the Secret in his book: Happier than God. In this book Walsch clarifies that we can only align with the nature of the universe as it is which he says is all interconnected and for the Good of all. Thus he says when we attempt to manifest with either harmful intent or selfish intent we actually step out of alignment, and the messages we receive will simply bring us back into alignment for the common good.
So Walsch would say we could plan whatever we want as long as it aligned with the Universe. Wayne Dyer who of course writes extensively about this in his book The Power of Intention, as well as in his other books, also talks a great deal about how to be in alignment, how to avoid blocks and other pitfalls. But Dyer, while saying we can not be poor enough or sick enough to prevent other people from being poor or sick, is silent on the question of how we plan or whether our plans can be selfish or create negative effects for others.
Recently, I have been trying to discern whether to commit civil disobedience on behalf of climate change. In my old model I would listen and not act until I received a clear message to go forward. So far I have not received such a green light...although in both previous occasions in my life I contemplated a possible action with my mind analyzing the justice and injustice of the situation, and in both occasions just days before The Just One spoke powerfully and clearly with unmistakable direction right before the action with a power I could not have ignored.
In my new model I have been trying to hold a vision of the world re-emerging out of fossil fuel dominated world into one that uses sustainable alternative fuels. This is very challenging to hold a vision of since both the actions and mindsets that leads to carbon consumption are deeply embedded in our society. I know a visualizing process taught by Elise Boulding, the founder of modern Peace studies, which if engaged in with great detail can reveal strategic action, but this is different than a spiritual process. The process both Dyer and Walsch talk about would seem to suggest hold the big future vision, (not the yearning or you manifest the yearning) and then let it go in the confidence that the Universe will manifest it. Dyer does talk about working from the end which he describes as imagining a book already written and then writing it. This however still doesn't answer for me the question: how do we make yes/no decisions about possible actions? Oh, the moral from the immoral is fairly easy to discern, but should I take this or action or not is a different question?
This is where Redfield's concept of trying to picture a certain action and the other course (even if that is inaction) and see if we can picture it, provides, I think, an interesting intersection between these two paradigms. It suggests to me for the first time how to listen for the Divine Author's message regarding that which dwells in the future. When I tried to picture myself getting arrested I did not see it, but oddly it was because I did not really see the whole group getting arrested either! Perhaps this means Obama will not approve the XL pipeline. Or perhaps as happened in the past two occasions, that as events unfold a new Truth will plant itself in my heart with a correspondingly strong picture of that very arrest. My hope is in either, both? paradigms will be to listen in faithfulness and obedience to the Greatest Truth as it reveals itself.
