Thirty or so years ago, maybe in the mid-1990s, I had a sort of vision out on Plum Island, off the coast of northern Massachusetts. I had been mulling gender dynamics in spiritual developments in the Eastern Mediterranean basin over the past few thousand years. There on Plum Island, I “felt” the more feminine, egalitarian, earth-based systems– the horizontal — a few millennia ago breaking open for the upthrusting masculine, hierarchical, domination-based system: the horizontal broken open for the emergence of the vertical. I now “saw” the vertical beginning to crumble, as if a hose pointed upward had been turned off, and the last drops of water were falling toward the ground. In response, I “saw-felt” the horizontal pulling itself together and beginning to rise. Rising up the vertical until it was at the proportion of a cross, and there clicking into place. At that crossing, a “new” dimension was opened, piercing through the crossing toward a less binary way of being.
Today, I was walking up in the woods above this city. From the Spark sessions [link to Events page], I have developed an affection for, and sense of affinity with, the mycorrhizal network, the interwoven mass of mycelium that connects trees in a forest, providing nutrients, medicines, and information. Since my mind likes the easiest path to understanding, the principle of symmetry across scale, analogies, and metaphors is attractive to me.
Thus, until someone convinces me otherwise, my work and prayer are based on the belief that there is a similar network to that in the forest floor, connecting all sentient beings, perhaps all beings, maybe all creation. Like most things, it grows through appreciation. So, as I was coming down toward the pavement for the descent into town, I put some conscious appreciation into the network on which I was walking.
And up it came like steam from a pond on a cool morning, like the horizontal rising up to catch the vertical.
Five days a week, part of my morning routine is connecting with spiritual nodes around the globe. This morning, for the first time, I added in connection with the spiritual nodes within some political centers. I felt something stirring.
Now, in my descent from the Park and its woods, I felt the power from beneath, from the underside, gathering the horizontal and beginning its rise up to its right proportion with the vertical, where the way can open for the deep healing-whole-ing so needed. A new way of perceiving.
May we become open to all that is, to all the conceptual allies waiting for our appreciation in order to pour their gifts into our salvific endeavors.