Thougts

The Spiritual Dimension

| Lila Strand

There is a spiritual dimension, a dimension of profound love and light, immeasurable bliss – qualities and realities that the mind and its words cannot describe.

But how do we access it? How we can know it is completely counterintuitive. We cannot approach it by any of our worldly means. We cannot access that through our body-personality’s will, desire, skills or tools. It is beyond the mind., beyond scientific instruments. This is why the scientists and philosophers are so sure there is no spiritual world because the mind, and especially the well-trained mind – so busy with its grand thoughts – completely obfuscates and blocks the spiritual dimension.

The spiritual dimensions are so unbelievably more than the mind can grasp, and finer than the mind can access. Therefore, it is difficult, because our habit patterns are so entrenched, they work so well in this world, and only in this world does it work to control, to grasp, to attach ourselves.

When I was little wandering around in field and forest in Norway, I was always looking for some spiritual truths, so perhaps I am just writing the kind of books I was looking for. Sometimes it is like miracle when one can get a validation or an insight that hits home.

Below is my attempt to show the personal self, completely still and released from worldly concerns, being touched by Universal Energy. This energy we can call by any name, but for simplicity, and for a child’s understanding, I call it the Mother-of-Us-All.

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The Heart

Image | | Lila Strand

The workings of our physical body is nothing short of miraculous. But there is more to it – more to our heart, for instance – than the vital pumping of blood. Why is the heart always mentioned in writings and poetry, why is the heart symbol always used to denote love? It is because on some level we know where love can be found. At times we have experienced the heat in our hearts, the expansion, the glow, the joy and radiance that attends love. The Heart is the fount of love, compassion, and forgiveness.

At a deeper level, there is Light in the heart, but even if a person has not yet experienced that, they have surely experienced the love and goodness that flows out from the heart. This is something precious to value. This is something to know, to remember. The heart can only improve and grow as we remember it and use it.

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Strange

| Lila Strand

A little strange, isn’t it, to have set up a blog page and then not write?…the vagaries of life!

At first I thought it was because I am writing the third book. It is hard to be in one mode – the well-spring of creative thought and artistic beauty – and to also tailor ones thought processes to the public.

But later I have understood that I was in a kind of removed cocoon – needing to digest and ruminate on the state of the planet and humanity – yes, actually on the horrific mess we are in. I don’t mean covid, which in many ways is having a constructive effect on many, both personally and nationally. If we don’t look at the many aspects of our humanity and the planet, we can thankfully go along, coddled in our own little world, striving for our arrangements and comforts, struggling with our own challenges and fulfilling what must be fulfilled. And also trying in our own limited personal way to align our small efforts with planetary ethics. That is already a full plate. But what if we look, really look!

This time I have been reading a lot, Thomas Berry and Bill Plotkin, and Brian Swimme, but also many, many National Geographics that have been lying around for 20 years – all these thoughts and information has impacted me in a life-changing way.

And how to address what we know? How to address this! In a way I want to stand on rooftops and rail. But we know that does not work. It is also not aligned to my energies of love and understanding.

My teacher says, to do what you can according to your own capacity. This means on every level, spiritual, local and planetary. “According to your own capacity” is a very forgiving and focusing thought. This very thing bears examining. It has been a guiding force in my ruminations.

Little Star Lost - Children's Book
So he started to wander about

 

Words

| Lila Strand

If you throw away the language of the hidden subjective world

you have nothing,

no thoughts about it,

no way to communicate,

no tools, no knowledge, no help, to move and learn in that realm.

Our school-trained linear minds

Keep our sensibility imprisoned

By our rational, material, scientific words.

Our deepest essence imprisoned in the dark poverty of absence,

The absence of numinous words

When we discard the sacred words, the words we are allergic to

(Oh, those words!

Like ‘God’, ‘holiness’…)

We cannot benefit from their profound gifts

We are bereft of all they signify, what is actually behind them, what they mean in their deepest, most empowering radiant essence.

The words reek of another prison box and its wrongdoing

Its limitations, its past that is held, static
We need new words then,

Words without baggage

Otherwise we have thrown away our help, our tools, our knowing

Our way to a greater reality, that is US, actually, the total and whole US.

The right words can help give light to our sensibilities

Our depth, our yearning

Our love

I have heard ‘Mystery’.

The great Eternal Mystery

The Mother Father Mystery of the Universe

The Mystery of the All

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It’s a start

 

Seeds

| Lila Strand

Perhaps this try at posting a poem can be sorted by a little introduction…since my posts also appear on the front page, scrambled. So, how will this appear?…I think some punctuation might help the scramble?

 

Tender, forceful with life,

Seed heads push through the dark soil holding them down,

Up to light and life.

 

So too,

Our good seeds, unnamed, but yearning for

luminous

numinous

fields of eternity

Our good seeds are often held down by our own darkness and dross

 

Would they push through

Would they touch the hidden light, their own self

How radiantly joyful would we be

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