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Ecstasy
| Inner
focus |
adrenals |
| Outer
focus |
whole body
consciousness |
| Color |
white |
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Welcome
Feature Article from Independence, West Virginia
Dreams of Ecstasy
Why the Adrenals?
Book Recommendations
Ecstasy in the News?
Who’s Who in Ecstasy
Poetry
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From the Editor |
This month we are featuring Ecstasy, a Containing Principle (#14). The root of the word, ex-stasis, suggests standing-outside, so we often associate ecstasy with being out of the body or extra-normal consciousness. But as a spiritual principle, Ecstasy is a container for multiple levels of consciousness. Another way of putting it is that ecstasy is an energy that comes from the consciousness of the seamless wholeness from which everything is created. If you’re contracted with Ecstasy, that wholeness enters into your beingness in a very powerful way. --------Tamar Frankiel, Editor
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Feature Essay from Independence, West Virginia |
Our featured contributor this month has Sun and Midheaven in Ecstasy! |
e find Ecstasy, along with Resistance, is in the very middle of the Containing Principles, where Spirit and Matter meet. In The Invisible Garment, we learn that “Ecstasy …is the principle that reconstructs form after it has been deconstructed by Resistance.” The angels tell us, “Ecstasy occurs when all of one’s bodies (physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and energetic) are perfectly aligned so that energy is able to express itself truthfully through you. . . Your whole being is alive and alert—awake to its reality.” Several years ago, Jack Kornfield wrote a book called After the Ecstasy, the Laundry. Could it be that when heart and mind and soul agree, even the laundry seems holy and rewarding?
We moved to the country thirty years ago. Back then, we lived amid farmers and buckwheat fields, dairy barns and hay wagons, tractors and combines. When my sixth grade students grew up, they went off to college, got advanced degrees and moved away. The fields grew quiet, the gravel roads were paved. The fourth (and fifth) traffic lights in our county were installed in front of the big new box store. The country wasn’t quite as rural as it had been.
Recently, I’ve noticed something new occurring in this West Virginia neighborhood. My “kids,” 30- or 40-something now, are returning, and change is happening on these back roads. Phyllis is an engineer who raises chickens and guinea fowl in her side yard. Brad works for a government sub-contractor, but in the evenings and on weekends, he’s a lumberjack who also raises rabbits and hogs. His wife is learning to grow sweet potatoes in five gallon buckets. Serena is a landscape architect who works for an East Coast firm. She sends her site plans over the internet. When her baby is older, she plans to get a Jersey milk cow.
Tracy is a pharmacist. She uses expired IV solutions to rig up drips for her tomato plants. Her husband, an electrician, does the wiring for Larry, the remodeling contractor. Larry has a degree in geology, but likes working with his hands.
Remember Yeats’ poem about the rough beast who slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? It happens because “the falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold.” As I write this, I see on the national news, a piece about some teen boys who have rediscovered the Rubik’s Cube, the popular twisty puzzle from the '80s. One boy is able to put the colors back into place in 16 seconds. He says the secret is that the center block does not move.
Could it be that the principle of Ecstasy allows the center to hold? Could neighborhoods be ecstatic centers, energetic vortices that ask us to say “yes!”? But how do we say “yes”? In the book of Luke, we are told “Love the Lord your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” All the bodies emotional, spiritual, physical, and mental are aligned – and moving always toward the other.
After the Ecstasy, the neighborhood? I hope so.
--Carol Bucklew
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Dreams of Ecstasy |
Learning about the principle of Ecstasy from our dreams may not be so easy. Experiencing a “high” in a dream is not necessarily an indicator of the presence of Ecstasy as a spiritual principle. Awareness of wholeness may be a better sign. But Ecstasy dreams tend to flash in and out in brief images; they rarely lend themselves to writing a detailed story. Here are several short dreams:
Two men are talking, one a researcher, the other a coordinator or supervisor of his work. The Coordinator is telling the Researcher that he’s too bogged down in details. Also, he says the darkest of events has to be integrated into the overall picture.
An image then appears of two halves of a large ring, the left half silver, the right gold, moving toward each other and then clicking together. The Researcher then says something in self-defense about how long it will take. The Coordinator responds, “300 hours! We’re thinking of 300 years!” EOD
It has snowed 30 inches. I can see clearly the snow piled high outside. Later in the dream I am with my best friend from high-school (who has now moved beyond form). We go to get our bicycles - black and white ones, locked together, like we used to do in high school. Is the snow gone that now we could ride? EOD.
These
dreams, years apart from different dreamers, reveal the dynamic of black/white, silver/gold. The dark, black or silver signify the “void” or “dark space” of all-potential, while bright light, white, and gold indicate the dramatic emergence of manifest energy. Interestingly, both dreams had the number 30 encoded within the dream, suggesting the unity of all the principles now being manifested by human beings.
At a going-away party for a woman friend, a male friend comes out of a tent in a costume that completely covers him. He’s an oracle with a big white sheet around his body and a large headpiece that is very bizarre, white with painted markings and eyes high in the head. I have put that on myself once, and I know it’s hard to see out or orient oneself, so I speak to him to help him know where he is. Then he goes to talk to the woman who’s leaving.
This dream seems to be saying, Ecstasy is often oracular – perhaps that is why Ecstasy dreams are brief, intense, and even bizarre – and it is hard to find an orientation within them.
I’ m in an elevator at the airport parking garage, with my bike. The elevator goes up but instead of stopping at the top it keeps going. It flips sideways and starts swirling in huge circles. I’m frightened. Then the movement stops, the elevator disappears, and I’m looking at a cloudy grey sky. An opening appears in the middle with feathery clouds and white light. It fades then appears again, with part of a white orb in the hole. Then again, with light purple and lavender clouds and light. I’m aware of my body and wonder if I’m waking up but no, I just hear my breathing and feel my position on the bed. The same image appears a few more times, with white or lavender light. Then I say, “thank you” and fade into sleep. EOD
Looking at a black square on my left and a square with white clouds on my right. I ask, "What is the purpose of the dark?" The answer comes from behind/above me, "To give form to the light." The black square becomes deep space and the clouds fill a blue sky. EOD
Again two different dreamers and times. One has an experience more of the oracle – an answer to one of the mysteries of existence - while the other has an experience of bodies-wholeness, combining an apparent out-of-body experience and vision with the feeling of sleeping and breathing.
To find Ecstasy in your dreams look for the oracular, for images with simple but dramatic form, and strong examples of the colors white or metallic gold.
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Why
the Adrenals? |
The adrenal glands are a metaphor for Ecstasy because both are parts of central mechanisms for modulating the whole system. In the physical realm, we know that adrenalin rapidly readies our body to use energy in great spurts of effort (the stress response of fight/flight). But this does NOT mean that an adrenalin rush is spiritual! Think metaphorically: just as the adrenals are central to shifting a wide range of bodily operations (digestion, respiration, muscle tension, etc), so also Ecstasy – at the center of our 30 principles – modulates connections among all the principles to create new form.
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Book Recommendations |
Why Can’t We Be Good? by Jacob Needleman
Needleman invites the reader into a philosophical process of examining how humans can move out of our cycle of violence, division and duality. He suggests that we can access an inner moral power through conscious attention.This moral power is not found in spoken or written knowledge or ideas but in an energy field in which we live and move and have our being. Needleman’s foundational belief is that this energy, the mind of God, is always available within us to guide our words and act.
The book relates to the spiritual principle of Ecstasy because Needleman suggests it is the body and awareness of bodily experience that provide access to this field, this mind of the divine. His description of tuning into the good through bodily experience is highly compatible with Connie’s writing about Ecstasy as a deep wakefulness. Needleman shares experiments with his students which illustrate how to awaken to this body wisdom. He revisits ancient philosophers and lays bare the missing element in moral discourse – the wisdom that emerges when human discourse makes space for the energetic field to enter consciousness through the body.
Offering From the Conscious Body: The Discipline of Authentic Movement by Janet Adler
The angels revealed to Connie that “Ecstasy is simply the Divine flow of energy.” Janet Adler’s book describes a process for tuning into that energy flow within an intentional, communal vessel. Synthesizing mysticism, Jungian psychology and movement therapy, Authentic Movement enables a person to surrender projections, story-telling and judgments, with the intention of allowing the energy of direct bodily experience to guide the person into a non-ego defined state. The care and integrity of focusing on the body, as one person moves and another witnesses, reveals the interconnectedness of consciousness which is arrived at through ecstatic energy.
---Robin Moore
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Ecstasy in the News |
Can Ecstasy be studied? produced? invoked? Check out these efforts and tell us what you think at www.generositydreams.blogspot.com.
- Headline: SoCal College offers Happiness Studies doctorate
Claremont Graduate University is offering an unusual doctoral program focusing on what makes people happy. "Most research on human behavior has focused on what goes wrong in human affairs: aggression, mental disease, failure and so on," said Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced chick-sent-me-high-ee), head of the university's Quality of Life Research Center. "We don't know enough about what makes life worth living, what gives people hope and energy and enjoyment," he said. . . . However, the Ph.D. program is anything but touchy-feely. It will feature hardcore studies in research and statistics. http://cbs5.com/watercooler/local_story_074152255.html
- Headline:
Enki Curriculum for the whole child inspired by Waldorf. . .
From ecstasy to empowerment? This is from an explanation of the Enki Education approach to “First Grade Readiness”:
“The kindergartner needs the seamless wholeness of the world reflected at every turn. The first grader needs to have the sense of relationship born of a separated self, reflected at every turn. Once the child’s consciousness has separated or individuated to move to a new matrix, she cannot go back to what was once the safe home of seamless wholeness. Her safety will now be in relationship and in personal competence or empowerment. When the time is right, this is what the child needs to have mirrored; this is where her health lies."
http://www.enkieducation.org/html/materials/tghs1-tghstgb-sample-b.pdf
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6.
Who's Who in Ecstasy |
A search for Sun in Ecstasy produces an interesting group of people. Themes of non-conformity, anti-institutionalism, and libertarianism are intertwined with a wide variety of careers:
- Marie Curie, 1867-1934
Polish-born scientist known for her work in radioactivity. Denied the right to enter a university in Poland, she moved to Paris where she became the first woman to win a Nobel prize in the sciences, and later the only scientist ever to win a Nobel prize in two sciences (physics and chemistry).
- Mata Hari, 1876-1914
Famed for her exotic dancing, this Dutch woman became courtesan to politicians and military personnel, then a double agent in World War I. She was executed by the French for espionage on behalf of Germany. She took the name “Mata Hari” from Indonesian/ Malay words meaning “Eye of the Day."
- Marc Chagall, 1887-1985
Artist from Belarus who portrayed many biblical themes reflecting his Jewish heritage. In the 1960s and 1970s, Chagall involved himself in large-scale projects involving important civic and religious buildings.
- Charles Lindbergh, 1902-1974
American pilot known for the first solo, non-stop flight across the Atlantic in 1927; he also helped design the first artificial heart (an unsuccessful invention). He was interested in influencing international affairs but his rightist views bordered on the extreme.
- Robert Heinlein, 1907-1988
Science-fiction writer, the first to break into “mainstream” magazines in the 1940s; insisted on a high ‘science’ standard in the genre and also promoted, in his writing, themes of liberty and non-conformity.
- Albert Camus, 1913-1960
Philosopher and novelist in the French language, Camus was the first African-born writer (Algerian) to receive a Nobel prize for literature. A leader of the French left, he opposed fascism, war, and capital punishment.
- Alan Watts, 1915-1973
Best known for popular books on “Zen-ist” philosophy (e.g., This Is It and The Way of Zen), Watts had few ties to institutions, and wrote on many wide-ranging interests -- child rearing, the arts, cuisine, education, law and freedom, architecture, sexuality, and the uses and abuses of technology.
- Pierre Cardin, 1922-
Clothing designer known for his futuristic designs with geometric shapes and motifs, often unrelated to the female form. He advanced into unisex fashions and later designed automobile interiors.
- Maya Angelou, 1922-
American poet and memoirist, active in the civil rights movement and many other causes; perhaps America’s best known living poet.
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Poetry |
WINTER HEAVENS
George Meredith (1828-1909)
Sharp is the night, but stars with frost alive
Leap off the rim of earth across the dome.
It is a night to make the heavens our home
More than the nest whereto apace we strive.
Lengths down our road each fir-tree seems a hive,
In swarms outrushing from the golden comb.
They waken waves of thoughts that burst to foam:
The living throb in me, the dead revive.
Yon mantle clothes us: there, past mortal breath,
Life glistens on the river of the death.
It folds us, flesh and dust; and have we knelt
Or never knelt, or eyed as kine the springs
Of radiance, the radiance enrings:
And this is the soul's haven to have felt.
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