While we confine our interest in Field practice to that inner state of self-friendliness we call “alignment,” we are aware that the Law of Correspondence operates—that is to say, that who we are determines the contours of our reality, inner and outer, for the universe is always paying attention to and “proving” who we believe ourselves to be. If we believe we are victims, we will not have to wait long for the universe to arrange conditions that allow us to demonstrate that belief. If we believe ourselves lucky, then this belief, too, will work its magic, for the universe is a magical place, and we ought not to let those who have become inured to the wondrous tell us otherwise.

Einstein said that the most important question we can ask is the question, “Is the universe a friendly place?” Here at the Field Center, we feel that there is a more important and prior question: “Are we friendly?” for the universe is neither more nor less friendly than we are resolved to be in the inmost recess of our being. In this, we see that the Law of Assumption is none other than the Golden Rule, for as we are, so we receive, and with an efficiency that never rests, never takes a vacation, never forgets. So we are wise to direct our attention not to what we are getting but to what we are giving, for the giving informs the getting, and does so with the authority and relentlessness of natural law. If we are friendly, which first and foremost means self-friendly, then we must find ourselves living in a friendly universe. And this is why we answer Dr. Einstein’s question with a question.

Now, if this self-friendliness were easy to come by, everyone would embrace it, and the evening news would not be what it is. We would not give in to the siren songs of adverse fact; we would release old payoffs gracefully the moment we outgrew them; we would be more inventive than reactive; love for the ideal would motivate us more than fear; and we would be so busy lighting the candles of alignment that there would be no darkness to curse. But we have been tireless in coming up with ways to be set against ourselves. Do we settle for less than our dreams, our passion, our “bliss” as Joe Campbell calls it—having condemned the best in us as “unrealistic” or “impractical?” Do we give in to despair or hopelessness, or assume the role of the victim? Do we secretly believe that we have been thrown here without purpose or meaning, to fend for ourselves until death comes for us? Are we unwilling to receive? Are we carrying burdens of responsibility that we are not constituted to carry? Do we deny what we know in our heart and gut, or pretend to know more than we do? Do we secretly believe that no matter how hard we try, it’s never enough? These are only some of the ways that we have devised to be unfriendly—and we wonder why life can be so hard.

This is why we do the work we do at the Field Center. Even one person shifting from contradiction and suffering to alignment and joy becomes a candle, an example, an inspiration, and a nonlocal influence. And we recognize further that, while the work is inner, the results ripple outward into reality, infusing the air with the friendly self-relation such that everyone with whom an aligned person comes into local contact and many with whom he or she does not will end up smiling, perhaps without knowing why. One form these ripples of self-befriending take in their less local expressions is something Carl Jung termed “synchronicity”—a word for ingenious timings that demonstrate an extraordinary degree of relevance in a form that proves helpful or useful. These are the Field’s ingenious remedies that come unbidden, when we have forgot to look for them, when we are too busy being in love with being alive to believe that we’re lacking anything, when our identity has become an outflow of gratitude for the improbable gift of this very moment. Then we see the friendly universe taking up our cause, opening doors where there were none that we could see, making the arrangements and connections for the fulfillment of our heart’s desire in ways we never could have anticipated.

Technorati Tags: Field Center, Consciousness, Metaphysics, Reality

This morning I received the following email from Field training student Dan Sobral:

I purchased the Course in mid December and first I just want to say I really love it. I can’t believe how much material is packed into each session. I’m getting a lot out of it. What attracted me to the Field Center is your central idea of “alignment, not manifestation,” but what puzzles me is this: Why not just have one intention—to align with the Field Itself, to establish oneself in that greater identity without the need for all these other intentions? I like the statement “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you.” If we aligned with the Field, wouldn’t the Field automatically bring about what’s best in any staging area of life? You seem to allude to this idea in last week’s Realities blog on stillness, where you mention that there may not be any need to “place an order.” It just feels that when I align with the Field Itself there really are no needs and nothing to order, yet a lot of great things happen effortlessly. Just wondered if you would respond to this. Thank you.

Here’s my reply:

Thanks for your email. Glad you’re getting so much out of the study. Technically, and to be precise, “alignment” in our model is a certain sort of relationship between desire and belief, where the two are in friendly agreement. So there is nothing in the model that provides for “aligning with the Field.” Also, “intention” means, “that which we take to be real and with which we identify.” Of course, we all take many things to be real, and identify with many different qualities. The idea of “having just one intention” seems to be assigning a different meaning to the term, probably something like “having one desire.” Students sometimes confuse intention with desire, thinking they’re intending something simply because they want it. Presuming you mean, “why not have just one desire?”—the answer is entirely practical. Each of us has many desires. Deliberate intending gives us a way to enter into the version of self for whom the desire has been fulfilled, rather than experiencing desire as a state of lack.

As for the religious reference (“See ye first the Kingdom of God. . .”), of course Field training isn’t religious, but the problem with this idea in our terms is that, while beautiful in its own way, it invites a strategic approach. We identify with and claim the ideal for its own sake, not so “things will be added,” though we understand that the Law of Correspondence is always operating to fulfill whatever identity we’re claiming, wittingly or unwittingly. The point of the blog piece was that even just being still is clearing counterintentions and establishing an aligned consciousness, and that this practice alone can be enough for us to notice things improving in our lives. It wasn’t meant as a broad technique to replace deliberate intending.

That said, the intention that “I have no needs,” or “I have no wants” as a kind of shortcut may operate as what the Course calls a “Level-2″ intention (two kinds: ontological law and structural intention; we’re talking herea bout the latter), fulfilling itself to the extent that one actually claims it and rests in the body sense. Level-2 intentions involve broad, structural/formal beliefs about the process itself, e.g., “I am aligned in all four staging areas,” or “The Field brings me fulfillment in the perfect form, the perfect time, and the perfect way,” etc. Structual intentions are self-fulfilling, of course (all intentions are that don’t contradict ontological law). The Level-2 intention, “The Field automatically brings me what’s best,” while perhaps aligned, tends against the ontological law that we are each “radically responsible” for our intentions and identity, and so, indirectly, our reality. There is no “catch-all belief” that we can adopt to make an end run around participating fully, which means coming to terms with our desires and intentions as they arise.

Ultimately, we have whatever desires we have, and whatever intentions, and this is where practice begins. There is nothing wrong with desire; to the contrary, it’s miraculous and wonderful, as is Particle identity itself. So it’s not that there’s “a need for all these other intentions.” We have no choice but to intend, which means to take things to be real and identify with them, and each of us is embodying more intentions than we know, by our nature; each of us has come to many ontological conclusions which are informing who we are. They make up the richness of self. The idea of consolidating them into one master, Level-2 intention would be something like looking to consolidate all the different web sites of the Internet into one site, so there would be “no need for all these other web sites.” We have as many desires as we have, and as the Course states, “the Field operates in the truth.” In practical terms, this means that it’s far more important and useful to honestly acknowledge what we want, and to stay honest with the evolving story of our desires, than to consolidate, even with an aligned Level-2 belief. This is our curriculum, and there are no shortcuts other than to become, desire by desire, intention by intention, more conscious, more self-aware and self-friendly, more the version of self that embodies our ideal.

Thanks to Dan for submitting this thoughtful question, and for allowing us to share the exchange with you here.

We Field training students tend to think of conscious creating solely in terms of deliberate intending, but the students reading this will understand and perhaps appreciate how easy it is for our focus to fall primarily on the second and third steps. Step one of our method, which tells us to settle into the native stillness of self, too often gets overlooked. We may be in a hurry to “place an order” with the universe; we may feel urgent or impatient, and so on—any and all of which works against that state of spirit that the method is designed to inspire in us. Indeed, the Course states plainly that, “the aim of practice is alignment, not manifestation.” We are advised to let go of all concern about factual manifestations, and instead, to take up a certain inner relation to the ideal, leaving all else to the Field. Thus, in three steps, we go from poise to poise, and the circle of creation is complete as we rest in a private sabbath that belongs to the inner world rather than the world of Saturdays or Sundays.

“My ship comes in over a calm sea,” writes Florence Scovel Shinn. Any student remembering this essential point would never skip the first of the three steps provided in the Course. It isn’t just that being still prepares us for the steps that follow; no, stillness is creative in its own right. In fact, simply being still clears contradictions we may never know we were carrying, and if we did no more than take up the practice of stillness, refusing to allow the day’s demands to distract us from the inner oasis, we would find our lives improving spontaneously in surprising ways, without the need to “place an order.”

On occasion, students have asked me if it’s necessary to meditate to practice Field training. The quick answer is no, if by “meditate” one means some formal practice involving postures or mantras or something similarly formal. That said, it is fair to say that the regular practice of stillness is so important, that one may find his or her practice faltering or stalling if such a practice has not become part of one’s daily routine. In other words, while it is not necessary to meditate, it is essential to discover the meditative state of simply being—of allowing oneself to slip out of one’s will and the endless, constricting concerns wrought by immersion in the four staging areas—love, health, supply, and life direction—and begin to practice allowing, for what we allow informs who we are, and who we are determines our reality.

It may sound like a radical thing to suggest, but this week, if you’re facing some situation that has left you feeling stressed, resistant, and bound by the tightening coils of willfulness, why not “go the other way,” as we say, and instead of going to war, go to peace? This peace is not the peace of conditions, which by their nature are forever changing. It is the peace that lies at the center of self, the “I AM” that has always been neither more nor less than itself, the center of the hurricane that is the world, calm, and silently creative. Resting at the center, you may discover the mysterious efficiency of this stillness, its irresistible authority, its stunning generosity. It is the inner jewel that we carry in unawareness, the true wealth of our being, awaiting only our recognition to serve us.

Technorati Tags: Field Center, Consciousness, Metaphysics, Reality

It seems like a simple enough matter to state, as Field training does again and again, that identity is the key to conscious creating, that “reality is in the I of the beholder.” Yet I suspect that if we caught even a glimpse of the identities to which we are giving ourselves, we would be startled if not shocked, for we would see that we are not who we think we are, that we are often deeply committed to identities that we would never wittingly accept. Let me give a simple example: One Field training student announced proudly that she was a “survivor.” This is how she saw herself. What she did not see was how this identification amounted to a contract with the Field that her reality had to fulfill, and she continually found herself in situations to survive. Another student understood her identity as a mother, with “mother” defined as a woman tirelessly devoted to rescuing her children from one crisis after another. This was, it seemed self-evident to her and so beyond questioning, what a good and loving mother did. Unfortunately, and this part of it was anything but evident to her, the identity of “the one who rescues” requires others who are willing to read the opposite lines—which is to say, to need rescuing. The moment she realized that her commitment to “mother-as-rescuer” involved a secret, nonlocal contract that her children, out of their great love for her, kept signing and fulfilling, the very love that had informed the contradiction made the old choice unacceptable.

Now, neither the woman who saw herself as a survivor nor the mother who did not realize the nonlocal implications of needing to save her children even suspected that they had given themselves to contradiction, and not just a five-and-dime, take-it-or-leave-it contradiction, but a contradiction that gave the universe no choice but to keep presenting problems and suffering. We may take up a role in which we feel some sense of pride, but what does that role presuppose? What condition must be fulfilled in order for that identity to be expressed?

There is a well-known Native American saying: “What you protect, you make weak.” The one who identifies with the role of the protector as a rule does not see how that identity invites weakness in others. The payoff of assuming such an identity eclipses the price it exacts, but the Field doesn’t miss a trick, and we get what we require whether or not we understand what the requirement itself requires.

Every identity has its dialectic, which means that every identity is a curriculum that eventually leads beyond itself to something greater. Identities in this sense are seeds; they are broken open by what they contain. This breaking open takes place the moment we wake up to the secret contract implicit in whatever identity has had our allegiance. Hidden in every identity, however tormented by contradiction, is an ideal, the longing for the fulfillment of something beautiful and good. There is something beautiful in the resolve to “survive,” to overcome all odds, and so on. In the same way, the impulse to protect and support and help those we love ultimately is an expression of selflessness and devotion that bears witness to the deep and abiding empathy of love. And yet. . .and yet—the preconditions are there, on the hidden side of the ideal, like the dark side of the moon. And we are responsible for the contracts we sign, even the secret ones.

Field training is a path of self-awareness. It is not something that we can use to create this or that factual condition. In truth we, as Heidegger noted about philosophy in general, we cannot do anything with it—but if we let it, it can do something with us. Something wonderful.

Technorati Tags: Field Center, Consciousness, Metaphysics, Reality

The body, the form we see in the mirror and with which we identify the “I” is not inherently alive. This can be a startling idea until one reflects upon it, but the truth is that the body only expresses life as long as it is quickened by consciousness. In these terms, the tongue is not aware of what it is saying, the eye does not know what it sees, and so on. Once the enlivening consciousness is withdrawn, neither the tongue nor the eye is able to express life any longer, and the body’s inherently inert state is revealed. Thus the body cannot die, because it is is never alive, except insofar as the consciousness dwelling within it for a time animates it, and this consciousness, the true and unseen self, cannot die. The ancient Vedas have this to say of it:

The Self is not born; it does not die.
Fire does not burn it; water does not wet it.
Birthless, deathless, it goes on from age to age.

This truth prompted Seth/Jane Roberts to state that “we’re as dead now as we’re ever going to be.” The difficulty in experiencing this comes from the Particle self’s tenacious identification with the body, for it is our nature as Particles to measure reality by what is seen rather than what is unseen, and in this, from a more expanded perspective, the Particle has things exactly backwards. It is only partly correct, then, to state that the self is “in the body” since, from a more awakened vantage, the body is in the self. The experience of this, however, goes far beyond the mere stating of it. One way to get at this experience is to regard the one we see in the mirror as a construct, a version of us much like the one we might see in a dream. In any dream in which we behold ourselves in this way, in this or that situation and so on, we likely would not notice that there we are existing simultaneously as the dreamer. In other words, we are observing some Particle version carrying out the local action of the dream story, and this Particle version is the self, but the one observing, the one who is not in the dream but from whose point of view the dream is unfolding, that is also the self. As protagonist in the dream and as observer, we are bilocated, with one version of self local and the other, not. The same model can be “caught in the act,” as it were, in our waking experience, for the one who is aware, despite identifying with the body, is not “in the body.” Rather, the body is in it in the same way that the dream is in the dreamer.

If one catches this angle of vision, something nonlocal turns inside out. It is difficult to lock into language for the simple reason that language is a Particle invention, and as a rule presupposes Particle assumptions. There are ways in which language can point to or perhaps evoke such fringe meanings, however. Poetry, for example, has this power. So does humor in certain forms. Zen koans are famous for this iconoclastic effect. The point to contemplate here is captured beautifully in a poem by Juan Ramon Jimenez, a Spanish poet who translated the verses of Tagore from the Hindu. The poem is entitled, I Am Not I:

I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
the one who remains silent while I talk,
the one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,
the one who takes a walk when I am indoors,
the one who will remain standing when I die.

Encountering this “I that is not I” illuminates conscious creating from the inside out in a way that cannot be imagined in strictly Particle terms. It is the doorway of homecoming and immortality. To know this less local I is to wake up from the long sleepwalk of Particle life and, as another poet, T.S. Eliot describes, “to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

Technorati Tags: Field Center, Consciousness, Metaphysics, Reality

Welcome back to Realities, and happy 2010 to all.

Over the holiday break, I received an email from a woman making what she called an “unusual request.” She was having a problem accessing the Adobe Acrobat PDF files in our Free Library because she was visually impaired and used a screen reader (a software application that converts screen text to auditory or Braille output), but she kept getting an error message that the PDF files were restricted. Furthermore, she could not open the MP3 (audio) versions of the files in the Free Library either due to some alleged issue with Javascript (perhaps she meant Flash; the MP3 files don’t use Javascript), and wanted to know if I could do something to help. We do in fact restrict the PDF files with basic security that prevents copying, but have always been careful to distill these files so that they remain accessible to screen readers, and this was the first report I’d had of difficulty of this sort, though this woman certainly was not the first person to come to our web site with special accessibility requirements. She is not a Field training student, but of course I wanted to do what I could. Within the hour, after running a quick test, I redistilled all the Free Library files sans copying restriction, zipped them up, and sent them to her, and this seemed to do the trick.

Now, during the email exchanges that allowed us to troubleshoot what was going on and work out what to try, she began criticizing the design of the web site on the grounds that it had not sufficiently considered accessibility standards. I thought this was a strange tone to take in any case, but even more so since it was in the same breath, as it were, that she was asking for and receiving special accommodation of her “unusual request.” I did my best to explain that we indeed had taken accessibility into account in constructing the site. Making the Free Library files available in both visual and aural formats was itself an example of such consideration, as was ensuring that text was resizable throughout the site rather than locked in graphic files, and so on. There is a point, however, I went on to say, past which incorporating universal standards begins to have an adverse effect on site functionality. Furthermore, I explained, any organization must work within the limits of its available resources. To illustrate this, I pointed out that the site content is available only in English. Those who don’t speak English might be critical on the grounds that they are not being sufficiently considered. She took issue with this analogy, too, as she seemed to be inclined to do increasingly with my position, and it became apparent to me that I was wandering into the dimly lit halls of an unfriendly conversation, at which point I offered a final attempt to satisfy her objections, ending the note with my wish that she would enjoy the articles.

That was not the end of it. The next day, I received an email from the woman thanking me for the files and the “interesting exchange,” and asking if I would send one of the files again in a different format, as she had had trouble opening it. In light of the emails of the night before, the sudden return to a friendly tone struck me as disingenuous, and likely informed by the need for still further accommodation. I emailed back telling her that the files I already had sent would have to suffice, that I had not found the exchange of the previous evening “interesting” but “adversarial, critical, and inappropriate.” Field training is predicated on truthfulness, and this was the simple truth of it. I told her further that we at the Field Center do not engage in or tolerate polemics with either students or non-students, and that in my judgment there was not a good fit either for study or further communication between us. I trusted that she would respect this, and I again closed the note with best wishes.

Now here is where the thing becomes instructional, and I hope that this will be useful to anyone who has stayed with the story this far. Not surprisingly, I received yet another reply, this one criticizing me personally on the grounds that I was “making her responsible for my perceptions” and sadly, not living up to my own teaching, this sort of thing. It is a complaint I have heard more than once over the years by sincere but misguided students who do not realize that they are committing the grossest possible error in thinking about consciousness as cause, for they are invoking the subjective element in self-as-creator to justify irresponsibility, and it is hard to imagine a greater misuse. My response in this case was to have filters placed on the server to block the woman’s email and IP addresses. Her intention that she was not welcome, that she was being denied access, had found a way to fulfill itself.

That a stranger, even in the moment of asking for and receiving extraordinary help and support, would lapse into what is probably a well practiced stance of contention and blame is not unprecedented. That this woman would presume to lecture me on consciousness as cause in the same critical and egregiously disrespectful tone, without being invited to be my teacher, this too is not unheard of. It happens. This work attracts people in various states of contradiction and suffering, and sometimes the basic requirements of receptivity and respect are not in place. One can recognize this for what it is and respond appropriately by disengaging. No big deal. But it is worth writing about, even at some length, because there is an instructional point here that is essential to Field practice.

Field training tells us that “the world is the self writ large.” The whole model moves within the arc of the subjective, and even goes as far as to propose the notion of “radical responsibility” as a requirement of practice, a term that refers to the need to be willing to take responsibility even in situations where what is taking place appears to be the result of the will of others. This is imperative, because it is our willingness that creates, and the willingness to take responsibility at this ontological depth unleashes our creative authority, power, and reach.

That said, the subjective point can become a problem. Our Audio Series I program, “The Conversation,” addresses and resolves this problem by explaining how Field training can claim that “the world is the self writ large” and still avoid the unsupportable implications of absolute subjectivity or solipsism. From time to time, I talk to students and non-students who have bought into one of these implications and been snared by the contradiction it invariably entails. For example, one woman was living with a man who was physically abusive. This had been going on for a while, and the woman was exhausted. Now, criticizing this woman on the grounds that “the world is the self writ large” and that, therefore, she was responsible for his abusiveness, would have involved the great subjective error, which at the end of the day comes down to “blame the victim.” Such a position is heartless and has absolutely no place in Field theory or practice. If someone slaps you, then that person has slapped you. To collapse into subjectivity and ask how you created the slap would be to have your feet firmly on the wrong path. It is not that the question cannot be followed to a more liberating choice. The problem is that it too readily leads into mazes of confusion; the solipsistic denial of others; and displaced, disowned, or projected responsibility. The creative extrusions of consciousness into the world are often circuitous, subtle, and indirect—and importantly, as Field training tells us, no one can create for another. Too often, the simplistic “How did I create this?” misses the point, and leads us to overlook the many things for which we, as Particles, are not and cannot be responsible. Radical responsibility does not mean taking on responsibility that rightly belongs to someone else, for example. That is not conscious creatorship; it’s codependency. The one who has been slapped, however, does have a creative choice to make about whether or not that reality is allowed to continue. Its continuation, as Field training tells us again and again (and seems to need to), arises out of willful allegiance to the corresponding identity (in this case, that of the victim of abuse), and this is the right understanding of the subjective. The woman who lived with the abusive man did not want that situation, certainly, but she was willing to keep giving herself to the identity that made the situation inevitable. She was willing to be a victim. Thus, while she was in no way directly responsible for his abusiveness, she was radically responsible for her choice to be the one who continued to endure it. This is why Field training tells us that the creative willingness that shapes our reality implies a corresponding unwillingness to settle for less, which at heart means an unwillingness to be less.

Perhaps the woman with the screen reader does not see how she slaps people, even people who are doing all they can to be responsive and helpful. I would venture to guess that she had no experience of being disrespectful in presuming to lecture me about my failing to practice what I preach, and so on. I have seen Field training couples point the finger at each other in this way and even invoke “radical responsibility” as a kind of blame game or “tu quoque” argument. This is not Field training. It is an error in thinking that can range from simple confusion to sociopathic manipulation. We should never indulge in this sort of thing, nor tolerate it from someone else. It is first and last an abdication of responsibility, and worse, an avoidance that seeks to conceal itself within profound principles. Conscious creatorship hangs on the willingness to take responsibility, but one should never turn this into an argument against another.

If someone treats you unkindly or disrespectfully, if someone is abusive to you, if someone brings to you the burden of a mean spirit and invites you to dive into the dark waters of contradiction, you have a choice. You can refuse to participate. You can hold to the high standard of self-regard and continue resting in your ideal. And if this someone, tangentially acquainted with the idea of consciousness as cause, tries to turn the tables and cast you as the offender on the grounds that you have created the offense by being at the receiving end of it, then you can meet this disrespect with self-respect and disengage. This is the great value and power of Witnessing. Sometimes disengaging is the only practical way to stay true to what’s best in us. And is this not why such people come into our experience—to test us, to give us the opportunity to stay true to our better nature and refuse to collude with them in contradiction and suffering? We can understand that “the world is the self writ large” without allowing that to confuse us about how we are being treated. If someone else will not come up to our standard of respect and friendliness, I don’t see why we should sink to their standard of cynicism and complaint. The choice, as always, is ours.

Technorati Tags: Field Center, Consciousness, Metaphysics, Reality

‘Tis the season to be joyful, but many experience something far short of it. The proverbial “blue Christmas” is one name given to that unique brand of sadness that seems to attach itself to the end-of-year holidays, especially for those who are struggling in the throes of contradiction in one or more of the four staging areas of experience: love, health, supply, and life direction. Of course, only a Field training student would be likely to think of it in those terms; for others, the problem is “out there”—the loneliness of being without a partner or other family, the frustration of financial lack in a season defined by the giving of gifts, the added burden of a health issue at a time when the rest of the world is celebrating.

As always, though, a burden is a gift waiting to be unwrapped. This, however, is not necessarily easy to see, though seeing it invariably brings home the truth that sets free. One student, for example, was suffering greatly because a partner with whom she had spent many end-of-year holidays had up and left her, and this after a long and steady history of neglect and indifference that seemed to flow naturally from him. No time of year has the power to exacerbate the loneliness of loss like the season of joy, and she found herself missing him acutely and wishing that she could be with him, even intending, in our terms, a rapprochement and reconciliation. She could not, in that moment, recognize all that she was being spared by his departure. There is an old caution, perhaps its origins lie in the well-known horror story first published in 1902, “The Monkey’s Paw,” by W.W. Jacobs: “Be careful what you ask for lest it come true.” Oscar Wilde expressed the same sentiment in his inimitable way: “There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.” Along the same lines, there is this observation from a source I do not recall: “The magic wish is granted and can’t be taken back.” All of these remind us that there is often a grace operating in wishes not coming true. More than a matter of finding the proverbial silver lining in the cloud, or seeing the glass half full rather than half empty, recognizing grace in our disappointments, challenges, even burdens and losses calls for a “seeing through” the facts to a deeper truth: In the great punctuation of our experience, there is no period. Things change. The simple willingness to remember this, to refrain from assigning the status of a conclusion to whatever is happening at the moment, may open a window in the psyche and let in the fresh air of a broader context, one in which we can see the blessing hidden in the burden, the gift delivered in the unlikely form of a wound.

There is a famous Zen story (it has several forms) about an old farmer who lived on a small tract of land in a remote village with his son. They were dirt-poor, and worked hard just to get by. One day, a wild horse came out of the mountains and wandered onto their land. Under the law, this meant that the horse now rightfully belonged to them, and as horses were considered to be of great value, the incident made them literally wealthy overnight by their standards. The son, overjoyed at their good fortune, ran to his father and asked him what he thought about this miracle, to which the farmer replied, “We’ll see.” The next day, the horse ran away, and the son, bemoaning the crushing disappointment, went to his father again. “We’ll see,” said the farmer. The third day, the same horse returned from the mountains with half a dozen stallions following, all of which immediately became the property of the farmer and his son. Ecstatic, the son hurried to his father, thrilled and incredulous at the further turn of luck in their favor. The farmer said only, “We’ll see.” On the fourth day, the boy climbed on one of the horses and was thrown badly, breaking his leg. As the doctors were tending to him, the boy complained bitterly. Brushing the hair gently from his eyes, his father said only, “We’ll see.” And on the fourth day, the province went to war and the army recruiters came through the village to conscript all of the young men—except, of course, the one with the broken leg.

Grace works in our behalf continuously. The whole of creation is grace in motion—but we are not always present to recognize and appreciate its ingenuity because our unhappy conclusions blind and bind us. Simply to refrain from such conclusions, to be a little less infatuated with things that we only think we know, to be open and willing enough for life to present the treasure within the trial—these are things that can open us to the true magic of the season, restore the weary spirit, and give us peace.

This post ends our blog year, as we “go dark,” as theater people say, in December. We hope you found Realities edifying, and that in some small way its weekly pensées helped make your experience richer and more rewarding. Our best intentions go with you into the new year and always. “See you” in January.

Technorati Tags: Field Center, Consciousness, Metaphysics, Reality

The following is an excerpt from an email I sent out today to our Certified Facilitator Training class. Someone in the group had asked about Field training and how the idea that we create our reality plays out with one’s young children. Field theory tells us that children are deeply receptive and therefore susceptible to the identity-choices made by their parents or others around them whom they love and on whom they depend. How do we reconcile, the student wanted to know, the notion that we are “radically responsible” and continuously extending the influence of our intentions to our children with the idea that, as Field training also tells us, we cannot create another’s reality? Here’s my reply:

Radical responsibility suggests that it’s always a good idea to explore our consciousness with the idea of coming to see how we’re participating in whatever reality seems so convincingly to be happening to us, “objectively.” It is axiomatic in Field training that we don’t create for others, but we certainly can and do intend for them and in ways that affect them commensurate with their receptivity. In the case of one’s children, given that children are by nature deeply receptive, it is wise to be aware of the nonlocal influence, and many parents are motivated if not inspired to resolve contradictions they’ve carried for a long time the moment they understand that failing to resolve them will mean passing them along to their little ones. This shouldn’t be taken to mean that we are creating their experience. Parents are generally aware that they are role models for their kids, and the better parents take this responsibility seriously. Recognizing that our identity exerts a nonlocal influence doesn’t alter the basic lay of the land here. It just may afford us a deeper appreciation of how subtle and persistent that influence can be. Our children learn not from what we say to them, but from who we are.

That said, it is a common Particle practice to take on more responsibility than any Particle is equipped manage. This follows both from the Particle’s willful faith in “making things happen” and from the inversion of cause and effect that in part defines Particle identity. Radical responsibility is a pragmatic necessity; it provides a way for us to stop reacting to the world and come home to our creative authority. At the same time, given the all but complete limitations of Particle will with respect to knowledge, vision, resources, and efficiency, there is much for which the Particle self is not and cannot be responsible, despite its penchant for believing that it is causing events through the offices of its will. This is one of the many paradoxes of Field training. We are both radically responsible (for our intentions, which cause our experience inwardly and outwardly) and almost entirely limited (in our will). One cannot realize the truth and immeasurable value of practice without honoring both of these principles. If we overlook one of them, we end up “exporting our authority.” If we overlook the other, we become lost in the stagings of the world. The paradox notwithstanding, then, both are essential to moving forward in one’s practice.

Those of us who are parents may understand from this that the work we do to effect and deepen our alignment benefits our children just as it benefits all others with whom we come into local contact, and many more benefit nonlocally. Our alignment is in this respect a gift that we give to the world, and our most valuable legacy.

Technorati Tags: Field Center, Consciousness, Metaphysics, Reality

One beautiful and powerful way to explore the lush country of our consciousness is to begin listening to song lyrics with the idea in mind that either the Field is singing to us or we are singing to the Field. The particular songs that get our attention, whether we hear the lyrics as a message from or to the Field, and the significance they have all can reveal important aspects of our identity, especially the structures of our consciousness that Field training calls “intentions,” a term roughly synonymous with “beliefs.” Of course, otherwise ordinary lyrics take on extraordinary significance when we hear them in this special way, for they are imbued with all the grace and ingenuity of the nonlocal.

Many students who have tried this have reported remarkable synchronicities: a song coming on the radio at just the right time to help them resolve a difficult and persistent problem, or some bit of information they had been wanting suddenly finding them in a restaurant. Just the willingness to pay attention beyond the usual, immersed point of view is sufficient to the magic to find them, and to illuminate a passing moment that they all but certainly would have overlooked with oracular meaning and relevance.

Sometimes the lyrics themselves make plain whether the message is coming from the Field, or more properly one we are offering to it. One student, for example, was struggling with staying aligned due to doubts that the Field would see to his concern. An advanced Field training student may recognize the contradiction implicit in this problem, but that is not the point for now. He got in his car to take a drive, thinking that by getting moving, he would be able to get beyond what he regarded as a “failure of faith” and return to resting in alignment. Minutes later, driving along, he turned on the radio. Billy Joel was crooning “Just the Way You Are,” when the student began listening to the lyrics with an intuitive receptivity. Suddenly, he heard the Field saying to him:

I need to know that you will always be, the same old someone that I knew.
What will it take till you believe in me, the way that I believe in you?

Field training students understand that the Particle/Field relation is much like a conversation, and they are mindful not to miss what Florence Shinn calls “leads.” These are little signs, subtle sometimes but unambiguous, that confirm intuition or provide startlingly clear and relevant guidance or direction. This idea of a conversation places Field practice in a different camp than the New Age approach. We are not just visualizing or using affirmations to tell the Field what to do for us. Rather, we take up the role of student. We listen. We pay attention. We see to it that our mind and heart stay open so that we don’t “miss a trick,” as Ms. Shinn puts it. The leads are easy to miss if we have forgotten that we are students of the Field, which means students of life. But when our eyes and hears, mind and heart are open, we find the Truth everywhere, eager to serve us. And all for the price of a song.

Technorati Tags: Field Center, Consciousness, Metaphysics, Reality

I receive many emails from people who are struggling with one situation or another, and want to know how Field training can help them. Often, they bring assumptions from their experience with the New Age model, which has led them to various sorts of disappointment, and I imagine that my response to them is unsatisfying for that reason. Field training offers no quick fix, really no fix at all, because it recognizes that the paradox of consciousness-as-cause: If belief is the generative force in the psyche, and we believe that something is broken, then our belief in the problem works against us. Sometimes on hearing this, these individuals protest. What are we supposed to do, then? Stick our head in the sand? Of course not. Something else is required. Something involving neither denial nor unwitting collusion with the problem. That something more is responsibility. Ontological responsibility. Which means responsibility for who we are agreeing to be. Letting outer conditions dictate that is ontologically irresponsible, a case of the proverbial tail wagging the dog.

Plainly put, cause and effect constitute a fundamental dichotomy. Everyone wants to wield the creative power of cause, but how many are willing to stop being the effect? One must choose. If we let every situation that comes along take our resolve hostage, how can we exercise causal authority? We are creators, but we must claim the role, live up to it, remain faithful to it before it can prove itself in our experience.

“Responsibility for who we are agreeing to be” means responsibility for our identity. This is essential because identity is cause. Our outer life follows from our identity, and can do no other. Each of us is agreeing to be many things, some of them unwittingly. These agreements range from the incidental to the profound. For example, I agree to be someone who uses an Apple computer. I used to be someone who agreed to use a Windows machine. It wasn’t something I thought about. I assumed it, and the fact followed without question. One day, I was standing in a bookstore and it struck me that I was switching to Apple. In that moment, I identified with that, and the facts had no choice but to fall in step. This is a trivial thing, but it illustrates the point. Marriages begin and end the moment that the required identification takes place. So do wars. The world around us bears witness to the identity we are allowing to be convincing. Nothing stands outside this rule.

Sometimes I get emails from Field training students who are struggling with this or that situation. Invariably, my suggestion to them is to practice what they know, because Field training isn’t about manifesting money or health or love or anything else. It removes its gaze from manifestation as an act of compassion, since any focus on manifesting throws us into contradiction, and contradiction leads to suffering. In other words, I remind these students that they have a choice about who they are agreeing to be; indeed they already are making this choice in the willingness to resist and struggle with conditions. And as they remember that they are making this choice against themselves, they come home to their creative authority, since if they are choosing this, they can choose something else.

Florence Scovel Shinn writes, “I do not move, so the situation moves.” We cannot use our creative consciousness to alter conditions, but we can choose who we are agreeing to be, and as it turn out, this is enough.

Technorati Tags: Field Center, Consciousness, Metaphysics, Reality