Documentary Dreams
“Do you trust yourself enough to allow your own awakening?” The question compelled me to look it in the eye. I was watching Time of the Sixth Sun, a documentary film featuring indigenous people from all over the globe sharing their wisdom about spiritual awakening. The movie spoke to me on many levels, and I knew there was more to learn from pondering its messages. That night I remember asking for dreams to support my own awakening. After falling asleep, I dreamed most of the night.
One scene in the movie had shown a weathered board fence in a rundown part of an unnamed city. The word, UNCONDITIONAL was painted in white along one side, and just around the corner a big red heart had been painted with LOVE written inside. The message was obvious. I am to love all people, in fact all creation, with no limitations, boundaries, or exceptions — and trust that all the circumstances life brings my way are meant for my good. My stumbling block has been allowing judgments to interrupt the free flow of unconditional love to those whose actions I saw as harmful to other people and/or Mother Earth. Overt aggression in political, religious, and military arenas deeply saddens me. As a young child, I was deeply wounded within a conservative religious setting, so personal experience had taught me the pain and suffering such behaviors bring to innocent people. Even though I have grown beyond many limiting beliefs over the decades, I have carried echoes of pain and remnants of resistance ever since age seven. Lack of capacity to forgive fully and finally those who harmed me confined my love in a box too small. In truth, when we attach conditions or expectations to our love, it is ego involvement – not genuine love at all. It seems to me there is no middle ground.
In the series of dreams that night, much has been forgotten, but one scene remains crystal clear. I was being hosted at a social event by a conservative protestant congregation much like the one I grew up in. I was a person of note as an open-hearted spiritual teacher, so they knew who I was by reputation, but only a dozen or so seemed to know me personally. All of them were so friendly; a loving and generous-hearted group that bore no ill will toward me at all. We were enjoying ourselves immensely, even joking back and forth about our differing religious views. Those differences didn’t seem important to them or me. Unconditional love was on full display.
Upon waking, I laid quietly for awhile pondering the dream and what it meant. It became clear that my dream had shown me what relationships are like amongst souls in their natural state, unencumbered by ideas, karma, or a cranky Homo sapiens’ body and psyche. If I am to be love, and thus experience Heaven on Earth, my love must include those who hurt me most deeply in life. It’s easy to love those who think and act like me, but I cannot be love unless I share it fully and completely. I felt unconditional love in the dream, so I know it’s an innate part of me. Now my task is to live it consistently with no constraints or exceptions. My heart feels it unfolding.
Soli Deo Gloria.
Silver Linings — Rising Above Circumstances
“Gratitude is not about what is received;
it’s about how you receive what is there.”
— Yogi tea bag tag
Happy Labor Day, friends! Please enjoy your holiday.
Background: Since mid-July, I have been recovering from a broken rib and punctured lung resulting from a fall while working alongside our driveway. This is the third painful fall encountered over the past five summers. My reactions to the accidents in 2018 and 2021 were dominated by resistance, anger, and frustration, rooted in fear of aging limitations. Finally, this year’s fall has been accompanied by gratitude for the silver linings that accompanied the experience. The experience has been so different because spiritual practice had expended my trust in life. I was actually surprised that gratitude was present as the experience unfolded!
“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”
— Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
Viktor Frankl authored the above quote, after surviving three years in a series of WWII concentration camps. Although the Holocaust is not the subject of this essay, the context of Frankl’s quote gives it tremendous power. As Frankl discovered, it’s always possible to find meaning and purpose from whatever experiences we encounter. Spiritual growth reveals the ability to see it. This highlights the fact that our beliefs are a key factor in determining the meaning and purpose we find within life’s experiences. There’s plenty of evidence that life reflects back to us exactly what we put into it. If we are loving and kind, our life experiences reflect those characteristics back to us. If we believe life is untrustworthy and difficult, then our life reflects one problem after another. The meaning and purpose we find in life are indeed shaped by our beliefs.
Many religious/spiritual traditions also teach that even our most painful and challenging life experiences are intended for our good. Avatars and sages have long believed that whatever events come our way, they all contain silver linings that await our discovery. However, that doesn’t imply that meaning and purpose (silver linings) will be easy to discern.
Silver linings within my July 2023 fall: When the ER doctor was describing the CAT scan results, he pointed out that I had broken rib #8 in my lower right back, and that it had punctured my right lung. The lung had partially collapsed so a chest tube would be inserted to remove the air leaked from the punctured lung into the chest cavity. That would allow the lung to reinflate and heal. All pretty straightforward. Then came a big surprise. Almost casually, he also noted that the scan had revealed an ascending aortic aneurysm. It was still small enough not to require immediate action, but we’d have to follow up with a cardiologist to monitor it. This was completely new information! If it had remained undetected and expanded to critical size, it would likely have ruptured, very likely resulting in death. There is simply too little time for complex emergency surgery arrangements to happen. My first reaction to this news amazed me — I felt no fear; only a sense of calm that all was well. It was instantly obvious that the purpose and meaning for this fall was to reveal the aneurysm early enough to be monitored and managed as a health concern, rather than a medical emergency. This meaning was amplified because the still small voice within, my soul/God-Presence, has told me whenever I’ve needed reassurance, that this life as Foster will last long enough for my soul to experience all the growth opportunities that inspired it to choose this life for its incarnation before I was born. What else could one hope for?
Besides this mega-realization, other aspects of the experience also inspired gratitude. All the doctors and nurses in the ER and ICU were simply marvelous caregivers; prompt, expert, kind, and gentle with my aching body and anxious mind. They informed me of what was going on and responded to all my questions with patience.
Another aspect of gratitude is how well I have recovered from the injuries. From the beginning of this saga, many friends and family have been praying and sending energy to support my healing. By the time I got to the ICU the evening of the fall, the only pain medication required to sleep quite well was Tylenol. After a couple of days, lidocaine patches over the broken rib site increased my comfort. After returning home, the lidocaine patches were only needed the first week. And now, six weeks after the fall, I have been pain free for over two weeks with no meds at all. Those four weeks compare with typical recovery from broken ribs of six to eight weeks. The collapsed lung was working normally from the time the chest tube was removed after two days. I am convinced that my four-week recovery was a direct result of those many prayers and thoughts of love. I am deeply grateful for each caring person who offered them. Thank you!
And last, another component of the rapid recovery has been home care visits from physical and occupational therapy specialists. They were immensely helpful, tailoring a perfect set of daily exercises to enhance my body’s strength, balance, and agility, all of which will make me less prone to falling in the future. They provided just what I need to approach life with more confidence. My part is to continue exercise work as part of my new normal.
My mind first wanted to fret over all the pain and suffering that might have been avoided in this lifetime, if only all life’s ups and downs had been blessed with this new level of grace and gratitude, but that couldn’t have happened…, I wasn’t ready until now. I’ve been encouraging people to trust life for several years, but I’m grateful to experience that level of trust within my own being to know it with conviction. I am deeply grateful that this experience so richly facilitated my spiritual growth. I’ve been working for more lifetimes than I can imagine to reach this state of trust in Life and Its Creator. Ongoing gratitude is finally part of my new normal. Enthusiasm for life in my 80s is a wondrous gift! Love and Blessings to all.
Soli Deo Gloria.
A Tree Deva Dream
A tree Deva dream
carries meaning for us all,
keepers of the Earth.
I recently had a dream where I and a group of strangers were visiting a diverse grove of giant old growth trees. I have dreamt of ancient trees for years, so this experience felt familiar. Except this time there was a tattered old woman, a spiritual caretaker for the trees, who lived at the forest edge. The trees were in a sad state of decline, and she was worried for them. She was singing to the trees. It sounded Gaelic or something similar – no words I could understand. Her voice was high and clear, sad and soothing at the same time. Oddly, the dream shifted locations several times to different groves of ancient trees, but they were all similarly suffering. The old woman was always present singing her song. It was both a song of praise for the trees and a lament for the passing of their time.
When I awoke, I knew this dream was meant to be shared with others who also love trees; some of you are reading this. I am to believe in the tree’s angels and hold them and their sacred work in my heart. A given tree angel holds in consciousness the eternal pattern for a particular tree species. Each species, those now living on Earth and elsewhere, as well as those not presently in physical form, has their own angel. When Findhorn co-founder Dorothy Maclean rediscovered tree angels, she named them devas, from an old Sanskrit word translated as shining divine being. The tree devas associated with Earth need our support to strengthen and encourage them in these difficult times. They will feel our belief in them and be stronger as a result. There are many suitable locations across the Cosmos for trees to grow, yet every single tree is beloved by the Sacred Author of creation. [A similar truth is equally real for all species of life everywhere.]
The dream’s message for me: I am to pray for the tree devas, Mother Earth, and the wellbeing of her ancient trees. Indeed, Planet Earth requires for its own wellbeing the energies carried by the old growth forests that still remain. We, humans, are also blessed by the wisdom and peacefulness embodied in these elders of the tree kingdom. Love flows in many ways through many channels. We are all part of an interdependent, boundless expression of God-energy. God is unconditional love, so it is our very nature to love each other and all life. If praying for old growth forests, or any aspect of nature’s vast creativity calls to you, please choose one to consciously hold in your heart. We can thus become sacred keepers of the Earth. Namaste.
Love and blessings to all.
Soli Deo Gloria.
What If We Choose Not to Choose?
Choosing not to choose
would result in disaster.
Is that really true?
Choosing not to use my power of choice sounds like a recipe for drifting aimlessly through life, or does it? Maybe it all depends on how I approach the question. Of course, opting not to choose is itself a choice. What would my life look like if I ceded my power of choice (control) to God, fate, or some other option? Is power of choice just a new thought phrase that really means I want to control the flow of my life? Would I dare to trust my life if it was free to flow without me trying to steer?
We, humans, are by nature a seamless blend of physical and non-physical, Homo sapiens body and eternal soul. Our Homo sapiens body is equipped with a powerful ego that is strongly motivated toward self-protection. The soul part of us is a true clone of the Divine One; any apparent difference is one of scale, not basic nature. Besides, Oneness says scale is irrelevant. From within the context of human life, the soul part of us carries power and love far beyond our capacity to comprehend. Both the non-physical and physical aspects of us are unique in the entire cosmos. And both are Divine in origin, held within the Beloved One that is eternally authoring all of Creation. I am that I amis profoundly true for each of us.
We humans are, also by nature, creatures of choice. We make them all the time, regardless of whether habit, knee jerk, or wisdom is in play. We often hear, and it may be true, that we can have anything we want via our power of choice when we bring faith, commitment, and follow-up to life’s party. The ego loves the sound of that, so our beliefs and motivation can be a blessing or a red herring that leads us wildly astray. Red herring or not, choices always have consequences, sometimes very different than anticipated.
As spiritual seekers, we would be well-advised to remember that our soul chose this specific life before incarnating. So, it’s wise to consider whether a given possibility is in harmony with our soul’s intentions. Experience has taught me that my ego is remarkably clever and persistent at drawing attention to its agenda — keeping me safe, and feeling important, successful, etc. So discernment can be a slippery slope. My ego has even tricked me into thinking its agenda is Divine in origin.
So, how can we use our power of choice and at the same time, trust that our choice is in harmony with our soul’s reasons for choosing this particular life? Please note that your soul’s intentions and Divine inspiration and guidance are exactly the same. How can I say that? Because there can be no disharmony between your soul and The Beloved One which cloned it from within Itself. So our problem boils down to understanding how we can know our soul’s intentions. The truth is, when our ego is in charge, we can’t. And as noted, it can be very hard to discern which part of you is choosing. One thing seems clear. We must avoid allowing indecision to drift into stagnation. Making a misguided choice at least offers the opportunity to learn from our mistake. Stagnation doesn’t even offer that. Either approach stunts spiritual growth by leaving one’s ego in control.
While journaling early this year, a pathway was revealed that finally became clear in the process of writing this essay. I believe we must transcend our title question rather than tie ourselves in knots trying to solve it. To transcend, we simply surrender (freely release) our power of choice to God [please use your own term for the Nameless One]. What might such surrender look like? Whatever choices come into my awareness; I release into God’s hands. I am not advocating that we idly relax on some celestial cloud doing nothing! What I am suggesting is that we trust our inner voice, the soul within, to guide and inspire our choices and actions.
If that sounds too risky, it indicates that ego-fear is not happy surrendering control of one’s life to the God of their understanding. The key is to trust that God’s love is unconditional. Often, surrender to God is not a simple choice, so much as a process of unlearning a lifetime of ego-based assumptions and habits. Our God of love is very willing to assist with this shift in thinking. A key point: If you are struggling to understand your life challenges, remember that many events are the result of unresolved karma from prior incarnations carried into this life by your soul. Surrendering everything to God and trusting your intuition and synchronicities, (your soul’s voice) is the pathway of transcendence beyond your soul’s karmic history and other challenges rooted in this lifetime.
Clarification: The choices I suggest we surrender to God involve matters that impact the harmony of our life flow with the intentions of our soul. Life’s routine choices are safe in our hands. Of course, we cannot shirk responsibility for our Earthly lives. We are learning how to approach our life’s pathway most wisely. Our discernment and choices are always in play — experiential learning is why our souls chose the Earth School in the first place. Whatever our choices and outcomes, remember to enjoy the journey.
Love and blessings to all.
Soli Deo Gloria.
Crazy Horse
Most of my heroes
were defenders of freedom.
Cherish your freedoms.
“Crazy Horse dreamed and went into the world where there is nothing but the spirits of all things … He was on his horse in that world, and the horse and himself on it and the trees and the grass and the stones and everything were made of spirit, and nothing was hard, and everything seemed to float … It was this vision that gave him his great power, for when he went into a fight, he had only to think of that world to be in it again so that he could go through anything and not be hurt … I think it was only the power of his great
vision that made him great.”
– John G. Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks
Over the past seven years, Crazy Horse has become a freedom icon for me. The vision Black Elk described likely happened while he was a teenager preparing to become a warrior. His Oglala Lakota descendants honor Crazy Horse in their hearts to this day, because of his fearless leadership and success as a warrior. He and his Oglala were never defeated in twenty-two battles with rival tribes or the US Cavalry. He was dedicated to his people and fiercely defended their ancestral lands and way of life. During the tumultuous westward expansion of our Euro-American ancestors, the Oglala were the last group of American Indians to be starved into submission by the Army and buffalo hide hunters. Crazy Horse was never captured and his refusal to surrender his people’s freedom required vision, courage, and tenacity equal to any great leader in history.
Their resistance collapsed only when the buffalo were slaughtered beyond any hope of sustaining the Oglala. There was no food and no place to find it. So, Crazy Horse was persuaded to negotiate at Fort Robinson (in present-day northwest Nebraska), by other Lakota chiefs who had already surrendered the fate of their people to the US Government. When Crazy Horse arrived at Fort Robinson to negotiate terms for his people to join reservation life, the Army saw it as their opportunity to arrest him. When Crazy Horse was walking with a group of officers and reservation Indian chiefs to a meeting in a guard house, he saw the barred windows as a trap to capture him. He tried to escape, but in the resulting melee, he was fatally bayoneted in the back by one of the soldiers and died in a few minutes. The last American Indian war leader was thus spared life in prison on September 5, 1877. Crazy Horse was only thirty-three.
The vibrant current of American Indian freedom finally ended when the Oglala were sequestered on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. It was three hundred eighty-five years after Columbus’ first visit to the Americas. Our nation still has no idea what was lost when we finally won this long-sought victory. Even now, we don’t have the wisdom to see that our own freedom is immeasurably diminished every time we deny it to another. We are left to ponder Crazy Horse, his powerful vision, leadership, and especially, his tenacious love of freedom.
Crazy Horse remains an icon for the Oglala to this day, a hundred-fifty years after he died. In June 2015, we joined some friends at Fort Robinson State Park in northwest Nebraska to support the Oglala Lakota from the Pine Ridge Reservation, as they undertook their 18th annual Crazy Horse Ride. On a Saturday afternoon, two hundred Lakota and their horses gathered at Fort Robinson. The ride would cover a hundred miles from Fort Robinson back to the Pine Ridge fragment of their homeland. On Sunday morning about a hundred riders assembled on the parade ground in front of a sign that marks the spot where Crazy Horse died. The three lead riders each carried a Lakota staff, a traditional one decorated with eagle feathers, another held an American flag, and the last a black MIA flag. We were told that in past years the procession had been led by a riderless horse to symbolize fallen military warriors. The horse had always known the way home to Pine Ridge, but this year no such horse was available.
The Oglala organizer of this event since its inception emphasized that the ride was to honor our military veterans and that it was open to anyone who wanted to come. In fact, a handful of visitors from the US and a few European nations rode in 2015. Honoring military veterans is indeed an important point for the Lakota since many of them join the US military as a way to express their warrior heritage, and experience the world beyond reservation borders. I met an Oglala man who told me that both he and his wife were veterans of US military service. This year his sixteen-year-old son was riding in his fifth Crazy Horse Ride to honor his older sister who was presently active in the US military.
The Crazy Horse Ride also carries a deeper symbolism beyond honoring of modern-day veterans. When Crazy Horse rode into Fort Robinson to negotiate the best conditions of surrender for his people, he was killed and never rode out. Every rider and horse in the Crazy Horse Ride for the past eighteen years has ridden out of Fort Robinson as a living, breathing symbol of the ride Crazy Horse never took. The riderless horse that usually leads the ride can also be seen as a symbol of Crazy Horse. This deeper symbolism made their ride out of Fort Robinson one of the most compelling experiences of my life. In some sense, it felt like they were riding to honor the ideal of freedom itself. It did not feel dramatic so much as resolute, something that was essential for them — and all of us.
My heart knows Crazy Horse did his best, but his story feels open-ended — his people lost their freedom. This weekend at Fort Robinson was a poignant reminder of the moral debt American society owes to the American Indians and African slaves who paved the way for our ascendance. There are sad histories that deserve apologies, wounds to be forgiven, and opportunities for great blessings to unfold, on the day ALL Americans live their lives and dreams in full freedom.
Closing thought: I know in my heart that Crazy Horse still rides in the wild realm of light described by Black Elk. His pain is healed, and all is well with his soul. He and his horse are free as the wind. Crazy Horse is at peace.
Soli Deo Gloria.
A Kind and Gentle Spirit
Deep dichotomy:
How did Anne Frank write such words
while living in hell?
“In the long run, the sharpest weapon of all is a kind and gentle spirit.”
- Anne Frank
This essay reminds us of the precious freedoms we enjoy in the United States. As we celebrate this July, let’s remember that freedom begins within our own heart and shines outward from there. All freedom and peace begin within.
One of the miracles that emerged after WWII was The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank. She wrote her famous diary while hiding from the Nazis in a small enclave within her family’s Amsterdam home. By the latter stages of WWII, all of them had died in Nazi concentration camps except her father Otto, who was liberated when the war ended.
For many years, the Frank family home has been a museum. Every holocaust museum or memorial is deeply moving, but this modest home was especially so, because Anne Frank wrote the unquenchable love and wisdom of her diary in that setting. Their family home brings the Holocaust down to a human scale one can relate to.
In light of the millions of people who died in the Holocaust, dare we believe that Anne’s quote is true? When we look at today’s violent world, one wonders if humanity has learned anything from centuries of almost continuous war around the world. Our Homo sapiens’ nature has found it impossible to see and learn life lessons that are anchored in violence, even massive events like WWII. It’s now clear that human consciousness cannot be pushed up from below. If history has demonstrated anything, we should know by now that violence never leads to lasting freedom!
Since none of us can change the beliefs of another, our best option is to become kind and gentle spirits within ourselves, then trust our love to inspire others as it ripples outward.
The 20th century Russian dissident, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, captured the truth about good and evil in his famous book, The Gulag Archipelago: “The line separating good from evil passes through the heart of every man.” Dare we believe that each person on Earth has the potential to become a kind and gentle spirit within their own heart? Please pause reading and take a moment to recall moments when loving-kindness flowed freely through your heart.
Over my eight decades of life, an ongoing parade of beautiful people, coupled with divinely orchestrated coincidences, have carried me from childhood through ever-expanding spiritual experiences. Here are two bios about kind and gentle spirits who inspire me to this day:
Can you imagine a new-to-Denver college freshman from IL, accidentally finding himself in a community meeting he had not planned to attend? That meeting introduced him to a local NGO focused on meeting the needs of the underserved West Denver community. He immediately volunteered, and as he put it, “I never left.” Milestones over his adult life include starting and leading for two decades a very effective alternative school to serve HS dropouts in the community. Whatever role was needed over the years, he accepted. His roles eventually included Executive Director, and finally Pastor. He literally gave his life to the West Denver community. I met this remarkable man in the mid-1980s and learned his compelling story over time. He is the kindest and most gentle spirit I’ve ever met. His entire life is love in action.
Joyful Lady [her alias for this vignette.] spent her young adult years in a convent. I know nothing about her life between then and years later when she married a minister. They faithfully served their church for years, while raising two sons. When their sons reached adulthood, JL embraced the opportunity to pursue her dream. She founded an NGO that has blessed the lives of hundreds of Kenyan children. Over two intensely active decades, she oversaw building an orphanage for homeless street children, a school in a local village, and created a farm near Nairobi to generate money to sustain those operations. She also connected with an already-existing orphanage for HIV-positive children and paid school fees for countless dozens of children for a quarter century and counting. The Kenyan BOD she formed now manages all of this, including the ongoing distribution of school fees. Until JL turned operations over to them, she garnered financial support for operations and school fees by hosting visits to Kenya for groups of Americans who were drawn to her work. As a result, my wife and I, along with dozens of people, fell in love with Africa and her children. Starting in 2000, we participated in visits to Kenya arranged by JL and her NGO four times and have been supporting various children’s school fees from the beginning. We are blessed by beloved Kenyan friends to this day. We are deeply grateful that JL pursued her dream. If you have a dream of serving the world, JL’s life demonstrates that it’s possible!
Over the past two decades, spiritual growth has revealed new experiences as others faded. I embraced Science of Mind (SOM) teachings, ultimately becoming a licensed Science of Mind Practitioner. SOM led to serving people in new ways. I became comfortable speaking about spiritual matters in front of groups, praying with people, and officiating life celebrations and weddings. Several years ago, I officiated my grandson’s marriage. In late August, they will bless our family with our first great-grandchild. Alleluia!
When the time came to set aside the role of Practitioner, my lifelong relationship with nature expanded to further enrich my life. Two spiritual books have also found their way into print. Sixteen months ago, a friend helped me create a website which now hosts my twice per month Cosmic Chronicles blog. My love for Mother Earth and all the life she holds still flows freely. May expansion of your kind and gentle spirit be so blessed. Love and Blessings to all.
Soli Deo Gloria.
A Short and Simple Path to Inner Peace
“Raise your consciousness and you will be able to see beauty in everything and everyone.”
– Opening Doors Within, Meditation for June 12, Eileen Caddye
In today’s world, most people would be incredulous if you told them there is beauty in everything and everyone. Similarly, very few carry the strength and grace to feel inner peace amid the mind-numbing divisiveness and violence of the world. Sadly, such conditions are not new or unusual. Human nature being what it is, the world of Jesus’ time was similarly violent and chaotic. So his teachings for how to live amid challenging times remain as relevant as when they were spoken. We are to “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness [embody God’s teachings], and all these things shall be added unto you.” – Matt. 6:33. Jesus also told us where to seek, “…the kingdom of God is within you.” – Luke 17:21.
As for the 21st century, there is good news. Things are not as hopeless as they may seem. When the world’s beauty is obscured and we are blocked from feeling inner peace, we’re not required to fix the world. Nothing needs to change but us! In truth, everything and everyone in all Creation are already beautiful. It’s just a matter of perception. As Eileen Caddy’s quote points out, to see the world’s beauty, we must raise our consciousness. This automatically clears our inner vision and opens the door to inner peace. One must focus their attention on God’s omnipresence and recognize that God’s beauty already includes you! The shift is inner work, a matter of trust. As your God-awareness expands, your vision of the world’s beauty, along with inner peace, naturally unfold. Inner (and outer) peace are waiting for your choice.
Remember, it is absolutely safe to trust God’s Presence within you. Eileen’s quote and Jesus’ teachings are very powerful. Please consider them with reverence.
Love and Blessings to all!
Soli Deo Gloria.