Greetings!
I've taken a week off to read and am juggling 3 books: Rabbi David Cooper's God is a Verb on Kabbalah and the practice of mystical Judaism, Andrew Harvey and Mark Matousek's Dialogues with a Modern Mystic (a 2nd reading) and Naomi Klein's revelatory and disturbing The Shock Doctrine, on the rise of disaster capitalism.
I'm reminded of my first 10 weeks, 10 women, 10 wins group when each person came to the table with an idea of something she was committed to. When one women said her goal was to be a mystic, everyone laughed. It seemed hysterically funny, given our programming for humility. How could you dare call yourself a mystic even if you were one? But the more we pondered it, the more sense it made. What is a mystic anyway but a person who has an unmediated, personal experience of the Divine? Or as Andrew Harvey defines it: someone who has direct cognition of God beyond thought or image...one whose eyes have been opened through purification, discipline and grace to the living mystery.
The mystic does not deny the world, but engages with it deeply. Mystics are not passive, impotent thinkers, but dynamic engines of creativity and change, constantly spiralling from the inner to the outer realms, bridging sacred to secular, spiritual to political, self to other. Some of you reading this are mystics, devoted to a spiritual practice, experts in the art of thinking beyond duality, conscious of your light and power in the world.
To be a mystic these days is a great calling. It leads us to that place where Frederick Buechner speaks of when he writes about the place where our own deep joy meets the world's deep hunger. This is the intersection we're looking for. This is the place where our meaning can be found.
In God Is a Verb, Rabbi Cooper speaks of God being everywhere, moving in all directions, represented by light. Evil, he writes, is also everywhere, represented by veils. Evil is a force that dims the light. Our job is to remove the veils---the ones over our own eyes and hearts first. This is what Meister Eckhart refers to when he says the way to God or the process of enlightenment is a process of subtraction, not addition. Our work is not to learn more as much as to unlearn what we have been taught about being separate--from the Sacred, from the Self, and from the other. Mysticism is not a subject for the head. It is an experience for the heart. You are already home. Just let yourself feel it. And if you need to, rearrange the furniture.
May our votes today move us ever closer to a true and timely American unveiling.
All light your way,
Jan
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Facilitator Trainings
coming up in San Diego and Lake Bonaparte, NY
(These are intensive weekend trainings for people who are ready to harvest their wisdom, unleash creativity in themselves and others, and make a living doing what they love.) $400. (Fri pm-Sunday noon)
San Diego: February 15-17 (2 spots left)
March 14-16
October 17-18
November 7-9
Lake Bonaparte: June 6-8, July 18-20
"In one weekend, Jan Phillips gave me food and fire for my passion like I've never had before. I see real and viable ways to change my work and live closer to the life I want. I am transformed, enlivened and profoundly hopeful. I also have the know-how now to market and bring my gifts to the people who need what I teach."
- Jane Myers Drew, Ph.D. Psychologist; author of Where Were You When I Needed You, Dad? Creator of Let's Connect! Game
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 San Diego Events & Beyond
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I am listing these events because I know and trust all the women who are leading them. You are in good hands if you are in any of their hands...
The Art of You
3060 Adams Ave SD 92116 (805 at Adams) www.theartofyou.com
Speaking Circles will meet 6:30 - 8:30pm on Wednesdays February 6 and February 20
at The Art of You
RSVP TO SANDY TRYBUS, LCSW
619-253-6342 or sandytrybus@cox.net
March 29 - April 5, 2008
Portals to the Self: A Women's Circle by the Sea.
Isla Mujeres, Mexico; an island sacred to Ixchel, the Mayan Moon Goddess and historically a place for healing rituals among the Mayan people; creating a sacred circle of support, compassion, abundance and replenishment as we weave together our stories and wisdom, becoming midwives of our dreams and visions. kfrlisw@aol.com; 440.779.6727
Click here for info
Creativity and Yoga Retreat in Guatemala for women
(Awaken your creativity and nurture your artist's soul in community with other women. Open to all levels of artists and yoga students)
March 22-29,2008 with Laura Hansen
Click here for more info
"Heartbreak gives birth to new worlds unimaginable beyond the womb. This is the womb: maelstrom. Drift, be blown, notice what is inescapable, hold onto nothing, for it will be torn from you in this journey." Leiah Bowden founder of Energy Portraits
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All religions, all this singing,
One song.
The differences are illusion and vanity.
The sun's light looks a little different on this wall
than it does on that wall,
and a lot different on this other one,
but it's still one light.
Rumi
No matter how brilliant our attempts to inform, it is our ability to inspire that will
turn the tides.
from Marry Your Muse
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Mysticism is not about human abandonment into the arms of the divine, but about immersion in the divine mystery at the heart of creation...
The mystic is not detached from history but committed to it.
Diarmund O'Murchu
Evolutionary Faith
Your neighbors are the channel through which all your virtues come to birth.
Catherine of Siena
Once we recognize the part within us that is connected with God, we can never be defeated.
Rabbi David Cooper
Mysticism is an alternative mode of thought to patriarchal thinking.
Gerda Lerner
Reading Naomi Klein's book on Disaster Capitalism has prompted me to send you to Syracuse Cultural Workers who are creating artwork that informs and inspires the social imagination.
They are also a great venue for you artists who are creating works of social relevance
(poetry, images, music, books) Be sure to get on their artists mailing list.
Click here for SCW catalog
Laurence W. Britt wrote about the common signs of fascism in April, 2003, after researching seven fascist regimes in recent history. SCW has made a poster of his findings.
In honor of our beloved poet-brother John O'Donohue
who died this January.
Beannacht
("Blessing")
On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.
~ John O'Donohue ~
(Echoes of Memory)
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"I dream about a kind of criticism that would try not to judge but to bring an oeuvre, a book, a sentence, an idea to life; it would light fires, watch the grass grow, listen to the wind, and catch the sea foam in the breeze and scatter it. It would multiply not judgments but signs of existence; it would summon them, drag them from their sleep. Perhaps it would invent them sometimes -- all the better."
-Michel Foucault,
"The Masked Philosopher"
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