![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Getting back to Quaker Quiet
Jan. 13th, 2006 02:47 pmAs I've gone back and reexamined my Quaker roots, I've come to realize that I never really stopped being Quaker. I just started being more conscious and deliberate about the different set of metaphors I'd been using all my life.
When I was younger (between the ages of about 8 and 19), I self-identified as Quaker, and made it a point to spend some extended time every day focusing my attention on the "Inner Light," the "Christ Within," the "Inner Seed," the "Spirit" -- whatever you choose to call it.
When I began to identify as Pagan (a whole 'nother story for an other time), I tried to replace that silent Listening with all the rituals I was reading about in those Wicca & Paganism 101 books. But all of those external activities meant to focus the mind and spirit only distracted mine, especially since I am physically unable to do a lot of the things that are "required" (like having the soles of your feet touch the earth, or not allowing plastic or electronics inside the cast circle -- kind of hard, when you rely on a motorised wheelchair), and I had to 'translate' all the rituals and make up my own. ... It all felt like an intellectual abstraction rather than a deep spiritual connection. So I dropped the Pagan rituals from my practice, too. I went back to silent meditations to celebrate the Sabbats, but they had stopped being the daily practice they had been in my youth.
Well, today, I decided to change that, and get back to the Listening every day. I've decided to set aside one hour a day for this -- right after breakfast and getting dressed, even if I don't fill the whole hour with meditation, at first.
I started by simply visualizing the Inner Light as a physical inner light, in the center of my body, and then visualizing that same inner light in the center of each individual cell in my body (boy, was that a trip!), and then visualizing that light inside the body/spirit of every living thing, and every atom, surrounding me.
I noticed that my legs became less spastic and my posture corrected itself without my trying to do aything.
And this insight came to my mind:
The sacrifice of Jesus the Christ on the Cross is Exactly the Same as the sacrifice of a blade of grass to the cow, and the cow to the lion (or to the human). Life (or the Life-force) is the Father (or Mother). Each living individual is the Only Begotten Son (or Daughter). And the love and generosity that allows this sacrifice to take place is the Holy Spirit. ...The Crucifiction and Ressurection and Eternal Life are all going on, all the time, in a never-ending cycle, and it's all driven by Love.
And that why the Cross is/was often synonomous with the Tree of Life (or why the Tree of Life became translated into the Cross, depending on your starting vantage point ;-)).
When I was younger (between the ages of about 8 and 19), I self-identified as Quaker, and made it a point to spend some extended time every day focusing my attention on the "Inner Light," the "Christ Within," the "Inner Seed," the "Spirit" -- whatever you choose to call it.
When I began to identify as Pagan (a whole 'nother story for an other time), I tried to replace that silent Listening with all the rituals I was reading about in those Wicca & Paganism 101 books. But all of those external activities meant to focus the mind and spirit only distracted mine, especially since I am physically unable to do a lot of the things that are "required" (like having the soles of your feet touch the earth, or not allowing plastic or electronics inside the cast circle -- kind of hard, when you rely on a motorised wheelchair), and I had to 'translate' all the rituals and make up my own. ... It all felt like an intellectual abstraction rather than a deep spiritual connection. So I dropped the Pagan rituals from my practice, too. I went back to silent meditations to celebrate the Sabbats, but they had stopped being the daily practice they had been in my youth.
Well, today, I decided to change that, and get back to the Listening every day. I've decided to set aside one hour a day for this -- right after breakfast and getting dressed, even if I don't fill the whole hour with meditation, at first.
I started by simply visualizing the Inner Light as a physical inner light, in the center of my body, and then visualizing that same inner light in the center of each individual cell in my body (boy, was that a trip!), and then visualizing that light inside the body/spirit of every living thing, and every atom, surrounding me.
I noticed that my legs became less spastic and my posture corrected itself without my trying to do aything.
And this insight came to my mind:
The sacrifice of Jesus the Christ on the Cross is Exactly the Same as the sacrifice of a blade of grass to the cow, and the cow to the lion (or to the human). Life (or the Life-force) is the Father (or Mother). Each living individual is the Only Begotten Son (or Daughter). And the love and generosity that allows this sacrifice to take place is the Holy Spirit. ...The Crucifiction and Ressurection and Eternal Life are all going on, all the time, in a never-ending cycle, and it's all driven by Love.
And that why the Cross is/was often synonomous with the Tree of Life (or why the Tree of Life became translated into the Cross, depending on your starting vantage point ;-)).
