Click here to go to the next issue
Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nondual Highlights each day
#1758 - Monday, April 5, 2004 - Editor: Jerry
Message from the Hopi
Elders
We have been telling the people that this is the
Eleventh Hour
Now you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour
And there are things to be considered.
Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in the right relation?
Where is your water?
Know your garden.
It is time to speak your truth
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for the leader.
This could be a good time!
There is a river flowing now very fast
It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.
They will try to hold onto the shore.
They will feel they are being torn apart and they will suffer
greatly.
Know the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore, and push off and into
the river,
Keep our eyes open, and our head above the water.
See who is in there with you and Celebrate.
At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally.
Least of all ourselves.
For the moment that we do,
Our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.
The time of the lone wolf is over, Gather
yourselves!
Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary.
All that you do now must be done in a sacred manner
And in celebration.
"We are the ones we've been waiting for..."
The Elders, Hopi Nation, Oraibi, Arizona
A colossus of Helios the sun-god, erected by the Greeks near
the harbor of a Mediterranean Island
The
Colossus of Rhodes
Small Miracles
an excerpt from http://www.naturalhomemagazine.com/current-issues/archive/2002/JanFeb02/SmallMiracles.htm
~ ~ ~
In 1977, while she was an architecture student at
the University of Oregon, Sarah Susanka became
fascinated by traditional Japanese architecture.
She admired the spare design, the inherent
restraint. In a term paper titled "Simplicity and
Elegance," she struggled to explain the quiet
brilliance of this architectural style.
...
Susanka, who grew up as "a very spiritual
kid in
a family that wasn't at all religious," has
always felt an "internal knowing that there's
something much greater than we understand"
guiding the universe. "A lot of my spiritual
leanings as a child were through engaging in the
experience of place," she remembers.
Susanka spent nine long months at her laptop in
1997, pouring these insights into her first draft
of The Not So Big House. She was more than a bit
distressed, then, when her publisher asked for a
rewrite. He wanted her to tone it down, cater to
a more mainstream audience. Consumed by a feeling
of powerlessness and afraid her message would be
corrupted, Susanka sat in deep meditation for
days. And at a workshop on the subject of Sacred
Service, she reached her epiphany.
"Suddenly I was filled to overflowing with
an
aching sadness," Susanka writes on
www.soulfulliving.com/sacredhome.htm.
"All the
souls of the oppressed feminine energies of
millennia came pouring forth through me into the
world. I knew inexplicably that my role in this
life is to help reawaken this knowing of the
feminine principle, and to rebalance the division
between masculine and feminine energies in the
planet and her peoples. Until this moment, such a
thought had never even crossed my mind. I would
have thought it arrogant beyond words."
Bringing the Feminine Home
As she subsequently worked it out with her
editor, Susanka discovered that her true mission
in writing The Not So Big House was "to bring our
homes into harmony by giving credence to
intuition, to the need for comfort, and to the
home's ability to nurture the lives within--all
aspects of the neglected feminine. Our houses can
be places of beauty and inspiration; they can be
the still point and the place of the heart."
Susanka's references to the feminine are about a
quality of energy, not an issue of gender, she's
quick to point out. Her purpose--to bring about a
rebalancing of the system of rules by which
society operates--is much more holistic. "We've
had a definite preoccupation with quantity, a
more masculine characteristic--which doesn't mean
male," she says. "Rebalancing just means bringing
a little more feminine energy into being so we
can act from the center. Home really is the place
of nurturing--of security, rest, letting down,
being more calm. In many ways, it's the place you
go in your life to have a jolt of femininity."
Without preaching or proselytizing, Susanka has
given people quiet permission to think about
their homes as spiritual havens. A semi-taboo
subject three years ago, that idea is now taking
root in often surprising places, including the
mainstream media. "It's been interesting to be
this sort of spokesperson and to discover over
the last three years how much more willing people
are to talk about spirituality in everyday life,"
she says. "Three years ago people worried that
spirituality might be about religion--a very
dangerous subject for the media. But I think the
awareness that you can talk about the spirit
without discriminating--that you don't have to
polarize the situation--is just thrilling to many
people. They understand right away that this is
less about nuts and bolts and more about
expressing in matter what we know intuitively
within us."
For Susanka, centering that concept around
place--be it the home or a community retreat
center--is key. With the profits from The Not So
Big House, she and some friends formed Maitrhea,
a nonprofit corporation dedicated to helping to
create nondenominational sacred spaces for the
individual, the group, and the culture. Through
its website, www.maitrhea.org,
the group helps
people find retreat centers around the country;
it is also bringing together those who share the
vision of building places for gatherings and
sacred learning.
"I'm just speaking this idea into the
marketplace," Susanka says. "It's much bigger
than one person can evolve--like saying, We have
a need for motels. I sort of feel like I am just
a voicepiece, and the idea will continue to grow
and evolve. When I first got this sense of a
mission, I thought I had to do something. And
then I realized I don't actually have to do
anything; it's happening all by itself. I just
let things evolve--and when the time is right,
whatever's going to happen will happen."
Susanka compares herself to the Fool of the Tarot
deck, stepping off the precipice and trusting the
outcome. "None of us is alone as we step," she
states. "We fall into a myriad rocking arms,
singing the one true song, dancing the only dance
there is, to awaken us from our sleep."
AllspiritInspiration
Set your mind right
The real does not die, the unreal never lived. Set your mind
right and all will be right. When you know that the world is
one, that humanity is one, you will act accordingly. But first
of all you must attend to the way you feel, think and live.
Unless there is order in yourself, there can be no order in
the world.
~Nisargadatta Maharaj