Category Archives: Meditations

New Course – Cultivating the Inner Tree of Life

12 Session Online Experience
Starts Sunday, January 19th
Meets every other week

Learn a series of meditation practices for healing, guidance
and for serving in accord with your Soul’s calling

“All theory, dear friend, is gray,
but the golden tree of life springs ever green.”
–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We are all facing the same predicament: Our attention is being called and pulled in a myriad of directions while feelings of helplessness, anger, fear and grief are rising up and swirling throughout. How do we stay centered and relate to each other and the world with courage, kindness and love? Where do we find guidance and direction?

In my over fifty years of spiritual practice, I’ve explored a range of pathways. Each has helped me to center, develop greater awareness of my essential nature and grow as a mature human being. Each has helped me to serve more effectively in whatever role I can play in the great work of making the world a more just and compassionate realm.

Several decades ago I began to explore the teachings of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. I found here more than a symbol for the human mind/body and the nature of Reality. The Tree of Life is a tool and method for experiencing and integrating directly the essential qualities that we seek in psychological and spiritual growth. I’ve been working for several years with individuals and small groups bringing these teachings forward and have found they provide answers to the questions we face in these times. I am now launching this online course that brings it all together.

Skills you will get from this course

Deepen meditation skills whether you are a beginner or seasoned meditator.

Enhance kinesthetic experience of your body and the healing energies that resolve pain and increase vitality.

Access sources within the Tree of Life for creativity, compassion, wisdom, strength and love – the divine attributes of your true nature.

Heal the conflict between the inner man and woman.

Learn to take responsibility for your state of mind – transform “negative” emotions.

Invoke your ancestors and spirit allies to assist in your life journey.

Basically, my hope and intention is that this course will deepen your multi-faceted, spiritual awareness and help you develop a disciplined daily practice that is of benefit to you and all life on Mother Earth.

We will explore and experience together

Mindfulness practices for clearing the mind chatter and moving beyond the thinking mind.

The tree as both a cross-cultural symbol for human development, and the Tree of Life as a map of divine and human powers and attributes.

Practices for navigating in consciousness. Journeying deeply into the nature of the Sephiroth and the Tree. Discerning real or imaginary creations of the mind?

Understanding experiences of unity and duality – balancing the poles of yin and yang, male and female, giving and receiving.

Processes for healing the wounds of the heart.

Walking your visions with strength and opening to the sustaining support of Mother Earth.

Why the Tree of Life

The form and meaning of the Tree of Life were originally developed by Jewish mystics and further adapted by Christian, Sufi and Western esoteric spiritual teachers. Yet, many of the studies involving the Tree remain largely abstract and intellectual. This course will focus on experiential practices using meditations, divinations and invocations that explore the Tree in a way that opens you to the deep healing energies and spiritual guidance within. My approach draws from a range of spiritual lineages that include mindfulness meditation, the light-fire teachings of Agni Yoga, shamanism, alchemy and depth psychology.

The structure of the Tree of Life is similar to the chakra system of the East. There are centers (Sephiroth) that are sources of energy and places in consciousness that serve as emanations of attributes of your Soul and the Divine Source of all-that-is. Different than most depictions of the chakras, the Tree of Life has, in addition to the central column, axes that have centers to the right and left of the human body helping to balance the feminine and masculine, (yin and yang) aspects of your nature. The Tree also brings a focus down lower in the body to the feet with the aim of balancing transcendence with embodiment, coming to and serving the Earth.

The relationships of the different Sephiroth to each other form triangles and other patterns that express a range of states of consciousness. Each Sephira is related to elements of nature and mythological beings as well as psychological and spiritual qualities. Learning to navigate the Sephiroth and their relationships is a mind expanding and transformational process quite different from simply studying them theoretically or cognitively.

Course structure

The course will consist of twelve 90-minute, online sessions. All sessions will include experiential meditations, lecture and question and answer periods. All of the sessions will be recorded so participants will have access to them during and after the completion of the course. In addition, all participants will have access to over 10 recorded meditations that can be used for your own ongoing practice. The content and sequence of materials in the course will be flexible and proceed according to the needs of those attending.

Sessions will be online meeting every other week (except where holidays are involved).

All sessions will be recorded in case you miss a class.

Supplemental recorded meditations will be available for practice in between classes.

Sessions will be Sunday at 7 PM Eastern Time/4 PM PT and will be 90-minutes.

Fee for course including all materials is $500. Scroll down to register.

Register Here

Communing With the Realms of Life on Earth

This message comes with a link to a prayer/meditation that I recorded for my podcast series. The practice is one that I learned from my good friend and teacher of many years, Ralph Metzner, who joined the ancestor spirits in March of 2019. It’s a very helpful way to focus your attention before going on a journey of any kind, whether inward for healing, growth or exploring and expanding consciousness, or outward through the world. Similarly, it can be used at the end of a journey for opening to and expressing gratitude.

painting by Sam Brown, https://www.flickr.com/photos/samandkosmo/with/51538411474/

“Communing with the Realms of Life on Earth” begins with a short meditation to center, balance and open to a fuller integration of body, mind and spirit. We then invoke (or call attention to) the spirits of the different realms: place, time, the four directions, the animals, plants and fungi, minerals, ancestors and humans. We do this for the good of ourselves and all life on Earth. 

Here is a link to the podcast which I hope you enjoy and find helpful: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1827447/9799490.

Much has been said about the need for a major paradigm shift in human consciousness in order to avert or mitigate the impending catastrophic consequences of human activity over the past centuries. Some of the elements of that include shifting from an individualistic, competitive orientation towards greater cooperation, collaboration and mutual respect. Going deeper, the transformation we are opening to calls for a different quality of awareness of who we are, what our place is in this world, and how we pay attention to what is all around us.

I think I am safe in saying that anyone reading this has, like myself, been strongly conditioned with the attitude that humans are the only truly intelligent life on Earth. While a few alternative scientific studies have revealed some kinds of intelligence in animals and even plants, there is still the tendency, for most of us, to keep our attention focused primarily on humans. This may be true even if we have begun to adopt beliefs that humans are not the pinnacle of evolution or that consciousness is not a product of the human brain. Beliefs do not become our reality until we essentially embody them in the substance of our body, until we know in our heart and gut. This cultivation of a change in consciousness takes openness, intention and practice.

In the meditation/prayer “Communing With the Realms of Life on Earth” there are several suggestions that stretch the boundary of the mainstream consensus of what is real. One example is opening to the non-physical, spiritual, intelligent aspects of animals, plants and minerals. This was (is) the way indigenous people related as they sought prayerful connection with the spirit of a particular animal they were hunting or sought the benefit of a plant for medicine or spiritual awareness.

Other elements of the Communing practice is a focus on place and time as having sacred energy with which we can attune; the calling of attention to the spiritual energy of the four directions of the planet; the opening to experience the presence of ancestors who are no longer “alive” in physical bodies. Rather than believe, you are asked to simply be open to the possibility that when you direct your attention with thought, heart and senses, without prejudgment, you may experience these realities for the first time or more deeply.

I think this non-dogmatic, empirical approach and attitude is what can help us shift our consciousness and contribute to the collective transformation of humanity. We have been counseled to “be the peace we want to see in the world.” Likewise, may we be the mutually respectful, multi-dimensional beings that are vehicles of compassion and bring the harmonizing power of Spirit throughout the web-of-all-beings within which we live. I invite you to listen to this practice and I hope it is helpful to you in that realization.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1827447/9799490