White-Hot Heart Currents

Former U.S. President Gerald Ford died just recently, at the very advanced age of 95. When I saw some of the features on the news channels about him and his presidency, I was struck by the basic humanity of the man. He was not actually elected; in fact, he took over the presidency in 1974 upon Richard Nixon’s disgrace and resignation following Watergate. So, much was made of Ford’s attempts to heal and reunite the country after the divisive tumult of the Viet Nam era and Watergate.

The stories also featured pictures of Ford with his team, including, prominently, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney as much younger men.

At some point, mulling it all over, I had the odd but very strong feeling that, though he never would have said so, President Ford may well have only felt free to let go into death after these recent congressional elections. I had no basis for this feeling in anything I’d ever heard of him saying. But there it was. My sense of the man’s soul was that the Democratic Party’s “thumping” (Pres. Bush’s frank assessment) of the Republicans, regaining control of both the House and the Senate, may have reassured him that the health of the American government of checks and balances was strong again. In effect, his party’s loss may have given him the blessing he needed to die after a long, rich, extraordinary life as a servant of his country.

I didn’t even mention this feeling to Linda. Not that I wouldn’t have; it just seemed so off the wall and impossible to prove. But it was there, very strongly, and I mulled it over on and off for several days.

Then, last night on the news, there was the revelation that Ford had done a secret piece of a televised interview with Watergate whistle-blower Bob Woodward (interesting that he was willing to do this with an opponent of his party). He had only done the piece on the firm stipulation that Woodward not release it until after Ford’s death. And in this simple snippet of interview, Ford said–this is not an exact quote but it’s pretty close–”I believe Bush, Rumsfeld, and Cheney made a mistake justifying the war in Iraq” to the American people, Congress, and the world.

Wow. So this then was his second blessing, this time one that he gave us in his time of departure. A former president standing in the role of statesman, patriot, and also world citizen, stating bluntly feelings that perhaps only a very few intimates had heard from him before. (I’m not following the followup, so that may turn out not to be true.) Hearing this unprecedented statement, seeing him say those words on camera in his obviously advanced old age. prompted me to share my earlier sense of his timing.

I hope it makes a strong impact on everyone, especially those with power to get us out of Iraq and onto a new track in our international relations. I fear George Bush and even his new team won’t altogether get it, though. In any case, it’s another good sign that America is not down for the count and a new era is opening up. Thank you, President Gerald Ford, and blessings on your journey, wherever it may lead!

*****

On another note, I was watching ad genius Donny Deutsch’s “Big Idea” show last night featuring Bill Gates. What most impressed me was Gates’s recounting of how he and Paul Allen and their friends had anticipated the “revolution” of getting computer power into the hands of individuals, out of the corporate mainframes and institutions–and how amazed they were that no potential competitors seemed to notice.

That was inspiring and encouraging. To me personally.

I feel that the advent of “21st Century Enlightenment” in the form of realization of the HEART is like a tsunami still mostly out at sea, or only perceptible yet to a very few of us. Yet it’s my strong conviction and my passionate intention that this quality of awakened living, with so many unprecedented distinctions from the kinds of enlightenment that were available in the past, is destined to break upon the world with immense power and become commonplace among intelligent, authentic, self-aware people, in this century. All over the world.

That’s what Linda and I are fervently working to help bring about. In every way we possibly can. I also believe that it’s potentially a far more transmissible and popular revolution than even that of, say, the Integral perspective–precisely because it doesn’t require a whole lot of mind and conceptual thinking to appreciate its essences. It can be communicated between and among people almost by osmosis, especially as more time goes by and the community(ies) of those living on this basis become more communicative and attractive to all manner of sensitive, hungry hearts.

I’m well aware that this may seem preposterous to some, or grandiose, inflated, etc. After all, we’ve been doing our thing for nearly a decade and a half, and we’re still largely unknown.

I’m fine with that. I know the process that I am living and transmitting. I feel very strongly how Linda and I and others, in our quiet, apparently everyday ways, are nurturing Heart-realization in countless other human beings in the mystery of the Onlyness. So, time will tell. I hope and intend!

[From Saniel: I sent this to a friend who sent an audio of a traditional chant to the Guru on “Guru Purnima,” July 7, the traditional “full moon of the Guru” celebration day in India. The friend, also a client/student, had written that he wanted to honor Linda and me on that day, and had also, since he is “his own guru,” spent the day playing the chant over and over to himself. I’ve edited it a bit for publication on the blog.]

Only now listened all the way thru…that was Krishnadas, yes? Beautiful.

Thank you so much for sending it.

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[Note: At some point we’ll resurrect my golf site, honestswinggolf.com, and move this particular blog over there entirely. For now, I’ll leave it here at sanielandlinda.com.]

I’ve had a couple of mornings on the course recently that I’d mostly rather forget, if I look at them with an eye to either performance or enjoyment. But the learning … good stuff.

(That’s the Tim Gallwey “Inner Game” triad: Performance, Enjoyment, Learning. I think any of us who steps onto a course without a balanced desire to enhance our game in each of the three arenas is missing a whole lot of what The Game offers.)

What I had a chance to experience—more than I wish I had!—is what I’m coming to call “Golf Shock.” It relates to things I’ve been ruminating about in the aftermath of this summer’s U.S. Open at Winged Foot in New York, where Tiger Woods for the first time ever as a pro missed the cut at a major, and Phil Mickelson treated the entire cosmos to one of the most appalling, deeply disappointing chokes in Earthly golf history.

In our spiritual and psycho-emotional work with clients, my wife Linda and I and the teachers I’ve trained address what we call the “broken zones” of everybody’s psyche. A serious discussion of broken zones could go on and on. I’ll spare us. The essence of what we mean is this: they’re “broken” in the sense that when a person tumbles into one of them, his basic feeling of identity suffers a sharp, severe discontinuity from his ordinary, everyday sense of who he is. Suddenly he’s in another, very weird and extremely uncomfortable world. People describe how it feels to be in these psychic zones with intense terms: “shattered,” “drowning,” “knocked back,” “miles away,” “spinning,” “no ground underneath me,” “burning alive,” “freezing up,” “being strangled,” “can’t feel anything,” and so on.

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Tuesday July 13–Finally getting around to learning how to use the blog after so many months with it sitting here…ah well. Embarrassingly easy; many thanks to Greg Aurand for helping me out.

I’ve written up a more complete version of my “Achilles Plexus” essay that’s posted elsewhere on the blog. One of my friends and fellow Waking Down in Mutuality teachers thinks it’s as important as our whole discussion of “hypermasculine dharmas.” I agree. More on that later, but in general, I feel one of the most pressing issues of our time is for us spiritual teachers, leaders, and “evolutionary vanguard” practitioners to soberly assess just how governed we ourselves still are by archaic dynamics that will tend to sabotage everything we are otherwise diligently putting in place.

Well, this doesn’t say much yet. But now that I know the how-to’s, I’ll be back a lot. I actually love keeping journals and this one will probably be as much fun for me as my previous ones. I hope you like it too.

PS, I’m soon adding another section of the blog called “Honest Swing Golf.” Decided recently that “I am no longer willing to let changing the world prevent me from my golf game.” Question prompted by the comment of a friend (damn good golfer): Does golf mimic life?…

Getting to know quite a number of teachers over the last couple of years, and finding so many points of resonance in our views and orientations, Linda and I feel more and more that we are part of what I am coming to call a “Global Living Lineage” of teachings, traditions, transmissions, and teachers.

In the isolated sacred cultures of the old world, at least in highly elaborated practice traditions such as those in India and Tibet, a practitioner might have a “root guru” or home school. Yet he or she might also take instruction from any number of other teachers, and even cross lines into substantially different lineage “clans.” But none of this would represent a fundamental separation from the original teacher or teaching that the seeker established a heart-link with to begin with. Or, therefore, from the whole precious stream of grace that that link had opened and kept alive for him or her.

In today’s global culture, the same is practically the case across all previous lines of traditions and teachings. I’ve long observed that people who enter the Waking Down in Mutuality work feel free–and we bless them–to explore all kinds of other schools and forms of liberating, healing, and evolutionary work. And we see people coming into our process from an enormous variety of other modalities of such work.

So it seems to me that it’s time for all of us to begin accepting that we are all now participants in and beneficiaries of a single Global Living Lineage. This grand lineage tradition includes all cultures and traditions of sacred transformational pursuit, EAst and West, indigenous and modern. And the more each particular school and lineage can recognize this and grant its participants blessing to partake of other offerings within the greater Global Living Lineage, the more each of us, whether teacher, apprentice, or seeker, will begin to relax into the recognition that everyone’s journey is unique and there is no fundamentally wrong or sinful place in the greater lineage for our heart’s prompts to take us.

Linda and I encourage all our teaching colleagues in all schools and traditions to accept this as the reality of our lives and times and come to peace with it. And when our students find themselves impelled to journey elsewhere for further growth and clarification, let us therefore bless them liberally, knowing they are never really leaving either our own hearts or the Heart of Being itself. And where and when we find ourselves so moved, let’s have the courage to act and to bless our own freedom too!

This kind of blessing, generously and openly extended, could contribute much to true peace and tolerance among all schools, traditions, teachers and lineages within the Global Living Lineage. So be it.

“The Achilles Plexus, #1.” In a session with a client not long ago I came upon a key phrase I want to develop: “The Achilles Plexus.”

It addresses one of the visions I have of the current scene that just haunts me. How much are we leaders, authors, teachers, and cutting-edge showers of the path, actually blind to our own brokenness and therefore still governed by it? A lot, I feel. And I have this deep anxiety that we’re not going to work this piece out till it’s too late. Till the slide into an evolutionary arrest or regression, with accompanying devastating breakdown of society and biosphere, is impossible to prevent.

I address this in Dawson Church and Geralyn Gendreau’s anthology, Healing Our Planet, Healing Our Selves. My essay is titled “Healing the Roots of Fundamentalism.” In it I suggest that we’re all fundamentalists—in that we’re all still far too driven by relatively unconscious rigidity, irrationality, and brokenness. And I make the point:

“This includes many of our leaders, secular and spiritual. When a leader requires others to hold him as flawless, or simply unaccountable, his flock becomes self-toxifying. The idea of a leaders’ untouchable superiority betrays brokenness in all willing participants. Such societies become like extended dysfunctional families. Their ‘children’ shoulder unbearable pressures of both their own shadowy brokenness and that of their ‘parents.’ These collectives often embody the worst attributes of what we fear as cults. However, many of them flourish not only in marginal spiritual or political communes, but also in corporate high-rises, respectable churches and synagogues, and halls of government—all over the planet.” (p. 32)

The power dynamics of this kind of toxic leadership still prevail. What’s of most urgent concern, I feel, is that they still prevail in spirituality as much as anywhere. And one of the most entrenched features of such toxic, double-messaging leadership is what I recently began calling “The Achilles Plexus.” It’s a fundamental wound in our primary personal-power zone, the solar plexus, that we unconsciously act out in nearly all our relations. And we act it out in ways that ultimately can and often do sabotage just about everything we stand for.

I’ll say more about this in my next entry.

ROSE (Radical Organismic Spiritual Evolution) Work explained:

Dear Visitor,

Welcome! We’re so excited to start our blog! You’ll be hearing from both of us…literally, since we plan to post audio and eventually video pieces here as well as writings.

We have a brilliant, passionately dedicated team helping us help you crystallize your awakened presence on this Earth—an ongoing event of “radical organismic spiritual evolution.” (No, that’s not “orgasmic” or “organic,” it’s “organism-ic”!) They’re helping us help you continually find, embrace, refine, and fulfill your own destiny-genius of contribution to humanity and all Life.

We named this blog “White-Hot Heart Currents” because it’s our way of keeping you current (up to date) with the currents (streams) of our Heart-work for and with you. As for what we mean by “White-Hot,” well, you probably can’t get that merely from the words and images here and on our whole site…but they’re a mighty good place to start!

What is your own “destiny-genius” of awakened contribution? Whatever it may be, whatever changes it may move you through over the course of your lifetime…finding, clarifying, and expressing that mystery is a perpetual hero’s or heroine’s journey.

We take ours by helping you take yours.

Let’s do this Thing together!

So, keep coming back to “White-Hot Heart Currents.” We intend to make it very worth your while. And we thank you for your time and attention.

Blessings,

Saniel & Linda