mirror of light, dark

I came across an interesting concept in a novel I am reading, Kushiel's Scion, that struck a chord for me. It talked about a group or person being a mirror of the light or of the dark for a person. That someone can even be both. It would take an awareness of self to look and a courageous heart to keep looking into that mirror. It reminds me of the path to growth where resistance must be confronted and allowed to move through it. What also got my attention was the group part of that mirror concept. Who mirrors groups I belong to? How about on a large scale, my country? How about for religious groups? An example I see of that comes from a blog, Quaker-Pagan Reflections, and its writers' interactions with more typical Quakers. I see the two groups, Quakers and Pagans, being mirrors of both the light and the dark for each other. Pagans can unabashedly embrace the ecstatic connection to the divine which Quakers appear to struggle to keep quiet. Quakers are much more willing to put the "leadings" of the divine to the community to test their truth whereas Pagans can go with individual "spirit told me" ideas and not test their truth within community. I think Zen has something to say about these kinds of mirrors and I just picked up a book last night that speaks to it, The Zen of Creativity, thanks wife for bringing it home. I will continue reading both and see what I find. Also I will look in the mirror.

Peace, Jim

patterns

The patterns that weave through existence are becoming clearer. Activating these patterns with the spark of the divine, connected to my divine spark, shows me a possibility for connecting to all. I saw a group of grackles chasing a coopers hawk and wondered at how they coordinate their actions to get the hawk to leave the territory. I then wondered how people can do it? There is language, obviously. But there are deeper, more subtle ways I think. Rupert Sheldrake speaks of biogenetic fields that all of existence operates in and creates. The patterns I am beginning to see may be the foundation of these fields. Perhaps humans can communicate through these means. Language is so fraught with distortions and mis-communications it can be more of a distraction than help. If we, those who can, those who want to, can learn to put our intentions, directions, and actions into these patterns in a conscious way, as in certain kinds of prayer, we can give ourselves an option to language to communicate with. This is not intrusive as some technological signal sent out might be, since one can simply ask,"is this for the greatest good?" and it will be in alignment with that, and we can allow it in. It can be accepted or rejected. The messages are really already out there. People have been putting out their stuff for as long as we have thought beyond ourselves. Like Sheldrake talks about, the more of something out there the more it can be picked up on. I think I am seeing a possibility to do this directly, finding the pattern, setting the thought or idea into it and letting it go. This goes further than what I understood as prayer in that it is directed to a specific place in a pattern I can perceive. As opposed to a thought or idea sent to a general address like "the divine" or "the highest and best of all." Now to test the hypothesis. Come up with a good double blind and see what happens.