2012 is finally here, and it gives us the opportunity to step forward as mystics who are willing to participate in making this a year of great positive transformation for the entire world and all her kingdoms. In this we will be joining spiritually-minded people all over the world who hold the dream of a New Earth based in compassion and cooperation, rather than greed and competition. We launch the 2012 Mystical Musings by looking at ways that we can, with just an adjustment of attitude and self-perception, make our contribution, as a community and as individuals, toward bringing about these great changes.

What are the changes we wish to see happen in this monumental year? How as mystics can we help to create them? We get inspiration and guidance by looking at some discoveries of quantum physics and applying them to our desire to help bring about the 2012 transformation. Surprisingly, we can have very powerful effect on the world, on its heart and mind, instantaneously and with very little effort. We can do this individually and as a community. Our prayers together in this Musing can be of the "quantum-think" sort and together we can bless the Earth and all Her kingdoms in a joyful and unified and very powerful way. Please join us and we will bless the world together.

In this time of exceedingly rapid evolution of consciousness, we experience often unexpected extremely challenging times, and also sudden states of expanded joyful realization. When we put both of these experiences in the context of the collective, of the Oneness, we find that knowing our participation in the healing of the planet in both the difficult and the joyful times takes on new meaning. And this knowing leads us, first, to take things less personally, and, second, to bring into awareness our willingness to help evolution along by welcoming the universal healing that comes with both the contractions and expansions. We will talk not only about attitudes that are helpful in these times, but also techniques for making our experiences support the common good.

Floods, fires, infestations, political standoffs and strife: chaos abounding outwardly and inwardly as well. What's a good mystic to do? If the mystic path is about anything it is about love and compassion, which have been abundant in the face of the Texas floods as well as the many wildfires plaguing the nation; there are so many examples of ordinary people rising up extraordinarily to help their fellow citizens. Compassion seems to be part of our genetic code and is thus a great practice in these chaotic times. And of course compassion is for others but also for ourselves, especially those dark corners of our childhood woundings that now more than ever need the light of our love to help ourselves consciously evolve, deepening our mystic practices. Michaelangelo said in late old age, I am still learning. And so Curiosity about even Chaos as well as Compassion is a foundation for all of our contemplative work and will thus be our parting gift to our fellow mystics, curiously exploring body, mind, heart, spirit.

How do we keep our mystic boat afloat in turbulent waters? How can we keep our sense of oneness in such polarizing and divisive times? In time for our Mystical Musings hiatus until September 17, we explore some fundamental strategies for evoking our mystic presence and for cultivating our mystic practice.

The message that Jesus brings is Love. The magic and power of Easter is that Love returns, embodied. The message is Love! not just the Law, not the power-of-the-strongest, but Love! and not just when it is convenient and easy and flowing, but also and even especially when it is difficult and challenging. Herein our mystic passion is being forged. In a culture of conformity, the iconoclastic mystic faces challenges with and from the status quo. Remaining oriented toward Love, our mystic paths are our refuges- along with community and the Avatar- amid the stormy evolution. Easter reminds us and evokes from within us the Christ-spirit, Love ongoing. These are transformative times as institutions, cultural touchstones and some individuals are crumbling, others rising anew, resurrecting. As the mystic core of love and union guides us through...we ourselves are resurrecting, an embodied resurrecting, renewing and transforming, ever-deepening and expanding our capacity to Love.

With a collective sense of humanity in America, and to some extent the world, being anxious and uncertain amid the rapidly evolving political and environmental scenes, we need as never before to access our genetically encoded sense of joy/peace/love; we need this access as a daily mystic practice to help heal what is ailin' us. And Hey! it's Springtime, a significant return of the basic codes of our earthly existence, offering us cyclical renewal as a balm for the oppression of current events and unfolding planet-wide changes. With renewal comes fresh perspective, new opportunity and new ways of living our lives and maybe, just maybe, irrational exuberance. Join us for our Spring Equinox Mystical Musings.

In terms of the daily living of our lives, perfection is the enemy of the soul. Kindness, lovingkindness toward one's family and friends, tribe and worthy opponents, and towards oneself, is a mystic practice in great demand right now. The Japanese philosophy of WabiSabi is a paradigm founded on the Buddhist three marks of existence: impermanence, suffering and emptiness, which cultivate kindness through compassion. The WabiSabi aesthetic includes simplicity, intimacy and deep appreciation of the ingenuous integrity of the natural world. Let us find our way toward deepening lovingkindness, together in this next Mystical Musings.

Do we lose our innocence or just misplace it? Does innocence end because of the seemingly inevitable effects of growing older or does it get transformed, so that we often don't recognize it anymore? In this complex and challenging world is access to innocence even desirable? Innocence is our true inner sense; we are born with Buddha nature, with purity, presence, wonder and joy. Innocence/Inner Sense is our platform for our being human and for learning anything especially the spiritual art of the mystic. Please join us as we begin our fourteenth year of Mystical Musings as we celebrate what feels to us as an unfolding of a whole new cycle of endeavor personally and collectively.

Such love does the sky now pour, that whenever I stand in a field, I have to wring out the light when i get home. -St Francis of Assisi The inner journey in nature, no matter time of year, offers opportunities for letting go, for deeper presence, absorption, sometimes even rapture or ecstasy. And so we wring out the light with the utter delight of deeply knowing that God is Love, Love Is, and I am Love. Wringing out the Light, we go deeper, we open more deeply than ever to the Light and to the Dark, the Great YinYang of the felt universe. We wring out the light when we are consciously living on our growing edge and work with whatever arises emotionally, spiritually, energetically. Let's wring out the light together at our next Mystical Musings.

Silence, stillness and darkness give us a chance to disconnect from our wired world, from the external, from the cacophony of everyday life, the onslaught of information and the chaos of noise pollution. Stillness is the silence of our habitual unconscious body movements. Darkness is the silence of sight. For some the disconnect of silence is emptiness, for others it is fullness. Silence breeds insight as we let go of the familiar and open to the depths. Silence cultivates deeper listening, an active listening. Silence invites a deepening of our inner life. Silence is the potentiated field of possibility. Silence opens the door to the vastness of our Being. Silence is the playground of the mystic. "Silence holds with its gloved hand, the wild hawk of the mind."

Isn't a whisper how sometimes spirit speaks? Not the loud, authoritative, powerful voice necessarily but the still, small, voice, a whisper speaking spirit. Whether it is your name being called or your power being called back into your heart and soul, a whisper is what often guides the mystic. But what of eternity? Other than that it is a very long, long time? How does "eternal" interface with daily reality? Is it only awe or does it include practicality as well? Whispers are not only sounds, but with a little synesthesia-imagination, a feather-touch could be perceived as a somatic whisper; or if there is a waft of an exquisite fragrance, this too could be an olfactory whisper. Doesn't elusive happiness whisper to us? Our embodiment whispers often on many different levels, intimating whispers of eternity. We will offer Musings on eternity whispering. Please join us.

The dark events of the summer are enough to make pessi-mystics of us all! No one needs to be told that there is currently conflict and confusion, widespread anger and deep grief in the collective. Add the weather to the mix and we can be almost depressed! But there is work for the mystic to do that can make a huge difference in all that's going on. What we might not give thought to is how we can help the situation and how we can learn from it. And the chaos can also help us grow deeply and rapidly. We don't want to miss the opportunity. Many believe that this time is the dark night before an awesome dawn, but this time has intrinsic value and is an invitation to service for all the spiritual communities on earth. We also point out while alarming conflict and confusion reign in the outside world, we are being infused by a gargantuan amount of Light. We await the dawn while we do what only spiritual awakening people can do: send powerful showers of Love and Light to everyone on the planet. We also look at what we can learn as we go about the task of lovingly caring for the world, and how we can use all the darkness to illuminate places in ourselves that need attention. We look at how, underneath it all, there is brilliant Light shining on us as spiritual beings. Please join us midway in our thirteenth year for this first Mystical Musings of the 2016-17 season.

In the face of a religious and cultural dominance built around doctrine and sectarianism, it takes courage to be an outsider, a mystic who looks within to the ultimate authority, not to dogma nor religious teachings- a very different perspective from those adhering to a creed that someone else has written and many follow. The Mystic takes the "road less traveled", and dares to be different from so many others. The mystic is an outsider who knows about persecution through the ages of those of a similar stripe, and courageously moves forward even though the threat of exclusion or misunderstanding can follow. With the cultural onslaught of the superficial and the glamorous, the mystic finds heart to move into the depths of Being guided by spiritual intuition, un-dazzled by the world of appearances. In the face of our living in "interesting times" it takes courage to integrate the indeterminacy of a volatile outer world, and to aim ourselves toward a peaceful inner life. In the face of fear, it takes big-hearted mystical courage to confront the demons within us so that, with perseverance, we might eventually find deepening wisdom and empowerment and meaning in our suffering. Mystics dare to say an unconditional "Yes" to life, despite its perils; even allowing the Yes in despair, resentment and collapse. The mystic aiming toward Oneness takes full responsibility for all that unfolds in life, conscious or unconscious, whether by our own agency or that of another, finding in ourselves Courage, finding in ourselves Heart, finding in ourselves the alchemy inherent in This, Here, Now.

The mystic develops skills that are specific to a Path of Awareness, Compassion, and Embodiment of Spirit. Among those skills are the ever-increasing ability to find silence within, to know deep peacefulness, to practice unconditional love, and to take responsibility for all the events in one's life. The mystic seeks embodied experience beyond the surface and the cultural in order to overcome habit, conditioning, unconsciousness, and ignorance. Mystic skill looks to daily life not as distraction or busyness, but as opportunities for deeper and deeper realization. Mystic skill reframes our tendencies toward glamour and avoidance, and chooses instead deep presence and compassionate love, joy and wonder. Please join us for our (playful) celebration of mystic skill.

This Sunday for the Musings is the sacred Palm Sunday holiday for Christianity and is sacred as well at the Spring Equinox for the earth-based religions. We honor these religious celebrations and will create together our own sacred Sunday mystic event, by exploring the fundamental value of Playfulness as a way of deepening into the Mystical. This can sound oxymoronically outrageous as we so often think of the intense suffering the mystic has to endure in order to awaken to the Divine Presence. But then we think of the great masters Nasrudin (a Sufi writer who is a hilarious spiritual teacher) and of course Hafiz (another early Sufi mystic) with whom we have laughed many times in our Musings together. So we have learned that even the deepest teachings can be expressed with humor and delight. This Sunday we continue our exploration of the New Spirituality and we learn the profound value of bringing playfulness to our prayers and meditations and affirmations and of having a playful attitude toward everything that we can during the day. The energy and effectiveness of this is quite astounding. We want to share with you the joy we have found using this attitude. (We have even applied it to tax preparation!) Come and share some Divine play with us, while learning what we can do to make life lighter and easier!

In our fast-paced modern culture the mystic faces the challenge of daring to live life in a slower, more contemplative way. This requires a focus on Being, more than on the constant Acting we have been conditioned to do, and is supported by being in the moment, slowing down our breathing, our thinking, our feeling. We meditate, pray, self-reflect, and deeply appreciate the beauty all around us by letting-go and relaxing into the Divine Presence. We allow life to flow at it own pace without feeling compelled to push forward. In this Musing we suggest ways of slowing down the body, the mind, and the heart. We recommend taking a fresh look at our to-do lists and eliminating what is not necessary in favor of using the time to serve ourselves, our communities and the world. We invite you to join us as we discuss some useful techniques for taking undue pressure off our lives and learning to live a slower, more awakened, more graceful, and more grace--filled life.

Mystics have long taught that the Divine Presence can be felt in the heart, mind, and body of anyone who asks for it. The felt sensation is one of warmth, comfort, true love and unconditional support. We can bathe in this in good times and bad, and it never fails to soothe the soul. We often forget that this is always available and so sacrifice the opportunity for the rich reward of feeling cared for at the deepest level. In this Musing we discuss how to call for that gift from our Guides, Angels, Avatars, and the Divine Source itself, and how to revel in it. Please join us for our New Year celebration of Divine Nurturance.

Our non-denominational Christmas Musing asks the question, "How can we find joy in such a difficult time?" The first thing to know is that joy and happiness are not the same. Happiness is fleeting, joy is constant. Ultimately true spiritual joy is attained when we welcome all the feelings and all the experiences of our lives and know that they come to us for our own growth and enlightenment. Joy is the deep knowing that all is well and all is going according to plan for us each. Joy is only possible when we have a felt sense of the benevolence of the Divine Presence. Joy knows the depth of us, knows the yin and the yang, the light and the dark and is able to hold the opposites in the vastness of our awareness. Even in our most challenging times we are able to find the joy of our spiritual lives. We will celebrate joy by singing traditional carols, and praying together for the relief of suffering on our planet. Please join us for this holiday gathering!

So many of us live our lives as a simple prayer, the prayer great mystic Meister Eckhart values above all others: "Thank You". We walk in gratitude because we know our blessings and notice how often they come, even in times of darkness. Using the phrase "Thank You" as a mantra yields beautiful results. Just the simple phrase, rather than Thank You "for". It is easy for us to make lists of what we are grateful for, and it is also a very powerful prayer. But leaving off the "for" and simply saying "Thank you" throughout the day elevates and enlivens us. It is hard to say a simple "Thank You" without smiling. Saying the phrase seems to gladden the heart each time we say it. It is an interesting experiment to think of something painful and simply say "Thank You": you will notice that it lightens the spirit. Saying it in any mood brings joy. Other simple mantra prayers are "God bless you", "May all beings be free", "I cover the world with the violet flame of transformation". In this Musing, we explore the power of simple prayer said in many situations, in many tones of voice, and it various moods. Please join us as we say simple prayers together and notice the effect it has on our bodies and our hearts, and on our community. This is, not unsurprisingly, our Thanksgiving gathering. Please celebrate it with us!