Reflection on our Attunement Intensive – Holding a Space for Love and Light.

◄ by Erin Rivers – Mission, KS ►

The Attunement Intensive of 2014 was exactly what one would expect. Three days of intensive attunement, dialogue, and reflection. What I brought away from our weekend in Kansas City was a sense of joyous resonance, thoughtful mindfulness, and a renewed idea of what it means to “be in the flow.” In the circle of some very wise people, I learned that the feeling realm should not be denied. Denying feelings such as abandonment, loneliness, worthlessness only feeds those feelings. With the bonds of Love, strengthened with Truth, I heard the circle explore the feeling realm and realize that only by accepting and holding these feelings can we release them and facilitate healing.

It became apparent that the feeling realm within each of us – that rainbow of joy and sorrow, hope and despair, jealousy and compassion – are a part of what creates in us human compassion. Without compassion, there is no love. And the first person with whom one should practice compassion is oneself. As I listened to the stories brought into the circle, I understood that I was listening to the world. And through this weekend, I saw that by embracing my own hurt, my own sense of loneliness, abandonment, and worthlessness, I was allowing a greater capacity within me to embrace my own joy, my own sense of belonging, joy, and worth (great worth, actually.) I could hold myself in Light, radiating Love without regard to outcome and step into the place of compassion that allows each of us to dance with the Spirit and to hold the world in Light and in Love.

I wasn’t struck on the side of the road by lightening. I wasn’t hit on the side of the head with a board. Rather, this Intensive continues the gradual unfolding of my authentic self. As I continue in Attunement, I become more of who I truly am. Many of the self-negating ways of thinking I have nurtured as precious family heirlooms are relaxing and falling away, no longer necessary, no longer needed, no longer called upon. Generational habits of mind are changing as I am enfolded in the Radiant Love and Truth Attunement calls forth.

At the end of the weekend while we reflected around the circle, most everyone spoke to the experience of gratitude and great blessing. The shared idea of how very blessed we were to be able to participate in such an arena of Love and Compassion touched us, some of us to tears. I am finding in the weeks following that I have a slightly different lens with which I am viewing the world. Love attracts Love. To quote Lloyd Meeker II in his poem “Ceremony of Assurance” –

Being vast, knowing light,
that gives my eye another sight,
the end of courage passes me,
transmutes to trust silently.

I kneel, and kneeling gladly lift
singing heat of flesh and fire-
flesh ascends, and fire falls,
the heart transfigured, without walls
expands, includes and purifies,
clothes the earth in heaven’s guise;
both earth and heaven find release
in flame of union, holy peace.

Soaring high or hunting deep
the heart runs true in healing sweep,
nowhere is the fire not
burning sweet and burning hot.

My burning brooks no compromise,
commands the trusting heart to rise:
by love I see, in fire I know
the path of peace on which I go.
-From To Sunder the Dark
as found in – Attunement Love Made Visible
By Chris Jorgensen