(based on the teachings of Cosmologist Brian Swimme on the Powers of the Universe, illustrated with insights from Jean Houston and from the writings of poets and mystics)

Homeostasis: Here what has been developed is sustained, maintained… The goddess Sarasvati in India plays only one note on her long-stringed instrument; body temperature stays at 98.6F…. We may reach a level of sameness in our prayers and practices, our work and relationships, the structures of our lives, our liturgies…. but if kept too long, safety leads to stagnation. We reach a plateau as the urgency subsides, the joy fades into the commonplace; what seemed wonderful becomes the everyday, the expected. Our lives slip into the “nothing-happening” of an Austen novel, and we may not even notice how dull it is. The universe gets bored with us. That was Dorothy’s life when we first meet her in the Wizard of Oz. Grey skies, grey land, grey telephone poles.The only thing really alive was Toto; then he was taken away.

Cataclysm: For the next level of growth, of deepening, something has to wake us up, shake us up. It may take a tornado to blow us all the way to Oz…. We must orchestrate the breakdown for the breakthrough to occur. The mystics endured cataclysm in different ways: Julian of Norwich was sustained in her near-death experience by the presence of love whereas Angela of Foligno, a follower of Francis of Assisi, learned in the darkness where she lost everything that love would never leave her. For by that blessing which came with the darkness I did collect my thoughts and was made so sure of God that I can never again doubt but that I do of a certainty possess him. Trust in the darkness and loss finally brings us through to the light. Etty Hillesum, who died in Auschwitz during the Second World War, wrote: I shall try to help you, God, to stop my strength ebbing away, though I cannot vouch for it in advance. But one thing is becoming increasingly clear to me: that you cannot help us, that we must help you to help ourselves. And that is all we can manage these days, also all that really matters: that we safeguard that little piece of you, God, in ourselves. And in others as well. Alas, there doesn’t seem to be much you yourself can do about our circumstances, about our lives. Neither do I hold you responsible. You cannot help us but we must help you and defend your dwelling place inside us to the end.

Jean Houston says that the call is to “radical reinvention” in order to speciate, to become a deepening spirit of the earth for her new emergence. Like the seed, the mystic must go down into the darkness of the earth, let go of the success of walking in the midday sun of her own achievements, her own goals and triumphs.

Synergy: mutually enhancing relationships. Life at the Benedictine Monastery of Helfta was an illustration of this: four mystics lived there in the 12^th century, sustaining one another in faith and love and their mystical experiences. The writings of the mystics can offer synergistic energy, the guidance and wisdom we need; now we are more deeply aware of the earth and its living beings, of the universe itself as offering shared energies to us; the bio-mimicry that teaches us how creatures on our planet survive cataclysm; the characters in the Wizard of Oz, representing heart and brain and courage are a splendid example of synergy.

Transmutation: slow but deep change over time; releasing us from old powers that hold us in check: the personal unconscious (Freud); the collective unconscious (Jung); the whole biological nature (Bateson). The universe is at work within us: we are part of the cosmological unconscious (Swimme); we are the universe reflecting upon itself through us (Teilhard). On the mystic journey, our own efforts to be still, to listen, to pray, to seek inner guidance….

Terese of Lisieux said our efforts are like a child trying laboriously to lift her feet to climb high steps until at last love scoops her up in her arms, carries her to the top…evolution of species; the ancient tale of the earth gradually being created by bits of soil being placed on the back of a turtle… we recognize transmutation taking place in us when we no longer fit into old patterns, relationships, structures. Then we must seek out others to help us to keep going.

Transformation: Sudden. Go looking for guidance in the mystics, writers and poets who have experienced this. Welcome beauty into our lives. We have within us a visionary process which is a source for the recoding of the planet. All the codings for the life of the unborn future are available in us. We are the recoding, the reset button.

After a long illness, a bout of scrupulosity, Caryll Houselander had an experience of God that removed her obsessive fears and gave her a profound peace: “It was in the evening, I think. The room was dark, and the flames of firelight dancing on the wall seemed almost to cause me pain when I opened my eyes….I had realized in a dim, intuitive way that it was not something I had done that required forgiveness, but everything I was that required to be miraculously transformed.”

Interrelatedness : a vision of caring with a sense of the whole an invitation from the cosmos to see all of life as interconnected, as did the mystics, the astronauts and now the physicists. We need an overarching vision that is so simple and alluring that we can see what the world can be…. What does a world look like that really works for everyone? This is an incredible grace and opportunity for us, born on this beautiful planet at this time in history.

Radiance: the power of wisdom: The sun gives off messages as gravitons that pull us to the sun; the sun interacts with the moon and new gravitons feed us; the earth responds with a flood of gravitons….human presence depth perception. We are frozen light…

Hildegard of Bingen, the astonishing 12^th c. abbess and genius, wrote: “From my infancy until now, in the 70^th year of my age, my soul has always beheld this Light, and in it my soul soars to the summit of the firmament and into a different air….The brightness which I see is not limited by space and is more brilliant than the radiance around the sun ….When and how I see this, I cannot tell; but sometimes when I see it, all sadness and pain is lifted from me, and I seem a simple girl again, and an old woman no more!”

Brian Swimme says that every being you meet holds fourteen billion years of radiance. Radiance is the primary language of the universe. We develop a container that can respond to the beauty of the other. We enter into resonance with the radiance of the universe, and that is the primary form of prayer. You become the radiance that is flooding the world.