Dear Friends of the
Feast,
The Feast for the
Soul has been launched. After more than
a year of preparation, on Thursday morning we released our booster rockets and
are finally traveling freely through space.
There are more people
with us on this journey than we will ever know. Those registered on our website are only a fraction of our total
community. Some say that we are at
least 5,000 in number -- others say as many as 10,000. To all of you who worked so hard to spread
the word, I thank you. The success of
this work was truly a grass roots effort.
From where I sit in
this “cat-bird seat”, I have heard wonderful stories of how the Feast began
five days ago:
·
The group of 18
people who climbed to the top of a mountain to meditate together to launch the
Feast in Georgia.
·
The 45 people
who gathered at 5:30 am in our little Valley here in Idaho, braving the dark
and the cold to sit together in silence as we launched the Feast in the Wood
River Valley.
·
The woman in
California whose cat woke her up at exactly 4:30 am so that they could sit
together for the first day of the Feast.
·
The woman who
listened to all three of the on-line meditations and was filled with joy by the
guidance she found there.
Relax into the joy of
what has been created, be true to your commitment, and be a support for others
who have joined you. The success of
this Feast is truly a community effort.
As Father Ken
Brannon, Rector of St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Ketchum Idaho said in his
sermon the Sunday before the Feast began: “The commitment to the Winter Feast
is not for the faint of heart.” I will
add, that these are extraordinary times, and they demand extraordinary
measures.
Love and blessings to
all of you. My heart is filled with joy
knowing you are out there.
Valerie
NEWSLETTER
January
19, 2009
Volume
I, Number 7
TABLE
OF CONTENTS
FUND
RAISING RESULTS
Awesome!!!
DAILY
DEDICATION
Something to add to your daily practice
DAILY
INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES FOR JANUARY 22 - 28
SUBTLE
ACTIVISM:
Notes from David Nicol’s Talk in Sun Valley
Announcement of Webcast
IT’S
NEVER TOO LATE:
Yes, You Can Join the Feast Now, Even If You Missed the Opening Day
FUND RAISING
RESULTS
As I write this
newsletter I am thrilled to be able to announce that we have already received
$1,425 through Pay Pal donations and through a handful of checks received in
today’s mail. Thank you to each of you
for your generosity. Trust that these
funds are being used carefully. Your
generous response assures me that you are reading this newsletter and
appreciating our work.
DAILY
DEDICATON:
I encourage/invite
you to use the following dedication each morning when you begin your practice,
particularly on Tuesday, the Inaugural day for the new president of the United
States, Barack Obama.
Dedication: Let us join our hearts with all those around the globe who are part
of this Feast for the Soul. May the
energy that is generated by our intentions, our commitment, and our contact
with the greater collective give birth to something entirely new for the
healing of our planet, for all life, and the inspiration and guidance of our
leaders around the world. Let the merit
of our practice be a blessing to all of life.
DAILY
INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES FOR JANUARY 22 – 28
January 22:
“Be impeccable with your word.
Don’t take anything personally.
Don’t make assumptions.
Always do your best.”
Don Miguel Ruiz, from The Four
Agreements
January 23:
“It doesn’t matter whether one is brand new to meditation or has been
meditating for a long time. What
matters is the attitude with which we engage in the process of meditation. The most important thing is that we come to
meditation with an open attitude, an attitude that is truly innocent, by which
I mean an attitude that’s not colored by the past, by what we’ve heard about
meditation through culture, through the media, or through our various spiritual
and religious traditions. We need to
approach the notion of meditation in a way that is fresh and innocent.”
Adyashanti, from True
Meditation
January 24:
“Death is not the opposite of life.
Life has no opposite. The
opposite of death is birth. Life is
eternal.”
Eckhart Tolle from
Stillness Speaks
January 25:
“Loving kindness toward ourselves doesn’t mean getting rid of
anything. The point is not to try to
change ourselves. Meditation isn’t
about throwing ourselves away and becoming something better. It’s about
befriending who we already are…that’s what we study, that’s what we come to
know with curiosity and interest.”
Pema Chodron from Awakening
Loving Kindness
January 26:
There is a silken cord that connects the soul to God. That cord is our very own breath.
This is an adaptation (not a direct quote) from the teachings of Hazrat
Inayat Kahn, Sufi Master of the early 20th Century.
January 27:
“Let thy words be few.”
Ecclesiastes 5:2
January 28:
“Your task is not to seek for Love,
But merely to seek and find
All the barriers within yourself
That you have built against it.”
Jelaluddin Rumi
SUBTLE ACTIVISM: NOTES FROM DAVID NICOL’S TALK
You may remember that
David Nicol, Founder and Director of the Gaiafield Project and the Center for
Subtle Activism in San Francisco, spoke in Sun Valley on January 13 as part of
our local launch program for the Winter Feast for the Soul. We had hoped to be able to webcast the
event, but due to technical difficulties we were unable to do that. I would apologize here, but in the end I
think we have arranged something even better and more concise
Here is the good news…David
has agreed to record a one-hour presentation on Subtle Activism for our site on
TalkShoe.com. I expect that it will be
posted by the end of the day on Tuesday.
This webcast will replace our Saturday Community Call this week.
You will find the recording
of his talk on the Winter Feast page on TalkShoe under Guest Speakers. In the meantime I offer you my notes from
his talk last week.
My notes from his talk on the 13th:
· The groundbreaking work of Richard Tarnas
in Understanding the Development of the Western Mind and the work of Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin in the evolution of consciousness come together in the
understanding of Subtle Activism.
· To understand both is to see what is
happening in the world now from an entirely new perspective.
· The accommodation for an evolving
consciousness shows itself in the evolution of the physical form, ever evolving
in order to accommodate the evolution of consciousness. David referred to this as the “Law of
Complexity Consciousness.”
· The events that are taking place today are
indicative of a birthing process taking place in consciousness…a shift that is
as big as the transition from “non-life to life.”
· The transformation that will be needed for
this shift requires an initiation.
· In earlier times, a crucial role held by an
elder in this initiatory process was simply to “hold the space” for the
initiate, providing a calm and reassuring presence. This support would enable the initiate to pass through a journey
of descent and to come out the other side.
· The shift that is taking place now is so
huge that no one individual can guide us through. It is an initiation that will require huge numbers of us, and
perhaps all of us to participate.
· Perhaps the practice of global meditation
and prayer, if engaged in by enough people can play that role for the
collective psyche.
· The practice of global meditation might
just create a subtle global field of presence that can support humanity to
gather the courage to face the collective crisis and pass willingly through the
darkness to be reborn on the other side.
· The initiation that we will go through to
birth this new consciousness is likely to be very demanding, and we see that is
already is for many of us.
IT’S NEVER TOO
LATE TO JOIN OUR FEAST FOR THE SOUL
Of course people can
continue to join the Winter Feast for the Soul anytime they are moved to do
so. Forty days will begin whenever they
start. I suspect by the time we reach
the half-way point on February 4th we will have increased our
numbers to a some critical mass needed to support a shift in consciousness that
will carry us into the next Feast in 2010.
Welcome the latecomers. It is
never too late to join the Feast for the Soul.
Here is an interesting
link about Mercury retrograde from one of our readers, Jackie Major:
http://aquariumage.com/vibration.html
