Llewellyn is the founder of The Golden Sufi Center. Author of several books, he has specialized in the area of dream work, integrating the ancient Sufi approach with modern psychology. Since 2000 his focus has been on spiritual responsibility in our present era and awakening the global consciousness of oneness. He has written about the feminine, the world soul and spiritual ecology. He has been interviewed by Oprah Winfrey on SuperSoul Sunday, and featured on the Global Spirit series on PBS.

Llewellyn.jpg

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

A lover's journey

<h4>LLEWELLYN VAUGHAN-LEE explores love in the time of coronavirus, and how those
 of us with a spiritual practice can turn the results into action, bringing care and compassion into our communities.
</h4>
Suddenly we are all thrown together into a time of anxiety, fear for the health of
 family, friends, loved ones and neighbors, and for the economic distress caused by this pandemic. While some countries
 have a strong safety net, many live pay-check to pay-check, or even day-to-day, the rickshaw driver without customers
 having nothing to feed his family. This is the reality of the global crisis we are all encountering. It is also a
 testing time for those of us who are fortunate to be rooted in a spiritual practice, faced with the simple opportunity
 to open towards love rather than contract into fear.
There is a story that when the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan were sweeping across
 Central Asia, destroying cities, massacring the population, fearful dervishes ran to the great mystic Shams, the
 teacher of Rumi, shouting, “The Mongols are coming, the Mongols are coming!” He calmly replied, “I have been teaching
 you to be a duck, now swim.” For those of us drawn to the path of love, now is the opportunity to put our practice
 into action, to bring care and compassion into our communities, rather than being caught in the collective patterns of
 anxiety or panic that are swirling around us. This pandemic has taught us that we are all one, no one is separate, no
 countries or borders can limit the spread of the virus. Rather we have to respond from a place of shared humanity,
 helping and supporting each other.
<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Love and care – care for each other, 
 care for the Earth – are the simplest 
 and most valuable human qualities. 
 And love belongs to oneness.
</h5>
<hr>
The most common sense response to the virus has been to self-isolate, to close
 everything except essential services. Isolation is the oldest and most tested way to prevent the spread of a disease.
 In the Middle Ages in Europe whole cities were quarantined to prevent the spread of the plague. It is vital that as
 far as possible we practice social distancing. But rather than any sense of isolation is the knowing that we are all
 in this together, that it is part of our shared journey together with each other and with the Earth. And the power of
 our love can serve as a balance to the darkness of fear, to the forces that can so easily contract us.
And in the strength of our love and our shared journey we can use this crisis as an
 opportunity, a moment to step back from the daily demands, the busyness of our outer life. With so many stores and
 businesses closed, we experience our life reduced to what is essential, and when this pandemic is over, can we
 continue with a voluntary simplicity, no longer caught in the addictions of consumerism? We can recognize that the
 Earth is sending us a message, that it is out of balance and needs our love and care and attention. We are all part of
 one interdependent living being, ancient beyond our understanding.
We can no longer afford to pollute it with our ceaseless desires, filling the air with
 carbon emissions, the oceans with plastic.
If there is a light in this present crisis, it is in the air pollution plunging across
 China; ducks, fish, and clear waters returning to the canals of Venice. And possibly the shock of the pandemic will
 warn us of the danger of denying science, of waiting until it is too late. Maybe we can finally recognize that the
 imbalance of the Earth can and will affect us all, suddenly, unexpectedly.
<a
 href="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Open_Towards_Love2_1d646f58e3.jpg">
 <img class="lazyload has-img-center"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Open_Towards_Love2_1d646f58e3.jpg" />
 </a>
Love and care – care for each other, care for the Earth – are the
 simplest and most valuable human qualities. And love belongs to oneness. We&nbsp;know this in our human
 relationships, how love draws us closer, and in its most intimate moments we can experience physical union with
 another. It can also awaken us to the awareness that we are one human family, and on the deepest level love can
 reconnect us with our essential unity with all life, with the Earth herself.
Love will remind us that we are a part of life – that we belong to each other and to
 this living, suffering planet. We just need to say “yes” to this mystery within our own hearts, to open to the link of
 love that unites us all, that is woven into the web of life. Only from this place of living oneness can we support
 each other in this crisis and then walk into a future that recognizes, feels, the sacred nature of all that exists,
 and so help to bring our world back into balance. We can emerge from this pandemic with a deeper sense of our shared
 humanity and our love for our common home, its mystery and wonder. Or we can remain stranded on the desolate shores of
 materialism, as in a supermarket where the shelves are increasingly empty.
<hr>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">Article by LLEWELLYN VAUGHAN-LEE 
 Illustrations by JASMEE RATHOD</h4>
<hr>

Open toward love

<h4>In this article, LLEWELLYN VAUGHAN-LEE ignites our sense aligncenter of wonder
 with his
 personal experiences of a deepening relationship with food over the course of his life. He also offers us some
 valuable tips in “The Practice of Cooking with Love.”</h4>
Let dharma be the same as food, 
 and let food be the same as dharma … 
 This food is the fulfillment 
 that is the joy of dharma and 
 the delight of meditation. 
 
Dogen
When I was in my teens and began to practice meditation, I also learned to cook. I have
 an instinctual belief that to prepare and cook one’s food with attention is an essential part of spiritual life that
 provides a necessary ingredient for the journey. When Dogen, the founder of the Soto Zen school, went to China to
 rediscover the roots of Zen, his most instructive meeting was with an old monk who was the chief cook of the
 monastery, who rebuked him for not understanding that cooking was a spiritual practice.
Maybe it was this ancient tradition that returned when, along with meditation, I learned
 to chop vegetables and bake stoneground bread. I had been brought up without any consciousness of food, in the
 English style of cooking, in which cabbage is boiled for twenty minutes until all the goodness has long gone. With
 my chopping board, knives and wok, I learned to bring attention to cooking and eating. It was also an excellent
 silent rebellion against my middle class family background. While everyone was eating their Sunday lunch of roast
 beef and roast potatoes, I was sitting at the same table eating a bowl of rice and vegetables with chopsticks!
I learned to cook with awareness, with a sense that food is not just something we eat
 but also part of a spiritual practice, a sense that cooking and meditation go together, bringing outer and inner
 purity. Through being attentive to the preparation of our food, we bring an awareness into a basic substance and
 sustenance of life. Just as being aware of the breath is central to spiritual life, reconnecting us with life’s
 essence, so is the simple art of cooking. What is more satisfying than a bowl of rice and vegetables that you have
 prepared and cooked with attention – what is a greater gift to a visitor and friend?
Then one day in my late twenties, I discovered something very different about cooking.
 My teacher invited me to a meal she had cooked, simple Indian fritters with rice and chutney. And I tasted love. I
 had never known that one can taste love, but after that meal my understanding of cooking changed completely. Yes,
 attention as one chops the vegetables, as one stirs the pot, is vital, but there is another ingredient that adds a
 totally different dimension to a meal – love.
<div class="text-center">
 <img alt="cooking-with-love" class="lazyload has-img-center mb-4"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Cooking_with_love2_a4c4e3d980.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-05T05:59:15.744Z">
</div>
If in my childhood there was little consciousness about food, there was no awareness of
 love. And to be given a plate of fritters and rice in which love was the central ingredient and the main taste was
 revolutionary. Even the idea that one can taste love was something altogether new. Other people may have known this
 all their lives, known the sweetness of a cake that comes not just from the sugar, but it opened worlds to me.
Is there a technique for cooking with love? I do not know, except that it happens. Maybe
 it happens when, as with the old cook who taught Dogen, cooking becomes one’s “practice of the Way.” My teacher had
 studied with a Sufi master in India and learned the secrets of love, and how to work with love. Her cooking was an
 expression of her training and practice. But from this one meal I learned something so simple and wonderful: that
 one can put love into food that then nourishes both the body and the soul. This new ingredient now became central to
 my cooking.
There are wonderful spiritual practices for cooking. One can cook with mindfulness and
 attention, as in the Zen tradition. One can say a mantra or dhikr when one prepares a meal, so
 that the food is infused with remembrance of God. But love is a simple expression of the heart. It does not require
 special training, only an awareness and offering of the love in one’s heart. And the food responds. The food knows
 that it is loved and it passes on this gift to the one who enjoys the food. A deep sharing then takes place, as if
 an ancient magic is part of the meal.
So now, when I cook, I remember that meal of rice and fritters, I remember love. Of
 course sometimes I just make and eat an omelet, grill a piece of fish, and maybe I am not even consciously
 attentive. But if I am present in my heart as well as my fingers, then love can be present, love can be the secret
 ingredient of a meal. This is one of the reasons I rarely eat at restaurants. The food may taste good, but this
 central ingredient is hardly ever present; something essential is missing. And love is what speaks to us, both on a
 cellular level and in the soul. It nourishes our body on all levels.
How to cook with love is for each of us to discover, because our heart is unique to each
 of us, just as the song of our soul is unique to each of us. And yet love is also the primary substance of life; it
 connects us with the divine Source of all that exists. And for me, one meal cooked with love was an experience of a
 lifetime. Forty years later I can still taste it.

<hr class="vertical-space1">

<div class="text-center">
 <img alt="cooking-with-love" class="lazyload has-img-center mb-4"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Cooking_with_love4_1ee55f5dc5.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-05T06:00:38.712Z">
</div>
<h4>THE PRACTICE of COOKING with LOVE</h4>
Food and love are two of the most vital forms of human nourishment. Combining them is a simple
 but essential
 practice.
Love is alive. It is so much more than just the feeling we call love; it is the animating force
 of life, working
 according to principles far vaster than our own lives. When we feel it moving, most of us try to grab on to it or
 chase after it, make it our own. But it is the very nature of love to move and flow. The more it flows, the more it
 serves. It grows as it is given.
Cooking with love is natural, because through cooking we give. Cooking and serving food are two
 of the most ancient
 and basic human gifts. We serve those who eat the food with the Earth’s sustenance – Its gift – as well as with our
 time, effort, care, and attention. Through this gift we are in turn given the opportunity to consciously reconnect
 with the foundation of life.
<img alt="cooking-with-love" class="lazyload mw-100"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Cooking_with_love10_2b2ebe0270.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-05T06:01:26.213Z">

To practice cooking with
 love,&nbsp;begin with the trust and confidence that love is accessible and can be worked
 with. Without this fundamental understanding, love will not be drawn in, cannot season, or nourish. Cultivate the
 trust that love is always available to an open heart, and that through our loving attention we can create ways for
 love to flow.
<h4><img alt="cooking-with-love" class="lazyload mw-100"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Cooking_with_love7_718af7646e.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-05T06:02:35.056Z">
</h4>
As you prepare to cook,&nbsp;let your
 heart open to love. Let yourself feel – love comes in on feeling. A simple way to begin to access love in the
 kitchen is to cook for people you love – your friends, your family, your partner, the person you’re in love with –
 allowing your feeling for them to infuse the process. We experience love most familiarly in the love we feel for
 others and from others, the feelings of affinity and affection or passion that bind human beings together. Even if
 you are cooking just for yourself, you can bring love in, drawing on the same kindness and compassion of love that
 you would bring to others. This love is not self-regard, but a real, needed nourishment for the body and soul.
<img alt="cooking-with-love" class="lazyload mw-100"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Cooking_with_love8_cee65f8f1c.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-05T06:03:23.247Z">

As love animates all of
 life,&nbsp;it is not limited to our love for one another and ourselves. It can be found
 everywhere, in everything. It is abundantly present in the ingredients we use in our cooking, and we can access it
 simply through bringing our open attention to them as we work. Begin by slowing down – don’t rush. Give yourself
 time and space to cook. Look closely at the ingredients you are using. Consciously touch and smell them. Recognize
 the bright beauty of the carrot; the symmetry of a cauliflower; the mysterious, universal swirl of a fiddlehead; the
 simple wonder of an egg. Breathe in the scent of the herbs and be conscious of their unique properties – how one can
 revive your liver and another soothe your stomach. Imagine the cow, buffalo, or chicken in the meat, milk, cheese,
 or eggs you are cooking, acknowledging the living animal whose life has become part of your food. Feel the love from
 the Earth that has made all this bounty available to you.
<h4><img alt="cooking-with-love" class="lazyload mw-100"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Cooking_with_love9_65470278c5.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-05T06:20:26.055Z">
</h4>
The love that gives life&nbsp;to all things also
 comes alive through your hands. It is accessible through the simple awareness and care you bring to chopping the
 vegetables, stirring the pot. As you work, bring the feeling from your heart into your hands, from your hands into
 the food. Love is alive; it wants to flow, and through your attention you can participate in directing its flow.
<h4><img alt="cooking-with-love" class="lazyload mw-100"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Cooking_with_love6_053ac44654.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-05T06:21:14.498Z">
 </h4>
Be attentive to the offering&nbsp;that
 this act of cooking is. As you pepper the stew to refine the taste, be aware that you are creating something to
 give, to feed, and share. Reaffirm the fundamental generosity of the Earth – how it not only keeps us alive but
 gives us pleasure and enjoyment through our senses of smell and taste, and how through cooking you are participating
 in that generosity.
In our modern world we have almost entirely lost this direct relationship with food. But
 food links us together and to the Earth, and cooking can help us become more conscious of this essential gift of
 love. Everything that is part of cooking – from the fire of the stove and the herbs we season with, to the water or
 wine we pour – invites us to consciously participate in this circle of life that both gives and receives. The more
 we recognize that we are part of this wholeness, not separate from it, the more love can flow with and through us.

The world needs love. It needs love to flow like water, to be breathed like oxygen. Love
 can be savored, as it nourishes us in hidden ways. Love is like a key ingredient in a recipe that only the
 grandmothers remember. And yet it is here with us, waiting to be used, simple – like salt on the shelf. It is the
 most fundamental ingredient of all of life.
<div>
 <img alt="cooking-with-love" class="lazyload has-img-center"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Cooking_with_love5_69d9b106af.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-05T06:22:45.187Z">
</div>

<hr class="vertical-space1">

Reprinted with permission from Spiritual Ecology: 10 Practices
 to Reawaken the
 Sacred in Everyday Life. <a style="color: #7e8c41;" href="www.spiritualecology.org" target="_blank"
 rel="noopener noreferrer">www.spiritualecology.org</a> © 2017 The Golden Sufi Center, Llewellyn
 Vaughan-Lee &amp; Hilary Hart.
<hr>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">Article by LLEWELLYN VAUGHAN-LEE 
 Main illustrations by JASMEE RATHOD</h4>
<hr>

Cooking with love

<hr class="vertical-space1">
<h4 style="text-align: justify;">LLEWELLYN VAUHGAN-LEE challenges us to examine the
 ceaseless demands of today’s world that so easily fill up our days. With our smart phones and computer screens we
 often remain caught on the surface of our lives, amidst the noise and chatter that continually distract us, that
 stops us from being rooted in our true nature. Unaware we are drowned deeper and deeper in a culture of soulless
 materialism.</h4>
<h4 style="text-align: justify;">In response, along with HILARY HART, he finds it
 more and more important to have outer activities that can connect us to what is more natural and help us live in
 relationship to the deep root of our being, and in an awareness of the moment which alone can give real meaning to
 our everyday existence. Over the years he has developed a number of simple practices that bring together action and
 a quality of mindfulness, or deepening awareness, that can nourish our lives in hidden ways. These activities, like
 mindful walking, cooking with love and attention, can reconnect us with the web of life, our natural interconnection
 with life in its beauty and wonder. They can help us ‘declutter’ our outer life and instead become rooted in what is
 simple and real. They can help us to return to joy. One of these practices, which combines action with mindfulness,
 is simplicity.</h4>
<hr class="vertical-space1">
<h4 style="text-align: center;">Simplicity, patience, compassion. 
 These three are your greatest treasures. 
 Simple in actions and in thoughts, 
 you return to the source of being. 
 Patient with both friends and enemies, 
 you accord with the way things are. 
 Compassionate toward yourself, 
 you reconcile all beings in the world.
</h4>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">– Lao Tsu</h4>

<hr class="vertical-space1">

The boat people of Southeast Asia, the Moken, have few possessions. They can only carry
 what they need in their small boats. They also have no word in their language for ‘worry’. But when the tsunami
 came, they were attentive and watchful of the water; they saw the sea first come high on the beach and then recede
 far out. They remembered their stories, their myths of what happens to the seas, and so took their boats into deep
 water and survived the tsunami. The local fishermen did not survive; their boats were destroyed. They did not watch.
 They were not attentive.
How can we be fully attentive when our lives are cluttered with so many possessions, so
 many attachments, so many desires? Will we have time to remember the stories, to watch and move our little boat to
 deeper waters? Or will we be like the local fisherman, inattentive to the need of the moment, sunk by the tsunami of
 materialism? We live in a culture in which we are constantly bombarded, our attention distracted, no longer just by
 the ‘ten thousand things’ of the ancient world, but by ten million things. Everything is demanding our attention,
 wanting us to consume, to buy, to spend our money and our time. And we do not even know the depths and subtleties of
 this web of consumerism, its powers of deception.
How can we create a space of clarity, of attentiveness? How can we return to what is
 essential? How can we remember what really matters, what gives meaning and substance to our daily lives? How can we
 return to a simplicity of life that honors the simplicity of our essential nature, that gives space for the sacred?

First, we have to acknowledge that our whole culture is caught in the grip of
 unnecessary desires and recognize the poison of accumulation for what it is. We are conditioned and pressured to
 want more and more – this is the myth of continual economic progress. This myth has become a monster destroying our
 ecosystem, taking our money and our life energy. It has polluted our consciousness with its slogans and jingles,
 designed to distort, to manipulate. And we do not even know the power of its dark magic, how much it has us in its
 grip, feeding us false promises of a better life, assuring us that ‘things go better’ with the purchase of a
 product. It has saturated every corner of our culture. We are pressured to consume packaged food and even packaged
 spirituality. We no longer know the ingredients of our lives.
Second, we have to have the strength to say “No.” To go against this toxic flow, to
 resist the power of its empty promises and the corporations behind them, we have to regain an essential simplicity,
 return to what we need rather than what we think we want. Only then can we begin to hear the music of life, be
 attentive to the inner and outer need of the Earth. Only then can we become alive with what is sacred and true.
Third, we have to learn to discriminate, to clear our inner and outer clutter. In the
 classical love story of Eros and Psyche, one of Psyche’s almost impossible tasks is to sort a huge pile of seeds.
 Like Psyche, we have to sort the many things in our life; we have to make conscious what is of value, what we really
 need. Discrimination is never an easy task. But as Psyche is aided in her task by some willing ants, we too have
 help, in the form of an instinctual wisdom, a quiet quality, that is present to us if we are paying attention. And
 it becomes easier after time and practice. As we clear more space in our inner and outer lives, we become more
 attuned to what is necessary, more aware of the deceptions and false promises of unnecessary ‘stuff ’. We see more
 clearly how our possessions take more than just space, they also take our attention.


<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">How can we create a space of clarity, of
 attentiveness? 
 How can we return to what is essential? 
 How can we remember what really matters, 
 what gives meaning and substance to our daily lives? 
 How can we return to a simplicity of life that honors 
 the simplicity of our essential nature, 
 that gives space for the sacred?
</h5>


<hr>
Personally I love the old Taoist ways, the ways of the hermits whose spirituality and
 nature were blended together, their poems a flock of wild geese crossing high in the sky. They lived an essential
 simplicity that speaks to my soul: their possessions one robe and one bowl, the decoration of their mountain hut
 ‘the moon at the window’. I have tried to recapture this simplicity in my life, but today we seem to need so many
 things just to get by. Again and again I have tried to empty my room, especially when I was younger. But family life
 demanded more and more possessions – many more than needed by a hermit in a hut – though my children would still
 complain that I threw out too many things.
<img decoding="async" class="lazyload img-float-left has-img-center-in-mobile"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/simplicity2_1_2ce3341e7a.jpg" alt="simplicity-2">So
 over
 the years I have tried instead to keep an inner simplicity, an empty space in as many moments of the day as is
 possible. Now I am getting older, once again I feel the tug of this other landscape, a longing for a small cottage
 and rain-swept hills – maybe the beautiful and bleak Scottish highlands I knew as a child. But my life remains full,
 though more with people than possessions. So I keep this simplicity as an inner secret, an emptiness that I crave.

Still I have to be careful. I use modern technology: a computer, the Internet, and I
 love listening to music on an iPod. All around me I feel consumerism and its dark web of desires that so easily
 entangles us, more than we realize. And often it is not enough to clear out the physical clutter in our homes; we
 need also to bring a simplicity to how we spend our time, how we use our attention – to be mindful in how we live.

The practice of meditation and mindfulness can clear the clutter of our minds. A few
 trips to the goodwill or charity store can clear the clutter from our homes.
And then continual attention is needed so that the currents of accumulation do not fill
 the empty space we have created. And beyond the clutter of thoughts and things, we also have to watch that we are
 not caught in constant activity, our culture’s emphasis on endless ‘doing’ rather than ‘being’. We need space in
 order to watch, to listen, to walk, to breathe – to be present. The Tao Te Ching teaches the value of not
 doing:
Less and less is done until nothing is done, 
 When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.
Through a quality of emptiness we can access a deeper rhythm than the surface jangle of
 constant activity. We used to be held by the rhythms of the seasons and the soil. Now we have to struggle to return
 to a rhythm and a space that are not toxic with consumption, that belong to the seasons of the sacred, where life
 still flows true to its essential nature. Simplicity, patience, and compassion can guide and keep us inwardly
 aligned. Gradually we can once again listen to the Earth, to Her wisdom and beauty; we can feel the beating of both
 Her heart and ours. We can feel again the deep belonging that allows us to be present in every moment, not as a
 practice but a simple state of being. We can remember why we are here.


<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">Gradually we can once again listen to the
 Earth, 
 to Her wisdom and beauty; we can feel the beating of both Her heart and
 ours. 
 We can feel again the deep belonging that allows us to be present in every
 moment, 
 not as a practice but a simple state of being.
</h5>


<hr>
<hr class="vertical-space1">
<h4>SIMPLICITY PRACTICE</h4>
Simplicity is the essence of life. The word itself comes from the Latin
 simplex, meaning uncompounded or composed of a single part. Simple things reflect this essential nature,
 which belongs to everything in creation. When we honor the simple things of life, we bring ourselves back to this
 oneness, our true Home.

All the practices in this book are a return to simplicity. Breathing, walking, growing
 food, cooking … these are the ‘chop wood, carry water’ of our day. If we honor what is essential in our lives, we
 connect with the life force that runs free of the dramas of our individual and collective psyche. Here we are
 connected and responsive.
Give extra attention to your
 simple daily activities, like rising from bed and putting two feet on the floor. Pause
 there. You are awake; you are alive. Take note of how you feel in your body, and how your feet touch the floor. Be
 aware as you move towards the bathroom, towards the kitchen and the coffee or tea. Be grateful for water in the
 sink, for oranges that made your juice, for milk in your tea. Drink slowly. Appreciate your food. Appreciate your
 family, the sun coming in the window, the beauty you see in your partner and children. Simplicity reveals itself
 through slowness, in quiet moments when you can see, feel, taste, touch and listen. Take time during the day to stop
 rushing. Move through the day with respect and openness.
Take an honest inventory of
 your life. Look at the things you have that take up time and psychic space. Look at your
 activities and commitments. Which of these things do you actually need? Which are habits and entanglements that take
 up space and weigh you down? Which reflect your real values, feed your soul, and touch you with love? Do you need or
 just want that new thing, that new activity, that has caught your eye? For a short time, try going without some of
 the things of your life. Maybe you don’t need them after all.
Let nature teach
 you. In nature, we are students of simplicity. The way a tree grows towards the sun, the way
 a cat stretches beside the fire, the way the seasons come round again and again without fail, can teach the
 simplicity of what is. The essential nature of our own lives – the cycle of birth, death, suffering and joy, and
 even liberation – also reflects this simplicity. We might make our lives complicated by how we relate to these –
 fighting death, avoiding suffering, searching for freedom and happiness – but that is our superimposed experience,
 not what is. Look for ways to attune to the natural simplicity of life that underlies the complications of our human
 experience.
Bring yourself back
 again and again to what is simple, to what does not change over time, to what shines steady through the fog.
 Ask yourself, do we need more than these things? Do we need more than the beauty of a crab apple tree in spring, a
 warm house in the winter, the way water sounds flowing through a stream, a cup of tea with friends? Do we need more
 in our lives than love?
Practicing simplicity doesn’t mean giving away all our things, quitting our demanding
 jobs, and moving to a mountain hut or living off the grid. It simply means being very honest about what we value in
 our lives, what sustains us, brings us joy and meaning, and devoting ourselves to those activities, people, or
 things. While we might end up having fewer possessions or changing some of our habits, simplicity compels a return,
 not a rejection – a seeing through and within, rather than looking somewhere else. When we live from a place of
 simplicity we naturally find we need less, and instead are more open to life.
Don’t be afraid of simplicity. It can feel stark and empty because it is free of
 psychological complexity and the coverings of accumulated need and desire. But our attention and our genuine
 response – awe, gratitude, appreciation, and respect – help transform that starkness into the richest of human
 experiences.
<hr class="vertical-space1">
Adapted from Spiritual Ecology: 10 Practices to Reawaken the Sacred in Everyday
 Life. www.spiritualecology.org © 2017 The Golden Sufi Center, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee &amp; Hilary
 Hart. 
 Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee is a spiritual teacher and author, Hilary Hart is an author with
 a focus on women and feminine consciousness.

<hr class="vertical-space1">


<hr>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">Article by LLEWELLYN VAUHGAN-LEE and HILARY HART</h4>


<hr>

Simplicity

<h3 style="text-align: center">
 REJOINING THE GREAT CONVERSATION
 </h3>
 <h4>
 LLEWELLYN VAUGHAN-LEE delivers a
 heartfelt plea to all of us to open our hearts and care for our Mother
 Earth, value her sacredness, and reconnect with her soul.
 </h4>
 
 <img
 class="img-float-right has-img-center-in-mobile lazyload"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Greta_303316327a.jpeg?updated_at=2023-04-05T12:03:36.165Z"
 alt="Greta"
 />We are present at a moment in our shared destiny when the Earth is
 crying out to us to help her in this time of crisis that is destroying
 her ecosystem, the fragile web of life that supports her multihued
 unity. All around us are what Thich Nhat Hanh calls the “bells of
 mindfulness” – we can hear them ringing in the unprecedented species
 depletion (such as the recent awareness of what is called the ‘insect
 Armageddon’, with a 45-75% loss of insect biomass), the oceans filling
 with plastic at a rate unfathomable a few decades ago, and accelerating
 climate change; all with unforeseen consequences. And, on a different
 level, though just as painful, is the loss of wildness and wonder, a
 diminishing sense of the sacred that nourishes our souls.
 
 
 Many of us are responding with action and ideas, even as our governments
 and corporations – with their focus on economic growth and materialism –
 are unable or unwilling to make this a real priority. This was
 forcefully articulated at the recent UN Climate Change COP24 Conference
 by the 16-year-old activist Greta Thunberg, who spoke truth to power
 when she said: “We have not come here to beg world leaders to care. You
 have ignored us in the past and you will ignore us again.”
 
 
 “You only speak of green eternal economic growth because you are too
 scared of being unpopular. You only talk about moving forward with the
 same bad ideas that got us into this mess, even when the only sensible
 thing to do is pull the emergency brake. You are not mature enough to
 tell it like it is. Even that burden you leave to us children. But I
 don’t care about being popular. I care about climate justice and the
 living planet. …” 
 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFkQSGyeCWg)
 
 
 This last sentence brought tears to my eyes, as my soul heard her speak
 about real care for the Earth – for this living, beautiful being who has
 given us life, who has nourished us with her endless generosity, even as
 we have abused and desecrated her, raped and pillaged her body, which
 our culture regards greedily as just a ‘resource’ for our endless use
 and abuse.
 
 
 But behind Greta’s phrase, “the living planet,” is a deeper truth that
 calls out to our forgetfulness. As was known to the ancients and to
 indigenous peoples, our Earth is a being with a soul as well as a body,
 what in the West we called the anima mundi, the soul of the
 world, and what the Kogi in the Sierra Nevada in Colombia call
 Aluna, the spiritual intelligence within nature. Until we
 recognize, remember, and reconnect with the spiritual nature of the
 Earth, the primal intelligence within all life, we will be walking in
 the darkness of our forgetfulness, unable to find the way to work
 together with her, to start to heal and transform the living oneness to
 which we all belong.
 
 <hr />
 <h5 style="text-align: center">
 Spiritual Activism is an emerging field that calls for a spiritual
 response 
 to our present global crisis – to our present social divisiveness and
 ecological devastation, 
 to our self-destructive identification with an old story of
 separation 
 rather than embracing the living story of life’s interdependent
 oneness.
 </h5>
 <hr />
 
 <img
 class="has-img-center lazyload w-100 h-auto"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Rejoining2_31b3e86d6b.jpeg?updated_at=2023-04-05T12:04:14.474Z"
 alt="Rejoining2"
 />
 
 
 Every butterfly, every bee, every waterfall, every dream we have, is a
 part of this living, spiritual being. She is ancient beyond our
 understanding, even as she is crying out at this moment. The greatest
 unspoken tragedy of this time is that we have forgotten her living
 sacred presence, and this is the silent censorship that has clear-cut
 our consciousness. In the West, when the early Christians violently
 banished paganism, they burned the books that understood her magical
 nature;1 and now, as the web of life is being torn apart, we
 do not even know how to respond. We do not know how to access her
 wisdom, how to return to being a part of the great conversation that
 belongs to all of life. We remain stranded on the desolate shores of
 materialism, as in a supermarket where the shelves are increasingly
 empty.
 
 
 Spiritual Activism is an emerging field that calls for a spiritual
 response to our present global crisis – to our present social
 divisiveness and ecological devastation, to our self-destructive
 identification with an old story of separation rather than embracing the
 living story of life’s interdependent oneness. Yes, we desperately need
 to reduce carbon emissions and pesticides, to stop turning rainforests
 into ranchland or palm oil plantations. But there is also a call to
 reconnect with the sacred within creation, with the spiritual lifeblood
 of the planet. Otherwise we will just be continuing the same one-sided
 conversation that has caused this devastation. We need to work together
 with the Earth, to include her wonder and wisdom. We need to reconnect
 with her soul.
 
 <hr />
 <h5 style="text-align: center">
 It does not need governments or big organizations; 
 just individuals whose hearts are open 
 and who have heard the cry of the Earth. 
 Within our own being we can make this connection, 
 and so help to bring the sacred alive again 
 in our own daily life and the life of the Earth.
 </h5>
 <hr />
 
 And this is a work that we each can do. It does not need governments or
 big organizations; just individuals whose hearts are open and who have
 heard the cry of the Earth. Within our own being we can make this
 connection, and so help to bring the sacred alive again in our own daily
 life and the life of the Earth. There are many different ways to
 reconnect. In a recent book,
 Spiritual Ecology: 10 Practices to Reawaken the Sacred in Everyday
 Life, I outline a number of simple spiritual practices, from walking in a
 sacred manner, to cooking with love and cleaning with awareness.2 Whatever our practice, this foundational work is not complicated, but
 rather simply requires our attention, real mindfulness. It can empower
 us to make a real contribution to enable humanity to rejoin the great
 conversation, the sacred relationship with the Earth that was part of
 the Original Instructions given to our ancestors.
 
 
 The Earth will continue. We are now living through the sixth mass
 extinction of species in her history. It is our shared future that is
 uncertain: whether we will keep to our ancient promise to witness her
 wonder and beauty, honor her sacred ways; or whether we will continue
 our present path, stumbling through an increasingly soulless wasteland,
 caught in consumerism, until the sea levels rise, the air becomes too
 toxic, the oceans too acidic, our souls too desolate. Again, in the
 words of the young activist Greta Thunberg, “We have run out of excuses
 and we are running out of time.” But she also said, “Change is coming.”
 The real question is whether we are open to being a part of real change
 – for hearts and hands to help the Earth, for our souls to reconnect
 with the magic and mystery of her living being.
 
 
 1Beginning in the fourth century, the early Christians
 banned or burned up to 90% of pagan or pre-Christian writings. Of some
 pagan philosophers only fragments now remain (Catherine Nixey,
 The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical
 World).
 
 
 2The chapters ‘Walking’, ‘Simplicity’ and ‘Cleaning’ have
 been published in previous issues of Heartfulness Magazine.
 
 <hr />
 <h4 style="text-align: center">Article by LLEWELLYN VAUGHAN-LEE</h4>
 <hr />

Reconnecting with the soul of the world

<h4>LLEWELLYN VAUGHAN-LEE&nbsp;&amp; HILARY HART celebrate the
 sacredness and beauty of all life, challenging us to reconnect with that source of meaning and appreciation.</h4>
You’ve traveled up ten thousand steps in search of the
 Dharma. 
 So many long days in the archives, copying, copying. 
 The gravity of the Tang and the profundity of the Sung make heavy baggage. 
 Here! I’ve picked you a bunch of wildflowers. 
 Their meaning is the same but they’re much easier to carry.

—Hsu Yun (Empty Cloud)
Waking early, hearing an owl call from the trees, I feel part of something stretching
 out all around me, a deep vein of life’s meaning running through all that exists. How could I live without this
 heartbeat, this feeling of connection? Life speaks to me in so many ways: from a simple human exchange at the post
 office counter or at the bakery – a smile, a hello – to the evening clouds forming and reforming, pink against the
 setting sun. This is real meaning woven into my days – life’s story telling itself anew every day. It is the sacred
 alive in every moment.
We are surrounded by the sacred; it is in the core of our being and in the Earth’s. It
 is the essential nature of everything that is. The “sacred” is not something primarily religious, or even spiritual.
 It is not a quality we need to learn or to develop. It belongs to the primary nature of all that is. When our
 ancestors knew that everything they could see was sacred, this was not something taught but instinctively known. It
 was as natural as sunlight, as necessary as breathing, a fundamental recognition of the wonder, beauty, and divine
 nature of the world. From this sense of the sacred real meaning is born, the meaning that makes our hearts sing with
 the deepest purpose of being alive.
Tragically, our present culture appears to have lost sight of this vital quality.&nbsp;
 Instead we live on the surface, separated from the real substance that has always given everyday life a depth of
 meaning. We are told to find meaning in our individual life, but all around us life itself tells us a different
 story – that we are part of the Earth, that we belong to the community of all of life in its myriad forms. Only
 through recognizing and living this sacred unity can we find and experience the real meaning that life is offering
 to us. And so we have to find ways to remember, to reconnect, to feel again what is all around us.
Meaning is what calls from the depths of the soul. It is the song that sings us into
 life. Whether we have a meaningful life depends upon whether we can hear this song, this primal music of the sacred.
 Sadly, today so much of life is covered in distractions, in the addictions of consumerism. Just as the infinite
 majesty of the stars has become hidden by the lights from our cities, the soul’s music is being drowned out amidst
 life’s constant clamor. Wonder and mystery have become less and less accessible. As a culture we seem to have lost
 the thread that connects the inner world, from which meaning is born, to the outer world, where we spend our days.
 The stories of the soul are no longer told. Instead, our dreams have become the desires of materialism. Even
 spirituality is often sold in the marketplace, another drug that promises to placate us, to cover the growing
 anxiety that something essential is missing.
To find meaning we have to reclaim our sense of the sacred, something our culture
 appears to have overlooked or forgotten. The sacred is an essential quality of life. It connects us to our own soul
 and the Divine that is the source of all that exists.
<hr>
The sacred can be found in any form: 
 a small stone or a mountain, 
 the first cry of a newborn child 
 and the last gasp of a dying person. 
 It can be present in a loaf of bread, 
 on a table, waiting for a meal, 
 and in the words that bless the meal. 
 The remembrance of the sacred 
 is like a central note within life. 
 Without this remembrance 
 something fundamental to our existence is missing. 
 Our daily life lacks a basic nourishment, 
 a depth of meaning. 
 
<hr>
The sacred can be found in any form: a small stone or a mountain, the first cry of a
 newborn child and the last gasp of a dying person. It can be present in a loaf of bread, on a table, waiting for a
 meal, and in the words that bless the meal. The remembrance of the sacred is like a central note within life.
 Without this remembrance something fundamental to our existence is missing. Our daily life lacks a basic
 nourishment, a depth of meaning.
When we feel this music, when we sense this song, we are living our natural connection
 with the Earth and all of life. Meaning is not something that belongs to us. Rather, our life becomes “meaningful”
 when we live this connection, when we feel it under our feet as we walk down the street, in the scent of a flower,
 in rain falling. I am very fortunate in that I live in nature. Early each morning as I walk, sensing the day
 awakening, I feel this simple connection: how the Earth breathes together with me, how It speaks the language of the
 soul and of life’s mystery. Here meaning is as simple as apple blossoms breaking open; as a young hawk, its feathers
 still downy; as the fog lifting across the water.
<img decoding="async" alt="" class="lazyload w-100"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/meaning_and_the_sacred2_1_cedbeaa489.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-07T05:42:34.513Z">

The chapters and practices in this small book are simple ways to reconnect so that we
 can once again feel the music, the song of our living connection with the Earth. They encourage us to slow down, to
 listen, to sense, to feel, and to be attentive. They draw our awareness from fantasies and desires to what is, where
 meaning waits. There are of course many other ways we can reawaken to the sacred in everyday life, feel the meaning
 that is present in everything, like blood flowing through us and through the Earth. As Rumi says, “there are a
 thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” It is this sacred ground that is calling to us, that needs our living
 presence, our attentiveness
We are all part of one living being we call the Earth, who is magical beyond our
 understanding. She gives us life and Her wonder nourishes us. In Her being the worlds come together. Her seeds give
 us both bread and stories. For centuries the stories of seeds were central to humanity, myths told again and again –
 stories of rebirth, life re-creating itself in the darkness. Now we have almost forgotten these stories. Stranded in
 our separate, isolated selves, we do not even know how hungry we have become. We have to find a way to reconnect
 with what is essential – to learn once again how to walk in a sacred manner, how to breathe with awareness, cook
 with love and prayers, how to give attention to simple things.
We need to learn to welcome life in all its colors and fragrances, to say “yes” again
 and again. Then life will give us back the connection to our own soul, and once more we will hear its song. Then
 meaning will return as a gift and a promise. And something within our own heart will open and we will know that we
 have come Home.
Reprinted with permission from Spiritual Ecology: 10
 Practices to Reawaken the Sacred in Everyday Life. <a style="color: #cc5214;" href="www.spiritualecology.org"
 target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">www.spiritualecology.org</a> © 2017 The Golden Sufi Center,
 Llewellyn
 Vaughan-Lee &amp; Hilary Hart.
<hr>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">Article by LLEWELLYN VAUGHAN-LEE &amp; HILARY HART</h4>
<hr>

Meaning and the sacred

<h4>LLEWELLYN VAUGHAN-LEE explores the beauty of silence, and the need of the hour
 for love and compassion. He invites us to listen to the song of unity, and embrace a world waiting to be born.</h4>
<h4 style="text-align: justify; color: #4a8bb4;">1. How can we reconnect with our deeper
 selves, our essential nature?</h4>
There are many ways to reconnect with our essential nature. Any spiritual practice,
 prayer or meditation that takes us beneath the surface of our daily life, beneath the clutter of the mind and the
 demands of the outer world, can be a place of reconnection, a place where we can rest inwardly and be nourished by
 the deeper roots of our being. And if we need an added ingredient to help us in this work, silence is most valuable,
 especially in today’s world where noise surrounds us more and more. To learn to be present in an inner and outer
 silence is a doorway to what is real within ourselves and in the world around us.
And as our world appears to spin more and more out of balance – temperatures and sea
 levels rising, species depleted – there is a pressing need to return to a this deep place, a place of belonging
 where real healing and transformation can take place. Returning to our essential self, we may find a balance
 resurfacing from deep within, a balance that reconnects and restores us, and also allows us to contribute in unseen
 ways.
One of Carl Jung’s favorite stories was The Rainmaker, in which a world out of balance,
 in a time of drought and suffering, was healed not through activity but through a rainmaker retiring to a hut in
 silence. Three days later the rain came and the drought was over. When he was asked how he brought the rain, he
 replied, “Oh, I can explain that. I come from another country where things are in order. Here they are out of order,
 they are not as they should be by the ordinance of heaven. Therefore the whole country is not in Tao, and I am also
 not in the natural order of things because I am in a disordered country.
“So I had to wait three days until I was back in Tao, and then naturally the rain came.”

If we are to participate creatively in these toxic times, to bring rain to a land where
 the inner and outer wells have run dry, first we need to be present “in another country where things are in order.”
 And this “other country” is not so far away. It can be found in the Earth beneath our feet, and in the space between
 the in-breath and the out-breath where the soul is present. But first we need to reconnect, to return to this place
 of balance. And the simplest way is through stillness and silence.
Silence draws us inward, away from the clutter and distractions of our outer life, to
 the deeper roots of our being. Here our soul nourishes us, here we can be replenished, and here we can help
 replenish our world. The Earth is dying from the ravages of our culture, of our materialistic nightmare that
 pollutes the air we breathe, the water we drink, and starves our soul from its natural connection to the sacred. In
 the silence we can drink deeply of the waters of life that are still pure, we can commune with the primal forces of
 nature, we can return to what is sacred and essential to our life and to the life of the Earth.
Here, in this “other country,” the air is not toxic, and the miasma of today’s world in
 this post-truth era is not blurring our vision. The laughter of children rings true. Stillness is here, and the
 seasons are in balance. Every in-breath and out-breath is sacred. The breath, the soul, the Earth and its seasons,
 are linked together, nourished by each other. It is a time to heal.
Sitting here at my window, I look out onto the wetlands. I watch the tides rise and
 fall, the sun red in the morning, sometimes breaking through the mist. Traffic may pass on the road just beneath me,
 the early morning milk truck, but the silence remains. As I get older I am less and less drawn to activity, more of
 me remains in stillness, sensing the Earth, watching the birds at my birdfeeder – I love the woodpecker with his
 bright red crest. Now it is springtime, apple and cherry blossoms already carpeting the ground.
<h4 style="text-align: justify; color: #f2c16e;"><img decoding="async" alt=""
 class="lazyload w-100"
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</h4>
<h4 style="text-align: justify; color: #f2c16e;">2. How can we create or reimagine a more
 compassionate world from within the current structures?</h4>
There is a world waiting to be born, a world founded upon cooperation rather than
 competition, a world that honors all life in its diversity and wonder. A compassionate world in which we return to
 what is simple and essential and remember the “Original Instructions” given to our ancestors and held by Indigenous
 Wisdom Keepers about “how to get long with all of creation.” And this world, which seems so different to the broken
 structures of today’s divisive and exploitative culture, is not so far away. It is a world seen through the eyes,
 the consciousness of oneness, rather than the consciousness of separation. It is a simple shift from “me” to “we.”

Oneness holds the essential vision that we are one living, interconnected ecosystem – a
 living Earth that supports and nourishes all of its inhabitants. If we acknowledge and honor this simple reality, we
 can begin to participate in the vital work of healing our fractured and ravaged world and embrace a living unity
 that is our human heritage. This is the opportunity that is being offered to us, even as its dark twin is
 constellating the dynamics of nationalism, tribalism, isolationism, and all the other regressive forces that try to
 divide us.
Oneness is not a metaphysical idea but something essential and ordinary. It is in every
 breath, in the wing-beat of every butterfly, in every piece of garbage left on city streets. This oneness is life –
 life no longer experienced solely through the fragmented vision of the ego, through the distortions of our culture,
 but known within the heart, felt in the soul. This oneness is the heartbeat of life. It is for each of us to live
 and celebrate this oneness, to participate in its beauty and wonder. And through our awareness, and actions born of
 this awareness, we can help to reconnect our world with its original nature.
There are many ways to experience and participate in this living oneness. But if I have
 learned anything after half a century of spiritual practice, it is the power of love. Love comes in so many forms
 and expressions. There are the simple acts of loving kindness towards friends and family, members of our community,
 or strangers. Love reaches across boundaries, expressing what is most essential and human: what unites rather than
 divides. “Small things with great love,” are more potent and powerful than we realize, because they reconnect us
 with the spiritual roots of life and its transformative and healing energies. Because life is an expression of love,
 each act of love is a participation and gift to the whole.
Cooking a meal with love and care, listening to another’s troubles with an open heart,
 touching your lover’s body with tenderness, or going deep in prayer until you merge in love’s infinite ocean – in
 all these acts, we live the love that unites us. And through our loving, we nourish life in unseen ways.
And at this time of ecological crisis, as we are tearing apart the fragile web of life,
 there is a vital need for us to love the Earth, to bring her into our hearts and prayers. We have a spiritual as
 well as a physical responsibility for “our common home,” and she is calling out to us, crying for our help and
 healing.”
We need to reawaken to the power of love in the world. It is our love for the Earth that
 will heal what we have desecrated, that will guide us through this wasteland and help us to bring light back into
 our darkening world. Love links us all together in the most mysterious ways, and love can guide our hearts and
 hands. The central note of love is oneness. Love speaks the language of oneness, of unity rather than separation.

<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">In the words of Thich Nhat Hanh: 
 “Real change will only happen 
 when we fall in love with our planet. 
 Only love can show us how to live 
 in harmony with nature and with each other and 
 save us from the devastating effects of 
 environmental destruction and climate change.”</h5>
<hr>
Love can open us to our deep participation in the life of the whole; it can teach us
 once again how to listen to life, feel life’s heartbeat, sense its soul. It can open us to the sacred within all of
 creation and can reconnect us with our primal knowing that the Divine is present in everything – in every breath,
 every stone, every animate and inanimate thing. In the oneness of love, everything is included, and everything is
 sacred.
And from there, we can begin to respond. We cannot return to the simplicity of an
 indigenous lifestyle, but when we let love guide us we become more aware of the oneness of life. We recognize that
 how we are and what we do at an individual level affects the global environment, both outer and inner. We can learn
 how to live in a more sustainable way, according to a deeper understanding of sustainability that rests on an
 acknowledgment of the sacred within creation. We can live more simply, saying no to unnecessary material things in
 our outer lives. We can also work inwardly to heal the spiritual imbalance in the world. Our individual conscious
 awareness of the sacred within creation reconnects the split between spirit and matter within our own soul. Also,
 because we are so much more a part of the spiritual body of the Earth than we realize, within the soul of the world.

<img decoding="async" alt="Silence and Compassion" class="lazyload has-img-center"
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Love is the most powerful force in the universe. Love draws us back to love, love
 uncovers love, love makes us whole, and love takes us Home. In the depths of the soul we are loved by God. This is
 the deepest secret of being human, the bond of love that is at the core of our being and belongs to all that exists.
 And the more we live this love, the more we give ourselves to this mystery that is both human and divine, the more
 fully we participate in life as it really is, in its wonder and moment-by-moment revelation.
Love and care – care for each other, care for the Earth – are the simplest and most
 valuable human qualities. And love belongs to oneness. We know this in our human relationships, how love draws us
 closer, and in its most intimate moments we can experience physical union with another. It can also awaken us to the
 awareness that we are one human family, even as our rulers become more authoritarian, our politics more divisive.
 And on the deepest level, love can reconnect us with our essential unity with all of life, with the Earth herself.

The Earth is a living oneness born from love, being remade by love each instant. And we
 can be part of its spiritual transformation, its awakening. The Earth is waiting and needing our participation. It
 has been wounded by our greed and exploitation, and by our forgetfulness of its sacred nature. It needs us to
 remember and reconnect, to live the oneness that is our true nature. And love is the simplest key to this oneness,
 this remembrance. Love is the most ordinary, simplest, and most direct way to uncover what is real – the innermost
 secrets of life. It is at the root of all that exists, as well as in every bud breaking open at springtime, every
 fruit ripening in fall.
Love will remind us that we are a part of life, and that we belong to each other and to
 this living, suffering planet. Love will reconnect us to the sacred ways known to our ancestors, as well as awaken
 us to new ways to be with each other and the Earth. We just need to say, “Yes,” to this mystery within our own
 hearts, to open to the link of love that unites us all, that is woven into the web of life. And then we will uncover
 the love affair that is life itself and hear the song of unity as it comes alive in our hearts and the heart of the
 world.
<img decoding="async" alt="" class="lazyload w-100"
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<hr>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">Article by LLEWELLYN VAUGHAN-LEE 
 Illustrations by JASMEE RATHOD</h4>
<hr>

Silence and compassion

<hr class="vertical-space1" />
<h3 style="text-align: center">
 REJOINING THE GREAT CONVERSATION
</h3>
<hr class="vertical-space1" />
<h4>
 LLEWELLYN VAUGHAN-LEE delivers a heartfelt
 plea to all of us to open our hearts and care for our Mother Earth, value her
 sacredness, and reconnect with her soul.
</h4>
<hr class="vertical-space1" />

 We are present at a moment in our shared destiny when the Earth is crying out
 to us to help her in this time of crisis that is destroying her ecosystem, the
 fragile web of life that supports her multihued unity. All around us are what
 Thich Nhat Hanh calls the “bells of mindfulness” – we can hear them ringing in
 the unprecedented species depletion (such as the recent awareness of what is
 called the ‘insect Armageddon’, with a 45-75% loss of insect biomass), the
 oceans filling with plastic at a rate unfathomable a few decades ago, and
 accelerating climate change; all with unforeseen consequences. And, on a
 different level, though just as painful, is the loss of wildness and wonder, a
 diminishing sense of the sacred that nourishes our souls.


 Many of us are responding with action and ideas, even as our governments and
 corporations – with their focus on economic growth and materialism – are
 unable or unwilling to make this a real priority. This was forcefully
 articulated at the recent UN Climate Change COP24 Conference by the
 15-year-old activist Greta Thunberg, who spoke truth to power when she said:
 “We have not come here to beg world leaders to care. You have ignored us in
 the past and you will ignore us again.


 “You only speak of green eternal economic growth because you are too scared of
 being unpopular. You only talk about moving forward with the same bad ideas
 that got us into this mess, even when the only sensible thing to do is pull
 the emergency brake. You are not mature enough to tell it like it is. Even
 that burden you leave to us children. But I don’t care about being popular.
 I care about climate justice and the living planet. …” (<a
 style="color: #333333" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFkQSGyeCWg" target="_blank"
 rel="noopener noreferrer">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFkQSGyeCWg</a>)


 This last sentence brought tears to my eyes, as my soul heard her speak about
 real care for the Earth – for this living, beautiful being who has given us
 life, who has nourished us with her endless generosity, even as we have abused
 and desecrated her, raped and pillaged her body, which our culture regards
 greedily as just a ‘resource’ for our endless use and abuse.


 But behind Greta’s phrase, “the living planet,” is a deeper truth that calls
 out to our forgetfulness. As was known to the ancients and to indigenous
 peoples, our Earth is a being with a soul as well as a body, what in the West
 we called the anima mundi, the soul of the world, and what the Kogi
 in the Sierra Nevada in Colombia call Aluna, the spiritual
 intelligence within nature. Until we recognize, remember, and reconnect with
 the spiritual nature of the Earth, the primal intelligence within all life, we
 will be walking in the darkness of our forgetfulness, unable to find the way
 to work together with her, to start to heal and transform the living oneness
 to which we all belong.Every butterfly, every bee, every waterfall, every
 dream we have, is a part of this living, spiritual being. She is ancient
 beyond our understanding, even as she is crying out at this moment. The
 greatest unspoken tragedy of this time is that we have forgotten her living
 sacred presence, and this is the silent censorship that has clear-cut our
 consciousness. In the West, when the early Christians violently banished
 paganism, they burned the books that understood her magical nature1; and now,
 as the web of life is being torn apart, we do not even know how to respond. We
 do not know how to access her wisdom, how to return to being a part of the
 great conversation that belongs to all of life. We remain stranded on the
 desolate shores of materialism, as in a supermarket where the shelves are
 increasingly empty.

<hr class="vertical-space1" />

<hr />
<h5 style="text-align: center">
 Our Earth is a being with a soul as well as a body, 
 what in the West we called the anima mundi, the soul of the
 world, 
 and what the Kogi in the Sierra Nevada in Colombia call
 Aluna, 
 the spiritual intelligence within nature.
</h5>

<hr />
<hr class="vertical-space1" />

 <img alt="reconnecting-soul-world2" class="w-100 lazyload"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/reconnecting_soul_world2_12c1313a98.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-10T08:21:43.169Z" />

<hr class="vertical-space1" />

 Spiritual Activism is an emerging field that calls for a spiritual response to
 our present global crisis – to our present social divisiveness and ecological
 devastation, to our self-destructive identification with an old story of
 separation rather than embracing the living story of life’s interdependent
 oneness. Yes, we desperately need to reduce carbon emissions and pesticides,
 to stop turning rainforests into ranchland or palm oil plantations. But there
 is also a call to reconnect with the sacred within creation, with the
 spiritual lifeblood of the planet. Otherwise we will just be continuing the
 same one-sided conversation that has caused this devastation. We need to work
 together with the Earth, to include her wonder and wisdom. We need to
 reconnect with her soul.


 And this is a work that we each can do. It does not need governments or big
 organizations; just individuals whose hearts are open and who have heard the
 cry of the Earth. Within our own being we can make this connection, and so
 help to bring the sacred alive again in our own daily life and the life of the
 Earth. There are many different ways to reconnect. In a recent book,
 Spiritual Ecology: 10 Practices to Reawaken the Sacred in Everyday Life, I outline a number of simple
 spiritual practices, from walking in a sacred
 manner, to cooking with love and cleaning with awareness.2 Whatever
 our practice, this foundational work is not complicated, but rather simply
 requires our attention, real mindfulness. It can empower us to make a real
 contribution to enable humanity to rejoin the great conversation, the sacred
 relationship with the Earth that was part of the Original Instructions given
 to our ancestors.

<hr class="vertical-space1" />

<hr />
<h5 style="text-align: center">
 Spiritual Activism is an emerging field 
 that calls for a spiritual response to our present global crisis – 
 to our present social divisiveness and ecological devastation, 
 to our self-destructive identification 
 with an old story of separation rather than 
 embracing the living story of life’s interdependent oneness.
</h5>

<hr />
<hr class="vertical-space1" />

 The Earth will continue. We are now living through the sixth mass extinction
 of species in her history. It is our shared future that is uncertain: whether
 we will keep to our ancient promise to witness her wonder and beauty, honor
 her sacred ways; or whether we will continue our present path, stumbling
 through an increasingly soulless wasteland, caught in consumerism, until the
 sea levels rise, the air becomes too toxic, the oceans too acidic, our souls
 too desolate. Again, in the words of the young activist Greta Thunberg, “We
 have run out of excuses and we are running out of time.” But she also said,
 “Change is coming.” The real question is whether we are open to being a part
 of real change – for hearts and hands to help the Earth, for our souls to
 reconnect with the magic and mystery of her living being.

<hr class="vertical-space1" />

 1 Beginning in the fourth century, the early Christians banned
 or burned up to 90% of pagan or pre-Christian writings. Of some pagan
 philosophers only fragments now remain (Catherine Nixey,
 The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World).


 2 The chapters “Walking,” “Simplicity” and “Cleaning” have been
 published in previous issues of Heartfulness Magazine.

<hr class="vertical-space1" />

<hr />
<h4 style="text-align: center">Article by LLEWELLYN VAUGHAN-LEE</h4>
<hr />

<h4
 id="h-llewellyn-vaughan-lee-reminds-us-of-the-ever-present-cycles-of-nature-and-with-them-an-understanding-of-time-and-the-sense-of-sacredness-that-comes-with-being-in-tune-with-all-that-is-natural-he-reminds-us-that-time-is-essential-to-life-and-thus-important-to-honor-in-our-day-to-day-life-instead-of-the-rushing-and-disconnection-associated-with-our-modern-day-urban-lifestyle">
 LLEWELLYN VAUGHAN-LEE reminds us of the
 ever-present cycles of Nature, and with them an
 understanding of time and the sense of sacredness that comes with being in
 tune with all that is natural. He reminds us that time is essential to life,
 and thus important to honor in our day-to-day life, instead of the rushing
 and disconnection associated with our modern-day urban lifestyle.
</h4>

<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 The sacred is an essential quality to life. It connects us to our own soul and
 to the Divine that is the source of all that exists. The sacred can be found
 in any form: in every drop of dew on an early morning spider’s web, in the
 call of wildfowl at dusk. It speaks to us in a myriad of ways. In my own
 garden it is in the scent of honeysuckle and the hummingbird drinking nectar,
 or the chipmunk scurrying after the seeds fallen from the bird feeder. It is
 also present in every prayer, every song of praise and thanksgiving. The
 remembrance of the sacred is like a central note within life. Without it
 something fundamental to our existence is missing. Our daily life lacks a
 basic nourishment, a depth of meaning.



 The “sacred” is not something primarily religious or even spiritual. It is not
 a quality we need to learn or to develop. It belongs to the primary nature of
 all that is. When the First Peoples felt that everything they saw was sacred,
 this was not something taught but instinctively known. It was as natural as
 sunlight, as necessary as breathing. We all have within us a sense of the
 sacred, a sense of reverence, however we may articulate it. It is a part of
 our human nature.



 We each carry this primal knowing within our consciousness, even if we have
 forgotten it. A relationship to the sacred is older than any formalized
 religion, even though it lies at the foundation of many religions. It is a
 fundamental recognition of the wonder, beauty, and divine nature of the world.
 It is a felt reverence, an inner sense – we even speak of “a sense of the
 sacred.” If we remember the sacred, we will find ourself in a world awake in
 wonder. However we may call this mystery, it permeates all of creation. It may
 be more easily felt in certain places, in ancient groves, beneath star-filled
 skies, in temples or cathedrals, in the chords of music. But this is a mystery
 that belongs to all that exists – there is nothing that is separate from it.
 As such, it celebrates the unity that is within and around us, the living
 oneness of which we are a part. Our sense of the sacred is a recognition that
 we are a part of this deeper all-embracing mystery.



 The sacred is not something static or easily defined. It belongs to the wonder
 of life and its deepest meaning. It is also part of the flow of life, its
 constant change. And yet it has cycles, patterns of meaning. Both creation and
 the soul have their seasons, their times of light and dark, times of birth,
 blossoming and abundance, times of fruition, decay and apparent barrenness. It
 can be helpful to recognize these changing seasons of the sacred. Then we can
 see how the deeper patterns within our own life follow these rhythms – how we
 are part of this ever-evolving mystery.



 The sacred is a quality of the soul, of our inner being and the inner being of
 the Earth. The experience of the sacred follows the rhythms of the soul and of
 the Earth, the cycles of becoming, the seasons of life. In today’s world we
 are caught in an image of time as an endless flow of minutes, ays, and years
 that never return – a river of time that is always passing. We rarely think
 anymore of time as cyclical, of the days as a movement of light and dark, or
 the years as a pattern of returning seasons – most of us do not live on the
 land with its rhythm of sowing and harvesting. We have also almost forgotten
 how the outer movement of time can reflect the time of the soul. Few still
 mark the year with the saint’s days, or the prayers, rituals, or dances that
 belong to sacred days. Nor do we hear the monastery bells that, before the
 arrival of clocks, divided the day for both the monks and the medieval
 farmers, a day that began with Matins and ended with Vespers.


<hr class="vertical-space1" />

<figure>
 <img alt="" width="840" height="563" class="lazyload w-100 h-auto"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/sacred_time2_e2cd7d2ab2.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-10T14:15:49.022Z" />
</figure>

<hr class="vertical-space1" />

<hr />

<h5 class="has-text-align-center">
 The sacred is a quality of the soul, of our inner being
 and the inner
 being of the Earth. The experience of the sacred follows the
 rhythms of the soul and of the Earth, the cycles of becoming, the
 seasons of life.
</h5>

<hr />

<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 This deeper cycle of sacred time, which was known to our ancestors, linked the
 greater and lesser events of their lives – the days, the seasons, and the
 years:


<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the
 heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a
 time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to
 heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a
 time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to get, and a
 time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend,
 and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to
 love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.


Ecclesiastes 3:1–8, The Bible

<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 This deeper rhythm of time is the rhythm of the sacred. To be in the presence
 of the sacred is to be present in a time very different from what we
 experience in our rushed days with the constant demands of the clock. It
 allows us to listen to a rhythm of meaning, understanding our place within
 patterns of time that link the growth of a seed to the phases of the moon and
 the movement of the stars. To live in sacred time is to be present in how this
 greater pattern connects with our own soul, our inner being, in which every
 breath is a sacred moment.



 But despite our forgetfulness, despite our heated or air-conditioned homes and
 offices, our disconnection from the soil, the seasons still speak to most of
 us, from the first warm breath of Spring to the cold wind of Winter. The
 seasons remind us of our deeper roots and the rhythms that are our heritage.
 As we get older we can also begin to sense the same seasons in the passage of
 years, from birth and childhood to old age, when our body’s energy lessens
 before time returns us to the earth. In the unfolding of our soul we can
 recognize similar patterns. In previous times and cultures this inner
 unfolding was marked by initiations, by sacred rites of passage. Now, for most
 of us there are few outer initiations. Instead, if we pay attention, we can
 come to feel the seasons that define our own soul. We can learn to respect and
 appreciate the way time speaks to us, how its wisdom is within us.


<hr class="vertical-space1" />

<div>
 <figure>
 <img alt="" width="875" height="586" class="w-100 h-auto lazyload"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/sacred_time3_dc8f58df01.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-10T14:18:28.453Z" />
 </figure>
</div>

<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 Putting aside our daily concerns and our mind’s clutter, we can learn to be
 present to the presence of the sacred in each moment. Every moment is unique,
 offering its own way to connect to what is deepest within us, to the wonder
 and mystery of being fully alive.



 Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn, a cool breeze in
 summer, snow in winter. If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary
 things, this is the best season of your life.


Wu-Men

<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 Adapted by the author from
 Seasons of the Sacred: Reconnecting to the Wisdom within Nature and the
 Soul.
 Golden Sufi Center, 2021.

Seasons of the sacred: sacred time

<h4>
 LLEWELLYN VAUGHAN-LEE
 is a Sufi and spiritual ecologist who is passionate about the sacredness
 of the Earth and the oneness of all beings. Here he discusses our current
 environmental crisis in the light of problems and solutions, and initiates
 a call to action to contribute to a brighter future.
</h4>

<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 Walking in the wetlands I encounter a family of river otters playing in the
 water, then, sliding their sleek bodies onto the land, they tumble over each
 other in the sand, as a blue heron watches nearby. In their primal world
 there is neither truth nor falsehood, just life present, unfractured.



 Once, long ago, we walked in this landscape, were part of this ecology of
 place. With songs and prayers, dances and dreams we were also alive in
 life’s wholeness. But today our human world is not like this, its
 consciousness long lost, held only by a few Indigenous people and others who
 live close to the Earth. And in recent years social media has increased the
 noise of discord and distortions, half-truths, falsehoods, and conspiracy
 theories. Our collective consciousness has become fractured, different
 voices shouting while the planet burns.



 And yet, even as our patterns of disbelief poison the Earth, the land, the
 sea, and the air, even as we deny our responsibility for the coming
 catastrophe of climate change, or in some ways, more dangerously, think that
 we can “green the economy,” continuing our fantasy of eternal economic
 growth, this landscape is still present. It can be heard in every dawn
 chorus, seen in the “v” of geese flying south, in the fox found curled
 asleep in my garden. The Earth has not forgotten what is real, even if we
 are increasingly lost. Buds still break open in springtime, leaves turn
 golden in autumn. And our bodies still awake every morning into this world,
 even if our minds are quickly caught in other patterns. While our attention
 is drawn to our smartphones, sunlight filters through the clouds.


<hr class="vertical-space1" />


<img decoding="async" alt="" width="523" height="349" class="lazyload has-img-center"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/watching_river_otters2_f11ddfc1f9.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-11T06:45:37.698Z" />


<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 And in our hearts there is a thread that connects it all together – the
 heart that knows the meaning of love and companionship, care and community.
 Our hearts can recognize the simple magic in birdsong, the essential beauty
 of a sunrise, the joy of a child’s laughter. Our hearts have not forgotten
 that we are all a part of one living community, bonded together since the
 very beginning, since the early days when we walked and played, sang and
 dreamed in harmony with the Earth and its magical nature. That thread is
 still present, even if it is covered over by the confusions of today, by our
 materialistic dreams, even by contemporary techniques that promote
 well-being. Like the otters playing in the water, it is too simple to be
 caught in distortion, too primal to be fractured. It can be found in the
 most ordinary things, a bowl of soup cooked with love and attention, a few
 kind words exchanged with friends or strangers.



 Science has presented us with the basic truths of the coming ecological
 catastrophe: Together with a warming planet it has documented an insect
 apocalypse and oceans filling with plastic. If we are to survive together
 with the Earth we have to recognize that our present way of life is
 unsustainable, and act from this knowing to reduce carbon emissions and stop
 destroying wild places.



 But we also have to find the thread that connects back with a deeper truth,
 a knowing older than our rational mind. Sadly, because so much of our
 response comes from the same rational consciousness and its technological
 inventions that created these patterns of distortion, even though this
 landscape is all around us, it is difficult to reconnect, “to arrive where
 we started / And know the place for the first time.”



 With so many voices clamoring for our attention, to whom do we listen, and
 more important, whom do we trust? A few fundamental truths are becoming more
 and more self-evident: The interconnected and interdependent nature of the
 biosphere, and how we are all a part of this living wholeness; how our
 present dream of material prosperity is destroying the environment at an
 accelerating rate, causing ecocide as it tears at the fragile web of life
 that supports us all; how governments and big corporations are too addicted
 to the present ideology of progress and profit to effect real change,
 instead increasing economic and social divisiveness; how the voices of young
 people who are crying out for a future being stolen, and suffering the very
 real trauma of climate anxiety, are more attuned to the moment than those in
 positions of power.


<hr class="vertical-space1" />


<img decoding="async" width="523" height="533" alt="" class="lazyload has-img-center"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/watching_river_otters3_9b443b8394.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-11T06:54:02.211Z" />


<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 Those of us who have looked through the cracks in our present civilization
 know that it is over, past its use-by date, but also that possibilities for
 radical change and transformation are present, like green shoots amidst a
 dying wasteland. It is possible that this century will be one of increasing
 insecurity, disturbance, chaos, even social breakdown, and then out of this
 a new civilization will gradually emerge a civilization that will emerge
 organically in harmony with nature. Quite different to now. This Great
 Unraveling that can lead to a Great Turning has the potential to return us
 to a life-sustaining culture that once again recognizes how all of creation
 is sacred. And now is the time to begin planting seeds for this
 transformation, seeds that can germinate in the darkness and difficulties of
 the coming years and belong to the foundations for a future seven
 generations or more.



<hr class="vertical-space1" />
 


<hr />

<h4 class="text-center">
 
 It is a doorway into a way of being 
 with each other and the Earth 
 that carries the secrets of our
 shared existence, 
 where we are a part of a living tapestry 
 that stretches to the stars and
 beyond.
</h4>


<hr />
 


<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 Those alive today may never see this emerging civilization, but like the
 cathedral builders of the Middle Ages who laid their foundation stones
 knowing that it could be many generations, even centuries, before their
 buildings would be completed, this should not deter us. We have the
 opportunity to lay the foundations for a way of life more aligned with the
 deeper truths of the Earth and our own sacred nature. And I believe a simple
 step into this landscape, which is always present, though hidden by today’s
 world of clicks and memes, will help us find what we need. It is a place
 where we all belong.



 Watching the river otters playing, tumbling over each other in such
 intimacy, I know that there is a deeper truth to our journey together with
 the Earth, a truth older than any belief or ideology, and far from the
 discords of today. It does not offer a solution to today’s problems, because
 it is too simple and radical. It is a doorway into a way of being with each
 other and the Earth that carries the secrets of our shared existence, where
 we are a part of a living tapestry that stretches to the stars and beyond.
 And it is here, all around us, present in the most ordinary things.



<hr class="vertical-space1" />
 


<hr />

<h4 class="text-center">Illustrations by ARATI SHEDDE</h4>


<hr />

Watching river otters: visioning a life-sustaining future

<h4 class="my-5">
 <spanundefined
 >LLEWELLYN VAUGHAN-LEE mourns the
 forgetting of our connection with the Earth, inviting us once more to
 remember, reconnect and rekindle the sacred of that relationship in our
 lives.
 
</h4>


 <spanundefined
 >The pandemic has confronted us with a world seemingly out of balance, a
 health crisis easily becoming an economic crisis. Here in California, a
 summer of raging wildfires has brought climate crisis to our doorstep, the
 air dense with smoke, the sun rising red, ash falling. As the world spins
 more and more out of balance there is a pressing need to stay inwardly
 aligned, to keep our feet on the ground and our hearts open. We cannot
 afford to contract into fear or be caught in the miasma of disinformation
 and distortion, to be swept along by the strange currents of this time. It
 is essential to have a simple spiritual practice to remain centered, whether
 watching the breath, a prayer, or just resting in silence.


 <spanundefined
 >The remembrance of the heart is one such practice. Through our remembrance,
 the Divine becomes alive within our heart and comes to meet us in our daily
 life. We bring a quality of love into our ordinary life, nourishing our
 environment in hidden ways. But remembrance also implies forgetfulness; we
 remember what we have forgotten, being with the Divine as a living presence,
 in friendship, companionship. Initially, for an individual, awakening is
 always an act of grace, given as a gift to help us begin our journey home.
 We are given a taste of our pre-existing state of divine oneness, or
 presence. Spiritual practice is then a simple way to remain awake from the
 forgetfulness caused by the illusions of the world, and gradually lift the
 veils that separate us from the light within us and around us.


 <spanundefined
 >Because our present culture has lost touch with the knowing of how we are
 interconnected with the Earth, what the Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh calls
 “interbeing,” we have forgotten how deeply we affect the Earth as a living
 being. We are belatedly realizing how our global industrial growth and
 consumer society are negatively impacting our physical environment,
 destroying the web of life on an unprecedented scale, pushing the planet’s
 life support systems to the edge. We do not yet realize how our collective
 consciousness also impacts the Earth. Earlier cultures lived in harmony with
 the Earth, recognizing how it was alive spiritually and magically as well as
 physically. With their prayers and rituals they communed with the Earth and
 its many inhabitants, keeping the balance between the worlds and never
 forgetting the Great Spirit present in creation. Their song, dance, drumming
 infused the Earth with their awareness of its divine nature, their sacred
 symbols belonging to both the outer and inner worlds. In this way, since the
 very beginning, they helped the Earth come alive as a magical being, just as
 our own spiritual practice can help us individually to bring alive our
 awareness of our divine nature.


<hr />

<h5 style="text-align: center">
 <spanundefined style="color: #2a90de"
 >The remembrance of the heart is one such practice. Through our remembrance,
 the Divine becomes alive within our heart and comes to meet us in our daily
 life. We bring a quality of love into our ordinary life, nourishing our
 environment in hidden ways.
</h5>


<hr />


 <spanundefined
 >In the first days, when human consciousness awakened on the Earth, maybe
 two hundred thousand years ago or longer, something changed, shifted within
 the spiritual body of the Earth. The light of human consciousness,
 mythically imaged as fire stolen from the gods, communed directly with the
 light of the Earth; the human soul and the soul of the world,
 anima mundi, sang together. The Earth awakened in a new way; a
 different quality of Earth consciousness was born. And as the first peoples
 danced and sang their stories and creation myths, the magic of the land
 awoke. This was also the time of the naming, when shamans or wisdom keepers
 were given the names of creation, which gave them access to their magical
 power, the healing properties of plants, the wisdom and powers of animals.
 


<img class="w-100"
src=https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Remembrance_sacred_earth2_433f160b98.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-12T05:39:41.035Z"
alt="Remembrance-sacred-earth">


 <spanundefined
 >In this earlier time there was a knowing that has now become deeply hidden
 – a knowing of the sacred purpose of creation, of its beauty and wonder. And
 this knowing was continuously coming alive, speaking to human beings in all
 the myriad voices of the world around, in the streams and storms, in the
 cries of the birds and the animals, in the first language of
 life1. And the awakening Earth was cared for by the first
 peoples, by their ceremonies and prayers, and later by their sacred art –
 drawings of bison, horses, deer, and then by stone circles aligned to the
 midsummer rising sun, or temples whose statues often imaged the fertility of
 the goddess. In this way, human consciousness and Earth consciousness met in
 a sacred manner and nurtured each other, the light of the human soul and the
 light within creation helping both humanity and the Earth to evolve, to sing
 together.
 


 <spanundefined
 >And so, for millennia, the Earth and humanity evolved together, until we
 began our journey of separation from the Earth, when God retreated into
 heaven, the soil stopped being sacred, and we began to forget. Now our
 creation myth is the Big Bang of science, but where in this story are the
 salmon swimming upstream, and the bear hibernating in winter? Where are the
 spirits of the mountains and rivers, felt in the winds and the water? Where
 are the power and the wonder, the magic that can come alive through our
 senses, through our direct relationship with the land and its inhabitants?
 What have we lost? What have we forgotten? And what does this mean to the
 Earth Herself that our prayers are no longer present?


 <spanundefined
 >Sadly, tragically, our forgetfulness of the Earth’s magical nature, and the
 fact that so few of us practice the rituals that sustain this relationship,
 have meant that this magical living dimension of the Earth has receded from
 consciousness. For most people it remains only in myth or children’s
 stories. Its song is no longer heard; its sacred meaning has been forgotten.
 And the Earth Herself has suffered, Her light withdrawing.


 <spanundefined
 >Now, the Earth is dying physically and spiritually. We cannot return to the
 dances and stories of our ancestors – they belong to a different time and
 place. But the simple act of our remembrance of Her sacred nature can help
 in this moment. And the heart’s remembrance is always love. Love is life’s
 greatest gift and our greatest gift back to life. And, as the poet Mary
 Oliver writes so poignantly, “There is only one question: how to love this
 world.” We can help the world remember what our culture has forgotten – how
 the soil, the seeds, the rivers and the stars all carry a central message of
 love. In all its diverse forms, its different ways of being and breathing,
 the living Earth is a celebration of love. And now it is calling out to us,
 crying to us to remember its sacred nature.



<hr />

1<spanundefined>
 In The Spell of the Sensuous (1996), David Abram describes how “for
 the Inuit, as for numerous other peoples, humans and animals all originally
 spoke the same language.” He quotes an Inuit woman:
 

 <spanundefined style="color: #808080"
 >In the very earliest time when peoples and animals lived on earth... All
 spoke the same language. That was the time when words were like magic...
 

<spanundefined style="color: #808080"
 >Those who are recognized as shamans or medicine persons “most fully remember
 the primordial language, and are thus able to slip, at will, out of the purely
 human discourses in order to converse directly with the other powers.”

<spanundefined style="color: #2a90de"
 >Adapted from
 A Handbook for Survivalists: Caring for the Earth, A Series of
 Meditations.
 Available as a free PDF at www.goldensufi.org. © 2020, The Golden Sufi
 Center



<hr />

<h4 style="text-align: center">
 Article by <spanundefined>LLEWELLYN VAUGHAN-LEE
</h4>


<hr />

Remembrance & a sacred earth

<h4>LLEWELLYN VAUGHAN-LEE looks back on a life of learning about love in its many forms and faces, from the most human to the most esoteric, and what it means to him that love is the source of all that exists.</h4>One of my favorite practices, a prayer, is to imagine placing the world within my heart and feeling the love that infuses everything – every bird and butterfly, the trees and the ocean, the chipmunks that have just reappeared in the garden after their hibernation, the bleary-eyed child waiting for the school bus I pass on my morning walk. Everything, every dream, every cloud passing, is infused with love, is an expression of love. Love is the source of all that exists, is all that exists. This primary mystical awareness is stamped into my soul and consciousness, following me throughout the day, and especially in the early hours of the morning, when prayer takes me, when the world of thoughts has faded away and the heart’s presence is all that matters.Scientists may tell us that our universe began thirteen billion years ago with the Big Bang, when from an infinitely hot and dense single point matter came into existence. But mystics know a different truth: from the unborn and undying emptiness, existence is constantly being created as a flow of light and love that then becomes physical form. And this love remains the foundation, the essence of everything – every particle and every star. It is the primary energy, power, presence within the created world. And it is our divine nature, always evolving and changing within our body and soul, even as it remains constant.In today’s world, we associate love with personal relationships. We seek for it in a lover, experience it through the tenderness of a mother’s touch. We often associate it with passion, desire, or sex, even though its essence is quite different. I never knew love in my own childhood, never heard the words, “I love you.” I don’t think my parents even knew they existed. Instead, it was a cold middle-class childhood of boarding school and cold baths, endless sports on muddy fields. But in my late teens love came calling, singing out its name, drawing me deep within the heart.Love calls to us in many different ways. As Rumi says:sultan, saint, pickpocket love has everyone by the ear dragging us to God by secret waysWhile most people seek love in the tangle of human relationships, I first experienced love and the longing for love sitting at the feet of my teacher, a white-haired Russian woman who had just come back from India where she had been trained by a Sufi master. In her small room beside the train tracks in North London, this invisible essence was present, tangible. This is what was awakened in me through the simple practice of sitting at the feet of my teacher and meditating on the heart, following the ancient Sufi tradition of divine love, the secret of secrets.Love speaks to our soul and to our body. Love includes all the senses – taste and touch, smell, sight, and sound. Love by its very nature includes everything. It can be found anywhere, because it is everywhere. The mystic uncovers the simple secret: that in truth love flows through everything – sweet, tender, aching, knowing, as well as dark and passionate. And as this primal energy, this greatest power, awakens within us, within our heart, our soul, always it draws us deeper into its own mystery, into the secret of oneness, what the Sufis call the unity of being.My own journey took me from formlessness to form. As an intense young man, when I first met my teacher I only looked for love within the heart in deep meditation. But then I fell in love and was awakened to the beauty of a woman, to the feminine side of love and longing. I had been drawn into this mystery by the eyes of a woman and a longing in my heart. The tangle of her hair, the softness of her body, had taken and taught me what spiritual texts could not. Divine love is a spiritual and physical experience, and in a woman the two are united, body and soul. The Indian poet and princess Mirabai knew this secret. She was in love with Krishna, her “Dark Lord,” and she left her palace to dance before him. She had experienced the soul’s rapture with her Dark Lord, and speaks of the body’s “hidden treasures”:O friend, understand: the body is like the ocean, rich with hidden treasures.Open your innermost chamber and light its lamp.Within the body are gardens, rare flowers, the inner Music; within the body a lake of bliss, on it the white soul-swans take their joy.And in the body, a vast market – go there, trade, sell yourself for a profit you can’t spend.Mira says, her Lord is beyond praising. Allow her to dwell near your feet.In her words of rapture are one of the deepest mysteries of the feminine: how in her body are “gardens, rare flowers, and the inner Music.” This is not just erotic imagery, but alludes to the secret of creation, and the beauty and wonder that belong to this essential substance. Without this quality of the feminine there would be no joy, the magic of life would not be present. Colors and fragrances would fade into dull gray days.And now, as an old man, I find this secret of creation all around me. It walks with me beside the bay in the early morning, as I follow the quails scurrying down the path, the baby rabbits hopping out of sight, the coyotes stalking in the nearby field, and the glimpse of a river otter, its nose just above the water. And in the depths of night I know this love both in the emptiness and the world of forms.<figure class="image image-style-align-center"><img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/love_and_prayer2_dc62540697.jpg" alt="image name alternative"></figure>I was born a stranger to love, did not know its meaning, even its existence. Over twenty years passed in a grayed-out world before desire for Truth took me to love. And now, all that is really left a lifetime later seems to be this quality of love that sustains me. After so long a journey – often tired, longing just to rest – I return to love. Or love returns. And this love includes everything. It belongs not just to a human relationship, or to an inner relationship with God; it is a love that is everything, that flows through all that exists – sweet, tender, aching, knowing. Or just a simple presence within the heart, a soft warmth that sometimes brings bliss.And love is free, a gift to each of us. Even if it costs blood and a broken heart, it is still free. Love is life speaking to its beloved and the beloved speaking to life. And in that conversation so many things can happen, so many miracles can be born – the small unsuspected miracles that we often do not notice, like a moment of sunlight through the clouds, a flower blossoming from the sprout of a seed, a smile from a stranger. This world is steeped in this divine quality that is waiting to be born, to be brought into existence, to be loved into being. And just to be a part of it is enough, is a story that sings in the heart.Yes, the world is full of discord and suffering, tears and blood, the bomb falling on a marketplace, the mother whose starving child is dying in her arms. This pain is real. And I do not attempt to understand how this is all born from love, is an expression of love. I do remember once, when I was deeply praying for those suffering, a still voice came into my heart saying “You think I do not love these people?” But how all suffering belongs to God and is also an expression of divine love is a mystery my mind cannot grasp, even if my heart has been taken to places where only this deeper oneness is real.<figure class="image image-style-align-center"><img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/love_and_prayer3_adadc0f698.jpg" alt="image name alternative"></figure>And so, when I wake in the night and pray for the world, I am especially drawn to places of darkness and pain, to war and injustice, those fighting or demonstrating for freedom, those without food or shelter. And in my heart I also feel the Earth being torn apart – species and wild beauty lost. Through it all the love remains, the one constant, the only true solace, the deeper knowing of our divine nature: that we are all born from love and will return to love.This journey has taken me from formlessness to form, to life’s unending multiplicity, beautiful, numinous, and most ordinary. And then back into the infinite emptiness of the beyond. Love cries and often my heart feels broken. I sense that love is really all we have to give, and the meaning behind every experience that touches the soul. Love is life’s greatest gift and our greatest gift back to life. And especially at this time, life, the Earth, is calling out to be loved, to be held in the heart, so that this thread of love that is present throughout creation can support it in its crisis, so that a new story for humanity and the Earth can begin to be woven into the fabric of existence.So, in the night, in the empty hours after midnight, traditionally known as the “Hour of God” or “the Night Prayer,” when prayers are especially powerful, I turn my attention to the Earth and the heart, to the flow of love that comes from the beyond into existence, knowing only that this is a mystery to which I belong, felt in the tender touch of a loved one as well as the vast spaces where stars are born.<figure class="image"><img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/love_and_prayer4_2a7d348a49.jpg"></figure>&nbsp;<hr><h4 style="text-align:center;">Illustrations by ANANYA PATEL</h4><hr>&nbsp;

Love and prayer

&nbsp;<hr>&nbsp;<h4>LLEWELLYN VAUGHAN-LEE &amp; HILARY HART explore the contemplative, spiritual value of walking in Nature, and share with us a simple walking practice.</h4><hr>In the busy-ness of our contemporary life, we are drawn into ceaseless activity that often separates us from the deeper dimension of ourselves. With our smartphones and computer screens, we often remain caught on the surface of our lives amidst the noise and chatter that continually distract us, that stops us from being rooted in our true nature. Unaware we are drowned deeper and deeper in a culture of soulless materialism.At this time I find it more and more important to have outer activities that can connect us to what is more natural and help us live in relationship to the&nbsp;deep root of our being, and in an awareness of the moment which alone can give real meaning to our everyday existence. Over the years I have developed a number of simple practices that bring together action and a quality of heart-centered attention, or deepening awareness, that can nourish our lives in hidden ways. These activities, like walking, cooking with love and attention, can reconnect us with the web of life, our natural interconnection with life in its beauty and wonder. They can help us ‘declutter’ our outer life and instead become rooted in what is simple and real. One of these practices, which combines action with awareness, is walking.<hr><h3 style="text-align:center;">Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.</h3><h3 style="text-align:center;">—Thich Nhat Hanh</h3><hr><hr>I have always loved to walk early in the morning, to sense the Earth at the beginning of a day, to feel Her pulse, Her beauty and magic, before thoughts and demands clutter my day. Waking early, I have a hot cup of tea, meditate in silence, and then, as soon as the first light comes, I walk down the hill to the road beside the wetlands where I live. Sometimes the frost is sparkling around me, sometimes the water is clouded with fog, an egret appearing white against the reeds. This is another time of silent meditation, walking, breathing, feeling the Earth. I try to be as empty as possible, just to be present in the half-light, aware of what is around me. Prayer, meditation, presence, awareness – these are just words for a practice that immerses me in a mystery we call nature. Here the sacred speaks to me in its own language, and I try to listen.Now I live beside the wetlands, and the tidal water is part of this meeting, this communion. Other times, in other landscapes, it has been rivers and streams, the sounds of waterfowls’ wings, the dawn rising across meadows. Or in forests, a different bird chorus, animals skittering across the path, a deer and her young. Always it is a listening awareness, a deep receptivity to what is around me, an honoring of a world other than people. It is a remembrance of what is essential, elemental, and its nourishment carries me through the day. It is a return to the sacred, sensed and felt, without words or thoughts – a primal consciousness as if of the first day.This is a practice that has been with me since my teens – when I first started to meditate I also needed to walk. It was not taught or learned, but came as a need, a way to be, an antidote to much of the world around me – a world of people and problems, demands and desires. When one foot follows the other and the day has hardly begun, it seems these demands cannot touch me, as if I am immersed in something simpler, more essential. Placing each foot on the earth is a practice, but a practice that comes from my own roots, not a book or a teacher. Later I came to hear it called “walking in a sacred manner,” and it is sacred, a return to what is sacred. But it also is deeper or more primal than any purpose. Nature speaks to me and I listen. Nature calls and something deep within me responds, and I just need to give it space. I am part of a life far greater than any ‘me’.<hr><img src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/walking2_img_326f62d35e.jpg?updated_at=2023-03-31T13:33:15.303Z" alt="walking2_img"><hr>The Earth gives us sustenance: the air we breathe, the food we eat. She is generous in so many ways, even as we forget Her and abuse Her. But there is also this deeper nourishment, this invisible, intangible giving. My early morning walk is a communion – if I am receptive, it is a wine drunk deeply. It comes through Her landscape, moss dripping from the trees, white and pink blossoms welcoming spring, the cry of a sea bird. Those first rays of sunrise are always a blessing. I do not understand this with my mind, but my soul feels it, needs it. Once again we are back at the beginning, in that elemental world we never truly leave. Our present culture may have forgotten it,&nbsp;disowned it, covered it over, may pretend we no longer need this communion, but my soul and my feet know otherwise. This is the landscape of the soul as much as it is the wetlands stretching towards the ocean. But it is also any landscape we walk. A walk on city streets is made of the same elements: feet touching ground, the rhythm of walking, breathing, the same sky overhead, the wind touching the face.I would like to say it is easy, but so often I have to remember to reconnect, to empty the clutter of the coming day from my mind, my everyday thoughts. I have to stay in a place of awareness, sense my feet, feel the air, listen. I have to remember that I am not separate but part of everything around me. I have to push aside this great myth of separation, the great untruth. We are the air we breathe, the earth we touch, the same one life, alive in so many ways. We are the Earth awakening in the early morning, just as we are the buds breaking&nbsp;into color in the spring. To be fully alive is to feel how we are part of this embracing mystery. My morning walk is a remembrance, a reconnection, experienced in the body and felt in the soul.<hr>So often I have to remember to reconnect, to empty the clutter of the coming day from my mind, my everyday thoughts. I have to stay in a place of awareness, sense my feet, feel the air, listen. I have to remember that&nbsp;I am not separate but part of everything around me.<hr>&nbsp;<h3 style="text-align:center;">Walking Practice</h3><hr>Walking reinforces our connection to the Earth, one step at a time. Attuning to the rhythms of one’s feet, the swaying of one’s arms, the in and out of breath, the ways walking moves us through time and space, helps develop this relationship, reminding us consciously and unconsciously just how much a part of nature we are. Nature is cyclic and rhythmic, and walking – when we are not focused on where we are going – attunes us to this non-linear reality.Walking practice is perhaps best begun alone, when the intimacy of nature’s communication can be sensed without distraction. Just as when we meet a lover in the early part of a relationship, we do not want to share that meeting with others. Choose a time when you can be alone, when listening, hearing, and sensing can take place. Perhaps the start or the end of the day, before life’s clamoring takes hold or after it lets go. Lunchtime or an afternoon break from work might be more difficult, but if that is the time available, then make sure the walk is long enough for you to let go of work thoughts or tensions of the day.Turn off the cell phone, or better yet, leave it at home or the office. There is a way that the vulnerabilities that come with being alive have been squelched by our daily-life safety tools, like cell phones. If you can be without the protection and constant access they provide, try it. Social media will not miss documentation from your walk.Find a park or a path through quiet woods if you can. Let the rhythm of your steps soothe your mind and create a space for listening. Feel how your feet connect with the earth, how the air moves through your lungs. Follow your attention as it is drawn inward and outward both – to the inner movements of your body and to the feeling of warmth or cold, the sight of birds, the sound of a distant plane. Let your thoughts and impressions move through and out, as part of the natural rhythm of walking. Just as we come back to the breath in silent meditation, return your attention to your feet and their meeting and letting go of the ground.Commit to walking every day if you can. Walk without expectation, with an attitude of openness and gratitude. If you feel a longing inside you – a need to connect, a desire to be closer to nature – let it motivate and guide you.The nineteenth-century existential philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once wrote in a letter to his niece, “Every day, I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.”This is the first of the practices from Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee &amp; Hilary Hart’s <a href="https://goldensufi.org/press/">Spiritual Ecology: 10 Practices to Reawaken the Sacred in Everyday Life</a>, 2017. It is reprinted with written permission from the authors.<hr><h4 style="text-align:center;">Article by LLEWELLYN VAUGHAN-LEE &amp; HILARY HART</h4><hr>

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

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