{"id":927,"date":"2012-01-05T00:56:28","date_gmt":"2012-01-05T07:56:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetolteciching.com\/blog\/?p=927"},"modified":"2021-01-30T23:04:03","modified_gmt":"2021-01-31T06:04:03","slug":"echoes-of-presence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thetolteciching.com\/blog\/echoes-of-presence\/","title":{"rendered":"Echoes of Presence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Remember when we were young and played with bugs and watched them find there way along with their antennas?\u00a0 Remember how we just naturally called them feelers<\/em>?<\/p>\n

I was born in a cemetery and lived there among the rolling hills and marble standing stones for the first years of life.\u00a0 This body\u2019s first memories, then, seemed a natural continuation of the last memories of my previous body:\u00a0 I cannot remember a time when the voices of disembodied awareness did not echo in the valley spirit <\/em>of my heart.<\/p>\n

Profound openness of spirit, I have found, is intrinsic to human nature.\u00a0 Our ability to sense the presence of the One is little different than finding that we\u2019ve had feelers<\/em> all this time but just forgot to use them.\u00a0 Shifting our attention from the ever-changing world of appearances to the never-changing world of essence, we find ourselves standing slightly sideways from the flow of time\u2014as if we moved from the ever-circling storm of the hurricane into the stillpoint of its eye and suddenly felt<\/em> the entire hurricane as if it were our own body.\u00a0 This first-hand experience of the felt presence of pure awareness<\/em> forms, it appears to me, the foundation of nature mysticism and spiritual transformation.<\/p>\n

Teachers are everywhere and teachings radiate from everything once we make that subtle shift out of Thinking and back into Being.\u00a0 Turning off the linear language-mind and returning to the spatial dream-mind (where not only does everything happen at once but emotional meaning is packed into symbols in such a way that it unfolds with experience) allows us to rediscover what the ancients called the mind within the mind<\/em>.\u00a0 Being echoes Being in the open spontaneity of the valley spirit<\/em>:\u00a0 Presence does not make itself known in concepts and words but in the living symbols of Life and Land<\/p>\n

Everything we know about Spirit, the ancients taught, we learn by analog from Nature.\u00a0 The great oak hidden within the shell of the acorn, the vast grassland of a prairie bound together by its roots, the synchrony of tide and moon and fertility:\u00a0 the poetry of Creation is a symphony of art and architecture that bursts our hearts with the thundering stillness of the timeless moment of universal communion.\u00a0 The uncountable subatomic particles of spirit making up nature carry all the Memory and Understanding they have absorbed in the 14 billion years since the dawn of creation\u2014this current body of mine is composed of parts of old stars and wayward comets and sunlight and soil and peaches and snails and other people, so how can I view it as anything but sacred?\u00a0 An ancient mystic once imparted the secret of life thus:\u00a0 Everything is God.\u00a0 Live well.\u00a0 Die easy.<\/em><\/p>\n

Truth radiates from everything once we make our way along with our feelers<\/em>.\u00a0 The presence of the One radiates from within all form, the Open Secret that is obscured only by the temporary amnesia caused by our social upbringing.\u00a0 We train to quiet the self in order to hear the soul\u2014we listen to the soul in order to fashion the self into a vehicle of timely symbol of the perennial truth.\u00a0 Feeling<\/em> Presence, rather than thinking about <\/em>Presence\u2014or even thinking about feeling<\/em> Presence\u2014is what the ancients called Making a lodging-place for the One<\/em>.\u00a0 The valley spirit<\/em> is the quiet empty awareness that welcomes Presence and spontaneously echoes its Being without any conscious intent or motive, and for that reason it is the font of creativity and the ocean of sustenance.<\/p>\n

Like the poet says, Whoever brought me to this tavern is going to have to take me home<\/em>. To dwell in Presence, after all, is to dwell in intoxication, to celebrate the bliss of blessings, and to become the wellspring of happiness overflowing into the lives of others.<\/p>\n

Time passes for the body but not for the soul:\u00a0 I can still feel the Presence when it first enveloped me sixty years ago now, a boy wandering among the marble standing stones and listening to the stories of his disembodied companions.\u00a0 The Autumn air is chill, dew clings to grass tips, and sow bugs find their way through Creation with their feelers<\/em>.\u00a0 Teachers are everywhere and teachings radiate from everything.<\/p>\n

(This article first appeared in the Winter Solstice 2011 issue of Presence magazine<\/a>)<\/p>\n

~~~~~~~~~~<\/p>\n

I am deeply gratified that “The Toltec I Ching” has been selected a Silver Winner of the 2010 Nautilus Book Awards. My deepest gratitude extends to my co-author, Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and our enlightened publishers, Larson Publications.<\/em><\/p>\n

“The Toltec I Ching,” by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has been released by Larson Publications. It recasts the I Ching in the symbology of the Native Americans of ancient Mexico and includes original illustrations interpreting each of the hexagrams. Its subtitle, “64 Keys to Inspired Action in the New World,” hints at its focus on the ethics of the emerging world culture.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Click here<\/a> to go to the main site to see sample chapters, reviews and the link to Larson Publications<\/a> for ordering the book.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remember when we were young and played with bugs and watched them find there way along with their antennas?\u00a0 Remember how we just naturally called them feelers? I was born in a cemetery and lived there among the rolling hills … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-toltec-i-ching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thetolteciching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thetolteciching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thetolteciching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thetolteciching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thetolteciching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=927"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.thetolteciching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1292,"href":"http:\/\/www.thetolteciching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927\/revisions\/1292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thetolteciching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thetolteciching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thetolteciching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}