“If love is not present in the process; love will not be present in the outcome.”
Dear Friends,
As we gathered together after a “summer break” and a short hurricane disruption, we reflected on how, in the absence of ongoing intentional reflective dialogue, we lose the essence mind that reflective dialogue produces – the mind of seeing in images, images built through our processing, images of the whole, of the intended working of the whole, images of potential, of life, of the potential imbedded within life, intended to be unfolded by and through our taking up called work… the work of the heart… work being essential to our building soul and manifesting spirit. Yes, a summer “break” risks the dropping to the existence mind leading our thinking. Filling our hearts and minds with the problems of existence, we lose access to potential and wisdom.
Now is the time of potential…
a time for moving towards wholeness, away from that which divides…
a time for reflective dialogue – the process essential to building the essence mind,
the essence mind being essential for seeing potential.
Reflective dialogue, being the nature of what it is, led our imaging to move across our community, the nation and the world. I wish you could have been with us. I will try to give you sufficient image of our path so that you might follow it through reflective reading.
We began with reflecting on “A Seeing of Truth”, a paper from the book, WORK FOR ALL CHILDREN, giving particular attention to the shift from THEN to NOW, the shift from the unfolding mind of THEN to the unfolding mind of NOW. I expect that your reflective reading of “A Seeing of Truth” will evoke images similar to those we built together as we reflected together. Particularly we worked on a couple things. The first being the nature of mind, the mind needed at the time of Christ beginning his ministry… the nature of reflective capacities among the people called for THEN. Reflecting on “Let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone,” most significantly we saw a discernment, a mind with the capacity for seeing what is legal (in man’s law) is not necessarily fulfilling the intent of the Source… discerning from the “laws” of the Source, the true intent in particular situations. And there also must have been developed within the people at that time, some capacities for reflection… for reflecting on self… seeing one’s heart and mind against the commands of the Father.
Turning to the words of NOW, “If love is not present in the process, love will not be present in the outcome,” and reflecting on the image of groups taking turns throwing stones at one another as portrayed in the paper, we are struck that NOW work is related to the community mind… THEN, when the truth mirror, “Whoever is without sin cast the first stone,” was held up, the person being called to reflection was the “self.” NOW, when the “If love is not present in the process, love will not be present in the outcome” truth mirror is held up, the community is the “self”… communities attached to our ideologies, seeing not the whole, but the part to which we are attached… all “stoning” one another… seemingly as a means of gaining a power-over position for our incomplete, segmented and dividing views of the world and life. And in our Wisdom Writers processing, we reflected on the “love in the process” being the all-inclusive love of Christ, not the human feelings-based love, but love emanating from the Source, the “Love one another as I have loved you”-love… love leading to the capacity within community for forgiveness, capacity essential to the work of becoming… essential in that a forgiving community heart that itself is forgiven becomes the “open community heart” into which all-inclusive love can enter. The open community heart is a heart open to love in the process, open to all-inclusive love, open to seeing the life of the whole, open to the Source’s intent and intended way of working of all life on the earth, open to taking up pursuits in ways that work for all children in the world, open to taking up our reciprocal nourishment work – humanity becoming reciprocally nourishing within the whole of life… all being essential to our (humanity’s) fulfilling the eternalizing life command: eternal life on earth as in heaven.
Following our reflecting on the images coming to the fore through our reading of “A Seeing of Truth,” we turned to the reflective writing, “A Further Seeing… An Unfolding of this Time of Becoming,” (see WISDOM WORKING on this website), a writing which we will use as our core Wisdom Writers working paper over the coming months.
We found that reading aloud, and reflecting together upon “A Further Seeing…” enables building the essence mind, the process mind, the mind essential to the seeing of and unfolding of potential… the potential of LIFE itself… and within that, the potential of community life and the potential of our life.
As we continue gathering this fall, we will be turning as well to other Path of Potential writings, particularly, “Building a Going Forward Faith” (Volume 3 of “ADVANCING OUR HUMANNESS… OUR WORK IN THE WORLD”).
All for now, Sandra
Sandra Maslow Smith, Philosopher of Potential
