Shepherding Inspiration
Countervailing Angelic Dispersal
In the previous entry, I introduced the notion of “Angelic Dispersal.” I concluded by suggesting “Shepherding Inspiration” as a countervailing movement. The purpose of this article, which is very much contextualized by the previous post (so I definitely recommend starting there if you haven’t read it), is to venture some suggestions on how this may be approached.
When I set out creating this Substack, I had no intent whatsoever of offering suggestions for sādhanā,1 nor any inklings that I might do so. Yet, I am committed to following the hidden whisperer wherever it leads, and this is the terrain into which I’ve been lured for now. Whether or not you feel called to engage in the practices, however, the writing has its own value. The spirit behind the writing came through with a genuine sense of organic spontaneity, and I now offer up this artifact as a devotional gesture.
Before leaping in, however, I am first compelled to offer a few opening remarks:
Here I’ll be pointing to practices led by other teachers. These are suggestions offered by a fellow traveler in the spirit of an invitation to experiment: try these practices out, if you feel called (assuming you do not already engage in them), and see for yourself whether they bear fruit. They certainly have done so in my case. Of course, fruit does not ripen in an instant. The greater the persistence and consistency, the fuller the fruition. However, rather than relating to practice as a means toward a desired end, bringing forth this fruit can be approached in the spirit of lovingly tending a garden. To any who are new to meditative practice and have a desire to explore, it may be of benefit to start with these helpful tips for a lifetime of practice.
The drivers behind Angelic Dispersal are numerous and, as such, three practice avenues are hardly exhaustive (not to say I would even posit the possibility of “exhausting” the tendency toward Angelic Dispersal). However, if tended with sincerity and included within an ecology of practices, I am confident that these paths of cultivation can, if even humbly, serve to tip the balance of a life’s unfolding toward greater harmony with the innate potential represented by the Angel.
Like the well known saying, typically associated with Zen, that “Enlightenment is an accident, but practice makes us accident prone”2 — so with inspiration. We can’t produce inspiration on demand by sheer will, but we can practice lifting our sails to better catch the wind when it arrives. As such, I am making no claim that these practices are guaranteed to bring forth consistent inspiration. We must have respect, in the end, for the grace and mystery behind what inspires and animates our creative impulses—including the nonlinear logic guiding it. I do, however, believe these practices will not only make us more “inspiration prone,” but also help us to guard over and shield inspiration from detracting influences once it does arrive. And, fortunately, the value of these practices is not strictly targeted at Shepherding Inspiration. Each practice holds rich value in itself, including and well-exceeding its implications regarding the mystery of inspiration.
With this, let us take the leap….
Beauty: Receptacle and Lure
I alluded previously to Stephen Harrod Buhner’s reference to “golden threads.” In connection with this idea, he points to a quote from poet William Stafford: “When you find you do have a response—trust it. It has a meaning.”
Buhner elaborates on what it means to “have a response”:
“If you do use your feeling sense as your primary perceptual touching of the world you will encounter, from time to time, touches on your feeling/sensing that are out of the ordinary. These touches will capture your attention as nothing else in the feeling field does. From some place deep inside you will come an urge to turn toward that touching, a desire to immerse yourself in it, and to begin to follow it wherever it leads. These unique touches are what the poet William Stafford called golden threads.
He found the concept in one of William Blake’s poems (though Blake called it a golden string) . . .
I give you the end of a golden string
Only wind it into a ball,
It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate
Built in Jerusalem’s wall”3
Buhner’s “primary perceptual touching” gestures to a particular kind of attentional stance. It moves slowly while “feeling” outward, slowing down to greet everything that is perceived with great sensitivity, carefully noticing whatever feelings are evoked in response.
It also entails opening the heart into a receptive stance that is attuned to, and available for, the impact of Beauty.
This concern with Beauty brings us into the domain of aesthetics. The term is derived from the Greek word aisthesis, meaning “sense perception.” James Hillman points out that aisthesis traces back to the words aiou and aisthou (meaning both “I perceive” and “I gasp”) as well as aisthomai (“I breathe in”).4 If we are truly available for the reception of Beauty, we are struck and impacted by its arrival. We suddenly gasp, spontaneously drawing breath.
Inhalation is inspiration, concretely understood: “inspire” is derived from the Latin in (“into”) and spirare (“breathe”).
Breath has long been associated with spirit. Indeed, many ancient languages have one word for expressing both—for example, the Latin spirare is the root of spiritus, meaning both “breath” and “spirit.” Spirit can here be imagined as the invisible factor that imbues life with its very aliveness. Aliveness is what animates. To be inspired, then, to is be filled with currents of spontaneous animacy.
Very often, we are animated in response to what moves us, to what calls us into motion. Beauty is essential to this. As poet John O’Donahue points out:
“In Greek the word for ‘the beautiful’ is to kalon. It is related to the word kalein which includes the notion of ‘call’. When we experience beauty, we feel called… We respond with joy to the call of beauty because in an instant it can awaken under the layers of the heart a forgotten brightness.”5
Among Sufi mystics, Beauty is often portrayed as the great power that both inspires and transforms. Henry Corbin writes:
“Beauty is the supreme theophany [i.e., divine revelation], but it reveals itself as such only to a love which it transfigures. Mystic love is the religion of Beauty, because Beauty is the secret of theophanies and because as such it is the power which transfigures.”6
It reveals itself as such only to a love which it transfigures.
Beauty, then, is deeply dependent upon our ways of looking. Certainly, it often breaks in with the grace of its own undeniable force, stopping us in our tracks and calling us into greater sensitivity. Yet, in many cases—most cases—Beauty needs us in order to appear. We must be lovingly attentive, sensitive, receptive, attending to what is before us with a heart that is open and willing to be impacted.
We must be available.
From here, I move into recommendations for cultivating three capacities that can help prime this kind of availability. Considering Beauty as a face of the Angel, and the Angel as the factor that inspires us to unfold what is latent within us, our innate potential, these practices can be placed in service of Shepherding Inspiration.
Recommendation I
Samādhi is defined in numerous ways. Here, I lean specifically on Rob Burbea’s definition:
“This word samādhi is usually defined as ‘concentration’, but in many respects that does not convey the fullness, or the beauty, of what it really means . . . For samādhi involves more than just holding the attention on a fixed object with a minimum of wavering. And it certainly does not necessarily imply a spatially narrowed focus of the mind on a small area. Instead here we will emphasize that what characterizes states of samādhi is some degree of collectedness and unification of mind and body in a sense of well-being. Included in any such state will also be some degree of harmonization of the internal energies of the mind and body. Steadiness of the mind, then, is only one part of that.”7
Samādhi, then, involves “concentration” in a different sense than keeping the mind exclusively and continuously focused on a single object. Rather, it entails a drawing-together of awareness. Among its various conntations, samādhi means “to collect; to bring together.”
It is an antonym of dispersal.
Samādhi leads mind and body from a state of dispersion into one of harmonious coherence.
For Burbea, it often implies not only a state of centeredness, but also a gentle, delicate, and deeply settled awareness extending beyond the borders of the physical skin and into a space he calls “the energy body,” filling it with a receptive sensitivity.
Corbin points out that the Sufi traditions include ideas about a subtle energy system (they call it jism mithālī) quite similar to those from other spiritual traditions: “In short, this ‘mystic physiology’ operates with a ‘subtile body’ composed of psycho-spiritual organs (the centers, or Chakras, ‘lotus blossoms’) which must be distinguished from the bodily organs.”8 Cultivating this subtle body is described as the awakening of the body of light.9
I readily suspect a correspondence between subtle body coherence and Angelic Coherence (as an antonym of Angelic Dispersal). After all, the Angel is often understood as a denizen of the subtle plane (corresponding to what, in Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism, is called sambhogakaya). According to the metaphysical schema within a number of spiritual traditions, the subtle realm dwells in-between the material plane (nirmanakaya in the same Buddhist traditions) and the formless “causal” plane (dharmakaya). The subtle plane corresonds to the imaginal realm, understood as the level of reality making encounter with the Angel possible.
While we can conceptualize the energy body as a body of “light” or “subtle energy,” this is not necessary. Rob Burbea brackets such questions, opting for a phenomenological approach that requires no metaphysical or ontological postulations. As he puts it in a recorded dharma talk from a 2015 retreat called Path of the Imaginal:
“Philosophically, we’re talking about a phenomenological reality, if you like. This is a way of experiencing the body. It’s actually how we experience [the body] if we don’t necessarily layer too much on in terms of concepts. It’s a style of attention, that’s all, that reveals, opens the experience up in a certain way.”10
I sense this to be a wise framing for our contemporary context, as it invites a way of looking at energy body cultivation as experiential experiment: try it for yourself, notice what arises in your direct experience, and see what results you discover.
So, what does this mean in everyday lived experience?
Well, outside of cultivating samādhi as a foundation for imaginal meditation practices, this sort sensitivity can, over time, become a sort of barometer for authentic Eros. We can notice what calls us onward and enlivens us as signals in the extended body—what Bonnitta Roy calls “biomarkers.” Cultivating this kind of attention, we may more readily sense our golden threads when we encounter them.
Beyond this, a body-mind that is well-practiced in gathering and calming itself into a state of samādhi will have greater capacity for resiliency against the attention- and will-dispersing pull of compulsions.
To summarize: Samādhi leads mind and body from a state of dispersion into a “concentrated” state of harmonious coherence—one that is open, settled throughout the ambient space of the energy body, unperturbed by distraction.
Rob Burbea’s helpful explanations and guided energy practices, like the one below, are great starting points:
From this foundation of samādhi and energy body awareness, we come to the next recommendation.
Recommendation II
This brings us to the center of the energy body along the horizontal plane. I have had a strengthening intuition, reinforced by multiple sources, that the central channel is a focal point for Angelic Signals.
See my conversation with Rosa Lewis below, in which we discuss the idea of “Cosmic Intelligence” for the Awakening Course she is currently designing.
I have the video timestamped for a moment in our conversation [11:11-13:33] where I was offering speculations regarding experiences of inspiration that drive toward collaborative processes, taking Rosa’s calling to create her course as an example. I drew inferences from emerging language coming from the Collective Presencing milieu (specifically, the term “Source Keeper,”11 the precise attribution of which apparently remains unknown).
Rosa’s view of the inspired vision behind the course, including the role of the handful of contributors she has invited into it, came forward in her experience with greater clarity. She offered a real-time phenomenological account as this happened. It should be noted that Rosa is profoundly sensitive to layers of experience that, I assume, typically remain unconscious for most people (myself included).
She described a “resonance” felt in the midline, and her gestures seemed to suggest a process of staying in alignment with the creative-visionary process. The biomarker for this state of alignment apparently registers as a feeling of resonance in the central channel.
Angelic Signals, then, are marked by a confluence of these biomarkers and inspired intuitions of creative potential—often coming through in powerful intimations that offer a visionary glimpse or felt sense of the nascent creative undertaking as a whole. Of crucial importance here is Rosa’s explicit linking of this kind of creativity with a felt sense of Truth, Wisdom, and the superior intelligence made possible through the Collective. I am firmly of the opinion that the true Angelic Signals of our time will beckon us toward creative urges that drive in these directions. This is a creativity reaching beyond individuality, rooted in wisdom.
The hypothesis here: Attending to the central channel can open our availability for inspired visions of potentials that are wanting to emerge through us, drawing us into co-creative communion—Signals from our Angels out Ahead, longing to interweave their creative purposes.
Rob Burbea spends some time in this guided meditation focusing specifically on cultivating central channel sensitivity. (I have it timestamped for the guided meditation—though the preliminary discussion is highly recommended):
For Rosa’s course, I also intend to create a guided meditation focused on cultivating energy body awareness with an emphasis on central channel resonance, which will tentatively be called The Aeolian Heart String. This will be accompanied by some writing as well. For that, stay tuned.
From the integrated foundations of samādhi and sensitivity to signals corresponding to the central channel, we come to the final recommendation offered in this piece.
Recommendation III
This brings us to the center of the central channel along the vertical axis.
Corbin, noting that Sufi sources explicitly link the Angel to the heart center, refers to “the ‘subtile physiology,’ whose center is the heart; the heart is the focus in which creative spiritual energy, that is, theophanic energy, is concentrated.”12
Here is a snippet from my doctoral dissertation:
The Sufis employed the term himma, both in reference to the subtle organ of the heart which opens the subtle perception of the imaginal realm, as well as the longing for the Angel found therein. According to Avens (2003), “Heart—himma in Islamic Sufism—is conceived here as the locus of the spiritual energy of imagination or spiritual perception; it signifies ‘the act of meditating, imagining, projecting, ardently desiring...’” (p. 4).
The heart, then, is from this perspective more than just a neutral center of energy. It is a source and center of creative Eros.
The heart also holds everything that has rightly come to be associated with it—compassion being a central feature. The word “compassion” is derived from the Latin compati, meaning “suffer with.”
While, from what I’ve been able to gather, the idea of any real etymological relationship is at best dubious and more likely nonexistent, I find it hard to avoiding detecting a phonetic resonance between the Latin compati and the Pali word anukampati, which carries the multiple connotations of “to tremble along with” and “to have pity for; to have compassion for.”13
Catherine McGee, who did much to co-develop the Soulmaking Dharma with Rob Burbea and continues to carry it forward, emphasizes anukampati as an essential foundation of imaginal practice, which is practice oriented to soul, oriented to the Angel. A heart open to the Angel is one that is open to the world, willing to “tremble with” all beings in compassionate resonance.
Catherine also described anukampati as the basis of the Brahmavihārās.
Practices that cultivate these qualities of the heart, like these practices from Tasshin, are a great entry point. I’ll drop one here for good measure:
Mettā practices, like this one, open and sensitize the heart. The heart is a portal that moves us beyond preoccupation with the self—calling us into an I-Thou disposition, attuning us to a field of resonance with, and loving concern for, others. These qualities of heart are inextricably interwoven with the capacities for Angelic Resonance (the capacity to receive Angelic Signals).
In Conclusion
In closing, I am called back to Beauty.
John O’Donahue strikingly remarked that “beauty is so quietly woven through our ordinary days that we hardly notice it.”14
Very much in keeping with this observation, Catherine McGee recently recalled something Rob Burbea had once implored of his students:
“Don’t let a day go by without allowing your heart to open to beauty.”
A body-mind that is gathered, settled, filled with a subtly sensed quality that may be poetically described as light; an awareness attuned to the central channel and receptive to the hidden whispers of Angelic Signals; a heart that is open, sensitive, willing to tremble with the world in great compassion.
May these qualities take root and blossom in service of our noticing, receiving, and responding to what is quietly woven through our ordinary days—the faces of the Angel, found in all that inspires and leads us Beautifully onward….
Sādhanā can be defined as practice towards a spiritual goal. While I have no totalizing definition for what could be considered a “spiritual” goal, I quite like the characterization offered by Donald Evans in his book Spirituality and Human Nature (quoted in Jorge Ferrer’s Re-Visioning Transpersonal Theory, p. 34):
“Spirituality consists primarily of a basic transformative process in which we uncover and let go of our narcissism so as to surrender into the Mystery out of which everything continually arises.”
While I know of no solid sources for this statement, it appears to be most consistently attributed to Richard Rose.
From the intro to the 12th chapter of Buhner’s Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm (Digital copy, lacking page numbers).
James Hillman, City & Soul, p. 176.
John O’Donahue, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace, ch. 1 (Digital copy, lacking page numbers).
Henry Corbin, Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Suifism of Ibn ‘Arabi, p. 98.
Rob Burbea, Seeing That Frees, p. 39.
Alone with the Alone, p. 223.
Henry Corbin, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism.
In short, I understand a “Source Keeper” as one who feels a particular kind of inspiration—what Ria Baeck would call a “soul’s calling”—that involves maintaining a continuous relationship with that calling, often while in co-creative relationship with others. In this sense, Rosa would be the Source Keeper of her awakening course.
Alone with the Alone, p. 99. Theophany, again, entails “divine revelation.” Here, following angelology as we are, we can assume a close relationship between theophany and the upwellings of Eros evoked by anything that inspires our authentic interest. Your “golden threads” can be considered, in this light, as a kind of everyday theophany.
https://www.wisdomlib.org/definition/anukampa
https://suttacentral.net/define/anukampati?lang=en
Beauty, ch. 1