May 2007

Editors: Porter and Jeanie Underwood

Happy Mother's Day

To the world you might just be one person,
But to one person you might just be the world.
-- Author unknown.

Contents:

Research Breakthrough, by Puran Bair
Greatness, by Susanna Bair
President's Report, by Susanna Bair
The Influence of a Sage, by Asatar Bair
IAM Mentoring Program, by Jeanie Underwood
Heart Work, by Jody Curley
Community Voices
Calendar of Events
Letter From the Editor

Recognizing greatness has been our practice since our winter retreat. We've found this is a practice that helps people move from analysis to synthesis. As important as it is to analyze one's being in order ot become aware of one's lacks and shortcomings, it is even more important to work through the concept of greatness to create completion and fulfillment of one's being through the superlatives of what has already begun to manifest.

Read more...

Hazrat Inayat Khan tells several wonderful stories about a certain type of sage who can accomplish unusual things and who can extend this blessing to others. He describes three kinds of gifts: There are hearts who have the power of creating success, ease and attraction.

We are fortunate to have a sage like this in IAM, whose effect has been shown in his life and the lives of those he's helped. Read more...

With the maturity of his soul, a man desires to probe the depths of life. He desires to discover the power latent within him. He longs to know the sources and goal of his life. He yearns to understand the aim and meaning of his life. He wishes to understand the inner significance of things. He wants to uncover all that is covered by name and form. He seeks for insight into cause and effect. He wants to touch the mystery of time and space. he wishes to find the missing link between God and man - where man ends, where God begins." -- Hazrat Inayat Khan

To learn about the current certified mentors for IAM, go to the IAM Mentors website.

On March 31st to April 3, 2007, 14 people gathered in Tucson, AZ for the first of five training phases to become an IAM mentor. These pictures, taken by Linda Turner, capture some of the spirit of that training.

Heart Work, by Jody Curley

Attunement: The Divine Mother For I am the first and the last I am the venerated and the despised I am the prostitute and the virgin I am the mother and the daughter I am the arms of my mother I am barren and my children are many I am the married woman and the spinster I am the woman who gives birth and she who never procreated I am the consolation for pain of birth I am the wife and the husband And it was my man who created me I am the mother of my father I am the sister of my husband And he is my rejected son, who Always respects me For I am the shameful and the magnificent one. -- Hymn to Isis, third and fourth century B.C.     May the sun bring you new energy by day, May the moon softly restore you by night, May the rain wash away your worries, May the breeze blow new strength into your being, May you walk gently through the world and know its beauty all the days of your life. -- Apache Blessing

HOLY WAR Spring is no gentle thing. Call it true jihad, The battle to become. When the purple martins return to their houses They find squatters there: Tough little sparrows who took refuge Through bitter winter nights. There is war. Beaks stab and rip Scaled toes rake and claw Feathers fly Entangled little bodies plummet to earth Bloodied with absolute willingness To die for the ones to come Even when the nest is secure, When the mating is done and Eggs are safe beneath The warmly beating breast, No peace is certain. No Mother intended The poisons in earth and air and water That course through feathered hearts To seep even into eggs awakening in hard fought nests. If the egg shell is too hard The little break cannot break through. The exhausted baby's cradle becomes a crypt. If the egg shell is too thin The hatchling spills out too easily, Her protection shattered Before she ever grows the strength To survive the brutal beauty of Her first and only spring. We each are fighting our own great war. May we give thanks for the wisdom of the struggle. May we have the resistance we need to strengthen us. May we break through when it is our time To be exactly who we are meant to be. -- Jody Curley

Community Voices

When I was doing my retreat at Puran and Susanna's in December, the first night I looked above the window in my retreat space and there lurked a huge brown spider, about the size of a half dollar. I was really freaked out when I saw it, but I was observing silence and I was embarrassed to run screaming from the room to ask Puran to get it out! So, I decided to make friends with it and to try to communicate with it instead.

This happened to me once before on retreat, at the Abode in New Lebanon, New York. I was in one of the huts on the mountain and realized, to my horror, that it had been invaded by a colony of bees. I'm terribly allergic to bee stings, but I decided to befriend them, too, and it worked pretty well. So I thought it was oddly synchronous that once again there was some sort of undesirable creature in my retreat space!

I made a deal with the spider: it could go wherever it wanted to go in the next week, but it couldn't get in my bed. I figured I could live with it under those conditions. That done, I focused on my retreat. The funny thing was that I began to regard the spider as sort of a pet. I looked for it every morning, and it was almost always by the window -- and never in my bed! And when I couldn't find it, I wondered where it had gone and found myself hoping it would show its face to me during the day. After several days I realized that I could usually locate it in the room, because I could find its vibration and tune myself to it to make it visible. And thus the spider and I had a very good time together during the retreat.

Afterwards I realized that the spider represented some of the aspects of my self that I would rather have removed from me, rather than live with them. When I left it in the room I was befriending those aspects of self, and eventually found the vibration that allowed them to become synchronous with my self-concept. The spider, instead of remaining feared and alien, became my friend -- just as those disowned and feared parts of the self do when we are brave enough to incorporate them.

Instead of sweeping all the "spiders" of our life away, find their vibration, make their acquaintance, and become as one with them (as, in truth, we are).

Alia Simpson

Wow. Thank you for such an inspiring newsletter. To hear and feel the many voices felt like a gentle caress.

Love, Mindy Korth

Calendar of Events

See www.applied-meditation.org for additional information. You can register here.

Letter From the Editor

While putting this newsletter together, I read in The Essential Rumi, Translations by Coleman Barks, pages 132 and 133, the following selection:

The existence of the beloved is not provable, nor is it fantasy. The Friend, as Rumi usually calls this presence within and infinitely beyond the senses, is elusive and nearer than the big vein on your neck; you need a mirror to see it. The sheikh is a mirror, a reminder of that presence, and a cook. The understanding that comes through a sheikh gives nourishment and transforming energy to many. Rumi's image of a disciple is a chickpea that sprouts and enjoys the rainy garden of sexual pleasure. It matures to its hardened form, then gets picked and thrown in the cooking pot. The cook's tending is careful and constant and, in Rumi's case, garrulous. Gradually the disciple softens and takes on flavors the cook adds. Eventually her or she becomes tasty enough to be appealing to those who in the Sufi tradition are called the True Human Beings. So the chickpea moves from garden to cooking pot to a taste for the cook, finally to become sustenance for a mysterious community.

I have such a teacher, and my mentor helps me access It.

With love and in service,
Jeanie Underwood