Threshold: Spirituality and Ecology, Here at the Changing of the Guard (Mary Angelon Young)

We are living in wild times, in a shifting world in which we don’t know what’s going to happen. How can we find and live with reality in a world that is so predominantly unreal? Our karmas have to ripen all the way for us to become more fluid, open up, and let go. An essential tenet of tantra is non-rejection, taking whatever is arising as our path. Pratyahara, a teaching in the Yoga Sutras, is about freeing ourselves from identifications and attachments, including spiritual ones. The path is a living stream that keeps giving us new challenges. All spiritual practice leads us to an in-between liminal state where we have to respond to what is present now and not what was in the past. We’re also in-between duality and nonduality, with awareness in both. The doorway to the Divine is the Feminine, a quality of being that is present in everyone regardless of gender. The Feminine has an instinctual trust of the life process, which includes death. The deeper we go on the path the more our hearts are broken and the more we recognize our love for everything, for the world. We can bear witness to what is unfolding in our lives and the world. If we are “in the world but not of the world,” we can step back to have a greater view of what is happening without getting caught up in it. When we’re clear, that is a moment to reaffirm our intention to the universe. In order for a new consciousness to be born, things have to die. The quality of our inner life makes a difference in this world. We keep getting broken open and getting bigger. Can we welcome the unknown and step into it with open arms? Mary Angelon Young is a workshop leader with a background in Jungian psychology, an editor and author of As It Is, Under the Punnai Tree, The Baul Tradition, Caught in the Beloved’s Petticoats, Enlightened Duality (with Lee Lozowick), Krishna’s Heretic Lovers, The Art of Contemplation, and other books.