Hello dear Ones,

Something of a different nature this evening. Reflective of consciousness.

I was reading a passage from a book with friends and it brought back to mind a poem that I shared in a Community Building retreat years ago in England. A poem entitled The Woodcarver.

In both the book excerpt below and the woodcarver artistic achievement, the notion of Kairos time comes around; connecting, or immersing, with a different sense of time that allows the emergence of higher consciousness.

We’ve all have had that experience of being transported, somehow, into an amplified state of being, whether emotional or spiritual. Let’s think of the conditions that made this “transportation” possible. What conditions did we encounter or create for the sublimation of our “down to earth / down to the clock” mind?

The ancient Greeks had two words for time. Chronos was their word for chronological or sequential time (i.e., clock time and historical time) while Kairos refers to a moment of indeterminate time. Indeed Kairos is the time in which everything happens. In defining a hierarchy of human needs, Abraham Maslow, way back in 1943, referred to a “state of flow” as the main attribute of the self-actualized person. What he described melds nicely with what the Greeks simply called “Kairos.”

Artists often do their best work while in altered states of consciousness that arise in periods of heightened creativity. In speaking of such moments, they may use terms such as “divine flow” or “creative flow,” meaning they can sense the fluid movement of creativity running right through them. Others may refer to entering Kairos as dipping into the realm of “no time,” or the “eternal now.” Indeed the wisdom literature of all spiritual traditions reveals that Kairos, this “time of no time,” is the only interim in which heightened spiritual states and enlightenment can occur.

Whatever Happened to the New Age? page 101-102

The Woodcarver

A Taoist Tale

By Chuang Tzu

Khing, the master carver, made a bell stand

Of precious wood. When it was finished,

All who saw it were astounded. They said it must be

The work of spirits.

The Prince of Lu said to the master carver:

“What is your secret?”

Khing replied: “I am only a workman:

I have no secret. There is only this:

When I began to think about the work you commanded

I guarded my spirit, did not expend it

On trifles, that were not to the point.

I fasted in order to set

My heart at rest.

“After three days fasting,

I had forgotten gain and success.

After five days

I had forgotten praise or criticism.

After seven days

I had forgotten my body

With all its limbs.

“By this time all thought of your Highness

And of the court had faded away.

All that might distract me from the work

Had vanished.

I was collected in the single thought

Of the bell stand.

“Then I went to the forest

To see the trees in their own natural state.

When the right tree appeared before my eyes,

The bell stand also appeared in it, clearly, beyond doubt.

All I had to do was to put forth my hand

And begin.

“If I had not met this particular tree

There would have been

No bell stand at all.

“What happened?

My own collected thought

Encountered the hidden potential in the wood;

From this live encounter came the work

Which you ascribe to the spirits.”

Topic: Artistry, higher consciousness and the creative flow

Time: Mar 12 @ 2:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Meeting ID: 876 2515 8610