Expanded Spiritual Awareness

Walt Whitman, among the greatest poets of our times, obviously was highly sensitive to inspiration from the spiritual realm. His epic work, Leaves of Grass, serves as the title piece of an extraordinary collection of his inspired works which emerge, finally as a self-portrait of the poet and his universal images of reality. The work presents numerous references to the immortality of the soul and, in particular, to reincarnationist thought.

In Song of Myself, written in 1855, Whitman begins the opening verse with this striking understanding:

"I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you."

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Below is an Excerpt from my book, Whispers From the Soul: The Divine Dance of Consciousness by Don and Linda Pendleton.


ENGINES OF AWARENESS

Until modern science captured the human imagination on this planet, the engine of understanding was fueled by poets and philosophers, musicians and magicians, and other forces which unbridled human creativity. From the earliest recorded histories of mankind, the finer essences of human growth have been set free by the common assumption that our world is the abode of powerful spiritual forces with which we become intimate and join with them in the divine dance.

However, since every force within the natural world also seems bent into a common need for survival, the greatest fear of all is that death lurks behind every bush, and pain behind every joy. Since also it seems that the instinctive drive for procreation places us in an ever widening pool of activities which relate us all to one another inseparably, the common dilemma for every form of animate life is that every contact with every other life is undertaken at great risk. If love is woven into the very fabric of human consciousness, then the entire life experience continually intermingles us all into common bonds of joy and peril. It is that dance which has created and sustains the human experience on Planet Earth. Perhaps this is why there is no joy without some sorrow, no exaltation without some frustration, no growth without some pain.

It is clearly remarkable, then, that the human family has made such incredible strides forward instead of being engulfed by fears and competitions. If it is true that this universe was created some twenty billion years ago, as recognized by earth time, then the human presence on Planet Earth has been brief, indeed, and our species mere babes of the universe. The wonder is not, as some have said, that we have not blown our planet asunder by now but that we have developed the ability to do so and the wisdom, so far, not to. Obviously something more important than mere survival and more enthralling than mere power is moving the creative imaginations of humanity. Could it be true, then, that love is the magical ingredient? If not for love, then why do we put up with any of it and continue to believe that something more important than our own selfish needs and desires is at the root of this constant striving?

For all of us it seems that the need to understand and the willingness to seek our own destinies are the most powerful and moving forces behind existence itself. That drive did not begin in this century or any other but is that which drives the universe and empowers all sentient life. There were shamans and priests long before scientists, seers and soothsayers eons before physicians, oracles before preachers. All of the ancients spoke of a knowledge and wisdom beyond time and gifts beyond anything a materialistic awareness may envisage.

Our Twentieth Century equivalent of an expanded awareness will be found among the psychics, healers, mediums, astrologers, psychometrics and various others who tap into the spiritual dimensions of consciousness. But these special gifts of spiritual awareness need not be theirs alone. It may be possible for each of us, in our own way, to benefit from and enjoy the divine threads of the spiritual connection that links us all, through this dimension or another. Perhaps we need only to reach for and accept what has been ours from the beginning.

© Copyright 2003, 2009 by Linda Pendleton. All Rights Reserved.

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~Linda