Dear Friends,
I begin today with an image, which is, in fact, a moment, which then and now steals the breath with awe and wonder. I have begun my journey back east toward the Blue Ridge Mountains from these summer months in the Colorado Rockies by way of a westward jaunt to the Utah Canyonlands. Life moves not in straight lines but spiraling toward its ever-blossoming depths. I am certain at times when I am here that I am wandering the ocean bottom of Earth’s beginnings always layering life’s desire for life in technicolor potentia.
That blue-tone layer of Earth is not reflecting the blue of sky at dusk. The sky is not a mirror of the blue-tone layer of Earth. They are sympathetic resonance, appearing one with the other across the collapse of time. And those articulated structures are not houses on top but red stone outcroppings sculpted by wind and water and the ages, the color of which is outshone only by the translucence of the pink clouds reaching toward them.
The universe does this magnificence moment by moment across eons and trillions of galaxies, and I am arrested with wordless utterances when in such moments, the grandeur wrests me from ordinary awareness. The magnificence is no different with a bird in winged flight carried on currents of air. We see the winged one as the doing one. But it is air that meets the desire to fly. The two are one infinite act of flying, recalling outstretched stars suspended beyond the beyond.
I have become quite convinced that it is the heart that is seized by such grandeur. The intellect seeks to know how it is that this is so. The heart is moved into feeling that it is so, so that the soul might make meaning.
. . .
I thought today to offer a selection of notes taken from my journal as a glimpse into the forthcoming “Awakening to the Heart” 12-week online course and Valle Crucis (optional) retreat to follow. I hope these short passages might stir reflection amongst us as a preface to a Zoom “Q & A” Hour next Sunday, August 17, from 1:00 – 2:00 pm ET.
In last week’s announcement, I shared an outline of the course, cost, and so on. I imagine you have questions about how this course will be structured, questions about how much of your life and time you will be committing to this journey, the format, participating in this offering vs. reading Sunday letters, what we will do when we meet, and so on. This hour will also give you a sense of me and my online presence with you as co-participant, and set the tone for our work together. If you are considering this journey into the heart, please do join me next Sunday for a Zoom “Q & A” Hour.
Here is your Zoom link. And in copy/paste format: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/7363973458?omn=81200858216
Meeting ID: 736 397 3458
I’ll post it again in next Sunday morning’s letter.
So looking forward, dear friends,
Renée
12-Week Correspondence Course + (optional) Onsite Retreat
September 1–November 23, 2025 || (optional onsite retreat) December 3–7, 2025
Please email me to register, and if you have questions and cannot make the “Q & A” Zoom Hour: reneeeliphd [AT ] gmail [DOT] com
Commonplace Notes from My Journal
What follows are passages from others scribed during my reading hours. I have opted to maintain the gendered references here, recognizing the era in which these visionaries wrote.
You might observe which passage or passages stir or enliven. Which passage or passages linger? Which call you back to them?
July 10.
The heart’s magnetic field, which is the strongest rhythmic field produced by the human body, not only envelops every cell of the body, but also extends out in all directions into the space around us. The heart’s magnetic field can be measured several feet away from the body by sensitive magnetometers. Research . . . suggests the heart’s field is an important carrier of information. . . . Information about a person’s emotional state is encoded in the heart’s magnetic field.
Man lives mostly in his surface mind, life, and body, but there is an inner being within him with greater possibilities to which he has to awake. . . . He has to learn to live in his soul.
Sri Aurobindo, The Integral Yoga, pp. 4–5.
July 11.
It is the heart which is the marvelous organ called to serve love in its works. It is the structure of the heart—simultaneously human and divine, a structure of love—which by way of analogy can open our understanding. . . .
Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism, p. 227
. . . transformation of the human being into a man of heart is accomplished in the inner life.Tomberg, Meditations, p. 228.
July 22.
Psychology today is not soul work but science of human behavior. . . . psyche-logos (psychology) = speech of the soul
You can know the soul only as deeply as you have gone into your own soul.Robert Sardello, Collected Notes of Integral Spiritual Psychology: Foundations for a Spirituality of the Future—vol. 1: Foundations, p. 27.
July 25.
The grail is now each and every individual who is called to go through the process of inner development to form themselves into a vessel of receiving and giving love. Sardello, Collected Notes, p. 40.
July 28.
To know the pine, go to the pine.Matsua Bashō
July 31.
. . . bringing forward, under pressure, under the allurement of the divine mystery coming to form in the spiritual evolutionary awarkening in the human, this becomes the great work for humanity. Kathleen Deignan on Teilhard’s Divine Milieu
August 5.
There is a single force which nothing can replace and nothing destroy, a force which urges us forwards and draws us upwards: this is the force of love.Pierre Leroy, Foreword to Teilhard’s Divine Milieu
Love synchronizes our hearts with each other and the Earth.
August 8.
Through every cleft the sensible world inundates us with its riches—food for the body, nourishment for the eyes, harmony of sounds and fulness of the heart, unknown phenomena and new truths, all these treasures, all these urges, all these calls, coming from the four quarters of the world, pass through our consciousness at every moment. What is their role within us? What will their effect be, even if we receive them passively or indistinctly, like bad workmen? They will merge into the most intimate life of our soul, and either develop it or poison it. We only have to look at ourselves for one moment to realise this, and feel either delight or anxiety. If even the most humble and most material of our nourishment is capable of deeply influencing our most spiritual faculties, what can be said of the infinitely more penetrating energies conveyed to us by the music of tones, of notes, of words, of ideas? We have not, in us, a body to be nourished independently of our soul.
Teilhard, The Divine Milieu, p. 28.
Essays in this “Heart” Series
~ Matter of the Heart - Part I
~ Matter of the Heart – Part II
When I read your depths Renée, it’s as if the magnetic fields of my heart become stronger, wider, more rhythmic and harmonious. They reach out to yours in infinite, grateful entanglement.
I paused and paused again on the air’s desiring to fly, and the merging of it with wing. This is such a beautiful reminder, our longing is never ours alone.
Traveling mercies, dear pilgrim, as you make your way east, carried on the wings of love, to your home in the Blue Ridge Mountains.