Coming in The Cold Time.

~ The Snowdrop ~
Many, many welcomes,
February fair-maid,
Ever as of old time,
Solitary firstling,
Coming in the cold time,
Prophet of the gay time,
Prophet of the May time,
Prophet of the roses,
Many, many welcomes,
February fair-maid!
— Alfred Lord Tennyson


Recently we spoke about not getting carried away by feelings in order to stay present in a given situation. This does not mean that we should never pick up our feet and let the river carry us -- sometimes it's our only option -- other times, it's the choice we make based on how safe we're feeling at the time. And still at other times, we've become addicted to the feeling of getting carried away and might behave in ways to activate it. Of course, it depends if we want to get taken to some place, or away from it.

Allowing our feelings to carry us to a certain state of mind is one way of establishing communicative links that brings us closer to those who are Risen, or to those who still embodied and are on (and therefore in) our mind but out of sight. But these feelings may actually achieve the opposite -- keeping us unlinked and inaccessible and frozen in one place. This is not the same as choosing to stay within one's own presence. One actually begins from the feeling of one's own authentic presence, and from there, purposively activates increasingly intensified feelings, as brought about by thoughts, memories, artifacts, music, smells, and so on.

"Authentic presence" needs further clarification, best done by looking at the etymology of each word. The etymology of a word is very useful, for it can clearly reveal the origin and historical development of a linguistic form as shown by determining its basic elements, earliest known use, and changes in form and meaning, even tracing its transmission from one language to another.

Authentic = "authoritative," from O.Fr. autentique (13c.), from M.L. authenticus, from Gk. authentikos "original, genuine, principal," from authentes "one acting on one's own authority," from autos "self" + hentes "doer, being." Hence, one authors one's sense of self through one's actions. These actions may be outer (visible and tangible) and/or inner (invisible and intangible). Most actions are many layered, interactive and "and/or".

"Presence" = "fact of being present," from O.Fr. presence (12c.), from L. præsentia "a being present," from præsentem (see present (n.)). Meaning "carriage, demeanor, aspect" (especially if impressive) is from 1579; that of "divine, spiritual or incorporeal being felt as present" is from 1667. Presence of mind (1665) is a loan-transl. of Fr. présence d'esprit, L. præsentia animi.

So authentic presence arises as the intensification of feeling increases our sphere of awareness of personal beingness, as well as our sensitivity to our local and non-local environments. New senses are grown out from the usual ones, like finer branches on a tree, which, when attended to with conscious awareness and love, will continue to grow, and flourish with gifts of leaves and fruits.

This process can be quite simple -- as it ought to be. For example, allowing one's self to be immersed into and overtaken by the smell of a loved one's old and well-worn shirt can transport us immediately to very real and substantial worlds of memory.

Some of the feelings activated will be intense enough as to be uncomfortable or even painful -- but neither of these qualities needs to be experienced (endured) as suffering. Suffering occurs with non-acceptance; acceptance negates suffering, and allows pain and discomfort to exist in order to allow us access to fuller experiences of being. Suffering not only pulls us away from our edges where pain and discomfort are found, but reduces our sphere of life, contracting it tighter and tighter, cutting us off from the potentially greater sphere of experience and existence. Life becomes less-than, a pinched off existence, and even the leaves and fruits of formerly gained extended senses will wilt and vanish from lack of light. The light in this case is the combined acknowledgement of perceiving, accepting and feeling all pain and discomfort without judgment. This combination results in new perceptions, enlarged lenses that allow for yet more light, and therefore, more life. More life is what our Creator Source seeks, and which gives It, and therefore gives each of us, unlimited pleasure.

Some of us are involved with pain on levels that none of us would ever aspire to, and yet it is the very intensity of that kind of pain that channels the innermost awareness to worlds that would never otherwise be accessed. Those who have refused pain killers because of their sense-deadening effects may understand this, and are courageous explorers into their own infinite aspects of dimensional awareness. "The pain takes me . . . " they might say. It takes them to places where there is no language, no reporting back. This journey transforms pain into something different. That being said, we are very blessed in having modern medical approaches that can treat pain appropriately and effectively. Nobody should ever have to endure pain. Some of us can tolerate or develop a certain kind of relationship with certain kinds of pain; it is unique and individual. Therefore while a bee sting may be small to one person, it could be very different for another with allergies to the venom.

Allowing oneself to sit with discomfort is not subjecting oneself to pain, nor is it self abuse, but is letting the experience of growing pains move ahead. The snowdrop flower, which appears earliest of all spring flowers in my area, grows right on up through the snow until it finds the sun. One wonders if this is an entity that suffers in the process, or endures it, or even has found pleasurable ecstasy in surrendering to where its life desires to take it. This is putting out new branches which will flower and fruit. This is the lifting of the feet from the river bottom and letting life carry us from the Source, to the Source.

Regarding the Risen, their sense of authentic presence is greatly enlarged compared to the embodied on Earth, and discomfort and pain are usually the result when they attempt to come down to our levels of awareness or vibration. "Down" is meant here not in a physical, directional way, but as "less organized truth." The more we can perceive something for what it is, the more truth we see; the "more true it is." So a "higher" level of truth is truth more organized.

When Krishnamurti dissolved the theosophical Order of the Star of The Start of the East in 1929, he began by telling this little joke to his unsuspecting audience:

You may remember the story of how the devil and a friend of his were walking down the street, when they saw ahead of them a man stoop down and pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket. The friend said to the devil, "What did that man pick up?" "He picked up a piece of Truth," said the devil. "That is a very bad business for you, then," said his friend. "Oh, not at all," the devil replied, "I am going to let him organize it."

There are levels of truth, and depending on how well it is organized, we may derive more or less pleasure from the truth. The saying that "the truth hurts" is a typically backward terrestrial mirror way of seeing things, as it suggests that truth has the potential for malice. Rather, malice has the potential for truth. Once we find a piece of truth, it is ours forever. Even if we should "fall backwards" we take this truth with us, and it affects the darkness far more than the darkness affects it. The smallest piece of truth is still a light in the fog.

The discomfort that the Risen experience has been reported by them to be "as if in a dense, polluted fog, unable to breathe" or "this must be what being in the old-fashioned deep-sea diving suit felt like!" They are literally squeezed into our dimension. Because their imprints of living still exist within the fabric of terrestrial history (as is everyone's) old mannerisms, habits and eccentricities will be reactivated -- rather like putting on an old Halloween costume that one had forgotten about and had been moldering away for years in Grandma's attic. Wearing these old earthly personas often confuse the returning spirit, and so a certain amount, or even a great deal of strangeness can come out of their communication attempts, and so unfortunately these attempts get tagged as coincidences, nonsense or even fraud. It's not uncommon for someone Risen to forget their own earthly name -- we often receive new names as Risen, which Tim has referred to as "designators" -- and are based on perception of light, colour, sound, and affect and effect - not just picked out of an astral baby names book. My name, August, was given to me by my Risen friends to reflect their perception of me as I am in this earthly existence. It will change many times, and become multi-layered, as one continues to transition from one level of vibration to the next.