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Renee Descartes’ declaration in 1637, “I think, therefore I am,”  powerfully aligned Western thought with the form-identified “avatar* ego” for the centuries that would follow. Yet we are fundamentally NOT the ego which is an amalgam of meticulously maintained, habitual thoughts ruled by fear.  We are the awareness — the vast consciousness which is one with the larger field of universal intelligence behind the avatar-ego.

We think approximately 70,000 thoughts per day. We can choose to let these thoughts ride roughshod over us and align us with the limited ego. Or we can come to understand our minds and consciously, intentionally train it to serve our own growth and the evolution of our society.

Most people don’t understand the purpose of the human mind as a tool. Like Descartes we deify the mind with its limited reality-frame, and indulge its incessant fear-driven discursive thought. We thereby inadvertently cause ourselves and others a great deal of unnecessary suffering. 

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____Activists attempt to move socio-political reality from point A, to an improved point B.
____Physicists create models of reality. Quantum mechanics and digital physics in particular have arrived at the same non-material understanding of reality as a probability distribution in which consciousness, not “bits” of matter, is the fundamental stuff of reality.
___Mystics tap into and experience a much wider swath of reality than most — including non-material reality.
____Contemplatives employ the practices and tools that facilitate arrival at a broad, mystical, exerience of reality.
____We are all now standing in the same space, sharing the same understanding and experience of reality. There is a confluence of wisdom and experience that activists, enabled by discoveries in physics, neuroscience, and using contemplative tools, are  bringing to bear on their social transformation work from a wide-angle perspective and a vantage point of unprecedented clarity.

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Mastery of our minds is essential to living in alignment with our highest, selves, i.e. with Love. Such mastery  involves working intentionally, creatively, and consistently with our brains.

We can train our minds to change the physical structure and the function(s) of the brain. If we continually pay attention to, and purposefully direct our thought processes we can gain tremendous self-knowledge. Until we begin to consistently work with the dynamics of our longstanding habits, belief systems, points of reference, and patterns, these processes run us. The brain defaults to what is familiar, not necessarily to what is healthy and growth producing.

We can shape, reshape, and mold our malleable brains like modeling clay to deliberately foster optimal growth and transformation. The terrain of the brain stands at the ready. We just need to pick up the tools and work methodically.  

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Quaker Friends speak of a state of “unity.” Mystics worldwide describe resting in and obtaining guidance from undifferentiated consciousness as the ultimate state of bliss.

The Quaker Pathways Forward community-of-practice takes the mystery [but not the awe] out of “mystical.” We usher the mystical experience out of the esoteric closets of the few by participating together in practices which democratize the opportunity for ALL interested Friends to co-create with spirit. The community-of-practice cultivates Friends’direct, frequent, and sustained experience of the light —the undifferentiated field.
A “Mystical experience” is where deep contemplative practice melds with reality as a probability distribution as explained by quantum science, digital physics, and neurobiology.

In community, Friends foster and hone ongoing, conscious alignment with universal intelligence lived daily, for their evolution, and that of society.

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We are called to reclaim, live, and become the TRUTH of —Love— . Deep, impersonal, all-abiding love,   —the “evolutionary spark,” is impervious to the onslaught of our culture’s attempt to  commercialize, trivialize, and commodify it.

Becoming and being love connotes experiencing and transmitting the joyous “evolutionary spark” which propels our growth toward ever greater conscious alignment with the larger consciousness system.  

BECOMING LOVE: is to consistently expand our awareness beyond the self, (personal avatar-centeredness*), into Self (larger frame of consciousness). This means to live into —  intentionally experience our oneness with others and with ALL. When that experience becomes the norm it pervades, and conditions our relationships and we become universal love receivers, generators, and transmitters at once.

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There is a plethora of excellent Quaker and resonant material in use around mysticism, quantum science, contemplation, and the revitalization of Quakerism. There are as many pathways toward the goal of “being love” in service to the planet as there are Quaker Friends.

Therefore members of the Quaker Pathways Forward – Rekindling the Fire of Fox community-of-practice are enthusiastically encouraged to avail themselves of the publications, programs, curriculum, retreats, training, and study guides which enhance spiritual deepening. These are “supports to our practice” – tools that help to purposefully focus intent.

Some seminal offerings are listed herein.

By, Pamela Boyce Simms
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Accurate guidance comes only from within while in CONSCIOUS unity with the undifferentiated, quantum field of unified intelligence.  

Community-of-practice group dynamic: Rekindling the Fire of Fox practices are incessantly evolving and emerge from community-of-practice participants’ direct personal experiences.

As practitioners record each practice and their experiences in writing,  they integrate both brain function and subjective experience.

Writing  our insights with a utensil other than a keyboard during small group sessions is, in and of itself part of a balancing, healing, awareness-expanding process.

By Marisol Cortez
Cross-posted from Deceleration
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We had gotten wind of this talk at a meeting on climate organizing in San Antonio, where we had picked up a flyer describing Boyce Simms as “an engaged Eco-Buddhist” who “works to transform anger and despair into compassion toward neighbors, communities, and the environment.” Given Deceleration‘s concern not just with questions of climate justice but with the affective (or inner/emotional) work required to sustain effective action in the face of mounting climate and social crises, we were intrigued.

By: By Marta Rusek
Cross-posted from Friends General Conference (FGC) “Words of Friends”
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“Friends have been at the epicenter of everything – abolition, civil rights, the the peace movement – and I think a large part of that has to do with the contemplative practice that comes with being Quaker,” [Boyce Simms] said.
In July, Simms will deliver the closing plenary presentation at FGC’s annual Gathering in Niagara, NY. Her talk will take audiences through the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual transformation needed to experience unity with our planet.

By Pamela Boyce Simms
Cross Posted from Resilience.org @ The Postcarbon Institute
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Once upon a time, as climate change accelerated in the 21st century, the recognition that everyone was in the same boat with a hole at the bottom jolted some of your ancestors awake. Quaker, Buddhist, and Unitarian Universalist environmental activists quietly and methodically gathered an eclectic group of allies into an intentional circle that embraced marginalized populations, and scores of grassroots organizations throughout the African Diaspora.