Hi, I’m Mari Perron, and I’d like to personally welcome you to this page—the Expressions page, and the next, the Dialogue page—pages that have a lot to do with how I see A Course of Love (ACOL) moving out into the world. As each reader experiencing this Course comes to the “end of learning” predicted within its pages, they begin to express themselves in new ways. This is so important. This Course will live on in us and as us. It is not meant to follow the same model as previous teachings. This is one of the many ways that you and I are called to be pioneers of the new.
Christina Strutt
Please welcome fellow pioneer, Christina Strutt whose writing on “Coming to Voice” corresponds beautifully with the first of the Dialogue series videos (see the Dialogue page). “Coming to voice” has so many ways of being felt and experienced, and as with all things, relates to the whole person and, as Christina suggests, the whole heart. You can hear the story of how she discovered ACOL in the second video of the Dialogue series.
This paper was prompted by a request; a request that came as a result of an on-going dialogue on the ACOL USA FaceBook Group page in April 2015; a dialogue on the topic of various throat and voice issues some members were experiencing and what this might mean. This writing then unfolded for me as a lovely way of clarifying years of my own experiences, musings, and understanding; and I am so grateful to be invited to share it with you here. As you read, it may be helpful to imagine that each sentence includes a preface of “It is my experience and understanding that …” . I welcome all comments, wonderings, and explorations as we journey on together.
It was in September 2001 that I first encountered the notion of a new chakra – the color of turquoise – that was opening in the human system. It was right after 9/11, and I was joining with others creating safe spaces for people to gather, express, and heal all manner of feelings – sadness, sorrow, grief, anger, frustration, rage, hopelessness and helplessness – to name a few. This new chakra I was told, had just been cracked open in humanity, and heralded the coming of Peace – of divine love and compassion working in seamless, effortless collaboration with human being and doing on the planet. And so we used turquoise as the color of peace and healing in all we continued to offer during that traumatic time. I offered turquoise pocket stones, turquoise ribbon on door knobs (mine is still on my side door), and arranged a river of turquoise fabric flowing beneath each person as they sat in our circle. The deeply felt truth of these experiences, and this very vulnerable time has stayed with me. This same truth has travelled with me all these years, and when I encountered A Course of Love, I began to understand. And today I finally begin to write about what I feel and what I know to be true for me. It is this that I am happy to share with you.
Some context – Instead of the previous, fairly well-known, seven physical body centers or chakras, the newly transformed human body is purported to have eleven. This eleven-center network has two additional interdimensional (etheric) centers located above the head. They are called the ‘Universal Female’ and the ‘Universal Male’; and so in total, we will have thirteen primary chakras – two purely etheric (divine), and eleven that are part of our physical (human) selves.
It is the sixth chakra newly forming – the one I call the Whole Heart chakra (also referred to as the High Heart or Thymus chakra) – that signals a coming reality in which the body realizes itself as pure Love, pure thought-form, fully divine and fully human. It is my experience and understanding that this is synonymous with the Elevated Self of Form described in A Course of Love. How exciting is that!?
In the newly transforming Self, the Whole Heart chakra is opening in the upper chest, located just above and to the right of the heart chakra, between the heart chakra (green) and throat chakra (blue). This is the area where Wholehearted Loving Intention originates. The Whole Heart chakra connects the emotions of Divine Love, compassion, truth, and forgiveness, with the area where the expression of our thinking mind through verbal language originates. Activating the Whole Heart chakra empowers us to speak our truth courageously from our hearts AND minds in union. We are being Wholehearted.
This newly opening/activating chakra feels to be the so-called Seat of the Soul. It represents our Christ Consciousness, and is literally the bridge between our feelings and our intellect. Working intentionally with the Whole Heart chakra, enables us to create a powerful connection between our soul body (Divine Being) and our physical body (Human Being). This is the home of our authentic Wholehearted Self. It is the resting place of what I call our Compassionate Mind and Wise Heart – the One Heart and One Mind – joined in loving union and relationship.
The colors associated with the Whole Heart Chakra are turquoise, aqua, blue, green, and pink. Green is the color of the Heart Chakra, representing personal love. Blue is the color of the Throat chakra, representing the intellectual/logical expression of the mind. Pink is the color of transpersonal Wholehearted Unconditional Love. Blue-green – turquoise/aqua – is the color of wholehearted knowing and compassionate communication as the divine being AND human being we are becoming.
Blue-Green stones like Turquoise assist in opening both the Throat chakra and the Whole Heart chakra, increasing our receptiveness to Divine Love, forgiveness and the release of fear. Pink stones like Rose Quartz, assist in opening both the Heart chakra and the Whole Heart chakra encouraging us to more fully feel and express the love flowing through us. It is important to note that this flow includes ALL feelings associated with the emotion of Love. These include BOTH the feelings that we label as positive AND the feelings we label as negative. A Course of Love tells us, “Feelings are your awareness of the present and thus of the truth. They are your means of coming to know. They arise as Christ-consciousness. They come not in response but as creations.” (D:Day18.8)
The Whole Heart Chakra is also the seat of true forgiveness. Many of us have been unable to fully forgive, and continue to hold onto some amount of unfelt, unprocessed energy that we may well have carried for many years. As A Course of Love describes it, “What you once stopped and held in a “holding pattern” to return to later … were based on fear. You feared them because you did not understand them and could not assign meaning to them. Being inexplicable the “holding pattern” that you entered into with them was one of willful forgetting and escape. They were “shelved” like museum pieces and collected solidity within you. Like stones thrown into a clear pool, they made ripples and then settled.”(D:Day14.7)
As the Whole Heart Chakra opens we find that we are ready and able to face, enfold, and transmute these feelings. In doing this, some of us experience rather dark and intense energies of deepest grief and sorrow that are brought to the surface. A Course of Love reminds us, “You have no feelings that are bad. You embrace sadness, grief, anger, and all else that you feel because these feelings are part of who you are in the present moment. When you remain in the present moment you remain within Christ-consciousness where all that is exists in harmony.”(D:Day 16.10) While this may not be at all comfortable, these feelings are in fact surfacing so that they can be seen, recognized, felt, neutralized – literally metabolized – and integrated into the expansive, inclusive, spaciousness of the Loving Self. A Course of Love explains, “Only now, in your realization of your invisibility and spaciousness, do you look within and see the stones that settled in your clear pools. They are as specks of sand to the ocean. And yet we do not choose to keep them.”(D:Day 14.10) “Do not be too hard on yourself now. Observe these stones with neutrality and see if they do not wash away. Your willingness to have them gone is all that is required.”(D:Day 15.13) As we allow ourselves to forgive those who we feel have done us wrong, and those to whom we feel we have done wrong, we step out boldly and intentionally onto the path to fully healing – transforming – ourselves.
As we bring the energy of the Whole Heart into play, we make great strides in our spiritual growth, and experience a dramatic change in the way that we experience and interact with the world. The Whole Heart chakra via the Throat chakra aids with clarity of communication – being heard in the world. Particularly if we have not been expressing – but rather suppressing – ideas or issues that are very important to us. As A Course of Love invites us, “Bring your voice to this continuing dialogue. This is all that is asked of you. This is the gift you have been given and the gift you bring the world: your own voice, the voice of Who You Are. This is not a voice of separation or of the separated self but a voice of union and of the One Self. It is how union is expressed and made recognizable in form. It is what will usher in the new and change the world. It cannot be accomplished without you—without your ability to stand in unity and relationship as The Accomplished.” (A.49) As we begin acknowledging, accepting without judgment, and expressing our true feelings, we heal ongoing problems within the throat and above it. We find ourselves coming to voice, speaking our truth with greater power and clarity; and coming to fuller expression/demonstration of the loving feelings that are beginning to flow more freely and unconditionally through every aspect of our lives.
Working with the energy of the Whole Heart chakra also enables us to discover in each moment, exactly what our purpose is on the planet – what that unique gift is that each of us alone can contribute in each situation, and offer to the world. The Whole Heart chakra has been somewhat dormant in the past in most of us. Now it’s time has come. Now our time has come. Now is the time of Christ-consciousness. The planet needs each one of us to choose to elevate our vibrations and come fully into Our Selves. As we work with the energy of the Whole Heart chakra, we find that we begin to live life with greater authenticity; and more sustainably in close alignment with the intention of the Accomplished Self.
“Jesus, the example life used throughout this course, was both man and God. … Jesus was all of God and God was all of Jesus while at the same time each was different or individuated by being in union and relationship.”(D:D37.24-26)
As newly emerging Wholehearted Beings, we literally walk the planet in our big brother Jesus’ footsteps of over 2000 years ago. The image of walking the planet as a Bodhisattva is also deeply meaningful to me; it is an image that connects me to ancient origins some 500 years before Christ, when it was taught that each one of us is a Bodhisattva Maitreya – a budding Buddha, both fully human and fully divine – forsaking Nirvana, in order to walk the planet joining hands with all our fellow beings. I smile to think that Maitreya is always depicted wearing sandals … how practical!
And thus we come together – wholeheartedly joining in union and relationship – CoCreating the joyful, playful new world of our dreams. As A Course of Love tells us, “Be happy that there is no end in sight to this road you travel now. It is simply the road of what is endlessly creating like unto itself. You now know how to respond to love, for you are love, being. So be it.”(E.29-30)
“Beloved brothers and sisters, You are The Accomplished.”(A.50)
Offered with love,
Christina Strutt
7th May 2015 and 4th December 2015
www.CoCreatingClarity.com