Explicit Growth

“Our thinking mind controls our internal process of thinking and knowing as well as our reflective physical behavior. Therefore our thinking mind cannot and will not accept the Intelligent Design of our Spirit Consciousness, until it is willing to open itself to thinking as an internal process of self-reflection as it studies the philosophy of its own explicit growth with each life experience in each physical lifetime.” (4, Spirit Consciousness: Our Intelligent Design by Kathy Oddenino)


Certain words conjure energy images that teach me how to know the energy of my reflections. When I have felt a thin veil of “resentment,” the word “prelate” came to my mind with it, and I have this energy-image of a man moving in just such a way, in robes, his hands in a familiar pose, that quiet dignity that is a reinforced dignity, a more physical stacked-up sense of dignity than a true internal strength. There is a smugness in him, mixed with the satisfaction of truth, so the process of change is mixing the mortar of it all.

This is the way he moved, smoothly but not quite gliding, because gliding brings with it a naturalness of movement that is poetic, that recalls leaves, water, wind. When taken this way, his moving revealed an effort underneath, a wooden way just visible that belied that assurance that may first be taken for dignity and the reserve of patience and kindness.

As the public spokesperson for a body such as the “world church,” this man had assumed a mantle with the weight of centuries, but in ways he did not yet understand. The mouthpiece that took sounds already formed and strived to carry them forth into the world moved slowly as a long train full with cargo.

What is his explicit growth in that moment? Moving down that wide road or aisle, smoke rising, the incantations low and steady, he is hypnotized in his own robe and miter-walk, the steady drumbeat of time. The air within and around him has a hint of sulfur, and the strong scent of oiled wood.

Then there is lightness, a freshness I see, with a young woman moving through groves of trees in early morning sunlight. She is happy, with dark curls, alone. The dappling sunlight bathes her face and her bare arms. There is nothing else to the world in that moment but her happiness, which encompasses and comes from the pulse of the earth, the air, the speaking green of those trees.

The realm between these scenes is the energy of change which comes with explicit growth and the internal self-reflection of thinking.