Field Experience

“Use your happy voice!”

“Do as I say, not as I do!”

Two things I want to write about while fresh in the garden of my mind. I drove to Alabama to attend the Nigerian Missionary reunion, as Mom was being “memorialized” and we knew she, and Dad, would want us to be there. I felt refreshed – the change of routine, driving in the countryside on beautiful days, listening to The Divine Idea (over and over), sharing time with my sister and family, meeting “old friends” who were part of another lifetime – all was a good experience which nurtured me in this time in my life. It felt good to remember Mom and Dad in that setting, too – as though the windows open on their life when they were our age, and before, as so many that they knew gathered in one place to honor their heritage, their history, and their lives together in a place they came to call “home.” 

An old friend we saw sent me an email saying how seeing us was probably the highlight of the weekend for her, and how it evoked many memories. She said she could still hear Dad saying in his gentle Southern accent, Margaret Ellen, use your happy voice! I love this story, this memory. It is so perfect for me to remember right now. I have been thinking a lot about sounds, about my voice, for the last few months as I am learning to modulate my own energy as a whole being. The hard-edged voice I had even as a child I remember sometimes like the sound of a scratchy record – disturbances in the field! It’s funny to think of this. The narrator in the book-on-tape (There are Gods in Alabama) that L. loaned me performs this level of “scratchiness” well, in the narrator’s character in the story. She is smart, defensive, and snarly at times. Her remembrance is as a young adult, telling the story of the ruining of her innocence as a mind, if she began with innocence. The tone cast by her boyfriend, a different and much more patient personality, beautifully shows the contrast in how they think, how they perceive themselves and the world. I think about how we create images of ourselves as we live day by day, beginning with our conception – having chosen our parents, our “destiny,” we plunge into “character” and begin the molding and shaping that energy beings must live as physical matter making their way in the world. 

I am learning to always use my happy voice, Dad! Thank you for the guidance you’ve given me, and continue to give me even in such messages as these from an old friend. Dad taught us, we are what we do and we are what we say.

After talking with a friend on Sunday, I have been thinking about the teaching/learning pattern of “do as I say, and not as I do.” She was telling me about her study program. They are taught some things because of the Boards, but taught to do things differently in the clinic. I remember Kathy’s talking about taking the real estate broker’s exam years ago after studying THE recommended reference book, with no experience “in the field.” This, compared to others’ extensive experience in the field, and perhaps also a fear of taking tests. Or being tested. The variety of experience, and potential of “unknown variables,” changes the way the information is applied – so those with more experience have more to “unlearn”? I keep thinking about the mentality of “will this be on the test”? “Do we need to know this?” I realize that Spiritual Philosophy, or philosophical thinking, is the foundation of learning. With this foundation of the Ethical Values as our Spiritual Design, and the design of our soul as dual (mind and emotions, male and female), we can apply all knowledge to its highest potential of being, and sense follows, appears, is made and enjoyed. 

This is because love, as the creative, healing energy, is always logical. Love as an emotion without true understanding of the mind and its place in the trinity of consciousness, is not safe in the world of strong-arm tactics and labile, immature minds. The senses cannot be fully appreciated when the mind is depressed and love is suppressed. The senses can be appreciated only to a limited degree – delightful though that degree may be. I think of the pleasures of swinging on vines, the total satisfaction and flavor of biting into sweet ripened fruit as its juice drips, the physical release as a cascade of “joy” runs through the body like electric currents of teasing pleasure. So much there is to appreciate and enjoy. Yet the mind is its own castle and ocean which opens into vistas beyond the cave that a physically focused mind relies on for shelter. Thinking is a gift which lifts us to the mountaintop, so we know the terrain for miles and miles – so we know the cloud patterns and what they bring, how they change. Watching the rescue of the Chilean miners has shown me this again beautifully. Though “suppressed” deep in the dark within the Earth, they thought through their situation, worked together, and “kept their spirits up” until other necessary parties enacted the plan to free them into the light of day. The emotions as they arrived from below, as their relatives greeted them, were irrepressible and absolutely a joy to watch and to share.

If we are taught well, we are taught to know the foundation of principles which illuminate the structure of the knowledge we are seeking, and every way the other details relate fall into place or by the wayside as we experience. Book learning as compared to “life learning.” Knowledge is easily applicable when we understand the structure of our creation as energy beings. I think that knowing the Ethical Values of us as an eternal being makes any learning easier, and any information more applicable, more relevant to our individual life experiences.