presents a free newsletter for friends of generosity incorporated

Welcome
Feature Article from Los Angeles, California
Dreams of Extension
Why Hands?
Film Recommendations
Extension in the News?
Who’s Who in Extension
Poetry

From the Editors

This month we are featuring Extension, an Ascending Principle (#5). The mystery of the evolution of the world of form is embodied in the Ascending Principles, and Extension is a good example.  How did molecules come to life? How did they organize themselves to become cells?  How did they diversify, specialize, and yet stay connected?  Extension reminds us of these mysteries by drawing us into the intelligence of the plant devas in all those events, calling forth lichen and fungi, grass and herbs, flowers and trees, rising from the depths of the earth to the warm air above.

To discuss the ideas and teachings in this newsletter, please go to http://www.generositydreams.blogspot.com/ and post your question or comment there. We look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Also, a reminder – as we announced last month, KABBALAH: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION FOR CHRISTIANS is now available as a Generosity Incorporated audio book!  Download or buy the CDs at www.generosityincorporated.com.

Feature Article from Los Angeles, California

This month's principle is Extension. Here is a teaching derived from our online dream discussions:

Extension has two dimensions – deep roots and wide branches.  That description immediately reminds us of trees – and indeed the form of a tree is the paradigm of “plantness” with which we are all familiar, even if we aren’t plant lovers. Tree-ness is so resonant for human beings that our religious traditions are full of tree symbolism, from the Bodhi tree to the Christmas tree to the Kabbalistic “tree of life.”  Last month a discussion of tree dreams and experiences turned up on our Turtledreamers’ website, so we'll begin there. (The dream that sparked the discussion is cited below in the "Dreams" section; for the whole discussion, see the thread entitled “Receiving Knowledge/ Enlightenment” beginning 8-3-07, at www.turtledreamers.com.) 

Our dreamers’ comments suggest that the morphic field around a tree is a powerful reminder of the essential vitality of Extension. One dreamer recalled that she had learned, while in meditation, to place her spine against the trunk of a tree in order to receive the light-filled vibration of "god-ness." “Humans carry the seed of radiance,” she wrote; “the trees are the radiance of the feminine power - and they activate en-lighten-ment within the human species.”

Another sister remembered a ceremony in which a group of women were blindfolded and taken by a circuitous route to a tree, then later were able to find the tree again even though they had never seen the path to it. “We have much more vibrational kin with the trees than we realize,” she commented.

I also recall special experiences with trees. The most notable was an hour I spent in communion with a tree in Yosemite Valley, in an area called Happy Grove. The area was destroyed by an avalanche a couple of years later, but I still remember leaning on that tree, communing with it, allowing it to embrace me and share its energy.

Our relationship with trees reminds us of symbiosis - defined as an association of dissimilar organisms in a mutually beneficial relationship. We are all in symbiotic relationship with other beings.  Our dreams, meditations, and altered-consciousness experiences allow us to feel that symbiosis as a vibration, or know it as an inner experience.  The principle of Extension reminds us that our reality depends on connection and sympathy with other beings:  spine to trunk, human to tree, hand to the branches and leaves of plants.  Our roots not only go deep, they also intertwine, just as vines, fungi, moss, and lichen interweave with a huge tree. And only when we maintain connection can our branches spread wide, providing shelter and bearing fruit for others.

--Tamar Frankiel

Dreams of Extension

We can learn about the principles by examining our dreams. Here are several dreams of Extension:

There is a big galactic event -- the astrologers are so impressed with the lineup of stars that they are sure it's ushering in the new age. The dreaming women decide to gather in one place before the event.
          The first night we sleep together in an old house. I'm aware of holding a dream-sister’s hand throughout the night. During the night we all realize that the event is going to be catastrophic, and that to be safe we must go into a bomb shelter to sleep the next night. However, I know that I must stay outside while the others go into the shelter. It may be my death, but there is no question that I must stay above ground and face it.
         The next day we all prepare for the catastrophe. We set up cots in the bomb shelter, which is a cave behind the house. We stock it with food. We take a television and various media devices along with comfortable chairs. It's actually kind of cheerful. We also practice meditating together.
          As dusk comes, I tell everyone that I must stay outside. People seem sad, but don't question the choice. I hug everyone and say goodnight. The sister whose hand I held the night before is the last to descend. She gives me her right thumb. In some magical way, her thumb stays with me, connected to her by a long silvery cord. I hold onto her thumb throughout the next part of the dream.
         I watch the sun go down and the stars come out. I see the alignment very clearly. Just as the exact moment of the alignment hits, I experience the most excruciating pain imaginable in my spine – a horrible electrical pain. I reach back to and find a kitchen knife emerging OUT of my spine – not as if I've been stabbed, but as if the knife is cutting itself out of my body from the inside. I pull the knife out and the pain stops. The knife is covered with a red substance the consistency of ketchup or creamed honey. The color is coral rather than bright red like blood. I wonder if I'll bleed to death.
         Just then the sun comes up and the other dreamers emerge from the bomb shelter. They see me alive, and they're very happy. They look at the wound as if it were some kind of art piece. No one seems concerned that I will die.  I give my dream-sister her thumb back, and tell her she kept me alive. (turtledreamers.com 9-11-07)

Extension as connection: The dreamer holding another’s hand or thumb, and a cord that connects underground to above-ground. We see the dreamer ready to make the ultimate sacrifice, but she stays connected and the energy is transformed – as indicated by the change in the color of the dreamer’s blood. Rather than sacrifice, there is surrender to the larger reality. This dream also reminds us that Extension reaches into the depths or the darkness just as plant roots reach into the ground.

Plant and tree dreams:

I dream I am kneeling in a garden and I am planting. The soil is black and loamy. My hands love the feel of it. A fellow gardening friend is watching me. She sees the wonderful soil and wants to plant too, but her timing is a little off and she is frustrated.
Later I take a big turtle to a water source to get it wet. It seemed a little dry and it appreciated the moisture. There was a feeling of forgiveness to the moment. I hold it like a loved one (turtledreamers.com 1-31-06)

I'm in Tibet, a spiritual Tibet, high up. I have an invisible guide who is with me as I look at and touch the plant growth. What I focused on most was a red bottle brush plant. I held one of the flowers in my hand and felt its energetic signature, so delicate. Further down the mountain there is meditation instruction. I am listening to the suggestions of the man who is teaching but my meditation is not fluid and irritating. I wish that I were back on the mountaintop with the flowers where my mind felt a lot clearer and at peace. (turtledreamers.com 3-26-07)

Hands in the loamy soil -- delving into the richness of life, to see what kinds of new forms might be nourished and nurtured. . . and the image of hands holding the turtle brings forward the idea of Extension. In the second dream, the hands feel the energetic signature of the plant. The latter dream also teaches us that we must find our own way to access our true mind – we each have our unique ways of connecting with Source.

I’m with a group of people, outdoors in a forested area, and we are all taking turns standing in a certain spot about four feet to the left of a particular tree. While standing in this spot the person would receive knowledge/enlightenment. As the others take their turns, I see a glowing beam of light coming from the tree, surrounding them. I also see the person vibrating. When I have my turn I only remember the feeling of receiving enlightenment, no vibration. The group disperses; I go back, alone, to where the tree is because I want to experience again the good feeling of receiving enlightenment. (turtledreamers.com 8-3-07) 

The Tree of Knowledge is familiar from the Garden of Eden story, but in this dream it's clear that the knowledge is enlightenment.

I'm with a group of people in New York. An older woman looks at me and strongly suggests that I go to a part of New York where there is a park with a blue stone bench-sculpture. She says that something is happening there that could really benefit me.
When I go, there are hundreds of people who are doing a graceful exercise which mostly consists of lifting their arms toward the heavens whereby they turn into trees. Some of these "tree people" have been doing this exercise for a very long time. The people are mostly stuffed into pews. It seems that if you are confined in a pew with other people, it's easier to turn into a tree. The trees are beautiful evergreens, some tall wispy pines. There were a few saplings growing from cracks between the pews and the walkway. They were darling little things.
I meet the man who started this event. He seems to be from South America; he's in his mid twenties. He has a round happy face and is wearing jeans and a jacket. He makes it clear he wants to teach me things and he presents me with his card. When I look at it it's very colorful and the more I look at it the bigger it gets so that it's really a painting of the farm where he lives; the place that he cultivates. I show him my card and say the colors are similar. (turtledreamers.com 4-2-07)

Pews -- places where people sit or kneel to worship -- are made of wood. So if one is held (or confined) within wood, then it is easier to trace it backwards to the source and become one with that Source, the living tree. . . . The principle of Extension is calling us to reach up our hands to the devic realm. --Cammie Doty
Also, the "South American" - an angel bringing teachings about what he "cultivates" - is communicating that the dreamer's experience of Extension is part of a much larger picture, the "farm" in similar colors. --TF

Look in your dreams for references to the hands ... to the plant world and its energies ... to the colors orange or coral.

Why Hands?

“What is it that we see/know in the eyes of our hands that can't be known in any other way? Why is touch so healing, so important, so vibrant?” one of our dreamers asks.   One aspect is that the hands imitate the form of Extension, with deep connections to the core of the nervous system, then branching out to touch and sense reality. Another is that hands and fingers give final expression to our inner will.  Whether it is grasping a tool to transform the world, or tenderly caressing the face of a child, the hands are the extension of our will. Hands extended also can grasp the hands of others, creating a circle of connection.

Film Recommendations

Recommended: Pan's Labyrinth , directed by Guillermo Del Toro
Ten-year old Ofelia stumbles on a decaying labyrinth by traveling through an opening in a tree.  The labyrinth is guarded by Pan, an ancient satyr who claims to know her destiny. With a new home, a new stepfather – a Fascist officer in Spain in 1944 – and a new sibling on the way, nothing is familiar to Ofelia.  While seeking refuge in the forest near her home, she is drawn toward the opening in the tree. 
One could assume that the events that unfold are Ofelia's imagination – fantasies she dreams up to help her cope with her untenable situation; or one could read the film as saying that Spirit is reaching out to support Ofelia through nature and ancestral beings.

--Mary Sue Dailey

Not so much: Miss Potter , directed by Christopher Noonan
Despite Beatrix Potter’s Sun in Extension, we can’t really recommend the film as a way to learn about the principle - her life is another story.  Ella Taylor of the Village Voice (12/26/06) sums it up in her review: “[In the film] we leave Beatrix, a merry chipmunk, scribbling and sketching in the sun by a suspiciously blue lake in a part of England known for its unrelenting rain. In real life, she married her solicitor, gave up writing, and devoted herself to buying up half the land in the Lake District from under the filthy mitts of marauding developers. I doubt whether Potter, a woman who battled her way to fame, wealth, and a pioneering spot in the conservation movement in a world where women mostly sat and sewed, bore any resemblance to the film's serenely girlish figure.”                                                                                        --TF

Extension in the News

If you search the internet for ‘extension news,’ you’re likely to come up first with university extension classes.  Beautiful! -- the deep roots of knowledge based in centuries of research into hidden mysteries, extending out potentially to every citizen.  Here are a couple of articles about discoveries in the Plant Kindom which may be of interest:

• Headline: Poison plant could help cure the planet
  Ben Macintyre, Times Online [London], July 28, 2007:
  The jatropha bush seems an unlikely prize in the hunt for alternative energy, being an ugly, fast-growing and poisonous weed. Hitherto, its use to humanity has principally been as a remedy for constipation. Very soon, however, it may be powering your car. . . . Scientists say that it can grow in the poorest wasteland, generating topsoil and helping to stall erosion, but also absorbing carbon dioxide as it grows, thus making it carbon-neutral even when burnt.
  www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article2155351.ece
  
  
• Headline: Recent symbiosis offers clues to photosynthesis …
  Scientific American, Sept 5, 2006 (www.sciam.com):
  Photosynthesis is a neat trick: take light, carbon dioxide and water, and make sugar as well as oxygen as waste. This fundamental engine of life first arose in cyanobacteria, and scientists speculate that the progenitor to plant cells captured and incorporated these organisms . . . By studying the odd amoeba Paulinella chromatophora and its new plastid, scientists can gain a window into the mystery of how photosynthesis evolved.

Editor's Note: The “neat tricks” of life such as photosynthesis, apparently based in amoebas’ “capturing” bacteria to create symbiosis, are part of the amazing interweaving of energies that we refer to as the work of the “plant devas.”  Scientific descriptions of these mysteries seem to turn these mysteries into facts, but when we contemplate the actuality that is described in articles like this one, we can only stand in awe.

6. Who's Who in Extension

Famous people through whom Extension came to life - these have Sun in Extension:

• Pearl Buck, 1892-1973
  American author, most famous for her novel The Good Earth (1931) about the fortunes of a Chinese farmer.  After leaving China in 1934, she lived on an old Pennsylvania farm for 38 years, pursuing humanitarian interests and gardening. An activist for human rights, she established the first international adoption agency.

• Rachel Carson, 1907-1964
  American marine biologist and writer, whose Silent Spring (1962) is credited with having launched the environmental movement. It directly contributed to the banning of DDT and eventually other pesticides.

• William Henry Gates III, 1955-
  Founder of Microsoft, who at age 14 made $20,000 in one year with his computer skills, now the world’s richest individual (about $56 billion).  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provides scholarship funds and supports global problem-solving such as dealing with AIDS and other diseases in third-world countries.
  
  
• Steve Jobs, 1955-
  Founder and CEO of Apple, former CEO of Pixar; known as an aggressive and persuasive salesman.   By legend the lowest-paid CEO in America with a $1/year salary, he nevertheless has managed to accumulate wealth estimated just under $5 billion from Apple stock, gifts and bonuses.
  
  
• Sandra Day O’Connor, 1926
  First female Supreme Court justice (1981-2006), ranked as the second most powerful woman in America in 2001.  She entered public service as an attorney because in the 1950s a woman, even though graduated from Stanford Law School, could not get a job with a private law firm.
  
  
• Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis 1929-1994
  As First Lady, represented the nation with intelligence and grace; known for her support of arts, culture, and the American heritage, including the White House and other historical monuments.
  
  
• H. Ross Perot, 1930-
  Starting as a salesman for IBM, Perot made billions in electronic data systems, became involved in politics in Texas after a rescue mission in Iran, and ran for President of the U.S. as an independent candidate in 1992.
  
  
• Helen Beatrix Potter, 1866-1943
  British author, illustrator, botanist, conservationist, famous for her Peter Rabbit stories. However, she was also well known in England as a mycologist – an expert in fungi. Farming became one of her passions later in life.
  
  
• Johann Wolfgang van Goethe, 1749-1832
  One of the extraordinary figures of German Romanticism, Goethe (pronounced ger-tuh) was a polymath – that is, brilliant in many fields. His best known work is the dramatic poem Faust.  He was also a scientist whose studies of plant morphology influenced Darwin, and whose Theory of Colour is still influential today.
  

Poetry

EXTENSION
©Betty Luceigh, 2007

I stretch my arms to the stars
extend them fervently
into the dark night
palms open, fingers spread,
I swirl my vee into a cone
that stars may pour into my heart
or I may spray my heart out to them.

I try to will myself elastic,
become a rubber band of flesh,
to extend beyond my planet of experiences
and touch the mothers of my matter.
All the while the stars’ faint glow
extends as well across the space between
and channels its light touch
into my longing.

I want to lift away,
rise above in space or ahead in time,
or beyond them both,
but I forget
extension is in two directions
plus and minus, light and dark,
sky and soil, past and future,
so I go deep to nourish
my flight to the heavens
only to realize on the way
that I am always extended into both

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