A Light on the Hill: Accomplishment in Flow

Among other things, we have been exploring on the BLOG the relationship between “loving what is,” and moving toward “what can be.”

Recently, I had the privledge to spend some time at Light on the Hill, a wonderful retreat center in Van Etten, New York, run by Larwence Muscat and Alice McDowell. I have been coming regularly to Light on the Hill for over 12 years, and during that time, I’ve witnessed an extraordinary manifestation: the conception, construction, and execution of a wonderful building, the “Inner Light Lodge,” that holds a powerful sacred space for workshops, can comfortably lodge over 30 people, has a first class kitchen, a breathaking view, and a palpable aura of luminescence all around it. Since the Lodge was completed over a year ago, various groups have flocked to the center, which is powerfully facilitating high quality of consciousness transformation work.

I know how many people dream of building holistic centers, and I know that Omega Institute’s workshop, “How to Start a Holistic Center,” draws huge numbers of participants each summer. But I also know how few of these dreams ever materialize, and how those that do materialize often wind up struggling with, and cowtowing to, the money economy that they wished to rise above. One thing I have noticed about Alice and Larry over the years is that even as their center grew, they were not consumed by it. They remain relaxed, open, and receiving to all who come by. So I asked them one evening about this question of manifestation in terms of the Lodge. 

Savoring the Present

“There is a moment in each day that Satan cannot find.
Nor can his Watch fiends find it, but the Industrious find this moment and it multiply.
& When it is once found, It renovates every Moment of the day…”

~ William Blake, Milton

At some moment every day, we perceive the mystery. At some moment every day, we are gifted with its presence. But all too easily we are brought down by the tide of circumstances, and by the great rush to nowhere that our lives have become.

“Living in the Present” has become a cliche, unfortunately, but what if one were to realize that the “present” is “a present,” a gift? What if, instead of all the vain efforts at meditation, or purity, or health; one could stop and receive the gift that appears “at some moment every day,” and reconstruct the day around that grace?

This is not an exercise in sentimentality, this is an exercise in opening the doors of perception, of breathing in deep appreciation, of acknowledging those minor moments of revelation. Last night, we were in circle and someone was chanting powerfully in an unknown language. Instead of closing my eyes and trying to go somewhere else, I kept my eyes and ears open to receive the gift. And for a brief moment, the bowl of water in the center altar of the earth became the center of everything, and everything and everyone fit beautifully and perfectly into that pattern emerging from the great center both ever full and empty at once, a miracle in a blink of an eye. But acknowledging these moments, by writing about them, sharing them, affirming them, we move into the world of renewal as opposed to the world of strife and loss. There is a moment in each day….