Nights full of dreams, all this week. Can’t remember a lot of details, just that I was busy all night (some days are like that too).  Oftentimes we can’t readily see the outcome of a night’s work – or a day’s, for that matter. This morning was different.

I have a little team that I work with, my task group in the being-human biz. They advise me, comfort me, sometimes help straighten me out when I’m on a tear of un-reality. I’m the only one who’s in a body, the rest are in the astral somewhere; I’m the team’s point person here on earth. Sound a little crazy? Consider how many of us turn to someone or something outside the physical world, through prayer or other practices. This is my version. If you talk to Jesus, Mother Mary, or Allah, then we’re all doing the same thing, consulting the Divine on how to live in the non-Divine.

Usually, when I reach out to talk with my team, I conceive them as being behind and a little above me, like they’re looking over my shoulder. You’d be amazed at some of the rich, rewarding conversations we’ve had this way. It doesn’t matter that I can’t see their faces, because they don’t have any. But there is clearly a sense that they’re somewhere outside of me.

This morning, I felt them on the inside – subtly, but clearly. Of course these are all metaphors – however we might be in relationship with a Divine being, a source of spiritual guidance, it’s not physically anywhere in particular. Even if we use ritual objects to facilitate our connection to them, they are not in the objects either. But our personal metaphors say a lot about ourselves, what is showing up for us as the deepest reality, on a day to day basis. And so this morning I celebrated the intimacy of feeling my team inside for the first time, to feel that deep comfort, the connection and support inside my physicality – and said to myself, “so that’s what all the night work has been about this week – making the inner space for my dearest friends to come closer”.

It wasn’t just a mental abstraction. I have a daily practice I’ve been doing the past several months, reading a news summary first thing in the morning. It can be a devastating experience – which is why I shunned the news for a number of years before this. But it’s now become part of my GCS (Global Community Service) to absorb the waking nightmares served up on our daily information plates, letting them pass through my body-mind-spirit and back out the other side, hoping that some healing is offered to the world through my doing this (believe me, it wasn’t my idea, it came as a request from the Divine – but that’s good enough for me). Often I do this before I’ve gotten out of bed, which can be a good thing when it flattens me too much to be standing up anyway.

Of course I’m not doing this alone – my team and I are doing it together – but I can’t always feel their presence as it’s happening. Lately, as the daily dose has become an order of magnitude more disturbing, the task of clearing its energy from within me has become commensurately larger.  But this morning, feeling my dear friends and helpers inside me, the “news task” seemed a good bit lighter – even though the news itself was no less discouraging than usual. I think of it like this: When I take in the news, it’s like a truckload of reeking toxic sludge just got dumped in the middle of my consciousness. By some alchemical process I don’t pretend to understand, it passes back out at least partially cleaned up, and some healing is given to the world through that happening. Having my team on the inside is kind of like “oh, you’ve been using a shovel to move this stuff? The power equipment has arrived!”.

I can’t be sure this will last, that it will be tomorrow morning’s experience as strongly as it was today’s. Thirty-plus years of spiritual travel has taught me never to expect anything to progress in a straight line, or even to hold still after coming up to a higher level… but once something has happened, even once, it can never un-happen – and so it joins the realm of the possible. And we all need more of that to help get us through the day in these disheartening times.

And so, on to the day’s work… which, today, begins with this writing. May we all come to value the work we do, with our eyes closed as well as open. Blessings.