Back to the castle

THE EIGHTH ROOM

A Time For Prayer

In order to grow your soul, look at how you pray. In the content of your prayers is your personal agenda with God Within the First Mansion, your agenda has tended to focus on your needs, fears, health, and family, with occasional prayers of gratitude. Begin to dedicate daily prayer to those who have harmed you, to those who do not pray for themselves, and to the well-being of the human community. (I would add, to all life!) Begin that practice now; it becomes a devotion unto itself within the Fourth Mansion.

Soul Work: Note in your journal your struggles with prayer. Do you find it difficult to be present with God unless you have an agenda? Note what it is like for you to make praying for others a part of your daily life. Find time to pray every day. Find time for silence every day. Carry silence within you. Be still and know that you are devine.

A Moment of Contemplation

Your soul is your most powerful and certainly most intimate companion. Why would you not want to trust your companion? Nothing is as comforting as knowing that you can enter your Castle at will. Your Castle is real, a place of divine presence, activity, guidance, contemlation, prayer and grace. The work you do in the First Mansion is arduous. You are, as Teresa noted, stillhalf in the world of reptiles while alson in the Castle with God. Consider, however, that you have always lived in these two worlds. The only difference now is that you have chosen to become aware of this truth. You must n0w stengthen your soul that is genuine and deepening. It takes great courage to accept humility as a soul practice, it requires constant attention to manage your relationship to chaos, and it takes pure devotion to continue toward God when, as Teresa so aptly noted, the rewards in the First Mansion are few and far between. But how blessed you are to have discovered that your Castle is hidden within your soul.

LEAVING THE CASTLE

You must not simply open your eyes and exit your Castle. You are deep within a field of grace, even if your five senses are fully active. You have a spiritual energy field around you that has been heightened by prayer, by contemplation, by the quality of thought in which you have been engaged. Now you need to withdraw gradually from your Castle. Think of your soul as if it has been deep under water with you and you are both now adjusting the oxygen contint in your bloodstream as you ascend back to the surface, the external world.

Exit Prayer

I am a channel of grace. As I leace my Castle, grace surrounds

me and grace protects me. I enter my life under the blessing of

God and I remain open to receive guidance from my soul.

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Hmm, You may think, whats an artist doing going on about spiritual stuff so much of the time.

The thing is, the `peace` of art I am working on at the moment is very time consuming for little result. (One of my sons just said, "Dad when are you going to finish, people arent even going to read to this bit.) I am scraping the back of a mirror in parts to reveal sections of glass.

Okay he is really impatient for me to stop and so by for now.

Your bro Peter