The Animating Power of Life
Fresh Thinking, Inspiration, and Vision on the Process of Spiritual Transformation
We had a beautiful ceremony on March 12th, honoring Jack Caputo’s life. Jack was a member of the Sunrise Ranch community and passed away unexpectedly on March 8th. I knew Jack since we went to Palmer College of Chiropractic together thirty-four years ago. Two passionate Italians living in the same house while going to school together—that was an adventure! We lived with eight other people in a place called Integrity House, in Davenport, Iowa. Our friendship was based in Spirit.
In my office, and in many chiropractors’ offices, we have a poster with this statement, which is a quote from B. J. Palmer, a pioneer of the chiropractic profession:
The power that made the body heals the body. It happens no other way.
That is what chiropractic is about, and that is what life is about. What is this power? What is this force that animates the living world? We use the word innate in the chiropractic context to name that power. The essence of chiropractic is all about spirit, the animating force. So is all of life.
This life force is the power that animates life; the power that created the body heals the body. The power that is life stewards life. They are not separate things.
So how might a person learn how to resonate with that life force? How can a person know that power and let it fill one’s capacity full of life? An important factor in anyone’s life is the quality of relationship that they initiate and sustain with other people. In a friendship between two people who are interested in letting the creative life force move freely, there is power moving through the relationship, and the experience of possibility and understanding increases. The field that is between two people is their field. They stand together with the power of the Creator. In that connection is magic, and often a greater understanding of the flow of the life force is available for creation.
That creative field held by two people can manifest many things: a family, an organization, or even a nation. The creative field between two people could be a healing relationship, like the relationship between a chiropractor and a patient. Whatever is created in the field between two people, it is the clear flow of the animating power within all living things that manifests it. They have to be truly open to God the Possible for that field to blossom.
I have found, and perhaps you have too, that friendships sometime draw things out from me I didn’t know were there. I have new thoughts, new perceptions, and often I have new vision. The current of love between two people is the same power that animates the world. It’s the same life force. When we tap into the life force, we bring not only the power of the life but also the genius of it.
We have used the expression God the Possible to describe what is within us. Conscious human beings can be the means for God the Possible to manifest on earth. We can be a creative vehicle for that power. I have been enjoying using these words: God the Possible and God the Means. They are unfamiliar to a mind that believes it knows how everything works. Using new language to describe the power of life can assist a person to find resonance with what they feel but haven’t been able to name. It can sometimes circumvent the intellectual arrogance that can dismiss the most essential elements of life and close off the possibility of new thought.
So sometimes we use new language to assist a person to rethink what they are experiencing; because as long as people are thinking about their life in the same way that they have, with the same names for what is happening, they are unlikely to discover new possibilities for their life. All too often a person can’t see past their current experience to the opportunity to know something different. While sharing my sense of what was possible for a person recently, they said to me, “I wish you’d have told me that a long time ago.” I had to restrain myself from saying, “I did—you just couldn’t hear it.”
Words are tools that can carry the power of life. When we care about what opens up for the people with us, we are called to be ingenious in our use of words so that they open up doors for them. When we invest our words with the power of the life within us, it is that vibration that rings true for people. You can have people with many different backgrounds hearing what you say in different ways because of the culture of their own thinking, and they can still hear something true and real because the message is one of life.
It takes courage to bring new thoughts and ideas into your world. Yesterday I was listening to a talk and the speaker said, “I’m going to say this, knowing it’s going to be misinterpreted.” That’s courage—courage to bring a vision of the animating power of life. When people are beginning to understand something new in their life, they inevitably won’t understand it fully. But it has to be brought. We have to keep inviting people to remember the power that animates them. It is what animates you and me. When two or more bring that animating power of God the Possible there is a field, a means for manifestation. That field is the means of magic and manifestation for God the Possible.
People are reminded of possibility a lot in this time of year in the northern hemisphere because it is spring. Here in Colorado the bluebirds have arrived, the first daffodils are coming up, and there are buds ready to burst on the trees. Gardeners are wondering, “What will we plant? Will that come back? Will the raspberries survive? Will we get a frost after the peach and apricot blossoms are on the trees?” Possibility—people are thinking in terms of the unknown, of what might manifest if we play our part in letting it do so.
March 30th, 2011
