This morning we’re traveling in the wake of a great Attunement Retreat. Attunement can be freed to be more than we ever thought, more than our consciousness ever entertained. That was the point of the weekend, as far as I was concerned.

It is spring here, and we have the opportunity to be on new ground and look at new green shoots in our own consciousness. There are two parts to that cycle. In one, we mainly see the green shoots spring up, like looking outside this morning at all this greenery. Yet there’s another cycle, one of letting go of the old, what we’ve known. Sometimes we say the old when it’s simply letting go of things that are ready to be discarded. Often the things that make the best compost are the ones that were held most dearly, that served us well over the years.

But a time has come for a fresh wind to blow through consciousness. Sometimes I’ve envied people who are just discovering the thrill of attunement or the excitement of who they are. But for anyone that thrill is right within reach. Right within each of us is that sense of discovery, that sense of the new. If you get analytical and look at this time right now, it’s the only one we’ve got. I don’t know as I’d want another one. This one’s good; it’s perfect for what can be born, what will be born, from what’s within my heart and your heart, pushing to come out.

We have been speaking about courage. Courage is something that’s always gone along with attunement, because attunement isn’t the most common experience in consciousness. Our culture isn’t built on consciously knowing attunement. And yet the thread of what we call attunement with life runs through everything we are and everything we do. Courage seems to be called for in letting it come out. The courageous act is to give attunement and to live it.

It is a courageous act to acknowledge one’s choice to be oriented to life. Am I willing to come out and stand, representing what I know is my true nature, what I sense deep within me, and to let it spill over so that the people around me can’t help but touch it? Anyone who’s within hearing distance or seeing distance or sensing distance can’t help but feel the excitement of life, feel the greeting and the welcome. They cannot avoid the enfoldment and the call to come out, say who they are and be who they are.

Some people are looking around for safety before offering their best. Well, you may have a long wait, because the real safety is in offering what’s right and true and genuine—it carries the protection; it carries its own integrity.

There’s only one way that my expression or your expression can be changed or altered or dragged around, and that is if I drag it around. Because someone can touch my outside but they can’t touch my inside. I give great thanks for my outside, because it’s one way I can touch other people. But there’s the other way, too, the way of heart-to-heart through the spirit that we share with each other. Sometimes that’s invisible, and yet how magnificent it is to actually give it expression.

You look around and we’ve got an apple tree that’s just getting touches of color in the blossoms. There’s the hint of something there. There’s the hint of the beauty of the blossom that’s going to come. If I’d never seen an apple tree before, I wouldn’t know what it was, but there’s just this hint of color. And if you really know about fruit trees, there’s the hint of an apple coming. But we don’t need to put our fellows through having to do detective work to figure out what the blossom is or the fruit is that we bring.

In that regard, we sometimes seek to inspire people to blossom. And yet, it’s good to take a look at what I am welcoming from others. Is the welcome genuine and is it a real interest in what shade, what color you are? I think that’s a big thing. That’s the secret of outstanding teachers and teaching. Think of the teachers that you knew when you were going to school, the ones who you’d regard as the greatest teachers. They were the ones who were interested in you. They were the ones who were welcoming. They may also have been the ones that offered some discipline, strangely enough! But, in any case, they were the ones who showed interest and were clever enough to draw out the gift that was there in you, without making it laborious. I believe that the great talent is to inspire, and the even greater talent is to draw forth.

In this Attunement Retreat, courage was, as I said, a big thing—the courage to love and bless the people we already know and to bless the people we don’t know as yet. I guess it’s obvious, but if I’m not blessing the people I know, how can I invite someone else into an atmosphere of blessing and safety and welcome? I’ve got to start somewhere, and here is a pretty good place. It’s the basis of teaching, and the courage not just to love the people I know, but to love them exactly as they are. There is a welcome that’s not just appropriate—there’s a welcome that’s perfect. It opens the way for what your friends, and those who may not be quite so familiar, would bring.

Sometimes there’s a temptation to say, “Well, that person isn’t interested. They’re not welcoming.” But the question for me is, have I taxed my full ingenuity? Have I offered the full openness of my heart, the strength of my unconditional love? Have I had the courage to do that, to commit? I sometimes think about the courage to let go of ideas, the way I’ve done things—the good ones, the ones that are working. Not to cast them in the trash, but to be open to new ideas. I don’t have to keep carrying an idea forward, making sure that happens. I just need to do what’s open to me now, what’s in front of me now. Sometimes that’s not the easiest or the most exciting thing to do. But when you get down to it, it’s the way into people’s hearts, and it’s also the way for my own heart to express outward. And the old idea may not work in this circumstance.

My wife and I phoned an old friend last night on the occasion of her mother passing on. Phoning people after someone has passed on is not my favorite occupation. I sometimes think women are better at it than men; I don’t know why. But men are often self-conscious in doing that. And maybe it has to do with opening the heart, loving, and knowing that you don’t lose your heart if there’s something flowing out through it. You can’t lose; it’s almost impossible to say the wrong word. I guess if you work at it you can get both feet in your mouth, but the fact that you even phone a person whose parent, child or friend has passed on means a lot. It means more than what’s said. The fact that we have interest in a person means more than the great message we’re carrying in our heads.

To live with courage is about living on the edge, or living without a net. I think it’s very apropos to live without a net. That has a hundred percent to do with attunement. Living on the edge of the unknown is living where the invisible in our hearts, where spirit, my spirit and your spirit, find form. It’s where attunement comes into perceptible form. Living on the edge is an exciting place. And it isn’t all written down in a book. Attunement with life isn’t just printed in a book. It’s in this book that is in my heart, and it’s in your heart too. This is the power we have this morning—the power to bring what’s genuine, the power to bring the spirit of spring. Ours is the power to bring the angel, the power to shine on our outside like we’re already shining on our inside. We don’t have to invent life. It’s ours to give.

Hugh Duff
Edenvale, British Columbia
April 20, 2014