In a matter of days, the landscape surrounding the house has undergone a major upheaval marking the end of Eastertide and the transition towards the new liturgical season of Holy Trinity. Here in Denmark, Pentecost is a big celebration, a three-day event, when people gather on the Sunday to watch the sun rise over the sea. All forms of work and agricultural labours in the fields are suspended and the joyful songs of birds fill the quietened space caressed by a gentle breeze dusting the petals of blossom scattered on the garden lawns.

After the extended weekend, work resumed in an unexpected way. A few weeks ago, the farmer had asked to trim the trees on our property bordering the field, adding that he would be doing the same with the neighbouring property and at no cost. We had no idea what was to come out of this. At dawn the swather invaded the fields and swiftly cut the hay, much to the distress of the larks nesting in the long grass and the hares who shelter their young on the edge of the field, and much to the delight of the birds swooping down to catch the exposed prey and the cats stalking the mouse holes. The cut hay was aspirated and funnelled into the carts running alongside the suction appliance.  This was followed by the seasonal spraying of manure: two layers, and even more for the desiccated patches where water had stagnated during the wet season impoverishing the soil. Once the manure was laid, the cutting machine roared into action shearing the drooping boughs off the trees. The farmer deftly picked the broken branches and dumped them in the sunken cavity in the middle of the field. He then proudly announced that after five years of hay for the nearby cows it was time to change crop: he was going to plant corn for the pigs.

The distant scene I had observed in April with seagulls swooping down behind the tractor to form a white veil hovering above the soil suddenly became an immersive experience, alive and animated, close and unbearably intimate, almost taking place in the kitchen. It took a full day of work to plough up the field and, as we sat at the kitchen table with our guest, we watched the red tractor drag the blades into the soil and turn it over while the flocks of seagulls whizzed around the house in raucous cries to take up their position in the next stretch to be overturned.

It was hot weather and hard work! Standing in the midst of the upheaval was a catalytic experience, like being in the heart of a particle collider machine, where the soaring energies summoned to realise the changeover swirl and twirl. I felt dizzy and feverish, almost caffeinated, as if taking part in a frenzied dance, swaying in the chaotic and overwhelming. The experience was all the more intense that it coincided with the time when I was hosting the session of the odyssey on shifting and going through the eye of the needle.

Everything felt as if it was being turned inside out and on its head. The green pastoral field becoming luscious deep brown soil in a matter of hours was the physical manifestation of what we go through when we give ourselves up to transformation. It was a good reminder of the intensity involved in radical transformations and the need to rest to support the next phase of recalibration. Now that the upturned chunks of earth have been broken down, softened and smoothed out, seeded and the rows of corn are making their first appearance, I am all the more aware of the serenity that follows the storm. Nonetheless, I am fascinated by the amplitude of the tidal waves rising from the inner restlessness induced by the catalytic experience. There are peaks of creativity operating on high octane energy followed by troughs of drowsiness where I am likely to fall asleep in the middle of a task. There is no other way of describing the paradox than to say that I am awake and yet also asleep.

We are now half way through the odyssey and have reached a major tipping point where we leave behind the self-orientation and acquisitive habits of self-knowledge to enter the spaciousness of contemplative stillness beyond self-reflective awareness. We intuit that this is an utterly new realm that does not, and cannot, operate on the same principles as the pathways we have leaving behind. We begin to feel ourselves in this new environment and trust that we will be presented with what is needed to pursue our voyage of discovery.

What type of intimate relationship might we entertain with new orders of consciousness and in particular with the numinous that lies beyond the horizons of our surface mind? What new understandings of the developmental nature of consciousness and the cosmology of reality unfolding unto itself might the unified self uncover?  What might happen when we hand ourselves in to existential surrender? Revelation and reason working together to reveal the next dispensation of our life, unveiling the mystery and privilege of being alive, teaching us how to live truthfully and lovingly in a world on fire.

For this to become our unceasing prayer, we begin by awakening to conscious love and harnessing the universal power of love which, in many respects, might be the only true destination of our incarnate adventure.