Rev. Dr. Catherine Quehl-Engel
Healing Arts
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 The Care, Growth & Communing of Souls

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RELAX INTO ONENESS
 

   Few experiences are more profound than dropping into quiet awareness of communing love and Oneness.

This relaxed, expanded awareness occurs not only during formal seated practice of Infused Prayer, Qi Gong, and other meditative moments.

This experience of love, beauty, joy, and Oneness also occurs amid "thin place" moments or encounters

with the rest of nature of which we are part;

amid child-like wonder and playfulness;

amid life in human community;

amid in the most ordinary of daily life activities.

As powerfully, these moments also occur amid compassionate embrace and acceptance
of our vulnerabilities, weakness, and wounds.
That is, amid our daring to relax, loosen, and let go into Unknowing and Mystery.
 

Through relaxed, transformed awareness one can, as Thomas Keating put it, walk down the street, pour a cup

of coffee, or shake hands and be pouring Divine life into the world
(The Mystery of Christ: Liturgy as Spiritual Practice p. 25).
This is Divine life, Source, life force, or Great Spirit abiding so close as to be breathing us and everything like a pulsing, vibrating energy field within and between all peoples and beings, linking us as one.

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Such radiant love and pre-mordial life force energy Spirit is also within the universe of our inner being.

As my dear friend, St. Teresa of Avila, put it back in the 16th c., our problem is that we don't know who we are,

nor what abides at the core of our being: 

 The Eternal as that deepest part of us. What I'll call soul. That Divine spark that's uniquely manifested as you.

Your Deep Self. Our being indwelt with life force energy or Inner Helper Spirit which Jesus, Jewish and Vedanta scriptures, and so many other spiritual masters and traditions speak. 

This Sacred Indwelling is what Muslim mystics call The Soul within all souls.

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This is also about consciousness or expanded awareness--what in TCM and Taoist tradition is called Shen.

And how we can adjust our inner radio dial in a variety of ways to awaken or attune like a radio signal transmitter and receiver.  This is also about the physical body and of course the breath.

Indeed, this radiant energy of love and life force Spirit is The Breath within our breath

breathing us and everything.

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By the way, the Biblical Hebrew word for human is "Nefesh" meaning a mind-body-Spirit. There is no separation like we often do with dualistic thinking in the West. Moreover, the name for The Sacred, "Ruach-El", or Spirit of God, is used some 380+ times in Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament)

which translates as Spirit embedded in all physical matter. 

It is a joy helping others experience greater wholeness, resonance, and awareness for the inner and outer universe along this life journey.

To attune and experience Oneness with Source--a Oneness it turns out we've had all along.
While we're at it--this is also about greater awareness of Oneness with all people and beings.

Hence the cornerstone of my offerings as both East-West inter-spiritual and Christian mystical wisdom traditions.

Also related life force energy Spirit-based practices

for the care, growth, and communing of souls.
And while we're at it, for our mind and body wellness too.

While these offerings can also assist us with stress reduction, self-empowerment, personal well-being and the like, this is also about more than that. This also is about engaging in contemplative practices for courageous, loving service, life in community, and--as Gandhi and the likes of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr did through non-violent resistance--honoring even those we may struggle to love.

Saying 'no' to the hate--absolutely.

Yet continuing to humbly honor Sacred Presence in them in this One Reality of which we all are part.

This is about the power of love.
The power of personal and communal transformation.

The power of co-participation with and in the Divine, with one another, and dare I say

with the ministry of angels and other seen and unseen healing, mysterious forces.
This is about loving Presence. And being peace.

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Since retiring/becoming Chaplain Emerita of Cornell College in 2021, it's been a joy not only helping others experience this inner and outer peace and Presence through Calm with Catherine classes and other offerings like spiritual companioning, East-West contemplative mind-body-spirit practices, retreats, sound healing and other healing arts.

Doing this part-time means I also get to (finally!) live with a more savoring, unhurried, contemplative pace.

That includes for prayerful runs and long walks daily in The Vastness among oceanic, open fields and big sky of Iowa back roads. It's my own daily Camino amid quiet earth and mystical skyscapes which not only fuel semi-expressionist paintings which poour from my soul.

Out in the mystical landscape of rolling fields and big sky Iowa vastness--just like when I walk the Camino in Spain or along the ancient coastal pathways in Scotland--I can practice relaxing and expanding awareness into and as The Vastness. To practice living from and as Soul in Sacred energy Field of Divine love pouring forth from Creator, Creation, and from soul--that Divine spark or Indwelling Light and Life force within, bursting from the inside out.  What a joy to practice relaxing and letting go so well as to open awareness all the more to the Oneness and peace we've had all along.  And with that, also opening all the more to Sacred Beauty, Love, Presence, the ministy of angels, ancestors and other loved ones across the veil, and to mysterious healing forces in this multiverse of Reality of which we all are part.  
 

As long as I can keep that balance--including as Craig and I sojourn more often to Scotland where our daughter has made her home (of course with time in contemplative, quiet places like Iona and Isle of Skye)--it is an honor to keep this teaching and healing arts ministry going.
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That said, my credentials for inter-spiritual, Christian, and secular teaching, retreat leadership, soul care, etc are posted below.
Peace,

Catherine

 

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