Being Helped to Heaven: Money and Manifestation in Summer

Being Helped to Heaven: Money and Manifestation in Summer

a plaque illustrating Jesus's Ascension to Heaven with other figures (the disciplines, the women at the grave)

Being helped to Heaven: “Women at the Grave of Christ and the Ascension of Christ” (known as the Reidersche Tafel). Italian ivory carving from about 400 CE, in the Bavarian National Museum, Munich.

Being Helped to Heaven: Money and Manifestation All Year ‘Round

The seasons are very important to us humans here on Earth. The Earth energies matter to our human endeavors. When we seek a peaceful, ethical relationship with  money, and when we seek to manifest–to bring something from the spiritual or ideal realm into the physical world–we do well to pay attention to what is going on seasonally.

The Basics

Regarding money/manifestation and the seasons, we are:

  • Conscious of Fall’s harvest connection to abundance.
  • Aware in Winter of everything going underground–including our energy and initiative for manifestation.
  • Ripely ready for Spring’s sprouting, which we can easily see as abundance emerging.

But what about Summer? What difference does this season actually make to money and manifestation?

I set out to answer that question through research, reflection on my own experience, and prior knowledge about manifestation through the seasons.

Being Helped to Heaven: Money and Manifestation in Summer

Summer.

I just never thought about it, honestly. I can’t believe it!

We offer posts about every other season, including harvest–but Summer? It’s all on the surface. Right? It’s all easy street, fruiting all the time. Right? It’s watermelon–what a metaphor for abundance! It’s juicy peaches, and tomatoes worth eating. Yum! Right?

Nope! Summer’s not just for Coppertone and (clandestine) beach parties. It’s not all vacations and foolishness. There is a way we participate in Summer’s fruiting.

The period we are in right now has powerful impact on our soul development according to each religion I investigated.

Some Spiritual Understandings of Summer

In Celtic paganism, it’s Beltane, which means “bright fire.” Since ancient times, we protect and purify what is precious at Beltane using flames, smoke and ashes. The fire inside the hearth is put out, to be re-lit from the communal bonfire.

In Judaism, it’s Shavuot, when G-d gave us the Torah, plus a major celebration–of the wheat harvest. What is more basic to most of humanity’s survival than wheat?

In Christianity, it is our Ascension, and 10 days later our Pentecost (also called “Whitsun”). At the Ascension, witnessed by his disciples, Jesus climbed to Heaven, with the assistance you see in the image opening this post. 10 days later, we disciples received the Holy Spirit within ourselves, shown as tongues of flame about each individual’s head below–lit by the holy fire that lifted Jesus. “The main sign of Pentecost in the West is the color red. It symbolizes joy and the fire of the Holy Spirit. “

“Majesty,” depicting Mary and the disciples with above their individual heads the flame of the Holy Spirit–often understood as the embodiment of the feminine in the Holy Trinity. This painting by Duccio is from a Sienese cathedral altarpiece, now in the Museum of Works from the Duomo in Florence.

Understanding Summer’s Impact on our Ascension: How We are Being Helped to Heaven

I referred to some prior knowledge I have of the seasons’ impact on money and manifestation. One of the greatest sources has been Perelandra’s human-nature interaction research and practices. Highly recommended; ask me if you want a place to begin, or try this.

Rudolf Steiner’s Spiritual Science

I’ve also found Rudolf Steiner’s ideas useful to round out my working understanding of what is going on among the human, divine and natural forces at work in each season.

I started with the Vesica Institute’s workshops and written materials, and then bought Adrian Anderson’s Living a Spiritual Year. Anderson is a trusted Steiner interpreter. One of Anderson’s choice quotes from Steiner (with my italics) sums up this entire post:

We must develop the perception that, just as there is a soul in our bodies, so too in everything that occurs outside us--the rising and setting of the stars, the bright sunlight, the twilight–there dwells something spiritual.

Steiner looks deeply into the ancients’ view of the “marriage” of our Earth and the Sun and sees the Sun as the Christ, understanding the Christ energy not as the property of one individual (Jesus), but as our individual human destiny–our ascension. As the very non-esoteric Encyclopedia Britannica puts it, describing the Christian holiday of Ascension, Christ “was lifted up into heaven so that he might make us partakers of his Godhead.”

This is what the seasonal energies support us in, right now.

Are you game?

What Do You Will?

Your will is an expression of your individuality–your ego. We have vilified the ego–wrongly. Now is a good time to correct that.

Remember those little flames above everybody’s head in the painting up above? Notice that those people were not shown surrounded by a big cloud of fire or smoke. This spiritualizing of the ego is not a mass event. It’s an individual event happening at the same time to each person in the group.

Manifestation involves will!

In order to have happen what you will (and harm none, as the pagan phrase goes), you have to

  • have a will,
  • know your will, and
  • be responsible for your will.

Thus, to receive the blessings of Summer, we focus on our will, our power of decisionmaking.

Summer is the time nothing is hidden.

Right now, what it is revealing to you is your own will.

Steiner sees our ego as divine. (For example, for this post, I read a series of lectures by Steiner on Ascension and Pentecost, one of which is subtitled “The Immortality of the Ego.”)

The sun is hanging out in our hemisphere right now. There is no time like the present to “solarize” our will, our ego, and our individuality.

No wonder we had such a hard time seeing the impact of Summer on abundance!

I had denied the importance of the will, the ego, and our individuality in manifesting abundance.

The Sun My Ego*

The ego is so vilified in spiritual work nowadays. The nondualism I practice abjures emphasis on the individual. And, although I have a lot of willpower, I never thought of it as G-d-given.

But it is not having an ego or will or individuality that is a problem! It’s built right into the human spiritual experience. It’s not an accident that we incarnate as individuals. Duh!

Like everything, it’s what we do with what we have, including these neglected parts of ourselves that matters. And right now is the perfect time to pay attention to them.

I truly believe starting with self-observation is the approach we want. Noticing, observing, attending to our will: what do we will? what do we not will, or refuse to will?

Noticing, observing, attending to our ego: what is it saying? how does it influence our decision-making and actions?

Can we see our individuality as spiritual? Welcome to the flame above your head: I see it!


*With thanks to Thich Nhat Hanh’s The Sun My Heart.

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