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Strengthen Goodness, Love, & Light: The Power of Group Intention
One concrete way to care for ourselves and others is to gather in small groups with others who share an intention to strengthen the goodness, love, and light in us and around us.
As we live through rapid changes, it’s easy to feel caught up, swept away, and powerless. However, we always have choices. We can always choose where to focus our attention and intention. Positive intentions help us to be agents of love and healing amid the tumult of any kind.
One concrete way to care for ourselves and others is to gather in small groups with others who share an intention to strengthen the goodness, love, and light in us and around us.
Science reveals that when we come together with others with the specific intention for healing, we have the capacity to heal and transform ourselves and the world. Lynne McTaggart is a journalist and researcher who spent decades exploring the science behind intention and its transformative impact on individuals and communities. Bridging spirituality and science, her work reveals the extraordinary capacity for connection and healing when people come together with a shared positive intention. Her first book, The Intention Experiment, compiled scientific research about intentions and invited others to participate in the experiments. Then, she scaled down the research to create small groups of eight people (“Power of Eight” groups) from across the globe who met regularly. People were instructed to send a healing intention to a person facing a challenge. The results, published in her second book, The Power of Eight, revealed that those who sent their intentions as well as their receivers were positively impacted in unexpected ways. A few quotes from her books are below.
It is reassuring that science confirms what many faith traditions have practiced for thousands of years, and what many intuitively know.
I’ve been reflecting on the power of intention and my experiences with small groups at Well for the Journey (Women at the Well and other groups ( http://wellforthejourney.org) and the Ignite Your Light team ( https://ignitecm.com/). When I gather in small groups with the desire to nourish my soul, reconnect with my inner light, and remember the goodness within and around me, I feel stronger, lighter, more joyful, and better able to give and receive love. It impacts all my relationships.
Nurturing our soul and spirit is not only good for us but is also good for the world.
Small groups of people have life-giving potential for these times. When we gather with the intention to bring more goodness, love, and light into the world, the energy field strengthens and expands. Renewing our own soul brings renewal to our world; reconnecting with our own light brings more light to all around us.
Friends, I encourage you to find companions to nourish your soul, reconnect with your inner light, and bring healing to our world. See the invitation below:)
Sending love,
Mabeth
Note: A portion of this writing is adapted from Gathering 5 of “The Modern Dilemma: How to Be Human & Soulful in a Rapidly Changing World,” a Women at the Well program that our collaborative Women at the Well team created in 2024.
AN INVITATION FOR YOU…
Please join me at one of the gatherings below.
Ignite Your Light Women’s Well-being Weekend
April 4-6, 2025, in Cape May, NJ https://ignitecm.com/
Women at the Well
Six Wednesday mornings (10:00-11:30 AM)
March 26- April 30, 2025
Zoom group OR in-person group (Lutherville, MD)
Other opportunities can be found at wellforthejourney.org http://wellforthejourney.org
Or create your own group!
QUOTES & GOING DEEPER:
“Research demonstrates that living things are constant transmitters and receivers of measurable energy…Intention appears to be something akin to a tuning fork causing the tuning forks of other things in the universe to resonate at the same frequency.”
-Lynne McTaggert, The Intention Experiment
(When people became part of a Power of Eight group, there was something McTaggart called a “mirror effect” on the senders of the intention….) “If they prayed for peace, their lives became more peaceful. If they tried to heal someone else, they experienced a healing in their own lives. Focusing on healing someone else brings on a mirrored healing.”
-Lynne McTaggert, The Power of Eight
“Don’t play small when it comes to healing yourself or healing the world. This is too big an enterprise to attempt by yourself. Find your truest self and your greatest power in numbers.”
-Lynne McTaggart, The Power of Eight
Good Company to Birth New
Are you a spiritual seeker, yearning for greater connection and meaning?
Do you feel like your religious traditions no longer fit?
You are not alone. We are together in this.
Earlier this month, on a chilly morning, I arose before the winter sun, looking forward to cracking open a new book recommended by a soul friend: The Great Search: Turning to Earth and Soul in the Quest for Healing and Home by John Philip Newell. A renowned spiritual teacher, speaker, and author steeped in Celtic tradition, Newell urges us to reawaken to the sacredness of Earth and every human being. His previous books nourished and enriched my soul.
With a candle lit and my journal and pen nearby, I nestled in with his latest writing. He opens with this observation: “We are living through a time of immense transition as old systems of authority and belief are questioned. A new vision of reality is trying to be born.”
Yes! I wholeheartedly agree.
Then, this passage glistened, leaping off the page:
“We are living through an age that is characterized by exile and spiritual search. Something new is trying to be born within us and around us.”
My heart burned.
I jotted the sentences down in my journal, slowly pondering them.
How can two simple sentences explain so succinctly the work that I am called to?
I am one of many who feel exiled from religious traditions that no longer fit. The way forward, as I can see it, is to make time and space to pay attention to this stirring, sometimes alone, sometimes with others who might be feeling the same sense of confusion and disillusionment. I am grateful to have companions and colleagues at Well for the Journey who wander this path with me, along with other small circles of companions who are exploring. Also, I am grateful for YOU, because as you read this now, our hearts are meeting. It is my deep hope that we are already birthing a newness yearning to be born, though we cannot yet see or comprehend it.
The good news is that we can find refuge and belonging in our exile through a practice that I call “soul-nesting.” Let me explain.
I am working on a collection of reflections that invites people into the vital work of soul-nesting. A bird’s nest is a powerful spiritual metaphor for these times. Our souls need a space to nurture, protect, and incubate what wants to be born. Like a bird gathering materials to build a nest, we need only look around and begin. Soul-nesting practices include small activities such as pausing, breathing, journaling, resting, gathering with others in sacred conversation, walking outside, and listening. Building a nest for our souls where we are—in the middle of our everyday lives—allows us to remember our deep, innate connection with God and incubate the new life longing to emerge. We can give birth to more love, over and over again.
I look forward to unpacking this concept further in the year ahead with an enhanced website and, with God’s help, a book to be published. (Gulp-I have put my dream out there!)
Turning back to John Philip Newell’s book, I appreciate that he focuses on people throughout history who left traditional religion to find a deeper connection with Earth and all of humanity. Some of my favorite formative teachers are highlighted: Etty Hillesum, Carl Jung, and Julaluddin Rumi, for instance. Each of them has touched my soul through their lives and writings. Though we’ve never met, I think of them as friends in spirit.
Hillesum (1914-1943) was a courageous and compassionate Jewish woman who experienced a spiritual awakening while suffering and facing death during the Holocaust. Her diaries reveal a remarkable strength, depth of soul, and love amid the most horrific circumstances. Jung (1875-1961), who founded analytical psychology, posited that we find healing and wholeness only as we become more conscious of our inner life. I’ve drawn on his wisdom personally and professionally, applying it most recently to the Conscious Aging classes I lead. Rumi (1207-1273) lived in the Middle East and wrote an incredible breadth of poetry, some of which I’ve selected for a “Love Poems from God” program that I’ve led over the years. Rumi calls us to remember that love is the true religion.
If you are searching for inspiration as you live through these times, you will find good company in John Philip Newell’s The Great Search: Turning to Earth and Soul in the Quest for Healing and Home.
And quite possibly—just maybe—my book that is being born will be a companion for you in the years to come.
With a heart of gratitude, I offer you blessings and love for the new year, friends.
Mabeth
Awakening to New Perspectives: Seeing with the Eye of the Heart
Seeing with the eye of the heart
Background: I wrote the bones of this as a reflection for the quarterly theme of “Awakening to New Perspectives” for Well for the Journey’s “Well-being Wednesday Meditation,” offered on January 29, 2025. Every Wednesday, people dial in at 8:00 am (EST) over the phone to listen to a free 15-minute reflection/meditation to nourish their souls. Anyone is welcome! The meditations are recorded, and they can be accessed anytime here: https://wellforthejourney.org/wbw-library/
“Awakening to New Perspectives” is a compelling theme. At this time in human history, I believe we are being called to awaken from our spiritual slumber to become more conscious of Goodness within and around us, especially in those people who offend or anger us. Another word for Goodness is Godness. We are called to awaken to God’s presence in and among us, often in surprising new ways.
One way to awaken to new perspectives is to practice “seeing with the eye of the heart.” This concept keeps jumping out at me repeatedly in various forms.
Can it be that the healing of the world depends on shifting the way we see- especially the way we see others and the way we see ourselves?
As humans, our minds are filled with thoughts, judgments, worries, opinions, fears, and anxieties. Our unceasing thought patterns can entangle us, keeping us stuck in a continuous loop and significantly impacting our perspectives. While looking at ourselves and others through the eye of the mind, our perspectives can become clouded with biases, illusions, blame, and, significantly, judgments. We judge ourselves; we judge others. We all do it. It is part of the human condition. And it can be rough.
I should note our minds are essential and often marvelously constructive. They help us plan, organize, connect the dots, calculate, strategize, reason, and create. Mine helped me write these words. Let us give thanks for our minds!
But sometimes, we can be too controlled by our minds. We forget that we are NOT our thoughts. That’s precisely when we need to shift deeper into our hearts.
Think about the heart. What does it symbolize? Love…connection…belonging… compassion…kindness…acceptance. The world needs more of all of these.
In December, part of my morning quiet time was reading a book by spiritual writer John Shea called Starlight: Beholding the Christmas Miracle All Year Round (Isn’t that a great title?). In it, he writes about spiritual perspective. He points out that when we walk the spiritual journey, a new way of seeing emerges, and we notice things we have never noticed before. We often see things we have always seen, but we see them in a new way.
The following passage has rocked my inner world:
“In the Book of Revelation, Christ exclaims, ‘Behold! I make all things new’ (Rev. 21:5). It should be stressed that he makes no new things. Rather, he facilitates a way of seeing that makes all things new. People often say, ‘I am seeing it for the first time.’ What they mean is that something they have seen physically many times is now seen in a new light… This new light is the spiritual perspective. It is a light that comes from within.” (my emphasis added) This spiritual perspective, he says, is called the third eye, the inner vision, and the eye of the heart.
BOOM. Please take a moment to read and ponder his words. What resonates with you?
My response: WTF? What do you mean, God doesn’t make all things new?!? I pray for God to intercede in this crazy world and bring about a new peace, a new world order, new love and kindness, and new people to bring us to a new place. I pray for a lot of new!
Do you mean it’s up to me and us? Do I have to see with new eyes? What am I called to awaken to? Is what I’m looking for right here, but I just can’t see it?
By the way, friends, I’m not giving up hope that God is at work making all things new. However, I realize that I have some work to do, too. I need to try to wake up, shift my spiritual perspective, and practice seeing with the eye of the heart. It is challenging work, but what if seeing with the eye of the heart can bring healing and love to our world?
In each human being (yes, that means everyone- you, me, and all other beings, including those we don’t like), there is an innate goodness…an inner divine radiance…that is part of the Eternal. We are made in the image of God. We are not God of course, but we have part of God in us. It is our divine DNA. A spark of divine love dwells in our heart space.
Often, it requires that we pause and momentarily extract ourselves from the chaotic energy and thoughts of the mind to shift ourselves into the warm, loving light of the heart. When we make time to remember, honor, and nurture that goodness, we become empowered to see with the eye of the heart.
In these chaotic times, it’s easy to get mired in thoughts of worry, grief, fear, angst, and anxiety. Most of us are stuck looking through the eye of the mind. It is painful.
I invite you here and now to join me in a short practice of looking at ourselves through the eye of the heart, bringing forth kindness and compassion.
Please follow these prompts slowly, allowing generous pauses.
While seated comfortably, with your feet on the ground, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths at your own pace…Place one hand on your chest over your heart…Continue breathing…feel the warmth of your chest…Perhaps you feel your heart beating, pumping blood through your body…Imagine warm, loving light expanding out from your heart. See it surround you…Feel that energy…Feel unconditional love embracing you. Accept this love… Relax into this love. Know how deeply you are loved…. For the next 60 seconds (or longer, if you like) simply relax into the warm light of unconditional love and acceptance.
Now open your eyes and look around. Can you sense any difference in what you see? Do you sense a softening of sorts?
What if seeing with the eye of the heart became a daily practice? I believe it could change the world.
Meanwhile, while we work on seeing with the eye of the heart, I am not giving up hope that God is working on making all things new.
A blessing for all of us:
Friends,
May we practice seeing with the eye of the heart,
bringing healing and love
to ourselves, to those around us, and to the world. Amen.
Love,
Mabeth