Preview Jan’s new book
What an amazing and accessible collection of wisdom and guidance. Hold this precious book carefully in your hands. It’s the last moment it will be pristine… for soon you will be underlining luscious and meaningful phrases, dog-earing pages, filling it with post-it tabs, and moving it from bedside to kitchen table and back because this is a working document. I love how the pages are laid out in spaciousness, and I can imagine writing in those wide margins, a kind of dialogue of hours. Thank you Jan Phillips for all the spiritual journeying represented here. A great capstone to her many titles.
Christina Baldwin is the author of numerous titles including Storycatcher, The Seven Whispers, and her debut novel, The Beekeeper’s Question.
In Stop Seeking, Start Finding, Jan Phillips acknowledges our hunger for wholeness and invites us each to the table to satiate our hunger. Through poetry and prayer she reframes the Divine as a Force within each one of us unfolding Creation. She accompanies us on our spiritual journey calling upon us to know the Divine. Stop Seeking, Start Finding is balm for the soul.
Maureen Murdock, author, Mythmaking: Self Discovery and the Timeless Art of Memoir
available now at Book Baby shop
available on Amazon by December 1.
available at Jan Phillips shop
INTRODUCTION
This book is a call to mindfulness, a reminder that evolutionary action begins with stillness, that visionary ideas are seeded in spiritual practice. We are the myth-makers and co-creators of the 21st century, the prophets and writers of new sacred texts. Vessels of Divine Energy, our job is to reorient ourselves to the Heaven within and around us.
The Book of Hours originated in the Middle Ages as a way for people to stay spiritually mindful. This book is designed for the same purpose—to give people a way to stay grounded in Spirit throughout the day. To me, the passages are modern-day psalms—ideas from prophetic poets, mystics, physicists, mythologists, and monks who changed the trajectory of my life when I encountered them. Meister Eckhart wrote that enlightenment is a process of subtraction, not addition. The writers of these quotes guided me in that long process of releasing outmoded beliefs and creating a faith for myself that was original, authentic and resilient.
I try on different hats as I sit in silence, praying not only as a Christian, but as a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Native American, an atheist, a post-theist. And while my thoughts might shift or my prayers evolve, the Presence I am steeped in never alters, the Ground of my Being never moves.
We are not here to worry or argue over God’s meaning. We’re here to live out lives shot through with Sacred Splendor. This book is a handbook to spiritual autonomy, to higher consciousness—the words of spiritual masters waiting to be embodied that we might rise and respond to the demands of this hour.
And for those of you who notice there are more male voices than female here, let us remember the silencing of women which began with the patriarchy and continues today. We are still learning to take our power, take our seats at the table, and speak with a soul force that’s sourced in our core. Consider this a call to action, a call to write down your thoughts and visions. To say something about your faith, your understanding of divinity, your experience as a mystic or poet that women in the future can use as a guide on the winding path.
Once we were excluded from the art schools and museums, the universities and yeshivas, places of culture and commerce, but we have access now—not to the priesthood, but to the publishers and political arena, at least. There are places for us to make our marks, leave our legacies, and it’s incumbent upon us, in order to balance the audio and saturate the sound waves with the music and wisdom women have to offer.
This book in your hands can serve as a reminder—there are always ways we can leave a trail of who we were and what we loved. We can let our descendants know for what we stood, for whom we fought. We can say where we started, how we changed, where we went. You think it doesn’t matter. You think no one will care. But don’t you care? Doesn’t it matter to you, the lives and struggles of the ones before you and the ones at your side?
We came here with a purpose: to be of use. I made this book hoping to be of use to you. I want it to be a tool that helps you evolve your own life and practice. That helps you let go of whatever it is that’s held you back. As they used to say in the Novitiate, “Your hope is my hope, Sister.” And I hope mine is yours.
Chapter One
In the beginning, Nothing became unstable; then particles of Something started to form.
Michio Kaku, physicist, The Future of the Mind
As we evolve ourselves consciously, we entertain alternate ideas about the beginning of Creation. We let go of the bearded God who made the world in six days, then rested on the seventh. We let go of Adam and Eve, the apple and the snake, for our own good. It does not serve us. Singing “He’s got the whole world in His hands,” has also not served us. This is our planet. Our home. And it’s in our hands. Nobody is coming to save us when we’ve poisoned our waters and destroyed our forests. Could it really be our religious beliefs that led us to this place of planetary crisis?
Thinking that a Deity in the sky punished us with original sin because a mythological woman named Eve disobeyed his order is outdated. It was written at a time when people thought the world was flat. Written in another language by men with agendas of their own. Let the inspired ones today contribute to new sacred texts that guide us into action for the common good. Let us open our ears to the prophets of today and take our place among them
Revelations are occurring around the globe to individuals who open themselves like satellite dishes to Mind-at-Large, which is broadcasting Itself every second of the day. It’s up to us to tune in, quiet down and listen. Every one of us is being penetrated with broadcasts from the Source of our lives.
Every infant born into this world is full of grace, a chalice of Holy Water. We are not sinners. We are co-creators of culture, makers of the future. We are those particles of Something that formed when the Great Wave moved and birthed the cosmos. Let us give thanks.
When God First Saw His Mother
When God first saw His Mother, He cried. Astonished by her Radiance He fell to his knees, witnessing a wonder beyond All-Knowing. She appeared on the shoulders of seven galaxies. The Milky Way crowned her with a halo of stars. Andromeda and Centaurus circled her wrists, bangles from the heavens for the Mother of All. Orion dropped his shield when she appeared. Pegasus reared and spread his wings. A roar from Ursa Major shattered the silence.
“I never knew,” God said, an old man now, aloft on a nebula. “Look what I made, so I wouldn’t be alone,” he said, pointing everywhere with his fingers of Light. Hoping for Her approval, He began His litany, “Fire, water, wind, stars, planets, creatures.”
God’s Mother beheld the heavens, impressed with the wonder of binary stars, stellar winds, moons and tides, and galaxies in the trillions with no beginning or end.
“Is it as you intended?” She asked Her Son. “Except for Earth, where they are slow to learn. They fight day and night and poison their young in all manner of ways.”
“Do you not intercede?” the Mother inquired. “I do not,” God said, “They are born to create.” “What do you think will come to pass?”
“It’s up to them, though they cling to beliefs that I’m in charge.” “Do you not have power
over their sun and moon?” “The affairs of earth belong to them. The infinite is mine, the finite, theirs.”
“I see,” She said, as she shifted in space, the galaxies swirling and shining beneath her.
“You have done well,” She praised, then dissolved into dark: the Mother of Everything returning to Naught. God entered the deep space of silence and awe, then broadcast to the cosmos this bulletin of joy: The Mother has come. We are not alone. Let us sing praise to the Mother of All.
