Conversations with Orland Bishop

Unit 2: The Conditions of a Dilemma

The three segments in this session are highly esoteric, and at the same time eminently practical. Orland is offering principles and instructions that can vastly expand our capacity to truly participate in creation – creation as an ongoing process, not as a finished product we merely occupy. This is actually the originating impulse of science: “The human need to participate in a reality that is the source of everything that comes into form.”

Course Videos

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Study Notes

Orland’s instructions might seem metaphysical but they can apply to anything you want to bring into the world. And what could we want to bring in more, than sacredness? “Nothing,” he says, “is made sacred. It becomes sacred when we give our attention to it at a level that reveals what it holds as energy and information.” He describes attentiveness as a creative act, not just attending to what is, but giving something to what becomes.

Where do we place our attention to access the information and energy to channel into sacred creation? Other cultures had and have ceremonies to direct and refine the attention so that it accesses divine forces beyond what he calls “the elemental world” – the material forces that technology manipulates. Our society has pretty much mastered the peculiar ceremonies embedded in science, but we are approaching a limit. They will not rescue us from our current social, medical, and ecological impasse. We need to draw from the spiritual world. Fortunately, the most basic type of ceremony is always available to do that – contemplation. It is a source of renewal, an anchor to stillness in the midst of chaos. Is it not obvious how necessary that is during these times?

Stillness is not an end in itself. It is a portal through which higher soul forces (to use Orland’s terminology) can enter. These include the soul forces of the earth and beyond. The energies accessed can contribute to personal goals or to the endeavors of others. Anything you bring in becomes part of the collective inheritance.

Orland says, “What makes a ceremony more revealing is the use of something beyond ourselves. Something beyond our own knowing, and we surrender to that.” Our creative capacities are limited when we only build on what we already know (or think we know). The reach of our thoughts cannot expand when we traverse well-established pathways. Thus, today, the solutions offered by the technocratic class are so often part of the problem. The growing realization of our crisis and our helplessness constitutes an initiatory dilemma. It leads to humility, which is the surrender that allows higher forces in.

Discussion/Practice Suggestion

“This planet needs meditation,” says Orland. Not only does meditation feed the planet, but it is necessary if human beings are to assume their proper role as creative partners with Earth. He clarifies that meditation is not just quieting the mind. It is “to really engage with intelligences that can utilize these higher octaves of thinking” so that they, in turn, can engage human life.

I will share with you my own practice to engage higher intelligences in meditation. Try it out and share on the course discussion group. It is very simply to enter meditation with a question and hold that question faithfully, from a place of a sincere wanting to know. A sincere question is very attractive to higher intelligences! The faithful holding of the question will need to endure challenges: for example, off-ramps into ready answers that are false answers, but that preserve the inner status quo. We must understand that a real question emanates from a desire to grow beyond what has been. To ask a question sincerely is already a kind of surrender. It admits, “I do not know.” You will be amazed at the insights that come during or following this meditation. Often, the insights do not directly answer the question, but rather speak to the wanting behind it. Some questions, I have held in this way for years or decades.