Tom Kenyon – As many of you know, I entered what was supposed to be a one-year sabbatical at the beginning of 2020. For about a year before I announced my decision, I had been repeatedly visited by what I call Messengers from the Deep. These messengers took the form of intuitions about my future and when I paid them no mind, they got more insistent. Finally, they started to invade my dreamtime and my meditations. The message was blunt and clear.

I needed temporarily to stop teaching so that I could enter an extended period of personal introspection to explore deeper truths about the Work of personal and planetary transformation. If I did not take this time, the Messengers informed me, I would be unable to energetically manage the next level of evolutionary transformation being asked of me—including my own personal transformation and any abilities I might have as a transformational catalyst.

I announced my sabbatical at the end of 2019. Then the pandemic hit.

Our collective world was turned upside down and my internal world was in flux. I had thought that I could “do” this “introspection thing” (as if it were something “to do” rather than experience) within a year and get back to work. But as the saying goes, “one way to make the gods and goddesses laugh is to make plans.”

We are now, as of this writing, past the midway point of the second year, and I have been humbled and in awe by the intricacies and intensity of the human psyche—my psyche to be exact but also the collective psyche of our human family.

I suspect that many of you, like myself, are feeling the intensity and the rapidity of global change that is now upon us. Many years ago, when the Hathors first mentioned to me the idea of Chaotic Nodes, I thought it was a quaint and interesting notion. Now that we are clearly in the midst of ever-increasing chaos, that concept is turning into a palpable everyday reality.

Perhaps you recall a book from 1970 by the title of Future Shock, which was written by the futurist Alvin Toffler and his wife Adelaide Farrell. The term “future shock” was coined to describe a psychological state of individuals and entire societies in which there was a personal perception of “too much change in too short a period of time.”

I felt the truth of this concept when I first read about it when I was in college. But now the truth of this is in our society’s face. And we are clearly in an accelerated track of collective and personal transformation.

The roots of the word, trans and formation, mean beyond form. And indeed, the structures of our society, of our institutions, of our personal relationships with each other and with ourselves are morphing right before our eyes.

I am also struck by how the Chinese language speaks to the word transformation. Their version of this word consists of two ideograms. One means danger and the other opportunity. Indeed, in any transformational process there is both opportunity for change and danger in that very opportunity.

And that is the crux of the matter as far as I am concerned. How do we embrace the opportunities for rapid change that are all around us while avoiding the dangers? How do we avoid the fate of Icarus who flew too close to the sun?

How we choose to answer these questions will determine our fate. And getting to those answers is both an individually personal and a shared collective endeavor.

It is clearly not just about us as individuals. It is also about us as part of a greater whole. It is not just about “me” but it is also about “we.” To borrow a concept from the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, it is about both I and Thou. And, accelerating events on the global stage are clear harbingers that a new worldview is in the midst of being birthed—albeit it often under great duress.

I believe that the Work, specifically exploring the depths of our own nature can be an immense ally as we face our uncertain planetary future. And I thought that surely by now I would be rejoining the public conversation. But it is not yet the right time for me.

To be completely transparent here, I am clearly still walking within the Cloud of Unknowing an idea introduced in the latter half of the14th Century Europe by a manuscript written by an anonymous Christian mystic. The Cloud of Unknowing, as it was called, suggested that the way to know God was to surrender one’s mind and ego to “the realm of unknowing” by which one might catch a glimpse of the Divine.

For me, as a mystically oriented post-modern humanist, I take this to refer to that strange and often uncomfortable position when we modern humans are clearly lost in something with no idea  how to find our way out of it. It is a period of extreme uncertainty. It as if all the data of our lives has temporarily been lost in the Cloud (digital not theological). And while such glitches are usually temporary, it is best not to force “coming back on line.”

All of this brings me back to my odd reality of being a teacher with nothing to teach. The mist within the Cloud obscures my knowing. But I also know that while the dispersion of the Cloud will not follow my agendas or sense of time, the cloud bank will, at some point, dissolve into the clear sky of Mind. And in that moment (sometimes moments) I can catch a glimpse of the Great Mystery itself. And after such encounters, human lives do not usually remain the way they were before.

I have experienced this a few times during my life as a 73-year-old human primate. And if you are one of us older folks then you may have as well. If you are a younger one, you might not have encountered this strange territory of the psyche yet. But you most likely will. My advice? Don’t push the river when there is no water flowing in the riverbed. Be gentle with yourself. Breathe more and look up a lot to the sky—both literally and figuratively.

But back to my quandary, which is why I am writing those of you who have studied with me in the past or thought about it.

I have no sense of when this Cloud will disperse into a new sense of knowing and a new approach to the Work. But I trust it will.

Given the fact that I continuously receive requests for my teaching schedule, one-on-one mentorships, interviews and tours, I feel I owe it to our community to be up front about what I see transpiring so as not to waste people’s precious time with inquiries.

To that end I plan (…and yes, the gods and goddesses are laughing) to continue offering Hathor messages as they come through, write articles as they seem timely and helpful, compose more music and record new sound meditations for The Celestial Sangha, which I really encourage you to explore. But I will not be teaching, doing interviews or offering one-on-one work for the foreseeable future. This includes online events.

I truly wish all of you reading this the gift of grace and serendipity as we all sail upon the currently tempestuous sea of the Great Mystery. And may the new lands we find bring us all great happiness.

SF Source Tom Kenyon Newsletter Aug 2022