...from the Field Project
There are so many things I love about Field training, both the theory and the practice: the recognition of the central role of paradox, the emphasis on self-friendliness and radical respect for both self and others, the recognition that the creative aspect of our consciousness is inseparably bound up with our willingness to live up to what we would create in our lives, and so on.
But the thing I love the most is the idea that practice places us in conversation with life, and not life as something merely objective or empirical, but life as the expression of an infinitely resourceful, efficient, and generous intelligence that in some mysterious sense, is on our side.
In Field training, consciousness and correspondence operate within clearly stated ontological laws, but this is only one of two defining aspects, the other of which is love, in the mystical sense of a oneness that transcends separateness, and a giving-of-self-for-the-sake-of-other.
Of course, we must be a self before we can give of self, thus the central importance in our model of self-befriending.
Beyond this, however, there is the recognition that conscious creating really is co-creating, and that the life lived wholly is a conversation with something wonderful.
One feature of this conversation is the exchange that takes place between intention and correspondence.
It is as though the Field is constantly granting wishes that we may not realize we are making.
Resting in alignment, we are able to express these wishes or desires not as a lack, but as an immediate experience of fulfillment that occurs inwardly.
In fact, Field training describes the inner experience of fulfillment as “the first manifestation.”
Mysteriously, the outer also begins to move in new directions, with no effort or organizing on our part, but spontaneously, in keeping with the silent authority of the inner claim.
But the Field doesn’t speak to us only in this factual coming-into-congruence.
Once we are receptive, we are open to nonlocal instruction, guidance, and direction.
Of course, the Field doesn’t speak English or any other human language.
Rather, it offers its messages in a rich variety of experiences that bear the unmistakable signature of the nonlocal.
Students who rest consistently in alignment begin to notice that facts are stacking up in meaningful, beneficial, and surprising ways.
Synchronicities, happy coincidences, miracles of timing, sudden hunches, and serendipitous events seem to follow them with increasing reliability.
Florence Shinn called these factual expressions of a higher order “leads,” and advised her students never to take action without having received one.
It is essential to understand that one does not go chasing after these “leads” or nonlocal information.
They arise naturally in the world as an effect of resting in alignment for its own sake.
One thing that all these messages have in common is that they are beautiful, as is alignment itself.
And it becomes clear at some point that beauty is the Field’s native tongue.
Eventually, we get to the point where we experience firsthand the revelation of Keats’s famous verse: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
Beauty becomes a compass heading as our resolve to honor our best, most beautiful self takes hold and deepens.
We begin to speak the Field’s language, and find beauty in unlikely places—even in things we might have feared or resisted earlier.
As we are given over more and more to what is beautiful, we find that beauty is a creative force—indeed, it is the creative force.
On all sides, the Field is offering us messages that have the power to enlighten, guide, uplift, and enrich who we are and how we show up on the stage of the world.
These messages are offered in the language of beauty, and become understandable to those resting in the beauty of alignment.
