About Two Wings Spirit | Two Wings Themes | About Bevalyn Crawford
TWO WINGS SPIRIT
A SCHOOL FOR SPIRITUAL GROWTH AND AWARENESS
A MYSTICAL GATHERING OF FRIENDSTWO WINGS SPIRIT
A SCHOOL FOR SPIRITUAL GROWTH AND AWARENESS
A MYSTICAL GATHERING OF FRIENDSTwo Wings Spirit is a school to facilitate spiritual growth and awareness of the Divine Presence at the center of our lives and the universe. It is also a space for being with others, nourishing being and mystical sensibility. You will find below the themes explored in Two Wings programs.
The following paragraphs describe the overall Two Wings perspective for our work together.
THE HUMAN CONDITION
As we live our life on this earth we soon realize that life is difficult, that there is illness, loss, obstacles everywhere we turn, and yet, in the midst of it all, we catch fleeting glimpses of extraordinary meaning and beauty. Before we awaken to the Way, to the spiritual meaning of life’s challenges and the path through them, we struggle, and feel victimized and trapped in dramas and ego games. The overall sense is that something is amiss in human life. In some cultures it is called the “state of sin” in others a “state of ignorance.” In Taoist culture it is said that “the Tao (the Way) has been lost.”Spiritual liberation, salvation or enlightenment is becoming inwardly free of the mental and psychological elements that obstruct our realization of who we really are. As we fulfill the task to “know thyself,” we discover the beauty, meaning and harmony that are already present in ordinary life. The impediments are such things as ignorance; attachments; illusions; conditioned ways of perceiving ourselves and the world; and identification with our limited self, the ego. These hindrances are the cause of suffering, limitation and what is often called “the human condition.”
THE SOLUTION
Great spiritual explorers have learned that true freedom arises from discovering and identifying with the level of our being that is “beyond” ego and limitation: the Divine Presence within us. This deep identity is more fundamental than ego and all the undermining limitations we think are real. It is the source of our life. Because it is fundamental, as we realize our true Self, the Presence of God within us, we can release the more superficial limitations of ego and become who we really are, underneath who we think we are. We become free.PERENNIAL WISDOM
Sufi poet and mystic, Rumi, described this essential identity as “the one thing which must not be forgotten,” and its recollection is the reason we are here on planet earth. Recognition of this indwelling Presence of the Divine as our true identity is the insight and experience at the mystical heart of the world’s great religions. As a body of teachings it is called The Perennial Wisdom or The Perennial Philosophy because it has existed in all ages and across the planet. This wisdom exists within us; we have simply forgotten it.THE MEANING OF THE TWO WINGS METAPHOR
My principle teacher, Swami Muktananda, often said that the bird of liberation has two wings: grace and self-effort. “Two wings of the one bird” also serves as a metaphor for the intrinsic unity behind the seeming duality of life, duality that we mistakenly think is Reality. Duality is only relatively real, not Ultimate Reality.THE TWO WINGS OBJECTIVE
Two Wings Spirit is here to help us recognize the grace in our life and the kind of effort (and letting go) that works, that brings us closer to the divine Self in actual life. The school presents a perspective and a process to help the student perceive and experience the unity behind outward appearances of duality and discord.Two Wings Spirit is not affiliated with any particular religion or spiritual path. Rather we draw on the rich, universal legacy of Perennial Wisdom, the deepest, mystical foundation of the world’s great religions, to help us remember and experience the truth of who we are, the Truth that sets us free.
Classes and other explorations of Two Wings Spirit are concerned with themes such as these:
Characteristics of the Human Condition:
experiencing life unconsciously, suffering, disaster and tragedy, separation and alienation, misunderstood longing, spiritual deadness, chasing illusions, conflict and duality, dead emptiness, ego as identity, meaninglessness, “all is vanity,” dead ends.Myth and metaphor:
death and rebirth; lost and found; wandering; awakening; the journey; the Teacher; the shadow and descent into the underworld; gods, goddesses, myths and fairy tales as archetypal patterns in human lives; religion and science as metaphor for a deeper reality.Questions:
Who am I? Where am I going? What does it all mean? What must I do to be saved, liberated, enlightened? What is my purpose in life? What is knowledge? What is reality? How can I know God? Seeking and finding.Identity:
What is the ego, what is the Self? who / what is God? The Personal God and / or God as the Ground of Being. The role of the mind. Fertile emptiness (the Void)Diminishment of ego:
ego as servant of the Self. “to die before we die.” non-doership. unstructured mind, emptiness, selflessness, fierce grace
Challenges on the path:
purification, pitfalls, fierce grace, working with pain and suffering.Help on the path:
Truth, teachers, grace, serendipity and synchronicity, the guidance of Spirit, prayer, practices, Perennial Wisdom, taking refuge, ordinary life as teaching, symbols and metaphor, “all things work together”– the perfection of it all.
TWO WINGS OFFERINGS
Two Wings Spirit offers speaking, classes and workshops, mentoring, Rosen Method bodywork, informative writings and suggestions on this website.
BEVALYN CRAWFORD’S STORY:
THE ESSENCE AND THE SKELETON
BEVALYN CRAWFORD’S STORY:
THE ESSENCE AND THE SKELETONTHE ARCHTYPAL JOURNEY
I once heard a brilliant definition of a myth: it's not something that never happened but something that happens all the time. The Greek story, The Odyssey, while officially called an epic, has been a myth of my life, and I think all of our lives if we consider the deep trajectory of where we have been and where we are going.At the end of the Trojan War, the hero, Odysseus, sets sail for his home in Ithaca. The gods, however, have something else in store for him. He must learn about life and himself before he is allowed to complete his journey. The winds of fate toss him about, throwing him on the shores of strange lands where he must escape from the one-eyed monster, Cyclops, navigate the duality of Scylla and Chrybdis, free himself from the lethargic spell of the lotus-eaters and the enchantress, Circe. This story is a myth of the human journey, the spiritual journey home– back to our source and ourselves.
THE ECHO
I recognize its themes, and similar twists and turns, in my own life. Although I was (not-so-blissfully) ignorant of the grand journey as I flitted about like a butterfly, each flower and tree I stopped at was needed: to whack me awake, to strengthen me, and to teach me what I needed to fulfill the purpose of my life. Through it all, Spirit was shepherding me out of captivity in what is often called “the human condition”, just as Ariadne’s thread guided Theseus through the labyrinth in which he was imprisoned, for having had the audacity to kill the Minotaur, the pet monster of her father, the king of Crete (another applicable myth). From living such a life I learned to recognize the promptings and movement of Spirit and how it turns one experience into ash and another into gold. In this way I was guided, and learned.Here I give the bare bones, a kind of table of contents of my own Odyssey, the turns of fate and influences through which Spirit has shaped me.
A PLAY OF CONTRASTS AND OPPOSITES
I grew up in a small town in Minnesota but was transported by a whirlwind to live in other lands, in Europe and India. I spent many years in the Land of Oz, called on the map, California.I studied humanities as an undergraduate and then earned masters degrees in physics and social work. I am now, again, in graduate school, this time to develop my writing.
I was a proper, Midwestern “good girl” and later, in the sixties and seventies, a California hippie, caught in sex and drugs. This prodigal period was a turning point.
At various times in my life I have suffered from depression and fragile health. In other periods I have experienced grounded practicality and transcendent bliss. Each encounter had its gifts but some were certainly more pleasant than others.
My family life was difficult: both the family I grew up in and later my own family. I was married, had two children but then experienced many personal problems, my family falling apart, and divorce. I had much to learn about relationships.
I was a born-again, evangelical Christian but then “lost my faith” and became an agnostic-cum-atheist. Eventually, through study with an Indian Guru, with Sufi and Buddhist teachers, and through going deep within my own being, I went beyond religion / no-religion to mystical experience of God as indwelling Presence, the ground of Being. This was both the “pearl of great price” and the place from which to stand, as Archimedes desired, to move the whole world.
I have worked as a research physicist, community college teacher, as a counselor and Rosen Method bodyworker and had long periods of outwardly doing nothing. My inner work was all I could handle during these times. In the late eighties I morphed from journal writing to writing that took others into account.
Some years ago I began teaching classes on spirituality and world religions: privately in my home and then at the Angela Center, a Catholic retreat center in Santa Rosa, California and at Santa Rosa Junior College. In 2006 I opened Two Wings Spirit in Minneapolis, a space in which to gather and recognize “the wondrous song that sings all the things of this world” and the Divine Presence, who dwells within us, as our own Self.