Soul On Earth Current

SOUL ON EARTH: Living and Loving Your Human Life
Ruth L. Schwartz, Ph.D.
Soul on Earth: A Guide Book
About the Author: Ruth L. Schwartz, Ph.D., has been a writer, teacher and healer for over twenty-five years. She has published four books of poems and a memoir; her fifth book of poems will appear in 2012. Winner of many prizes and grants for her writing, Ruth has taught at six colleges, including California State University-Fresno, Cleveland State University, and Mills College. Currently, she is a core faculty member in the M.F.A. Creative Writing program at Ashland University. Ruths formal education includes a B.A. degree from Wesleyan University, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. in Transpersonal Psychology from the University for Integrative Learning. She is a board-certified Clinical Hypnotherapist, and a long-time student and practitioner of shamanic healing and energy medicine. Ruth has had a private practice in HeartMind Integration, a healing modality she developed, since 2003 (www.HeartMindIntegration.com.) She is also fluent in Spanish. Ruth spends her time deeply engaging with the world in both its seen and unseen dimensions, and helping other people to do the same. She works with individuals and couples in person at her home in Oakland, CA, and nationally and internationally via telephone and Skype. The Writer As Shaman retreats, which Ruth developed and leads worldwide, offer a powerful synthesis of creative, psychospiritual and shamanic practices. (www.TheWriterAsShaman.com.) About Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life Ruth is grateful to have the opportunity to receive teachings and healings from many wise, compassionate non-physical teachers. The material in Soul on Earth is a distillation of the teachings she has received from these sources. To contact Ruth, please email Ruthpoet@aol.com, or call 510-472-4542.
Soul on Earth: A Guide Book
TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Please note: this book is still in progress. It is not yet complete! The table of contents does not accurately reflect the current content however, it will give you an idea of whats here. I. Understanding Your Lifes Purpose Tools The Inner Design The Souls Timeline & Prayer The Role of Choice Its Not What We Do, But Why & How Invitation Joy as a Navigational Aid Human Self & Soul The Tapestry of Reality Why & How Our Choices Matter Saying Yes to Life Releasing Life on its own Recognizance Service, or How We Help Others The Gift and the Gap II. Challenges on the Path Understanding Hardship Working with Physical Pain Working with Difficult Emotional States Understanding & Dispelling Shame & Self-Hatred Understanding Emotional Postures Physical Health Issues & Internal Solutions Forces & Counter-Forces Fear Doubt Limits Attachment to Outcome Power, Harm & Human Responsibility The Role of Crisis When There Is No Solution IV. Gifts and Taking Care of Ourselves The Power of Intention Pushing With life as Prayer & The Gap Between Beyond the Individual Self
III. Love and Relationships Love as the Gate to Heaven The True Nature of Love Falling in Love Dismantling the Fortress The Purpose of Intimate Relationships Commitment: Process vs. Outcome Sexuality Partnership & Community Trust & Resistance
Introduction Times are tough and miraculous. Both as a species and as individuals, human beings are facing life-shattering challenges. Many of us are also accessing astonishing new levels of consciousness, wisdom and healing. And even more of us are turning our attention to the biggest questions of our existence. As the global economic system teeters, climate change grows more extreme, and our individual lives continue to offer up their array of physical, emotional and spiritual challenges, its hard not to wonder: Why am I here? Does my life have a larger meaning and purpose? If so, how can I know what it is? How can I experience more joy, peace and fulfillment? This book offers answers to those big questions, and many more. The information contained here is not new; it has always been available to those who listen to the wisdom within, and it has appeared in many other forms, languages, cultures and time periods. Yet if you are reading these words now, it may be because you are ready to receive this wisdom now, in this form, at this time. Whoever you are, wherever you have come from, and wherever you have headed, it is my deepest hope and wish that this book may help you find your way to greater clarity, love, peace and joy.
Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life
The Core Teachings Life does not generally organize itself into chapters and sections. Our relationships to ourselves impact our relationships to others; our feelings about the work we do each day are shaped by, and shape, all of our relationships; our spiritual, emotional and physical health is affected by, and affects, all of the above; and of course, our understanding of the universe and our place in it determines how we see and experience everything that occurs, both inside and outside of us. Therefore, the chapters in this book could have been sequenced in many different ways. If you choose to read them as I have ordered them here, I hope that a certain logical progression will emerge; but if you read them in some other order, I hope that the truths within them will still be clear and useful. Everything written here is based on twelve key understandings. It is simple to read over the list, but at least in my own experience it is the work of a lifetime (at least!) to integrate these understandings in every aspect of our lives. 1. Our purpose on earth is to fulfill our inner design, the specific blueprint of our own soul. There are always myriad ways to accomplish this, on the level of form. 2. Infinite support, wisdom, compassion and healing are available to us from unseen realms. There are many names for these realms - Higher Consciousness, God, Goddess, the Divine, Source, the universe, angels, spirit guides but whatever we call them, every one of us has the ability to access this support.
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3. Joy is our best navigational aid. When we feel joy, its a sure sign that we are operating in alignment with our soul purpose and inner design. 4. Intention and prayer are the most powerful technologies in existence. Consistent, frequent, focused work with these internal technologies is the key to making changes in our lives. 5. Internal, non-physical reality is even more mutable than external, physical reality. We have the power to change any thought, feeling, belief or emotional pattern within ourselves. 6. What we do matters much less than how and why we do it. The same external action can have radically different internal meanings and effects, depending on the energy currents that fuel it and flow through it. It is those energy currents that determine our experience. 7. Our relationship with ourselves determines our relationship with all others, and with life. Of course, our relationships with others also determine our relationship with ourselves. A major part of our souls work is to become able to love ourselves as well as we love others in our best moments, and to love others as well as we love ourselves in our best moments. 8. It is only by loving and accepting ourselves exactly as we are in this moment and by allowing ourselves to know, feel, accept and receive lifes love for us, as we are -- that we make change possible. Yes, no matter who, what or how we are, we are infinitely lovable and absolutely worthy -- and our natural state, like the natural state of all living organisms, is a state of growth toward even fuller expression of ourselves. 9. We are 100% responsible for our own experience, and 0% responsible for anyone elses. Self-responsibility empowers us; blaming ourselves or anyone else robs us of power. No one else can change our experience for us and we cannot change anyone elses experience for them, either.
10. Now is the point of power. All change is possible within this moment. The past cannot affect us unless were holding on now to the postures and beliefs we formed then. And if were holding onto them now, we can change them now. 11. We can increase our power exponentially by fully saying Yes to life. Saying Yes to life as it is, with every fiber of our being, enables us to access and turbo-charge all of our resources: internal and external, physical and non-physical. 12. The work we do on ourselves also serves our lineage, and the entire human race. The individual self is the most effective portal into the work of healing the world. As you read through this book, you will find that each chapter frequently refers back to one or more of these understandings. My hope is that the chapters elaborate on these understandings, giving them context, providing examples to help us comprehend on deeper and deeper levels. Also, because each of us operates on many frequencies at once, from the rational and cognitive to the intuitive and mystical (although we may value and identify with one end of this spectrum more than the other), I hope that the many kinds of metaphors and examples I have offered will open various perceptual doorways for each reader. As you pass through those doorways, you may find yourself in contact with parts of your own being that are largely unknown to you, and yet feel profoundly familiar. Ultimately, a book like this can only impact you if and because you recognize and resonate with its truths, not only intellectually, but with your own deepest pathways of knowing.
Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life I. Our Life Purpose
1. Somethings Happening Here Somethings happening here / and what it is aint exactly clear - Buffalo Springfield Human life is challenging, complex and confusing, and were not given instruction manuals or if we are (for instance, if we grow up within a strict religious context), they are woefully incomplete. We are born tiny and physically helpless, completely dependent on the adults around us for care; and almost always they, too, are confused and struggling. At a certain point in infancy, many of us probably looked up at our caregivers and thought with horror, This is whos supposed to teach me what I need to know? And so cycles of pain, confusion, damage and suffering are perpetuated in so many vast and intricate ways, through so many generations, that sometimes it looks as if theres no way out. As Eckhart Tolle points out in A New Earth, the history of humanity has been deeply disturbed, and disturbing, for millennia. And yet something is happening here, and is growing clearer. Human consciousness is changing. An evolutionary impulse is sweeping through our species, unsettling both our inner and our outer lives. Some of us are joyfully welcoming these shifts, while others respond with fear or with forcible resistance. In fact, because each of us contains many different aspects of self at widely varying levels of evolution, most of us experience that quality of joyful welcome and that quality of fear and forcible resistance within ourselves. What is changing in human consciousness? And how can we surf the powerful waves of this change, make positive transformational use of their
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energy, rather than being pulled under by their force, and ground into the sand? It helps to start with an understanding of what human consciousness is. Like every other species on earth, human beings are part of a vast interconnected web of synergy and support. We are connected, not only to all other human beings, but to all of the other life forms and energies on earth, and beyond. Yet we often dont know it, because we are also a species uniquely gifted with, and challenged by, individuated consciousness which means that we experience ourselves as individuals, separate from all other things and beings. Interdependence is the objective truth of our physical lives. Each second of our existence is made possible by myriad other life forms, and supports other life forms in turn. We live with billions of mitochondria in our cells and bacteria in our guts; we breathe oxygen created for us by trees, and eat food grown in the earth, with the help of the sun and rain. And none of us could live the lives we live without the past and present labor of literally millions of other human beings, and all of the human-made products created from materials that came originally from earth and sea. Yet because of our individuated consciousness, its easy for us to forget that we are, in fact, always connected to all that exists. And this forgetting leads to inner and outer devastation. The vast majority of human suffering is caused by our profound though illusory experience of disconnection from everything and everyone else. Lost in the terror of this unreal disconnect, we come to damaging, incorrect conclusions about ourselves, others, and life itself; these
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conclusions and beliefs largely determine what we are able to experience. Most of us live much of our lives in various postures of rejection and objection, alternately or simultaneously judging or fighting against ourselves, others, God or Life. We feel alone and unsupported; we think our lives are meaningless; we conclude that there is something wrong with us, or with others, or with life, or with God; and because we are operating from these illusions, we cause great harm to ourselves and others, perpetuating the cycle. If there were no way out, this picture would indeed be bleak. But there is a way out or rather, a way in to a much deeper, more accurate, more freeing and joyful understanding of who and what we really are, and what is possible for us. The consciousness of the entire human collective is shifting in ways that make this enlarged understanding more accessible than ever before; huge numbers of tools are available to help people shift from constriction and despair to states of peace and connection with themselves, others, and life itself. And more people are using these tools and opening to these expanded realities every day. A Buddhist saying reminds us that Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional. In other words, every one of us will experience painful circumstances in our lives, old age, sickness and death among them. Those are the conditions of life on the earth plane; every living thing and creature is subject to them. But we are not being cursed or punished; these sources of pain do not actually mean that there is anything wrong with us, or others, or life, or God. They are simply a shared part of the experience of physical life, and when we cease to resist them, our suffering is greatly diminished.
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When we further realize that the pain and difficulty of physical life is simply a small part of a much bigger picture, that in fact a human lifetime is in itself a tiny part of each souls vast trajectory, that suffering shrinks smaller still. Life on the earth plane, life in a physical body, will always be challenging. Its designed to be challenging. Its challenges offer us astonishing creative opportunities, and nearly endless numbers of ways to explore, grow and learn. These opportunities to create and grow, to make choices, to develop and evolve, are a major part of what were here for. And when we understand the tools and the support available to us, the vast realms of wisdom and compassion we can draw on in our evolutionary journeys, our suffering can be replaced by gratitude, excitement and joy. That may sound far-fetched, I know. If youre trapped in a small, dim corner of consciousness right now, its very hard to imagine the light thats available to you. Or perhaps youve already glimpsed that light, and then lost sight of it again. Some of the most intense suffering is experienced by people who have tasted joy and freedom, but been unable to sustain it. So whoever you are, and wherever you are on your evolutionary journey, I hope youll keep reading. Its fine if you feel doubtful or skeptical. Wherever you are, Ive been there, too. And Im quite certain that somewhere, sometime, some part of you has also been in the much more radiant place I now inhabit most of the time. How can I be so sure? Because were separate, on one level of reality, but were also not separate at all.
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2. The Support Available To Us As we have already seen, no human being is ever truly alone or disconnected. Even a quick look at our physical environment can remind us of that, if we let it. For instance, I am typing these words on a laptop computer, which was invented by people, then assembled by other people in a factory somewhere a factory which was built by other people, using materials extracted and refined by yet other people, using machinery created by other people, which was made of materials that had been extracted and refined by other people before being assembled and so on. And thats just the making of my laptop! If I think about how this laptop came to be in my hands or how the chair Im sitting on came to be, and to be in my house or how the cup of tea Im sipping from was created, how the tea itself was planted and harvested and packaged and shipped and sold, how I boiled the water for the tea in a teapot which was Well, you get the picture. We are connected to other human beings, to the human currents of generosity, ingenuity, curiosity, ambition, desire, greed, altruism and much more, in every second of our lives. And of course, we are also connected to the larger physical world, the earth and the sea with their plants, animals and minerals, the sun, the sky, the rain, the wind, and everything else which surrounds us. Each of those natural elements contributes to our lives in myriad daily ways, seen and unseen. And the physical world is a reflection of the much larger unseen, nonphysical realm. We might say that the physical is a hologram of the nonphysical, a tiny, tangible representation of something far bigger and more dimensional.
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Human beings in every time, place and culture have been aware of this unseen realm, which some shamans call non-ordinary reality. Every spiritual tradition in existence has acknowledged non-physical or nonordinary phenomena; in fact, the spirit itself exists only in non-physical reality, so any experience of spirituality, by definition, takes us into that realm. We cannot see, smell, hear, taste or touch our spirits; we cannot measure them with scientific instruments; yet we know and sense that they are very real. In contemporary Western culture, however, we are generally taught to take seriously only those levels of reality with which we can physically interact. In other words, we are taught that only physical reality is real. This over-emphasis on one aspect of reality and dismissal of another has hobbled us as a society, since so much of our actual lived experience takes place in the non-physical aspects of our being for instance, our memories, our beliefs and our emotions. These non-physical phenomena play a central role in shaping our lives, yet we are given few tools for understanding or working with these levels of reality. So, when they cause us suffering, most of us have only physical methods at our disposal, in order to impact them. Physical interventions, including pharmaceutical drugs and other moodaltering physical substances, can shift our non-physical states, but they are generally clumsy, non-specific tools for working with very complex and delicate realms. (Later in this book, well discuss tools that are far more effective in the non-physical realm.) Beyond our own personal non-physical landscapes, the non-physical realm is vast and multidimensional. In fact, it is far larger and more
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complex than the physical world. Most of us sense some aspects of this unseen universe, at least some of the time; some of us even have the gift of seeing or hearing in this realm, though not exactly with the same kinds of sight and hearing we use in physical reality. Some of us see auras; some see, perceive, or have the ability to communicate with ghosts. Some experience energetic phenomena, and are able to sense when people or places have bad energy or good energy. Some practice Reiki or other forms of energy medicine, using their hands to bring healing energies from the non-physical realm into the physical. Some have had near-death experiences which offered glimpses of the reality beyond physical life. Children often have imaginary friends and of course, once we acknowledge the unseen realms as real, its clear that these friends may not be imaginary at all. Many people of all ages experience the presence, voice or touch of God, angels, spirit guides, or other divine beings. And many of the worlds best-known artists, writers, musicians and scientists have experienced their creations or inventions being given to them -- or inspired -- by the unseen realms. However, given the cultural bias against even acknowledging the existence of these realms, many of us have shut down or resisted developing our capacity to perceive and interact with them. We may fear being crazy, or being considered crazy. (I understand. Ive been there, too.) We may fear the social isolation that could result if we acknowledged perceptions and experiences that fall outside the narrow confines of consensus reality. If we grew up in a religious context, we may even have been told that such non-ordinary reality perceptions were the work of the
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devil. Tragically, these fears and social proscriptions keep us from fully accessing the most powerful sources of support, love, wisdom, compassion and healing available. Yet this, too, is changing. Many people who never imagined that they would be able to talk to angels or non-physical guides and teachers are discovering that they can do so. Others are having spontaneous awakening experiences, in which they profoundly and viscerally experience their connectedness to all that is. For some, like Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie both of whom awakened from states of profound depression these awakenings create unlikely new lives as spiritual teachers. Edgar Mitchell, one of the original Apollo astronauts, experienced such an awakening on his way back to Earth; it led him to found an organization called the Institute of Noetic Sciences, an organization that aims to bring objective scientific tools and techniques together with subjective inner knowing to study the full range of human experiences. In less dramatic ways, many millions of people are using tools like meditation, yoga, Tai Chi and Qi Gong to access states of peace, inner balance and harmony, as well as other kinds of healing. You, too, can open to receive the support of trustworthy, compassionate non-physical guides and teachers. You can also open to the support of your own light-filled core, which some people call the soul, or the Higher Self. The gifted channel D.L. Zeta proposes that we can even make contact with our own future selves, even the selves of future lifetimes, for support and guidance. There are thousands of books, courses and methods that can help you access the Akashic records, speak with angels, contact
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spirit guides or power animals, talk to God, connect with nature spirits, develop your psychic and intuitive powers, and receive other kinds of support from the non-physical realms. This book will also describe some of the specific practices and prayers that I have found helpful, and I, too, teach workshops and do one-on-one work to help people connect with higher-level sources of support. Of course, some of these teachers, practices and techniques wont feel like the right fit for you. But the most important thing for you to know is this: whoever you are, and wherever you find yourself on your lifes trajectory, there are trustworthy, compassionate, wise and benevolent non-physical beings, forces and energies available to help you.
When I was four years old, lying awake on a cot in my nursery school, I received a visit from three non-physical teachers who told or showed me something about what I was here to do with my life. Afterward, I forgot the specifics of what they had told me, but I never forgot the visit, or doubted that it was real. I also told no one about it until I was in my twenties. Even as a small child, I understood that these beings existed on a level of reality different from the reality that the people around me were acknowledging. Although the experience sounds magical now, it actually left me filled with confusion and dread. Afterward, I could never again imagine that I existed in a random universe. I understood that there was an order to the universe, and a purpose to my life, that went far beyond my small personal self. Yet I didnt know whether or how I would be able to do what it was that I was supposed to do especially since I didnt even remember what it was!
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It wasnt until I was nearly forty that I met the human teacher who helped me make contact with those guides again. Through her workshops, I learned the tools of hypnotherapy and shamanic journeying, two powerful methods for accessing unseen realms. I developed a regular practice of shamanic journeying; in these journeys, I formed relationships with guides who taught and showed me a great deal, and also helped me heal. But I was still surprised when, several years later, a non-physical teacher began speaking directly to me outside of a journey. Even though I had heard of people channeling guides, I would never, ever have imagined that such a thing would happen to me. First, I wondered if I was crazy. Next, I wondered if other people would think I was crazy. Then, I remembered that during my more than two decades of writing poetry, I had often felt that my poems knew more than I did. I suddenly wondered just where I had thought that wisdom was coming from! Once I finally opened to the experience of speaking to this new guide, I began asking him every question I could think of, both about my own life, and about life in general. Soon, other people requested readings, and I found to my great surprise that I was able to give them helpful information, too. (Of course, it wasnt really coming from me, but from my guide.) That was nearly six years ago, and this book is a product of the many conversations I have had with that guide since then.
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3: The Inner Design
So, human consciousness is changing. And non-physical sources of love and wisdom are available to help us. But why are we even here individually and collectively? What is the purpose of our lives? The simplest, truest answer is that each of us is here to fulfill our own inner design: in other words, to grow into our fullest self. What that means what that looks like, on the level of form is up to each of us to discover and determine. In other words, it is your soul's sacred task to discover what it means to be you, to embody your own being and essence as widely and deeply as you possibly can. When we look at other life forms, it is obvious to us that their purpose is to become fully themselves. For instance, if we see a dandelion seed, we know that its purpose is to become a dandelion. We would never imagine that it should try to become a rose bush or an oak tree instead. If that seed found itself pushing its way up through a crack in the sidewalk, rather than growing in a lush, moist patch of dirt, the plant that grew from it might remain small and scraggly. Even so, it would still be a dandelion, and it would still be fulfilling its purpose. No matter how small it remained, it would not judge itself as lacking, nor would it be judged by life. The dandelion seed fulfills its inner design by becoming a dandelion plant; the dandelion plant fulfills its inner design, what we might think of as its essential blueprint, simply by being.
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And so we, too, fulfill our inner design simply by being -- although our inner blueprints are somewhat more complicated, and we have vastly more choice about how we will live them out. Like all life forms, each human being is encoded with our own unique inner design, or soul-level pattern. Our sole purpose on earth is to fulfill this inner design. On the physical plane, this can take a nearly infinite number of forms; there is never a single right destiny. In other words, we are not specifically destined to become lawyers or bus drivers, to be married or to remain single, to live in a city or to move to the country. Our destiny is simply to become fully ourselves within whichever forms we choose or find available to us, just as the dandelion seeds destiny is to become a dandelion wherever it lands -- in any patch of dirt, anywhere on earth. Yet, although the specific forms of our lives are not predestined, we each carry an absolutely reliable, built-in indicator of our connection to, or disconnection from, our inner design. That indicator is joy. When we are living in ways that fulfill our inner design, we frequently experience joy. When we are living in ways not consonant with our inner design, joy is absent. In one sense, the fulfillment of your inner design is a solitary pursuit. You are the only one who can know when you are feeling the joy that indicates that youre on a path that deeply resonates with your soul (though of course other people may notice it too). No one else can predict, prescribe or dictate what that path will be. Yet in another sense, the fulfillment of your
inner design is intricately connected with the life tasks of many other beings, both human and otherwise. For this reason, its not selfish to fulfill your inner design; in fact, it is the most effective way you can connect to life, and, therefore, to other beings as well. Its easier to understand how this works by observing the life cycles of other forms of life. A flowering plant, for instance, fulfills its inner design by growing and flowering. It must do this on its own; no one else can complete this task for it. And yet it is constantly supported in fulfilling its inner design. The earth, sun and rain make it possible for the plant to grow and flower; when it needs to spread its seed, it is also supported by the wind, and by bees and other insects. As it grows, it also provides support to other life forms perhaps sheltering them, feeding them, or simply offering them the beauty of its fragrance or color. In the process of fulfilling its own inner design, it is supported by a vast and interconnected web of life, and also helps each being in that web to fulfill its own inner design. Life is highly efficient and synergistic; each life form exists within an elegant, intricate, mutually interdependent web of receiving and giving. So the flower provides gifts of its own to insects, hummingbirds, deer, or human beings; then it makes more of itself, and then dies or rather, transforms its aliveness in such a way that life can continue to make use of it by feeding and replenishing the soil from which it came. And then, of course, the cycle begins again.
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Each human being is part of a similar process, although for us it is considerably more elaborate, since, on the level of form, we are considerably more complex and long-lived than a flower. This complexity and longevity does not make us better or worse, more or less fortunate or deserving than other life forms. We are simply one among many manifestations which demonstrate the vast creativity of life itself. As weve already discussed, however, there is one aspect of our design as human beings which is unique to our species, and which offers us some very particular challenges and opportunities. It is the individuated consciousness which leads us to conceive of ourselves as selves, as separate individuals, to a degree greater than that of any other life form. Because we experience ourselves as individuals, we have the chance to exert freedom of choice in our cycles of growth and development. We have vastly more choice than a flower does about the forms through which we will fulfill our inner design, and even the degree to which we fulfill it. It is as if we are flowers capable of choosing to transplant ourselves to the desert or to a mountaintop or a heavily wooded forest, to conditions of drought or flooding or moderate rainfall, to gardens filled with other flowers or to barren, isolated patches of earth and then choosing the nature and size, color and fragrance, and even the duration of our blooms. This level of freedom is a terrific creative opportunity, and yet for many of us, it can also be a source of great confusion and stress. We may fear making the wrong choices; we may struggle against our own inclinations,
and mistrust the deep well of knowing within us. We may feel ourselves divided between different levels of our own being, or by the influence of various familial and social structures. These are challenges which no other species on earth experiences. We face these challenges and we are blessed with these opportunities -- because we perceive ourselves as individual selves. Our human consciousness enables and supports this perception, in order that we may, as a species, fulfill the unique inner design of the human race. One of the most important ways we do this is by making choices.
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3: The Role of Choice As human beings as members of the only species gifted with the challenge and opportunity of individuated consciousness a significant part of our inner design involves learning to make choices in harmony with the larger web of life. Every single choice we make can bring us closer to this harmony, or can move us away from it. Of course, this also means that each choice we make can brings us closer to, or take us further from, ourselves, since each one of us is an inextricable part of that larger web. And we make hundreds, or even thousands of choices each day! Its easy to feel overwhelmed by the responsibility of all this choice. Some of us therefore attempt to exempt ourselves from it by adopting a passive stance toward our lives and surroundings, trying to simply take what comes, rather than acting in accordance with our own preferences. We may even strive to have no preferences at all, or to pretend that we do not have preferences. Some people have the misconception that this is a spiritual way to be, a sign of our willingness to accept life as it is. Of course, it is deeply helpful to our spirits when we can accept life as it is, since the alternative refusing to accept life as it is pits us against life in a battle we can never win. But the idea that we should therefore resist having preferences, or acting on those preferences, reflects a misunderstanding of our role on earth. Accepting life as it is, and ceasing to resist it, does
not preclude our acting to change any aspect of what lies within our individual realm of influence. The Serenity Prayer recited in thousands of
12-step meetings worldwide recognizes this distinction: God grant me the ability to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Regardless of whether or not you resonate with the specific phrasing of that prayer, its message is an important one. Each of us possesses the ability to change certain things those that fall within our own personal sphere of influence and lacks the ability to change other things. Many of us exert tremendous energy trying to change things that are not within our own sphere of influence for instance, the lives of other people and neglect the myriad opportunities to change things that are very much within our own purview. The fact is, the possibility of choice is encoded within us; we cannot escape it. Even choosing to attempt to escape it or choosing to resist, deny or ignore it is, in itself, a choice. Although there is nothing wrong with choosing to refuse to choose, it's like being an artist who has millions of beautiful colors of paint available to her, yet blindfolds herself as she paints. Whatever emerges will still be her creation; in fact, her own creativity is inevitably at work even in her surrender to the principles of randomness, her choice to allow life to make her choices for her. And yet few of us in our lives truly wish for this degree of surrender. Most of us have quite distinct preferences. It is, in fact, very human to have preferences. And so it is harmonious to life, since we ourselves are a part of life, to honor those preferences with our choices, when and where we can.
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A year ago, the nasturtiums I had planted in my garden beautiful, brightly-colored, fragrant flowers - become badly infested by aphids. Some of the leaves were almost completely black with hundreds of tiny insects. A few ladybugs had arrived to feed on the aphids, but there were not nearly enough to resolve the infestation. As I thought about how to respond, the following choices occurred to me: 1) I could choose to do nothing, and let life take its course, allowing the aphids, ladybugs and flowers to battle it out. (Of course, its important to note that I had already altered lifes course by choosing to plant nasturtiums in this location.) 2) I could choose to spray poison on the aphids, thus killing both them and the ladybugs, but hopefully saving the flowers while meanwhile having an unpredictable impact on the rest of the environment. (Of course, my choice to plant the nasturtiums had already had an unpredictable impact on the environment.) 3) I could choose to buy and release more ladybugs in the hope of tipping the scale toward the ladybugs and away from the aphids. (Yet this act, too, would influence other plants and animals in the vicinity, in ways I could not predict.) 4) I could choose to remove only the most infested flowers, and hope that that action, combined with the arrival of ladybugs, would favor the flowers I left.
5) I could choose to remove all of the flowers from my garden and pave the area with concrete. This would, of course, resolve the aphid infestation and prevent any further infestations, but it would also rob me of the joy of seeing and smelling flowers; it would rob the ladybugs of their food; and this action, too, would have an unknown impact on other life forms in the area. As the gardener, I was charged with making a choice. From the perspective of life, the flowers, ladybugs, aphids and human gardener are each equally wondrous and worthy. Life would therefore served no matter what I do; life is always served, and is always serving itself and serving us, although not always in ways we recognize. Life would even be served if I removed the flowers and insects altogether, and filled my garden with concrete, since in that case life would simply relocate itself to other gardens. Of course, over time it might return to my garden as well, by sprouting up through the cracks in the cement. Its hard to keep life out. Although this was an actual situation, it is, of course, also a metaphor for my life, and for yours. Each choice we make will appear to benefit certain ends, at the expense of others and yet all will benefit life. Therefore, it is wise to make the choices that feel most harmonious t us, and that bring us joy. (I sprayed the aphids with a spray supposedly non-toxic to other life forms. This years crop of nasturtiums is even bigger, and Ive seen no sign of aphids yet. However, I also have not seen any ladybugs.)
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3: Its Not What We Do, but Why and How No choice we can make is right or wrong. Yet some choices are better-suited or less well-suited to our own inner design. The measure of the fit is always joy. And yet what matters most is not what we do, but why and how we do it the quality of energy that flows through us as we do it. For instance, if I disliked nasturtiums and was fond of aphids, the choice I made in my garden would have been out of alignment with my own spirit. Since I felt the reverse, the choice I made did suit my inner design. I felt distress when I saw the aphids consuming the nasturtiums, and feel joy now that the nasturtiums are thriving again. However, a different gardener even one fond of nasturtiums - might have felt profoundly uncomfortable with killing any life form, including aphids. The choice I made would not have been harmonious for such a person. Was I right or wrong to kill the aphids? Was I right or wrong to plant the nasturtiums to begin with? Is it right or wrong to plant anything at all, to impact our own environments in any way? When you consider the vast impact of each of our choices, these questions become very difficult to answer. Everything we do will benefit some life forms, and cause harm to others. Each of us must find our own way, making choices that feel harmonious to us on a soul level. And as long as our choices are rooted in a sense of connection with life and with ourselves, they will exist in harmony
with the larger web of life of which we are part.
If, however, I had
sprayed the aphids or allowed the aphids to remain while feeling a sense of hatred for them, my actions would have had an entirely different meaning and reverberation in the unseen world. Acting with the energy of anger anger at the very existence of aphids, for instance, or at the world which constantly pits one life form against another would have caused me to set myself against life. And when we separate ourselves from life in this way, we cannot feel joy, no matter how beautiful our gardens may externally appear. Clearly, if the energy that flows through our actions is more important than our actions themselves, there is no way to take a formulaic approach to life. All choices must be considered within the larger context of our selves and lives, and we must be alert to our own beliefs, feelings and values as we choose. Almost any action we might take could serve our inner design and thus be in harmony with life, or could represent an act of self-betrayal, depending on our reasons for taking action, and on the energy that flows through our action. And we are the only ones who can truly know the place from which our actions come. No matter what choice we make, someone else may judge or find fault with it. Of course, in the very act of judging and fault-finding, they are separating themselves from life, and thus from joy. Since there is no set formula or rubric by which we can determine the actions most harmonious to life, many of us seek external authorities to guide us. There is no shortage of religious leaders, politicians, friends or relatives who will be happy to tell us what is right or wrong, according to
their own viewpoints -- which, of course, may contradict one another. Yet the biggest problem with accepting external authority is that its counsel generally limits itself to our actions, rather than the energies from which those actions come. For instance, many external authorities are either in favor of or against abortions. Yet, like almost any other action, an abortion could emerge from shame and hatred or from clarity and love. For someone who truly believes that abortion is murder, having an abortion cannot possibly be harmonious because committing an act she sees as murder will separate her from herself, and from life. Yet for someone whose most strongly held value is to birth children only in circumstances well-prepared to nourish them, having an abortion might well be an act of love, completely consonant with herself and with life. If any choice that we make with the energy of love can be a harmonious choice, how can we ever decide what to do? Say, for instance, that we have created a life with a partner, home and job, yet sense that something is missing or out of alignment with our souls. Do we need to leave that partner, home, job or other life circumstance in order to grow, and to restore our sense of joy? Or can we stay with our partner, home, job or other life circumstance, and bring a new or heightened quality of attention, intention and appreciation to it, in order to continue growing and restore our joy?
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In truth, either option is equally valid. It is up to us. Life has no preference in this regard; life will adapt to whichever choices we make, and so will everyone and everything else around us. What matters most, and what will most profoundly shape our experience and the experience of those around us, is the energy from which our choices come. If we force ourselves to leave or to stay from a posture of self-negation, self-punishment, or fear, our choice will be inharmonious. If we can instead make our choice from a posture of love for ourselves as well as for the other people involved, our choice will be in harmony with life. Changing the outer form of our lives ending a relationship, leaving a job or career, moving to a new locale obviously does not guarantee that the new form will better suit our inner design. Its entirely possible to make radical changes on the physical level, yet remain essentially in the same place emotionally and energetically, continuing to enact the same types of dynamics our souls sought to change. And so it makes sense that the reverse is also always possible: to remain in the same place physically, yet engage with the externally unchanged forms of our lives in a completely different way. It is not better to change the outer form, nor is it better not to. On the level of form, there is never only one possible harmonious choice. In fact, the more fully we understand the true nature of our inner design, the more we realize the possibility of fulfilling it through almost any choice. For instance, someone whose inner design draws her to know could acquire and
transmit knowledge if she took on the role of a teacher but also if she worked as a waitress, gardener, secretary, electrician, carpenter, truck driver, and so on. The truth is, the level of form always offers us myriad ways to fulfill our inner design. The specific choices we make are far less important than our reasons for making them and the energy that flows through us and through our choices, whatever they are. My guides once showed me a vision which helped me to understand this principle: I am given the opportunity to look down at the earth as if from another planet, through the eyes of someone who knows nothing about human life on earth. In this state, without any preconceived notions, I see many people engaged in tasks. Some are bringing plates of food to other people; some are driving big trucks filled with things; some are attending to people who are lying in bed; some are standing up and talking in big rooms filled with other people; some are sitting, staring at small boxes and making tapping sounds with their fingers, and so on. Since, in this vision, I have no idea of the meaning or purpose, of these actions, all I can see is the quality of energy flowing through each person. I notice that some of them are filled with an energy that looks bright, light, clear and sparkly, like the bubbles in club soda, while others have a thickerrope-like current of light running through them. In some people, the light is bright white; in others it has more of a golden or pinkish hue. Whatever the
nature of the energy in each persons body, I see how it flows through them into their tasks, and into the other people with whom they come in contact.
Through this vision, I could see very clearly that any role or task in the world can be a vehicle through which each person brings their own particular essence or light into the world. The Gnostic Gospels, thought to be secret teachings given by Jesus, remind us: If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you. This teaching emphasizes how essential it is that we find ways to express to bring forth the energy inside us. For instance, if you are a waitress and find joy in your work if you can experience your job as offering you an opportunity to nourish others on many levels, and thus to be nourished yourself then being a waitress may help you to fulfill your inner design. If, however, you are a waitress who longs to be a car mechanic, being a waitress may destroy a part of your spirit. It is not that being a car mechanic is intrinsically better than being a waitress, nor vice versa. But one form of work or another may indeed be better suited to you. On the other hand, waiting tables may actually suit you fine, and yet you may have been influenced by the opinions of others who do not value your work and thus have separated you from the work, and from yourself. This is why it is so important to become your own authority, to develop the
ability and willingness to discern what is harmonious for you, and make choices accordingly. It can be comforting to realize that in a way, it actually doesn't matter which specific circumstances we choose, or find ourselves in; we always have the opportunity to bring forth what is within us. The Dalai Lama tells the story of a Tibetan monk who spent most of his adult life in prison, undergoing abuse and torture by the Chinese government. After his release, he told the Dalai Lama that each day of his imprisonment, he had been quite afraid. I didn't fear for my life, he explained. I feared every day that I would lose my compassion for the Chinese. Obviously, for this monk, being able to experience compassion for others was a very deeply held value. For him, losing a sense of compassion would have been like losing life itself. Spiritual literature is full of stories like this stories of people who may seem extraordinary to us, who have maintained the light in their own souls despite unimaginable hardship. Yet the truth is, every person alive faces the hardship of individuated consciousness the challenge of perceiving ourselves as separate from all other life forms. And countless times each day, each one of us can choose to remember and live from the truth of our connectedness to ourselves, one another, and the larger web of life or to forget it, separate ourselves from ourselves, and experience the suffering that comes of that.
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4: Why and How Our Choices Matter As the monks story makes clear, we always have the ability to make choices choices that can either connect us more fully to ourselves and to life, or further our sense of separation. Life offers up an endless stream of ways, forms and contexts in which we will be challenged to learn what we need to learn, heal what we need to heal, and bring forth what is within us. Even if we are physically confined to prisons or hospital beds, a vast array of inner choices remains available. And these inner choices constitute our real work, regardless of our outer circumstances. Of course, when it is possible for us to choose outer circumstances to our liking, it is harmonious for us to do so. Although any choice we make can serve life, we can serve life most easily when we are working within forms and structures that resonate with us and bring joy. Yet even when we choose forms that bring us joy, the lessons we need to learn and the challenges we need to grapple with will emerge within them. There is no exception to this rule nor could or should there be, since that work is what we came to this plane to do! It is helpful to recognize that fact and embrace it, rather than fighting it or taking it as evidence that something has gone wrong. For instance, if your soul yearns to have children, it is harmonious for you to do so not because your life with your children will be easy, but because a life with children is the context in which you have chosen to engage with your share of challenge. If you prefer to remain childless, that, too, is a harmonious choice and your childless life will also present
challenges, as all life paths do. In any case -- with children or without, by conscious choice or by accident you can still fulfill your inner design. It is simply a question of creating more or less easeful circumstances for your own spirit. Life is designed so elegantly that regardless of our outer circumstances -- whether we live in the city or the country, marry or remain single, work as a carpenter or a psychotherapist we will at each moment have opportunities to do our real work, the work that consists of fulfilling our inner design. Of course some of us would prefer to be married carpenters in the city, and some would prefer to be single psychotherapists in the countryside or married psychotherapists and single carpenters, or live in the jungle or beside the sea -- and on the level of form, all of these options and many more have been provided to us. They are the field in which we get to play. They are the palette of colors with which we get to paint. Although nothing we do is wrong or right from life's point of view, some choices are better aligned with our own preferences. Yet even these choices do not assure us of ease and happiness. If we imagine that our choices should consistently bring contentment, we will be sorely disappointed! And if we therefore try repeatedly to change the outer form in the illusion that this will bring the ease we seek, we will become increasingly confused and embittered. If we have become so twisted and distorted inside that we do not allow ourselves to choose those forms to which our spirits
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most genuinely gravitate, and force ourselves instead to choose other forms, we will also suffer unnecessarily. We help ourselves and life by recognizing that we do have the right and the ability to choose the outer forms to which we are most drawn, and to reconfigure those forms in accordance with our own deep inner signals. Yet it is also helpful to remember that all choices, all paths, offer challenges, and that this, too, is right and necessary for our evolution. No matter what we choose, we cannot escape the cauldron of human difficulty. The parent raising children faces one cauldron; the lone mystic faces another. Experiencing these cauldrons, allowing them to work fully in us and on us, reaching the point where we willingly agree to accept the cauldron (which cannot anyway be refused but how hard we try, and for how long!) as our gift and our teacher, as a vehicle for our souls development, as the context in which we will fulfill our inner design that is what we are here for. That is the reason for our physical existence. In one of Carlos Castenada's books, the shaman Don Juan tells his young apprentice: All paths are the same; they lead nowhere. So the question to ask is, Does this path have a heart? Of course, the heart or lack of heart is not intrinsic to the path itself; it exists within you. You can only know whether a path has heart for you by listening to your own spirit, and by observing which paths and choices bring you joy. Our choices are very important. They are simply not important in the way we think they are. On the level of the larger tapestry of reality, it really
doesnt make much difference whether we marry one person or another, have children or remain childless, become a scientist or a bus driver, a nurse or an accountant. Our souls have ample opportunity to grow and develop in any circumstance we can possibly create, and the wounds and confusions we are here to work through will find ways to manifest in any circumstance, too. This is why we never have to fear missing out on opportunities, or making the wrong choice. Whichever paths we choose, whatever our intentions, life will continually offer us opportunities and possibilities that fit our trajectory. Such opportunities are everywhere; the field of possibilities which contains us, and which we contain, is much larger than we can conceive. Its as if we are artists with billions of colors at our disposal but, since no palette could possibly hold all those colors, only the colors or options relevant to the picture we are currently painting will present themselves to us. When we choose to begin a different picture when we re-set our intentions then a different palette automatically becomes available.
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5: Joy as Navigational Aid As we steer our way through the many challenges and choices involve in being human, joy is our best navigational aid. As weve seen, external systems of thought including religion, politics, and even the opinions of others close to us cannot tell us what is most deeply harmonious for us. Even when we attempt to choose for ourselves, we may find ourselves torn between different aspects of self, and different levels of understanding. The most soul-serving way out of such a dilemma is to navigate toward joy. Human beings are designed in such a way that we feel joy when we are living in congruence with our inner design, and feel an absence of joy when we are not. Although no choice is wrong or right, there are choices which are more or less harmonious for each of us choices better-suited, or less well-suited, to our own inner design. For instance, as I write this, I am sitting on a chair, with a steaming cup of tea on the table next to me. The cups inner design makes it well-suited to hold hot liquid; its handle enables me to bring the liquid to my mouth without burning my hand. The table is well-designed as a surface on which a cup can rest, and the chairs design makes it an object on which I can comfortably sit. Now, I could sit on my table and rest my cup of tea on my chair there would be nothing wrong with doing so. Yet it clearly works better the other way around. I could pour my tea onto the surface of the table, and then crouch underneath the table to try to catch some drops of tea in my mouth; again, while this would not be wrong, it would be inefficient, would
leave me thirsty, and over time might damage the surface of the table. I could attempt to sit on my cup, pour my tea onto my chair, and tilt it toward me to try to drink from it not wrong, but again, certainly uncomfortable and unsatisfying. And my cup might break in the process of being used in a manner so ill-suited to its inner design! For each of us, as for the table, chair and cup, there are roles, tasks, choices for which we are more optimally suited, and toward which our spirit naturally gravitates and other roles for which we are not so well-suited, and toward which we do not gravitate. Few of us would literally attempt to sit on our cups, pour tea onto the surfaces of our tables, and drink from the tables edge. And yet, how many of us do indeed attempt to use ourselves to direct our own life energy into forms and pathways just as ill-suited to us? Weve all experienced times or areas of our lives in which we feel energized, interested, engaged, motivated, excited, and grateful. This is evidence that we are living in alignment with our inner design. Many of us have also experienced times or areas of life in which weve felt restless, bored, unhappy, self-doubting, trapped, despairing, and angry whether we are angry at ourselves, at someone else, at the world, or at life itself. These emotional states can serve as an indicator that we are doing the equivalent of attempting to sit on our cups and drink from our tables. Its also true that in the complex landscapes of our inner lives, sometimes chairs actually seem to become tables or cups, and vice versa. We may thrive for a while in a given form a relationship, home, job, career
and then stop thriving. As our spirits grow and change which they must, since growth and change are the hallmark of all living organisms we may shift in such a way that the forms that suited us well at some point in our lives cease to suit us at all. When this happens, it takes courage to heed the inner message to move on, particularly when that means separating from the social structures around us, or ending relationships in which we have become emotionally enmeshed. It can be extremely challenging to keep pace, in our physical lives, with our inner unfolding. It can require shifts which take time, energy, effort and money to implement. Beyond that, it can take great courage. It requires us to trust ourselves, to believe that the inner signals were receiving are accurate, important, and worth following. This is especially true when our inner signals seem to be calling us in less conventional directions, directions our family, friends, or spouse may not understand or approve of. And although life is always supporting life, it unlike most of us! has no preference for conditions of ease over hardship. Some new age rhetoric seems to imply that following our bliss will always bring material wealth. This is not the case nor should it be, since our spirits do not necessarily seek or resonate with that particular kind of ease, and they certainly do not require it. Sometimes there is conflict between the human self, which tends to seek ease, and the spirit, which tends to value growth above all else. In order to honor our own spirits, we may sometimes need to make choices that, from the human perspective, appear to be sacrifices. Yet
the alternative sacrificing the call of the spirit in order to heed the human personalitys desire for comfort will never bring joy.
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7: The Souls Timeline It is rarely possible for the soul to accomplish all of the learning, growth, exploration and healing it has set out for itself, and fully express and embody all aspects of itself, in one human lifetime. Therefore, fulfillment of our inner design generally stretches out over what we consider, from our current vantage point, to be many lifetimes. In fact, from the perspective of the soul, a single lifetime is actually quite an arbitrary measurement. Expecting yourself to completely fulfill your inner design in that time frame is perhaps akin to giving yourself exactly ten minutes to prepare, eat and digest a delicious, complex, multi-course meal. Perhaps, with extraordinary effort, it could be done; but why would you even wish to complete such a task so quickly, rather than savoring it for several hours, or even an entire day? Human beings tend to think it is better to complete things quickly. However, the soul is in no hurry to embody its inner design. It also has no resistance to fully embodying its inner design. In other words, it neither pushes us, nor drags its feet. It is our choice how fully we will take on the work of our soul how fully we will embody our inner design -- in each lifetime. Although this may be difficult for us to grasp, there is no positive value assigned to moving more quickly or more slowly in that process. The only incentive life gives us is the feeling of joy that comes when we are living in harmony with our own nature, and with our inner design.
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Whether we work rapidly or gradually, calmly or with great fear, under conditions of tremendous hardship or with apparent ease, most of us do manage to make some movement toward this unfolding in each human lifetime. This movement may be partial, or may be relatively confined to certain aspects of our lives; again, there is nothing wrong with that, although it is likely to result in uneven allotments of joy in different parts of our lives. We may, for instance, choose to spend a lot of time and energy on our career, and that may help us fulfill one aspect of our inner design, and thus bring joy even while other aspects of our lives and our being remain somewhat underdeveloped. Or our paid work may feel relatively unimportant to us; we may give our best energy to, and experience the major part of our joy in, the process of raising children. Or we may come most fully alive while making art or music, or while gardening, or while experiencing the infinite permutations of love and sexuality in one or many intimate relationships. Each of these choices could be a way of fulfilling a part of our inner design. Regrettably, some of us manage to spend the greater part of our life energy in ways that do not contribute much to the fulfillment of our inner design. Again, it isnt necessarily a question of what we are doing, but rather, of how we are doing it -- the quality of energy and consciousness we are bringing to whatever we do, as well as how well that endeavor, and our approach to it, suits our particular nature. Each of us gravitates more naturally to certain conditions rather than others, and if social or familial
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pressures lead us to twist ourselves into shapes unnatural for us, we rob ourselves of the possibility of joy. Even if we are engaged in activities which in and of themselves are consonant with our inner design, it is possible to do them in a way that does not bring joy -- especially if we are unclear of the real purpose and value of our endeavors. Again, what we do is never as important as why or how we do it, or the quality of energy that flows through us as we do it. For instance, if we are engaged in an activity to which we are truly drawn, yet engage with a sense of pressure or obligation, we are working at cross-purposes with ourselves. Any sense of strain or forcing is an unfailing indication of misalignment or confusion about our true purpose. In this case, it is helpful to remind ourselves that all outer forms are simply vehicles for our soul's development. I work as a therapist and healer, and for the most part, I love my work. It is an incredible privilege to be an intimate witness to peoples processes of healing and unfolding and also to witness the myriad ways in which human beings can block ourselves, harm ourselves, and keep ourselves in pain. As long as I remain clear that my role is to hold the energy of love and possibility, no matter what my clients do, I can do my work and remain in joy. However, when I lose that clarity and start to believe that my work is actually to help people, I can become very frustrated and drained by working with people who do not seem from my limited vantage point to
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be open to my help. This creates a feeling of strain in me and in my interactions with those people, which robs me of joy. If I did not understand this phenomenon, I might think that it meant I needed to stop working as a therapist. In fact, I could stop working as a therapist if I chose to there would be nothing wrong with that choice. But if I did not address my underlying confusion, I would most likely continue to find myself in similar states of frustration when friends or family members seemed to refuse my help. On the other hand, when I reconnect with my true purpose to fulfill my own inner design and focus on the quality of energy that flows through me when I work with clients, rather than on the outcomes that are visible to me, my sense of joy returns.
At times we may be aware that our souls are urging us in a particular direction, yet still find ourselves making choices that move us in the opposite direction. Living in ways out of sync with our inner design sometimes offers social rewards, and we may experience some satisfaction in receiving those rewards. But making choices that are out of alignment with our own souls, or for reasons that are not aligned with our own souls, will never bring joy. Joy is a state of being which can neither be manufactured, nor disguised. When we feel joy, it is an unfailing indicator that we are working in harmony with our inner design. Some years ago, I was one year away from receiving tenure as a professor at a university. But I had begun my training as a healer, and the
joy I felt when I worked with clients told me that I needed to leave the fulltime classroom behind. My colleagues and most of my friends were aghast that I would leave such a secure, prestigious and coveted job in exchange for a private practice in a non-mainstream healing modality. And I did experience some fear and, for awhile, a considerable financial impact, as well - as I implemented the changes in my life. Nonetheless, I have never regretted my choice. I have worked with many clients who found themselves at similar junctures, but felt unable to make the choices their souls urged them toward. In some cases, this led to depression and bitterness. In other cases, it led to physical illness or accidents which rendered them unable to continue on the socially-approved path though it also sometimes rendered them less able to follow the paths they yearned toward. Sometimes, however, these difficult emotional or physical states ended up serving as wake-up calls, and the people involved became able to turn back toward themselves and choose in harmony with their own natures once again. When that did not happen, the suffering continued. Yet life is endlessly generous in offering us opportunities to wake up to the ways we are separating from ourselves, and from life. Its never too late to choose in accordance with our own joy. How can we know what will bring us joy? Some of us find ourselves relatively easily able to identify and move toward what nourishes our souls. Others have grown so gnarled and bent by hardships in this or other
lifetimes that we have twisted against our own natures; thus we unwittingly set ourselves against the ways of being that will bring us real fulfillment. If this is the case, we will need to heal this distorted internal posture before we are able to fulfill much of our inner design. We may also need to engage in internal detective work, becoming more attuned and alert to the voice of our soul. And yet this very work, the work of restoring ourselves to ourselves, is also part of the fulfillment of our inner design. In the big picture of our souls' development, we can never lose our way or go astray. It is impossible to find ourselves in the wrong place, because we are part of life, and carriers of life, and life does not ever prefer any circumstance or situation over any other. Anything we do can be used by our souls as fodder for growth, and can, in that sense, help us to fulfill our inner design. Certain choices do enable us to fulfill our inner design more easily and harmoniously, while other choices create more difficulty for us like the dandelion growing up through the crack in the sidewalk, rather than in the moist, rich soil of a tended garden. Life does not prefer the lush garden to the concrete patch; life finds a way to grow in both. The plant in the lush garden may grow faster and taller, and may bear more blossoms -- and yet it is truly no more successful, no more in harmony with itself, than the plant that encounters more difficult circumstances and must struggle to grow a single leaf. Each plant is being supported completely by life; and, being plants, and lacking the individuated consciousness that makes life so very
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interesting and challenging for human beings, each plant completely accepts itself and its life, and opens itself completely to the support it receives. However, although life itself has no preference for ease over difficulty, for the vast, thriving tree over the scrawny, struggling plant, we ourselves generally do have a preference. Most of us would prefer that our lives be easier rather than harder, and bear more fruit and flowers, rather than fewer. And in fact, as we become more able to recognize and value our own inner design, and make choices that support rather than oppose its fulfillment, we will experience more ease, joy and fruitfulness on the soul level.
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8: The Tapestry of Reality Our human lives exist within a reality so vast that we can best understand it as a multi-dimensional tapestry, extending inward and outward, forward and backward, upward and downward in short, in every possible direction. This tapestry incorporates all of what we think of as the past, the present, and the future. It contains within it not only what we have physically actualized, but every other potential we hold. It is a web of love, compassion and synergy far greater than we can perceive, or even imagine. Because this tapestry is so vast, our human minds can hold only a tiny segment of its fabric. It is as if our eyes are fixed a mere inch away from its surface, rendering us unable to see its larger design. For this reason, we can be easily distracted by details which are actually minute in relation to the whole. If you have ever looked at an actual tapestry or painting from very close up, and then moved across the room to look at it again, you have probably noticed that the design made more sense when seen from further away; its images or patterns resolved and became more recognizable to you when you looked at it from a distance. Since we rarely have the opportunity to do this with our own lives much less with the vast design of which our own lives are only a tiny part there is much that we cannot see, and much else that we inevitably misinterpret. Remembering this can help us hold our experiences, beliefs, desires and disappointments more lightly, and allow us
to more easily see the humor, even the grace, in what occurs. When the energies of lightness, humor and grace enter our being, they create a different momentum in our lives; they help us to uncramp ourselves, relax our inner muscles, and behold ourselves and our lives with more equanimity. There is nothing wrong with our limited vantage point, and nothing wrong with us for having it. Its the nature of the human experience, and it allows us to learn and develop in some very specific ways. Our relative lack of awareness, at this period in our evolution as a species, is actually an integral aspect of the tapestry not a mistake, nor something to struggle against, bemoan, or resist. And yet when we are able to briefly glimpse the larger reality of which we are part, such glimpses imbue our lives with a much deeper sense of meaning, purpose and joy. An individual flower cannot comprehend the larger forces which propel it into being, nourish it into bloom, and allow other beings to give to it and receive from it at every point in its life cycle. But, because the flower does not conceive of itself as separate from the web of life, it also cannot feel fear, doubt, or self-doubt. The individuated consciousness of human beings leaves us very vulnerable to such feelings despite the great web of life which has made us and is supporting us, and is available to support us, at all times. For this reason, it is helpful for us to consciously observe, remember and remind ourselves of our interconnectedness, and of the true size of the tapestry of which we are part. If we feel alone or disconnected from life, it is
actually a trick of our consciousness, a blind spot, and not reality. We are, in fact, never alone, and never unsupported, just as no flower or tree is ever alone or unsupported. Life is always with us, always moving through us and available to us, regardless of circumstances. Throughout human history, there have been certain exceptional people, Jesus Christ and the Buddha among them, who have seen and lived from a larger view of the tapestry. And every culture in human history has cultivated rituals and practices, including meditation, prayer, yoga, and the use of sacred medicines, to help people access a larger view of ourselves, and our place in the universe. Even people who have never engaged in such practices occasionally experience moments of profound clarity, in which we become filled with a sense of our intrinsic connection to life, and to lifes many forms. For most of us, these glimpses remain brief; we cannot sustain this expanded perspective day to day, moment to moment. Nonetheless, our memory or awareness of the larger truth can remain with us, continuing to inform us on deeper levels -- even as we go about our rightful business of living our lives as individual human selves, with all of the unique gifts, opportunities and challenges of the human state.
Rene Daumal writes: One climbs and one sees, one descends and one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one no longer sees, one can at least still know. And meditation teacher Jack Kornfield adds, There are certain truths we can learn only by descent. The descent and its subsequent humility can be seen as another form of blessing. 55 Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life
Section II: Challenges on the Path
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9: Releasing Life on its Own Recognizance As our consciousness expands, and as we deepen our contact with the realms of support available to us, we will probably begin to experience new levels of hope, purpose, and even joy. Yet we are also likely to find ourselves slamming up against internal patterns that stunt our growth and keep us from joy. One such pattern is a basic posture of resistance to life itself. Many of us feel that life has committed crimes against us. We may feel we did not receive what we needed or deserved -- or that we received treatment we did not deserve -- from our parents, siblings, schools, spouses, friends, children, workplaces, or other people or circumstances in our lives. And in many cases, from the human perspective, we are absolutely right. There is a great deal of unconsciousness, abuse, violence, cruelty and neglect among human beings, and most of us have been the recipients of these damaging behaviors at least some of the time. (Of course, though we may wish it were otherwise, we have likely been the perpetrators at least some of the time, as well.) It is also true that this damage is not apportioned equally or fairly. Some of us have endured extraordinary amounts of abuse and hardship. We may feel angry, bitter, mistrustful and scarred and we may believe we are right to feel this way. On the human level, no one ever deserves cruelty, abuse or neglect. Yet when seen as part of the larger tapestry of reality, hardship is simply part of lifes creativity, part of the way that life loves itself and us -- by extending itself into every corner and crevice, every circumstance
imaginable. The dandelion that grows up through a crack in the cement, rather than in lush soil, is not being abused or neglected by life. Life has not turned against it, nor against any one of us, no matter how difficult our circumstances may appear. Of course, it is different for a child to be molested by her father than for a dandelion seed to find itself growing through a cracked sidewalk. Neither the child nor the dandelion seed are experiencing the conditions optimal for their flourishing; the difference is that the dandelions hardship is caused by impersonal forces, while the childs abuse is perpetrated by a being with individuated consciousness a being who, like all human beings, experiences himself as separate from other beings, and is therefore capable of having an intent to harm. For the human beings involved, this is a deeply problematic situation. And yet on the level of life itself, hardship and abuse are never personal. A dandelion seed is blown onto cement; a child is born with a birth defect; a forest fire burns down thousands of trees; a father molests his daughter. Life very rarely provides optimal circumstances to anyone or anything. Yet because of the way our individuated consciousness leaves us feeling separate from life, we are prone to experience this generalized phenomenon of difficulty as a personal attack or affront. When we experience pain, we may erroneously conclude that life is cruel, that life does not value us, or that life is punishing us. In turn, we may then decide to punish life. Emotionally, we arrest life for the crimes we believe it has committed against us.
Sadly, if we adopt this posture, what we actually arrest is our own development. We cannot grow and develop in healthy ways by pitting ourselves against life. We are life, so by pitting ourselves against life, we pit ourselves against ourselves. And when we are pitted against ourselves and against life, it is much harder for the nourishing energies of life to reach us. We are like dandelions growing up through cracks in cement, that go on to erect metal boxes around themselves so that neither the rain nor the sun can reach them. In this way we compound and greatly increase our own suffering. What is the alternative? When someone has been arrested for a crime, they may sometimes be released from police custody on their own recognizance, without having to pay bail. This is an act of good faith and trust on the part of the court, a body not generally known for its faith or trust. Releasing life from the internal house arrest of our own judgment and resentment, releasing life on its own recognizance, is also an act of good faith and trust. Beyond that, it is a profound soul movement a movement that is necessary if we are to live in harmony with ourselves, our circumstances, and the larger tapestry of reality. If a dandelion finds its growth stunted by harsh conditions, it will struggle to survive, snf of course, it may not survive. But whatever happens, it will not blame itself, nor anyone else, nor life for its hardship. Yet, because of our individuated consciousness because we experience ourselves as
separate from other people, and from life when we suffer, we tend to look for someone to blame. Often, people who have been abused or neglected blame themselves. The belief that we must have deserved our harsh treatment, or that it would not have happened if we had been somehow different or better, often takes root in childhood and persists throughout our lives, causing a great deal of additional suffering. If we do not blame ourselves, we may blame our parents, or whoever else treated us badly. Those of us who find ourselves unable to blame our parents if, for example, we recognize that our parents were also abused, and were merely re-enacting a cycle may blame life itself, or God, or our guides, however we understand them. And of course, many people ricochet internally between all of these potential targets for blame. The problem with blame is that it is a vicious internal loop. No matter what or whom we blame, the act and energy of blaming will keep us feeling both wrong or wronged, and will separate us from ourselves, from others, and from life. Even though someone who is accustomed to blaming herself might think it would be healthier to blame others, or vice versa, the truth is that blame does not, will not and cannot heal us. No matter where we direct it, blame can never help us connect more fully to ourselves, to others or to life. And blame is also never true, in a larger sense. So it is an emotional and energetic dead-end, an inner posture that saps our energy, keeps us retelling the same stories, and thereby prevents the healing we long for.
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In order to facilitate true inner peace and healing, we must dismantle this internal blame machine, and commit to the work of accepting ourselves, our lives and our circumstances, exactly as we and they are. It is impossible to feel blame and acceptance at once; they are opposing currents. So if we cultivate acceptance, the blame in us will wither, and if we dismantle blame, we create at least the possibility of acceptance. Although this may feel frightening, destabilizing and disorienting at first, we will soon find that eliminating blame as an internal option frees up a great deal of emotional energy. Since blame is a vicious loop, cycles of other-blame, self-blame and life-blame keep us running in circles, rather than able to make real movement. It takes conscious intention and work to shift this pattern, but help is available from our guides or from the deepest parts of ourselves, when we ask for it. If you feel ready to change the painful, circular pattern of blame, here is a prayer that can help. If you dont relate to the word God, feel free to substitute any word or phrase that resonates for you.
I resolve in this moment, and in all other moments, to relinquish the illusion that anything in my life, past, present or future, is, was or will be in any way different from my destiny, my highest good. I resolve to allow and cultivate instead a profound acceptance of and gratitude for all of the circumstances, events and people in my life, for all that these configurations have taught me, and can and will teach me, when I permit them to. I resolve to thank the universe and my own larger self daily for all of the circumstances and relationships in my life, exactly as they are. I resolve to meditate daily on the clear understanding that nothing is 61 Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life
wrong and to accept the help of the universe in living, seeing, hearing, breathing, experiencing this truth more fully and completely each day, and with each breath. I recognize that resistance to any phenomenon in or outside the self is resistance to God, and I resolve to continually and completely dissolve the misperceptions which have resulted in my current resistance to God. There is no one and nothing that has failed me, least of all Life. Life has served me perfectly and continues to do so, and I humbly ask for Lifes help in removing my obstinate blindness and resistance to its service and to my own true role and purpose on behalf of Life. When I withhold from Life, I withhold from myself, for Life and I are one. I recognize that it is this soul movement, rather than any other inner or outer change, that will bring the peace I seek.
This prayer uses very strong language to combat the human tendency to blame. But there are many other ways to disable blame. One simple place to begin is simply by ceasing to pray or wish for anything in your life to be other than as it is. If, in this process, you find that parts of yourself do wish for things to be other than as they are, then you can step back a bit further and cease wishing for those parts to be different. You can accept them as they are in this moment, in all their confusion and striving, without identifying them as yourselves. You can be the watcher, the seer, the holder of all that is, both "inside" and "outside" ourselves. And as you do this, an internal reconciliation can occur. If, for example, you have a cold: do not pray to get well. If you have pain, do not long for it to go away. Allow the cold or the pain to be there, just
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as it is. Focus your energy not toward resisting, but toward a deeper and deeper allowing. Allow yourself to remember and to know that there are tremendous forces both "inside" and "outside" of you, which are tirelessly working to help you reach fuller alignment and harmony with the universe. Your conscious intention to align yourself with their compassionate stream will serve you better than any other intention or effort you could possibly hold. And if part of you does wish for the cold to go away, or for the pain to diminish, then you can also focus on more deeply acknowledging and accepting that part of your being. Let it know that you understand its wish to experience something different to feel better. Let it know that you accept it, too, exactly as it is. On a biological level, it is natural for us to flinch from pain. And if we touch something that physically burns or cuts us, it is, in fact, wise to quickly move away. So its not surprising that so many of us have learned to do the same thing with our emotions. The problem is that this very often results in our moving away from the vulnerable, hurting parts of ourselves, and also moving away from life which is what happens when we close ourselves to, or reject, any aspect of our experience. Life, however, does not ever move away from us. Life offers itself up to be lived in us, and through us, no matter what we experience, and no matter how we respond. Whether we embrace it or hurl epithets, life remains with us, and available to us. It is endlessly generous and abundant in that way.
And so when we are able to meet life in a spirit similar to that with which life meets us, our experience is joyful. When we resist any aspect of ourselves, our experience, or life, our experience is painful. Life itself has no preference for joy rather than pain. Life recognizes all states of being as equally valid, and embraces all of them, and all of us. Yet since most of us would prefer to feel joy rather than pain, we can use our pain as an indicator of something inside of us that is in need of attention, a sort of inner warning light, like the kind on car dashboards. Like a check engine light, our pain will remain illuminated for as long as is needed to get our attention. The lessons we need to learn are sent to us by life, and
pursue us relentlessly; they only grow more forceful if we attempt to escape or evade them. This is not because life is actually trying to teach us a lesson, as some parents say when they punish their children. It is simply an energetic principle. We cannot fail to feel pain when we separate ourselves from life. We cannot remain connected to life when we attempt to escape or evade any part of it. It is only by embracing, rather than rejecting life, that we can move from an experience of pain to an experience of joy. Of course, this embracing movement also requires us to embrace ourselves since we are part of life, and can never be separate from it. If we accept the challenges our lives bring to us, and embrace them if we live our way into those challenges fully, bringing ourselves to the tasks at hand with all the depth of courage, wisdom, spirit and heart we can find
within ourselves -- then we will serve life. And if at the same time we can also remember not only in our minds, but in the very depths of our beings that this life as it appears to us is only a tiny part of the larger tapestry of reality, and that the whole of our existence and being is much bigger than we can presently see, then life will find us more receptive, and will have an easier time serving us.
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10: Saying Yes to Life Releasing life on its own recognizance is a step on the path toward saying Yes to life. But saying I will cease to fight and resist life is still not quite the same as saying Yes. For most of us, it is very hard to say a full, complete Yes to life in all of its aspects. In fact, most people never do. Yet this refusal to say Yes to life has many consequences. It means that we do not and cannot fully say Yes to ourselves, since we are a part of life. It robs us of the deep peacefulness that comes from aligning ourselves to the larger movements of the universe. And it diminishes our power, our ability to manifest changes in our lives. After all, how powerful can we be when were pitting our small human fists against the much larger body of the world? Essentially, when we do not say Yes to life -- to the great stream of energy which contains us, and which we contain -- we condemn ourselves to living a kind of half-life in which we must always remain frustrated and at odds. Since we are a part of life, there is no way for us to be at odds with life without also being at odds with ourselves. We often have misconceptions about what it would mean to say Yes to life. From the human perspective remember, that perspective in which we are so close to the tapestry of reality that we can see very little of its actual design life is full of cruelty, injustice and suffering. So we might imagine that saying Yes to life would mean saying Yes to war, rape, child molestation, concentration camps, and torture, as well as to many smaller acts of harm. If
our childhoods were abusive, we may think that saying Yes to life also means saying Yes to whatever abuse we received. Its understandable and even appropriate that we dont want to grant approval to these kinds of phenomena. They do not deserve our approval. And yet, these disturbing phenomena do exist on earth. In fact, the emotional patterns they stem from exist within us, as well. So by attempting to separate ourselves internally from sin or abuse, in the very act of separation itself, we are also separating ourselves from ourselves, from life, and from love. Because the essence of love is non-separation, connection, embracing of all apparent conditions and contradictions, any separation, any act of rejection or judgment, distances us from love. This means that the remedy for the terrible problem of separation -- and for its terrible consequences -- is, and can only be, love. From the distance from which human beings generally view the tapestry of reality remember, that distance in which our eyes are so close to the tapestry that we cannot ever see its true design -- the idea of love as a remedy for terrible acts of cruelty and injustice may seem impossible, and perhaps even morally wrong. We may imagine that extending love to these phenomena would mean extending our approval of them, or our blessing. And yet, if we observe ourselves closely, we will notice that if we withhold our love from these disturbing phenomena, we become filled up with the emotional and energetic current of lovelessness. When we respond to horrors with hatred, resistance or refusal, we fill ourselves with the
energies of hatred, resistance or refusal and then those energies flow from us out into the world. When we respond with judgment, we are filled with judgment, and that judgment flows through us and adds to the heavy load of judgment already present in the world. And then not only the "outer world" that we see around us, but also the inner world we experience, becomes very bleak. Often, then, we become so cramped inside, in response to that bleakness, that very little life force can find its way in to soothe us, illuminate, teach, enliven and inspire us. Thus we condemn ourselves to live internally in the very state of non-love which we deplore in the outer world. This is one reason why people who devote their lives to "service," to "working for good," sometimes grow so cynical and despairing. Over time, so much judgment and resistance to what is wrong in the world becomes braided into their beings, as part of their effort to do right. On one level, they are perceiving things accurately. From the human perspective, there is a great deal that is wrong in the world. And of course, despite the greatest effort anyone can make, the wrongs of the world continue unceasingly. What these well-meaning people fail to see is how, through their judgment and resistance, they have actually added more fuel to the burning fire they had hoped to help put out. The energy of condemnation is a boomerang; it condemns both "subject" and "object," those who condemn as much as that which is the target of that condemnation. Hatred, judgment, resistance and condemnation are cognitive and energetic states that are essentially antilife. No stance that is anti-life can truly work in favor of life. It is that simple.
Yet if resisting terrible things simply creates more of them, what is the alternative? On a human level, it can be difficult to see the answer. Yet the answer is everywhere around us, all the time. The love of the sun, for instance, shines equally on everything. The love of the rain falls equally on all things, without judgment or discrimination. This kind of encompassing love is available constantly to all of us from the unseen realm, whether we think of that realm as God, the universe, our guides or higher selves, or in some other way. Many of us recognize and experience this energy of love most easily in nature. No matter how hurt you may have felt by other people, or even by life itself, you have probably never felt judged or condemned by a field of grass, a tree, a lake, a mountain. And if you have opened yourself enough, you may even have felt welcomed, or received, or acknowledged by the natural world or, at the very least, met with a profound and benign neutrality which was neither cold nor distancing. If you allow yourself to open to this neutrality, which is present in all natural landscapes, you will find that it is, in fact, the very essence of love, a love that prefers nothing and rejects nothing. This is the love that says Yes to all of us, no matter where and who we are, no matter what we have done or left undone in our lives. And receiving this Yes, experiencing the truth of it, can help us become more able to extend the same Yes both outwardly and inwardly, toward all we see
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and experience. Yes to life.
This is the essence of saying This is the essence of saying
This Yes does not render us unable to change internal or external realities; on the contrary, it is the position from which we are most able to make change, because we are working with rather than against the forces of life. The instruction to extend love to even the most horrific situations we encounter has been difficult for me personally to follow, even though I understand its wisdom and validity. So I want to describe a piece of my own process in working with this teaching. I have long been particularly disturbed by criminal cases in which a wife assisted her husband in kidnapping, sexually abusing or even killing other women or girls. For some reason, I can understand more easily how one persons soul can become so twisted that he feels compelled to do such things but it has been much harder for me to understand the participation of a second person, particularly a woman. When I encounter something human that I cant understand, I try harder. I agree with Carson McCullers that Nothing human is alien to me. So rather than turning my gaze away, I turn toward. In this case, I read as much as I could find about women involved in such cases, including a scholarly article titled Female Accomplices of Male Sexual Sadists. From these sources I learned that the majority of these women came from intact families (in other words, no matter how bad things got in the
household, no one ever left.) Most had been sexually abused themselves by close relatives, often starting in very early childhood. In some cases the male in the couple slowly seduced the woman by being gentle and attentive for months or years before revealing his sexually sadistic side; in others, he involved her in his sexual sadism early on, while also cultivating her emotional dependence on him. Helping him find other victims then became a way for the woman to cement their bond. Often, the woman believed that if the man could enact his sadistic impulses with the kidnapped girl or woman, she herself would receive more of his kindness. At times, however, the women involved also contained hidden reservoirs of sadism themselves as a consequence of their own abuse which became activated in these scenarios, interwoven with the effort to win and retain the male partners love. Reading all of this made the acts of these female accomplices make emotional sense to me -- an emotional sense that does not excuse, justify or condone, but that does enable me to empathically enter into the kind of soul distortions that can lead to these scenarios. As I understand more, I become more able to extend love not to the terrible acts committed by these women and their partners, not to the damage that compelled them to commit such acts, but to the core of each person, the radiance inside each one of those women, which in so many people becomes so blocked, cloudedover, inaccessible.
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And as I do that, I also remember that although I have never done anything remotely similar to these specific crimes, I have had times in which I did or said things that were hurtful to other people, because I was acting out of my own confusion and wounding. Again, without justifying or excusing these actions, I can extend love to the radiance at the core of the confusion whether it is my own, or someone elses. I can, in fact, remember that the distinction between mine and someone elses is valid and real in some ways, but not in others. It is most real as a way to delineate an area in which I have some jurisdiction, some access: in other words, I cannot heal anyone elses confusion or wounds, but I can work to heal my own. Extending love toward confusion -- and toward the kernel of light that is obscured by that confusion, yet is still present underneath it -- is a good way to begin.
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11: Serving Ourselves, Others and Life As we cease to resist our lives, become more able to say Yes to our inner and outer circumstances, and feel more peace and joy, we often wish to help other people experience the same thing. This desire spontaneously emerges as a result of our growing sense of love for others and for the earth, as well as our awareness of our connection to all other things and beings. Many religious and spiritual traditions call this impulse service, and promote it as an important path for soul growth. However, the idea that others need our help, or that anyone or anything needs us to serve it, is a well-intentioned error in perception. In truth, we cant possibly know what any other person needs from us -- or even what life itself needs from us. The tapestry of reality is so vast, and we are so small in relation to it, that the most we can ever hope to know is our own next step in fulfilling our inner design. Therefore, we might better understand our wish to serve as a wish to participate directly rather than indirectly, consciously rather than unconsciously, in the evolution of our planet and of our species. Of course, everyone is always participating; there is no one who is not. But those of us who have inquired more deeply into the nature of the human experience do have an opportunity to participate more deliberately, to make choices based on a higher level of understanding about the nature of our participation. As human beings with physical bodies, we are in a very powerful position. Our physical bodies give us a license to operate in physical
reality, on the earth plane. We have a unique ability to influence physical matter; we also have the capacity to serve as conduits of wisdom, compassion and love for one another, and for other life forms on the planet. Because of our individuated consciousness and the freedom of choice it affords us, we can consciously choose to be vessels for the energies of love and compassion, just as a cup is a vessel for tea. When we make this choice, we serve ourselves by allowing wisdom, compassion and love to reside within us because it feels good! We also serve those energies, giving them opportunities to fulfill their inner design. And we do serve others, too -- just as the tea cup serves itself, the tea it holds, and whoever drinks from it. Yet it is important for us to remember that our role as vessels is limited to holding energies. What others do or fail to do with those energies cannot be our concern. The cup does not become frustrated when someone holds it improperly, spills most of the tea while drinking it, or transfers the tea to her mouth with a fingertip rather than by sipping directly from the cup. The cup knows (in a manner of speaking) that it has a handle by which it can be held, and a rim to which people can put their mouths. It is welldesigned as a vessel from which people can drink. If people do not drink from it, or do not drink in the most efficient manner, the cup will not doubt itself. It has fulfilled its inner design simply by existing, regardless of whether or not others make use of it. In just this way, we are capable of holding and transmitting wisdom, compassion, and love, regardless of whether or not these energies are
received by others, or appear to be received. We can transmit these energies through written and spoken words, through actions, or through gestures or touch. We even transmit them simply by holding their frequency, even when we appear to be doing nothing. For instance, many studies have shown that when a large enough percentage of people in a given geographic area begins to meditate, the local crime rate goes down. The energetic state of peace and equanimity achieved by the meditators measurably impacts everyone else in the local environment. Of course, consciously holding and transmitting the energies of love, peace and wisdom will also increase our own state of joy. And even when it appears that others have not received our transmission, that perception need not interfere with our joy. Regardless of what happens or what we perceive is happening, which of course is never the full reality of the larger tapestry outside of us, being a vessel is the true source of our joy. A tea cup is designed for the purpose of providing tea; it is ready, willing and able to provide tea so its joy is not dependent on whether someone comes to drink from it, or how much tea they drink, or how efficiently they imbibe it. It is not dependent on anyone else in order to fulfill its function. And neither are we. It is not that we do not, cannot or will not help others; very often, in fact, we will. But it is important for us to understand that helping others is not our purpose, so that we do not attempt to intervene inappropriately in other peoples lives, nor become frustrated when they refuse the help we
have offered. There are always those who will not be helped, or whom we cannot help, at least on the levels we are able to perceive and if we think that our purpose is to help, this will feel to us like failure. In truth, of course, failure does not exist. On the level of the larger tapestry, the level on which our souls reside, there is no such thing as failure and there is also no such thing as success. There are only degrees of unfolding, alignment, and harmony. Focusing on our own unfolding and alignment, our own joy, is the way in which we can best serve others, and serve life itself. 12. The Gap As we grow in consciousness and wisdom, we may notice a disconcerting phenomenon. We know that higher realms exist to support us; we receive their support and bask in their wisdom, compassion and love, at least occasionally. We know that we are connected to everyone and everything, and at times sweet, sweet times we actually feel that connection. And yet we are also still our human selves. Sometimes we are still grumpy, depressed, selfish, impatient, cruel to ourselves or to others. We live from higher wisdom, from our luminous core, some of the time. But some of the time, we dont. I know this very well from my own experience. About a year after my guide started talking to me, I felt like a mess. I was deeply grateful to receive his wisdom, and it had led to many changes in my understanding and experience of life. Yet I noticed that I often asked him the same kinds of
questions over and over again even once I knew the kinds of answers he was likely to offer. For instance, I would ask what I should do in a given circumstance, even though I knew he would say as he had so many times that it didnt matter so much what I did, but why and how I did it. So I learned trick ways to ask my questions; rather than asking what I should do, I would ask, What are the issues involved in my decision about X? Sometimes the answers that came then provided more illumination but sometimes what they illuminated was simply the stuck places in my own being. Id been in direct contact with higher consciousness for a whole year, and I felt like a failure. I was fortunate to be casually acquainted with a woman who had been channeling a wise guide for sixteen years, so I made an appointment to talk with her. When I explained what was going on, her eyes lit up. Ah, she said. Thats the gap. You have to learn to love the gap. Love the gap?! How could I love being stuck in my narrow, petulant, limited human consciousness, especially once I was in contact with something so much wider, deeper and more wondrous? Yet her words stayed with me. And over time, through further conversations with my own guide, it became clearer to me that we human beings dont access higher consciousness in order to become higher consciousness through and through. We access it because of the amazing chemical reactions that can occur between the substance of higher
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consciousness, and the substance of individuated consciousness the sparkles, crackles, pops and fizzes, and sometimes the actual explosions. In other words, we arent here on earth in human bodies to stop being human. We are here to introduce higher consciousness as fully as we can into the human frame. It wont fit all the way. It cant. Its not supposed to. And were not wrong or defective because we dont stop being human, even when higher wisdom is available to us. There are many things we can do with our access to higher consciousness, things that are deeply valuable both to us the small human selves that we still, at least to some extent, perceive ourselves to be and to the larger human collective, the larger evolutionary process. We can funnel it into art, producing writing, music, dance, theater, visual art and other forms that rearrange the molecules of consciousness in those who view or read it. We can funnel it into therapeutic or educational work, helping people one-on-one, in couples or in groups to find and trust their own portals to higher consciousness. We can, in fact, bring it to any field of work, any and every human activity. We can bring it to our daily lives, funneling light, compassion and understanding to both our most intimate relationships and our most casual interactions. And of course, we can bring it to ourselves bring the patient, gentle, compassionate, lighthearted energies of our wise teachers to keep us company in the complex, tricky, glorious and troublesome landscapes of our inner lives. To be human is to have a gap. To have a gap is to be human.
This doesnt mean, of course, that we should cease to take responsibility for our destructive, hurtful inner postures or outer behaviors. We can absolutely continue to work to narrow the gap to bring more and more of ourselves into the light of our highest knowing, and to act from that higher knowing more of the time. But when we fall short, we havent failed. These physical human bodies just werent made to fly. We are composite beings part luminous, part fractured. So its helpful for us to refrain from self-blame, self-criticism or selfrejection when we see our gaps in action. Why? Because, of course, directing those judgmental energies at ourselves will only widen the gap! Our wise inner teachers are never disappointed or frustrated by us; they never judge us. Their essence is a always radiant compassion. So it is only when we extend compassion to ourselves that we can enter into their field of consciousness. Sometimes, the habit of hating, blaming, criticizing and rejecting ourselves is so firmly entrenched that it actually blocks us from contact with our teachers and guides. The good news is that if we decide we want to change this, our guides will help! It takes an internal reorientation perhaps only a small, subtle adjustment, or perhaps an enormous tug on the rudder of the Titanic of our will -- to change course. Changing course means ceasing to blame or reject ourselves because of the gap, and moving instead into self-love, self-acceptance, and self-responsibility.
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The energy of self-responsibility, by the way, is completely different from the energy of self-blame. Self-blame says I am wrong, I am bad. It therefore separates you from the light of love, wisdom and compassion. Self responsibility, on the other hand, says I have acted in ways not in accordance with my deepest knowing. I regret the harm this has caused me or others, and want to work to bring that deep knowing more fully to bear throughout my life. This posture helps us reconnect to the light of higher consciousness which in fact is always inside us, has never left us, and will and could never leave us, no matter what. So, try to love the gap. The more youre able to love it, the more it will shrink. But even more importantly, work to love yourself gap and all.
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11. Mental, Emotional and Energetic Imprints What we carry within us the thoughts, beliefs, memories and emotions of our individuated consciousness, or small self creates what we experience as the outside world. Both as individuals and as a human collective, our beliefs and assumptions about ourselves, others and the world developed early on, often within our first few months of life, and rife with confusion and distortion form imprints which largely determine what we are able to see, feel and experience in our lives. In essence, we see and experience, again and again, what we have seen and experienced before -- because it is what we expect, and what we believe is possible. Energetically, it is what we draw toward us, and what we allow. And if something other than what we expect or believe does manage to show up in our lives, we will most often misperceive it by seeing in it only what we are used to seeing. So, even though our field of possibilities is vast, most of those possibilities cannot reach us or be perceived by us unless and until we change the imprints we carry. This is why attempts to change our lives from the outside by changing our job, home, partner, and so on -- so rarely achieve the effects we anticipate or desire. Its far more effective to change whats inside of us; once we do, our outer lives will inevitably change, too. Changing our imprints can be tricky, though, because in essence we are trying to become able to believe in a reality different from what we have (at least in our conscious memory) ever experienced. Thus, it requires a
leap of faith, an act of grace, a concerted willingness and help from higher sources. Fortunately, that help is abundantly available. How do we begin? It helps, first, to acknowledge that our beliefs about ourselves, others and life are just that: beliefs, rather than universal or absolute truths. For instance, a woman who believes that Men always reject women may have seen and experienced exactly that, over and over again; yet, if she intentionally looks around, she will also see various other kinds of other things occurring: women rejecting men, men staying with women, women and men being happy together, and so on. Its possible that even in her own life, she may have experienced something different from her imprint for instance, a man who didnt reject her. Yet, if her imprint is strong enough, she will still be able to turn everything she sees into a version of her belief. For instance, the man who didnt reject her was undesirable and not really a man; the women who appear to be rejecting men are only doing so because they have already actually been rejected; the men who appear to be staying with women are only pretending; the women and men who appear to be happy together are doomed for an inevitable fall when the man rejects the women, as men always do etcetera. Imprints can be very, very strong. They can feel like reality, like the truth that no one else is willing to acknowledge. Some of us even take pride in the strength of our imprints! Yet this is a destructive, misplaced pride. It is
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as if we had blinders on, and took pride in our knowledge that the world was really much narrower than everyone else believed. So the first step is to realize and admit that we do, in fact, have our own set of blinders, or imprints and that our imprints are not reality, even though they have shaped what we are able to see and believe about reality. For some of us, this realization is joyful and liberating; for others, however, it can feel frightening and disorienting. Even if we believe things that make us feel miserable for instance, that men always reject women having a set of beliefs can give us a feeling of safety and orientation in a big and unpredictable world. Depending on which part of our consciousness we most identify with, the realization that the world is, in fact, unpredictable that much more is possible than we had allowed ourselves to imagine can be exciting, terrifying, or both. Once we realize that our imprints or beliefs about reality are not reality itself, it may be helpful to inventory just what beliefs and imprints were carrying. Since this can be a very lengthy process, it helps to focus on one aspect of life at a time. Most of us carry imprints in all of the key areas of our lives, including: Intimate relationships My gender / the opposite gender (or: gender in general) Family Work Money
My own worth and value Creative Expression Health and Physicality Sexuality God/Spirit If youd like to begin inventorying your imprints, just pick an item from the list above and ask your guides for help in writing down every belief you hold or even partially hold about that area of life. For instance, if you are a man and pick My gender / the opposite gender, you would first write down every belief in your being about men, what men do and dont do, what is required of men, what is manly or unmanly, what is possible and impossible for men, what is right and wrong for men, etc. Then, youd do the same about women. If you are someone whose experience of your own gender is more complex than can fit in a box labeled male or female, this exercise is equally important, because its likely that youre still carrying many more conventional beliefs and imprints regarding gender. Next, ask your guides for help in remembering and recognizing instances in which reality has proven itself to be different from your imprints. Write down times when you or other men have broken the rules imbedded in your consciousness about men, and when women have contradicted your beliefs about women. If its difficult for you to think of instances which disprove your beliefs, ask your guides to help you recognize such instances over the next few days, weeks or months. Consciously direct your intention
to allow in a wider experience of life, and of gender, than has previously been available to you. If fear or resistance comes up, ask your guides to help you with that, too. Your statement of intention might be something like this: I affirm my desire, my willingness, my choice and my intention to become more able to perceive the vast range of truth about men and women [or: about gender as a whole]. I ask for the help of my wise guides, inner teachers and higher consciousness in dissolving my limiting beliefs about men and women, and helping me see the much wider reality of both, or all, genders. I also ask my guides for help in healing or releasing those parts of me that feel fear about entering into this wider knowing. Please, guides, help those parts to become stronger and more whole, or help them to dissolve them in the light of the larger parts of my being, whichever will best serve my highest good. Its very important to understand that the process of clearing your imprints is not simply a mental process. There is a mental component thats what youre doing when you realize that your imprints represent a narrow, stuck distortion of reality, rather than reality itself. But that mental recognition alone does little or nothing to actually clear an imprint. Thats why its essential to draw on the help of someone or something larger than your small personal self. It doesnt matter whether you call on your guides, God, your higher self, your angels, or some other form of higher consciousness assistance; what matters is that you are asking for and
allowing the help of a level of beings or energies that truly dwell in reality, rather than in imprints. In other words, the part of you thats stuck in imprints cant clear your imprints by itself. Perhaps the following simpler approach makes it even clearer that clearing imprints is not a mental process. To work with this simpler method, just call in your guides and inner teachers in whatever ways work for you for instance, by sitting or standing in front of an altar, or lighting a candle or some incense, drumming, rattling, burning sage, praying, or meditating. (I myself like to light a candle, pass a leaf of dried burning sage over my body and my immediate area, and then invoke the Six Directions using the invocation included later in this book.) Then, once you sense the presence or energy of higher consciousness, remember the area you wish to work in for instance, My beliefs about gender and then chant aloud or inwardly: Release what needs to be released. Transform what needs to be transformed. Bring in what needs to be brought in. This simple chant can be very powerful. You may actually notice a whoosh of energy in your system when you first say it, as if youve opened the door to let your guides begin their work which, in fact, you have. You can repeat it again and again, even as you engage in other activities, to keep the healing and clearing process active. If you take this approach, you are trusting in your guides to know what it is that needs to be released, transformed, and brought in. You may
receive images of the beliefs or imprints youve been carrying, or you may not. You can even specify to your guides, If theres anything I really need to know about, just let me know. Theyll do this anyway, of course, even without your requesting it but its good practice for you to ask for what you want and intend! You can also use either or both of these approaches to clear your imprints about a specific person or relationship in your life or about yourself. You can come up with your own approaches, or ask your guides to help you develop clearing methods uniquely suited to you. Sometimes, our beliefs and imprints were formed under very traumatic conditions. For instance, the woman who believes that Men always reject women may have developed this imprint when her father left her mother, when she was very young. This rejection may have had devastating effects on her mother, emotionally, logistically, financially. So there may be a great deal of emotional charge, grief, fear, rage, compressed into the imprint. If thats the case, these emotions may need to be transmuted or released in the process of clearing the imprint. You can ask your guides for help with this, too. For instance: As the storms of emotion move through me, please help me remain connected to you, to the light of higher consciousness and love. Please help my grief, fear and rage pass through my body and return to the earth, where they can be composted. Please help any emotions which are not mine to return to wherever or whomever they actually belong. [In the
situation described above, the young girl may well have taken on her mothers emotions, and perhaps even the emotions of other siblings or people involved.] Clearing imprints can be easy, or it can be deeply challenging or both. If you need help, there are a wide range of healing practitioners who can assist you, locally or long-distance. These might be shamanic practitioners, hypnotherapists, or other kinds of healers familiar with working in the non-physical realm. In the shamanic framework, some of what were talking about here would be called soul retrieval bringing back pieces of the soul that had become disconnected due to trauma and some would be called energy clearing, restoring energetic integrity by releasing energies that never truly belonged to you. Whats most important is for you to know that the clearing can be done, and then choose a practitioner with whom you feel rapport, and who inspires trust and confidence in you. Its not the practitioners job to do your work for you, and, in fact, thats not possible. The responsibility for your own healing lies with you, as it must. But, especially when we are doing very deep work, the help of other human beings can be invaluable. We can hold up flashlights for each other, and provide skills and tools. Help is always coming from higher realms, of course but the higher realms does much of its work through human voices, minds and hands. Of course, when you are choosing a human helper, discernment is necessary. If someone charges exorbitant fees, or claims that they are the
only person who can help you, or that their methodology is far more advanced than anyone elses run, dont walk in the other direction. Hucksters and self-promoters abound in every field, including the fields of consciousness and healing. But self-aggrandizing statements are giveaways that someone either believes, or wants you to believe, that they and/or their connection to healing energy is special and unique. They arent, and it isnt. You, and everyone else, are just as special, and have just as much potential access to life-changing fields of consciousness. A professional healer or consciousness worker has spent more time developing skills in this area, so they may be better-versed in it, just as a professional chef might be able to cook a gourmet meal more easily and quickly than you could, or a professional car mechanic might be able to rebuild your cars engine much more easily and quickly than you could (or at least much more quickly than I could!) But cooking, car mechanics and consciousness shifting are not rocket science. (Actually, from what Ive heard, even rocket science isnt rocket science, at least not in the sense of being uniquely, extraordinarily difficult.) So if you feel a desire or need for help from a human healer or therapist, Id suggest you choose one who acknowledges his or her humanness, who is humble, warm, open, willing to help in the ways you want help -- and who also strives to empower you to become able to help yourself.
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Inner versus Outer Work Once we understand that it is the mental, emotional and energetic imprints we carry that create our experience of reality and that it is the mental, emotional and energetic imprints of the human collective that create the larger human reality, as it has currently manifested it becomes clear why it is more effective to work for change from the inside than from the outside. In other words, if we change our imprints (or, rather, dissolve them), what we see, hear, feel and perceive around us will also change. But the reverse isnt true. We might work extraordinarily hard to change some outer circumstance for instance, to try to force a workplace to adopt more just hiring practices and might even appear to achieve some limited success. However, if havent changed our own imprints regarding workplace discrimination, we are likely to continue to encounter it elsewhere, and if the other people in our workplace have not undergone internal transformation, they are likely to continue to perpetrate discrimination, even if they do it in less overt ways. At this point in the process of human evolution, the inner work we do is far more impactful than the outer. We must, of course, continue to do outer work as well; the material conditions of life require this from us. And when our outer work flows from a balanced internal current, it will create greater harmony in the world. It is also valuable for us to do outer work simply because of the ways in which it will unfailingly illuminate the places within us
in which more inner work is needed. Seeing what shows up in our outer lives will give us a great deal of information about the imprints we are still carrying. Yet we do not have to manifest these imbalances externally in order to know that they are there. Simply by paying close attention to our thoughts, behaviors, actions, statements and emotions on any given day, we can easily discover what remains unhealed, confused, knotted or tangled-up within us. The manifestations of our distorted relationship to the universe are readily apparent, when we choose to allow ourselves to see them. Of course, from the human perspective, there is a great deal in need of attention in the outer world, as well. And feeding the hungry or reforming the political system or saving the rainforests are all valid and important arenas to work in as long as we can remain clear that we are choosing these arenas, these contexts, in order to do our real work, which has much more to do with clearing our own imprints so that we can hold a higher state of consciousness over all. Yet because the level of physical reality is so consuming and distracting to most human beings, its easy to get so caught up in whatever we are doing on the physical level that we come to believe its what matters most. Unfortunately, this confusion leads to cross-currents and contradictions that waste our energy and divert us from our intended course for instance, when people working in peace movements become just as
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focused on vanquishing the enemy as those on the other side, whom they deplore. Of course it is harmonious for us to be kind to each other, and be conscientious in our use of the earths resources. Outer gestures do matter; it is simply that when we work on the internal level, the appropriate outer gestures will emerge automatically but concentrating on outer forms will not necessarily yield inner transformation. And no matter what our outer actions may look like, what really matters what really determines our own course and the course of our world (which we understand to be different but which actually is not) -- is the energy or attitude underlying our actions. Recycling our newspapers out of a grim insistence on being morally superior to others, for instance, is an act of psychic violence. Being kind to someone else in a manner that strips us of the time and energy we need for our own inner unfolding is also an act of psychic violence in this case, against ourselves. Of course, all acts of psychic violence affect both others and self because the current of violence cannot fail to run between, and thereby to pollute, both sender and recipient. If, for instance, some of those who are intent on saving the rainforests could truly see what they are doing to their own inner rainforests, and those of others, with their psychic violence and negativity, they might come to understand why it is so important to work on the inner plane. If we as a species halt our inner pollution and violence, the outer manifestations of these energies will shift too. And if we do not if
we violently fight for peace, if we pollutedly fight against pollution we are creating an energetic standoff in which nothing can really change. Those of us who wish to serve or to improve the world are usually fueled by a genuine awareness of the life force and its beauty, and we sincerely wish to feed and activate this beauty both within ourselves and outside ourselves, in the world. We must therefore honor this stream in ourselves by more fully understanding its nature and our own rather than distorting it and thus doing violence both to it, and with it. When one is not properly oriented, any beautiful thing can become a weapon with which to bludgeon others or the self. For instance, organized Christianity has accomplished this with Christ consciousness. Who would ever have imagined that the source of such injunctions as Love thy neighbor as thyself and Judge not lest ye be judged could have been turned into a vast machine for damaging minds, souls, bodies and spirits with institutionalized judgments and notions of sin, repentance and damnation? The human species has been adept at turning ploughshares into swords and using anything at all as a potential weapon. And so we have also twisted our desire to do or to be good. So the terrain of inner development is tricky and must be explored and understood on the deepest levels those levels on which any kind of violence, resistance, refusal or hostility, whether directed against oneself, others, or life, and for any reason, is understood to be deeply in error. The barbs we direct at others cannot fail to pierce our own skin. The barbs we
direct against ourselves cannot fail to harm others. The harm we do to ourselves and others cannot fail to harm the earth, the trees, the rivers, the animals and flowers. If we see this truth only on a surface level we may take it and use it to stab ourselves using the blades of despair, regret, selfblame. Or we might use it to blame others, the system, the Republicans, the Democrats, the corporations, our bosses, our parents, and so on. This is why it is so important to go deeper. We must understand that any of these inner movements actually enacts the violence we deplore, and also that even the deploring itself can be a kind of violence against the violence. And so we must instead take the violence in our arms like a wailing and difficult baby. We must take ourselves in our arms this way, and our whole disturbed and disturbing, difficult and confused society and species. This is the only way to honor that life force which is in us -- which is in everything, and in everyone. It is this life force that feeds and inspires us, and which we rightly know in our souls to be beautiful, and worthy of nourishing and being nourished by. The posture of being set against anything whether inside or outside the self will never serve us, or serve life. Life itself is not opposed to anything. Rather, there is, especially where life remains relatively undisturbed by these human currents of which I have spoken, a kind of immense and intricate harmony which emerges from life, and which is life. It is hardly the point to feel badly about ourselves or our species because of how hard we have fought this harmony. The point is rather to recognize the
harmony, to allow it into ourselves, to realize that we exist within it, that we are of it and not separate from it. It does not really matter, on this level, what any politician does or what any other human being does. What matters is what we do, in our hearts. Directing psychic violence at others, even those to whom we feel strongly politically opposed, cannot fail to inflict that same violence on ourselves and on the planet. There are no exceptions to this rule. Fighting against anyone or anything, whether inside or outside the self, is in essence fighting against life. It cannot be otherwise. We are life. So is every politician on each side of the political fence. So are our fathers, our mothers, our children, our bosses, the giant corporations, and the homeless people who line the streets of our cities. So too is the Dalai Lama, and the oak tree down the street, and most magnificent river you have ever seen. Inner or outer violence in the form of judgment or resistance -- as well as in other, more obvious forms -- against any aspect of life amounts to violence against ourselves. And violence against ourselves is violence against the collective, against our species. There are no exceptions. The slogan, Be the change we wish to see expresses this principle nicely. Yet it is far more easily said than done. If we find that in order to really stop the violence on this level we must turn ourselves inside out we must die to who we have known ourselves to be, and allow someone else to be born then, and only then, have we truly understood this principle.
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12: The Role of Hardship There is a crack, a crack in everything. Thats how the light gets in. - Leonard Cohen If it is true that life is always supporting us, and always available to support us, then why is it that we must so often struggle with such difficult conditions? From the human perspective, so many lives seem to be stunted or distorted by circumstances like poverty and oppression, abuse, neglect, and physical or mental illness. When we look at the tapestry from this vantage point, it seems tragic that so many conditions limit the potential each human being might otherwise reach. Of course, if we broaden our gaze, we see immediately that it is not only human beings who face this challenge. For instance, some flowers must struggle to grow through drought, or through floods, or through extremely hot or cold temperatures, or must push their way up through cement. It is hard for us to see, from the human level, that life equally values, and is equally present within, all conditions conditions of hardship as much as ease, insufficiency as much as plenty. Life pours itself out equally toward and into all circumstances and life forms; life trusts in itself and supports itself in ways more generous than we can imagine, and in so doing creates a marvelously diverse universe filled with surprise, variety, ingenuity, creativity and adventure. If we look closely at what we call the natural world, if we allow ourselves to deeply feel that world, we will know the truth of this in our cells.
And yet as human beings we are fated to perceive ourselves as individual selves, knowing little or nothing of the conditions in which we came to be. We are determined just as any flower is determined, fueled by the force of life within its cells to grow. And each of us, in our growth process, will in fact encounter conditions of hardship and ease, insufficiency and plenty. We are absolutely certain to struggle in certain ways, and thrive in others. And in all of this we are life, and are completely held and supported by life. Lifes support is no less present, no less generous or real, in our times of hardship. It is only because of the limitations of our human vision that we view pain and difficulty as bad, as signs that something must be wrong with us, or with others, or with life itself. The great mystic Julian of Norwich put it this way: If there be anywhere on earth a lover of God who is always kept safe, I know nothing of it, for it was not shown to me. But this was shown: that in falling and rising again, we are always kept safe in that same precious love. Hardship is not cannot ever be -- a barrier to the fulfillment of our inner design. In fact, if we were able to stand further back from the tapestry, we would see clearly that each hardship is akin to a creative variable, lovingly introduced by life, and on behalf of life. There is no circumstance which cannot serve our growth and development, if we allow it to. For instance, the suffering that feels as if it will shatter us may actually serve to shatter the rigid shell of the individual selves we believe ourselves to be; this breaking-open can be a great gift to our souls. In fact, several
well-known contemporary spiritual teachers, including Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie, speak of having achieved lasting states of higher consciousness as a direct result of being shattered by long-term depression. Just as a seed needs to break apart in order to germinate, to be able to grow up through the earth and fulfill its inner design, so we, too, often need to break apart, or be broken apart by life. When we can fully embrace this experience, rather than struggling against it or believing that we have been wronged, we are far better positioned to receive its transformational gifts. Of course, most of us who are depressed will not experience dramatic, lasting spiritual awakenings of the kind described by Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie. And so we may instead feel as if our lives, or the lives of others we know, have been warped or truncated by inner or outer difficulties. We may be haunted by the sense of wasted or lost potential. While understandable on the human level, this grief reflects a misunderstanding of the nature of life, and of our own purpose within it. It is true that no one among us will ever reach the particular expression we might have reached if every condition and circumstance we had encountered had been optimal. Yet what is also true is that it was never our purpose to reach that optimal expression to experience a life without apparent hardship or damage. What or who we might have become without hardship or damage is not the point at all. Rather, the point is what we do with and through the damage and hardship of our lives. When we let go of the idea that our lives should
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have been different in some way, we can see more clearly the way light enters us and radiates from our wounds and scars. From our vantage point here on earth, the moon appears to go through cycles of growth and diminishment, waxing and waning. At times we see the moon as round, and we call it full. At other times, we barely see the moon at all; it seems to have disappeared. Yet the truth is that the moon is always full and round. All that changes is the angle from which we are able to see the moon. In just that way, we, too, are always full. Everything we could have been and done, including the fullest and most glorious expression of every single one of our potentials, exists somewhere in a dimension we cannot usually perceive from our earthly perspective. It simply would not be possible to embody all of that within a single human body and lifetime and if it were possible, having a human body and lifetime would be unnecessary. So, rather than grieving for the parts of our own moon that appear to be missing, we can choose instead to celebrate all the parts of ourselves that are present and glowing, here and now all of the ways in which we are full of creativity, love, and the infinite self-healing capacity of life itself. My sister, who is five years younger than me, has struggled all her life. Although she was bright, beautiful and talented as a child, her life has been truncated by emotional pain, eating disorders, self-injury, and drug and alcohol addiction. For most of my life I was haunted by grief about her
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wasted potential, as well as guilt about having a life that appears so much more comfortable and fulfilled than hers. Even once I began communicating with inner teachers, I often argued with them about the amount of pain in my sisters life. I remember one time when I practically had a screaming match with a guide who, of course, being a guide, remained completely equanimous. Why is there so much pain in the world? I asked argumentatively. Because pain is such a good teacher, he answered calmly. Even though I wanted to argue, I knew he was right. The lions share of my own growth and learning has come about through the most painful experiences in my life. And although I do not have the best vantage point from which to see how my sisters pain has facilitated her growth, I certainly know that my own pain about her pain has been a powerful catalyst for me, and one of the major motivations behind my own drive to heal, and to help others heal. In another meditation, I asked to see my sisters higher self or spirit. To my surprise, I was shown a graceful, supremely confident being who joyfully accepted the challenge of incarnating into such a troubled human life. I realized that in some ways I had always perceived this aspect of my sister, but had misunderstood its true nature. I had been grieving the fact that this spirit was not more visible in my sisters daily life yet now I could see that this spirit had deliberately chosen a life in which much of her light would be unavailable to her, so that she could learn from that experience.
At least, this is what was shown to me. Can I know for sure that this is the truth? Of course not but neither can I (or any of us) know anything else for sure. I often remember the parable about the blind men and the elephant: as each man touched a different part of the elephant, he proclaimed that that part was the elephant. The man who touched the tail asserted, An elephant is like a rope! The man whose hand was on the elephants tusk insisted, No, an elephant is like a spear! The one with his hand on the elephants leg exclaimed, No, its like a redwood tree! And so on. Of course, they were all right but none of them had the whole picture. I like to say that I have one finger on one strand of hair in the elephants tail. Thats it; thats all the reality I can see. So the glimpses that bring me greater peace are, I think, at least as true as those that bring me suffering.
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13. The Family as Crucible For most of us, the members of our family of origin are among our biggest teachers in this lifetime. There is something of that original configuration, or those original relationships, in every challenging life situation we confront. They have been the primary shapers of our inner world; they have determined much about the contours of our souls work. Or perhaps, as some people believe, our souls actually chose our families and early life circumstances in order to work with particular kinds of challenges. Of course, the true teacher is always life but life finds its way to work through many forms, including the forms of our close relatives. We may spend our entire lives working to clear the imprints of our first few years of life and the energetic patterns held and created by those who raised us, and/or those whose genes we carry. From a higher perspective, this is not a mistake, nor is it unfortunate. Family relationships were actually designed to imprint upon us this deeply, in order to give us a lifetimes worth of material to work with. And the work we do with this material whether it is direct, i.e. working with the feelings about our parents, or indirect, working with issues brought to us by intimate partners or others acting as surrogates for our parents is never wasted. All of it is a contribution to the larger collective. The work we do on our fear of loss, or rage, or grief, or clearing of boundaries, is actually work on those nonphysical structures as they exist in other human beings, as well. We need to experience them as our own issues in order to have a portal into healing
them; if we think an issue belongs to someone else, we cannot access it. Yet since we are not truly separate, individual selves in the way we perceive ourselves to be, what we experience as ours is not ours alone. By sweeping our own floors, we are actually sweeping the floors of the world. When we understand our individual healing and clearing processes in this way, we see that there is no reason to be impatient, or to think that we should be done more quickly. If we were done with this work, we would simply move on to something else! There is no end of work to be done on the human plane -- and work is what we came to this plane to do. It is necessary and valuable for us to feel the full range of emotions triggered in us by our familial and ancestral relationships anger, powerlessness, grief, betrayal, and so on. Even when parts of ourselves know better, or hold a larger understanding, it does not help to try to suppress the reactions that exist on one level with the knowledge from another. Rather, we must allow the level of the reactions and the level of the knowledge to encounter one another, to interpenetrate, to embrace. This is the essence of integration. Without integration, we are simply hopping on board what one therapist of mine called the Transcendental Express taking mental shortcuts to transcendent perspectives which we cannot actually utilize in our own psyches or lives. Real, integrated healing can take place in many ways, but the basic template is almost always the same: the error or distortion in feeling or perception must be fully exposed, revealed,
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brought forth -- and higher knowing must be present to meet it and hold it, thus creating the conditions in which it can transform. When my father, a medical doctor, had his license revoked for narcotics violations, I had to face the fact that he was an addict, something I had refused to see for many years. I loved him and wanted him to go into drug treatment; he refused to admit he had a problem. When he came into town unexpectedly, I wrestled with whether or not to confront him directly. I knew that whatever I said to him was unlikely to change his behavior, so I wondered whether it was worth saying anything at all. Here is what my guide told me: You are still wishing by your actions to make things other than as they are. What is more important than your contact or your lack of contact with your father is your continued work to accept him, and all of the people with whom you come into contact, exactly as he and they are -- rather than in any way attempting to shift, change, affect or influence them by your actions. If you were to reach a point of true acceptance of your father as he is, the effects would be healing both to you and to him, though the latter in ways that are likely to be invisible to you, regardless of whether or not you are in contact. If you do not reach this greater acceptance, there is nothing in any deeper sense to be gained by contact. As always, the significant work is what happens on the inside.
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15: Understanding and Working With Emotional States As we have already seen, it is possible to change our mental, emotional and energetic imprints, dissolving our blinders so that we can see, perceive and experience a much larger swath of the vastness that is reality. By doing so, we are essentially changing our inner, non-physical structures. And we can also work with these inner structures to transform, heal and release emotional states that cause suffering. Much of the hardship experienced by contemporary Westerners takes place on the non-physical level. Although many of us live in relative physical comfort (and almost all of us live in great physical comfort compared to the conditions in many other parts of the world,) our internal landscapes are often the source of great pain. States of depression, anxiety, shame and self-loathing are so commonplace as to be taken for granted in the West, and may even be thought of as the human condition. Yet in fact, throughout most times and places these states have been far less common. In an oftencirculated story, the Dalai Lama was asked, on one of his first speaking tours in the West, about how to work with self-hatred. His translator struggled for a long time to effectively communicate the question to the Dalai Lama, who was utterly baffled by the concept. How can the self hate the self? he finally asked. The fact that this story is surprising to most of us shows just how far we have come in accepting as natural such an unnatural state. Another clue that humans have not always lived in endemic states of self-hatred comes from the Bible, with its injunction to Love thy neighbor as
thyself. In my work with clients, I find I often have to reverse the injunction and try to help people Love thyself as thy neighbor! Of course, hating oneself or hating ones neighbor is evidence of the same state of separation from life just differently focused. In fact, it is illogical for the self to hate the self. Our individuated consciousness enables us to perceive ourselves as separate from all other life forms, but for most of human history, that has led to a tendency to try to look out for #1 at the expense of all other beings. If we perceive ourselves as separate but are no longer looking out even for ourselves, we are clearly very knotted-up in our relationship to life. Because we also live in a time and place in which non-physical reality is dismissed as unreal, people struggling with difficult emotional states may have their suffering dismissed with phrases like Its all in your head -- as if that made these painful states less real. And yet these non-physical states are so torturous that millions of people take physical substances in attempts to alter them whether these substances are doctor-prescribed antidepressant and anti-anxiety pills, or self-prescribed drugs or alcohol. Unfortunately, in most cases physical substances are of very limited utility in healing non-physical phenomena. Clearly, we as a culture need a clearer understanding of such states, and how to work with them. Here is the understanding my teachers have given me. Depression, anxiety, self-hatred and other painful emotional states are real. Yet unlike a broken leg or a cancerous tumor, these emotional states
have no physical reality. Instead, their substance is composed of nonphysical matter. For this reason, these difficult states are most effectively addressed non-physically, rather than physically. As human beings, we interact constantly with both physical and nonphysical matter. However, we are far better acquainted with our ability to impact physical matter. What we are able to do with the physical matter in our environments can actually serve to inform us about what is possible with our non-physical matter. And this is very important, because although our internal, non-physical matter is even more amenable to change it is far easier, for instance, to move a thought or feeling across the room internally, given its weightlessness, than to move a heavy piece of furniture we do not have a good understanding of our power to impact the nonphysical realm. For instance, a state of depression is both as real, and as unreal, as the kitchen table on which we might place a cup. But we are aware that we could change the physical form of the table, or our relationship to it, if we so chose. We could paint the table, or move it into a different room, or break it apart, or burn it. If we decide we no longer want it, we could take it to the dump, sell it, give it to the Goodwill, or put it out on the curb with a Free sign on it. None of this strikes us as surprising or particularly difficult, since we have been taught to interact with, and to impact, physical matter since we were very young. What most of us have not been taught is that we have essentially the same options available with our depression, or with our
beliefs about ourselves, or with any other aspect of our non-physical, internal matter. There are numerous non-physical means available to dismantle, shift, alter or release our beliefs and emotions, and these means are just as real, and just as effective, as any action we could take with physical matter in the physical world. Why, then, is it so hard for most of us to change the non-physical matter of our emotional states and beliefs? One reason, of course, is that the knowledge that it is possible to do so is not widely available in our culture. But even more significantly, we are hindered in changing our nonphysical matter because we tend to confuse it with ourselves. We are very unlikely to confuse our tables with ourselves, which is why we can change our tables so much more easily than with our fears! In other words, in order to work effectively with our non-physical matter, we must be able to distinguish it from ourselves. That's why meditation and practices that involve the development of an inner witness are so useful for so many people. Realizing that we are not our emotional states and that they are not us is a crucial first step in becoming able to transform or release them. The physical world and the non-physical world are two sides of the same coin; they function similarly, and each serves to reflect and illuminate the other. The table on which my cup rests is real and solid to me right now, for all intents and purposes (even though quantum physics would tell me that its matter is not actually solid at all). Pretending it did not exist would be
shirking an opportunity to use, move, break, burn, paint it or give it away. In the same way, pretending that emotional pain or depression does not exist or is not real is an evasion. Although they lack physical matter, our emotional states are very real; yet they are no more permanent or immutable than any form of physical matter. In fact, they are far more mutable than most physical matter. Once we understand that our emotional states are composed of nonphysical matter, we can explore them the same way we explore our external surroundings. We can walk through the rooms of our own consciousness just as we might walk through the rooms of our physical dwellings, examining the structures that are already in place, and assessing changes we wish to make. Many of the emotional states we experience, and beliefs and imprints we carry, can be shifted with surprising ease. Other aspects of what we experience as self are more foundational -- meaning that a great deal of what we think we are has been built upon them -- and are therefore more difficult to change. And yet, although it is expensive and timeconsuming to replace the foundation of a physical house, it can still be done. The foundations of our personalities what we consider ourselves to be can be changed too. The Pathwork, a group of over two hundred lectures given by a nonphysical teacher who called himself only The Guide, offers profound insights and tools that can help. (For more information about the Pathwork, you can visit the website of the organization that has developed to keep
these teachings alive, www.pathwork.org.) Here are some statements taken from Pathwork lectures that can help you begin this process. No real growth and happiness can exist unless a change in the personality takes place. Do not say change does not exist. The universe, and everything in it, changes constantly, is constantly in flux. Even your body is not the same as it was several years ago. Everything changes, even in physical matter, though you may not be aware of it. When you are always together with a living, growing being, you do not see the growth taking place. You notice it only retrospectively. But the very essence of life is change. If there is no change, there is no life. If you remain static, you are in a predicament. You are unhappy. You are not alive. To a large degree, the human struggle exists because a part of you grows organically and healthily according to the laws of nature, while another part remains static. So do not say change is impossible. It is the only thing that is possible, I might say. Change is the only organic, natural process of creation, and therefore it is also within you The freeing new thought process might be to begin with: "I do not want to stay in this position. There are powers within me that make it possible for me to change, and to feel good and secure about the change. I do deserve it. This change is my birth-right, which I claim. I decide, wish, request, desire and intend to make the following change ____________________, and I ask for the assistance of all of the compassionate and loving forces in the universe in doing so. [Ruths comment: If there are
specific forces you believe in, you can invoke their names here: Buddhas and bodhisattvas, the Divine, Source, God, Essence, All-That-Is, the Dalai Lama, your guides, your power animals, your own Higher Self or Unified Self, or whatever other names you may use for compassionate energies and forces.] Even if some part of you still resists while you say these words, if your innermost will pronounces these words strongly and decisively, without covering up or denying the negative will, but meeting it head on, a new power will be created by the force of the intent within your thought. Only too often you wait for change to take place, without your deciding on a new thought process about the issue in question. It is the thought that must change first. In thought lies the intent. This intent can then seep deeper and deeper into the still-resisting layers of your consciousness. In that way the process takes place on the outermost and the innermost levels: on the outermost, by the volitional thoughts you issue forth; on the innermost, by the divine power you mobilize when you meditate for this specific help. In this way, you cannot fail to inactivate the power of the old negative force field, and create a new force field that will bring you into ever increasing fulfillment, meaningful life, joy, peace, and love.
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16: Working With Shame and Self-Hatred In our time and place, shame and self-hated are so widespread as to be very nearly ubiquitous. And where they exist, it is essential for those who wish to grow and feel joy to heal, shift, and release them. These emotional states are particularly painful and damaging because their very essence, self-rejection, both emerges from, and perpetuates, a sense of separation from the self, and from all of life. In addition to causing great suffering on their own, they also retard or block connection and healing. On an energetic level, shame and self-hatred resemble a twisting or arching-back of the being, in response to perceived external pain. The message carried by these emotional states is, I (not the outside) am the problem. Unlike the wholesome state of self-responsibility, shame and selfhatred shift energetic burden onto the self in a way that renders us incapacitated and paralyzed. Shame and self-hatred are negative, rejecting postures, which, in this case, we have directed toward ourselves. Negativity and rejection can only cause harm, whether it is directed toward the outside or the inside. And we know, and can remind ourselves, that life itself does not reject any part of itself, nor any part of us. Therefore, since we are a part of life, it is obvious that shame and self-hatred are not true, or truth. Regardless of who or what is being rejected, postures of rejection do not emerge from truth; in fact, they prevent access to truth. Specifically, shame and selfhatred work like a kind of internal electric fence, corralling the being into
certain behavioral and energetic patterns, and away from others. Since they are contracting rather than expansive (i.e., they close us down rather than opening us up), they narrow the pathways through which whatever we desire can actually come. In this way, they create the equivalent of a nonphysical hardening of the arteries which predisposes us to heart attacks (painful states of increasing intensity), just as physical angina predisposes us to physical heart attacks; the oxygen that is needed simply cannot reach its destination efficiently in the face of so many blocked roads. Or to use a different type of metaphor, we could say that these internal states reshape the being into what Buddhism calls a hungry ghost, a being with a huge belly and a tiny throat, who is therefore always be ravenous. Like most suffering, this condition arises from pain, causes pain, and makes the true cause of pain harder to see and harder, therefore, to resolve. In fact, the original cause of this pain emerges from a misunderstanding. Although shame says, There is something wrong with me, there could not possibly be anything wrong with you, just as there cannot be anything wrong with a tree, bush or flower. Of course, some trees are healthier than others; some are taller, shorter, greener or less green. Some may even be stunted or diseased. But even a tree in a state of sickliness would clearly be valid and worthy, deserving of compassion and care, not blame. Life does not hate a sickly or malformed tree; life is incapable of hating anything. Life energy is, quite simply, composed of love.
Nor would the stunted tree ever hate itself. It is only because of our individuated consciousness our ability to perceive ourselves as separate that we may translate a general feeling that Something is wrong, into the specific conclusion, Something is wrong with me. Of course, when we turn against ourselves because of our suffering, we create even more suffering. Yet when we understand that the principles of working with internal, non-physical matter are quite similar to those we already use to work with external, physical matter, we can see that there are many effective ways to dispel energetic phenomena like shame and self-hatred. Of course, it doesnt work to argue with or deny the emotional state. Arguing with or denying the existence of an ugly piece of furniture in our house would not be an effective approach at all! Rather, we must see that it is there; see that it is not us; see that it is not necessary to us; and then change or release it. Although this process sounds straightforward, it can actually be surprisingly difficult for many of us to recognize the nature of our internal states and then to distinguish them from ourselves. Even once we have done that, we may still feel that we need the state; we might not be able to imagine life without it. So these are the kinds of challenges we must face, and misconceptions we must correct, in order to become able to transform or shift our internal non-physical matter. Here is one approach: Exercise: Releasing Self-Hatred or Shame
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1) Remind yourself that the shame or self-hatred is not you, and you are not it. To make this distinction more clear, deliberately direct your memory to a moment in your life, or an aspect of your life, in which the shame or self-hatred was not present. Allow yourself to remember and reexperience this moment or aspect as vividly as possible: how it looks, feels, tastes, sounds, smells. Then, realize clearly that since you can experience life so fully in the absence of shame or self-hatred, those emotions cannot possibly be you. No matter how infrequent or brief such instants may have been, they show you that what you are, is separate and distinct from these emotional states. 2) Realize that the shame or self-hatred is not true and not truth. You are a part of life, and life does not hate itself or any part of itself. Therefore, as you viscerally remember your unbreakable connection to life, your shame or self-hatred cannot continue to exist. 3) Now, with the understanding that the shame or self-hatred are not you, and are not truth, ask yourself whether there are any reasons you would like to continue to keep them within you. For instance, you might find it hard to let go of your shame because you simply cannot imagine what your life would be like without it. Its as if you had a big, ugly table in your living room, which makes you trip every time you enter the room, allows no room for the rest of your furniture, and is infested with cockroaches. You hate the table, yet when you imagine getting rid of it, you might wonder, But where will I put my tea? What if I
can never find another table? Maybe Id better hold onto this table, despite all its faults. After all, its here already. What will people think of me if I dont have a table in my living room? If these kinds of questions or fears emerge, you may need to ask internal or external sources of assistance for help. With support from a larger aspect of your being or from another human being not caught up in your personal tangle you will be able to identify other structures or energies within your being, which will indeed keep you safe in the absence of the familiar shame or self-hatred. 4) Once you reach a point where you feel completely ready and willing to give up the shame or self-hatred whether that process takes you a moment, or a decade -- there are many ways to do so. The internal tool we call the imagination is actually the most powerful resource available for working with non-physical reality. For instance, you could imagine putting all of the shame into a bag or box, then asking your guides or inner teachers to take it from you. Or you might imagine the shame and self-hatred as iron filings, and allow yourself to pass a powerful non-physical magnet over your being, gathering up all the particles. You might picture yourself being washed inside and out, in a crystalline pool. You might see yourself with a broom or vacuum cleaner in your hand, literally cleaning your being of these toxic states. Or a different image might come. What matters is that the image makes sense to you. What we are describing here is a process that is
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both symbolic and an energetic. The psyche thrives on symbols, so for many of us, they are a very effective way to work with inner states. As you continue, you may find yourself able to energetically see or sense the self-hatred moving upward, out of your body and energy field, and into the light which is all around us, and is the ultimate recycler of all matter. Or, if you cant see or feel it, allow yourself to imagine that you can. Or, you might prefer to energetically see or sense the shame moving downward, into the earth which is also a master transformer, capable of transmuting all manner of toxic or decaying matter into new forms. Or, you could envision Light and love surrounding the self-hatred, penetrating it so deeply that it ceases to be hatred at all, and transforms into internal matter of a very different kind. If you are aware that your pattern of shame or self-hatred came to you by way of another person, you can also energetically send it back to them, or to their Higher Self. This is actually an appropriate and helpful thing to do, since each of us must deal with our own internal matter as part of our evolutionary process. Your holding on to these states for the other person will prevent them from doing the work they need to do to evolve.
This is just one example of a way to work with shame, self-hatred, and other difficult emotional states. There are myriad tools available, although they are not widely known in the mainstream. Still, more and more are surfacing, sometimes as specific processes available in the larger context of
techniques like hypnotherapy, guided visualization, shamanic journeying, EFT, Theta Healing, and so on. Each of these approaches and many others offer a way to gain access to the inner being, and change or release the non-physical structures within it. Each persons inner landscape contains
different structures, so different forms of assistance may be more beneficial or resonant for different people. Whats most important here is the understanding that internal matter can be completely transformed or released. We do not have to live with ugly, cumbersome, disruptive internal states, any more than we must keep ugly, cumbersome or dangerous objects in our houses.
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17: The Emotional State of Feeling Abused or Victimized One particularly challenging emotional state is the state of feeling abused or victimized by others, or by life itself. This state is both complex and painful enough to merit its own discussion. When we cannot hold onto a sense of our own power and value when we cannot dwell internally in a posture of self-love suffering ensues. In such a state of suffering, we cannot feel at peace when we are alone, so we look to others to help us feel connected to life, and to confirm our value. Unfortunately, due to our underlying posture of self-negation, we may instead encounter a steady stream of people who appear to disempower us, disrespect us, and lack consideration for us. The real issue is that we carry collapsed areas inside our own being, in which we do not feel our own power, or respect ourselves, or show consideration for ourselves. Understandably, we wish others to show us this respect and consideration first, without our having developed it for ourselves. Yet it cannot happen that way, because what we experience internally and what manifests externally are inextricably connected. And it is the inner sphere that we are most able to influence, through working with our non-physical internal matter. We could waste a great deal of energy trying to train others to treat us more respectfully but in the end, unless and until we are able to treat ourselves in such a manner, we will be energetically unable to receive such treatment from outside.
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It is not that life or anyone else is punishing us. It is a neutral energetic phenomenon, like the way that water cannot enter a jar that is sealed. Of course, we can become angry or hurt at lifes repeated reminders that we are sealed in this way or we can choose to receive the message without blaming the messenger. It is, in fact, a gift to have whatever it is in us that makes us bow down, go mute, succumb and deflate be so relentlessly exposed, because it is only through our repeated confrontations with these inner phenomena manifested externally that we will recognize what we are carrying inside, and take steps to change it.
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18. Understanding Emotional Postures Emotional states produce sensations; emotional postures are the stances that underlie those sensations. For instance, if you were leaning over for an extended period of time, you might notice that your back was sore. You would probably then realize that your leaning-over was bringing about the soreness, and that you could choose, instead, to stand up straight to alleviate the pain. If, on the other hand, you did not make the connection between the sore back and the leaning over, you might take pain killers for the sore back, without ceasing to lean over. Thus you might enter into a pattern of continuously medicating your symptom, without recognizing or changing the posture that was creating the symptom. If the painkiller caused you to have an upset stomach, you might then take a second medication to try to manage that symptom, which might then cause other problems, for which you might take a third medication, and so on all without ever correcting the original cause of pain. Many of us do exactly this with our emotional lives, so it is valuable to explore our habitual emotional postures to see how they may be contributing to our emotional pain. In addition, when we understand the way emotional postures work, we become more able to distinguish between inner stances that connect us to ourselves and to life, and inner stances that disconnect us. This recognition can help us to make slight yet profound shifts in our emotional carriage shifts that allow us to move through our lives with more freedom, joy and power.
Sometimes, emotional postures that are actually very different may bear a surface resemblance to one another: for instance, self-responsibility and self-blame. However, when you look more closely, you can see that they are actually not similar at all. The posture of self-responsibility is a steppingforward into the universe and saying, I am here. In contrast, the posture of self-blame says, I should not be here. I hereby attempt to obliterate myself. Self-responsibility makes us larger, more powerful, by connecting us to the harmonious force of life itself. Self-blame makes us smaller, more powerless. It is an inharmonious stripping-way of the "self," as if to feed some "other." But since there truly is no "other," it is an act of violence both against the "self," and against all that is. Therefore, self-responsibility is a posture that will help us to recognize and alleviate emotional pain, while selfblame will inevitably increase emotional pain. There are many cases of emotional postures that might appear similar at first glance, yet are radically different on an energetic level: for instance, guilt and remorse. Guilt says I am bad. The posture is one of shrinking, cringing. The energetic statement implicit in this posture is, I deserve to be punished. I deserve to receive less than my full complement of life energy and compassion. Again, this belief emerges out of a fundamental confusion, since anything withheld from the self is also, by definition, withheld from others. In contrast, the posture of remorse says, I have done something which is out of alignment with what I know to be the highest truth, or the highest good. There is a sense of standing fully erect, without defensiveness
or self-abnegation. The statement being made is, I wish and intend to align myself and my actions with the universal flow. Compassion for the self is present in this posture, and compassion from "outside" can be allowed in. Again, therefore, the posture of remorse can facilitate the healing of emotional pain, whereas the posture of guilt will further entrench that pain. At first glance, it might appear more harmonious to feel proud than to feel ashamed. In fact, both are energetically closed states. Although shame says I am bad and pride says I am good, both emerge from a framework in which the individual conceives of him or herself as separate -- an individual self that, because it is cut off from life, needs to be reduced or enlarged in some way. However, the kind of enlargement that accompanies pride is energetically bloated and unstable, subject to collapsing in on itself in any moment and revealing itself as its "opposite," shame. Although shame will automatically create pain, and pride may at first appear to alleviate such pain, it will not lead to real healing. In contrast, the posture of gratitude is a posture of balance. There is no attempt to "feel good" while holding oneself separate or apart from the universe; rather, there is a joyful acknowledgement of the connection between oneself and the universe. This makes it a stable and nourishing inner posture, and a very foundation for healing. Of course, it is not "bad" to blame oneself, or to feel guilt, or to feel pride -- nor is it "better to feel self-responsible or grateful. It is simply that the former postures alienate and constrict the self from the universal flow,
while the latter postures are opening and aligning. When we experience this difference, it makes sense to cultivate those postures which enlarge and empower us, simply because they feel so much better. Human beings tend to judge emotions as good or bad, positive or negative which is something like judging a tree or patch of grass. Trees and grass simply are; so, too, are emotions. Although certain emotions do contribute to suffering, while others are life-affirming, the act of judging an emotion as bad or judging ourselves as bad for having bad emotions only creates more separation and suffering. Rather than judging ourselves, others, or emotions in this way, it makes sense to examine the fruits borne by that tree. A crabapple tree is not bad, but if we prefer to eat peaches, we might wish to uproot the crabapple trees in our yard and plant trees that will bear the fruit we find delicious and nourishing. Some people believe that anger is a negative emotion, and should be avoided. But that is a terrible oversimplification. If we look at the underlying inner posture, we can see that anger does emerge from a place of resistance, an inner belief that something is wrong. Generally the statement behind the feeling of anger is either, I have been wronged, or Someone or something outside of me is wrong. If we were to diagram these statements energetically, we would see a flow of energy leaving the person who believes they have been wronged, and going directly to the person they believe has wronged them. Thus, their anger has the effect of stripping their own life energy from them, and gifting it to another person. Seen from this angle, it
becomes clear that anger is not wrong of course, nothing is wrong. However, anger is ineffective it is not appropriate medicine for the pain it attempts to assuage -- because it deepens rather than corrects energetic imbalances. Of course, judging anger as bad will not help to correct the underlying imbalance. Instead, a posture of self-love will help bring energy back to where it belongs and when you are in full possession of your own energy, it is very difficult to feel wronged. Many people believe that "self-esteem" is good, and should be cultivated, since most people prefer to "feel good about themselves" rather than its opposite, "feeling bad about themselves" (although a surprising number actually have the reverse preference.) But to understand the true nature of this posture, we must explore what it is to feel "good about ourselves." Does this "good" feeling rely upon a sense of separation from others for its maintenance? Does it arise from feeling "better than" others? Is there a note of smugness and superiority within it? If so, this so-called "good" feeling is a trick knife-blade that will actually cause harm to the one who wields it because any feeling that arises from or relies upon a notion of oneself as separate from others will ultimately cause pain. In contrast, any feeling that arises from an understanding of oneself as intrinsically and inextricably connected to all others, and to life, will promote joy and harmony. Again, it is never helpful to judge, blame or criticize oneself or others for experiencing emotional states that both reflect and further a sense of
separation. Obviously, such judgment, blame or criticism would only further the very split that we have already recognized as inharmonious. Rather, we can recognize where we have gone off course where we have deepened our separation from life and from ourselves, and caused ourselves pain, confusion and energy loss -- while holding ourselves in complete compassion. When we are able to observe ourselves in this way, it is easy to make emotional and energetic shifts -- because in fact, the key initial shift has already been made. Any genuine instance of compassion, regardless of context, restores harmony to our inner being, and restores us to our proper relationship to the universe.
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19: Working with Physical Pain Emotional pain and physical pain are similar phenomena that occur on different levels of our being. Emotional pain, as we have discussed, is invisible, non-physical. It emerges from and reflects postures of imbalance and separation within the self, and it is most effectively addressed through non-physical means. Physical pain, obviously, is pain that has manifested within our physical bodies. We might therefore assume that it would be most effectively addressed through physical means; however, this is not always the case. In part, this is because the experiences of emotional and physical pain are not wholly distinct, but tend to interweave. When not addressed, emotional pain can actually produce or morph into physical pain. Physical pain can also produce emotional pain for instance, when one feels shame, self-hatred, or victimized due to the physical pain. Although physical responses to physical phenomena may be necessary and appropriate, it is still our inner stance that is most important, in terms of correcting the underlying imbalance and sense of separation. For instance, it can be useful to take the pills commonly known as "pain killers" to alleviate physical pain -- as long as our inner focus is directed toward allowing the pills to work, and to help us work, in harmony with the larger flow of life. We might do well to internally rename the pills; instead of calling them killers of pain, we could call them servers of life, to make our relationship to them more clear. If we take such pills with an
inner posture of love and respect for life, for ourselves, and for our bodies, they will probably serve us well (though it is also true that if we can cultivate such a posture of love and respect, our pain may diminish on its own.) If, on the other hand, we take pain killers in order to try to kill off, silence or numb the part of ourselves that is feeling pain, or in order to force ourselves into a level of functioning or artificial "well-being" not in concert with our inner experience, we are removing ourselves from the stream of lifes compassion. In this case, while the pills may or may not do their job on a surface level, our inner attitude will move us further from, rather than closer to, true healing. Although they may seem subtle, these distinctions are profound. When we look more closely, we can see again that what we do matters far less than why and how we do it. For instance, if we take analgesic pills as an act of compassion for our body - which is working so hard on our behalf, which is suffering and manifesting the physical effects of all our inner confusions and distortions, and which needs our tender attention and our focused work in order to become more able to manifest the true state of well-being which would represent the fulfillment of its inner design -- then the pills themselves can actually serve as emissaries of the universe, and assist us in our larger project. If, however, we refrain from taking such pills as a means of withholding compassion from ourselves and our bodies, forcing ourselves to "tough it
out," then the pain we experience will become magnified and amplified -reflecting not only the original processes which led to its manifestation, but also the secondary processes by which we fracture and divide ourselves from ourselves, and separate ourselves from the universal flow. What truly matters are the energies and intentions which fuel our actions or inactions. On the physical plane, sometimes physical actions are necessary or appropriate to aid in the transformation of physicallymanifested phenomena. Yet our reasons for taking those actions, and the emotions and energies with which we undertake them, are always more impactful than the presence or absence of the physical intervention itself. Its also true that sometimes energies must move through our bodies and take shape on the physical level, in the process of being transformed. Our wish to "kill" the pain or banish its source often stems from a misunderstanding of this larger process -- a belief that pain or illness means that we have done something wrong, or failed to do something right, or that it means there is something wrong with us. In fact, any instance of physical pain or illness is simply the natural result of a particular energetic process. While it may be true that this result could have been avoided if different internal actions had been taken, that understanding cannot really help us now, and is not really the point -- just as berating ourselves now for having denied ourselves compassion in the past, is not the point, and does not help.
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Compassion is the one medication which is always indicated, and a willingness to open to it, to align ourselves with it, to allow it to work with us and within us and on our behalf -- and, in so doing, align us with all of the compassionate energies at work in the universe -- that is the point, now and always. Its never too late or too early for that inner soul movement of receptivity, regardless of what inner or outer damage may already have manifested from previous incapacity or misunderstandings. Like emotional pain, physical pain can be a shattering experience. And this shattering can be beneficial if we can allow it to strip us of our outer layers of guardedness, shame and isolation, and expose more of our inner being to light.
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20: Understanding Physical Illness Severe health problems most often represent an imbalance or distortion in our connection to ourselves, or our connection to life. They can therefore be understood as part of a larger process designed to get our attention, to show us where and how we have separated ourselves from ourselves and from life. When illness brings us to a point of crisis, it can also bring the gift of crisis: the receipt of the message that various parts of our being have likely been attempting to communicate for a long time that we cannot go on living in the same way; that change is necessary. If we are to heal, we must choose on behalf of ourselves, and on behalf of life. In many illnesses, part of the pattern at work is a movement toward our own life force, and a counter-movement against or away from it. When both movements are very strong, it is as if we are standing between two very strong winds, each blowing in an opposite direction. These winds work inside us like magnetic poles - when one grows stronger, the other also experiences a parallel increase in strength. This is why sometimes an illness may continue to progress, despite or in some cases, even because of our having accomplished a significant amount of healing. Painful emotional states play a significant role in the genesis of most severe illnesses. This is true because the energetic misalignment that creates illness the separation between a person and his or her own life force both emerges from, and leads to, states of emotional pain. Selfhatred and self-rejection, in particular, are often involved in the development
of illness. When we are very knotted-up by self-loathing, we can actually come to perceive the counter-movement against our own life force as being in favor of life. We may believe on some level that our very existence and needs are somehow anti-life, and that these must be suppressed or negated in order for life to be served. Of course, this is not and cannot ever be true. We are a part of life, and life is served by our well-being. But there are many paths by which we can come to believe otherwise. For instance, if we felt unloved or disliked by one or both of our parents, we may have perceived that in order to align with them, we had to turn against ourselves. This may at one time have seemed like the only way we could receive love, and the only way we could stay alive. And yet of course it created an anti-love, anti-life current within the self. A self that is turned against itself is, obviously, turned against life because we are part of life. There is, therefore, no way for us to hate or reject ourselves, without also hating and rejecting life. Another pathway to this particular distortion is an acute awareness of the suffering of others -- and an early, erroneous conclusion regarding its cause. As infants or very young children, we may have perceived our existence as burdensome for our mother or other caretaker, and concluded that life in this case, our caretakers life would be better served if we did not exist, or did not fully exist. Over the years, this sort of misperception can remain with us and even seem to acquire layers of proof, because of the ways in which our experience of reality will almost always manage to
prove whatever we already believe. If we become and remain ill, it may indeed seem as if we are burdening others around us, which will make it even harder to heal the original misperception. The result may be that the part of ourselves that is determined to serve life by eliminating us grows quite frantic to make this occur, while the part that wants to choose on behalf of our well-being becomes equally frantic in response. To heal these kinds of distortions, we must work at their source. We must directly examine the conviction that our own full existence is somehow inappropriate, undesirable, or damaging to life. We must expose all of the distorted beliefs that have been running us from underground, so that we can clearly see their distortions. This will make it possible for us to create a clear, rather than a split, statement of healing intention. Here is an exercise that can help us clear out some of the internal matter that may be at work in our illness: Squares (exercise developed by Leslie Temple Thurston) Begin by taking a piece of paper and drawing two lines across it, one horizontal and one vertical, to create four equal squares. Then, give each of your squares a title: 1. Why I desire to be alive 2. Why I fear being alive 3. Why I desire death 4. Why I fear death
Then, fill in as much as you can within each of the four squares. You must write something in every square; if at first it seems as if one or more of the four squares does not apply to you, look more deeply. Dedicated attention to these four questions will almost certainly yield some surprises. This is a powerful energetic process, and should not be misunderstood as merely a mental exercise. You may find it impossible to do the entire process in a single sitting. You may also find you need to do it more than once. If you scour yourself deeply enough, you will find at least some degree of distortion and charge in your answers for each of the four squares. Once you have identified the distorted attitudes or postures at work within you, you can ask your inner teachers, the universe or God for help in removing them. You can also use the tools of intention and prayer to untangle, clear, correct or release the erroneous beliefs. Remember, these attitudes, postures and beliefs are real they are actual, though non-physical, structures inside your being. But they are not true, not Truth. And just as you have the power to transform or release physical structures in your life, you can transform or remove these beliefs.
All roads really do bring us back to the relationship with the self. Healing can only occur, and must occur, through a process of full selfembrace. And yet, because the personal self is a fictitious construct and a portal into the larger whole, our relationship with ourselves is also a
representation of, and a metaphor for, the way the human species as a whole has become contorted in its relationship to life and to the universe. The distortions inside each of us, while to some extent our own unique configurations, are mirrored and echoed in many other people and forms. Therefore, our work to clear and untangle these distortions inside ourselves will also benefit others. At times we may have carried so many misconceptions about ourselves, so many currents of self-rejection and self-negation, for so long that they have braided, knotted and massed together, forming the equivalent of an Inner Destroyer a dark force or energy which actively works to push us away from wholeness and from life. As we grow in consciousness and strength, the Destroyer grows, too, fed by the underground currents of our self-loathing, and a tremendous strain results. When both forces in us, that which seeks to heal us and that which seeks to destroy us, grow strong enough, the internal tension produces an implosion, and a crisis on the physical level is a likely result. The problem is that when it is not fully integrated on all levels of the being, spiritual growth can actually deepen existing fault lines and ruptures within our being. The more we come into contact with profound levels of truth and with the beauty of higher consciousness, the more distorted parts of ourselves may struggle to hold themselves and us away from that light. Meanwhile, for those parts of ourselves that have glimpsed Truth, the fact that so much of our being is still segregated and held apart from that
Truth and light can feel increasingly intolerable. So both the light-aware, light-seeking part of us, and the shame-filled inner destroyer then work harder and harder, causing more of what we experience as suffering and disruption, in order to get our attention. When this occurs, the solution, as usual, is love. Specifically, we must work to love and value ourselves as never before; we must commit ourselves to recognizing our own true goodness and beauty, our intrinsic worth and value, our inextricable connectedness to life. We must call upon all of our external and internal allies, friends and teachers, and ask them to join us in flooding our being with love -- in order that the balance may shift in favor of our continued physical existence, rather than against. Quite simply, the crisis of illness asks us to decide to live, to embrace our own life force wholeheartedly, to stand openly and forcefully in our own being and to directly confront, heal and/or release those internal configurations which prevent us from doing so. All of our own life force waits to embrace us and work toward helping us heal, if we will only turn ourselves decisively in the direction of choosing that, allowing it, directing our wills toward opening to that natural process rather than toward suppressing ourselves. And even when it may not appear so on the surface, all of the other people in our lives including those for whose sake we might have imagined that it was necessary for us to suppress ourselves will also be served by this inner movement. This cannot fail to be the case because in fact life at
the deepest level is not, and can never be, opposed to life. Our survival and healing is not truly being contested by anyone other than ourselves. And we have only turned against ourselves because of ancient errors in perception. All that is really required to begin to reverse this is a conscious and fullhearted decision to do so a clear setting of a new intention. There are also times when illness or other challenges come to us in order to soften us. This is particularly necessary for those of us who have confused softness with weakness. If we hold this misconception, at some point life will need to disabuse us of it. The problem, or rather, the inharmonious posture, is our attempt to be stronger than the universe. This effort is destined to fail; we need to align ourselves with the truth, which is that the universe is stronger than us at least, stronger than our small personality selves, which is the only part of us that would engage in this type of power struggle. In essence, the universe is like a masseur which holds us in its hands; depending on the strength of our resistance, it can massage us into softness, or it can break us. The choice is ours. Resistance, of course, makes us brittle. The urge to fight, to try to control, to dominate these impulses actually work counter to our alignment with the universal currents. Often we carry within us old angers, which form hard knots in our being. Over time, we develop the misconception that our lives depend on continuing to hold onto those knots, as if they hold us together with their bitterness and bile. In fact, they prevent the natural upwelling of gratitude in
us, and separate us from the flow of life. In order to heal this pattern, we must open the knots and allow their venom to drain out but within an internal environment so filled with higher knowing that the venom simply burns up, and becomes transformed into particles of light. Healing cannot be brought about through sheer force of will, although strong-willed people often attempt to heal in this way. This is another manifestation of the belief that one individual can be stronger than the universe itself and so this effort is doomed to fail. Our learning here is to shift in such a way that we stop trying to dominate the universe, to force it to heal us -- and instead become able to open to the universe, and allow it to heal us. As we become able to enter into this more receptive posture, the question of forgiveness may arise. We may have to forgive those from whom we first learned to be so tough. We may have to forgive ourselves for the harm our toughness has caused, both to ourselves and to others. Forgiving ourselves will help us to forgive others; forgiving others will help us to forgive ourselves. As this new energetic pattern gains momentum, the feeling of having been wronged or having done wrong will inevitably wither, and gratitude will rise up organically in its place. Of course, all of these shifts are parts of a much larger process of realignment, in which we are likely to develop a very different understanding of strength and weakness. We may come to understand that the posture we have held and taken as strength has actually made us weak, and that the
postures part of us still sees as weak the postures of forgiveness, receptivity and gratitude actually represent great strength. As we incorporate these new understandings more fully and deeply, the life energy in our bodies will redistribute itself in such a way as to facilitate our healing, or the resolution of our challenge or difficulty.
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21: Forces and Counter-Forces The physical plane is a realm of duality, a plane on which we experience many seeming opposites -- day and night, dark and light, black and white, wet and dry, hot and cold. When we can see the tapestry of existence from a bit further away, it becomes clear that these opposites are not truly in opposition to each other at all, but are, instead, different points on a continuum, or different aspects of one larger thing. Yet on the human level, we are given to binary perception. And so we often experience another pair of seeming opposites: forces and counter-forces. If youve ever made a serious, firm decision to start going to the gym every day and then found yourself avoiding the gym and actually eating more junk food in response then you have experienced forces and counterforces at work. In this case, the force was your intention to go to the gym more often, and the counter-force was produced by all the parts of you that hadnt agreed to that plan and hadnt, in fact, even been consulted or acknowledged. The concept of self-sabotage has been bandied about so much in self-help circles that many people now believe they house an inner saboteur who is trying hard to prevent them from making positive changes. Some spiritual literature even posits that this inner enemy is the ego itself. In this interpretation, the ego or small self feels threatened by our emotional and spiritual development, and therefore tries every trick at its disposal to trip us up.
Yet it is not actually true that such phenomena are caused by the presence of inner saboteurs or villainous, destructive egos. What is true is that we, like all matter on the earth plane, contain forces and counter-forces. None of these forces is actually opposed to our well-being, growth and development rather, they simply hold opposing notions of what would constitute such well-being. And it is an integral part of our growth and development not a distraction, obstacle or diversion from it to become responsive to, and able to cooperate with, these forces and counter-forces within us. Balance is necessary for our well-being on the earth plane, where we experience so many opposites and extremes. In order to achieve emotional and spiritual health, we must learn to live much of our lives between these extremes, incorporating the strengths of each. For many of us, this is difficult; we tend to prefer one side or the other of any given spectrum. Some of us might prefer it to be sunny every day, and never rain; or to be daylight all day, every day, and never get dark; or to be winter all year round, and never get warm. And yet these conditions, which each represent only one half of the duality, would not actually work well in sustaining our physical lives on earth. We need both the force of the sun and the counter-force of the rain, the force of the day and the counter-force of the night, the warmer weather and the cold. The interplay of forces and counter-forces helps keep us in balance, and also creates conditions which
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support all of the other interconnected life forms with which we interact, and on which we depend. We are aware that on the earth plane, we are subject to the force of gravity. If we leap from a plane or a bridge, we fall to earth. If a cup slips out of our hand, it falls to the floor. Gravity is a physical law which is always with us. And yet, despite this physical law, we are nonetheless able (if our bodies are healthy) to move our limbs up and down, to run, jump and dance. We do this by using the counter-force of our own life energy, in concert with the force of gravity. If gravity were the only force, if there were no counterforce, then we would be like stones, unable to move at all. Yet if there were no gravity, life as we know it would be completely impossible. We, and every other physical object in existence, would be floating through air rather than being steadily held here on earth. So it is both the force of gravity, and the counter-force of our own life energy, that make possible the lives we live. Within each of us, too, forces and counter-forces are constantly arising. It is part of their nature, their inner design, to dance with each other, and to teach us balance by ensuring that we dance with both of them. Yet many of us misunderstand this principle, and believe that the dance of our inner forces and counter-forces represents self-sabotage. If that were the case, then night would also represent the sabotage of daylight! And yet in truth night is daylights complement; the two depend upon one another, and work in tandem.
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So, how are we to understand it when we set an intention, and then find a counter-force in us producing a behavior that appears to be in direct opposition to that intention? Rather than becoming angry and frustrated with ourselves, if we step back a few inches from the tapestry we will see that this interplay of force and counter-force is actually preventing us from creating too large a gap between the different aspects of self. In this way, it is actually serving our wholeness if we can recognize whats going on, and respond with understanding and respect for all of the parts of ourselves, and their perspectives. In order to achieve the inner unification which will enable us to move forward with our entire being, we need to consciously work to bring all the parts of ourselves, our forces and our counter-forces, into alignment. Because what we do is always less important than why or how we do it, it will not serve our health or wholeness to attempt to leap-frog over any part of ourselves much less to try to blindfold, bind and gag those parts and stuff them into our inner closets! Any attempt to avoid or deny those parts of ourselves that are not in agreement with planned changes will inevitably trigger a response from our counter-forces. Yet when we recognize why this is occurring, and bring whatever we had been avoiding or denying into the light of our awareness, the dance of force and counter-force can truly serve our growth and our internal balance. There is no inner saboteur or villain, but we each contain many parts, aspects and perspectives. The work of
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wholeness requires us to listen to all of them not to heed all of them, but to include them in our inner conversation.
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22: Understanding and Working With Fear Fear is an inevitable part of the experience of being human, just as having skin a vulnerable, breachable barrier is part of the experience of having a human physical form. Just as we would not strive to have physically unbreachable skin while in a human form, neither should we strive to eliminate fear, or even imagine that it would be desirable to do so. These experiences of vulnerability, these limits, are part of being human; they are part of what we are here to work with and within. Some human beings identify strongly with their fear, feel it often, and go through life alert to the possibility of harm around every external or internal corner. Others attempt to banish their fear, and identify instead with a constructed invincible persona. Both of these approaches offer gifts and challenges; the beings who adopt them might be compared to a violet, a delicate flower that grows only in moist shade, and a prickly pear, a robust cactus that can handle much harsher conditions, and protects itself with thorns. Each life form is beautiful; each has its own integrity and purpose; each is sturdy, in its own way, and yet also vulnerable. And each offers a different vantage point from which to learn about and experience life. Although we often attempt to sort and label our fears, distinguishing between those that are justified and unjustified, that is a misguided effort. In our internal landscapes, fear simply is, just as, in our outer landscape, rain simply is. The question, therefore, is not whether rain is justified, but how we will respond to its existence. Will we go outdoors
anyway, or will we stay home? Will we wear boots, coats, hats, and use umbrellas, or don bathing suits instead, and go splashing through puddles? All of these options are available to us, because fear, at its base, it just another phenomenon to be explored and engaged with. As always, there are no wrong choices, and no right ones. There are only possibilities. And yet as we grow spiritually and emotionally, there can be a tendency to become argumentative or frustrated with our fear or with the aspects of our being that experience fear. We may begin to see fear as somehow problematic, a circumstance to be healed or remedied. In truth, however, fear is neutral, as all phenomena are, at base, neutral. It is an illusion to think that fear must be overcome in order that more interesting landscapes may be explored. The internal landscape and its complex mix and interaction of weather patterns is the terrain we are given, and there is none more interesting. So we do not need to fear (!) being held up by our attention to whatever is within us; that attention is necessary and actually part of, not merely precursor to, our further explorations. Fear can be a pathway to light; we hew to this path by honoring, not disregarding, what we find on the way. At the same time, it is also true that on one level there is never anything to fear there are no dangers -- because, at our essence, what we are cannot be harmed. When we sense this truth, we may become frustrated that our human selves persist in feeling fear. Yet on the human level, harm is possible. In this, as in all other aspects of life, we straddle multiple realities.
Depending on the distance from which we view the tapestry, very different things are true at once. In most cases, for instance, contact with hot coals will burn human skin. Yet in the context of fire-walks, thousands of people have experienced states which enable them to walk barefoot on burning coals, without injury. This shows us something about what is possible. It is useful for how it challenges our sense of immutable laws. But it does not mean that we should cease to use pot-holders while cooking. As human beings, we carry fear within us because all of us have experienced fearsome things in our physical lives. This fear has created structures in our internal, non-physical landscapes, which render us vulnerable. So, although it is the presence of fear that makes danger into danger, rather than the reverse, the danger is still real. Cultivating an attitude of bluffing or bravado attempting to hide our fear from others, and most especially from ourselves actually leaves us more open to being harmed. We might understand fear as a kind of porousness in the being. All human beings have this porousness, though in different locations and to different extents. When a child scrapes her knee and the skin barrier is broken, pathogens can enter her bloodstream. Where a human being has fear, the energetic barrier is broken, and pathogens can enter the energy field. It is fear itself that creates the opening fear that renders us vulnerable to intrusion or harm. And yet the vulnerability, once present, cannot usefully be ignored, denied, or argued with. If we wish to heal the
vulnerability and soothe the fear, we must instead use the medicines of compassion and love. By working with inner teachers or outer sources of help (such as spiritually-aligned friends or therapists), we can become less identified with the parts of ourselves that feel fear and thus more able to offer them support and tenderness. Over time we can cultivate the kind of relationship with our fear that a loving parent has with a very young infant. Such a parent would not attempt to reason with the child, to talk him out of whatever was distressing him; clearly such an approach would be useless, and would only make him cry harder. Instead, the parent would hold her child lovingly, gently soothing and rocking him to sleep. As we become able to respond tenderly to our fear, our perception of danger will decrease and in fact, the actual possibility of harm will decrease as well. Years ago, I experienced this in a visceral way. I had decided to get a home equity loan and substantially remodel my house, so that my teacher could use the house as her teaching space. For me, this also represented a deepening of my commitment to healing work, and an increase in my own visibility as a healer. I wanted to do it, but I also felt terrified. In a therapy session, I became able to see that the part of me I identified as me what we called, in the context of the therapy, my adult self had its back against a closet door, in which a monstrous, deformed infant was imprisoned. I felt there was nothing more important than keeping that door shut. Letting the monster out would ruin everything.
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Of course, my therapist had made sure I called in my guides, my compassionate inner teachers, at the start of the session. Now, she asked how my guides felt about the monster. Of course, they did not perceive it as monstrous at all! Slowly, my adult self became willing to move away from the closet door, so that my guides could retrieve and hold the infant. As they held it, I actually watched its monstrous, deformed features turn into the features of a normal infant. Fear is deforming. Love is undeforming, one guide told me. My own personality has always been counterphobic when I felt fear, I acted anyway. In some ways that pattern served me well; it certainly led to an adventurous life! But obviously it did not, and could not, lead to wholeness. Each time I acted in spite of my fears, I actually increased the split within my own being. I isolated the fearful parts of me even more, and rendered them even more fearful. As I continued to grow and expand, this pattern was simply not sustainable. When my guides removed the monster from the closet and I saw that it was truly only a human infant in need of love, something in me was finally able to relax. Although my first impulse is still to bind, gag and ignore my fears, I have learned over time to be present with them instead. This has enabled me to move forward in much fuller ways to experience internal adventures in intimacy, for instance, that were impossible for me when I was battling against the vulnerable parts of my own being.
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23: On The Nature and Uses of Doubt States of faith and doubt, knowing and not-knowing, perpetually coexist within us. This is so because there are actually many different layers and levels of what we consider to be us. Some layers or aspects of us dwell in a place where doubt does not exist where doubt is not even possible, so complete is the sense of knowing, and of being held. Other aspects of us are trapped in states of confusion and desolation, where faith and knowing are entirely inaccessible. All of this is real; all of it is us. We are like pianos with keys spanning the full range, from the very highest to the very lowest notes. And the lower notes on the piano are not worse, nor even less evolved. They are simply sounded by strings of a different length string that have a different connection to the center, and thus, produce different notes. It can be disconcerting to experience such extremes within ourselves to ricochet, for instance, between states of calm assuredness, and abject terror. Yet it is very human. And it is helpful to remember that the fear- and doubt-filled aspects of our being sound the only note available to them, based on their level of contact with the center. Of course, as these doubt-filled parts of ourselves move closer to the center, or experience the center moving closer to them, they do experience change. As we evolve and heal, our entire keyboard moves upward. We have many more high keys, and their highs grow progressively higher. Even our lowest keys do not go as low as they used to and yet they are still there. It is not possible to eliminate all doubt or fear on our plane, because it
is impossible for human beings to hold a completely accurate perception of the nature of reality. Dimensionally, it simply cannot occur. Our minds, our senses, our apparatuses of perception cannot expand that far. Trying to see the entire tapestry with our human eyes is something like a mouse trying to open its jaws wide enough to eat an alligator. The mouse can see the alligator, it can scamper the whole length of it and get to know it piece by piece, it can take tiny nibbles here and there, but it cannot possibly eat the entire thing in one bite. The alligator has capacities and perspectives about which the mouse knows nothing; it can move through elements that the mouse cannot; it can move with a degree of speed and power that the mouse is unable to achieve. It can also maintain a profound degree of stillness that the mouse, with its smaller nervous system, cannot. So, because an entirely accurate and comprehensive perception of the universe is not available to us as human beings, some degree of doubt or confusion must always remain. It does no good to fight that; of course, as we have seen, it does no good to fight anything. At the same time, specific doubts that arise may point to layers or aspects of our being that are in need of healing and clarification. When we closely examine these areas of doubt, we can identify the misconceptions from which they arise, and then use this information to chart a course for our healing work. Doubt is not actually a single substance or phenomenon; there are many different kinds of doubt. For instance, some human beings doubt that
anything at all exists beyond the material realm, or beyond a single human lifetime. Others might acknowledge the existence of the multidimensional universe, but doubt their own ability to know, perceive or work with it. Some people may feel persistent doubt regarding pursuit of a path that other aspects of their being know to be correct, and do not doubt at all. On the other hand, doubt can sometimes come as a messenger regarding something that a part of the being is attempting to avoid seeing something which must, in fact, be seen. Doubt serves as a useful challenge to the part of each of us that attempts to insist that things be black or white -- be completely this, or completely that. Doubt interrupts such binary thinking by upholding an opposing point of view: when we think something is this, doubt asserts that it may be that, or vice versa. However, doubt doesnt actually help us transcend the binary framework; it only assists us to move more freely between its poles. In actuality, all things are simultaneously this and that, and also neither this nor that. So ultimately doubt falls short as a tool because it tries to help us simplify our understanding of the universe and the universe is not a simple place. Nothing is truly right or wrong, bad or good; we ourselves, the perceivers of things, are also neither bad nor good. Everything in our knowledge of and relationship to these things-- and in fact, if we look closely enough, every circumstance or person with which we have ever had contact -- is also neither bad nor good, but an amalgam of many twisted and braided currents of darkness and light.
Take, for example, a case in which we have been cultivating a generous or positive view of a particular person or endeavor. When doubt arises, it can swing us back toward a more negative perception of that person or thing. Most likely, all of the evidence our doubt can mount for that negative case is true. Yet it is also likely that the evidence with which we had been assembling the positive case is also true. Furthermore, there are many additional true perceptions that we have not yet had, and may never have. It is difficult for us to stand in the fullness of what is -- because we tend to think we need to narrow, simplify and judge reality in order to reach a conclusion, form a stance and interpretation, make a decision, and so on. But all of these assumptions rely on our limited human perceptions as the determinants of our actions, and on our human will as both motor and rudder. This is not wrong, of course. But there are alternative approaches which can bring us into closer relationship with the true, multidimensional nature of reality. Instead of making judgments and decisions about things, and thereby fixing our gaze on a particular outcome on the horizon, we can cultivate the ability to allow all of the different factors, perspectives, perceptions, and levels of being to exist simultaneously (as, in fact, they actually do regardless of whether or not we allow them to!) From this greater vantage point, we can see that we ourselves do not and cannot know what is right or best in fact, those concepts actually cease to hold meaning at all.
How, then, can we ever make choices? It can, if we let it, become a different process entirely. We can become alert to the nuanced responses of our spirit; we can sense where we feel joy, and remember to use that as our most accurate navigational aid. We can hold the fearful parts of ourselves tenderly, as a loving parent holds an infant. We can remember that life supports us, as it supports all aspects of itself in fulfilling their inner design. And then, from that state of connection with ourselves and with life, we can feel our own way forward. Or we can permit life itself to choose our direction, and carry us there; in essence, when we no longer experience ourselves as separate from life, that is the same thing. Of course, it is difficult to let go of our old ways of being. We tend to believe, on some level, that if we cease to be the judge and jury of our lives, the director and producer and actor of our lives, nothing will happen. Yet if we really look at our lives, we will see that many wonderful and important events have in fact come about in a different way, without the involvement of our conscious plans or wills. We may have met people we could never have imagined we would meet, who have been very important to us. We may have discovered places we did not know existed, which have been transformative. There may have been times when we truly did not know what we needed and sought, but when our openness and uncertainty made us less energetically dense than usual, and allowed what we needed and sought to come close to us, and to make itself apparent.
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Doubt can function within us as a skeptic, a challenger, a provocateur. It can help us formulate a convincing case in which almost anything is either good or bad, and then alternate or vacillate between these cases. But doubt cannot allow us to behold the entire alligator of reality at once much less to be taken for a ride on the alligators back. So doubt is neither our friend nor our enemy. It does point to places within us that are in need of healing -- yet even as we heal those places, some doubt will remain as an inevitable feature of the human plane. Doubt can help to dislodge us from our fierce conviction of this-ness, but often it does so by moving us toward an equally fierce conviction of that-ness. Ultimately, we are best served by cultivating a more expansive view.
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Limits and Encumbrances Life on the physical earth, in physical bodies, is an experience of working within limits. Some of us choose to fight and resist those limits, but by doing so, we miss out on the richness of experience that limits actually offer us, and also on the opportunity for creative engagement with those limits. The well-known architect Frank Lloyd Wright famously asserted, Limits are an architects best friend. He explained that if you gave an architect an unlimited budget and told her to choose any site in the world on which to build the most beautiful house possible, it would be an impossible task. Yet, Wright said, if you gave the same architect a pre-determined site and a set budget, and asked her to build the most beautiful house possible within those constraints, she would be able to do so. Of course, there is an obvious parallel with our lives. We are given our sites and our budgets our histories, our bodies, our temperaments, our circumstances and it is from this raw material that we get to create the lives that will be most beautiful to us, the lives that will best fulfill our inner design. If you doubt that limits are gifts, consider this. Your hot shower feels delicious in the morning, but you wouldnt want it to be unlimited; you would grow waterlogged and bored! The wet warmth feels good, and then the drying off and clothing of the body feels good, too, each in its turn. When we resist limits, we are resisting life itself. All living organisms have their own limits, and live within limits. Another way to think of limits is
as contours. Each physical thing or being must have its own shape; that is what creates its reality as a separate thing. For instance, a cup has contours, limits, to define what is cup and not-cup. If it had no limits, it could not be a cup, it would have to be the entire world, and on the physical plane this would be very problematic since you cannot lift the entire world to your mouth to drink your tea! Although we sometimes experience limits as curses rather than blessings, we are actually as gifted by what we cannot do, as by what we can. These two streams the inner stream of can, of capability, and the outer stream or defining contour of cannot, of non-capability, together create the terrain in which we live. Of course, it is possible for us to change the specific contours of certain limits. For instance, if we run for twenty minutes every day, we will soon find ourselves able to run further within the same time frame. But this broadening of terrain occurs most effectively when we cultivate a stretchy, dynamic relationship with limits, a kind of dance which both respects the limits as they are, and explores conditions under which they may expand. Some spiritual paths also foster a misunderstanding of limits. For instance, in certain circles there is a misinterpretation of the Law of Attraction, which suggests that as people connect to their spiritual power, they will be released from limits and will become able to create or attract unlimited quantities of material wealth, or whatever else they desire. This is a confusion which conflates two different realms of being, the non-physical
realm, which is limitless, and the physical realm in which limits are necessary and inevitable. It also represents a conceptual misunderstanding of the nature of spiritual power. True spiritual power consists of aligning ourselves with the larger synergistic flow, not dominating it to try to grab a large share of goodies for ourselves! (In fact, the more connected we are to our spiritual power, the less we are likely to care about ourselves and our own material circumstances.) The physical universe itself has limits -- it could not exist without them so the concept of unlimited abundance is necessarily a distortion, a fairy tale. Because the physical universe is limited, human economies are, too. The economic systems in which we live are set up in such a way that when one person has vast material wealth, it does necessarily mean that others have less. Of course, this is not true on the non-physical level. When one person has vast compassion and love, it enriches all others with whom she comes into contact. But the physical world is a world in which limits operate as teachers, as contours, and as containers. Many human beings have confused limitlessness with freedom. There is an image of casting off the chains of limits, or of limiting beliefs. It is true that many people are limited by false limits, beliefs about themselves or the world which are inaccurate, and therefore unnecessarily or distortedly limiting. So it is harmonious to cultivate an exacting degree of discernment in relation to all of the limits we perceive in our inner and outer lives. With that discernment, we can recognize and embrace those limits which give our
physical lives shape and contour, while also unmasking and dissolving the false limits that distort and hobble us. Like limits, encumbrances things that weight us down, physically, emotionally and energetically are a necessarily and inevitable feature of life on the earth plane. Some of us gravitate toward encumbrance, or certain types of encumbrance for instance, we may take pleasure in owning many possessions, or having many close relationships. Others of us tend to resist encumbrance. In fact, encumbrance is not the key to a deeply satisfying life in which we can fulfill our inner design but neither is unencumbrance! Encumbrance and unencumbrance are like weight and weightlessness, each necessary and each freeing in its own way. Each of us yearns to feel connected to ourselves, and to Life. Some of us locate the access to that feeling in our relationships with other people, or even with material objects; others locate that access more individually and non-physically. For instance, some people thrive on having big families with lots of children and pets; they may own houses that continually need work, actively enjoy doing favors for others, do a lot of volunteer work, or otherwise involve themselves closely in interdependent, cooperative communities. All of these are examples of encumbrance which can, if freely chosen and in alignment with the soul, contribute to the fulfillment of ones inner design. Other people feel more connected to Life and to themselves when they exist in a relatively less encumbered state. They may thrive on solitude; they may choose to remain unmarried and/or childless; they may
prefer to rent a home, or just a room, rather than to own; they may actively work to keep their lives simple and their possessions few. And this, too, is a valid path to fulfillment of ones inner design. Of course, many of us vacillate between aspects of encumbrance and unencumbrance. We may choose greater or lesser encumbrance at different points in our lives, or in different aspects of our lives, and this, too, can be harmonious as long as it is freely chosen, and in accordance with the wishes of our souls. All of us came to the earth plane to be limited to work within the creative opportunities afforded by limits and encumbrance. Yet it is harmonious for us to choose our encumbrances carefully and consciously. Problems arise when we choose encumbrances that do not truly suit us, or choose encumbrances without taking full responsibility for the fact that we have chosen them. For instance, one person with a houseful of children and pets may thrive on the lively atmosphere of squalor; another might feel continually burdened by it. One person might thrive on a more solitary life, while another might feel desperately isolated under the same circumstances. All relationships and circumstances do create a certain amount of energetic encumbrance, yet that need not interfere with our sense of connection to our deep selves. If we find that our connection to ourselves feels impeded by our encumbrances, we may have chosen the wrong encumbrances for ourselves or we may have outgrown them. Or perhaps we are simply misunderstanding the nature of the encumbrance. For
instance, some of us feel unnecessarily and inappropriately weighted-down by our encumbrances because we internally take on responsibilities that are not ours for instance, if someone thinks his role is to make things okay for everyone else, or to maintain a house full of children and pets in a spotless condition! Once we have chosen encumbrances, it is most conducive to joy if we can either 1) Embrace the ways these encumbrances weight us, the gravity they exert in our lives, or 2) Unchoose them. Choosing them and then resisting and resenting them is also an option, of course, but it is far less likely to bring us joy, so it is therefore less harmonious. Encumbrances are the stuff of human life, and resisting, resenting, and feeling burdened by the stuff of life will not help us feel closer to life! If our relationships or other encumbrances feel burdensome, we would do well to ask ourselves: is this an encumbrance I truly want? If so, how can I take it on more joyfully, and release my resistance to it? And if not, how can I harmoniously shift its terms, or release it?
24: On Surrender and Attachment to Outcome Many religions teach the principles of surrender and non-attachment. Buddhism posits attachment and attachment to outcome as a primary source of suffering, while Christianity preaches safety through surrender to Gods will. And it is true that releasing our attachments, including our
attachments to our own will -- our own strong convictions and preferences concerning what should happen, when, and how -- can profoundly open us to the love, magic and wonder available in the universe. It can bring about a deep state of relaxation and receptivity in our own being when we truly realize that we are not alone and unsupported in a hostile universe; rather, we are supported at every step by forces and energies far wiser, far more benevolent, than our human personalities can even perceive or imagine. And yet this principle of surrender is complex, and highly subject to misinterpretation and misapplication. This is so because the emotions and energies that we carry into our surrender determine what it is that we surrender to, and also what is born of that surrender. If our act of selfsurrender emerges from an internal place of fear, dependence, and need -or from a sense of unworthiness, self-negation and separation then whoever or whatever we surrender to will be a tyrant to us. This is the phenomenon we see in cults of all kinds, whether cultural, religious or military. True surrender, in the spiritual sense, is not an act of self-negation, but an act of self-affirmation. When we feel and know ourselves to be fully held within the arms of a loving universe, our surrender allows that universe to use us for its own purposes which are identical to the purposes of our souls. Yet since so few people fully know or trust in the love that surrounds us, most acts of surrender of the personal will are akin to going out in the middle of the night with a wallet full of money, offering it up to whomever comes.
Although we might encounter a saintly figure on a mean street, we are far more likely to have our money our life energy -- taken and used by confused, needy, destructive human beings, in ways likely to cause harm both to them, and to us. So before we can even entertain the idea of surrendering our personal wills, our personal attachment to outcome, we must cultivate our ability to sense, know and trust the truly benevolent forces around us and within us and to distinguish between those forces and many others, the proverbial wolves in sheeps clothing described in the Bible. Once we can feel and know ourselves to be in the loving hands of the universe, it is safe to remember that in fact, our individual human perspective leaves a great deal unseen, and misunderstood. We are so close to the tapestry of reality that we are unable to see its larger designs. We also know that everything we encounter, on both the levels of external and internal matter, is nothing more than a temporary form or manifestation. Everything including us -- is in a continuous state of flux. For this reason, becoming attached to any particular outcome is both misguided, and disruptive. Our attachment, our sense of what is right or preferable, must inevitably emerge from our limited perspective and so it cannot possibly be accurate or complete. Theres a well-known Buddhist story which is often used to illustrate this point.
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One day a farmers horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. "Such bad luck," they said sympathetically. "We'll see," the farmer replied. The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. "How wonderful," the neighbors exclaimed. "We'll see," replied the old man. The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune. "We'll see," answered the farmer. The next day, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son's leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. "We'll see," said the farmer.
As the farmers responses make clear, we cannot possibly know in a given moment whether something that happens is good or bad in the larger picture of our lives much less in the vast picture of the human collective. So if we attempt to judge each event and respond accordingly, we will find ourselves on a continuous roller-coaster of emotion, like the farmers neighbors. Not only is this roller-coaster exhausting; it is also innacurate! What looks like good news one day may appear bad the next, and vice versa; and all of it is likely to look very different a year, five years, or a decade down the line. This is why it is helpful for us to cultivate an attitude of reduced attachment to outcome based on the knowledge that we see very little of the tapestry, so we cannot truly know what is best. Attachment to outcome is also, by its nature, a manipulative energetic current. In essence, when we are strongly attached to one outcome over another, it is as if we are trying to say to the universe, I must have things
this way, and not that, or You must do things this way, and not that. Yet when we address the universe in such a way, we are speaking from parts of ourselves that cannot know what would truly be most harmonious within the larger tapestry or even what would truly bring us most joy. Even when our attachment is to things as they are, that attachment contains a current of resistance in this case, the resistance to change. And when we are attached to an outcome which is not yet manifest, we create a kind of gathering-force energy of resistance an anticipatory resistance to anything else the universe might dish up. All of these states of attachment create a tension in the being, and pit us against the universe in a struggle which is erroneous and unnecessary, as well as counter-productive. And of course, the universe always wins! This does not necessarily mean that the outcome to which we are attached will not manifest. Sometimes the person who is sick will recover, or we will get the job or the house or the lover -- because the energetic currents are already in line for that outcome. The universe does not reward or punish so we will neither induce a specific outcome, nor prevent it, through our attachment to it. Instead, what we will negatively influence is our own ability to live in a state of peace, harmony and trust with the larger currents of life. Also, when we do have a strong attachment to outcome, and that outcome manifests, we tend to have an unwholesome relationship to it. We may feel vindicated or rewarded, and our attachment to the next set of conditions or outcomes we believe is best grows even stronger. Of course, if
that next outcome does not manifest, we are likely to feel deflated, resentful, betrayed, powerless, rageful, and so on. All of these energetic loops result in our squandering of the energy which we might otherwise use in full and joyful cooperation with the universe, the master weaver of the tapestry whose design is so much larger than we can see. It is very difficult to grasp the operating principle of this master weaver from a human perspective. Thats why we so often imagine God as a parental figure, someone rather like us, only much bigger and more powerful. But in truth, assigning a form to God, or to the active life principle in the universe, is like assigning a form to Love. Love could and does -- take any form. Its essence is formless yet we know with absolute certainty when we are in contact with it. Its formlessness is not powerlessness quite the opposite. Its formlessness gives it power because it can inhabit, imbue and work through any form in the universe and so it does, when we do not block it. The truth is, not only do our attachments fail to influence the direction of the universe, they also create confusion and suffering for us. We can alleviate that suffering by making a deep inner commitment setting a new intention at the deepest levels of our being -- to accept whatever is, whatever circumstances our lives have brought us. This does not mean that we cannot also work to change what is. We can! Every single day, we are given the opportunity to make myriad choices, both large and small; with these choices, we shape the form, the content and the energies of our lives.
And yet the most secure and powerful place from which to shape our lives is a place in which we know ourselves held and supported by life, rather than a place in which we are constantly alert for betrayal, fighting, scheming and resisting what is. Does this information seem contradictory or paradoxical? It may, if you attempt to understand it with your mind alone. And yet all of us have experienced states of being in which we are both choiceful, and at one with our circumstances; in which we experience the wind at our back, lifes energetic currents in support of our own chosen movements, even as we also feel those movements being shaped by those winds. This kind of surrender does not mean subjugation to inner or outer tyrants; it does not mean abandoning our own wills, or our powers of discernment, or our sources of joy or even our own preferences. It simply means acknowledging and remembering that we are working within, and held by, a larger field of intelligence and compassion that is available to guide us. The country-western song I Thank God for Unanswered Prayers makes this point in a humorous way. The singer is thanking God for not having given him the woman he wanted long before, because he sees, now, that the woman he married was a much better partner for him. There is a fine art to acting in accordance with our own preferences, navigating by our own joy -- while also accepting and trusting in what comes, and remembering that we do not truly know what is best for us, nor for anyone else. If we decide to cultivate this ability, we can ask our inner
teachers for help, and they will surely respond. It may take a little while, but a new relationship of trust will grow within us, and between us and life, and we will invariably experience a far greater sense of harmony and joy.
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25: Power, Harm, and Human Responsibility Most thoughtful human beings feel a sense of confusion and conflict about our own power. When we look around, we see abundant evidence of our species abuses of power; indeed, human beings have done, and continue to do, great harm to one another, to animals, and to the earth itself. We might conclude that being human is the problem yet we really have no choice about that. (Of course, the real culprit is the individuated consciousness which allows each human to perceive him- or herself as separate from all other beings.) Since we are stuck with being human, we might conclude that the way to avoid doing harm is by refusing to use our power. Unfortunately, this means we end up starving ourselves of our own life energy, and stunting our ability to manifest and create in the world. What is power, anyway? Power is actually just another name for life energy. Dandelions use their power when they push themselves up through soil or between cracks in concrete in order to grow. And we, too, must use our power if we are to become most fully ourselves, and fulfill our inner design. Power is inherent to, and the birthright of, all living things. And even those things which human beings do not generally recognize as living have their own power. Fire, wind, water, sun the power of these forces can be understood as the active component of their beingness, their nature. Power, in other words, is the mechanism by which things express their nature fully into the world. As such, it is clearly neither good nor bad, and it certainly cannot be eradicated; nothing could be without it.
The problem, as seen from the human level, arises when one things active nature leads it to interfere with anothers. For instance, take the exuberant life force of the morning glory. The nature of the morning glorys power, or being-ness, leads it to twine around and grow over whatever it encounters even if its a fence that might eventually be pried apart by the morning glorys strong tendrils, or a rosebush that will no longer receive the sun its needs once the morning glory has twined on top of it. The morning glory does not care about these things; however, it does not not care, either. Neither caring nor not-caring, it simply expresses its beingness by growing as vibrantly as it can, wherever it can. Because human beings have a consciousness which perceives itself as separate, our relationship to our own power is appropriately more complex. A morning glorys consciousness does not enable it to consider the other life forms it might harm by expressing its beingness. Our consciousness, however, does enable such considerations; in fact, it requires them -- if we are to live in accordance with our true nature, the nature within which we know ourselves connected to all that is. In the final analysis, life itself doesnt care how the balance of power works out whether the yard ends up being filled with morning glories, roses, roses choked out by morning glories, nasturtiums covered with aphids or something else entirely. Life understands that power lost from one place or form is always gained by another; since all forms are life, life cannot possibly prefer one over another. Trees grow tall they are life,
exercising their power. Fire comes and burns them to the ground it, too, is life, and it, too, is exercising its power. Or, men come and cut the trees down they, too, are life. Tsunamis wash over the land and sweep men away; it, too, is life. Life is endlessly interfering with itself, recycling itself, and shifting its own balances and forms all without judgment, blame, recrimination, villains or victims. Regardless of what happens on the level of form, all phenomena are completely harmonious when viewed from the point of view of the larger tapestry. And yet, from the human level, a given phenomenon can appear grossly inharmonious, or even tragic in its particulars for instance, when one person assaults or abuses another. A tall tree may prevent a smaller tree from growing, and bear no moral responsibility in the matter; it is simply being itself, allowing life to move through it. But when an adult harms or kills a child, there is moral responsibility involved. The adult perceives herself as separate; she has a choice about how to use her power, in a way that a tree or morning glory does not. And so when she uses it to harm what she perceives as another being, she is betraying her responsibility to life. (In fact, although she may not realize it, she is actually betraying her responsibility to herself. Because we perceive ourselves as separate, we are able to choose to act in ways that cause harm to others; however, because we are truly not separate from others, or from the earth, causing harm to them also inevitably harms us.)
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So how can any one human being responsibly hold and express his power? This is a question that most of our species is struggling with at this point in time. For that reason, the work each of us does with this issue is not ours alone; it is of direct benefit to the entire collective. What appear to be our own personal fears, misconceptions and distortions regarding power are merely our portal in to the larger arena, in which all of the possible permutations of power including gain, loss, abuse and harmony are being explored. Given the complexity of this issue, it is natural that some of us simply long to back away from the whole arena. Yet backing away from our own power means backing away from our very nature, our energized life force which is not only damaging to the self, not only negating of lifes own current, but also an evasion of our responsibility the responsibility with which we have been blessed, by the gift of individuated consciousness. Moreover, our own disowned power will continually attempt to return to us from the outside, usually in the form of externalized bullies and tyrants who have no compunction about taking, using, exerting, or even stealing our power. If we dont want it, someone else will. In short, when we suppress or constrict our own power, we negate ourselves; we negate life; we shirk our sacred duty; and we render ourselves inappropriately vulnerable to others. Clearly, this is not a solution.
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How, then, can conscientious human beings embrace and express our own power in a manner harmonious both with the forces and flow of the universe, and with our own role and nature? The first step is to better understand what power is. We need to examine and explore the subject from all sides, clearing away the cobwebs, prejudices and myths which have grown up around it to approach the topic with open eyes and with full intelligence, with clarity of purpose, intention, and trust in the support of the benign universe. Yes, it is an enormous responsibility to be powerful, but in essence it is no different from the responsibility inherent in simply being alive: that is, the work of fulfilling our own inner design. If we truly wish to serve life, we must face and clear the impurities and distortions within ourselves, both so that we can grow stronger, and in order to remain in alignment with that new strength. We may find, for example, that we are afraid of exploiting or damaging someone or something because of the places that are still unhealed in us, and on the human level, that is
a valid and appropriate fear. But it is not a valid reason to shrink back from full development of our power. Rather, it is a reason to continue developing our power, and also continue working to resolve and heal what is unhealed in us at the same time. The development of our power will both aid and motivate the healing, and the further healing will also facilitate our development of greater power.
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Its also helpful to remember that in relation to power, as in all other aspects of our lives, what matters most is not what we do, but the energy and intention we bring to the effort. Given the enormity of the tapestry we are part of, in one sense it might seem hardly to matter how we might damage ourselves by suppressing our power, or damage others by expressing it. And yet because of the energetic principles by which reality operates, our smallest efforts matter far more than we can understand. If humans, like morning glories, did not perceive ourselves as separate, there would be no wrong in one human killing another. Yet without the concept of the separate self, there would also be no possibility of harboring a desire to kill another. The morning glory exists without a differentiated ego, without individual desire or will or intention other than the intention shared by all living things: to live, to grow, to express its beingness as fully as possible. On the largest level of the tapestry, the level we might call ultimate reality, wrong does not exist. No one would accuse a morning glory of being morally corrupt for harming the plants it had twined itself around, or try a cat for murder because it had killed a mouse. Obviously, the morning glory and cat are simply being true to their own natures, so what they do cannot be seen as wrong. Throughout nature, life forms kill other life forms, or interfere with their full expression and growth and where there is no separate consciousness involved, concepts like abuse, genocide, and tragedy do not exist. From that perspective, the actions of a human being
like Hitler are not really different than the actions of a rapacious morning glory vine, or a powerful tsunami. Yet on the level of human consciousness, where a vast experiment in the illusion of separation is being played out, it is necessary and appropriate to apply an entirely different set of frameworks. In essence, humans are playing our own game within the larger tapestry. As with any game, there are rules. If people were to sit down to play Scrabble, but everyone could see all the letters and take whichever ones they wanted at any time, there would be no point to the game. The handicaps provided by the rules the acceptance of the agreed-upon limits is what allows the game to be played in a meaningful fashion. Since humans are not truly separate from the rest of creation, on one level it does not matter what damage we may appear to cause in expressing our humanness. Yet, since humans believe ourselves separate from the rest of creation and from each other, we are capable of harboring an intent to cause or not to cause damage, in a way that no other entity can. It is this intent, therefore, that is the problem and therefore, it is with this intention that we must, as conscientious human beings, do our work. If humans truly came to understand that we are not separate from creation or from other humans, the entire experience of humanness would change in a manner quite unimaginable to us at this time. There would be none of the distorted suppression of power that currently exists because to suppress oneself would be clearly understood as no better than, and in fact, no different from, suppressing another. At the same time, there would
be none of the distorted expression of power that currently exists again, because to suppress another would be understood to be no more desirable than, and in fact no different from, suppressing oneself. Yet because this awareness is not widespread among humanity at this time, the role of conscientious human beings is to continue to play the game by the rules. Within the illusion of separateness, it is necessary to try to determine how to responsibly hold both ones awareness of ones own life force, and the life force of others. Valuing the life force of others over ones own leads to immobilization and stunting of life in this case, our own. Valuing ones own life force over that of others leads to excessive expansion in a manner also harmful to life in this case, someone elses. Although we and others are truly not separate, we must behave as if we are separate, so that we can work to hold both ourselves and others equally in the light of affirmation and respect. There is, however, a wild card in this game an element capable of completely transforming the game as we know it. That element is love. Precisely because humans live with the illusion of separateness, we are capable of feeling love for one another as other. Although this capacity for love is often misunderstood, misused and distorted, it alone offers humans the possibility of experiencing harmony. The challenge is that it requires humans to leave the separate state to some extent in order to understand and experience love and then bring it back like a contraband delivery into occupied territory.
Love by its nature transcends the state of duality and separation, precisely because it does not discriminate. It offers itself equally and in abundance to the morning glory and the rose, the tall tree and the small, the fire and the wood-cutter, the cat and the mouse. All things and beings are held equally within it; none are preferred. When humans try to emulate this phenomenon, we almost invariably distort it by loving ourselves in a way that removes love from others, or by loving others in a way that strips love from the self. Most commonly we alternate between these two patterns, with myriad intricate variations on the theme. For thousands of years the injunction to Love thy neighbor as thyself has been with us, and for all of those years we have generally managed either to love our neighbors instead of ourselves, or vice versa but not to hold ourselves and all others within the same great, abiding and generous flow. Loving ourselves and others fully would dissolve the illusion that loving the self requires harm to others or that loving others necessitates harm to the self. Once this illusion is dissolved, there is no real meaning left in the concept of the separate self. Or rather, the self can remain separate on the level of form, but in essence is understood to be undifferentiated just an individual manifestation emerging from the great pool of life. With this understanding, the possibility of desiring to cause harm to another or to the self would be eliminated, and with that shift, the game of separation would end.
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At this time in history, some individual humans are making this shift out of the illusion of separation, and, to greater and lesser extents, stepping out of the game altogether. But humanity as a whole is still very much caught in the illusion that loving the self (or those whom one associates with the self, such as ones family, ones tribe, or ones nation) requires disregard for others, and vice versa. This is the larger context within which our discussion of power is occurring. Without the illusion of separateness, there is no need for a concept like integrity. A cat shows neither integrity nor lack of integrity when it kills a mouse. The concept is simply not valid. But within the framework of the human, separate self, the development of integrity and responsibility is our contribution to make. Yet the truest integrity, or wholeness, comes from or with that kind of non-discriminating love which is only to be found beyond the veil of separation. So humans who wish to play the game of humanness in as conscious a manner as possible must in essence exist both within, and beyond, our notion of separation. When we achieve too much awareness of unity, we leave behind the game we agreed to play. When we have too little awareness of unity, we cannot access the transformative potential inherent in the structure of our consciousness. All of this may seem to make theoretical sense yet on the level of form, nothing is resolved. Cats do kill mice, tall trees do block the growth of small ones, and the morning glory does harm the other plants it twines itself
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on. So how is it possible within the separate state or even beyond it for one human not to harm another? On the level of ultimate reality, harm does not exist. There is only a constant flux of shifting forms and expressions, like that in a kaleidoscope. No pattern truly destroys another; each new pattern simply replaces the last, and then in its own turn is replaced. However, on the level of human consciousness, harm does exist and, in fact, it is inevitable. There is no way for humans to live, breathe, eat, drink and eliminate on this planet, without causing harm. This seemingly doomed configuration is necessary for the transformation of our consciousness. It is necessary that we believe that harm is possible, so we may be motivated to strive to avoid causing harm. Therefore, it is the apparent reality of the plane on which we live. And so on this plane we must strive to untangle the distortions that would lead us to wish to cause harm to ourselves or to another -- regardless of the fact that on the human level such harm is in some ways unavoidable, and on the larger level, such harm does not even exist. Human beings have a truly magnificent opportunity to make choices in ways no other entity can. For instance, if we have a garden, we can choose to leave the morning glory vine on top of the rose bush, or remove it, or remove both the morning glory and the rose bush and plant other plants in their place, or pour poison over the whole area. The garden is ours, so all of these options and more are within our control. And life has plenty of other gardens to grow in, so from one standpoint, it doesnt really need ours. Yet
from the standpoint of our own development, and our contribution to the collective human consciousness, the choice we make or, rather, the energies that fuel our choice -- matters enormously. An action based on love will produce different energetic ripples both inside and outside of us than an action based on disregard for any other life form, or for ourselves. If love is the energy behind our actions and the basis for our actions, then our actions will join us with the flow of the universe which is harmless and unharmable beyond the level of form. If our actions arise from hatred (including self-hatred) or judgment (including self-judgment), or from fear or anger, then they will be misaligned with the larger universe, regardless of what effects they appear to create on the surface. So the point is not to create a beautiful garden, or a wild tangle of plants, or a neat concrete square; the point is to create whatever we create with love. The point is not to avoid ever causing the smallest degree of harm to oneself or another (which would be impossible), but to wish and strive and intend to avoid causing harm. As always, we can understand this principle more fully by connecting with it on an energetic level, beneath the surface of the level of form. When we allow ourselves to sense into it, we will clearly experience that Love free of distortion has an unmistakable energetic signature, which we recognize with our whole being. The cat which kills the mouse, the fire which burns the forest, the morning glory which strangles the rose are not separate from that energy of love, regardless of the appearance of surface harm. Yet the
mother who yells cruel words at her small child is separate from it, not because her action causes more harm than a forest fire, but because the nature of the place from which her action emerges is qualitatively different. Our challenge, then, is to fully embrace our own power and then to use that power in the service of love, a love that fully encompasses both ourselves, and all other beings.
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26: The Role of Crisis As human beings, we tend to find the thought of a crisis alarming. This is because we so often become attached to things as they are or have been, and fear change even when things as they are are profoundly misaligned with our souls path. On an energetic level, a crisis is simply a point at which a certain pattern or energy movement becomes unsustainable and must, therefore, give way to a different pattern. Crisis is therefore a gift to be welcomed, because of its ability to bring about a profound reconfiguration. When crises are allowed to do their work or not prevented from doing their work they make it possible for what we know as polarities to reverse, for darkness to turn itself inside out and reveal its facets of light. In the early years of the AIDS epidemic, I knew a man with AIDS who for months had felt increasingly embittered and alone. He decided to kill himself after attending one more Gay Pride parade. However, on his way home from the parade, he was severely beaten and robbed. When he woke up in a hospital bed, he realized he wanted to live and, in fact, to help other people who felt as alone as he had. The very next day, he hobbled into the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, where I worked at the time, and volunteered to help start a special hotline specifically to support people with AIDS. This is a perfect example of a crisis that did its work. Most of us have probably seen or heard stories like this
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The Chinese language recognizes the role of crisis in the actual formation of the word, which combines the characters for danger and opportunity. But the nature of the danger involved here is easily misunderstood. The true danger lies in not allowing the crisis to do its work, thus preventing it from having the effect it is designed to have, in accordance with its own deep internal structure. Most often, when we manage to avert or short-circuit a crisis, we simply prolong the cycle of darkness thereby creating conditions in which the crisis, when it comes, will need to be even bigger on the level of form in order to accomplish its mission. This is why it is impossible for us to know what should or should not happen. For instance, in the story above, what if a bystander had intervened before the man got severely beaten? Its possible that the bystanders caring would have moved the man deeply enough to turn him around. Its also possible that, had he not been beaten so severely, he would simply have gone home and fulfilled his plan to kill himself. We cannot know what will result when we try to help someone. Yet the tapestry of reality is vast and each thread on it is important. If a bystander did indeed witness the beating, and did nothing, what effect would that have on him or her? Would the guilt of that turn him against himself, and against life? Or would it transform her, as some criminals have been notoriously transformed? Whose crisis is this, anyway? In a sense, a crisis belongs to each person who is touched by it, however peripherally. The
possibility of transformation exists in each one of us, always ready to be activated when we allow it to be. So the solution does not lie in helping not in not helping, either. In fact, there is no solution, because there is no problem! There are only myriad opportunities, myriad choice-points in the lives of every one of us. Choosing love, whatever that means or looks like in a given scenario, will align us with the larger compassionate forces of the universe even though we cannot know what specific impact we will have, or should have. Until the mission of a crisis has been accomplished that is, until the darkness inside a person or circumstance reverses into light -- no real shift can take place. And yet it is impossible to predict exactly when and how this will occur. Each circumstance and individual is distinct, with its own uniquely calibrated tipping-point. This tipping-point brings us again and again from darkness to light, both individually and collectively. How ironic, then, that most of us do everything we can to avoid reaching it or to forestall it in the lives of those we love. We seldom recognize that we may be forestalling the changes our spirits most deeply need. Again, this does not mean we should not act with love when we see someone else in need. It only means we would be well-advised to act without attachment to outcome, because we cannot really see the whole tapestry in which our action is only a tiny thread. And we cannot know what needs to play out, or what is in the process of playing out, in the interplay of light and darkness within another person.
Everything in the universe exists on a multidimensional spectrum of light and darkness, which is constantly in flux. The exact nature of the relationship between this light and darkness is complex; they are not opposed to one another or in contradiction to each other, as is often supposed. Rather, they are aspects of one another, as is graphically reflected in the image of the Yin and Yang. On the level of the larger tapestry, neither is better or worse each has its functions, as do literal night and literal daytime on our planet. Although we are accustomed to thinking of light as good, and can therefore easily begin to imagine that darkness is bad, it would be more accurate (though still an oversimplification) to think of darkness is being akin to the season we know as winter. Although there are crops that cannot grow in cold weather, many others actually require a time of cold in order to fully develop. As a species, that is true of us, as well. In order to fulfill our inner design, we need to interact extensively with both darkness and light. And because we are designed to perceive phenomena within the framework of duality, we cannot truly recognize light without experiencing darkness nor can we choose light without also knowing darkness. On the level of the larger tapestry, there is nothing wrong. There is only what is, and since it is, it cannot possibly be wrong. Therefore, there are no enemies; there is nothing that needs to be judged, eliminated, or vanquished including darkness in any of its manifestations. And yet, it is also true that there is a natural growth process at work in human
development, and in the evolution of our planet and universe, in which what we know as darkness is primed to undergo a metamorphosis into what we know as light. Because of this, where there is too much darkness within a given individual or circumstance, light is eventually created though a kind of alchemical, reverse polarity process. This is taking place on both macrocosmic and microcosmic levels on the earth at this time. We can observe this within individuals who hit bottom with addictions or other destructive patterns, and afterward become able to make wholly different movements. We can also observe this in societies, in such events as the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the fall of apartheid, and the replacement of a government that espouses simplistic us against them messages with one that espouses messages of unity. In each of these examples, we can see the beneficial effects of crisis at work. And so, if a crisis looms in your own life, how can you respond? In one of his famous Letters to a Young Poet, the great poet Rainer Maria Rilke had this to say: So you mustnt be frightenedif a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do. You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you dont know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to
persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. And Rilke also wrote, Let life happen to you. Believe me, life is in the right always.
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27. Understanding Karma Karma is a Sanskrit word that refers to the natural laws of causation in other words, the process by which certain things come to happen in a given human lifetime, rather than others. My favorite definition of karma is this: If you plant an apple seed, you may or may not get an apple tree. But you will absolutely not get an orange tree. It just wont happen. In other words, while it is impossible to predict the exact impact our actions will have, there is a relationship between the actions we take, and what occurs. Each person has their own karma, which emerges from the combined sum of their own specific tangle of wounds and distortions, and their inner design. Or, we might also say that karma emerges from the combined sum of the souls chosen curriculum during a given lifetime, and the human personalitys exercise of free will. Either way, certain aspects of our karma are set the lessons or paths chosen by our souls and others are mutable, shaped by our own actions and choices, and continually available to be transformed. Each of us has our own karma which is simply another way of saying that we each have our own life to live, our own metaphorical garden to tend. It is not our place to change the karma of others, just as it is not our place to go and plant or weed in our neighbors yards. Actually, it is impossible for us to change the karma of another -- at least, impossible to do so by an act of will. Because of the synergistic nature of life, our presence in others lives
will indeed impact them, sometimes profoundly, and in this way, may also influence the ways in which their karma plays out. But because each person has her own set of lessons to learn, his own set of inner obstacles to overcome in the fulfillment of his inner design, our relationship to the life processes of others can only impact the specific forms in which those lessons come, and not the lessons themselves. Many years ago, I fell in love with a diabetic woman Ill call Ana, who had taken poor care of her health for many years. Several years into our relationship, her kidneys failed. Hoping that it would restore her to relative good health, I donated a kidney to her. Although the transplant itself was successful, Ana went on to suffer from many other health problems, and our relationship eventually became unsustainable for me. Knowing what I know now about karma, I can see that there must be things Anas spirit is trying to learn through her experience of chronic and life-threatening illness. I dont know specifically what those things are, nor is it my place to know. From my experience looking into the roots of severe illness, I might wonder: Does Anas karmic lesson have to do with learning to more fully value, honor and care for her own life force? Or becoming able to soften in the hands of the universe, rather than fight? Or perhaps it is something else entirely. Regardless of the specific contours of Anas karmic path, I now understand why it is that, although I was able to save her from kidney failure, I could not save her from an experience of ongoing poor health nor would it have been right for me to be able to do so. (And of
course, if I had somehow been able to restore her health, her lessons would simply have had to take a different form.) By giving a kidney to Ana, I did change the form in which her karma played out. She loathed dialysis, and did badly with it, so the transplant did probably save her life. Yet even so, I could not remove the karmic imprint which led to her kidney failure to begin with; if her relationship to herself or to life is somehow distorted, that work of unknotting is hers and hers alone. If she doesnt do it in this lifetime at least, according to the Buddhist and Hindu understanding of karma it will simply await her in the next. So, if we look from the souls perspective, did my gift of a kidney help Ana, or harm her? In one way, perhaps it helped; it probably gave her a longer time period in which to work at her karma in a single lifetime. Yet in another way, it may have harmed her, or at least made her path more difficult, since living longer with the medical problems caused by her diabetes has left her increasingly disabled. Ultimately, I believe that my action neither helped nor harmed Ana; it simply reconfigured the stage set, the outer appearance. On a soul level, her work remained, and remains, the same. Knowing what I now know, would I donate my kidney to Ana again, if given the choice? Probably I would, because I loved her, and she needed it, and I could. But I would do it with a very different understanding of my role and its limitations.
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If we fear interfering with someone elses karma or if we imagine we can change their karma to achieve a more positive outcome we are in error. There is actually no way to interfere, for good or for ill. It is impossible. Each persons karma will simply reshape itself around the new relationship or circumstance. We can circumvent or influence a specific occurrence, but not the overall movement of what will occur what must occur, according to spiritual law. Just as we cannot change the karma of others, we are also unable to escape our own. Our choices on the human level are limited to the outer circumstances in which our karma will play out. It is not that we are stuck with our karma, but rather that, in the oft-quoted words of the 12th-century Indian poet Akka Mahadevi, The only way out is through. Instead of recognizing this, most on our plane actually dig their wheels deeper into the mud of their karma, by trying to change it from the outside rather than deeply addressing it. This does not mean that we cannot or should not change the outer form of our lives. If a given circumstance, say, a job or relationship or physical location, does not have or has ceased to have a deep resonance and compatibility for us, we can change or exchange it, trade it in, just as in a game of Scrabble we can choose to skip a turn and trade in our letters for other letters. However, just as in Scrabble, the new letters provided to us by life will offer new challenges -- or, more accurately, the same challenges in a different form. In Scrabble we understand that the inability to know
what our letters are as we choose them the handicap or challenge that that ensures is intrinsic to the game. It is actually what makes the game worth playing. The fact that our underlying lessons for this lifetime are not subject to our conscious choice or control can be understood in analogous fashion. Those lessons, or the need to learn them, are provided to us as a given, just as with Scrabble, the board, rules, and specific letters are provided. It is ours to choose the words to spell out within that structure.
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28: When There is No Solution on the Human Level We may understand, in the abstract, the importance of allowing crises to do their work. We may even believe, in general, that, as Rilke says, Life holds us in its hand. It will not let us fall. And yet each of us has times, places, instances in which it feels almost impossible to hold to those larger truths we understand and believe in. When things occur that appear terrible and tragic on the human level and particularly when they directly affect us, or people whom we love --we may be plunged into a different sort of crisis: a crisis of faith in life itself. No matter how much wisdom we have cultivated, we may find ourselves entirely shaken, even despairing. Of course, like all crises, this can be extremely fruitful on the spirit level. When you encounter a problem or circumstance for which there truly seems to be no good human solution, the answer is love. There is no answer. On one level, there is no problem. On another, there is no solution, and there is an insoluble problem. Love seems an impractical or non-specific solution -- and yet where there is sufficient love, it renders all other questions irrelevant. The answer and the challenge -- lies in living ever more completely on our plane, through removing our resistance to it; and at the same time understanding the fragmentation and distortion of what we are able to see on this plane, with our eyes pressed so close to such a vast tapestry, and then allowing that understanding to help a part of us live elsewhere, beyond or apart from our human limitations.
Essentially, when we wrestle with a problem for which there is no solution at our current level of consciousness, we have two options. We can run or we can transform. To run means to flee from the level of consciousness on which the problem is perceived, or perceived as insoluble. There are myriad ways to flee, from denial, to drugs (illegal or prescribed), to insanity, to suicide, but they all amount to the same thing. The other option is to evolve to discard the level of consciousness on which there exists an insoluble problem -- or rather, to allow it to dissolve, or to allow ourselves to step out from it as from a husk. And so when we are presented with a dilemma for which there truly is no human remedy, we are facing both a dead end, and a portal. On the human level, all answers we can summon may be equivalent, and equivalently bleak. This is true of a great many circumstances in which humans exist at this point in time. It is a product and reflection of the level of distortion and inversion in human consciousness. And yet when a circumstance touches upon deep enough regions within us that our consciousness simply cannot not abide it, at its current level and when we are committed to no longer taking any of the ways outthen we instead receive access to the way up, out of the limited frame from which the dilemma has been seen, and into a higher or deeper level than we had previously known ourselves able to inhabit. It is, again, the tipping-point of crisis, with the same opportunity for transmutation of darkness into light. And it is a microcosm of what is occurring, what must occur and what will
occur, in every aspect of consciousness, in every part of humanity, and on every level of the world as we know it now. What is it that is occurring? We are individually and collectively opening to an understanding of love that we have not had before that we have not previously even conceived of. As this takes place, we realize that rather than continuing to ask what to do, which action to take, we can instead allow ourselves to enter the field of love, or allow the field of love to enter into us which is, of course, the same thing. When we allow ourselves to dwell within the field of love when we allow the field of love to dwell within us -- everything changes. This love does not discriminate or differentiate; it rushes out equally and constantly to all things and beings, all forms and phenomena, and always has, and always will. It is the presence that some humans call God. On a human level, when you confront an insoluble problem, it truly makes no difference what action you take. And yet when you allow the fullness of love into yourself, and into every nook and cranny and crevice of your situation, or your perception of her situation, then love becomes the solution that dissolves both the current problem, and all other apparent problems. This love is a force like the sun the sun that is always there, even when it cannot be seen from our earth because it is nighttime, or foggy, or raining. Where does the sun go, at night or in fog or in rain? Has it vanished? Has it left the earth behind, abandoned it? Has it ceased to exist, or has it continued to exist, yet ceased to shine? We know that the answer to all of
these questions is No. This is the love we must remember, and remind ourselves of. This is the force we must allow ourselves to make contact with, and be contacted by. Whatever kicking and screaming emerges deep within our being, whatever wails of but what should I do? and so on, can be brought to the field of love and simply held there, the way a crying baby can be picked up by a loving parent, and simply held. As that occurs, the source of the crying which is the illusion of separation -- dissolves. And what happens once this has taken place? There may be no change at all in the physical details of the circumstance that propelled us to this place and yet everything is different. As Marianne Williamson says, A miracle is a change in perception.
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29. The Oxymoron of Human Happiness In truth, not much happiness is possible on the human plane; yet most of us are so attached to our humanness that when we recognize this, we choose to remain human rather than to become happy. Human happiness is almost always an oxymoron, because we generally believe that our happiness requires the establishment and maintenance of a particular set of conditions conditions which may or may not be in accordance with the larger harmony. Even if these conditions are initially harmonious, the attempt to maintain them in a fixed and static way, or to ensure that their evolution proceeds in a fixed form or direction, certainly is not in harmony with the larger, ever-changing order. This means that to achieve what we call happiness, humans must work against the flow of life itself. And yet happiness cannot result when one is working against the flow of life! The only possible source of happiness lies in the onrushing stream of the life force. That is the only medium which can carry happiness, the way a rushing river moves itself, and whatever it holds, to the sea. Yet many of us who have intellectually recognized this truth remain deeply divided within ourselves. We allow truth to exist in one region of our consciousness, yet wall off large segments of the inner being from the dramatic changes that would ensue if this understanding were to become fully integrated. We may even feel an attachment to what we perceive as the human condition, which is understood to be one of suffering. This leads us to believe that since we are human, we must continue to suffer. In fact, it
is the other way around. It is the decision on deep levels of our being to continue to suffer, that perpetuates humanity as we know it. There is nothing wrong with any of this, of course. There is nothing wrong with suffering. And yet, this suffering is not inevitable. It could stop in any moment, without requiring the cessation of our physical lives. In fact, ceasing to suffer in this manner would change the nature of our physical existence so dramatically that death, as we now think of it, would also transform. The human plane is currently at a crossroads on every level from the tiniest biological phenomena we are capable of perceiving with our sophisticated scientific instruments, to the largest global changes we can measure. This crossroads includes all of the phenomena within the sphere of the individual and collective human body from physical and mental disease, to holocausts and wars. We have created unsustainable conditions as a result of our humanness, our individuated consciousness, our belief in the separate self. Our consciousness is thus something like a parasite that must eventually kills its host and yet we are also the host who insists on harboring the parasite; we refuse to let it go. Which we are we, really? Are we the parasite, or the host, or the entity dreaming them both dreaming the entire dilemma? With rare exception, even those of us who hold these understandings on what we consider to be deep levels, still resist them even more deeply within the body of our consciousness. We do this because we fear death. This
is the most profound confusion of all. Yes, a part of us would die if we integrated these truths on all levels of our being, but it is precisely that part which is currently responsible for all of the levels of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual death currently occurring in our sphere. There is a cliff of consciousness we must jump off now, if we are to avert that death. It is one death or the other, in other words. In some ways this image of a cliff is metaphorical, yet in other ways it is closer to truth than many of the truths we take for granted on the level of physical form. The separation between and confusion of the literal and the metaphorical realms is one of the many confusions currently reigning on the human plane. The separation between and confusion of the roles played by physical or external matter, versus non-physical or internal matter, is another. Almost everything we think we know about existence is inside out. So the truths we perceive are grasped only dimly, from the outside shining in, and are distorted in their transit. In order to correct this phenomenon, we must, in essence, turn ourselves inside out. We are the sole cause of all of that which we experience as suffering. This is equally true on both the individual and the collective levels. This is also why many attempts to help or serve humanity in its current configuration are deeply misguided. By making the oxymoronic existence slightly more bearable, such efforts actually serve to perpetuate the condition that must be overturned. There is no moral imperative here; it is more of a biological imperative, as we understand that concept, or a physical
law. The collective human organism is so sick it must die to itself, in order that life may life. The organism is not sick at all, and never has been, and never could be, but its illusion of sickness and its misunderstanding of its true nature the true nature and being of life itself has become so pervasive that it must appear to die in order that life may live. This truth is dawning simultaneously on a great many human beings and yet there is still a great amount of confusion about, and resistance to, its full implications. Things simply do not matter in the way we believe they do. Matter is not matter in the way we believe it to be. The significance of this tipping-point and of our individual roles at this moment in time are nearly impossible for us to grasp or rather, they are impossible for us to grasp, but only so long as we remain human, which in fact we are not, and never were. The problem of being human is an insoluble problem. But on the level of real truth, not only are there no insoluble problems, there are no problems at all. Life is only life, and is always life. Consciousness is continually shifting, evolving, mutating, experimenting, playing, exploring, experiencing itself. We are tiny particles of that consciousness and also holograms each we contains the whole. Even that sounds metaphorical to us, when it is actually literal again, as we understand that term, and if we pretend that such a distinction is valid, when it actually is not. Each f us is the whole -- which indicates, of course, that we are not the we that we think we are! Given that, there is really no problem, of course. And yet we are caught in such a
profound and disturbing dream of a problem that we must be awoken, so to speak. At this time there are changes taking place both in our world, and in the individual consciousness of each human being, which are contributing to that process of awakening. As the inner design of our plane continues to unfold, many people will come to understand these truths much more deeply. Each of us has trained and prepared for this, without knowing it on the level we think of as ourselves. All biological processes are prepared for by a phenomenally intricate and coordinated orchestral sequence, much of which is invisible to us. The time has come for the consciousness of the larger tapestry the consciousness of ultimate reality to integrate itself fully within human consciousness, or rather, within the consciousness of we who think of ourselves as human. It is time for that split to dissolve, for the fields to merge. Each of us involved in this endeavor which is all of us, of course; but particularly those of us capable of having some degree of individual consciousness about this endeavor will experience the changes in our own ways. Yet for all of us it will entail a dissolution of membranes which had previously held separate the different regions of our consciousness. Again, our language must of necessity use metaphors to point to deeper and more literal truths. There is no individual consciousness, for instance. But since we believe that there is, there is really no way to communicate about any of this without leaning on the essentially non201 Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life
existent structures which we have confused with reality, and on which we rely. It is like the old story about the prisoners in separate cells, who communicated by rapping on the wall between them. The wall was what separated them, yet it was also what allowed them in their separate state to communicate. Our work at this time is to dissolve this wall, so that we may directly communicate at last. Or rather, the work of the universe, of which we are both a part and the whole, is to dissolve this wall which does not in fact exist, and never did.
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Section III: Love and Relationships
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30. Love as the Gate to Heaven The heavens open and outpour their bounty on earth all day and all night, through every time, place, season, and circumstance. Their bounty is Love. Of course, this is a figure of speech. There are no "heavens" as we have conceived them, only varying levels of being and perception, all of which are available to us at any moment. Heaven is simply a state of being in which we are able to feel, receive and experience the love that is all around us already: the love that runs through our veins, pulses in our cells, enters and leaves our lungs with every breath; the love that shines down on us in the form of the sun, grows food for us in the form of the earth and makes itself apparent in the form of every other person, place, thing and phenomenon that supports us each day. We do not have to wait until we die to experience this heaven. It is available to us right now, whoever we are, and whatever the circumstances of our lives. There are many gates to experiencing this heaven, but in essence they are all one. All involve opening ourselves to the love that is already within us, and around us. (And none involve waiting for our prince or princess to come.) One place to start is by truly loving ourselves. (Chapter 16, Working with Shame and Self-Hatred, can help us prepare.) When we cease to argue with or resist any aspect of ourselves or our lives, when we fully say Yes to ourselves, just as we are, then there is nothing left any longer to block us
from the flow of life which is love. Because the self is an illusion, absolute self-love and self-acceptance will also lead unfailingly to an experience of greater love with others, as well. We can also practice love for other human beings, in general. As Chapter 10, Serving Others, Ourselves and Life makes clear, other people do not truly need our help; yet, for some of us, a posture of helping and service is an important aspect of fulfilling our own inner design. When we devote ourselves to serving others, not in a way that abnegates, rejects or denies the self, but in a way that joyfully acknowledges that self and others are one, we live in love. For some of us, its easiest to begin by experiencing the depth of our love for the natural world, and opening ourselves to receive its love in return. When we cultivate states of wonder, awe and appreciation for the myriad life forms that surround us, we are speaking our own lines in a vast, ongoing, magnificently loving conversation and the earth responds. Of course, loving oneself, or others, or the natural world, can also be understood as ways of loving God, since God is present in all things. But for some of us, a life more directly devoted to God is the souls path to a profound experience of love. And then there is love between ourselves and any other singular, beautiful, flawed human being. When we truly allow ourselves to unlock our inner doors, open our inner windows, haul our skeletons out of their closets, hang our dirty laundry on our clotheslines in plain sight, and fully know and
be known, love and be loved by another person, we also reach heaven. (Hint: this is not the easiest gate through which to walk.) No one is barricaded from these gates. The choice to love or even to intend to become ready to begin to attempt to love -- is always available to us. Even if we are alone on a desert island, or in a prison cell, we can commit ourselves to self-love, or love of God. (The desert island is likely to offer many other life forms for us to love, as well. And even in a prison cell, we might encounter a rat, a mouse, a fly, or at least an ant) Truly, there are opportunities everywhere; the entire world pulses with love, and with its readiness to receive and embrace us. We have only to begin and we can begin where we are, wherever that is. Many of us seek the gate of romantic love above all others. And it is a fine and worthy gate, when we do not find ourselves wailing and gnashing our teeth outside of it, or, even more miserably, within it! Often we misunderstand the nature of this gate. If we seek romantic love as a comfortable complement to our personalities, rather than a soul-stretching voyage into our own depths, we are bound to be disappointed. Love is the most powerful force in the universe. As such, it offers us not only the cute cuddliness of a stuffed bunny, but the fierce, illusion-slashing claws of a Bengal tiger. We need love to withstand love or rather, to withstand what the personality may experience as the challenges of love. The human personality is designed as a comfort- and safety-seeking machine. It tends to prefer a static soporific state, or movement of a certain
kind only, prescribed by itself, toward outcomes also prescribed by itself. The soul, on the other hand, seeks exposure, revelation. It seeks to be stripped bare so it can remake itself, reconceive itself -- and so that it can be remade and reconceived. Almost invariably, the personality fights these movements, and yearns for security and ease. In fact, security and ease are our destiny, but in a manner very different than that understood by the personality. When we are at ease within "ourselves" and with the world as it is, when there is nothing we experience either "inside" or "outside" ourselves that evokes the need to flee, judge or manipulate, then our state of being is deeply secure, easeful, comfortable, and comforting. But it is a stretchy, resilient, flexible comfort, a comfort that flows over and through us, and through all we encounter. It is not a comfort that demands that anything be a certain way, or prohibits anything from being exactly as it is. And it is through this sort of ease, this absolute lack of resistance, this complete Yes-saying, that we enter "heaven" -- or, more precisely, we find that we are already there; we have in fact always been there, and it was only because of our own inner tightness, our cramping-up against our own flow, and the flow of the world, that kept us from knowing it until now. Where, we might ask, can we find this heavenly love? The answer, of course, is that it already exists within us. We do not need to find it so much as open to it, and cease to block it from our hearts. It is not available from our usual level of being the aspects of self that so often judge and reject what they encounter, both within and without. But there is another level of
being within us. If you encounter it, you might call it an inner teacher, a spirit guide, your Higher Self. You might think of it as an angel, a power animal, The Divine, God, or Goddess. Or you may simply experience it as light; or you may encounter it as seeming to emanate from within a redwood tree, a saguaro cactus, or the wind blowing through a field of grass. These outer phenomena can serve as mirrors for, and reminders of, what lies within. And so we may also encounter that love in the eyes of a devoted companion animal or, yes, even in the eyes of another human being. And yet the eyes and heart of that other being are not the true source of this love. A vast field of love surrounds us, and is available to us. The specific beings or forms through which it may come to us are only emissaries of that larger field, just as we ourselves are emissaries of that field whenever we ourselves feel love. A full experience of love is available to each of us, if we allow it in. There is so much love surrounding us; it is everywhere, like an invisible cloak that completely covers us, whoever we are, whatever we do, and wherever we go. It is larger than anything else inside or outside our lives, or our consciousness. We would be helped by taking time each day to remember that, and allowing ourselves to sense, feel into or imagine it. If you work with inner teachers or guides, you can ask them to help you experience their love. If you feel a connection to the natural world, you can ask a tree, river, stone, mountain or other aspect of nature for help in feeling the field of love that surrounds and emanates from it. In Christian
circles there has been a recent movement toward an experiential type of prayer known as soaking prayer, in which people simply sit or lie down and allow themselves to soak in the love of God. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke said it this way: Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.
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31. The True Nature of Love Although Love is often thought of as an emotion, we can better understand it as an independent life form. Although it has no single physical form, and in fact makes use of all physical forms, we might compare Love to a unique type of plant. As a plant, Love is exceedingly friendly. Unlike most plants, Love has no defensive or offensive qualities: no toxins, thorns, or poisons; no bad tastes or smells; no aggressive tendrils that choke out other plants. Although Love can grow in soil where few other plants can grow, it can also grow in more populous soil. In fact, it can grow anywhere at all. This is why prisoners in solitary confinement for many years sometimes experience profound emotional and spiritual awakenings; Love has found a way to take root within them, even within the confines of their isolated cells. Because of its non-defensive nature, Love is often closely surrounded by a wide variety of other plants. Some of them grow literally on top of it. Although they do not succeed in killing Love, they do cause considerable confusion among those who are seeking to find Love. When someone goes in search of Love, they may pick many other plants that have grown nearby. Fear, anger, hatred, and related offshoots like jealousy and possessiveness, are among those which can grow so close to Love that they are often mistaken for Love. If we study Love closely, though, we will easily be able to tell it apart from its pretenders. The difference is very simple. Love is always Love, and
only Love. Love needs nothing, and insists on nothing. Love fears nothing, and hates nothing. Love is completely non-toxic; it harms nothing. It is completely non-defensive; it needs no defenses because it is threatened by nothing. It can be quite difficult for us, with our human perspective, to grasp the true nature of Love. How, for instance, can this non-physical "plant" love even those other plants that grow so close to it that they claim to be it, appearing to nearly choke out its existence? And yet it does. How can Love possibly extend itself equally to all beings -- the junkies in alleys and the executives in boardrooms, the mothers hitting their children and the children being hit, the "love atheists" who deny its existence and the "love junkies" who pursue it everywhere and endlessly? And yet it does. Because human beings are so accustomed to notions of reward and punishment, plenitude and scarcity, we often try and fail -- to understand Love within such frameworks. We might assume Love is only for "good" people, whoever we define those to be, or only for people when they are being "good," and not in the other inevitable moments when, according to the inescapable laws of duality, those same people would of necessity be "bad." We may think some people get more Love than others, or even that some people deserve more Love than others. We might even think that some people get or deserve no Love at all. All of these beliefs and assumptions represent profound confusions about the nature of Love. Love practices the essence of what Buddhism calls
"non-discrimination." It does not discriminate between rich and poor, "ugly" and "beautiful," murderer and "innocent victim." In this way, we can understand Love as a type of weather. Its easy to see that sun, rain, wind and snow share this quality of non-discrimination; they shine or fall or blow equally on everyone and everything in their path. Like weather, Love extends itself with equal fullness to all things and beings, forms and phenomena at once whether or not they are able to feel or receive it. We have a name for this non-discriminating constancy: we call it "unconditional love." But the idea of "conditional love" is actually an oxymoron, like "dark light." Love by its intrinsic nature sets and recognizes no conditions. "Conditional love" isnt, cant, be love at all. Or it might be a mixture of actual Love and some of the other plants that have grown so close to it that we have mistakenly gathered them, too. Love sets no conditions. Love embraces all forms and phenomena and all of us exactly as we are. On the human level, encompassing the vastness of Love is a great challenge. Surprisingly, it is just as difficult for most of us to receive this expanse of Love, as it is for us to offer it to another. Thats okay; Love doesnt mind. It remains fully available to us, even when we tremble and barricade ourselves before it; even when we push it away, then cry because we feel unloved. Love is the greatest teacher of human beings, the greatest challenge, and the greatest gift. If we can learn to receive Love completely, and to
extend that same Love toward another (who is, of course, also an aspect of ourselves) with that same completeness, we will have learned what we came to this plane to learn.
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32. Dismantling the Fortress As a species, human beings have both a deep longing for closeness, and a deep mistrust of it. Of course, on an individual level, this is due in part to the specific wounds we have each sustained in this and other lifetimes. But on a species level, our confusion regarding closeness has its root in our conflict over having what we perceive to be a separate self. Deep within us, we have a memory of the undifferentiated experience the pre-self time and place in which we lived without borders and boundaries, inextricably connected to everything and everyone in existence. And so we miss and long for that complete experience of love. Yet at the very same time, that experience of love does not allow, has no room for, the separate, differentiated self we now experience ourselves to be. And from the vantage point of the differentiated self, undifferentiation means death! And so each human being struggles with our longing for the merged experience of absolute love, and our terror of it. Most of us tend to identify more with one side of this polarity than the other. Perhaps you are someone who consciously craves love, searches for it and continually gets your heart broken. It may seem to you that this is occurring to you from outside that you simply cannot find the right woman or man, or that life itself has betrayed you. Or you may conclude, from this excruciatingly painful repeated experience, that you must be to blame, or defective in some way that the reason you have not found the love you seek is because of something wrong with you.
On the other hand, you may be someone who consciously disidentifies from the desire for love. Perhaps you pour your energies into your work, or into some other pursuit. Or perhaps you have detached yourself from your species, and live as an emotional hermit. Or you might ricochet between these two extremes: longing for love, experiencing heartbreak, and then rejecting love and detaching from other human being -- and then, eventually, beginning to long for love again. If you recognize yourself at any point along this continuum, one thing is certain: you are not living from the fullness of your own being. There is a hidden No or a hidden Yes or both waiting inside you to be discovered, worked with, and healed. The problem does not lie outside of you, with the faulty women or men whom you have met. Nor does it lie within you, at least not in the sense that you are defective, unworthy of love, or being betrayed by life. Rather, it lies within your own internal structure the nonphysical matter within you, that is currently shaped in such a way as to prevent a sustained, fulfilling experience of human love. (See Chapter 15, Understanding and Working With Emotional States, for an explanation of the non-physical matter of our beliefs and emotions.) Of course, in addition to this species-level imprint of longing for love and rejection of love, each of us also carries our own more individual, biographical imprints which generally also contain a Yes and a No. For instance, we may have felt unloved, or insufficiently loved, by one or both parents, causing a quite frantic Yes to develop within us. The Pathwork calls
this sort of Yes a forcing current, because when it is active in us, we are very likely to try to force others to love us or even to try to force ourselves to love them. Yet if we also observed pain and strife in our parents marriage, we may have vowed not to re-create that experience in our own lives hence, the No, which the Pathwork calls the No-current. Most of us contain both of these currents, which often play off of each other in our lives, causing us much pain. For instance, if we are lacking in self-love, that creates the conditions for a desperate-feeling Yes, a strong, painful feeling of need for love to come to us from the outer world; yet given the desperate tone of that Yes and our lack of self-love, love cannot come to us in a full and sustained way. Then inevitable experience of loss and rejection that follows may wound us so deeply that, with part of ourselves at least, we say a very firm No to ever risking that again. That No will make it even harder for love to reach us, which will start the cycle over again, creating an even more desperate Yes. If we felt (or actually were) emotionally or physically invaded by one or both parents, we probably developed a strong inner No in self-defense; yet this No may have left us feeling so isolated that a sad, hopeless-feeling Yes languishes alongside it. There are infinite configurations, infinite variations upon these themes. But their effect is the same: we barricade ourselves, or parts of ourselves, against connection. We build up inner fortresses to keep Love out. And then, from behind those walls, we ache for it.
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Each of us has our own uniquely-constructed fortress to dismantle, if we are to truly experience connection not only so that we can have an "intimate relationship" in the narrow sense, with one other human being, but so that the world, and Life itself, can flow more freely both into and out from the deepest parts of us. Of course, we built that inner fortress in response to states of pain, fear, self-rejection, anger and confusion, so we cannot just storm into our psyches with wrecking balls. We need to work tenderly with ourselves, healing the wounds, changing the imprints, correcting the misconceptions, and thus transforming the internal matter they created. We may also encounter parts of us that do not want to have our misperceptions proven wrong, or that do not want to change or heal. If so, we will need to work skillfully with these parts of self, too. A great deal of self-compassion and self-forgiveness are needed throughout this process. Fortunately, our guides will help us. And it can also help to realize that we are not alone; nearly every other human being is in the same boat, though the specific configurations of our rafts, canoes and kayaks differ. The most important thing to know is that opening ourselves to intimacy with life, and with others, is within our own power. Life has not denied us love, nor has it been withheld from us due to our flaws (which we do undoubtedly have; but so does everyone else!) If we have not yet experienced the connection we seek, it is because we ourselves have kept it away. This revelation reminds us that the power lies in our own hands.
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There are many tools we can use to transform our internal matter, and become more open to love. Many of them are described in Chapters 14-18, as well as elsewhere in this book, and of course there are many other resources available, as well. Here is one powerful prayer we can work with, when we feel ready: I declare now, from the fullness of my being, that it is my choice and my desire to stand naked and unprotected in this world, to experience all its forces and seasons. I ask for the help of my guides in preparing me and supporting me as I open myself to Love, with all of the feelings and experiences it may bring me. I decide, desire, wish, intend, to allow myself to feel deeply, to connect profoundly to others, in every way possible. I accept what my personality sees as the risks involved in this, and welcome the pain and confusion and difficulty that may ensue, as well as the delight, joy and harmony. I determine to facilitate, foster and nurture the permeability of my heart - so that others may more easily and completely feel me, and so that I may take others more fully into myself, not haphazardly, accidentally or compulsively, but with consciousness and with active willingness to allow myself to touch and be touched, engage and be engaged. I decide, desire, request, intend to allow these changes for the sake of my own highest spiritual and emotional well-being, and to further my evolutionary progress, regardless of how it may look or feel moment by moment on the human level. I affirm that by opening more fully to the forms and phenomena of this world, I am opening more fully to God - since God
resides in each one. By opening more fully to other people, I open more fully to God. By opening more fully to myself, I open more fully to God. And I affirm my desire, my intention and my willingness to further my openness to God in all of these as well as in all other ways.
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33. The Purpose of Intimate Relationships Although it may seem like a vast task, opening ourselves to love is actually only the beginning. As we work to clear the imprints, the inner Yesses and Nos that have kept us hungering outside the gate of Love, we are only preparing ourselves for an even bigger and more challenging adventure, should we choose to take it on: an intimate relationship with another magnificent, and magnificently flawed, human being. Most human beings have a very strong drive toward intimate relationships or at least, relationships that appear intimate. (When we do not know ourselves very well, and live in fear of what we may find within, it is very hard to be truly intimate with another.) Unfortunately, our understanding of how to engage in such relationships is so lacking that we rarely receive what we seek, either on the level of the human personality, or of the soul. Instead of bringing great joy along with joyful challenge and profound growth, many of us experience intimate relationships as a source of confusion, suffering, and repeated internal battering. And when we do not understand why we have this experience, we are unlikely to clear the imprints that create it. It is, however, within our power to have a completely different experience of love. If you work with the principles contained in this book, it will happen. From the souls perspective, the only thing that matters is continuing to work toward our life project: the fulfillment of our inner design. On a soul level, what is most important in our intimate relationships is our commitment
to using them as vehicles for our growth, healing, learning and exploration. Ultimately, the purpose of all learning is to become able to love more fully and completely not only, as Jesus said, to love our neighbors as ourselves, but also, in this time of rampant self-hatred, also to love ourselves as our neighbors. From the point of view of life, and the objective of Love, it does not matter at all whether we stay in one intimate relationship for an entire lifetime, or have many intimate relationships, or even have none at all. What matters is our commitment to using our relational circumstances, whatever they are, for the purpose of learning and healing, exploring and overcoming whatever makes it difficult for us to truly love another person, and to truly love ourselves. Our life projects are so vast that it is difficult for us even to glimpse their contours; if we ever imagine that we have really grasped them, we are probably mistaken. And it is certainly never possible for us to fully comprehend the life project of any other human being. So the difficult and joyful challenges of intimate relationships are best approached with a spirit of deep curiosity and profound humility, informed always by a reverence for the mystery that your lover is and must always be to you and, too, the mystery that you are to yourself. The ability to develop and sustain intimacy with self and others also depends upon a willingness to embrace change. Because both we and others are living, growing, changing organisms, change is not a likelihood, but a certainty. Yet, although the soul is tuned to follow joy through a constant
series of movements and calibrations, we often fall prey to the erroneous belief that our personal happiness will come about by achieving a certain fixed, unchanging state. When we do experience happiness in a given moment, we may mistakenly assume that the happiness will continue if only we can find a way to maintain the exact conditions present in that moment. Of course, this is impossible; we cannot achieve a fixed, unchanging external or internal state. Like every other aspect of life, our relationships are life is constantly changing, morphing, and transmuting. If we allow this natural process, it is life-giving to us. But if we resist it, we stagnate, and our relationships do, too. Ironically, the effort to reach or sustain happiness by maintaining a fixed state is not only impossible, but also misguided, because happiness is never actually produced by external conditions in the first place. Anyone who has ever felt miserable on an expensive vacation, or felt joy in simple or even unfortunate material circumstances, will recognize the truth of this. So any effort we make to artificially prolong any condition is based on confusion, and only serves to pit us against the flow of life itself. Imagine this: You have always wanted to travel through South America, and you meet someone who seems a wonderfully compatible travel partner. Your time in Colombia is dreamy, but conflicts start to emerge in Ecuador youd rather linger in the mountains, while your partner wants to hurry down to the
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coast. Still, your appreciation of each other as traveling partners is enough to make you want to compromise, and for a while this seems to work. As time goes on, though, conflicts continue to surface, and you cant deny that your needs and visions for this trip are turning out to be different. Things come to a head in Peru. After a day in Lima youre ready to head on, but your partner has fallen in love with the city and wants to stay much longer. To make matters worse, shes met another traveler whos already settled down in Lima and invites her to stay. You notice that your partners eyes light up when she mentions this other traveler, and you can feel her connection to this person and place even as you feel your own desire to get to the highlands of Bolivia and the waterfalls of Uruguay. What do you do? This metaphor of a trip may seem more lighthearted than if the two people involved had bought a house, or started a business, or married, or had children. And yet the basic principles involved remain the same. Each of us has a primary responsibility to the project of our own souls development. It is impossible for us to know, at any given point in our human journey, just what that development will require of us, on the level of form. And yet our deepest longings and inclinations show us exactly what is required at every juncture; when we feel joy, we know we are in contact with our souls. Therefore, if we are to remain in harmony with the fullness of our selves, and with life, any partnership we form with another human being must be subordinate to the needs and signals of our own soul.
This subordination of our relationships to the needs of our own souls does not mean we cannot truly love others, or receive their love. Rather, it means we must expand our notion of what it means to love others, and to receive their love. Many people attempt to conduct intimate relationships in a manner that has nothing to do with genuine love; rather, each member of the partnership may attempt to codify and control both him- or herself, and their partner. Such partnerships require compromise and sacrifice at every turn; in this scenario, where people disallow real contact with themselves and each other, there is no alternative. Of course, there is nothing wrong with compromise or sacrifice, if it is what the soul truly wishes. Something that appears to be a sacrifice when viewed from the outside may have a wholly different meaning to the person involved. For instance, all parents make numerous sacrifices, yet if having children is a genuine part of their inner design, the meaning of what they must give up in the process is very different than for someone who did not truly want to have children. In fact, if an apparent sacrifice represents a fulfillment of someones inner design, it is not truly a sacrifice at all. The challenge lies in remaining in close enough contact with ones own soul and with joy, our best navigational aid that we can continually determine what is right on the deepest levels of our being, even as it, and we ourselves, shift.
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34. Commitment If our ultimate commitment must be to our own souls growth, what does that mean about our ability to harmoniously commit ourselves to other human beings, and human relationships? Yet since the fulfillment of our souls needs is never dependent upon outer circumstance and forms, doesnt that suggest that we should be able to remain true to our souls journey in any relationship or circumstance? In short, why, how or to what can we ever harmoniously commit ourselves? Human beings largely misunderstand the true nature and purpose of commitment. The only appropriate, indeed, the only possible commitment you can and should make, is to yourself, to your own soul. Therefore, the most harmonious way to make commitments to and with other people is to commit yourself to a process, rather than to an outcome. Here are some examples: I commit to allowing my higher self, my soul and the Light to work through me in all aspects of my life, including this relationship. I commit myself wholeheartedly to my own growth and development, to learning what I came to this plane to learn, to giving what I came to give, and also to teaching and receiving all that I am able to teach and receive, in the fulfillment of my own inner design and to using this relationship as a vehicle for fulfilling these intentions.
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Obviously, these types of statements of commitment are very different from the kinds of outcome commitments people commonly attempt to make to one another commitments like these: I will stay with you forever. I will never hurt you. The problem with such commitments is that they are inherently limiting to the full flowering and expression of the soul. Perhaps it will be right for two people to stay together forever while still remaining faithful to their own life projects; perhaps it will not. To attempt to declare, announce, promise and vow such a commitment is misguided, because the soul will eventually find ways to assert itself, and all too often it will mean the breaking of such vows. And of course it is misguided to say I will never hurt you, since we have no control over what someone else will feel. Here are more examples of the kinds of commitments which do not limit the soul, but rather assist it in its mission of growth and exploration and are, therefore, the kinds of commitments which are harmonious to make, which keep us open to lifes flow and to the evolving forms of our own inner designs: Whatever happens between us, I vow to make a full effort to treat both you and myself with love, compassion, honesty and respect. I commit to the effort to remain conscious in all of my thoughts, words and actions, throughout our relationship.
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I commit to doing my best to remain emotionally present both with your pain and healing, and with my own. Yes, these commitments are challenging. In fact, when understood correctly, they are far more challenging than the old commitments because they require so much consciousness, presence, and attentiveness from us. They are commitments to ways of being, to energy flows, as well as to actions. The commitment to pursuing ones own life project the commitment to the growth of ones own soul -- is not irresponsible, selfish, or careless in any way. Rather, it is an expression of the ultimate responsibility we can and must take, which is responsibility for ourselves. It does require attention to the self, but, when correctly understood, it also requires equal attention and respect to the other even as no false or unrealistic promises are being made. Process commitments are the ultimate actions in caring for ourselves at a higher level, and also in caring for those others whom we love, and wish to love. As human beings with our eyes fixed such a short distance from the larger tapestry of our lives, its easy to become confused. Even those of us who know better who understand the role that change and growth play in our lives often commit ourselves emotionally to certain forms, both within ourselves and within our relationships. When those conditions or outcomes change, as they necessarily do and must, all too often we feel as if we have been betrayed by our partner, or by life. We may respond with fear, grief,
depression or rage. We may attempt to manipulate the other person to behave in the ways we would prefer. We may believe that all our worst fears are being confirmed. (Regardless of what our worst fears are abandonment, betrayal, and so on big changes within our close relationships are likely to trigger them.) Its very difficult for us as human beings not to struggle violently against disappointments and changes in plan. Yet the key to handling such changes in plan is to remember that regardless of any commitments you and your partner may have tried to make to one another, your real commitment is, or should be, to your own life path and project -- whatever that may be. Although it can be difficult to recall in the midst of relational storms, joy is the best navigational aid. Therefore, if you find joy at the idea of continuing onward to Bolivia, and your partner finds joy in remaining in Peru, it is likely that there is a larger pattern attempting to weave itself beyond the field of your vision. In this case, it would be harmonious to release yourselves and each other with love. It may in fact be your souls need to learn this gesture of loving release that has brought you to this juncture. When you are truly able to feel, believe, understand, know, recognize and remember that the purpose of your relationship is and was only to serve each of you in fulfilling your larger life project, it becomes possible to allow such partings to take place with a spirit of respectful gladness for the larger mystery in which both of you are held.
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35. Discernment versus Judgment Discernment, the ability to neutrally behold what is true on a given level of reality at a given time, is an essential ability to cultivate if we wish to be able to grow, experience joy, and fulfill our inner design. Judgment, the propensity to assign positive or negative value to what is true on a given level of reality at a given time, is a distorting force that always moves us further from our deepest selves, and from the truth. And yet these two soulpostures, which are so profoundly different in essence and energy, are sometimes confused with one another. Learning to distinguish between them, both in ourselves and in others, is therefore essential to our path of growth. In the process of fulfilling our inner design, we make plans and set intentions about what we wish to do, experience and create. Throughout this process we must use discernment in order to determine which actions will move us toward the fulfillment of our intentions, and which will not. This is true in all aspects of our lives, of course, but is also very relevant within the sphere of our personal relationships. For instance, imagine that you are a skier who has developed your ability to an expert level, and find joy in skiing rapidly down the steepest trails. If you decide to form a skiing partnership with someone who skis at a more basic level, sticking to beginning trails and often falling, your experience of skiing will necessarily change. Since there is no intrinsic value in being a better or worse skier, skiing more difficult or less difficult
trails, this change in your skiing life is neither bad nor good. However, in order to understand its meaning for you and its relevance to the process of your fulfillment of your inner design, its important to look at the energy, the internal dynamics, behind your change in behavior. You might be experiencing feelings like this: Its so much more rewarding to slow down, to ski with X. This way I get to really see the mountain rather than just zipping down it. I love getting the chance to share what Ive learned about skiing. It makes the whole experience feel much more rich and full to me. Perhaps before meeting X, you had imagined honing your ability to ski to such an extent that you could be in the Olympics. That process, too, might have brought you joy and could have represented a fulfillment of part of your inner design. Yet, if the experience of slowing down to ski with X rather than continue on your own feels rewarding and joyful to you, then its a sign that you are still fulfilling your inner design even though it may lead you to change course on the level of form, in your specific life vision. For instance, you may find yourself thinking of becoming a skiing instructor for disabled people, so that your emphasis is really on helping people develop to whatever extent theyre capable, rather than on mastery of the art of skiing, per se. This vision may potentially represent an even more complete fulfillment of your inner design than your original dream of skiing in the Olympics. On the other hand, you might be experiencing feelings like this:
I hate having to slow down, but there are so few other skiers who are as skilled as I am. In order to be in a relationship, Im going to have to abandon my own goals and dreams. Its so frustrating to be stuck here on the side of the mountain while X keeps falling. If youre feeling frustrated and stuck, its a sure sign that you are not fulfilling your inner design. If you wish to feel joy, it will be necessary to make a change either in the outer forms, or in your experience of the outer forms. Theres no larger right or wrong in any scenario, but there are paths which are truly more or less harmonious for you, for your particular spirit. When we find ourselves at life junctures which seem to pull us between conflicting desires and visions, its often helpful to work with a spiritual counselor of some kind, who can help us better understand the nature of our conflict, and the nature of the beliefs at the root of each inner pull. For instance, in this scenario, working with a counselor might help you realize that your goal of skiing in the Olympics wasnt ever truly yours, but actually stemmed from an ancient attempt to win your fathers approval. Once you saw that, you might let go of that goal and realize that in fact you were happy just skiing the beginners trails with X. On the other hand, you might realize that your own soul really did deeply long to excel as a skier, but that an ancient distortion in your psyche had prevented you from believing you could follow your own path while also having intimacy in your life. Once you realized this, you could either renegotiate the terms of your relationship with X (perhaps your relationship could still thrive as you skied on different trails
all day, and met up at the ski lodge each evening), or else change the form of that relationship so that you could be free to find intimacy with someone whose life path was more truly compatible with your own. In this example, the following statements would be examples of discernment: I am currently a far more proficient skier than X. Therefore, if I wish to ski with X by my side, I will need to ski on easier trails. If I spend my time skiing on easier trails in order to ski with X by my side, I wont be able to pursue my dream of skiing in the Olympics. These are statements of fact at the current human level of reality related to you, X, and skiing. Here are examples of statements of judgment: Its a waste of my time to have to ski the beginners trails with X. If X tried harder hed be a better skier by now. And here are examples of statements of self-judgment: Its selfish of me to want to pursue my dreams of skiing in the Olympics. If I really cared about X, I would stop wanting to ski on the advanced trails. If I werent so socially inept maybe I would have been able to get together with someone who skis better.
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The difference between discernment and judgment is that judgment always arises from the mistaken idea that certain things are better than others. In fact, it is no better to be a more proficient skier than to be a less proficient skier. It is no better to zip down a difficult trail in perfect form than to struggle down a beginners trail, falling repeatedly. It is no better to ski in the Olympics than to spend half an hour helping a developmentally disabled person learn to buckle her ski boot. The universe, life and God have no preference regarding these matters whatsoever. And yet it is true that within your own nature, you may have a soullevel yearning to follow one path instead of another. When this is the case, discernment is necessary so that you can see when a given relationship, job or other decision will likely move you toward, or away from that path. The key is to remember that any path, any outer form in existence, can be a vehicle for growth if we choose to use it in that way or can keep us stuck, if we dont. Ongoing self-inquiry and discernment about our own nature, longings, motives and intentions is essential to helping us realistically evaluate where we are at any given point, why were there (in other words, the internal factors that have created the external circumstance in which we find ourselves), and what we most deeply wish to do about it. All human beings need to experience circumstances in which we are teaching, mentoring, and supporting others, and circumstances in which we are being taught, mentored and supported by others -- as well as circumstances in which we find ourselves interacting with others on a peer or
colleague level, with a fully mutual, reciprocal exchange. And yet the degree to which we experience each of these conditions may rightfully vary at different points in our lives. At some stages of our growth process during our infancy, for instance -- it is truly more harmonious for us to receive more support than we give, at least on the physical level. In other stages, it can be truly harmonious for us to give more support than we receive. So it is important to discern which roles the people in our lives are playing, and are capable of playing, as well as to discern what our souls need in the current phase of our lives. For instance, in the preceding example, we can clearly see that there are people in our lives who can teach us to ski more proficiently, people whom we can teach to ski, and people who can ski as peers alongside us. And in the many processes and aspects of life which are far more complex than skiing, there are also people whom we can primarily teach, people from whom we can primarily learn, and people with whom we can exchange teaching and learning on a more or less equal level. And all of this is as it should be. So our work is not to ensure that we are giving and receiving in exactly equal proportions at every point or in every relationship in our lives which would, of course, be impossible but rather, that the teaching and learning, giving and receiving we are doing is in harmony with the fulfillment of our inner design. If it is, we will know it by our joy.
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36. Sexuality The human sexual experience is bound to confuse us. This is so because we are multidimensional beings, braided strands. Each of us contains a limited, wounded human personality and a timeless, vast, eternal soul. Each of us is both a physical, biological creature and a non-physical, non-local mass of shifting energies. By definition, there is a mismatch, or misalignment, between our biological, animal sexual inclinations, and the states of higher consciousness to which our sexual energies can be a portal. This does not mean that our biological, animal sexual inclinations are bad, wrong, or even lesser than our higher states of sexual consciousness; they are simply dimensionally different. The challenge of working within the various dimensions and aspects we contain is part of what we are here to experience. The essence of sexual energy is the energy of life itself. As such,
sexuality is neither bad nor good, just as the wind and rain and sun are
neither bad nor good. But in the individual manifestation of most peoples sexuality, there is a combination of currents, some more pure, essential, unwounded, connected to self and life, and others that are more distorted, polluted or cut off. A pure current is simply the full, natural, unhindered sexual expression of any aspect of the being. A distorted current occurs from the tangling of such pure currents with socially-constructed or woundbased imprints, such as the desire to be degraded or to degrade, to punish or be punished, to have power over or be powerless, to prove oneself as a
lover, to exhibit only male or only female characteristics, and so on. Of course, these distortions in the being do not exist only on the level of sexuality; they permeate us and affect every aspect of our lives. A major part of the value of sexuality lies in its ability to reveal these currents to us, so that we can recognize their distortions and the damage they cause, and work to heal them. For instance, take the case of a woman who was sexually abused as a child, who went on to have abusive relationships as an adult, and who now finds herself having sexual fantasies of being raped or otherwise mistreated. Of course, on a conscious level, she does not wish to have this experience at all. Yet she does not find herself attracted to kind, giving partners. She truly wants to have a loving, healthy relationship, yet the imprint in her psyche calls in men who will abuse her. How can she shift this pattern? A client whom Ill call Sarah (not her real name) came to me with this dilemma, and asked for the counsel of my inner teacher. Here is what he said: When Sarah asks what would be necessary for her to open her heart and her sexuality, what she is really asking is, what would be necessary for her to open the core of her being? The answer is simple. Trust is what would be necessary. Without trust, one cannot open. One can only be forced open, which is essentially what has occurred in Sarahs life and what occurs in her fantasies. But the true openness she yearns to experience cannot come about as a result of force neither force exerted from outside, nor force
exerted by Sarah herself. It can only be invited, promoted, facilitated, call forth by an atmosphere of inner nourishment, patience, gentleness and love. When the inner conditions are right, a wholesome and full-being openness naturally results. When they are not, it cannot. So this is an inner project that requires ongoing tender attention from Sarah, as well as an attitude of relaxed confidence. This process is something like the gestation period of a human infant. Much must occur on many levels to nourish the process and prepare for birth. It is a natural unfolding, yet it is also delicate, and requires care. A woman pregnant with a baby or with a healing process must treat herself with respect for what she is carrying, and must listen to the signals of her inner being and of her body, in order that she may be the best vessel possible for what she wishes to bring forth. Sarah must remember that she is working to transform the accumulated psychic residue not only of this lifetime, but of many others. The task is large not too large for her, but certainly worthy of her, her passionate spirit and her dedicated attention. Her intention keeps her moving forward, but her impatience actually slows down progress. Impatience, too, is born of lack of trust. It would be helpful for Sarah to let go of attachment to a certain outcome within a certain time frame, and just keep her focus on the inner work to be done, which is continually revealing itself to her knowing that each piece she accomplishes does unfailingly bring her closer to the opening she desires.
If we are to develop the ability to live in harmony with ourselves and with our sexuality, we must avoid falling prey to a sense of hierarchy (good/bad better/worse more evolved/less evolved) within us, or standing in judgment of any aspect of our sexual selves. Any sense of hierarchy or judgment, any notion of lesser or greater, is in fact itself utterly misaligned with the larger vision of the tapestry of which we are part that level we can call ultimate reality. And in sexuality, as in all other spheres, our purpose here on earth is actually to experience the entire spectrum of being. It is only in this way that we can grow toward our own fullest expression including our fullest expression of sexual energy. And yet, at the very same time, it is also possible to recognize and acknowledge currents within our sexuality as well as within other aspects of our being that have clearly been distorted by our wounding, and which do not currently enjoy the state of wholeness and health we wish for them, and for ourselves. And so the challenge before us is how to work to transform such currents, to heal our sexuality and ourselves, without ever passing judgment on ourselves, or on one another. Regardless of what sexual states we currently do or do not experience within our beings, nothing is wrong neither with us, nor with our sexual natures or expression. What is true for all of us - is that we have not yet experienced the full potential of our sexual expression. That is as it should be, since our work toward that full potential is, in fact, a significant part of why we are here on earth! And so we must cultivate tenderness toward
ourselves in the exact states of being in which we currently find ourselves. It is actually this tender acceptance which opens channels within us to enable our continued growth and development. And what exactly is it that we are growing or developing toward, or into? Most of us remain largely or completely ignorant about the true magnificence of our sexual potential the depths and heights to which our sexual responses can bring us, both in terms of intimacy with other human beings, and intimacy and alignment with the universe itself. Few of us are ready to access that magnificence at this time. We must, instead, heal our way toward it. And in the meantime, we must stop expecting our bodies to respond like pleasure-providing automatons while we wade through the valleys of our wounds and confusions. If we truly intend to use sexuality as a vehicle for our growth, we should accept the possibility of not having any recognizable form of "good sex" for some time; in fact, we would be wellserved to abandon our notion of "good sex" altogether, and instead dare to be fully authentic in our sexual and sensual contact. Our bodies are less capable of dissimulation than our minds, so they cannot fail to help us enter into the terrain that scares us, and that our minds would therefore avoid. Our bodies are highly sensitive instruments, and should be respected as such. As part of that respect, we must cease to allow ourselves to give in to the habit of mechanical sex. It will neither satisfy us nor bring us closer to one another or ourselves; it will neither ease our distress, nor further our
evolution. It is far better to treat both our own and each others' bodies as the
sacred vessels they are, containers of our hopes and fears, our wounds and resilience. When we are in sexual relationship with another or even with ourselves -- we can choose to engage in a kind of sex therapy that aids in our healing and clearing process, by consciously using our bodies and our sexual arousal as vehicles of presence. We can be conscious of what we are communicating through our touch, and what we are and are not able to give and receive in any given moment. This consciousness can be flooded through with compassion for ourselves, and even with a tender kind of amusement as we witness the gaps between our consciousness, and our sexual response. It can be as if we are witnessing the first fumbling steps of a child just learning to walk. As we watch, we know that the child will eventually become proficient at walking and even at running! But we also know that the process of learning to walk involves continued effort, clumsiness, holding onto physical supports, fumbling, and even falling. It is this way with our own sexual and spiritual development. If we critique or judge ourselves in our states of clumsiness and falling, we effectively arrest our own development. Fumbling and falling are necessary stages in development. Judgment is not! This point cannot be overemphasized, as the pattern of self-judgment is so deeply embedded in most of us. And it is that which interferes with our growth, not any one of the tangles, knots or confusions we may currently encounter within ourselves.
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We can and must also hold what our partner is or is not able to give -or to receive -- in each moment, with the utmost gentleness and respect. In other words, we can make a practice of holding no expectations or demands of ourselves or of each other in the realm of touch and sexuality. If we let go of our attachments to specific sexual outcomes, our bodies can serve both as our teachers, and as conduits which help us contact wounded parts of ourselves which need our compassionate attention. As we proceed with this process of development and healing, we should even consider carefully whether or not we wish to spend nights in the same bed as another person. Those of us who are sensitive to energy have already recognized that there is a tremendous amount of energetic mingling that occurs over the course of a nights sleep, which may or may not serve our efforts toward greater wholeness and clarity. Yes, it is normal to spend nights with our lovers, but normalcy has generally not yielded the joyous potentials of which we are capable, and for which we long! When we remember that both we and our partners are healing from a lifetime (or perhaps many lifetimes) of sexual wounding and confusion, it may enable us to be more patient with ourselves and each other. With the steady support of this current of inner patience, we can more easily grasp the importance of resisting the influence of ideas about what other people do," or what is expected. We know, of course, that sadly, many of those other people who are doing what is expected are actually quite dead to themselves and to each other. We have the opportunity to seek and find something very
different an uncommon degree of aliveness both in and to ourselves, and with each other. And we cannot fully experience such aliveness without honoring ourselves and each other in all our shifting particularities. To do this, we must descend -- or ascend -- to a much greater level of honesty in each moment of intimate contact.
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37. Partnership and Community Not only in what we have defined as our intimate relationships, but also in all of the rest of our relationships with other human beings, both individually and in groups, we have the opportunity to learn about what we fear, what we long for, and what we do and do not allow to ourselves and each other. There is always so much more that is possible, that we are not yet able to allow! And yet as always, the issue comes back to our relationships with ourselves, and with life. Allowing ourselves to know and feel how fully we are being held by life itself is the first step for those of us who also wish to form partnerships in which we hold each other or rather, in which we allow life to work through us in holding one another. Although most of us long to experience being held within a universal web of compassion and although, in reality, we are at all times held within a universal web of compassion when we are honest, we must acknowledge that we also resist being held. We know we are held, and yet we doubt. We long to be held, and yet we struggle. And yet the more we can know it, trust it, relax into it, the more the holding can accomplish its true purpose. We are not alone in having an inner design. The universe, too, has an inner design and it fulfills that design, in part, by holding us! And so, when we do not allow ourselves to be held with compassion, we are actually disrupting the flow of life itself. Many of us find ourselves bashing our heads repeatedly against what feels like an external wall though in reality, it is a wall we ourselves have
erected within ourselves. There is something on the other side of that wall that we know about, and want. But we cannot have it unless and until we dissolve the wall. The wall is made of the energy of resistance within us, and we hold it firmly in place even as we yearn for what we sense on the other side of it. When we do not allow ourselves to be held by life, we behave like drowning people who kick away life preservers even as we call for help. Of course, our resistance to being held comes from a fear that we will not be held. The problem is that this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, since the fear itself renders us unwilling to allow ourselves to be held, or unable to feel ourselves held. And so in the context of all of this, the decision to partner with another person or people -- whether in a romantic or familial context, or in some other community endeavor is a very particular kind of challenge, in which we are working not only with each of our individual fears, longings, and patterns of resistance, but with the combined sum of these patterns in each other person involved. And of course, part of the work of partnership or community is the effort to bring together disparate and seemingly opposed forces, and create of them a new pattern, a harmonious gift which we can then bestow upon ourselves, each other, and life. It is as if we are taking the energetic strands of our beings and hoping to weave them together into a sturdy basket. That basket is to be the container for our work in the world but also the container for us. We all seek a sense of safety, of being held in
the world, of being loved in a way we can know and feel, believe in and surrender to. But deep down we do not really believe it is possible; and yet still deeper down, we know it is possible, and that knowledge is fueling us. And the work of partnership itself is the container which is holding us, and the source of the knowledge which is fueling us. It is as if that work is our child, and at the same time, we are its child. For any partnership to truly fulfill its spiritual promise, the partners must each love each other as much as they love themselves in their finest moments, and must also love themselves as much as they love each other, in their finest moments. There must also be trust, based not so much based on each other as individuals, but on a larger shared commitment which we simultaneously hold, and allow ourselves to be held by. Between those for whom a sense of trust comes easily and naturally, it must be tempered by more discernment. Where easy, automatic trust is lacking, a deeper level of work is invited and called for. Every place of judgment and impatience in us must be examined, reckoned with, and dismantled. These judgments are actually covers for wounds in our being of which we are not always aware. That is why the work of partnership is so elegant in its design because by healing our relationship to one another, we are actually healing ourselves, and by healing ourselves, we are participating in healing others. If we are truly to serve such a partnership, we must become ready to give up our patterns of shame and of hiding from ourselves and one another.
The fact that this prospect is on some level terrifying only reveals how necessary it is that we cease to hide. Anything unexposed in our beings in relationship to one another has the potential to become the thread that will cause the entire seam to unravel. We cannot now imagine the pressures to which we will be subjected from both inside and outside. It is best that we cannot imagine them, because if we knew what it was going to entail, we might not take it on! And yet the rewards are far more than equal to the travails. In essence, any partnership must be understood as an independent energetic being. Such a being will unfailingly manifest the individual and combined energetic distortions of those who have created it -- the way a child will often evidence the distortions present in both parents, plus the distortions created by his/her reaction to them. In this way, any partnership runs the risk of becoming an even unhealthier entity than any of the individuals involved. Yet because the project is its own entity and is one step removed from these individuals, it can also be easier for them to heal and address its distortions, than to address their own. It can be possible for them to consider the needs of the partnership with a clearer vision than they can bring to bear on their own more personal circumstances just as highly devoted parents can sometimes bring a healthier energy to bear on parenting their children than they might evidence elsewhere in their lives. And just as in that circumstance, in the process of creating a healthier project, the partnerships parents will receive healing for themselves as
well.
Each of us has the potential to make this soul movement. And
yet people have died of thirst three feet from the oasis. It is not assured that we will make this movement and yet we could. It is eminently within our grasp. It would take an enormous amount of work, from one perspective, and from another, it would take no work at all. This is because all of us know on the deepest levels of our being how to make this movement, and if we simply allow those levels of our being to take charge rather than the conditioned levels of personality and defense we will find that we are already there. That where we are is where we seek to be, that we in fact never left the oasis. It is not leaveable. It is within us. Truly, all of the forces of the universe are with us, and none are against us. That is the deepest, widest and highest level of truth. If we take this path, there is no way to fail. But success is not always immediately visible or apparent in human terms. It certainly does not always take the forms we hope for or expect. When difficult circumstances come to us, we must remember that we have not been kicked out of the garden like Adam and Eve. It is exactly the opposite; we are being invited in to the garden. The garden is every bit as beautiful as we have imagined; in fact, it is even more beautiful than that. And yet the price of admission is high. To enter the garden and to remain there requires a very deep level of commitment to sustained internal work, to absolute integrity in our dealings with ourselves and with others. There is no more room for venting, for example. There is no more room for allowing
the false pleasure of blame or criticism of ourselves, or of others --into our consciousness. Absolute compassion is required of us now, both in our relationships with one another, and with ourselves. We cannot attempt to substitute, offering what appears to be compassion to another by stripping it from ourselves, or vice versa offering ourselves what masquerades as compassion, by blaming or finding fault with another. We must learn to trust to trust in the cycles and in the seasons; to trust that life is holding and carrying us; to trust in the life force, the inner impetus, the wellspring. When we sense into the energetic pattern of trust, we can feel how open and receptive and allowing it is and we can choose to align ourselves with that, rather than with the familiar patterns of making things happen with our will, desire and energy alone. If we cannot trust ourselves, we cannot trust life because, of course, we are life. If we do not trust life, it is hard to experience joy. Joy is a soul movement which is completely dependent on a certain level of trust. To experience joy is to allow ourselves to be held and swung within the hammock of life. If we do not trust that the hammock will hold us, or if we feel we must control its movements, we will not let ourselves be held and swung, and we will not feel joy. Joy is a direct result of allowing ourselves to remain within the flow of life, and allowing that flow to move freely and fully through our being. The decision to allow ourselves access to this flow, and
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allow this flow access to us, is a soul movement which we can choose to make in any moment, regardless of our outer circumstances.
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Section IV: Tools & Transformation
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38. On The Necessary Illusion of the Personal Self There is a secret which is right in front of us, a secret which holds the key to our experience of joy on this plane. The secret is this: there is no personal self. It does not exist; you, as you conceive yourself to be, the separate, isolated, disconnected you, do not exist. The personal self is a fiction, a construct, a clever faade, like a two-dimensional stage set for a high school play. Some people on spiritual paths believe that they need to dissolve their personal selves, or banish or vanquish them. But of course, we cannot dissolve, banish or vanquish what does not exist! What can happen instead is that when this personal self in which we believe becomes strong, whole and healed enough in our experience of it, then we, who have seen life through narrowed blinders for so long, become more and more willing to allow in the knowledge and experience of the larger self that aspect of self that is everything and everyone, that has no illusion of fixedness or constancy. There is a great confusion about what it means to have a separate body, a distinct physical form. Our physical form is not irrelevant; its more like the personal viewing screens now available on many airplanes, which allow each passenger to watch a different movie. The individual physical form has great utility as a teaching and learning device. The problem is that we have confused it with ourselves, with some separate self that does not truly exist.
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Our experience of the personal self limits, isolates and confines us. And yet we have lived in such a hall of mirrors that we are terrified of freedom. We are terrified of perceiving existence without all the mirrors, false starts, dead ends, imagined paths, reflections and distortions with which we live. We are frightened of stepping out from this narrow and echoing chamber into the light of day. Yet the chamber does not exist we have always been in the light of day, just unable to see it. What, exactly, do we think we are? Do we think of ourselves as simply pieces of flypaper, moving through the linear timeline of our existence on the physical plane, picking up all kinds of debris and detritus along the way? Do we then imagine that that debris, too, becomes us, or is inextricably attached to us -- since after all, flypaper is sticky and objects affixed to it cannot generally be removed? Everything that has happened to us (or everything whose happening we have been able and willing to acknowledge because it fits within a certain framework also located on the flypaper) and everything we have thought and felt about what happened all of this is the debris which covers the sticky paper, and which we have come to call our selves. No wonder so many of us take antidepressants it is indeed depressing to imagine that this piece of flypaper is us. The fiction of the personal self does have a purpose. Essentially, it provides us with a means to explore our options on the physical plane. Just as we can learn from a table about some of the many ways of interacting with external matter i.e, that we can place things on it, paint it, burn it, tear
it apart, or give it away -- we can learn from the personal self about all the permutations of inner freedom and imprisonment, clarity and obscuration, harmony and distortion. It is necessary that we believe in the table, because if we did not, we could not use it as a surface on which to rest our cups, and it would not be able to fulfill its inner design. In the same way, it is necessary that we believe in the personal self to some extent, because it is a portal through which we can experience the heart of existence. We may already have grasped to some extent that the personal self is not real, but a construct, a braided bundle of memory, experience, belief, emotion and energy which is constantly in flux. We may even have understood that our feelings are not really ours, but come to us and through us the way that different forms of weather wind, rain, sun, snow come to and through the landscapes of the earth. Yet the construct of the personal self is valuable precisely because, if we believe an emotion or issue is ours, there is an opportunity for us to engage with it much more deeply. This provides us with a means to learn about, and ultimately to transform, the specific energetic configurations which correspond to what we think of as our selves. And yet in fact, because there truly is no personal self, the work we do on ourselves is not on ourselves at all. Any work we do on our own distortions is work on the distortions of the world. There is no difference. This is why what each of us does in her or his personal life has an impact as great as the actions of an Adolf Hitler, on the one hand, or a Dalai Lama on
the other. The work we do with our fear, or our anger, or our confusion about love, is work on the world -- and in fact, it is the most immediate and direct means of working on and thereby serving the world. Physics tells us that the table on which we place our cup is, in an ultimate sense, not real and yet it remains useful to us as a surface on which to rest our cups. Metaphysics has told us that the personal self is not real, yet it is equally useful to us as a microcosm, a hologram, a miniature landscape which contains all the same features as the larger landscape. To put it another way: you cannot garden all over the world, you can only garden in your own yard (or perhaps in a nearby community garden.) Yet whatever you plant there affects the surface of the earth. Although the illusion of the personal self does, therefore, serve an important purpose, at this point in the evolution of our species, it would be helpful for us not to believe quite as much, or quite as fervently, in this fiction. Beyond a certain point, it can begin to get in our way. When we think that the laws of physical matter are real and immutable, we cannot possibly understand how people can also walk on hot coals without getting burned, or heal someone thousands of miles away with only their thoughts (which of course are neither only theirs, nor only thoughts) and yet these things do happen. When we confuse ourselves with the fictitious, constructed personal self to too great an extent, we miss out on the opportunity to play joyfully in the fields of the universe to use this self as a vehicle (a flying
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carpet, perhaps?) which can bring us to those fields, and through which we can experience joy. We use our tables, of course, but we do not take them so very seriously. In the same way, we can use our illusion of the personal self as the marvelous teaching and learning device that it is without losing sight of the larger task in which we are truly engaged. The small self is a portal through which to enter the larger, and the larger can also come through that porthole, as it were, to inform the small self and infuse it with light. Nothing of what we do matters in exactly the ways we think it does, or for the reasons we think it does and yet at the same time it is very important that we bring ourselves to the tasks at hand. Like a hologram, we contain the whole within us. As such, the life we live contributes to the entire human collective. The choices we make are not only our own; their effects ripple out much further than we will ever see. And as long as we do not become too attached to the level of form our own form, or the form our efforts will take, or produce then our individual work can aid rather than impede the larger flow. As long as we understand everything that happens as a metaphor, or as a tiny piece of a much larger process as long as we remember that we ourselves are in some sense a metaphor for, or held within, a much larger process then we can work with the currents rather than against them, knowing that we are held within a larger stream of compassion, harmony and well-being.
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39. Inner Transformation Transform: verb. To change in composition or structure; to change in character or condition. -- Merriam Webster Albert Einstein famously said, You cant solve a problem from the same level of thinking you used to create it. He, like most of the worlds great scientists, inventors, writers, artists, musicians and healers, was in contact with another level of thinking, a level we might call higher consciousness. When Einsteins human self got stuck on a problem it truly could not solve because it simply could not achieve the level of thinking at which the solution could come he was able to contact another, larger part of himself, to which the solutions could become readily apparent. When we ourselves wish to transform, we encounter the truth of Einsteins words. Like him, we cannot solve a problem in this case, clear our energetic fields, retrieve our souls, open our hearts, remove the distortions from the mental and emotional imprints that determine how we see the world from the same level of thinking or being on which it was created. Fortunately, we too have access to a very different level of thinking and being. And we must use it, if we are actually to experience change. It is actually much easier than most people think to create profound, lasting energetic change change that transforms the way we think, feel and experience life. And it can happen very quickly. This is because we are energetic beings we, like all other forms, are literally made of energy -- and the patterns that shape how we think, feel and experience life are
energetically coded into us. They do not have physical matter; our emotional wounds and confusions cannot be physically tended-to like stab wounds or broken legs. They are made of non-physical matter, which, as we discussed in Chapter 15, Understanding and Working With Emotional States, is most effectively worked with via non-physical means. Shifting non-physical (energetic) patterns via non-physical means is not difficult, and doesnt have to take a long time. What can be much more complicated and time-consuming is the process of becoming emotionally ready and willing to experience this level of change. There are a number of ways by which this process can be facilitated. Life itself helps, of course, by bringing the same pain to us again and again, thus keeping the suffering in our consciousness until we shift the internal structures underlying it. Crises help in similar fashion, by bringing us to internal tipping-points. But if we wish to move more quickly and deliberately in a chosen direction, it is essential to call on higher consciousness for assistance. What is higher consciousness? There are many ways to define it, and yet of course its essence cannot ever be captured in words. It is an energy field of such light, wisdom, compassion and creativity that it truly does not fit into the narrow confines offered by language. It is us, on a larger level; it knows us as intimately as we know ourselves (actually, it knows us much better than we know ourselves.) It is also not-us, in the sense that it is not limited or scarred by the wounds and distortions that have scarred and
limited us. It is the timeless, essential aspect of us, which is always whole. And it is much more, besides. Here is an explanation offered by one of my inner teachers, describing the place from which he speaks to me: The place of higher consciousness is a place like a cusp, or a bud. It is a place where all is held. Each of the six directions, the primal energy fields which together comprise the universe, brings itself to this place and contributes its own particular essence, qualities, characteristics and gifts. Everything and everyone is always held within this place. Wherever you are, youre always at the center of six directions. But when you know that you are there when you allow yourself to be conscious of how you are held then you can make full and conscious use of all the offerings and perspectives of North, East, South, West, Above and Below. And when you are resisting none of them, when you can welcome each one with its particular brilliance, then you are at the heart of life itself. This place where all is held is a place that all of you have already experienced some more fully or frequently than others, of course. But all of you have been there, and carry the memory and knowledge of it somewhere within you. That is why you are so easily able to recognize words that come to you from this place, why such words ring true and even feel familiar to you because they pluck some resonant chord in your soul which already sits in the place of higher consciousness, and knows what can be known there. This of course exists at a level below, or above, or beyond, or apart
from what you know as your humanness, and your humanness often serves to obscure this knowing. Yet it cannot block it out completely; if it could, you would literally not remain alive. All who are alive, even in your limited terms all whose hearts beat, whose lungs breathe in and breathe out hold a life force within them, and every iota of that life force, wherever it may be found, carries within it this knowing. Would it be accurate to call this knowing God? Yes, if you understand that God is not just one thing if you understand that God, in fact, is everything. Of course, with that understanding it would also be accurate to say that you are God. You are a god currently manifesting in a human physical form on a plane of matter, of fairly dense vibration. The higher consciousness aspect of self is a god manifesting on a different plane, absent of form, made of finer or higher vibrational substance. Of course, speaking in this way strips meaning from the term God or on the other hand, perhaps it adds meaning, so much so as to render the term irrelevant. Humans are always looking for God even though God is everywhere. Its as if you keep going from place to place say, from the kitchen to the bathroom to the car to the forest to the jungle to the city, sniffing and breathing and saying, Is this air? Is this air, here? Of course it is all air, everywhere. Yet it is also true that the air in the forest or jungle might be clearer or purer, might smell sweeter, than the air in the city or in your bathroom. That which you seek is everywhere, though it is easier for you to recognize it and to contact it in some places, ways, forms, than in others.
This description makes clear that higher consciousness is not something that is unfamiliar to, or removed from, any of us. It dwells within us, yet has the ability to stand much further back from the tapestry of reality to see much more of its design than we ourselves can. It is as deeply embedded in us, as integral to our non-physical being, as our beating hearts and our breathing lungs are to our physical bodies. So from one perspective, it is only a tiny step although to our human selves, it may seem like a giant leap to become able to make deliberate, conscious, regular contact with this aspect of our being. This contact as simple as texting, calling or emailing a friend. And just who is it that we are calling upon? There are many ways to understand and name our personal friends, or points of contact, within the field of higher consciousness. Some people are most comfortable with traditional religious terms like God, angels, or archangels. Some prefer nonreligious language like the universe, Source, All-That-Is. Some resonate with the language of shamanism: spirit guides, helping spirits, power animals. Some coin their own terms, like Wisdom Beings or Wise One. Some like more general terms like Higher Self, inner teacher, guide, or guidance. Personally, I resonate with all of these terms, while also accepting that none of them feels exactly right or complete. (As the Tao te Ching says, The Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao.) Language is shorthand; it never fully encompasses what we attempt to describe, but its a way of pointing at
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what were talking about. So, to make things simpler, I most often use the terms guide and inner teacher in this book. However we connect with our guides, and whatever we call them, this connection is necessary in order for us to bring about profound inner change.
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40. Connecting with Higher Consciousness, Guides, or Inner Teachers There are many ways to connect with the supportive non-physical realm known as Higher Consciousness. As always, what is most important is your willingness and your intention. If you are willing to connect with a wise, completely compassionate aspect of yourself (or of consciousness whichever understanding makes most sense to you), and set an intention to do so, it will happen. No particular process or ritual is necessary; however, many people find that establishing a ritual is helpful, especially at the beginning. (Once you develop relationships with your guides, you will eventually become able to call on them any time, anywhere. For instance, Ive connected with mine in the midst of difficult conversations with my partner. The conversations instantly became much easier.) It isnt that our guides require ritual; rather, the ritual serves us, helping us transition from what shamans call ordinary reality the human level of consciousness to an inner place in which we are able to hear, sense, see or perceive at a different level. Here are a few ways to begin. Again, none of these are necessary, they are only ideas. Choose the ones that feel helpful and feasible for you, and disregard the rest. 1. Create a particular spot in your house or room where you will physically sit (or stand, or lie down, or dance) when you want to talk with your inner teachers. Clear up any clutter in that space, and then intentionally decide what you want to put there. A pretty piece of cloth a
scarf, cloth napkin or fabric scrap is fine can help to define the space. Then: what else? A candle? A rock, shell, or other object that has meaning to you, or that feels powerful to you, or that you find beautiful? A small vase with a flower or two cut from your garden? Some people like to create more formal altars, on which they place a number of objects that have personal and spiritual significance to them. Some prefer to keep it simple. 2. Give yourself some time to just be in this spot with your candle lit, or with your objects, if you have chosen to put any there and clarify your intention. Remember that this is not a chore or obligation, nor a task at which you might succeed or fail. No one will be grading or evaluating your efforts or experiences with the possible exception of you! If it feels like your critical mind might be an inhibiting factor, see if you can ask that part to take a rest, just for now. Or you can also try asking for its help in supporting the process. If you get a sense that that part of you is willing to help, you can even come up with a statement of intention that reflects this inner agreement. Here is an example: I intend to develop and maintain a space in which to connect with wise, compassionate guides, and I invite all the parts of my being to participate in this process, in a spirit of openness and compassion. If any parts of my being are not familiar with the energies of openness and compassion, I invite them to learn about those energies through this process, and ask that they lay aside any fears or judgments that might get in the way. Since I know that I have guides already, even if I have not yet met them, I also ask my guides
for help in creating a smooth, clear inner pathway to making contact with them. Of course, you can change these words, take things out, add things in. Do whatever is necessary to make the statement of intention feel just right for you. If, in this process, you encounter an inner voice that seems determined to keep you from connecting with higher consciousness, see if you can find out more about it. Is it scared? If so, what frightens it about the idea of connecting with higher consciousness? You may be able to help allay its fears. But if it is very frightened, or if it is hostile for instance, if it asserts that you do not have guides, or do not deserve to connect with them then you may need to seek help from a practitioner familiar with these kinds of processes. There are many people who can help, so dont worry, and dont give up! Everyone has access to higher consciousness. If youre having trouble making the connection, you may just need a bit of extra help, some healing or clearing work, or perhaps just someone else to hold the space for you, in order to facilitate it. 3. Remember that you are seeking to connect with an inner teacher or guide who holds a higher consciousness field of energy in other words, one who is completely wise and compassionate, and who has no agenda of their own. You wouldnt look for help from any random stranger in the physical world nor do you want to connect with any random stranger in the non-physical world! Again, the way to navigate the non-physical realm is
non-physically, i.e., with your thoughts and intentions. So as long as your intention is clear, it will come to pass. 4. Open yourself to various means of connecting with guidance. For instance, you may find it works best to have a pen and paper in hand. Some people like to start by writing a question down, then waiting for the answer to come. Or it may work better for you to sit or lie down in silence, or with quiet music playing. Your best connection place may not be in your home at all; it might be out in nature, beside a tree, flowing stream, or anywhere else that makes you feel good. Or, if its more practical for you to be indoors, you can simply imagine yourself beside the tree or stream. (Remember, since we are working with non-physical reality, imagination is a valid and powerful tool.) You may find it works better for you to move, rather than sit still. If you know any moves from yoga, qi gong, or other practices that combine movement with awareness of energy, it might feel right to do those. Or you might find yourself wanting to draw or paint as a way of connecting inward. Let yourself listen to your own impulses, hold your intention clearly and see what feels right. 5. In general, its best to connect to your guides with a specific question or intention in mind. This helps to focus your mind, and also helps your guides know what youre looking for. If you havent met your guides yet, your intention could be something like this: I intend, desire, choose and decide to meet my guides now. I invite them to take any form which allows me to perceive them, and I ask for their help in allowing me to recognize and
interact with them. (Again, feel free to change this wording in any way youd like.) 6. Remember that as a human being, you have free will; higher consciousness guides will never insist that you do anything, prevent you from doing anything, or get mad at you if you dont follow their advice. At the same time, following the guidance of your guides is likely to increase your joy! If you want to do what they suggest, but are having trouble, you can always ask them to help you become more able to change. Here is some sample wording: Please help me to become more ready, willing, and able to follow your wise counsel. Please help me release or heal any part of myself that gets in the way. Please help me clear up any confusions or misconceptions that arise regarding your counsel. Please help me accept myself completely, exactly as I am in this moment, and dwell in a state of self-love as I ready and open myself to follow your counsel. 7. Again, if you need help, look for a practitioner experienced in these realms. This might be a spiritual director, an intuitive counselor, a hypnotherapist, a psychic, a shamanic practitioner, or even a psychotherapist. Just make sure you feel a sense of trust and rapport with him or her; also, make sure she or he has experience helping people connect with their own sources of guidance. (Some psychics may be more accustomed to simply providing guidance for their clients rather than helping them connect with their own guides.)
Here is what is most important to remember: We, all of us, are surrounded by, and filled by, a field of higher consciousness which is pure love, wisdom and compassion. We have the absolute right and the ability to connect with this field of consciousness since, in fact, it is us at another level of being. It will welcome the opportunity to guide and support us. It will have no agenda of its own; it will not require anything from us. Connecting with this field of consciousness developing a personal relationship with it is an essential resource for inner transformation. There are no right and no wrong ways to connect. If you find yourself able to make the connection on your own, great! If you need help, there are many spiritual practitioners and counselors who can help. Dont worry if you cant find the right kind of person in your local area; this kind of help can be equally effective by phone. You can even call the author of this book for assistance, if youd like.
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41. Working Effectively With Intention and Prayer
Intention and prayer are the inner technologies of change. They are the most effective tools imaginable for living a life filled with joy, creation and purpose. Not only are they the next best thing since sliced bread; they are also the wheat, the yeast, the knife and the cutting board! (And they can be gluten-free if you need them to be.) In short, intention and prayer are the tools you need; if you use them properly, you will thrive. Living your life without using the power of intention leaves you constantly having to carry, drag, push and pull heavy objects around inside yourself. Making effective use of the power of intention gives you a wheelbarrow. Making effective use of the twin powers of intention and prayer gives you the equivalent of a team of winged horses in your inner life! Here are some principles to help you make effective use of these powerful tools. 1. Your intentions and prayers must be consonant with your higher self, and with the fulfillment of your inner design. 2. Your intentions and prayers must be as specific as possible in essence, yet as flexible as possible in form. They must focus on what is truly most important to you, rather than on surrogate markers e.g., rather than saying, Please make so-and-so love me, say, Please help me attract, receive and feel love in my life. 3. You must give your intentions and prayers concentrated daily attention.
4. Your intentions and prayers must remain dynamic i.e., they must acknowledge and emerge from what youre feeling in the moment, rather than becoming static or rote. 5. Your intentions and prayers must address your desires from various angles: e.g., Please help me to attract and experience more of X in my life, and Please help be become willing and able to dissolve my blocks to receiving more of X in my life, and Please help me recognize and appreciate all the ways and places I already have X in my life, and Please help me heal whatever internal factors prevent me from attracting, receiving or retaining X in my life. 6. Continuously invite awareness of all of the parts of yourself which are not currently in agreement with your intention/prayer, and consciously work (and intend and pray) to heal or shift them. 7. Also, search within regarding your overall willingness to be here on this earth, at this time, in this body, in this life. (See Chapter 9, Saying Yes to Life.) If you havent completely said Yes to life, your wheelbarrow will have a flat tire and your winged horses will be grounded. 8. Self-criticism or a too-harsh inner environment also nullifies the effect of your intentions and prayers. Theres an inherent contradiction in asking the universe for support, while disparaging rather than supporting yourself. If you find yourself in this kind of bind, then make your self-criticism itself a focus of your intention/prayer work, e.g. Please help me shift my habit of internal harshness. Help me cultivate an internal atmosphere of
gentleness and respect. Help me release whatever keeps me in the contraction of self criticism. Help me see myself with eyes of compassion. Help me to love myself the way the compassionate universe loves me. Or, here is another approach: I decide, desire, wish and intend to become able to hold, view and address myself with love, gentleness and compassion. I choose and decide to release the harsh energies I am presently carrying. I ask for the help of my guides in releasing these energies and cultivating a loving, fertile, supportive environment throughout my inner being. There are many styles of prayer. Each carries its own particular energy, and offers its own kind of medicine. You may find that one style resonates with you at a certain period in your life, or when youre working with a certain issue; at another point, a different style might feel right. You can experience the different energies of each style simply by trying them out. Declaration: I decide, I choose, I declare, I affirm, to make __________ change. I consciously and deliberately harness and make use of the unseen forces to assist me Blessing: May I become more and more able to make _____ change. May all the powers of the universe assist me in making this change, and in opening all the levels of my being to this change Request: Please help me become able to make ___ change. Please help me to open all the levels of my being to this change; help me to heal and release what must be healed and released Affirmation: I am becoming more and more able to make this change. I sense and feel and affirm my own power to make this change, and I sense and know the support I am receiving
In essence, you are engaging in a dynamic conversation with your own personal contacts in higher consciousness. You can choose which kind of approach feels right, just as you choose the way you speak with your human friends. It isnt a question of getting it right; your guides are not judging you, and they are willing to help no matter what. Its more a matter of tuning your being to the communication style that feels most powerful and opening for you.
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42. Energetic Clearing If youve been working with intention and prayer, and feel stuck or if youve been intending to work with intention and prayer, and not quite getting there its possible that you may have some energetic interference getting in the way. Since we are energetic beings literally made of energy our energy fields can sometimes become tangled up with someone elses. Energetic imprints from people weve known parents, other relatives, exlovers can become imbedded within us. Energies from anyone who has abused us may also have taken up residence inside us, since abuse tends to create openings in our energetic skin. (Chapter 23, Understanding Fear, describes this in more detail.) Even energies from people whom we did not personally know may have found their way into our energetic fiber, particularly if there was an energetic match, or similar emotional quality, between them and us. Yes, energetic interference is possession by another name. But forget Linda Blair in the old movie The Exorcist, levitating her bed, swiveling her head 360 degrees, and vomiting up green pea soup. What were talking about here is nowhere near that dramatic, and much, much more common. Have you ever worn a particular item of clothing saying, a black sweatshirt, or corduroy pants, or maybe a fleece jacket that seemed to be a magnet for lint, pet hair, and other bits of detritus? Some peoples energy fields are like that, too. So energetic clearing at the most mundane level could be compared to using one of those tape-rollers that peels the lint and pet hair
right off, leaving your garment looking like itself again (and leaving your energy field feeling like your own again). Of course, sometimes the process is more involved and emotional than that. Many of us carry around the energies of our ex-spouses or ex-lovers, and parts of us may not want to let them go. If we were abused, its likely we carry the voices of our abusers inside of us, and we may have come to think of those voices as us. It always takes longer to clear out things we think are us, because first we have to realize that theyre not! But regardless of who or what may have become tangled-up inside us, whats important to realize is that we can clear it up, untangle it, clear it out. And of course, in this as in the rest of our inner work, our guides are an invaluable resource. If you are experiencing some difficult inner presences, you may well want to seek help from a human practitioner, too. Again, just make sure its someone who inspires a sense of trust and rapport in you, and who has experience clearing peoples energy fields. And again, this work can be done as effectively by phone as in-person since its non-physical work anyway! so geography is no barrier. When I first began studying shamanism, the idea of a person being inhabited or possessed by another being seemed pretty far out there to me. I had two main responses: skepticism and fear. Fortunately, I studied with a shamanic teacher who made the topic seem perfectly ordinary. She explained matter-of-factly that well over half of her clients had what she called energetic interference, and helped me
understand this kind of interference as a as a common side-effect of trauma -- analogous to an opportunistic infection, which takes advantage of a lowered immune system. In the years since then, I have led many clients through processes to release interfering energies. However, because I know that many people still harbor the same kind of fear and disbelief I once had about this topic, I dont usually talk about what weve done. Occasionally, a client will spontaneously joke about it, saying something like, Wow, that felt like an exorcism! Usually, I just smile, and say something like, Thats one way to look at it. Occasionally, however, the interfering energy makes itself known in a way that blows its own cover. When this happens, my clients are sometimes forced to adjust their view of reality. Its worth it, however, for the healing that can ensue. Heres a story about one such healing. I had been working with Megan for only a few weeks when she mentioned hesitantly that she experienced suicidal ideation. Her phrasing caught my attention; I noticed that she hadnt said she felt suicidal, but used much more distanced language. I asked her to explain what she meant. Well, she admitted, I frequently hear a voice in my head that says Just shoot yourself. It doesnt seem to have any connection with whats going on in my life. It doesnt matter whether Im depressed or happy, the voice is still there.
How often do you hear it? Oh, every day. Sometimes a few hundred times in a day. As a shamanic practitioner, I understand the phenomenon of hearing voices quite differently from mainstream psychotherapists. Megan bore many scars from an abusive and neglectful childhood, but she didnt have the kind of psychic or energetic disorganization known as schizophrenia or psychosis. So I suspected that the voice was coming from an actual
presence inside of her someone distinct from her, an energy that was not her own, and that needed to be released. As Ive said, I rarely talk explicitly with clients about the phenomenon of energetic interference or possession -- both because I dont want to scare people, and because I try to avoid imposing my own framework of understanding on others. Instead, I generally help clients enter a slightly altered state, and then simply explore the source of the voice, and its agenda. So, in Megans next session, I asked her to tune into the place in her body where she heard this voice, and describe the physical sensations associated with it. She described what felt like a hard, greenish spot on the left side of her head. I suggested we speak directly with and to that spot, to find out more about why it kept telling Megan to shoot herself. Its very angry at me, Megan said. It hates me. It doesnt want me to be happy.
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Why not? I asked. What does that do for it, to keep you from being happy? Then it doesnt feel so alone, Megan realized. Its unhappy, so it wants me to be unhappy too. The voice went on to indicate that its main function was to keep Megan unhappy. I commented that it must be very frustrated, since it was working so hard to keep her unhappy, but her own efforts toward healing were pulling her in the opposite direction. We spoke for a few more minutes, and suddenly Megan gasped. Its Mr. Myers! He was the father of a kid I knew in grade school. He killed himself when I was ten. Through Megan, I spoke with Mr. Myers for a little while more, and helped him understand that his own long suffering and frustration would end if he left Megans body and moved into the light. Rather than trying to make Megan unhappy to keep him company, he could, himself, become happy instead. He was quite surprised by this idea, and initially quite suspicious. However, his dead mother looking far more gentle and loving than she had ever been in life -- came toward him from the light to help him leave. It was a touching moment as this spirit who had been so unhappy and destructive for so long, finally softened and let himself receive love. I drummed to help the energy move as Megan released Mr. Myers into the light. Then I asked Megan to allow her guides to fill her completely with her own life energy, starting with her own essential spark of life force in her core, and radiating
outward until her own light had filled every nook, cranny and crevice in her being. This is a powerful healing process in its own right, and also helps render someone immune to further energetic interference. After that session, Megan never again heard the voice that had told her Just shoot yourself, over and over, for so many years. She still had plenty of her own healing to do, but it was much easier for her to do it without that constant interference.
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43. Soul Retrieval Take care of yourself. How many times have you heard that from a friend or acquaintance? And how often have you stopped to consider what it actually means? As we explore ourselves, we become acutely aware that our selves contain many different parts, each of which is at a different stage in its healing, development and connection to life and each of which may therefore pull us powerfully in different directions. How, then, do we take care of ourselves? Which self is doing the taking care, and which is receiving it? And what exactly does that care involve? Simply making external choices in accordance with the more highly-developed parts of ourselves is not the solution, because it further isolates the more wounded aspects of self, and enlarges the sense of rupture within our beings. Yet of course, making choices in accordance with the wishes of the less-healed, less-developed parts of ourselves is not the solution, either. The solution lies in the internal attitude we take toward both the moredeveloped and the less-developed, or less-healed, aspects of our being. We must cultivate a genuine ability to take care of ourselves by treating all of the aspects of ourselves with tenderness, respect and compassion. And yet this taking care of is very different from doing the bidding of. Taking care of the parts of ourselves that push for us to remain in our comfort zones, for example, rather than expanding, does not require us to forego expansion.
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One way to understand this more clearly is by imagining that the lessdeveloped parts of ourselves are like crying children, who, in the course of their sobbing, point at one toy or another as if it will heal their sadness. With the wiser adult parts of ourselves, we know that that toy is not what the crying part actually needs. Instead, we can take care of such parts of ourselves through our consciousness and intention. Too often, we tend not to devote much active healing energy or attention to those parts of ourselves, except when they are throwing tantrums. If we want to bring about a real shift, it takes a concerted and consistent process and commitment to being with those parts of ourselves in a progressively healing way, akin to the process of physical therapy after a bad accident. The process of returning a full range of motion to the injured limbs will take a consistent effort day by day. We cannot expect instantaneous results, but if we continue to hold healing postures, little by little, the injury will heal. In addition to cultivating this general climate of internal patience, respect and compassion for our wounded aspects of self, there is a particular healing practice that can be very helpful. Although different traditions call it by different names, my favorite name for it is the shamanic term, Soul Retrieval. Within the shamanic framework, there is an understanding that in moments of trauma, parts of our soul actually split off from us. This helps us bear the event in the moment, because there is less of us present to endure the trauma. However, over the long term we are weakened and distorted by the areas of disconnect from parts of our soul. And because the split-off
parts of us remain frozen in time, they continue to experience the trauma, until we retrieve them and reintegrate them. There are many kinds of trauma that can cause soul loss ranging from events that almost anyone would recognize as significantly traumatic (deaths, serious illnesses, car accidents, physical violence, sexual abuse, verbal abuse) to what some call cumulative micro-trauma. For instance, a child whose parent is consistently too busy to listen to him or her may experience cumulative micro-traumas, resulting in a sense that she is worthless, a belief that she is not worth listening to, and an imprint in which she is certain she will never find love. This is why even people who believe they had perfectly happy childhoods may sometimes carry very damaging internal imprints. Our souls are made of different kinds of fiber; some of us are scarred by circumstances that might not have caused great harm for another person. Yet the same kinds of sensitivity which render us easily wounded may also give us great gifts in other areas of our lives. So it is important not to judge ourselves or the traumas we may have been affected by. We can recognize the effects of trauma in ourselves in many ways. Some of the most common include damaging beliefs, painful patterns that replicate again and again in our lives, and triggers -- places where we freeze, find ourselves reacting rigidly rather than fluidly, or reacting based on emotional overlays from the past, rather than what is actually taking place in the present.
Soul retrieval is an energetic and symbolic process for resolving these effects of trauma. Because trauma is coded into the body and the psyche both energetically and symbolically. It doesnt matter if the events that caused the trauma occurred many years or even many lifetimes ago; if we are still experiencing symptoms, its because the energy of the trauma is still alive in us today. Therefore, we have the power to shift and heal it today! Soul retrieval goes beyond simply addressing the symptoms of trauma, and actually shifts the encoding of the trauma itself by removing our soul parts from the traumatic situations, healing them, and reintegrating them into ourselves. Life-changing healing is absolutely possible. However, you are likely to need strong inner and/or outer resources in order to be able to shift the places of trauma that are still alive inside you. If you have already done a lot of inner work and have strong relationships with your guides, you may be able to do this on your own. You may find a Soul Retrieval workshop, where you can have the support of the group while you go through your own healing process. Or you may wish to work one-on-one with an experienced Soul Retrieval practitioner, either in person or by phone. Here are some ways to approach the process of soul retrieval: -- You can go back to a specific traumatic event youre already aware of (that still holds a charge for you), and ask your guides for help in clearing/healing it.
-- You can trace backward from a trigger, phobia, frozen place or other symptom in your present life, and ask your guides to take you to wherever that originated, and/or help you heal or clear it. (Often it helps us to know where something came from; however, its not always necessary.) -- If you dont know where to start, you can simply ask your guides to help you retrieve any part(s) of your soul that are ready to come back to you at this time. Before you actually attempt a soul retrieval, it can be helpful to do some further preparation, to make sure that you are actually ready to receive a soul part back and that you will be bringing that part of yourself back to a safe environment. For instance, if the soul part left because your parents were verbally abusive to you, and you are currently in a relationship with someone verbally abusive, you may not yet be ready to bring that part back. Or, if you do bring it back, you may need to commit to changing your current life circumstance; otherwise, it will be unlikely to stay. Here are some questions that can help you determine your readiness. Its a good idea to spend some meditative time, perhaps with pen and paper in hand, to consider them. Pre-Soul Retrieval Questions -- When, and under what circumstances, did the soul part become disconnected? -- How is the absence of this soul part affecting your present-day life? -- Why do you wish to retrieve this soul part?
-- How do you anticipate that your present-day life will change, once you have retrieved this soul part? -- How ready and willing are you to experience these changes? - What changes do you anticipate that this soul part might need from
you, and/or in your present-day life, in order to be willing to come back, and to stay? -- How ready and willing are you to make these changes?
Dont be disturbed if, in the process of answering these questions, you realize that the time is not yet right for you to bring this soul part back. Healing is a multi-step process! You can ask your guides for help in creating the conditions necessary for this soul retrieval, on both the inner and outer levels of your being. There is always something you can do, a healing action or actions you can take, from exactly where you are. For instance, there may be another soul part you can bring back now, which will help you become ready for this one. Or there may be some energetic clearing that needs to happen first. Or you may simply need to spend time with your guides, experiencing their field of love, compassion and support. Or you may need to do some work with intention and prayer, to more clearly orient yourself in the direction youre heading. Any of these steps will keep you moving toward wholeness. The actual process of soul retrieval can be done in numerous forms. If you are familiar with the practice of shamanic journeying, you can do your
soul retrieval while someone else drums, or you drum for yourself, or listen to a recording of drumming. If you prefer to work in more meditative fashion, you may find silence more conducive, or you may find yourself supported by quiet instrumental music or by a walk in the woods, or by sitting on the beach. Choose whichever external surroundings and conditions feel best to you. Of course, the actual healing work will occur internally, but creating an environment that feels safe, supportive and nourishing can help us get there. In the healing process, your guides may take you back to scenes from your earlier adulthood, adolescence, childhood, infancy, time in the womb, symbolic or apparently past life experiences or even somewhere else. Try to trust whatever your guides show you or have you experience, even if it doesnt make sense to your rational mind. There is a difference between literal, factual truth and symbolic, emotional or energetic truth; with soul retrieval you will be working in the symbolic and energetic realm. Just as in nighttime dreams, your guides may present you with scenarios that are not literally, factually accurate, yet convey emotional truths. Once you find missing soul parts, work closely with your guides; they will help you through whatever is necessary in order for those parts to come back into your core. As always, your intention and willingness to heal are the most important pieces of the process.
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44. Loving The Gap As we continue to expand in consciousness, new levels of challenge arise. For instance, as we sense the magnificence of the vast whole of which we are part, we may begin to fear that our human selves are insufficient, not enough for life, or for our own souls. Then, because of the ping-pong effect between what we fear and what we experience, we may also fear, paradoxically, that life may be insufficient or not enough for us. These fears may then be reflected in various ways in the key areas of our lives: work, relationships, and our overall sense of well-being. When we hold a perspective and a knowing far larger than our human personality selves, it has the potential to set us free; however, given a slight distortion in our thinking, it also has the potential to do the opposite. We may struggle with the gap between the knowing of our souls, and our lived capacity as human beings. It can be very painful to feel inadequate to live what we know to feel too small and wounded to live a life as large and as free as the magnificent possibilities we can sense. However, there is a fundamental misconception at work here. If we are experiencing pain over this gap, it is because we have confused the small personal self with the larger, transpersonal self. We have forgotten that we are both, and have both to draw on, and to be fed by, as we live out our small, personal life or what appears to be our small, personal life on this plane. It is almost as if we have turned our higher or transpersonal self into a parent who cannot be satisfied no matter what we do, when in fact the
opposite is true. Our larger selves are satisfied no matter what we do! Our larger selves find no fault with us. Our larger selves are not the problem. Rather, the problem is the confusion in our personal sense of self, our fear of not measuring up which we may ping-pong back and forth in the form of judgments from various aspects of ourselves, upon various other aspects of ourselves. The answer to this dilemma, as to all dilemmas, is Love. Love is the only substance that can free us from this bind of our own making. We are like flies caught and struggling in a spider web, but Love has the capacity to dissolve those sticky strands and leave us free. Often we have known this instinctively, yet have sought this love in the wrong places, or from the wrong sources. For instance, we may seek it in relationships with intimate partners, but it cannot come to us this way -because until we resolve our inner structural confusion, anything that attempts to reach us from the outside must pass through our distorted inner structures, and becomes inevitably mangled in the process. Of course, if we resolve the internal issues we would not need to seek this love from outside ourselves, because we would know and feel that it was already within us. This internal shift would inevitably result in a dramatic change in the nature of any romantic relationships we might have. It would also result in a far greater sense of ease in our relationships to work and to money, because we would no longer be trying prove ourselves,
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vocationally or financially, within the internal system in which we are never enough. The solution lies in clarifying and strengthening the connection between our larger self and our small personal self or rather, healing the distortions in the personal self that have rendered us unable to experience the true nature of that connection, and to be supported by it. It can be helpful to contemplate the following questions: How do I understand my larger/higher self? What is its nature? How does it feel toward me? What does it want from me? What does it have to offer me? How do I feel about accepting what it offers? What would prevent me from accepting what it offers? If I believe I need to be different in order to fulfill the design of my higher self, from where has that belief come? And how can I heal my wounds and correct my misconceptions related to all of this? Taking this approach will enable us to restore balance and harmony within our being. In fact, part of the work of our human selves in this lifetime is to unravel these fundamental misconceptions in our being and to heal them, and ourselves, with love. In this process we will fully connect our larger and our personal selves, and become able to live from and within that connection. So it is important for us to understand that our current struggles and confusions are not keeping us from our real work, but pointing to it! And of course, once we straighten out the knotted-up channels in our being so that that knowing
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can flow freely into and through our human lives, the ways in which we can fulfill our inner design will naturally emerge. Whenever we feel drained or inadequate, we can be sure that somewhere within us there is a misunderstanding of life, its relationship to us, and our place in it. In fact, if we allow it to, life can wrap itself as tenderly around us as we might tuck a blanket around a small child whom we deeply love. It is that precise tenderness which we need, and which is available to us. The universe holds us with that kind of love; we need only change the internal structures and misunderstandings which are preventing us from feeling that love, and our lives will change.
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Pushing With At times we may feel daunted, both by the individual healing and clearing work we sense that we have before us, and by the vastness of the challenges currently facing our species. At such times it is very important to remember that we are not alone in our efforts, either as individuals or as a human collective. In the San Francisco Bay Area, fall comes very late, and spring comes very early so that it is not uncommon to see a maple tree which has turned golden and red and is losing its leaves, right next to a dogwood tree that is covered in magnificent blossoms just beginning to open. Many of us may find ourselves to be in that kind of time in our own lives. It can help us to recognize the beauty and poignance of these two currents coming together, both in nature and in ourselves, each offering its own particular gift. There is a quality of opening and tenderness and quivering and sadness and closing, all at the same time. And we can cultivate within ourselves a sense of responsiveness to all of these aspects, for the areas inside us that feel like spring, the buds just beginning to open inside us, and also for the places within us where leaves are falling from the tree. We can allow ourselves to behold each of these aspects with a sense of welcome and wonder. And as we continue to move toward new beginnings, even amid the falling leaves of the endings within us, it can also be helpful to go beyond our concepts of either simply sitting with what is, or pushing against what is toward some sort of change and open ourselves, instead, to the movement
of pushing with. This is a movement which is simultaneously receptive, and active. The life force is always attempting to move forward; we dont have to push the spring into coming, it comes on its own. Everything in the universe is lined up to enable it to come. So all we really need to do is move ourselves into the current of our souls growth, and position ourselves so that it can carry us. We can sit in a canoe and simply let the river of life move us along; or, if we choose, we can paddle in the same direction in which were already moving, to speed up the process. Each is its own kind of pushing with. As we paddle, we can turn our attention to the underground streams of our hearts. Each of us contains vast, powerful rushing rivers that have frozen, and are now beginning to thaw. As that thaw continues, a huge amount of power and energy becomes more accessible to us. We may become frightened when we sense that; we may begin unconsciously to direct energy toward damming it up, rather than letting it flow. Its important to understand that we are the river; the river is us. But the relationship between the small constructed persona that we usually think of as ourselves, and the very large, very powerful self that is thawing and becoming much more accessible, may require our attention. How can we bridge the gap between the constructed persona and the larger, powerful self? Desire is one powerful tool which can help us. Anything we desire can serve as the vehicle; the force of our wanting can break
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through the ice, giving us the courage and fortitude to withstand the change, and the contact with so much increased power and force. It can feel difficult to bear the sense of expansion, the breaking up of the ice, and frightening to have more of ourselves accessible both to us, and to the world. So it is helpful to remember that nothing in our lives is random; everything fits together in such a way that no misstep is possible. We do not have to waste energy on questioning our actions and choices so much; instead, we can approach whatever happens with a sense of wonder and curiosity, eager to see the wonderful magic the world is unfolding for us here and everywhere. Maintaining contact with that higher perspective can help us see the rightness of things as they happen, yet it can also help us see the way in which the details of what occurs dont actually matter; a beautiful pattern is being created, no matter what.
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45. Life as Prayer and Invitation The farther we travel on a path of exploration, the more intense and profound are the challenges that arise. It is a mistake to imagine that the path does or should get easier. That would hardly be fitting, since as we grow larger and stronger on a soul level, we actually need challenges in order to exercise our newly developed muscles. It is important, therefore, to understand that the continued appearance of challenges is neither a punishment of any kind, nor a sign that something is wrong -- quite the opposite. As a child gets better at reading, she will naturally choose to read more difficult and complex books; as an athlete continues with his training, he will naturally choose to take on more difficult feats. All of this is as it should be. Continuing to read basic primers or confine oneself to simple exercises once one's skills are more advanced would be both unsatisfying, and an inefficient use of the power gained. And yet at times we may become weary of all the challenge; our human selves may long to rest, to receive a more simple sort of nourishment, to simply soak in the goodness of life itself. And fortunately, that sort of nourishment is readily available to us. When we open ourselves to the beauty of our humanness in its dance with the cosmos, we see that it is possible to live every aspect of our lives even, perhaps especially, those we had dismissed as trivial, mundane, not worthy of our mindful engagement as prayer and invitation. Making a cup of tea and sitting by the window to sip it, for example, can become a deeply nourishing opportunity to be with ourselves as we are in this moment.
Preparing a meal can become a chance to celebrate the many gifts of the earth every miraculous process that went into growing and nourishing the vegetables, fruits, nuts, grains, seeds, or animals whose life force we are soon to ingest, to bring more life energy to our own. Actually sitting down to eat that meal can become an opening into even greater reverence as we bring our attention both to the gifts of the earth present in the food itself, and to our own bodies as yet another gift of the earth, part and parcel of the vast Creation which brought us into being, and sustains us. Even the smallest parts of our daily routines, such as taking vitamins or medications, can become a chance to engage with the sacredness. In fact, when we stop to think about it, what could be more sacred than ingesting concentrated substances with the intention of enhancing our physical health and vitality, enabling life to flow through us more fully, and enabling ourselves to more fully participate in life? The sacredness is already here, with us, all around us and within us, in each moment. We have only to remember that it is here, and acknowledge it, in order to bring its richness and resonance into our conscious experience. Taking a shower or bath offers another opportunity to engage with the miraculous. How astonishing it is that we have water -- the physical manifestation of the flow of life itself, the substance most critical to our own survival, the substance of which we are largely physically made flowing conveniently into our own homes! How much more astonishing that we can choose the precise temperature at which we wish this water to flow over our
skin! And how joyful it can be to consciously partner with this water, inviting it to cleanse us both physically and spiritually, to enliven us and to remind us of our connection to all of the other life-forms with which water is intimately engaged. Often, small acts of ritual, such as lighting a candle, can help us remember to engage in the sacred dimension of all that we do. Of course, even this small act reflects the fruit of a vast evolutionary process; our life as a species changed forever when we became able to generate the power of fire at will. Fire warms us, soothes us, cooks our food, and makes possible the creation of almost every single object we now use in our daily lives. Because we deeply know and biologically respond to its power, we can use it as an ally in empowering our intentions and our mindfulness. NEED MORE
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Soul on Earth: A Guide Book Section V: Prayers, Blessings, & Statements of Intention
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Statement of Intention to Connect with Others, and with Life I want to stand naked and unprotected in this world, to experience all its forces and seasons. I decide, desire, wish, intend, to allow myself to feel deeply, to connect profoundly to others, in every way possible. I accept what my personality sees as the risks involved in this, and welcome the pain and confusion and difficulty that may ensue, as well as the delight, joy and harmony. I determine to facilitate, foster and nurture the permeability of my heart - so that others may more easily and completely feel me, and so that I may take others more fully into myself, not haphazardly, accidentally or compulsively, but with consciousness and with active willingness to allow myself to touch and be touched, engage and be engaged. This does not mean the creation of a dependency on my part, but the willingness to be as fully present as possible, wherever and whenever and with whomever I can. I decide, desire, request, intend to allow these changes for the sake of my own highest spiritual and emotional well-being, and to further my evolutionary progress, regardless of how it may look or feel moment by moment on the human level. I affirm that by opening more fully to the forms and phenomena of this world, I am opening more fully to God - since God resides in each one. By opening more fully to other people, I open more fully to God. By opening more fully to myself, I open more fully to God. And I affirm my desire, my intention and my willingness to further my openness to God in all of these as well as in all other ways.
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Statement of Intention to Accept Life as it Is I resolve in this moment, and in all other moments, to relinquish the illusion that anything in my life, past, present or future, is, was or will be in any way different from my destiny, my highest good. I resolve to allow and cultivate instead a profound acceptance of and gratitude for all of the circumstances, events and people in my life, for all that these configurations have taught me, and can and will teach me when I permit them to. I resolve to thank the universe and my own larger self daily for all of the circumstances and relationships in my life, exactly as they are. I resolve to meditate daily on the clear understanding that nothing is wrong and to accept the help of the universe in living, seeing, hearing, breathing, experiencing this truth more fully and completely each day, and with each breath. I recognize that resistance to any phenomenon in or outside the self is resistance to God, and I resolve to continually and completely dissolve the misperceptions which have resulted in my current resistance to God. I avow once again that I am the sole cause of all that I experience as suffering, and that there is no power apart from my own to release and relieve me of this suffering. There is no one and nothing that has failed me, least of all life. life has served me perfectly and continues to do so, and I humbly ask for lifes help in removing my obstinate blindness and resistance to its service and to my own true role and purpose on behalf of life. As the Pathwork says: when I withhold from life, I withhold from myself, for truly life and I are one. I recognize that
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it is this soul movement, rather than any other inner or outer change, which will bring the rewards I seek.
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Prayer to Facilitate Internal Transformation I acknowledge, affirm and embrace my own ability to shift, change or release my internal matter, including those thoughts, feelings, beliefs and emotional patterns I have thought of as mine. I acknowledge that on the human personality level, there are confusions and distortions within me, and so I ask for help from the larger compassionate forces, however I conceive of them, in clearing these distortions, in softening and loosening the tangles, so that they may be easily unraveled. I also ask for help in releasing my sense of identification with my thoughts, feelings, beliefs and emotional patterns, in remembering that who and what I am is completely separate and apart from these temporary configurations of internal matter. I ask for help in fully knowing and remembering that I am not my internal matter, and that therefore I can change that matter, just as I am aware that I am not my clothing, and can change my clothes as I choose.
Prayer to Honor and Call In the Six Directions I honor and call in the spirit of the North, which I perceive as the force that teaches me through winter, through night, through darkness, through pain, cold, suffering, difficulty and hardship. I acknowledge all of the gifts
and teachings I have received through these channels, and I thank the spirit of the North for bringing them to me, and thank my own spirit for receiving them. I accept what you give me, North, and also what you take away. I honor and call in the spirit of the East, which I perceive as the force that teaches me through spring, through morning, through early light, through the energies of hope, potential and possibility, through new growth, beginnings, tender shoots and unfurling green leaves. I acknowledge all of the gifts and teachings I have received through these channels, and I thank the spirit of the East for bringing them to me, and thank my own spirit for receiving them. I accept what you give me, East, and also what you take away. I honor and call in the spirit of the South, which I perceive as the force that teaches me through summer, through mid-day sunshine, through the experiences of joy, plenty, abundance, ease, and the fulfillment of desires. I acknowledge all of the gifts and teachings I have received through these channels, and I thank the spirit of the South for bringing them to me, and thank my own spirit for receiving them. I accept what you give me, South, and also what you take away. I honor and call in the spirit of the West, which I perceive as the force that teaches me through autumn, through late afternoon, through the seasons of harvest and ripening, maturation and decay, through the experience of closure, the gift of endings, the natural completion of cycles. I acknowledge all of the gifts and teachings I have received through these
channels, and I thank the spirit of the West for bringing them to me, and thank my own spirit for receiving them. I accept what you give me, West, and also what you take away. I honor and call in the spirit of Below, which I perceive as the spirit that teaches me through the Earth and the body, through all the seasons and experiences of living in a body on this earth: hunger and fullness, physical pain and physical pleasure, illness and health, vitality and mortality, and the experience of limits. I acknowledge all of the support, gifts and teachings I have received through these channels, and the enormous and constant support of the earth itself, and I thank my own spirit for receiving these gifts. I accept what you give me, Below, and also what you take away. I honor and call in the spirit of Above, which I perceive as the force that teaches me through the vastness of sky, the cosmos, the mystery, and through the timeless, eternal aspect of my own being, my spirit, my soul, and the experience of limitlessness. I accept what you give me, direction of Above, and also what you take away. And finally, I acknowledge and affirm myself as the perceiver of these six directions. I acknowledge my place at their very center. I ask for help in remembering that wherever I go, whatever is happening internally or externally, I am always at the center of these six directions, always being held and supported by the energies of North, East, South, West, Below and Above. I thank the directions for holding me exactly as I am, and where I
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am, and also for helping me to become larger, to see more, receive more, know more, and feel ever more supported.
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Prayer and Ritual for Healing/Releasing Illness I acknowledge the higher truth that every level of my own healing physical, mental, emotional and spiritual is entirely my own responsibility and no one elses, and I ask for help from the larger compassionate forces in fully and completely claiming and accepting this responsibility so that it may fully restore my sense of power over my own circumstances, inner and outer, physical and non-physical. I affirm that it is only by accepting full and complete responsibility for my own illness or imbalance, and for my own healing, that I can actually heal. I acknowledge that healing and cure are not one and the same. If physically irreversible processes have taken place, I ask for help in releasing judgment and expectation, notions of failure and success, so that I may enter more fully into the true work of whatever healing is available to me at this time. I ask for help from my higher self, guides and God in fully and completely accepting responsibility for my own healing, while also deeply opening myself to receive their help. I ask for help in continually making this subtle yet profound distinction, on every level of my being, which enables me both to accept full responsibility for my own healing and to be fully open to receiving help from all truly compassionate sources inside and outside of me. If I work with a doctor, healer, therapist, chiropractor or other healing practitioner, I ask that
the larger realms help me become receptive to all that that practitioner gives, shows or teaches me, and help in using those gifts in the service of my highest good and my most profound healing while still remembering that my healing is my own responsibility. I ask for help in removing any projections I may have placed on anyone whose assistance I have sought, in any healing capacity, including physical, energetic and mental health practitioners, as well as family members, friends, spiritual leaders and teachers. I affirm my intention to accept any and all gifts from these outer sources which can truly support me in my healing process, and gently relinquish any efforts or energies from these outer sources which do not serve me at the highest levels. I affirm the wisdom and discernment of my body, mind, heart and spirit, and ask for full participation of every level of my being in taking from others only that which truly serves my healing, and releasing that which does not. I affirm that just as my body is capable of wisely excreting vitamins and minerals in excess of what it needs, my heart, mind and spirit can also wisely and harmlessly excrete any energies, thoughts, beliefs, suggestions or projections that come from others in relation to my healing process. I affirm that I, and only I not my small personality-level I, but my larger I, my soul, my spirit, my Higher Self I am capable of discerning what physical and non-physical methods and approaches best serve my healing, and I ask for help from that larger I; I ask it to partner with my human self so that I can more easily and quickly recognize the approaches that hold benefit
for me, and those that do not. And I ask that my higher self, guides and God give me the strength and determination to fully participate in the healing approaches that do serve me, and fully withdraw myself and my energies from those that do not.
Ritual: Start by lighting a candle and/or cleansing yourself with sage. Then sit quietly with a glass of warm water or cup of tea, and tune in to your guidance and non-physical support. It is always most effective to use your own words in prayer; however, here is a place to start. Dear God / guides / angels / higher self / universe (or whatever words fit for you), I am truly ready to heal this _________________________ (dis-ease in my body, mind, heart and/or spirit.) Please help me learn what I need to learn recognize what I need to recognize adjust, shift, recalibrate release, let go of cleanse, illuminate re-energize, reconfigure restore
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Please help me receive every lesson, message, teaching and gift which has come to me through this condition, and which remains to come to me through this condition. Please help me remain open to all of the ways this condition can serve me on my path of growth, even as the symptoms of _______ disappear from my (body, mind, heart and/or spirit.) Now, sense your Whole Self above you and all around you, radiating cleansing streams of light over and through you. Sense your Dead Self below you, and see, feel and sense the way that the streams of light cleanse you of all you no longer need, all that you are ready to release and how they carry it all to the Dead Self, who has room for it. Sense the way the ants, beetles and other earth-dwellers are actually nourished, served, by what no longer serves you. Sense the absolute rightness, harmony and integrity of your releasing what you no longer need, and sense the endless, infinite support from your Whole Self in doing so. Depending on your perceptual filters and the nature of what you are healing, you may feel physical sensations or see vivid images of the cleansing that is occurring. (For instance, when I was working to heal a digestive imbalance, I could feel and see different aspects of the light, carrying different healing currents, into each tiny pocket and filament of my intestines. Some of the light had an antiseptic, astringent quality to it, to clean the sludge out, while some of the light had more of a gentle healingbalm aspect.) You may also feel a sense of movement throughout your
body, or in any part of your body, as the energy from your Whole Self sluices through you. Try to let yourself sense, picture or imagine exactly how the light moves through the part of you in need of healing, and transports whatever needs to be moved into the Dead Self. Sit in this state for at least ten minutes (the longer the better up to an hour is great, just as if you were receiving a healing from a physical practitioner.) While youre doing this, you may become aware that you actually dont feel completely ready to heal, release or transform whatever youre working with. If thats the case, you can still use this process; just modify the wording so that it truly fits for you, and honors wherever you are on your path of growth. It is very important that your prayer feel completely true and authentic to you as you say it, so that it further unifies you with yourself, rather than creating more internal rupture and separation.
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Prayer for Releasing Someone on His or Her Own Recognizance I resolve, now, with all my heart, mind, body and spirit, with all the cells of my body and all the energies of my being, to let go of [say full name and relationship here: e.g., John David Jones, my father], to send them on their way whatever that way may look like, on the level of form with pure, undiluted currents of blessings, love, gratitude and appreciation. I thank ___________for all the gifts s/he has given me, all the lessons s/he both taught and brought me, all of the ways in which those lessons came including and especially those lessons I found painful or enraging. I honor the path of my own soul, and the ability of my soul to make use of and transmute each one of these teachings in ways that serve my highest intentions, and my highest good. I affirm my intention to release __________ to her/his own karma, her/his own soul path and destiny. I release her/him on her/his own recognizance. I release her him gladly, and with love and thanks. I honor all that s/he gave me, and also that it appears, on the limited human level, that s/he took from me. I choose to relinquish any thoughts, feelings or beliefs that anything _____________did, or anything that occurred between us, was wrong on the highest levels of being. In fact, I affirm my deep knowing that there is no wrong on the highest levels of being, and that the role of ____________ in my life has been as a teacher bearing gifts. I affirm my desire, my willingness and my ability to accept those gifts, to make of them the fullest and most harmonious use.
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Say aloud, if possible, filling in the persons name and/or relationship to you e.g. John David Jones, my father. I release you, _________________, my ____________________. I release you with love, compassion and blessings. I release you from the hooks of my desires, opinions and expectations. I release you from the barbs of my judgments, thoughts and beliefs. I release you to your higher self, your guides, and to God, however s/he may appear to you; I release you to your own highest good, your own karma and destiny, whatever that may look like on the level of form. I acknowledge that I cannot know your souls path, your highest good, and that your life and being are not mine to judge. I ask my higher self, my guides and God to help me dissolve the mental structures of judgment I may have imposed upon you, or upon our connection, or upon myself in relation to our connection, and I ask for help in releasing the belief that anything that happened between us has harmed either one of us. I affirm that my deepest healing and my highest selfinterest are served by relinquishing any belief, idea or concept that I was in any way victimized by you, and allowing the deeper truth to enter and be known and felt by every level of my being. I affirm that both my soul and yours are fully capable of learning and growing from any experience, no matter how difficult it may appear on the human plane. I acknowledge that I can only do my own learning, not yours; and to that end, I ask for help from the higher realms in using all of my
experiences, including all of my experiences with and in relation to you, in the service of my souls evolution and my highest good. I ask for help from all of the compassionate forces in understanding and fully experiencing the truth: that everything that occurred between us, everything each of us did, thought, felt and believed, can serve my highest good. I affirm the vast wisdom, the magnificent creativity, the enormous loving power of my own soul, and ask for its help in embodying these intentions and prayers.
And as part and parcel of my releasing you, I ask that all of my energy which you might now be holding any energy I gave to you, any energy you took from me be returned to me now. I ask for help from my higher self, my guides and God in retrieving this energy, and ask that its return strengthen and serve me in my growth and healing. I also ask that any energies of yours which I might have taken, or which you might have given me, be returned to you now, that they may strengthen and serve you, in your growth and healing. In this way, I ask for help in restoring full, complete energetic integrity in relation to you, and I send blessings that you may restore your own full, complete energetic integrity in relation to me. I also ask for help in healing my heart, freeing it from any wounds or confusions it holds in relation to you. If anger, rage, fury, shock, hurt, grief and other emotions arise in my being as I work with these prayers and intentions, I ask that the compassionate wise forces help these emotions to
run their energetic course in my body and be transformed or released, while also helping me to remain fully present, connected to myself, and unattached to any story line. Finally, I ask for help in purifying the quality of the love I feel for you now. May that love be so illuminated that any strains of bitterness, regret, withholding or judgment simply burn off, so that the love that remains is so pure, bright and shining that simply feeling it brings healing to my heart. And, as I feel the full extent of the deepest, widest, purest love I ever felt for you, may I also receive help in directing that same love toward myself.
Prayer For Maintaining Selfhood While in Relation to Others I commit to, I choose, I decide, I intend, to dissolve, transform and release my belief that I must choose between honoring my relationships with others, and honoring my deepest self. I ask all the guides and benevolent forces of the universe to help remove this imprint from every layer and every corner of my being, in all dimensions.
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Prayer for Returning and Retrieving Energies I ask that any energies which rightfully belong to ____________, which I may currently hold in my own energy field, be returned to _______ now. I affirm my willingness to release these energies, and ask for help in returning them to their rightful place within _____, so that they may further ______________s continued evolution. And I ask that any energies which rightfully belong to me, which _________________ may currently be holding, be returned to me now. I affirm my willingness to receive these energies, to joyfully accept and incorporate them back into my own being, to accept whatever new gifts and challenges they may bring me, and to allow myself to become fuller, stronger, larger, clearer and more powerful as my energies return to me. Finally, I ask for help in accepting my own fullness and strength, my largeness and clarity, and more fully inhabiting these characteristics for the good of the world, and for my own highest good.
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Prayer for Forgiveness, and for Awareness Beyond the Need for Forgiveness I ask for the healing currents of forgiveness to wash through my being on every level physical, mental, emotional and spiritual, particularly in relation to _____________ [name of person and/or circumstance]. I ask that these currents bring opening, loosening, warmth and ease to any places which may remain cramped or closed inside of me, in relation to __________. I ask for help in fully and completely forgiving both _____________ and myself for any and all mistakes we may appear to have made, even as I affirm that on the highest level, no mistakes exist. I ask for help in glimpsing that larger tapestry in which these mistakes can be seen as a necessary and even beautiful part of the larger design. I ask forgiveness for all of the ways I may appear, on the human level, to have caused harm, and ask for help in forgiving all the ways in which ____________ may appear to have caused me harm. I affirm my deep regret for the human pain and confusion __________ and I have caused, even as I affirm that on the level of the soul, we have committed no harm, and no harm has been or could ever be done to us, so that on the level of ultimate truth, there is therefore no need for forgiveness. I affirm both my human self, which does need to grant and receive forgiveness, and my larger self, which dwells in a place of such wholeness, love, compassion and wisdom that forgiveness is rendered unnecessary. I acknowledge that on the higher levels of the universe, in the vast multidimensional tapestry, all that exists is already in balance and in harmony; yet I also affirm my willingness and intention to do my part, on the
human level, to serve that balance and harmony with all the levels of my beings, by aligning all of my thoughts, feelings, words and actions more and more fully with the currents and energies of love.
Prayer for People Who Caretake Others Too Much I declare my intention to value, honor, nourish and attend to myself, and I ask all the compassionate larger forces to help me recognize that this self-care is an essential part of my purpose on earth. Please help me to know, with every cell of my body and every fiber of my being, that it is right for me to be fed; it is deeply right and in alignment for me to get, receive, allow myself to have, what I want and need. Please help me to recognize and release the misconception that I must go without, in order that others may have what they want and need. I affirm and take into myself on every level the truth that it is right for me to receive what I need; it is fully within my role and purpose on earth for me to receive what I need. In fact, it is an essential part of my role and purpose that I honor and attend to myself and my own needs, not only alone but within all my relationships, both personal and business. Please help me to know that I can give to others, help and teach others, and still get what I need. I affirm that I do not have to choose between others and myself. I ask for help in remaining in contact with the truth that it is right for me to honor myself in this way, and to expect, ask for and receive the honoring of the universe in this way. I declare, I affirm, I
remember, and I ask for help in continuing to remember, that it is deeply right and in harmonious alignment with the universe for me to receive what I deeply want and need. I ask that this truth penetrate, saturate, infuse me and transform me on every level of my being.
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Prayer to Become A Vessel of Light I affirm my intention to fulfill my inner design, and to bring joy to myself and to the world by serving as a conduit for light, peace and love. I ask for help in more fully embodying these energies, knowing their truths and accepting their brightness on all of the levels of my being: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. I ask to become more fully and powerfully aware of the blessings of light I am already receiving in every aspect of my physical being, in each and every one of my cells, my bones, my muscles and my organs, and in every circumstance in my physical life. And I ask that this recognition infuse my mental and emotional functions with light, so that all of my thoughts, beliefs and feelings can be transformed by light, and can become vehicles of light. I ask for help in continuing to grow and expand in my ability to access, hold and radiate light, even and especially in the darkest corners of my own being, and of the world. I acknowledge that in order to carry light into places of darkness, I must be willing to travel into such places, and I affirm my willingness to do so. I know that in order to serve as a bearer of light I must be willing to see everything, both inside and outside myself, and flinch from nothing, and I affirm my willingness to see all that I am given to see. I ask for help in removing the distortions in my vision, so that I can see more clearly. And I ask for help from Life in bearing all that I see, in finding ways to hold it
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which do not wound or burden me, but only increase my commitment to holding light. And I ask for help in working with all that I encounter, both within me and outside of me, which would impede or weaken my ability to hold light. I ask the light within me to clarify the obscurations in my being, release the misconceptions and errors in my thinking, and heal my emotional being. I ask for help in opening myself more and more fully to receive the light and the love of the universe, so that I may also spread this light forward in all of my interactions and relationships, in every encounter with others, no matter how casual, as well as in my closest relationships with family, friends and spouse and in every aspect of my relationship with myself, including every thought, feeling, belief, and internal conversation. I affirm the power of all of my actions, including my mental actions in the form of thoughts - to carry light or to obscure light, and I affirm my desire, my wish, my intention to use all of my actions to help myself and the world move closer to states of peace, love, harmony and well-being. I ask for help in recognizing all of those places where my energies, actions and thoughts depart from this goal, and I ask for help in correcting those, so that I can more fully and completely serve as a vessel and a vehicle for light.
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I affirm that as I take in more light from the universe, I will also have more light to bring to others, and as I bring more light to others, my ability and willingness to take in more of the light which surrounds me will increase exponentially, like the widening of a riverbank as more and more water flows through it. I affirm my gratitude for the opportunity to be of service on this beautiful and troubled earth at this time in history. I affirm my intention to embrace all facets of life on this earth, to turn my head and my heart away from nothing. I ask for help from Life in embracing this earth and this life exactly as they are, in saying Yes to life in all of its varied manifestations, no matter how distressing they may appear to me. I affirm my gratitude for all of the help I have received already, from every person with whom I have ever interacted from family, friends, partners, teachers, co-workers, and those whom I did not know. I affirm and acknowledge the help I have received from works of art and writing and music, from the beauty of nature and the wonder of animal life, as well as from my larger self and from the universe, and I ask for help in continuing to receive even more blessing, wisdom and teachings from all that I encounter, both within myself and outside of myself; and I ask for help in recognizing and making use of even and especially those blessings and teachings which come in disguise, which are painful and difficult to bear, those which I long to reject or shun, those which I wished with all my heart never to receive. I ask
for help in recognizing and receiving the light at the core of these experiences and feelings, as well, so that I can make use of them, so that they can work with me and within me to transform my experience, increase my commitment, and serve as a vessel and vehicle for ever greater amounts of light. And I ask for help in remembering this commitment more and more fully and completely as I go about my daily life, so that it can inform even my automatic and reflexive reactions and responses, infusing them with willingness to see what is there to be seen, bear what is there to be borne, and learn from all that I can.
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Prayer for Embodiment I wish, decide, desire and intend to bring my entire soul, all of the energies of my spirit, and all of the light I can access into my physical body. I affirm that my physical body is the vehicle I have been given for use on this earth, and I ask for help in fully embracing and celebrating it, bringing all of myself to it and inside it. I ask for help in accepting all of the gifts and joys, as well as all of the responsibilities and challenges inherent in having a physical form. I ask for help in learning all of the lessons and receiving all of the gifts my body brings me, through health as well as through illness, and through ecstasy as well as through pain. I ask for courage, grace and humility so that I can more fully receive the teachings my body offers me about limits, about fear, and about the need for rest and balance. I ask for help in embracing the sacred vulnerability of embodiment, and affirm it as a teaching which can help me more fully understand and embrace all other embodied beings. I affirm my intention to join the physical and non-physical aspects of my being in sacred partnership, so that my spirit can learn from, give to, and receive the gifts of my body, and my body can be held within the larger, unbounded knowing of my spirit. b I thank Life and the universe for all of the wonders and joys of this magnificent earth, for the opportunity to be here in a sensate human body, to touch the things of this earth, and be touched by them. I ask for help in remembering the blessings of my astonishing fortune for all of the nights
when I have had a warm, dry place to sleep; for all of the times when I have been hungry and had food available to me; for all of the times and ways in which my physical body has worked well enough to allow me to see, hear, smell, taste and touch so many of the wonders available on earth and in physical life. Prayer For Surrendering Attachment To Outcome I acknowledge that as an individual self, I cannot possibly see the full scope of significance or consequence in any event, circumstance or relationship. I ask for help in surrendering the belief that I can ever know what should happen, and loosening the grip of my own desire for any particular outcome, over any other. With this surrender, I ask for help in accepting, knowing, remembering and trusting that the tapestry of existence is far larger than I can see, and that greater designs are at work. Yet I also request help in continuing to find sense, meaning and purpose wherever I can, in whatever ways will serve my continued growth, healing and expansion, and in whatever ways will help me to carry more light. I ask for help in accepting the fact that I will never know the end result of any of my actions. I accept that others may believe I have caused them harm even when my intention was only to serve truth and light, and I reaffirm my commitment to serving only truth and light, while praying for peace to enter both the hearts of those who believe I have harmed them, and my own heart.
I also ask for help in seeing clearly any areas of my life, my thoughts and my emotions where I am deluding myself, where I am thinking or feeling or acting in error, where I have hidden agendas or impure motives. I ask for help in surrendering, releasing, dissolving or healing any parts of me that do wish to cause harm to any other, for any reason. I ask for help in aligning every level and aspect of my thoughts, feelings, beliefs and actions more fully and completely with love and truth, peace and light. I ask for help in accepting every circumstance and condition of my life exactly as it is, and every person I encounter, exactly as he or she is or rather, exactly as he or she appears to be, from my limited vantage point of the moment. I acknowledge that each person has her or his own path, destiny, karma, higher self, and guides, and I release each person on his or her own recognizance, to his or her own forces of light and learning. I ask that the light I carry may serve as a candle to illuminate the journey of others, if they allow it; but I also ask for help in fully accepting those circumstances in which, on a human level, it appears that I can do nothing. I ask for help in glimpsing the greater order of things, the larger designs of the tapestry, whenever I am able to; and I also ask for help in remembering that there is a greater order, even at those times when I am unable to see it. I ask for help in beholding and loving and accepting this world exactly as it is or appears to be, even as I work to hold more light. I
ask for help in doing all that I do in a spirit of love, peace, acceptance, and gratitude for all of the light and harmony which are already present on earth, and I join in partnership with those forces, and affirm my intention to fulfill my own unique role in the light-bearing process.
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Prayer for When I Eat When I eat, I express thanks for my miraculous body: for my nose and its ability to smell my food; for my tongue and the exquisite taste buds which line it, which allow me to savor my food; for my saliva, which helps my body begin to break down my food in order to make use of it; for my teeth, which allow me to chew my food so that it can pass from my mouth to my stomach. And I am thankful, also, for all of the miraculous workings of my digestive system, for its innate ability to make use of what will nourish me, and also for its ability to release what I do not need, and cannot use. I thank all of the organs of my body for their participation in this elegant, intricate system which is operating within me at all times, every moment and hour and day of my life, even without my conscious awareness. And I affirm that by choosing to become more conscious of it, I am able to more fully appreciate and celebrate the miraculous wisdom and constant effort of my body. I thank my body and all of the forces, factors and phenomena which came together to create it, including my parents, grandparents and all of my other physical ancestors.
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Prayer For When I Have Difficulty Accepting Myself I ask for help in fully and completely loving and accepting myself, exactly as I am in this moment, knowing that as I become able to more fully love and accept myself, I grow closer and closer to seeing with the eyes of God, or from the vantage point of all that is most knowing and compassionate in the universe. I ask for help in loving and accepting others fully and completely, with all of their wisdom and all of their limitations, including those others who may at this moment be unable to see, love or accept me exactly as I am. I recognize that by allowing the current of love and acceptance to flow freely through my being, like a river, I am contributing to the larger flow of harmony and peace among all of humankind, and I am grateful for the ability to serve all of humankind by choosing to love and accept myself. I affirm that it is completely possible and necessary to both fully love and accept myself exactly as I am, and to recognize all of my flaws, errors, limitations and distortions, in one and the same moment. I ask for help in opening myself to the vision and perception of Life and the universe, which do behold me exactly as I am: not denying my flaws and errors, not judging or blaming me for them, and never believing that my flaws or errors are what I am.
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I affirm that in fact it is by loving and accepting myself fully and completely that I can develop the capacity to clearly see myself as I am, including my flaws, and that by seeing these flaws with love and compassion, I can find the inner and outer resources that will help me transform them. I ask for help in relinquishing any notion or idea or image of myself as flawed, defective, insufficient, wrong or inadequate in any way. I affirm my unique wholeness at this moment, regardless of internal or external conditions. At the same time, I affirm that part of my wondrous wholeness, adequacy, sufficiency and perfection is my ability to grow and change, and I ask for help in growing and changing in every way that serves my highest intentions. I give thanks for the challenging and miraculous gift of my will, and I ask for help in continually using my will in ways that more and more fully serve my highest intentions. I ask for help in aligning my will with that of the Divine, with all that I can recognize as most truly loving, peaceful, lifeaffirming and light-filled, both inside and outside of myself.
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Prayer in Gratitude for Daily Miracles When I sit in the sun with my cat on my lap, I am thankful for every human experience I have, including the wonder of my ability to touch the soft fur of this cat who sits on my lap, who leans his entire body against me, exposing his belly and throat, and purrs at my touch. I give thanks for the miracle of my capacity to intimately encounter another being, a member of a species that is so different from my own, and achieve a connection which is meaningful and nourishing for both of us, and I ask for help in achieving more and more such connections with other beings. And I celebrate the beauty of my cat, his brindled dark and light hairs which come together to make a softly-patterned fur, the tiger-like stripes on his cheeks and forehead and paws and tail, the beautiful creamy belly, the bristling, alert whiskers,. I am thankful for the chair I am sitting on, the contraption someone invented and someone, perhaps many people, helped to create; I am thankful for the person who derived the means to make use of the metal or plastic or wood, those who created the chair from these materials, those who shipped it to a store, all of those people who conceived of and created and operated the store, all of the factors which came into play to allow me to earn the money to buy the chair, and which gave me the physical means to go to the store to buy the chair. I affirm that my life is full of unacknowledged miracles like this one, that every material possession I
own has come to me through the labor and efforts of vast numbers of people I will never know or see or thank personally, so I hereby thank them all, and thank the universe.
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Prayer For When I Drink Tea As I sip my hot tea, I affirm my gratitude for all that went into the making of the cup, the vessel which I now bring to my lips; the development of the ceramic or plastic or metal or glass, the refinement of the material, the creation of the factory, the workers who worked in the factory, and all the processes and circumstances and efforts by which this cup came to be in my hands and I thank, also, the people who discovered the tea bush, camella sensis, and who learned over years to harvest the tea leaves and dry them, and those who owned and worked at the tea plantation where this tea came from, and those who developed the mechanisms to ship this tea to the country and city I live in, and who created and worked in the store that sold it to me; and I thank my mouth for being able to experience the exquisite sensation of the warm tea filling it, and my taste buds for tasting the specific and exact flavor of this tea, and my throat for providing a vehicle through which this tea enters my body, and the miraculous properties of both my body and this tea, which allow me to make use of the antioxidant properties of the tea in such a way that my health is benefitted; and I thank Life or whomever or whatever created me in this fashion, and created my world in this fashion, so that I can sit here on a chair and sip warm tea and enjoy it, and also have a consciousness which is capable of recognizing the miracle of this moment, and being grateful for it.
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Prayer For Times When Those I Love Are Suffering When there is suffering in my family or among those I love, I give thanks for the ability of my ears to hear what is happening, the ability of my eyes to witness suffering, for the ability of my mouth and lips to speak in response, and for the ability of my heart to contract and expand in response to the pain of others knowing that all of these functions connect me more fully to the human experience, and therefore to all of humankind. I give thanks, also, for the miracle of my brain, for having developed the capacity to use language, and for all who taught me to understand and use words, so that I may both listen and speak, and so that I may learn more about the nature of the suffering of those I love. I am thankful to life for allowing me to become continually aware of the suffering of others, so that I may experience our shared humanity more fully, and recognize the context in which my own suffering exists. I ask for help in remembering that in all experiences, including this one, I can choose to use whatever comes to me in a way that serves my highest intentions. And as I witness or listen to the pain of others, I ask for help in recognizing where and how it mirrors and incites my own pain; and as I observe what may appear to me to be the blindness or foolishness or limitations of others, I ask for help in seeing how it echoes my own blindness, or foolishness, or limitations; and I ask for help in fully and completely loving
myself, even with my blindness and foolishness and limitations, and ask that this self-love can translate into an increased ability to love others, too, exactly as they are in this moment. And if, as I listen, it seems to me that there is a villain or wrongdoer in this story, I ask for help in opening my heart toward that person or group of people or institution. I ask for help in recognizing how even those actions which may seem to me unjust or cruel or even terrible, stem from places in the human experience which I, too, have experienced; and I ask for help in embracing the difficult gift of that humanness, while also seeking to bring light to the darkened areas of my own being, and the beings of others, from which such actions come. And I also ask for help in being able to see the larger and fuller picture, in which what initially appeared to be villains and victims may grow more complicated and indistinct, and I ask for help in embracing that complexity, and recognizing it, too, as the human condition. I ask for help in expanding my spirit so greatly that it no longer needs to find villains or victims in any circumstance, but is always able and willing to see a larger picture, a picture of human suffering which includes all of our blindness, foolishness and limits, which recognizes the many ways in which we bring suffering to ourselves and to one another, but which also holds us within a vast field of love, understanding, compassion and acceptance.
And if I experience pain or anguish at the suffering of others, I ask for help in allowing light to completely surround that pain or anguish, suffusing it with light, until it transforms into a radiant emanation of compassion.
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Prayer For When There Is Suffering Among People I Do Not Know When there is suffering in the world around me, among people or groups I do not personally know, I ask for help in activating exactly the same inner recesses of understanding and compassion that move in me in response to the suffering of those whom I most dearly love. I ask for help in moving beyond those parts of my being that are conditioned to blame, judge, and find fault, and help in moving more fully into those parts of my being which see with a larger vision, which do not flinch from beholding suffering, but witness suffering in such a way that brings illumination. I ask for help in remaining open and alive to the pain in the world, resisting the tendency to feel overwhelmed or to become numb, while also remaining connected to sources of inner and outer light which help me to bear my awareness of others pain. I ask for help in shedding the tendency toward despair, and I affirm my intention to dwell in hope, and to embody hope. I ask for help in doing whatever I can do to alleviate the suffering of others, in a way that is fully respectful both of my own trajectory of growth, my own path, my individual humanness, and theirs. I ask to be shown the wisest and most compassionate responses I can make, and help in having the ability, willingness and courage to make those compassionate responses.
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I ask for help in expanding my spirit, for help cultivating the generosity to extend myself wherever I can be of service, wherever I can bring more light into a circumstance, quarrel, or difficulty. And I also ask for help in recognizing those times when the most loving action I can take is to compassionately withdraw from the circumstance, releasing the person or people involved with love and respect, trusting in their own destinies and higher selves to bring them to whatever light is possible for them, whatever learning is needed by them, whether or not that occurs in a manner I will ever see or recognize.
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Prayer For Times of Physical Injury or Pain When my physical body is undergoing pain or disability, I ask for help in accepting whatever comes to me with grace, with a willingness to be deeply present with my own experience, and to learn from it. I affirm that when I am deeply present with my own experience in this way, no experience, no matter how painful, is ever in vain. And I affirm my ability and willingness to make use of every experience, no matter how painful, in the service of my highest intentions. I also ask that this experience of injury or pain help me to deepen my compassion for the suffering of others. At the same time, I ask to deepen my gratitude for all of the systems and parts of my body that continue to function, and for the joy of others around me. I ask for help in remembering on a cellular level that the joy of other beings can also infuse me with joy, even when my personal physical experience is difficult. When any part of my body hurts or is injured, I thank that part of my body for communicating its vulnerability to me. I thank it for all of the work it has performed when it was not injured, or when it was less injured, which I may previously have taken for granted. I gratefully acknowledge its importance to the whole of my body and my life, and I pray for its well-being as I would pray for the well-being of anything or anyone that I love.
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At the same time, I affirm the vibrancy and ingenuity of all of the other parts of my body; I thank them for whatever ways they may be compensating for the injured part, so that I can continue to function; and I thank the whole of my body, its elegant and intricate systems which I so rarely take the time to fully ponder or appreciate, for all of the ways in which it continuously supports my life. I also ask for help in learning whatever I can learn from this time of pain, fear and inconvenience. I affirm that there are lessons for me in the act of gracefully requesting and graciously accepting the assistance of others. I ask for help in dissolving, clearing or healing any aspect of my being which makes it difficult for me to request or receive help from others; I affirm my need of help as a completely honorable aspect of the interdependence that I share with all other human beings, and affirm the ways in which it connects me to the human experience. I affirm my intention to fully receive and appreciate any gesture made by another person to help me in my time of need, no matter how big or how small it may appear to me. . I affirm that ultimately all assistance comes from Life and from the universe, and I ask to remain grateful for all of the many ways in which it may come. I also affirm that there are lessons for me to learn in the process of gracefully accepting those ways and times in which others do not come forward to help me, or in which I am unable to perceive others help and support. I ask for help in seeing the gifts that are present both in what I do,
and what I do not receive from others. I ask for help in releasing any sense of myself as a victim or martyr, and in becoming increasingly able to take full and joyful responsibility for myself, even when I am injured or sick. I ask for help in learning all that I can from this experience: learning about my own patterns of thought, feeling and response, about my body, its needs, sensations, and forms of communication; about my relationship to others, and about my relationship to Life itself. I ask for help in accepting this experience exactly as it is, and finding within it whatever gifts of insight and healing it can offer me; and I also ask for help in working toward my own healing, and toward the greater wholeness and integration of my body, mind, spirit and heart.
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Prayer For When I Feel Lonely When I feel lonely, I give thanks for the ability to feel my own sense of connection and disconnection, and for the keenly alive heart within me that yearns for intimate contact with others. I acknowledge this yearning as an essential and precious part of my spirit, just as the physical sensation of hunger is necessary and precious to my physical survival. I ask for help in recognizing all of the gifts that come to me through aloneness, and even through loneliness. I ask for help in receiving these gifts and the growth which can come about in my heart, mind and spirit during this lonely time. And I also ask for help in allowing, opening to, finding and experiencing meaningful contact with other beings, and with Life itself. I ask for help in recognizing all of the meaningful contact which may already be present in my life, and which I may not have fully appreciated. I ask for help in widening the lens with which I view meaningful contact, and noticing all of those areas in my life which are already filled with contact including contact with an animal or animals I call pets; contact with wild animals who live outside my window, in my yard, or in my immediate vicinity; contact with trees or plants or bushes or flowers that may live just outside my windows and doors; and all of the small daily contact I have with other human beings, by telephone, email, mail, and through every interaction I have in the course of my daily
life. I ask for help in opening my heart and all of my inner sensors so that I can more fully breathe in the nourishment of contact from each and every one of these various sources. I also ask for help in breathing in a greater and greater sense of receptivity to all contact which is capable of touching and nourishing my being, and opening myself to all of the varied forms in which that might come. I ask for help in recognizing my very breath itself as a source of contact. I affirm that my breath is always with me, regardless of inner or outer circumstances; my breath is always able to willing to enter me deeply, then rise to the surface again, showing me by example that I, too, can dare to go deep into my own depths, and can rest in certainty that I will always be able to emerge again at my own surface. I ask for help in recognizing, celebrating and learning from all of the other miraculous properties of my breath, including its ability to continually extract exactly what I need from the outer environment, and continually release what I do not need and can no longer use, what does not serve me, into the environment again. I affirm my breath for its steadiness, constancy and faithfulness in working with me and within me in this way, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, even without my conscious awareness. I ask for help in becoming more conscious of these miraculous properties of my breath, of this built-in companionship, and I ask that as I feel more and more fully companioned by my own breath, I can relax more and more deeply and fully, creating a state of greater internal receptivity in which human companionship, too, will come to me more easily,
and enter me more fully, so that I can participate more completely and more joyfully in the human stream of life. I also ask for help in accepting and welcoming the human companionship which does come to me, even when it comes in forms that do not fit my expectations, nor my beliefs about what I want or need. I ask for help in seeing and receiving whatever gifts are present in any and all of my encounters I have with other human beings, and any and all of my encounters with myself. I ask for help in opening my heart to the full extent of its capacity, so that every encounter I have can resonate within me more widely and deeply, while also allowing this increased resonance to work with me and within me to expand my capacity of meaningful and loving contact. I ask for help in recognizing and dissolving those structures within my own being, my own thoughts and emotions, which hinder me from finding and experiencing meaningful contact with others; I ask for help in becoming more and more open and receptive to such contact, wherever and however it can occur.
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Prayer For Times When I Believe I am Right When I am believe that I am right, I humbly ask for help in remembering the limits of my own knowledge, awareness, wisdom and perspective. I affirm that there are many parts of the picture I cannot see, and there is much that I do not and cannot know. I ask for help in softening and opening, becoming less certain, and turning over the full force of my opinions to powers more vast than my personal self. I ask for help in trusting those larger and greater powers of the universe, knowing that events will continue to unfold as they do, and as they should, according to some larger design beyond my comprehension. I ask for help in approaching the present circumstance, and all circumstances, with greater love, wisdom, discernment, patience and humility, so that I can be a vessel of light in whatever transpires, however it may appear on the physical plane. I also ask for help in remembering what Rumi called that field beyond wrong and right, remembering that ultimately what matters most is not whether I am right, but whether I am able to hold peace, love and light in my heart at all times -- regardless of inner or outer circumstances, regardless of what anyone else may say, think, do, feel or believe. I ask that my sense of my own rightness be surrounded and infused by light, such that its self-satisfied or self-protective coating may dissolve and be replaced, instead, by a profound internal certainty of my own merit,
my deep intrinsic worth and value and also a profound certainty of the intrinsic merit, worth and value of all other beings, especially those with whom I may disagree.
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Prayer For When I Strongly Desire Something When I feel a strong desire, I ask for help in holding the powerful current of my own wanting in a balanced way. I ask for help in remembering that the tapestry of my life is far larger than my current awareness; I affirm that, therefore, I cannot truly know what will be best for me, or even what will bring me most happiness, in the longer term. I cannot know what I will experience or learn if what I desire comes to pass, nor where I may be led if what I desire does not occur. Therefore, I ask for help in remembering that receiving what I currently desire may not actually bring me the happiness I seek, and that that happiness, or perhaps even greater rewards, may come to me from completely unexpected occurrences or unimagined directions. I ask for help in trusting the universe and the largest aspects of my own consciousness, remembering that it is far vaster and wiser than I am, to bring me that which will best serve my highest intentions for my life, and I ask for help in fully and completely accepting whatever comes to me, whether or not it resembles what I currently desire. Ultimately, I ask for
help in trusting life, and trusting myself to find my own place within the vast body of life, where I can be safe, held and nourished, and where I can grow, learn and be healed.
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Prayer For When I Awaken When I awaken in the morning, I ask for help in embracing this day, and in remaining close to myself and my highest intentions during each moment of the day. I ask for help in remembering and recognizing the humanity of every person with whom I interact today, even briefly: the man or woman at the gas station, the grocery store, on the bus or train, and the people with whom I share a household or building or neighborhood or workplace. Today in all of my small encounters with strangers, I ask for help in recognizing the full humanity of each person; I ask to remember that each person I see was once a tiny, helpless baby, who may or may not have been adequately welcomed into the world, who may or may not have received all the care he or she needed. And for whatever wounds remain inside his or her heart, I ask for help in silently sending compassion to that hidden place. I ask for help in seeing the essential beauty of each person, especially when it is hard for me to see. I ask for help in remembering that at the core, each of us shares the same needs. I ask for help in being a beacon of light today, in every circumstance and encounter.
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And when I go to the bathroom, I ask for help in remembering to look in the mirror and greet the face I see there as a friend. If I am tempted at any point during the day to criticize myself, I ask Life to shower me with love, to help me remember that love is with me at all times, in all places, in all ways, and I ask that the memory, the visceral awareness of that love, reach me and soften me, move me and help me to release the harshness I have been holding against myself. And if I am tempted to criticize another person, or find myself doing so, I ask that that same love hold me just as palpably, comforting and nourishing me, reminding me of that level of my being on which all is right within me, and with the world, and I ask that this experience help me to soften, to relax into the experience of being held, and to relinquish the sharp edge I have been holding against another. I ask for help in remembering my intention to care for myself and care for others, in all of my interactions; to love myself as much as I love others, in my best moments, and to love others as much as I love myself, in my best moments; and to allow this love that flows into me and from me to be like a stream, carrying me through my day. And when I have a difficult but necessary thing to say to another person, I ask that this stream of love help me to remain conscious and present in my own vulnerable humanity as I speak, and ask it to keep me willing and able to sense and acknowledge and touch the vulnerable
humanity of the other. I ask for help in speaking necessary truths with clarity, and with a directness that is also kind. And when I have made a mistake, I ask for help in acknowledging it forthrightly and quickly, with a directness that is also an act of kindness to myself; and I ask for help in remembering my vulnerable humanness, the fact that all human beings make mistakes, that I am allowed to make a mistake, and help in remembering that I am still held within the loving stream of my larger self, no matter what small or large mistakes I may have made. And if I sit or stand or walk outside, I ask for help in being present to the beauty of the world. I ask for help in opening my senses to all of the life forms and consciousnesses around me. If there are birds in the sky or the trees, I ask for help in acknowledging them, greeting and saluting them in their essential nature, in their life form which is so different from my own, and yet, at its core, so similar. I ask that this recognition of both our difference and our similarity fill me with appreciation and tenderness. And if there are squirrels running through the grass or in the trees, I ask for help in truly noticing the marvel of these creatures, too, and the ways in which, again, they are both unlike and like me. If I live with or encounter cats or dogs, I ask for help in saluting those creatures who have chosen to transition from wildness to what we call
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"domestication," so that they can live more closely with us, and teach and comfort and heal us, and exchange with us. And if I encounter trees, I ask for help in remembering that these magnificent life-forms are constantly helping me by producing the oxygen I need to breathe. I affirm my intent to honor the trees, thanking them and appreciating the ways in which their lives and mine are intertwined.
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Prayer for Times of Despair When I feel angry at God, when the world looks to me like a random, cruel and unjust place, I ask for help in enlarging my vision, in seeing beyond the boundaries and limits of what I currently see. I ask for help in remembering that the tapestry of reality is far greater and more dimensional than I can see, and that therefore I cannot ever truly know what can, or should, or must occur. And so when things occur that seem to me to be wrong, painful, unbearable or tragic, I ask for help from the larger compassionate forces, that they may bring comfort and tenderness to my aching heart. And I ask that, as they comfort my heart, they also help me see further and deeper, so that I can glimpse the larger picture unfolding, or at least remember that there is a larger picture. I ask for help in trusting God, trusting the benevolent forces in the universe, trusting my own evolutionary process, and the evolutionary processes of all those others with whom I share the planet Earth. May we together find ways to serve in each others fullest unfolding, and in the full unfolding of the human destiny; may we each play whichever parts are spirits are most suited to playing, in this unfolding; and may we experience instances of connection, gratitude and light to keep us nourished through what is inevitably a challenging, confusing and difficult human journey.
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I acknowledge that life is a difficult and unwieldy gift, and I honor those parts of me that struggle with, or reject, that gift, but I also ask for help from the higher realms, that those parts of me may receive the healing they need. I ask for help in embracing my life, my physical human life; in saying Yes to this life, with all its conditions, all its curses and blessings. I ask for help, also, in remembering that I cannot ever truly know which events or relationships are curses, and which are blessings. I ask for help in redirecting the strong current of my will, which so often moves toward judgment and rejection, so that it may instead move toward understanding, acceptance and embrace, both of my own particular life in this very particular moment, and also of the larger life of human beings. I ask the higher forces to help me heal my despair, and enliven the core of hope within each of my cells. And I ask that as I move through the world, the higher forces help open my being to small glimmers of contact and connection, whatever their source. May I notice the tree outside the window, or the tired face of the person in front of me in line, or the comfort of driving in my car, or the fact that there is food available to me. May I notice that there are people in this world who know my name, who smile at me, even if our contact is brief. May I notice that I too know the names of others, and can smile at them, and can hold them in my heart, and can remember that all of us, myself as fully as every other person, are held within the larger heart of Life.
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SOUL ON EARTH: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Ruth L. Schwartz, Ph.D.

Soul on Earth: A Guide Book

Soul on Earth: A Guide Book

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

3: The Inner Design

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

with the larger web of life of which we are part.

If, however, I had

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Section II: Challenges on the Path

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

and experience. Yes to life.

This is the essence of saying This is the essence of saying

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life

Soul on Earth: Living and Loving Your Human Life