4th Chakra – Finding the Wish Fulfilling Tree
As a writer and storyteller and guide to Living the Wild and Precious Life I ask myself key questions. It is fairly easy to determine the level of consciousness of a person by knowing what questions direct their lives. “What is it that brings you truly alive?” is another good question. If you have ever felt truly alive, truly connected and totally in awe of any manifestation of the Universe then this gives you your quest. It gives you the starting point. This is a state of being in Love with the Universe. It is the magic state of being.
It is that magic state of being that is spoken of in fairy tales. It is when sleeping beauty is kissed awake in the tower. it is when beauty kisses awake the beast who lies dying in the garden of roses because he feels unloved. These instances of awakening are not just children’s stories. They are your story of the potential within you. You are the beauty that is locked away in the tower of the idea of separateness. You are the beast that is dying in the rose garden of your heart’s potential because you are under a spell.
What will bring you alive is intimated in all fairy tales. What will bring you alive is the empowerment of Love and the connection to beauty. This is the energy that kisses you awake. You think that you get it by finding that special other. Often, however, that special other mirrors the not specialness you feel when you look in the mirror of your unconsciousness which they reflect back to you. You feel the absence of your own love power and beauty. This beauty and the power of the kiss of awakening is worth more than an expensive villa, a top of the range luxury car or designer clothes. This is the magic state of being that the Sufi’s refer to as stations. A station is a state of being that you are able to access at will rather than a state that comes and goes.
The first step in finding this magic state of being is to begin to ask the question,
What is it I truly value?
No matter what you say you value the degree to which you value it will be manifested in your actions. Many leading teachers who I have researched via the World Wide Web begin the journey of personal development and beyond by asking you to focus, to really focus, on answering this question. Once you have identified what it is you value then a second question follows. This is
How committed are you to living this value?
You get an idea of the importance of this question from the master teacher Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus did not want disciples who were lukewarm in their commitment to the Way, the Truth and the Life. He wanted disciples who where passionate in their pursuit of living the wild and precious life of connectedness to Love and who were committed to serving Loves purpose.
Are you passionate about the value you are and the values you would live or are the worlds that articulate such values only words? When you talk about this value, or these values, do you feel impassioned or is the idea simply cerebral? Is it simply a nice idea locked in the tower of the intellect but asleep to the beauty held within it? Is it held within the spell of separateness that walks in a garden of roses and cannot see them because its mind is always focused on never quite enough?
A state of being is not a thing you possess. It is an energetic you live your life from and you engage your will in the service of. The true value that will bring you alive is the value of the heart. This is the value of the 4th chakra but it needs to be aligned with the will (3rd chakra) and to be grounded in day to day living (1st chakra). The way you ground it is through commitment (2nd chakra) to a spiritual practice. This can be the practice of meditation, prayer or yoga. It can be any practice you choose but it requires discipline and focus.
In the heart chakra you get the first flash of the true Self. You get to see (6th chakra) beyond the mundane world of the personal. You get to see and feel the magic of being. This takes you into the small chakra below the heart. This is referred to as the wish fulfilling tree – the boon tree. This is the wishing tree that grants you your true hearts desire. Does this invitation written here make you feel at all excited? Do you in any way feel attracted to the possibility of this kind of experience and this kind of power which is a power of healing and the power of the true Self? Does this invitation take you to a place, an energetic, that says this is what I truly desire and this is what I truly want to be?
The good news is that if you are reading this far then there must be some call from within that is keeping you reading about this magical state of being. This is a state of living your life that is more real than anything you can experience through acquisition of things. There is a part of you that knows that this state of being is your true home and that the power that beauty has to awaken this true desire within you can be yours – is yours to be realised.
To begin to access this magic wish fulfilling tree, which is your hearts true desire beyond your conscious desire, you have to take the work of healing the other three chakras seriously. These are the personality chakra’s. You have to do this over and over again until you can stand on solid ground of an integrated personality. This means that when you are invited to open the room of the 2nd chakra – the room of opposites and the room of opposition within you – the room with those unloved aspects of yourself that you deny, that you open the door and step into the possibility of the new. This opening the door of the room of the 2nd chakra and the crossing of the threshold of the unconscious is not for those who are lukewarm. This opening of the door and crossing the threshold is your commitment to the wish fulfilling tree within. This is the tree that bears the fruit of fulfilment.
You can’t make this state of your true hearts desire a station if you refuse to feel your feelings. The energetic of the second chakra is “I feel therefore I am.” Except, that because of deep seated trauma, or sustained neglect, many of us do not feel at all. We live, as the writer James Joyce said of a character in one of his books, “He lived some distance from his body.” Witness the increased experience of depression across all ages and class. We, as a culture have more and more material wealth and live longer but we are more and more subject to depression and addictions of all kinds.
This, I believe, mirrors our focus on values that do not engage the heart and allow us to experience meaning and propose that only direct connection to the heart centre can give. What is it that gives meaning and purse is to serve the value or values that excite and inspire you. If there are no values that do this then your energy system may have become armoured. You may have an inner critic or an emotional trauma that keeps you imprisoned and asleep. The good news is that if you ask you will be given but you have to do the work of removing all those energy blocks that keep you walled in to the prison of separateness. This is the work of opening up the personality to the unconscious and the integration of the shadow aspects of yourself that you do not love.
This is the work that is carried on by Debbie Ford. Debbie Ford runs a workshop on overcoming Self Sabotage.
Click here to register
(Please note: A new window will open taking you to the DailyOM website to register.)
I came across the work of Debbie Ford when I read her outstanding book entitled Debbie Ford – The Dark Side of the Light Chasers
Amazon.com Review
We know the shadow by many names: alter ego, lower self, the dark twin, repressed self, id. Carl Jung once said that the shadow “is the person you would rather not be.” But even if you choose to hide your dark side, it will still cast a shadow, according to author Debbie Ford. Rather than reject the seemingly undesirable parts of ourselves, Ford offers advice on how to confront our shadows. Only by owning every aspect of yourself can you achieve harmony and “let your own light shine,” she explains. “The purpose of doing shadow work, is to become whole. To end our suffering. To stop hiding ourselves from ourselves. Once we do this we can stop hiding ourselves from the rest of the world.”
As threatening as shadow work may seem, it is often very effective in creating transformation. Ford’s step-by-step guidebook is modelled on a highly successful course she developed about embracing the shadow. Ultimately, she helps readers illuminate the gifts and strengths that lie within the shadows. Although this works sound vague, clouded in dark metaphors, Ford manages to make it clear and specific. She has the writing gifts of a successful seminar leader–inspirational, trustworthy, and able to convey murky material with grace and ease. –Gail Hudson
I have given this book away to some light chasers who have spent much of their life avoiding their feelings. Here we begin to consciously work to align the 2nd chakra which is the integration of the opposites. This is work required to be alchemised by those who are drawn to the light and drawn to the wish for delight in their lives and who think that they can have a wild and precious life by ignoring the emotional shadow self.
The magic of being is real. It is more real and more alive than living a life of separateness that is devoid of life. In my storytelling program I tell the story called, “The Way Out.” It is a story based around the poem by Mary Oliver entitled “West Wind ll”
West Wind II
You are young. So you know everything. You leap
into the boat and begin rowing. But listen to me.
Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without
any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.
Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and
your heart, and heart’s little intelligence, and listen to
me. There is life without love. It is not worth a bent
penny, or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a
dead dog nine days unburied. When you hear, a mile
away and still out of sight, the churn of the water
as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the
sharp rocks – when you hear that unmistakable
pounding – when you feel the mist on your mouth
and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls
plunging and steaming – then row, row for your life
toward it.
~ Mary Oliver ~
(West Wind)
This poem is a clear statement of a value worth living for. This is stated in the negative but no less powerful for all that. Here is someone who has the confidence to say without embarrassment that they talk to your soul. They talk to you about that magic state of being. Here Mary Oliver tells you in no uncertain terms how a life lived without love isn’t worth very much. Is a life lived with Love or other related heart value what you truly value. Is it your passion? Are you committed (2nd chakra)? Are your disciplined (3rd chakra) or are you satisfied to stay asleep in the lower 1st chakra world and row, row your life away from the magic of who you are?
If your goal is magic then you will need commitment, discipline and practice. Let me tell you now that it is worth the effort. It is the only true way of bringing the revelation of the wild and precious life you are here to live. So if any of this writing excites you the check out the options for doing shadow work. This is the work of the 2nd chakra and the healing of the 2nd chakra where the unconscious and the conscious are brought into alignment. Then you begin to have real energy and passion and ascend higher to the place of the wish fulfilling tree. Then you find that what you thought you you needed wasn’t at all what you needed. What you needed was real purpose, passion and prosperity that you could give away in joy.
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STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS – Video about the various states of consiousness.
NEW DIMENSIONS – Over the years, a wealth of practical knowledge and perennial wisdom has accumulated in the audio archives of New Dimensions, a virtual treasure trove of timeless wisdom.
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The 7 Chakras and the Power of Storytelling
As a storyteller I write and tell stories from the heart (4th chakra). Fairytales and mythological stories are not simply stories told to entertain children. They are maps that chart the fullness of human potential. They are maps of the journey of the soul. These stories contain deep psychological truths. They have their own special kind of language. It is the language of symbolism and the language that leads to meaning and a life of purpose, passion and prosperity. I like to refer to this language as
the full moon language
This is the language that will take you into foreign lands of adventure where you can learn to live the one wild and precious life you are here to give and to share. Some fairy tales chart the full journey of the seven developmental phases of human potential as represented by the seven chakras. Others represent only a part of the journey. However, the fairy tale, the mythological story, demonstrates that the development of consciousness is not simply a linear progression from lower to higher but more the movement of a spiral.
The journey of personal development and beyond begins in the root chakra. This is the place of our day to day living. It is here that the full potential of the human being awaits revelation. It isn’t something that you have to add to yourself; rather think of it as your allowing yourself to be an instrument of manifestation. Each chakra has a world view associated with it and from which one lives their life. At the lowest chakra (low is not to be equated with bad) the world view is the view of separateness. It is the view that says you live in a body in time and space between a timeline called birth and death. At the seventh chakra the world view is Oneness. The journey of the Way of the Chakras is the journey into an ever increasingly expansive view of the world as a sacred unity rather than a collection of separate things.
In fairy stories or mythological tales the root chakra world view is often represented in various ways. In the modern day tale of The Wizard of Oz (7th chakra experience) Dorothy leaves the grey world, the flat lands of Kansas. In other stories the everyday world is represented by a colourful kind of paradise. In the story of the Fisher King the everyday world is a wasteland. This mirrors the ups and downs of our everyday living. Sometimes our everyday life is a series of grey days and we dream of a time when there might be days filled with colours of the rainbow (the colours of the chakra’s)
Dorothy Gale, played by the young Judy Garland in the film The Wizard of Oz, sings
Somewhere over the rainbow up high
There’s a land that I heard of once in a lullaby
Somewhere over the rainbow
and the dreams that you dare to dream
really do come true.
This somewhere over the rainbow isn’t a dream. It is the nowhere place that is everywhere. It is the vastness of the blue sky represented by the knowing and the living from the 7th chakra knowing. The blue birds that fly over the rainbow represent the element of the air which is the element of the heart chakra. This song is a lullaby. It is a song that is intended to comfort the child and lull them to sleep. It is not the sleep of the unconscious but the sleep that arrives cloaked in a sense of safety.
In fairy tales there is the common motif of disruption. The ideal world of the King and Queen (aspect of ourselves) who live in the Palace with their beautiful child Sleeping Beauty is disrupted when she finds the room that was hidden. The gray world of Kansas is disturbed when Dorothy is caught up in a tornado that carries her far from the grey world into the colourful world of Oz. This is where she walks the golden road of infinite possibility to meet with companions along the way who help her face her journey’s trials.
In the motif of the Hero’s Journey we see this as the step on the journey referred to as the call. It is the call to open the doors of the secret rooms that are the rooms of the unconscious. We see the rooms in different ways. Sometimes they are simply hidden in different part of the Palace – a metaphor for the psyche – the soul. Other times they are expressly forbidden as in the story of Bluebeard. Or they are simply a matter of curiosity as in the story of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Opening the door of the secret, or forbidden, room is the work of the second chakra. This is the phase of personal development that is called the Encounter with Opposites. It is the encounter with those aspects of yourself that you do not love and which send you asleep for over one hundred years.
Three Ways to Open the Doors
There are three ways of behaving in relation to those locked doors that invite you to cross a psychological threshold.
The first way is simply to ignore the door and continue living life as is. This is not the way to experience your wild and precious life. It leads to an absence of meaning. It avoids that special story filled with meaning and purpose that only you are here to tell. This is the potential you that is hidden within the secret or forbidden room. In avoiding the crossing of the place of threshold life remains grey and lifeless. You do not get to journey on the golden path to the magical kingdom of Oz where you meet with the wizard who shows what you already know but don’t have the confidence to act upon.
The second way of behaving in relation to the rooms is to open the door of the room and simply stand at the threshold and not cross over. The result is that you see what’s in the room but you do not engage with it. The door is shut and you can pretend that what is in the room really isn’t in the room at all. You can deny what you know is in that room. This leads to an inauthentic life and the death of any real intimate relationship. In the Hero’s Journey motif we see this stage as being the refusal of the call. This happens to the character Luke Skywalker in the opening of the map of the chakra way called Star Wars.
The third way, which is the way of the hero, is the movement from everyday consciousness into the world of the unconscious It arises from the decision to open the door, and cross the threshold into the secret of forbidden room. This is the way chosen in the fairy tale and the stories of myth. Thus begins a phase of expansion. We enter the room and we explore the contents and we begin the process of the work of the 2nd chakra.
Everyone one of us has rooms within us that we keep locked. Everyone of us has a voice within us that calls us to open the door of this room or rooms and come alive. This is the call of this soul – the call to unify all those opposing forces within us that divides your energy and keeps you locked up in the place of material comfort or in the poverty of cinders. Everyone of us has heard that voice call to us. Many of us, including this writer and storyteller, have refused to listen to this voice. We choose to stay in the world of the grey that is at least known. It may be just a little dull and routine and less scary than the wild and precious life that is potential within each one of us.
This may be what happens to you if you refuse the call. A life style, then your life, becomes devoid of meaning. It may lead to depression or the mindless pursuit of consumerism which become a form of addiction and the avoidance of the invitation to soul. The everyday grey world is absent of any sense of the joyous body and expansive feelings of compassion and love.
The power of fairytales lies in their connection to the sleeping beauty within you. This beauty will stay asleep within you until the time you hear the call to awaken and respond to the call. No one forces you to awaken but bear in mind that the process of awakening is inbuilt into the human psyche. The resistance to this awakening and the identification with separateness is the root cause of suffering. It is the experience of living in the root chakra and living from that world view. It is the refusal to accept the invitation to take the journey into the fullness of being – a spiralling upward journey into the power, the grace and the blessing of who you truly are.
I hope, in this short outline, that you begin to see the real power of fairytales and storytelling. These stories are maps to the meaning and purpose of life and not just some quaint little story of old. These stories invite the quintessential in you. This is a 5th chakra experience. It is the experience of the movement of matter into non matter. It is the matter that really matters.
I invite you to listen to stories told by one of the world’s great storytellers. She takes you deep into their meaning and empowers you with potential and the courage to imagine that you could be someone who, not only dreams of that somewhere over the rainbow but is prepared to journey. It is the storyteller who guides the way along the road less travelled. This is the golden road to the City of Oz. This is the journey to meet the wisdom mind in you that already knows that Love and you are never separate.
Why not begin to open the door and take the adventure along the golden road. I offer you suggestions below from the world renown storyteller and cantadora (keeper of the old tales), Clarissa Pinkola Estes
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PRINCIPLES OF SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION – Spiritual evolution is about growth of being, an ever brightening of the godspark that is your consciousness. Knowledge is the crucial cornerstone of this process, but a cornerstone alone provides no shelter. Unaccompa
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Turning Lead into Gold – 2nd Chakra Healing
Down in the darkness deep know there’s a light don’t sleep – David Gray
There are days when I meet with those who are called the Formorians. These are the Irish mythological forces of darkness. These are the dark life forces that vanquished the Shining Ones, the Tuatha de Danaan, the Beautiful People who are driven underground in the Irish story of the Battle of Moytura. These beautiful people are now known as the Irish fairies. There are days when I find this Formorian force within myself and I have to find inner resources to be able to counter their influence. Recently, I felt very despondent. This is largely due to the fact of being required to do a woman’s work in a man’s body when my partner Bee fell in the garden and broke her ankle in two places.
I think the closer you come to the light the closer you come to the dark within yourself and particularly within the culture you live in. When one truly begins to open ones beautiful eyes to the task of awakening to the light there will be times, even many times, when one feels despondent – even possibly despairing. You begin to see the true extent of what it means to live in ignorance of ones true radiance. This is why you need a practice or practices that ground you and keep you out of mental flights of fancy that can take you and make you, not one of the Shining Ones, but a prisoner of the Formorians – the Bag People – who are themselves filled with the baggage of the past. Those who, individually and collectively are intent on filling you full of baggage that becomes dispiriting.
My key grounding 1st chakra practice is to write. It is a kind of journal therapy and a yoga of journaling. I am sometimes invited from experience to write about feeling despondent, about feeling dispirited. I live in the world of duality (2nd chakra experience) and thus I am not always up nor am I always down. I, too often, lose the centre. I learn to hold this centre by sitting in the fire of dispiritedness. In this fire I learn the practice of turning the lead of despond into the gold of spirit – the experience of being inspired or “in spirited.” This is the work of 2nd chakra healing. You sit in the dark prepared to witness the process. This is true alchemy. It is consciousness witnessing consciousness. It is the practice of developing witness consciousness. A key practice in learning to live a wild and precious life. It is a key part of the practice of meditation
I sometimes lead groups in the invitation to what is called 7 Ways to a Wonderful Life. Those who don’t lead groups don’t often see the way in which those who lead such groups experience doubt, angst, and crises of faith. Despite this, one leads because there is a gift to be given. This gift often arises from the light that has been found in the dark. The more open you become, the more challenging the work becomes as you become a servant of Love in action. This is why this journey of inspired Love in action is called the Hero’s journey.
I am sixty one years of age. Most of my friends and family are younger than myself. So I tend to walk this experience of doubt, despondency and fear on my own. I do this with the technique I am sharing with you now. It has taken me years of daily practice to be able to learn to centre myself in the space of time that it takes to write four pages of A4. Yet the satisfaction, the healing through writing practice, the liberation, is wondrous. At the end of writing these four pages of A4 I will laugh at the idea that I will take my talent at writing and stuff it away because it is not seen to be valued.
I value it. I not only value it. I love it. To stop writing from the Love I feel inside would be like cutting off my nose to spite my face except that I have had a tendency to do this anyway. I hold a pity party where I am the only one who is invited. A face without a nose isn’t pretty but we wound ourselves because we feel hurt and turn our anger or our rage inward. It is a kind of taking back control. Many wonderful saints and teachers have mapped the road of the spirit. They have all said that the spiritual warrior will travel the road of trials. The road of trials includes those emotional experiences that invite imprisonment in the Formorian energy of despair, doubt, fear and other dispiriting adventures. This is when you are called to remember the forces of beauty that are within you.
There are always available the four magical gifts of the beautiful people: the Cauldron of Plenty that always gives to those who would stand before it with an open heart. There is the Sword of Lugh, the god of Light that cuts through the chains that are invisible. This is the sword that cuts through any sense of despond. There is the voice of destiny that calls you by your name as one whose sovereign centre can never be lost. The pen, we are told, is mightier than the sword. This pen has, in the time it has taken to write these pages, slain the Formorian forces of despondency. I am ready, not so much to do battle now, as to keep remembering that I live in a world of duality that is bounded by Oneness.
When I forget that I am not only a part of the Source, but never apart from the Source, then I am at the mercy of the forces prevalent in the world of duality – indifference, apathy, self-interest, guilt, despondency and so many other forces that pull one down but do not ground. So I have done the practical stuff of grounding through the written word.
Now I lay down my pen, my personal sword of light and go and get ready to share what it is useful to do when the Formorians arrive, as they will. Take up a daily practice. Make it something fun. It needn’t be writing, but any practice you take up needs commitment. Initially with any practice you will be pulled away from it. This is because the forces of the Formorian mindset do not want you to have access to the power of the light that invites the radiance within you.
You will find will be that the greatest battle will be with you own sense of indifference, your own sense of dis-empowerment, your own sense of despondency. Simply do not indulge these but take them and become an alchemist. This is when you turn the lead of despond into the gold of inspiration.
One of the key ways of healing the 2nd chakra is through the unification of opposites. Each of us has unloved aspects within ourselves. The 2nd chakra is the invitation to enter the room of opposition and reclaim those unloved aspects. One of the ways we can invite such a process is to study the fairytales and myths of old. These are not just stories from children and stories of olden times. They are maps to different levels of consciousness. We can choose to either ignore the invitation to cross the threshold and live a rather dull and meaningless life. We can choose to look into the room of our unconscious and decide that what is in there is best left to stay locked away. This is the death of the authentic self and the death of any real intimate relationship. The third way is the way of the hero who crosses the threshold and discovers the gold that is in the shadow.
This is 2nd chakra work. It not only benefits the individual. It benefits the collective. It is the first stage of the seven stage journey into wholeness. At each stage there will be resistance. This is the nature of growth. Do no be surprised if you feel afraid of opening the door of the unconsious. It is best to take it slowly and practice a great deal of loving kindness toward oneself.
One of the best books I have read on Chakra Healing is Archetypal Chakras
Another great book on Chakra Healing is Anatomy of Spirit – The Seven Stages of Power and Healing
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CHAKRA HEALING – Articles on Chakra Healing by Energy Master Carol Tuttle
Key Practices for the Law of Attraction – Solitude
“In solitude we are alone”
Lord Bryon
One of the key practices of living the wild and precious life is the practice of solitude. It is the learning the ability to be alone with oneself without the need to fill the time with entertainment or a myriad of things to do. The ability to be alone without experiencing being lonely is a quality of an attractor. You feel contentment in your own skin. You are not looking out into the world in order that if fill you up because you feel lost and in some sense inadequate.
The is a paradox about the Law of Attraction. Those who want its power for their own purpose do not attain this power or if they do it tends to be through struggle and wilfulness. They use a universal power for a personal gain. Those who are content in their own skin tend to have the power of this universal law given to them because they have a sense of the fullness of creation moving though them.
The Master Jesus referred to this tendency to build a life around what is called the having mode. The having mode is a focus on pleasure through possession. This is not only possession of things but possession of life as belonging to oneself. This is what Jesus warned when he said, “Do not build up treasure on earth where moth and rust doth corrupt.” Many have taken this to mean that there is some merit in being poverty stricken. Some take the vow of poverty and engage in a kind of spiritual egotism. Material well being is not a bar to spiritual enlightenment.
What is Your focus for Using the Law of Attraction?
If your focus is simply on attaining material wealth then the Law of Attraction as it moves through you will be less refined and it will take time and effort for you to manifest what it is you focus you attention on. This is the focus of the ego and not the focus of the soul. It is a focus on wanting to acquire something because you feel in some way that there is something missing.
Let me give you an example of a focus that your soul will love because it wishes to expand into the endless realmn of loves becoming. This is the power of the Law of Attraction in operation in one’s life. This is true asking aligned with the willingness to receive. Notice that it’s focus is not on lack but on the invitation to fullness. This is the true power of the power of intention which is the creative power of the Universe.
Lord, make me an instrument of thy Peace.
This is the opening line from the wonderful poem of St. Francis of Assisi. This is the power of intention focused for the highest good of all. This is, at the very least, and invitation to the opening of the 3rd chakra. This intention arises from the soul. It is an invitation from the personal will to the impersonal will. It is an invitation from the Lover to the Beloved. This is an attitude of soul – it is soul-attitude and solitude. This is attained through the practice of solitude where you learn to listen to the still small voice within.
In practicing this solitude, this attitude of soul, you might need a new Lexus in order to become an instrument of the peace that passeth understanding. It is not your purpose, but Love’s purpose to dictate the way in which you are to be this instrument of peace. Your work is to allow yourself to be used for Love’s purpose. This makes you a real attractor. Not only that but you feel in a real sense attractive.
You feel attractive in an emotional and psychological way. Your focus isn’t on where or not you look attractive, although there is nothing wrong with that, unless you get attached to the idea that being physically attractive will give you life purpose and meaning. Being physically attractive might facilitate your life’s purpose and meaning but equally it can become a hindrance to the full realisation of your real beauty.
Identification with physical attractiveness can keep you focused on the body (1st chakra) or it might be the reminder to you of what real beauty is beyond the physical form. Looking good will attract certain energies in your life but if you do not move beyond the 1st and 2nd chakra focus, which is the focus on opposites and thus opposition, then you will lock the door to the awareness of the power and beauty that makes you truly attractive. This is not a beauty that goes old. It is the beauty that creates from the knowing of the eternal.
Why Solitude is Important.
This attitude of soul is important because it teaches you how easily you can be distracted. The Law of Attraction is primarily a creative force. It moves through you from the un-manifest to the manifest. it moves through you from the formless to the form. This is why we have the opening lives of the Buddhist Heart Sutra telling us
Form is emptiness
Emptiness is form.
When Buddhist’s use the word empty they are trying to say a paradoxical thing. They are trying to tell you that everything arises out of no thing which is not the same as saying everything arises out of nothing. Nothing is a state of not. It is not a state of no thing. It is not the state of the invisible that has the infinite ability to become visible. No thing, as understood in the Heart Sutra, is the invisible field of infinite potential.
The creative process is new. It creates what was not into what now is. If you had the faith the size of a mustard seed than you could manifest in an instant what you place your conscious intention upon. Faith here does not mean faith in a fixed doctrine or creed. Faith, as used here, is faith in the process of Creation. The creative process isn’t simply a rehash of old ideas. A rehash of old ideas ties you to the past. It may be productive and you might arrive at a result that gives you something that you now possess but can equally possess you.
There is a time within the creative process, which is the movement of the Law of Attraction, when you do not know what is happening. There is a time when in that creative process when you ask for what will be given. The Law of Attraction is about asking for the qualities that will bring about the greater environment that serves Loves purpose. This kind of asking makes you qualify as an instrument of peace (4th chakra and upwards). Then you are able to sow love instead of hate, hope instead of despair and so much more.
You practice solitude, which is an attitude of soul, in order to listen to the still small voice within that knows what it wants to attract through you and designed you as a unique sound of Love in form to express Creation via the Law of Attraction. This Law is about learning to be on the same wavelength as that unique sound of Love that you are.
This is why I invite you to practice meditation, prayer or yoga. These practices are practices that invite an attitude of soul. There is nothing more attractive because when you live from that state, moving into the ability to station yourself there, you gain soul friendship. You become you own Anam cara. Then even if you gain the whole world and then lose it you will still be on solid ground. So I invite you to become an attractor. Someone who becomes charismatic. One who is a conduit for soul qualities. A quality of being that is the purpose of alignment with the Law of Attraction.
Recommendations for the Practice
The Law of Attraction is a law that serves Love. If your intention is in alignment with this universal creative force then manifestation of your heart’s desire will become available to you. If the focus is purely on ego desires then this creative force cannot really work for you because you see yourself as separate and it doesn’t recognise separateness. It only recognises Oneness.
I recommend that you learn to invite solitude. Go on a spiritual retreat. Do this regularly. Don’t get caught up in attachment any specific group identity. Follow what your heart invites but do not give your power away to a group identity. It is fine to belong to the group because it can nurture you but do not become dependant on its authority. Ask and receive means that you take your own power (3rd chakra). You have been given the ability to know the direction of you soul. Begin to commit to that knowing. Begin to develop an attitude of soul. The TAT Foundation is a site that has a listing of such places around the world. Solitary Spiritual Retreat Centres
The TAT Foundation guide to hermitages, cabins,
and other places for spiritual reflection.
OTHER GREAT CONTENT
Here is some other material that will further your personal and spiritual development and your understanding of the various stages of spiritual development.
spiritual guidance
STAGES OF PERSONAL GROWTH – This article describes four levels or stages of Personal Growth — social accomplishment, psychological growth, spiritual progress and transformation.
SPIRAL DYNAMICS – Another map of personal and spiritual development for your consideration
PHILOSOPHERS NOTES – The ultimate personal growth tool. Giving you more wisdom in less time. The essential teachings of 100 optimal living books condensed into convenient 6-page PDFs and 20-minute MP3s.
Key 2 Law of Attraction – Lionheartedness
I am an expon
ent of the Universal Law of Attraction. I am an attractor and as an attractor I am interested in examining techniques that invite the creative power of this Law for the highest good of all. Notice here that the focus in using this Law is for the highest good of all. In fact the word “using” is not the best word. A better word is the word “allowing.” There is a deeper sense of connection to this Universal energy in a focus on allowing. This focus is beautifully summed up in the life purpose statement made my the modern mystic Guy Finley.
Your purpose is to allow Love to use you for Love’s Purpose.
One of the indigenous cultures that use this Universal Law is the Huna.
Huna is a name recently given to the healing and mystical practices of ancient Hawaii. An expert was called a kahuna, literally kahu-na “a keeper of balance”. Older names for these shamanic practices included ho’omana and ho’omanamana, meaning the making and use of mana or power.
They use this law in a sacred way and not the way in which it tends to be interpreted in the West, which is in the service of ego satisfaction. Using the Law of Attraction in this way tends to create a deeper sense of separateness which opposes the true energy of the Law of Attraction. They use a visualization technique which moves the energy of the lower chakras – 1st to 3rd chakra – into the energy centre of the higher chakra’s that are connected through the heart.
This visualization technique that is engaged for the purpose of an individual’s and community’s well-being is this – focus on connecting the personal to the non- personal. Focus on connecting the will of the individual to the will of the Divine. This is how it is done for the highest good of all. This highest good moves from the unmanifest into the manifest. The word “good” in the last sentence does not refer to morality but to the energetic moment of Love in action.
As a writer and a storyteller I focus my energy on writing. The focus of this writing is the invitation to the wild and precious life. I share this focus on the Internet.- the world connection delivered by technology. To do this requires many skills and many resources. It requires a lot of time and some money. Whatever money I earn is re-channelled into the work that I feel graced to do and to be graced to have done through me. I consciously practice a life of simplicity but I combine my technology skills with my heart skills to marry a unique blend of storytelling, heart song, poetry and practice to give you a banquet where you can feast on your life.
I earn the money for this work in various ways. One way is through the advertising on this site and blog. I am not a fan of advertising because most of it is focused primarily on telling you that you need a lot of things to make you happy. What will really make you happy is the focus not on things but the focus on no thing. The acquisition of many things is not a recipe for joy. I am for true wealth creation. I am for running your own business. I am for working from the Source of all Creation. The wealth I invite you to create arises from the knowing of your intrinsic worth. You are already worth more than the whole world. You need to learn to attune to this validity.
I write to promote well being. This is well being and not well doing. I am for doing well but this doing well is moved from the focus of Love in action and not from doing in order to prove you have value because you lack something. It is a very different foundation. It is a rock that does not move. I write articles (blogs) such as the one you are reading now , not to make money, but to break the spell you are under. This is the spell of separateness that is the primary cause of suffering in this world of time and space.
However, I do pay attention. I pay sustained attention. I pay attention to what I enjoy. I pay attention to what is arising in and through me and what is attractive in me. I do this primarily though paying attention to songs, poetry, metaphors, the stories and the images that are given to me to manifest. These are given to me. I don’t go trying to make them. They arise spontaneously and I am enjoying the creative potential that is available within these songs, stories and images. I don’t have to strain to create an image. I simply have to learn to give it the attention it is attracting.
This blog is relatively new. Today, I learned that I had earned the princely sum of thirty-eight euro. This seems nothing at all, yet to me, it is an acknowledgment that what I am giving I reciprocrally receive. Some of you might think that all the effort is not worth it. However, I practice simplicity and I am given so much that a lot of my time is simply spent saying thank you. I woke up this morning, which is often the beginning line of a blues song, but when I woke up at six o’clock this morning I had a clear image in my head. It is an image I call “Pennies from Heaven.”
This image of the Pennies from Heaven connects me in some illogical way to a song that I have returned to and once loved deeply (and still do). This is the song called “Listen to the Lion” by Van Morrison. I am listening to the lion heart in me – the Aslan figure in me. This song begins with and repeats the line,
and all my Love come tumbling down.
When the Law of Attraction works through you then the love from the higher centres (chakra’s 5th to7th) comes tumbling down into the lower chakras and moves upward and downward spiralling as in the figure eight. The number eight in numerology is related to material success and justice. There can be no real material success without justice. Is what you spend your time creating fair to all living beings and the environment?
Avia Venefica writing in her blog Symbolic Meaning says,
The symbolism backing number eight deals largely with business, success, and wealth. This is primarily due to the fact that Eight represents continuation, repetition, and cycles. Such elements are seen in arenas where success is obtained simply because of dogged determination and repetition by the practitioner. Also, matters of business and wealth largely depend on cycles to fulfill their manifestation. It’s like the snowball analogy: As it continues to roll, in gets bigger and bigger with each revolution.
Eight also deals with terrestrial and celestial energies that are in constant circulation from top to bottom and regenerate themselves. Or, better said, the eight represents primordial & prime energies – male/female, life/death, dark/light, etc. This makes it an ultimate balance symbol (think yin and yang) So where there is continuation, there is also evolution in all areas of energy – the either is an incredibly intense number as it embodies the concept of connectivity between polar opposites of energy
I love this image of Pennies from Heaven. I don’t have to put a lot of effort into visualizing it. It isn’t dollar bills but metaphorically speaking it is a stronger image because it has within it cascading gold coins. This gold is the energy of Love moving from Heaven (7th chakra experience) into the body. In biblical terms it is the request in the Lord’s Prayer to have the will of Heaven (Love) move into form (Earth). It is easy for me to visualize golden coinage. This represents the power of the circle which is always related to wholeness. it is falling from a blue sky. The blue sky always reminds me of the poem by e e cummings.
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
This
I thank you God for this most amazing day
is a key practice in connection to what is to be attracted and manifested within you. It gives you a feeling of celebration and prosperity. It becomes a habit and a way of living. It is not the way of distraction by incessant media advertising and entertainment. It is the focus and discrimination of choosing what you truly value and how you will live from the well being of your primary value and intrinsic worth. I choose this writing to place before you products and services that invite the lionheartedness in you and the Love that comes tumbling down.
So I am happy to be able to say, “Thank you,” to the two people who clicked ads that they felt relevant to their condition. I hope that it leads them to be in alignment with the attractiveness within them. This is so that you can share what it is you are here to be and to find joy and freedom in being. This is reward enough and returns to me in so many wild and precious ways.
If you want some lionhearted inspiration why not listen to “Listen to the Lion.” and come back and read some more inspired invitations to living the lionhearted way of attractiveness. Simply click on the graphic below and it will take you to a video of this song being sung. Turn it up loud, the way I used to and dance as you invite your love to come tumbling down. Terribly attractive.
Recommendations for Living the Lionhearted Life
In The Abundance Paradigm, Joe Vitale shows you how to make the profound shift from a paradigm of scarcity— in which you have “not enough” of the things you want and need— to a paradigm abundance— in which you have more than enough of everything, at all times.
When you make this shift, you move beyond the Law of Attraction to the little-known Law of Creation… and step into a world where you:
Align with the universe automatically… instead of working to make it happen
Manifest your desires spontaneously… instead of thinking about it
Get what you want immediately… instead of waiting for it to show up
In these six CDs, Joe guides you, step by step, through a series of extremely powerful techniques that will facilitate nothing less than a complete paradigm shift that happens in real time, while you’re listening!
OTHER GREAT CONTENT
Here is some other material that will further your personal and spiritual development and your understanding of the various stages of spiritual development.
law of attraction
SPIRAL DYNAMICS – Another map of personal and spiritual development for your consideration
SUPER CONSCIOUSNESS MAGAZINE – SuperConsciousness is an inspiring, content-rich, evidence-based science and spirituality magazine focused on exploring innate human potential.
THE ENTHEOS ACADEMY – Online teaching that integrates everything you might have wanted to study: from old school philosophy and spirituality to modern day positive psychology, nutrition, creativity, conscious business and general self-development–all the
Personal Development and Beyond
In the personal development workshop entitled “Living the One Wild and Precious Life” that I hold at various venues and festivals in Ireland I share with those who are gathered in the opening circle the following poem by Mary Oliver:-
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean–
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down–
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is is you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
The Harvard Review describers her work as an antidote to
in attention and the baroque conventions of our social and professional lives. She is a poet of wisdom and generosity whose vision allows us to look intimately at a world not of our making."
For this writer and storyteller, personal development is very often about expanding your personal sense of separateness. It is not something that we can add to ourselves; it is more of a gradual process of revelation. It is the slow revelation to ourselves of our own beauty and the wildness of who we are. Personal development and beyond is an endless journey into the wild and wondrous creation you are and what you are here to be and share with the world in your unique way.
If personal development is simply the practice of developing the ego in order that you get what you want and get more of what you want, the danger is that you will move into some form of attachment which will become habitual and move into addiction in some form. The writer and founder of the Creation Spirituality movement Matthew Fox states in his recording from Sounds True entitled “Radical Prayer” that as a culture we get A+ for both addiction and violence.
Creation Spirituality deeply aligned with the ecological and environmental movements of the late 20th century, with a focus on “deep ecumenism” that embraces numerous spiritual traditions around the world, including Buddhism, Judaism, Sufism, and Native American teachings.
Deepak Chopra writing in his book entitled “How to Know God – The Soul’s Journey into the Mysteries of Mysteries,” writes
It is no co-incidence that a wealthy and privileged society is so prone to rampant addiction
He continues
“— when pleasure becomes obsessive, the result is addiction. If a source of pleasure is truly fulfilling, there is a natural cycle that begins with desire and ends in satiation. Addiction never closes the circle.
The first three steps into the endless journey of the wild and precious life are focused on that aspect of being human called the personality. The personality is the sum total of the way in which life expresses through you. It isn’t life itself but the way that the life force flows and expresses through you. It is not who you are but the expression of who you are.
The first step on the journey into living the wild and precious life is the step of grounding. This first step is where you focus on being present and conscious to yourself as a time/space experience living in the body. This is where you focus on being present in the moment. This poem by Mary Oliver called “The Summer Day” is about the practice of being present, which is the foundation to the higher state, that in living a wild and precious life, this writer calls presence.
The work of being present is a most practical work. It is the most practical of practices. There are many ways to practice being present in the moment. The three key practices which I focus on in learning to live the one wild and glorious life are meditation, prayer and yoga.
In this work that I am graced to share with you I will be using a framework around which the whole journey of personal development and beyond has been mapped. This is known as the chakra system. These are the seven psycho-spiritual doorways into dimensions of living that are available to each of us. This chakra system is what the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung referred to as the process of “individuation.” The journey into the wild and precious life is not a thing to be attained but a process of revelation to be learned and lived from.
These chakras I will be referring to as doorways and in relationship to personal development and beyond I will be giving you guidance on how to use key practices to open these doors. I will be your guide to finding the key and to guiding you to the door.
Your work is to have the discipline, commitment and courage to cross the threshold into a more expansive way of seeing (6th Chakra) the world and living from that way of seeing as one who has real vision. This way of personal development is not a quick fix method. The knowledge about the chakras is very ancient. It has been preserved and developed in India. However, the chakra system of personal development is not specifically “Indian.” It is a process and a map of human personal development and beyond.
This framework I will sometimes refer to as “The Path of the Chakras.” It is path that has different names. One name given to it is “The Hero’s Journey.” You will recognize this path in many movie themes including the movies such as Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, The Wizard of Oz and stories such as Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Icarus and many others. This is the path to the realisation and the revelation of the wonder tale that sleeps within you. You are the sleeping beauty within but you are the one who is locked in a room that you believe is the only room – the only way of seeing the world. This room I call the room of separateness and it is where you feel that you are someone called a person living in a body in time and space and that you are subject to the limitations of this space time dimension.
While this is true on one level – the first room level – it is not true on other levels.I hope to show there is so much more available to you than you might ever, or could ever, imagine. So we will begin our journey with an open mind so that we might develop the ego to a point where is expands and continues to expand into the fullness of what I will refer to as the Self. This is an expansion beyond the aspect of personal development where the individual merges with the Oneness of Creation and becomes the revelation of wonder that creation designed them to be and which you are forever becoming.
OTHER GREAT CONTENT
Here is some other material that will further your personal and spiritual development and your understanding of the various stages of spiritual development.
life transformation
THE ENTHEOS ACADEMY – Online teaching that integrates everything you might have wanted to study: from old school philosophy and spirituality to modern day positive psychology, nutrition, creativity, conscious business and general self-development–all the
THE HERO’S JOURNEY – Video that outlines the personal and spiritual development called the Hero’s Journey
SEVEN STAGES OF SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION – n his spiritual evolution, man passes through different stages, each of them having some specific characteristics. Recognizing these characteristics can open the path toward superior levels which leads us to perfecti