storyteller
Having the Time of Your Life – The Work of the 5th Chakra
Having the time of your life is the work of healing and balancing your relationship to the 5th chakra. As a writer on spiritual growth and personal development I have climbed various paths toward what might be referred to as the light. It has been in climbing those steps, which are the stages of spiritual growth, that I have come to live in dimensions where I might honestly claim to have lived the time of my life. Are you living the time of your life? This is an interesting question and it more often than not leads to a kind of inner quest. It is the personal view of this writer that in order to experience the time of your life you have to live a paradox. This is the paradox of living beyond time while living within time. For anyone truly interested in time management as a way to organise their life then read on.
The work of the 5th chakra is connected to our relationship to time and the timeless It is connected to that dimension that in fairytales is known as twixt and in between. Time, unfortunately, has become a serious problem for many people. Many people are now experiencing what is referred to as “time poverty.” For many of us there are not enough hours in the day to achieve all that is required to be achieved despite all our advanced technologies. We might go on time management courses in order to learn to make more time, so that the more time we make, can be filled with more things to do. My personal focus on the practice of time management is to ask the question, “What do I intend to do with the time I save?” If all that you do when you save more time is fill it with more things to do the result is likely to be burnout.
The work of the 5th chakra is a paradox. It begins when you have developed the base triad of the chakra’s (root chakra, sacral chakra and solar plexus chakra) that are linked with the integration of the personality. When the base triangle of the chakra’s is integrated then you will be grounded enough, and willing enough, to begin to let go into the beyond of personal development. Because you feel secure in the lower chakra’s you well be comfortable in letting go of the idea that your life is your life. You will be willing to allow life to begin to move into being. The best way of having the time of your life is to connect to being. Being is your essence and not the frantic do-do-doing of your life experience that is attached to outcomes labelled success or failure. Having the time of your life is more about connecting to the timeless dimension of existence. The misuse of time is when you move away from your being.
In Ireland, where I was born and now live, our mythology reminds us of the dimension of the timeless. We as a nation tell tales about the Land of Tir Na Nog. This is the Land of the Forever Young. This is the land where time stands still. It is a representation of an attitude of being – a beatitude. It is were stories are told of the mortal man (usually it is a man) who is enticed to enter the realm of the timeless that is the Land of the Forever Young. This invitation usually comes from a beautiful woman. The sorrow is that these stores are simply taken as quaint Irish stories.
However, the word quaint invites us to truly understand the power of this invitation to the Land of the Forever Young. We have the word quintessence. This translates as quaint essence or that which is quintessential. This quaint essence is related to ether and ether relates to that which is twixt and in between. Ether is that element which is not and which is both at the same time. It is the formless becoming form and the timeless entering the realm of time. Do not try and understand this with the rational mind. One can accept the possibility on a purely intellectual basis but the experience is known though feeling the connection with that which is formless and that which is timeless.
This transitional twixt and in between element is connect to the throat chakra (5th chakra). Having the time of your life will depend on the degree to which you are able to connect to the timeless dimension. The rock star of the new spirituality, Deepak Chopra writing in The Book of Secrets: Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Your Life
1. If timelessness is a part of your being, the wish will come true spontaneously without delay. You have the power to play with time as you would any other part of your world.
2. If timelessness has a tentative relationship to your being, some wishes will come true spontaneously, others won’t. There will be delays and an uneasy sense that you might not get what you want. Your ability to play with time is shaky but developing.
3. If timelessness has no relationship to your being, it will take work and determination to get what you want. You have no power over time. Instead of playing with it, you are subject to its inexorable march.
In the third scenario the focus is on experiencing the time of your life tends to be ego based. You are the one who has to make it happen. If you are the one who doesn’t do what is needed then it doesn’t happen. The first scenario is where you really experience the time of your life and the action arises from the action of the true Self. Your life is in flow. As for myself, I am somewhere in between these outlines of the relationship to the timeless although I am closer to the first way in my relationship to time than scenario number three. The journey of The Way of the Chakra’s is the journey through all of these scenarios until the paradox is revealed that you are the timeless playing within time.
Your relationship to time is your relationship to your being and your essential Self which is beyond time and form. If you have no experience of this essential Self then your focus on finding meaning and purpose in your life will be dependant on the power of your persona to create such a meaningful life within this boundary of time and space. There will be the focus on the attainment of certain criteria needed in order that will you might experience living the time of your life. This tends to be related to the ability to be entertained and to be free of responsibility. It tends not to last, and for some, becomes a form of narcisstic self-interest.
To move into living the time of your life from a connection to the timeless requires trust. You are required to trust in what is unknown but which can be known, not in an intellectual way, but in an experiential way. Trust is the work of opening up the heart chakra, which then opens up the throat chakra and the connection to the quaint essence and the quintessential Self. Time is necessary in this dimension of everyday living in order to prevent everything happening at once. Time, however, can become your prison and for some their dungeon. I invite you to become aware of the paradox that is the experience called having the time of your life. It is when you allow the timelessness of who you are to be who you are.
What are the practices that invite the cultivation of a relationship with the timeless? The ones I recommend are some form of
Meditation
In each of these practices you learn that the practices are not about achieving or grasping for results. The practice cultivates the art of being here in the present moment. You learn to become focused on the moment and allow the moment to be what it is. Your relationship with the timeless is best is understood by the word holiday. This is real recreation or re-creation. You can experience this when engaged in the work that you do but this is an art that you need to cultivate. You learn to become an artist of time and in becoming an artist of time you begin to allow creation to be the flow of the timeless through you. This is the reason why you are created. This is the paradox contained within the idea, and beyond the idea, of having the time of your life. The paradox is that the more you are connected to the timeless the more time you have.
In researching the issue of time poverty I came across an article which lists the main reasons why we experience such poverty. It makes for interesting reading. Although it references America in this article time poverty is not something that is just American although I think that time poverty is more extreme there than in other parts of the Western world. This list of time poverty items is outlined by John de Graaf who is the national coordinator of TAKE BACK YOUR TIME, an organization challenging time poverty and overwork in the U.S. and Canada (see www.timeday.org) and a frequent speaker on issues of overwork and over-consumption in America. He is the writer of the best selling book What’s the Economy For, Anyway?: Why It’s Time to Stop Chasing Growth and Start Pursuing Happiness
Some common causes of time poverty according to John de Graaf
Shopping fever: Americans spend on the average about 7 times more time shopping as we do playing with our kids.
Swollen expectations: Our garages are now as big as starter homes were in 1950, and our houses are three times as big, even though our families are smaller.
Chronic congestion: Our roads, landfills are congested, and our bigger homes are so congested that many of us need extra storage lockers to hold all our stuff.
A Rash of bankruptcies: In each of the five years prior to the change in the bankruptcy laws, more Americans declared bankruptcy than have graduated from college, more in fact than were declared during the Depression.
Credit Card debt: This is a leading cause of students having to drop out of college. 60% of Americans feel their children are very materialistic. Kids are referred to by marketers as “consumers in training.” Marketers “own, brand, and capture” kids.
Resource consumption and industrial diarrhoea: we can’t environmentally sustain our highly consumptive life styles. While we have far more than we need, more than a billion people on the planet have far less than they need just to subsist.
The stress of excess: Most Western Europeans work nine full weeks less than Americans each year or one full year for every five that we work. They simply choose to produce less stuff per capita, to value time more than money.
Job Stress: Job stress costs our economy $200 billion every year. Americans suffer from “hurry sickness” brought on by overwork and time pressure. Americans get an hour less sleep per night than they need to function well.
Too little exercise and far too much over-processed foods: Our sedentary lifestyles and high calorie foods combine to produce an increase in obesity in alarming rates in both children and adults.
Less time with family than in the past: Compared with the 1960’s, Americans now spend 40% less time with their children.
Overwork or underemployment: These are two sides of the same coin, but the result for both groups, due to less time or fewer resources, is diminished leisure.
Threats to security: Time poverty leads to a frenetic sense of rushing and short-temperedness. Too little sleep contributes to this combination of fatigue and anger.
Threats to the environment: Time poverty leads to less time for recycling, accessing slow foods, or using non-disposable products.
Less participation as citizens: 33% of non-voters in America report that they simply don’t have the time to vote.
The real question that John asks of the economy is this: is it “possible to have a more just and people friendly economy and compete globally?” All of us who support the cultural critique outlined in Take Back Your Time believe that we must create a shift in thought across cultures in the U.S. toward a better quality of life that is sustainable over the coming decades. What images can be put in front of people’s eyes to present a better way of living, one that allows parents to be more involved in their children’s lives and have time for personal leisure and community involvement? Or, one that encourages everyone to live a life that is slower, more integrated and balanced, more environmentally friendly and respectful of the resources that are needed around the world? What images have always made a connection with the soul?
Read full article here
http://www.recreationtherapy.com/articles/okeefe-time-poverty.htm
Here is another article which suggests some key practices to avoid time poverty.
http://treelifecoaching.com/wordpress/?p=693
It is my intention to invite awareness of a very different relationship to time and the connection to what is essential. This essentialness is through and beyond the connection to the heart. The above list of issues is a cause for concern. This does not lead to happiness and having the time of your life. I leave you with a more peaceful and a beautiful piece of music together with images that I happened to find when I was researching for more information on practices that one could use to connect to the timeless. Simply take time out now, breathe into your body and allow the music to simple invite you into a state of relaxation. You have just read about radical time management. I invite you to the only time there ever is and that is the present moment. Take a moment to sit or lie down and allow the invitation of this music to a letting go into the time of your life.
The work of the 5th chakra is high work. It is essential and quaintessential work. It requires faith (as opposed to belief) in the power of the unseen that is that power which manifests all thingss into form. The real problem with time is not that you do not have enough of it but that you do not have enough of a relationship to the timeless that can create from thought in an instant. This gives you real power and the ability to manifest what are your true desires as opposed to your ego desires and the collective desires of the market. The awareness of your true desires cannot be revealed without your healing and balancing the heart chakra.
Give yourself time each and everyday to enter the present moment in a conscious way. Don’t approach this time with the idea of your needing to achieve. Let go of all the demands for some little time and make it a conscious intention to invite the opening of the heart and the inviting of direct knowing that you are really the timelessness of Love having a time bound experience. When you know and feel this then that truly is experiencing the time of your life.
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The Power of Poetry from The Bards in the Woods
Last Sunday I spent a day communing with nature and with friends. It was a day when we gathered together to read and recite poetry in the woods that are part of the Cavan Burren. This is an ancient landscape where people have lived for nearly 10,000 years.
In more ancient times the spirit of the woods would have been revered as would have been the poets and the journey of the poetic that takes individuals into the knowing of the timeless and the living connection to the stories from the Land of the Forever Young. The walk began at the car park with a poem by Mary Oliver eloquently read by Bee Smith. We walked a short distance where there stood a lone tree surrounded by a circle of stones. It kind of called out to me to recite from one of my most loved poems. This is the poem by e e cummings which begins
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 love to think that we might learn to live our lives attuned and in alignment with this poem. This is especially to recognise that the day you have been given could be a day that is spent giving thanks for what is alive within you and what wants to be fully alive within you. This is facilitated by being rooted in the body as represented by the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a mind at peace represented by the blue true dream of sky – a sky that is the infinite possibility within you and the everything that is ‘yes’ within you.
We walked deep into the pine woods to come to the fairy dolmen, which technically speaking is a collapsed portal tomb. This can be representative of a portal, a doorway to the otherworld. This is a portal to the experience of consciousness beyond the experience of death. It is the experience you are invited to know in the present moment and is guaranteed to let you know (beyond intellectual knowing) that you are created from and intended to live from everything that is YES.
At this portal tomb individuals read poems that they had written. These poems were astonishing for their depth of invitation. They contained images and metaphors that spoke to one on any different levels. It takes courage to read your own poem and I think it helps to know that the word courage means to enter the heart and to speak your truth through poetry out into the world. Such was the courage of the readers. Such is the courage needed to be one who becomes worthy of the title poet. As one of my favourite mystic poets, Hafiz, says
A poet
A poet is someone
Who can pour Light into a cup
and raise it to nourish your
beautiful parched holy mouth
–Hafiz
At this dolmen there was no honey to pour into the mouths of the participants but chocolate was left by a child within the group as a gift for the fairies – because they are renowned for liking chocolate. We returned to the main path and onto that part of the wood where there are examples of ancient rock art. There I recited a favourite poem by W. B. Yeats, “The Song of Wandering Aeongus.” Bee Smith shared one of Denise Levertov’s poems “The Life Around Us.”
No human saw the night in this garden,
sliding blue into morning.
Only the sightless trees,
without braincells, lived it
and wholly knew it.
There is a way of living and loving life that is beyond the rational intellect. There is a way of seeing that the sight seeing eyes cannot envisage. This seeing and this knowing is the invitation from the transmission of poetry. It is this transmission that was once the power of religion, which for the most part has become only words that leave one stranded in the dark wood of literalism.
Good poetry makes the universe reveal a secret
–Hafiz
Back again on the main track travelling higher we came to what is called a glacial erratic. In more everyday language it is a huge boulder sitting on a sandstone pedestal. Bee refers to it as the local Geopark Geologist’s Pet Rock. Here Bee read from Susan Griffin in “Forest: The Way we Stand.”
how we are both infinitesimal and great and how we are infinitely without any purpose, you can see, in the way we stand, each alone, yet none of us inseparable, none of us as beautiful when separate, but all exquisite as we stand, each moment heeded in this cycle, no detail unlovely.
This is a moment of truth speaking. It reminds us of the truth that none of us are as beautiful when we are separate, standing alone, interested only in me, myself and mine. It can serve to remind each of us that when we stand alone and together, we are exquisite as we are. Poetry can remind us that there are so many gracious individuals flowing through the circle of their lives, hoping to become kinder and more compassionate and inviting us to mine our personal heart of gold.
Poetry can introduce us to a kind of knowing where no detail of ourselves was created unlovely even at those times when we venture into the dark wood of the unloved self. We can travel into those ‘Timbered Choirs’ recalling the poem by Wendell Berry, whose cathedral spaces take us into a personal clearing. In this clearing, were no detail of ourselves was created unlovely, we can stand tall. Like those leaping greenly spirits of trees we find the courage to expand into living and loving the unique YES that is our very life’s presence. We are then able to say YES to the purpose that we were born to give to the world.
Finally the group came together at the Calf Hut portal tomb. This is my favourite ancient edifice. You can sit inside it and some of the group expressed the desire to stay inside this tomb at some later date for a vision quest. We finished the Bards in the Wood Poetree Walk with two poems. One by John Kinsella honours trees that have been stripped from the land.
Bee read “Why We Stripped the Last Trees from the Banks of the Creek.” and finally Edward Thomas’ “First Known When Lost.” This reminds us that often it is too late to appreciate what is in front of us until it is lost. This could well happen to Irish woodlands should the forests be allowed to be sold off to the private sector and walks in the woods honouring the trees might well become part of the past. We as members of the public would bcome deprived. It is interesting that ‘private’ means ‘to deprive’, which is what would potentially happen to the forestry land and public access.
We walked back to the car park slowly. We met with old friends and made new friends. We all agreed that this had been one most amazing day. The sky was not exactly bright blue but the ‘greenly spirit’ of the trees and the poems about trees left each of us inspired in our own way. We all agreed that we connect and will come together again for similar events, which are being planted for the future together with picnics in the woods. At the end of the day I felt tired but I can honestly say and invite you to live from the invitation:-
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
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Spiritual Growth – Keywords to Optimise Your Life: Joy
A Song of Springtime
When I wrote the spiritual growth article entitled “Spiritual Growth – Keywords for an Optimised Life” I did not realise that it would create such interest. My partner Bee had just finished her A-Z of Things to See in Ireland and was looking for some new writing inspiration. The idea of using keywords as a spiritual practice, allied with your core values, intriged and exited her to share one of her keywords that allows for the optimization of her one Wild and Precious Life. I hope you enjoy this guest post from Bee Smith.
This spiritual growth practice invites what I now refer to as Spiritual Energy Optimization (SEO). It is a play on the words Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is the name given to the technique of using key words and phrases in order to rank highly within major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. I have taken this idea and turned it around to invite you to use keywords in optimizing your spiritual growth.
Guest Blog by Bee Smith
I was greatly intrigued by the blog “Spiritual Growth – Keywords for an Optimised Life” and decided to take up the challenge to consider what keywords I would be plugging in to optimise my life. Two keywords popped into my head straight away. Love. Well, of course, love! This is what Mary Oliver answered in an interview about what she had done with her one wild and precious life.
To love and to be loved. And it wasn’t always easy!”
But once I dug a bit around the ‘L’ word I realised that one tiny three letter word is really key. And that is ‘Joy.’
Now the dictionary defines this as the expression of pleasure and happiness. It refers to ‘rejoicing’, a word that is redolent of childhood Christmases, for me at least. But when I put it to the ‘conscious choice’ test I decided that we may not always feel in control of our choices about love, but we do always have free will when it comes to joy. Joy may seem an odd choice in a world that is characterised by uncertainty and strife. You would be a rare person to have got to middle age without having had a significant loss whether from separation, estrangement, job loss, divorce, death or shattered cherished wish. These are all grief making circumstances. But if we get stuck in the mourning phase then we make a decision to reject joy. Our sadness becomes a conscious choice as much as Queen Victoria’s choice of widow’s weeds for forty years or more of widowhood. It is an attitude to be struck. It becomes axiomatic. Sadness becomes a ruling principle by choice. Yet we can choose to affirm joy even in a life that will be touched with sorrowful, even grievous, circumstances.
It was at such a life defining loss when I was confronted with that choice. I spent nearly a decade of my life trying to achieve a long cherished wish. As I approached forty I asked myself if I was going to define myself by what I did not have or to accept the wonderful gift of life and love that was already part of my life’s condition. I think it was at that moment – and I can remember when it struck me, the street I walked, the mizzling rain, the descending twilight – when I realised that I had everything I needed to be happy. I let go of that wish, which I had put a lot of time, effort and commitment into, and watched it drift off into the overcast sky. It was a very conscious moment. There have been other times in my life when I’ve had to make a similar choice, to embrace happiness in what is, rather than dictating how things must be in order for me to be happy or feel pleasure. This is not a case of sugaring the lemonade. More, it is like realising that salt in tears can be for sorrow or joy. But salt is what we need to savour life. This is an important distinction.
Most often joy strikes in moments of being when I am in a state of open witnessing. Sometimes this is a meditative space, whether I am staring out a window or walking the dogs. Once I looked up from my computer screen to see a flock of linnets sweep into the hawthorn outside the office window. This gave me great joy. Walking along the lane in a soft rain chasing rainbows on the way home fills me with joy. Sitting beside my partner in bed, each of us companionably absorbed in our own reading, fills me with joy. It seems that paying attention to these small moments, the details and ‘is-ness’ of daily life – soup making, talking with a friend, watching the little dog chase invisible flies, laying words and sentences across a computer screen. All are occasions of joy. To live is a constant occasion for joy.
Reflections on Spiritual Keywords
Where joy intersects love is when one realises that all these moments of joy are inside love – the nurture that goes into making soup, the deep satisfaction of a long, loving relationship, the blaze of realisation that gets shared in a piece of writing, the amused affection for the little dog, the expansion of lungs and breath when singing harmony in a group. Joy is what happens when you are deep in the skin of love and life. But to savour that pleasure you must choose to sup from the cup of life and love and choose joy. So if I was to say what one keyword – other than love, of course – to use as a search toward optimising life, joy would be the single most important keyword.
To read more of Bee’s writing you can visit her website at
http://www.irishblessingstours.com
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Spiritual Growth – Keywords for the Optimised Life – (A Series)
In order to promote the awareness of the various maps of spiritual growth and development I have put together a marketing plan that I intend to use to rank for a top position in Google for one of my key words and phrases. When I have proved the effectiveness of this marketing strategy then I will use this to rank for other key words related to the process of spiritual growth and personal development. Choosing the right keywords is essential for what is referred to as search engine optimisation, or SEO.
This SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the science of ranking for the No 1 spot in key search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. When I was reflecting on this approach to the importance of keywords it struck me that this is a practice that we could effectively put to use in ranking for the most important search energies in life. This is the search that many of us want to rank for. This is our search for at-one-ment with Love.
So it is that idea of keyword ranking that I have decided to do a series about what might be regarded as high ranking spiritual growth keywords. I will focus on the keywords that I use, and which I spread out into the world wide web of relationship in an attempt to rank in the search engine of Love’s becoming. Let me say at the outset that this attempt at ranking for keywords is not a competition but a process of revelation. There is a paradox within this process of revelation. What is revealed already is and ever shall be. I, like you, are a unique expression of Love’s intention. The purpose of this expression of Love’s intention is to know it’s own unique character. I am Love’s work and the work I am here to facilitate is Love’s knowing of itself.
It would be an interesting spiritual growth exercise to imagine that you became a professional SEO. I have played around with that term to come up with the idea of your becoming a Spiritual Energy Optimizer. Another way of looking at this practical way of searching is that you are already optimized for Love’s purpose! You are connected to the Source and your heart’s deepest longing is to return to that knowing and being at one with this Source. This Source is always ranking you as number one in its’ search for you
The world is full of words. The world is filled with people talking in words. There is no hiding from words. Everywhere you go there is an absense of silence. What is also absent is the essence that words are intended to invite and be allowed to radiate through you. Mystics are people of the essence. They are connected to what is essential. Their approach to words is to move ever more deeply into silence.
It says in the Bible
In the beginning was the Word.
Many people take this literally. They think that an old man in a white beard spoke the world into existence. They think that words in a holy book are the words that God spoke into the world. They think that they if they know the words that they know the experience of the Source of the words. Now, words are important. I hear the words that some friends speak into the world and their words create havoc in their lives. They live a life script (more words) written for them in their childhood; they replay this old script every day of their lives. It is their real ‘scripture’; it isn’t in any sense holy because it leads to a deep sense of separation from Source.
One of Buddhism’s precepts is called ‘right speech.’ It is a practice whereby you commit to paying attention to the words you use in everyday interactions. It means that you are committed to ceasing from gossip but it also goes deeper than that. You commit to paying attention and to become a witness for your thoughts and how your speech reflects your thinking. Various studies have shown that the average person’s mind is filled with 95% negative thought. For the most part, this is unconscious. We are back to the ‘script’ that is followed out of habit. The walking of the spiritual journey is to make the unconscious conscious. It is the work of making the destructive scripts that you play in you head into the holy and creative scripture that is your very essence.
It helps to be around people who are conscious and who are consciously aware of the power of words. It helps to be around people who use words that empower and expand from a sense of Love rather than from fear or for a need to control. In the end, you are responsible for your own words and whether they expand who you are or contract you into a deeper sense of separateness from Love. The key to this process is to be aware of what is contained within your mind. We are all script writers. Most everyday we write the same old script, which we replay out of habit. It takes courage to write a holy scripture that becomes aligned with essence – the essential Self. It takes courage to be willing to realise the power, beauty and grace that is potential within you. This potential is always awaiting to be birthed in new ways of creative expression. This process begins with the thoughts you allow to occupy your mind.
Are you feeding your mind with junk food ideas? What are the thoughts that you allow to enter your mind? Are you cultivating the Guardian at the Threshold through some form of meditation practice or body awareness practice? For many people the Guardian at the Threshold of their mind is asleep or has been shamed or disempowered. What keywords do you consciously put into your mind on a daily basis? I read mystical poetry most every day. These are words that connect me to the essence. Mystical poetry contains words of power, beauty and grace – all inherent in this experience of Love expressing through form. My mind becomes clear and my heart becomes filled with joy.
Is your mind filled with the latest news or celebrity gossip? Is you mind filled with fear for national security or the latest product on the market that you don’t have, nor have the means to buy? Is your mind filled with soap opera plot with the drama a 95% negative reflection of the collective mind? The choice is yours. In the opening to one scripture we are told that in the beginning was the Word.
The paradox is that this in the beginning never began and never ends because it never did begin in the realm of time. It is the forever becoming of Love. You are not separate from this process. You are created to facilitate it. In order to do that you need to become more conscious of your words and choices that your words invite. The result of operating from unconscious impulses is suffering. Outward speech reflects inner dialogue. Is your speech the speech of a lover? Does it reflect a healthy loving regard for yourself, which expands into a healthy, loving regard for others and expands more deeply into the knowing that Love is who you are and why you are.
But to get back to being a Spiritual Energy Optimiser. Choose your keywords consciously. Pay attention to how they allow you to rank for the number one position. In this case that position is the at-one-ment with Source. Remember too, that this is a dialogue. As the German mystic Miester Eckhart tells us, “Love longs to know you just as much, if not more so, than you long to be the knowing of Love.” You and Love are never separate although we may go through life for the most part feeling separateness from Love as your primary life experience.
So, choose your keywords well. Make this choice of words a spiritual growth practice used for the purpose of optimising your life. Focus your life around those keywords that lead to your expanding your awareness and the direct knowing of your essential Self. Commit to revealing the essence of the keywords you choose. Align those keywords with your core values. Sometimes your ranking will slip down the scale. Yet in the end, which is also the beginning, your focus will become more about how to help others rank for the number one position. Your focus will tend to expand into a point where there is less of your and more of Love. Your focus then becomes on how to assist the revelation that every individual is here to become as a unique expression of Love in form.
Prepare for this to be a slow process. There are search engine optimisation experts who will tell you that you can rank highly in the search for at-one-ment by simply accepting their keywords. This is basically how authoritarian figures – whether religious or political – operate. Metaphorically speaking, this is what is called a ‘black hat technique’ to rise in rank as opposed to what search engines designate ‘white hate techniques.’ In matters of spiritual growth it is essential that you become your own authority.
You are responsible for what you allow to enter your mind, which then impacts your body. The demons and gargoyles that are carved at the entrance to churches and cathedrals are symbolic representations of the Guardian at the Threshold. This is the guardian of sacred space. This sacred space is the space of your mind, which is also the sacred space that the One Mind expresses through you. Consider your mind a cathedral space. Consider yourself the keeper of that space. You are the one that allows the light to shine through the stained glass windows of the body’s chakras. The choice is for you to decide to maintain the sacredness and the sanctuary of the mind? If you choose to do so then then you make that sanctuary available to others whose threshold guardians are sleepy.
The essential keyword that you are here to rank for is your name. This is not the name that you are called by in the everyday world. It’s not the name listed on your birth certificate. This is your existential vibration, your unique signature created by Love from beyond time and space. This is your Heavenly name known to all the angels.
When you search for it in the search engine of Love your work is to ensure that it ranks as at-one-ment. Pay attention to the words and images that you allow to enter the sacred space of your mind. Choose to make those images and words loving, inspirational, purpose-filled; allow your threshold guardian to be vigilant. Awaken this Guardian within you and align it in service to the highest good within you. Make this Guardian within available to serve Love’s purpose, which is, of course YOUR purpose. It is in this way that you become a superhero in your own right living from the direct knowing of your true name.
Remember too – this is not a competition. Using keywords as a spiritual growth practice is a win/win situation. Even if you never get to the No. 1 spot you are, paradoxically speaking, always No. 1. You have never left that No. 1 spot because you never left that place. You can never be separate from the Creator that is forever creating forms that are Love’s unique expressions through you, within your space and time dimension. I’ll be continuing my spiritual energy optimisation techniques for my life and also applying them to my website. These are SEO techniques and practices that will will reveal themselves as No. 1 – but not in a narcisstic, self-centred way but in an existentially centred-Self knowing. I intend to write a series about the keywords that I use in my own life. This would be with the intention of sharing the essence of such words. In this way I hope to demonstrate how one can maintain the sacred space of the mind and perfume it with the beauty of the language of the heart.
I hope that you will help me in my search and my search engine optimisation. Search engine optimisation is important to any writer trying to promote their work. You can do this by simply tweeting this article or sharing it with those who you want to optimise with Love. The retweet button is to the right of this post ending. Thanks for the support. This allows me to share the invitation to the radiance that is always potential within you and which you are birthed into form to realise and share as the true gift of who you are and why you are. If you like the material contained in this blog you might wish to sign up for the weekly newsletter that contains material that does not feature in this blog that invites well-being in all areas of your one Wild and Precious Life. This FREE weekly newsletter takes you through a series of maps of the spiritual journey from various traditions. The sign up box is at the top left of the page.
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.
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SPIRITUAL THEMES IN YOUNG ADULT BOOKS – Many young adult books can provide the spiritual information young adults need to assuage the loneliness of their passage; some of the possibilities are presented here.
INFINITE BEING – Spiritual metaphysics articles to help spiritual seekers find inspiration, love and creativity through heart-powered consciousness.
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.
Root Chakra Healing and the Atonement with the Father
Root chakra healing includes our relationship to security. One key issue around security for many people is the issue of money. The root chakra is, however, related to abundance. Abundance, as I have written before in this blog, is the way in which the individual is in alignment with and allows the life force to flow and freely express through them as it is intended. Abundance is not simply an issue about money and wealth. One might be extremely wealthy but from an energetic point of view they could be the living dead.
I have issues around money. Some of my more materiality focused friends have asked me if I have ever taken a vow of poverty. In a very real sense part of me did and finds it hard to let go. My Reiki master tells me that in relation to this issue I should cut the ties but not the love. I have always resisted that advice and now at the age of sixty one years I am getting ready to do what I have resisted. This willingness to let go has been prompted by a dream I had last night. In this dream I am running with another man. We are running in a wide open field. He is supporting me. He lets me go and says that I must now run on my own. This dream man is a kind of mentor.
I have root chakra issues I need healing around the issue of my father and money. The longer I live the more loving of him I become and my focus on what we had together is now more on gratitude rather than on loss. I realise that in many ways I am very like him. I used not to want to be anything like him. Now I appreciate who and what he was and the best of who he was. In some way that begins to mirror how I feel about myself.
I have an image that I keep in my mind that connects me to my father and my relationship to money. This is an image that I do not want to let go off. It is one image that when I recollect it connects me to my love for him. Even as I remember this recollection now a tear comes to my eye. My father was a working class man from the tough side of Liverpool in England. He fought for the rights of the working man. In his heart, however, he was an artist but he was forced to work at a job that was essentially soul destroying. He made money wherever he could and worked all the hours that he could in order to make ends meet. I never remember us, as a family ever going without except that I always remember going without the love I longed for him to express to me but never did. He was not a demonstrative kind of man. In that sense he and I are not alike.
My remembered image of my father takes place late one night. I had come down from my bedroom to use the bathroom. There was a light on in the living room and I look in. My father sat at a desk counting money. He was counting union dues from the men whose rights he upheld as their union representative at the place he worked at for most of his life. I remember most of all that he looked tired and sad. I remember too that I wanted most of all to take away that tiredness and sadness because of my intense love for him. He wasn’t aware of my watching him. I didn’t disturb him but left to go back upstairs to bed.
That memory connects me to him still, and in healing the root chakra and the sense of abundance, I have begun to let it go. I have, as my Reiki master advises cut the ties but not the love. This image is one connected to working in the dark late at night. It is an image of counting little sums of money that becomes a symbol of the men who, in a very real sense, are fighting for their souls. My father becomes a kind of guardian of that energy. I don’t want to let that go of this image of him but in a sense it keeps me tied into a relationship to money that does not serve what I am here to serve.
Like my father I am a union man. I am a writer who invites the ultimate union. I do not fight for this union. I invite surrender rather than fight. I pay my union dues through the spiritual practices that are part of my real work in the world. I work in the dark out of choice. I choose to work in the shadow lands of the human mind. I choose to do and practice dreamwork. I work to align the invitations from my dream life into the life that I express in this everyday world of form
Root chakra healing is about healing your sense of security. Money and security are deeply related. As a child my images around money are ones about struggle, doing work you hate, not earning your livelihood by giving up what you would love to do. It includes images of counting pittances that allow a struggle for the rights of the working man to go on. All of these images are a representation of my father doing his best with the situation that he was presented with. There are many such fathers in the world who are doing their best.
The question for me is how do I run on as the image of the dream invites me to do. It invites me to run into the wide open field. In this regard I am reminded of a poem that invites union within a field. It is by my beloved Rumi.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.—Rumi
The answer is that I let go the connection to the images of struggling in the dark with too little light. In order for root chakra healing to take place I let go the images of struggle but not the love that is and was inherent within that struggle. I change the image to one of honouring what was given by my father even if it wasn’t given in the way I most wanted. My father was a provider. He wasn’t a lover. He was too wounded by the blight of his own fathers alcoholism and the times through which he lived. Although in a way I see how he, in his own ay, late into the night, worried and sorrowful, risked for Love in ways I am privileged not to have to do.
Atonement with the father is root chakra work. It is the work of healing the roots of your family dynamic that will in all likelihood impact you throughout all of your life. I am beginning to open up to a real sense of abundance. I have learned new skills that I intend to take into the marketplace. I have learned new skills that I will take into my community. My community is everyone who reads this blog and all the various healers who are connected to each other through an invisible thread of intention.
I am intending to bring a union of the masculine and the feminine into the world of healing in the way I seem most graced to be able to do. This involves the work of teaching technological skills to healers so that they can promote their work to the world and in the process learn to integrate the power of the masculine as represented by the Goddess Techne with the power and grace of the Divine Feminine. This is my work. It is soul work. It is work that I am able to do and in doing it I am able to honour the sacrifice that my father made on my behalf and others so that we might be more empowered to follow the life we love. My father eventually got to do the soul work his heart longed for. He founded an art club that is still in existence long after his death.
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Here is some other material that will further your personal and spiritual development and your understanding of the various stages of spiritual development.
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KARMA TUBE is a collection of inspiring videos. This website brings inspirational stories to light, using the power of video and the internet to multiply acts of kindness, beauty and compassion
SPIRITUAL THEMES IN YOUNG ADULT BOOKS – Many young adult books can provide the spiritual information young adults need to assuage the loneliness of their passage; some of the possibilities are presented here.
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.
Stages of Spiritual Growth – A Series of Reflections
There are many maps of spiritual growth and many steps along the spiritual journey. Any one map will take you into the experience of the wonder you are intended to become. Unlike the assertion from many in various religious traditions there isn’t simple one way up the mountain of personal and spiritual development.
Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old,
Seek what they sought.
Matsuo Basho
Some of the maps that I find inviting and encouraging within my own spiritual growth experience include:-
- The Way of the Chakra’s.
- The Way of Love.
- The Way of the Spiral.
- The Way of the Lodge.
- The Way of the Road.
- The Way of the Hero (including the way of the Heroine).
- The Way of the Seer.
- The Way of the Force.
Each of these maps allows you to become aware of the vastness of the potential that lies dormant within you. The benefits of having a map of the spiritual growth process is that
- You know at any time where you are.
- You are given a sense of direction.
- You have a starting point from which to begin.
- You have the confidence that the road has been travelled before.
I will be compiling a Newsletter that will focus on all of the maps above and more. Each of these maps will become a complete reference source for any one who wishes to find a sense of spiritual direction. These maps will allow you to give up following old worn out paradigms that are destructive to oneself and to the collective called humanity. Let me begin by giving you an over view of the main stages of spiritual growth that are understood by the map makers of the spiritual journey.
The stages of spiritual growth are divided into the stage called the personal and the impersonal. You can call these two stages the development of the human and the revelation of the Divine. Each of these stages are represented by a triangle and the work of spiritual growth is to integrate these two triangles into a star. This is the star you are here to be and to shire. The base triangle of the personality involves the integration of the body, emotions and the will. The upper triangle which points downward has to do with the allowing of the purpose, intuition and revelation of the Divine will. What connects the two triangles is the heart. This is the work of bringing Heaven to earth. It is the work of bringing sacred unity into direct awareness within a body living in time and space.
One aspect I return to again and again is that the journey of spiritual growth is, in the words of the modern mystic Eckhart Tolle, through the body and not away from the body. The experience of spiritual growth is the play of energy within the body and the play of sexual energy within the body. For far to long sex has been seen as a sin of the flesh and not the blessing it is intended to be. Much unnecessary suffering is caused by sexual shaming, body shaming and other forms of shaming. Shaming is a killer and kills the spirit within the body. This in the words of the modern mystic Andrew Harvey speaking in the Sounds True recording Radiant Heart, “Has got to stop.”
The stages of spiritual growth I invite you into are stages of body awareness. This is body awareness that takes you into the experience of feeling sexy and feeling alive in a delightful way and into radical self acceptance. This is acceptance of the myriad of feelings that are your way of being able to express your needs and more importantly give you the ability to express your gifts. Whatever map of spiritual growth you choose to follow your life’s direction by it is best to start the journey with your feet on the ground. The way to do this is to begin each day with a very simply body awareness exercise. This allows you to follow the deep spiritual wisdom contained within the words of the poem by Mary Oliver. I personally use this within my own spiritual growth process. This is the spiritual direction that tells you
You only have to allow the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
The problem is that the soft animal of your bod has all too often been taught that it’s free flow is wrong, it is shameful, it is not quite nice or has been demonised by religious teachings’ and hidden under a form of cultural repression. This creates what is called body armour. The body loves attention. It loves conscious attention that is given without judgement. This conscious body awareness exercise teachers you to become a master of subtle energy within the body. Over time you become more sensitive to the subtle energy messages that come from the body. The body becomes the guide to your direction home. You begin to feel more grounded. You have your feet on the ground and you have a sense of your own direction. You become an expert in living your one wild and precious life. Again the poet Mary Oliver helps tremendously here when she writes in the Journey.
The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.Mary Oliver
Listen to the inner body. Let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. To assist you in this matter I have found a guided meditation that you can use to learn this art of body love and appreciation. This is a free guided meditation that you can download. Gift yourself a step in the right direction. Listen to the voice on the guided meditation that invites you to listen to the only voice that can truly unfold the wonder of who you are. This begins within the softness of the body that has shed the body armour we all use to protect ourselves. Let this softness develop within you and in time you will access the still small voice within. Here is a body awareness meditation that gives you some idea of the process.
Learn to use modern technology in service of spiritual growth. This will allow you to learn this technique in the comfort of your own home and deepen into the comfort of your own soft animal body that knows how to love what it loves. Bookmark this page (Control D) as it is my intention (when I finally resolve the recording issues) to record a mediatation to take you on the first step to higher ground.
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Here is some other material that will further your personal and spiritual development and your understanding of the various stages of spiritual development.
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SOUNDS TRUE – Tools and teachings to spark your inner evolution. Download FREE spiritual development podcasts from inspirational teachers
OUR ULTIMATE REALITY – The new de-facto reference for how to achieve your own Spiritual Growth as you travel your own Spiritual Journey along your own Spiritual path as we enter a crucially important era for all mankind
SELF HEALING EXPRESSIONS – Browse various articels related to topics such as Spiritual Soul Mates, Life Purpose and Dream Interpretation