Personal Development and Beyond – Embracing the Shadow
The world of personal development and beyond is a great adventure but it is not simply the journey into an experience of having everything you wish. This might be the wish of your ego but it is rarely the call of your soul. The soul is not some ‘thing’ that is improved upon or something to be perfected. You can improve on something but you cannot improve on the nothing that lives as the eternal potential to be and is everything. Does this mean we are to do nothing? The answer to this question is the answer to many spiritual questions. The answer, “Yes and No.” Real personal development and beyond requires practice, commitment and discipline. You are practicing, not so that you can be improved, but that you can be revealed. You are a revelation. You don’t make that revelation happen. What real personal development is doing is creating space for that which is beyond and that which is impersonal. Nothing is lost in this process except the idea the you are someone living separate from the whole of Creation.
One of the issues that one meets along the personal development and beyond journey is the issue of the shadow. This is a term given by the soul friend Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist, to those aspects of ourselves that we disown. Most everyone has a shadow. This writer certainly does and meets with its power on regular occasions. This is frightening and if it does not scare you or make you feel uncomfortable then it really is not the shadow self. My shadow issues centre around violence, emotional abuse, neglect and alcohol. All of these are aspects of my personal shadow. Because I am graced the knowing of what it is to be at-one-ment, it does not mean I live as one who always feels whole. There have been and will always continue to be wisdom teachers who are, what Jim Marion in “Death of the Mythic God calls, “cognitively enlightened” but not emotionally enlightened. In making this statement I am not in any way claiming to be enlightened.
I have, for the most of my life, walked this world with a sorrow that is unsaid. I was taught that it was OK to be happy. In fact that was the one thing that was insisted upon. So I buried all the sorrow I felt inside. It was not by accident that I am drawn to sing and tell the in-depth story of the Irish folk Song “She Moved Through the Fair.”
My young love said to me,
My mother won’t mind
And my father won’t slight you
For your lack of kind”
And she stepped away from me
And this she did say:
It will not be long, love,
Till our wedding day”
As she stepped away from me
And she moved through the fair
And fondly I watched her
Move here and move there
And then she turned homeward
With one star awake
Like the swan in the evening
Moves over the lake
The people were saying,
No two e’er were wed
But one had a sorrow
That never was said
And I smiled as she passed
With her goods and her gear,
And that was the last
That I saw of my dear.
Last night she came to me,
My dead love came in
So softly she came
That her feet made no din
As she laid her hand on me
And this she did say
It will not be long, love,
‘Til our wedding day
This song is my song. I am both the young lovers. I am the one who has the whisper of eternity and comes to tell him that it will not be long till the time that the mortal me will be wedded to this experience of the eternal now. I am also the one who, in the call to personal development and beyond refuses the call to this experience of sacred unity. I am the one who is scarred by dreams of its invitation. I am the one who chooses to avoid the beyond aspect of personal development, I have, however, over a long time, learned that this restistance is something that happens. The more powerful the call to the surrender to the young love that represents the highest potential within you the more the shadow appears.
Personal Development needs Resistance.
What people tend to do when they see the darkness arise within themselves is to run the other way. This is natural to the ego but it is the refusal of the invitation from the soul to grow. It is often through resistance that personal development in alignment with higher consciousness grows in us. The Hindus call this resistance samsara – the world of suffering. One, as a hero, journeying into Love takes this stuff of resistance and uses it to turn the lead of separateness into the gold of at-one-ment. This is the true wisdom of the spiritual teaching
Resist not Evil
If you follow this call to personal development and beyond will your life be more comfortable? Again, the answer is Yes and No. There are several stages along the journey into personal development and beyond. There is a three-fold process at every stage. There is the stage of birthing, the stage of living and stage of dying. Along the journey, what once assisted you in the development of the persona, now becomes a resistance. Does this mean you should despair? Only if you think you can do nothing about it. At a point in the process there is stream entry. This is where you know who you are and that the Universal intelligence that brought you into existence is Love and will not now let you go.
Personal Development is not always Sweetness and Light.
Personal Development and beyond is not a journey into all that is sweetness and light. You are already that. You don’t make yourself sweet and loveable because this is who you are. What you do is practice working to transmute that which is unloved within you into that which is Love. The real work is not done when everything is going incredibly well and when you are patting yourself on the back for all the goals you have set and achieved. When life is going incredibly well you are drinking, metaphorically speaking, from the wellspring of your connection to the One Source. This is living water. What happens when you sup at this wellspring is that you give it away. You have power. You have energy. You have vision. You share. You have faith in this sharing.
If this wellspring arises from the true source of well-being, which is your connection to the Source, then you will be grounded. This does not mean your life situation is not difficult. It means that the ground upon which you have your being in form is known. Does this mean you won’t have shadows appear in your life? No, it does not. The shadow energy within you is very powerful. It is powerful within this writer. I suspect it is the powerful within all writers. Writing is one way in which I invite the seeing of such shadow aspects of myself and the way in which I facilitate the personal development and beyond journey. Storytelling and story writing is also a way in which I have invited the dance of shadow within. This has been a long and noble tradition throughout all world cultures. We see this happening in all great movies, the contemporary way of carrying on this tradition.
In my personal shadow are issues of shame, anger, rage, violence and other lesser invitations. When they have sought to overwhelm me I have looked for, and asked for support in many ways. The hardest part of this process is often overcoming the resistance to saying and admitting, “I cannot do this on my own.” The ego does not like this one little bit. The moving through this resistance of feeling the shame of personal weakness becomes a true experience of personal development. So the sorrow that never was said is often the sorrow held within the dynamic of the family, the community, the nation, the world. When you, as an individual, take it upon yourself to integrate the shadow within yourself you become the proverbial black sheep of the family. This is the meaning of one of the more difficult passages in the Bible where one of the greatest black sheep that ever lived said,
Unless you hate your mother and your father you cannot follow me.”
This statement comes from one of the greatest wisdom teachers who has lived in form as the invitation to the birthright of knowing you are the flow of eternity. What is he saying? Should this teacher of Love have been arrested for inciting hatred? All families have shadows. This includes the family called the nation. It, too, has a shadow. To grow in Love is to move beyond the family script. It is to transcend the conditioning of time and culture to come into the flow of who you are and not what you have been made to be. To do this takes tremendous courage. To do this means to step outside the fold and become what I call an Outsider.
Personal Development places you Outside the norm.
The Outsider is a sort of shaman. They take on the shadow of the family, the community, the nation, the world. The greatest shaman was the wisdom teacher Jesus who took on the world shadow. This process is called Christing and has little to do with what would be called christianity (please note the small ‘c’). For a full explanation of he journey called Christing there is no better read than Putting on the Mind of Christ
To truly engage with personal development and beyond is to know resistance and to develop the way in which you can work with resistance but not deny it. It is to know that personal development is something of a paradox. You are invited to learn and to keep on learning. In this Personal Development and Beyond blog and related website I invite you to lean all sorts of things – poetry, storytelling, songs, geancannach (love talking) – but they are not inviting you to be an improvement on who you are.
In this journey of personal development and beyond be very kind to yourself. As it says in the wonderful poem Desiderata by Max Ehrman:
You are a child of God. You have a right to be here.
You are the creation of the Mother/Father source of Love. It created you for its own joy. Very often it feels like you are very far away from such an idea, let alone such an experience. However, that never changes the truth of your existence.
As it says in A Course in Miracles:
Nothing real can be threatened,
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God
Personal Development and Beyond has a different Embrace
Remember to be of good cheer. Practice kindness to yourself. You are not alone. All those who have journeyed through the personal development and beyond, which is a kind of death of the ego, are with you and ever will be. What appears dark now is never dark in eternity. You are given a great opportunity to live as a light worker. Only you do not do this by denying the dark. This is an aspect of personal development work that is not widely enough known about. One of the best books written on this subject is by the writer Debbie Ford who writes in Dark Side of the Lightchasers
Embracing The Shadow
The process of embracing our shadow side calls us to uncover the gifts and receive the wisdom hidden within each and every aspect of ourselves, particularly the ones that we are ashamed of or embarrassed by. Rather than viewing our weakness, our smallness, our insecurities or our rage as enemies or as obstacles to moving forward in our lives, this process guides us to embrace our so-called defects as the powerful teachers that they are. The Shadow Process is founded on the understanding that every quality, every emotion and every experience comes bearing great gifts. Once we learn how to uncover these gifts we become the powerful masters of our lives. We develop the ability to transform thoughts, beliefs or situations that once held us back into fuel for our spiritual evolution and the manifestation of our dreams. Embracing our shadow allows us to reclaim the power we once gave away. When we are at peace within ourselves, our self-esteem no longer depends on the approval of others. Our own sense of self-worth is no longer at the mercy of how other people feel about us. When we receive the gifts of our dark side, something truly miraculous occurs. Our wounds are transformed into wisdom and the parts of us we once believed to be our deepest flaws are revealed as our greatest assets.
This is the integrating shadow process that is understood in mythological stories as turning lead into gold. It is the paradoxical experience that what one often most resists is what really takes us into the beyond of personal development. We are no longer seeking to prove that we are someone because of our achievements but we have revealed to us what is truly miraculous within us. This is the knowing that we are not separate from the power of Love that created us for its own joy. This is the paradox of the shadow within the journey of personal development and beyond.
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
SUPER CONSCIOUSNESS MAGAZINE – SuperConsciousness is an inspiring, content-rich, evidence-based science and spirituality magazine focused on exploring innate human potential.
SOUL PROGRESS – Wonderful articles on spiritual life and spiritual living including the most sought after goals for individuals walking the spiritual path
SPIRAL DYNAMICS – Another map of personal and spiritual development for your consideration
101 Ways to to Transform Your Life
I am in the business of life transformation. I love to write articles where I invite you to you find ways to transform your life. I recently came across a blog by a wonderful young woman who writes a blog entitled The Personal Excellence Blog. Frankly speaking, the woman is inspired, and she has inspired me to try and follow an idea that she presents at her blog. I have one rule in this regard. While I might take an idea that someone else has used I will take that idea and use it in my unique way and with my unique style. I have, therefore, written what I consider to be a kind of 101 ways to transform your life. I have given this list a more poetic title. This title is a line taken from the poem Summer Day by Mary Oliver and follows a major theme of this blog which is the power of poetry to transform your life.
So here is my intention. I am going to list below what I think are 101 Ways to Transform your Life. They do not come in any particular order of importance except for the first two items. I have had fun listing these 101 Ways to Transform Your Life and I am going to have even more fun. I hope that you will join me in this adventure. I am going to commit to writing an article on each of these 101 Ways so that you can journey into the adventure of your Wild and Precious Life. At the end of each of these articles there will be the ability to print out the article so that you might like to file these away and keep them for reference. Included in these 101 Ways are practical ways.
Below is listed 101 Ways. Some of them might seem strange when you first read them. I have designed these to tempt you to engage you imagination. I have written them in the style that reflects this blog and its related website. This is the language of the heart and the invitation to the deep hearts core. Some of these lines are taken from poems that I love and some from song lines that I love. Those of you who know my writing style will know that I am strongly influenced by the great poets of history and the song writers of today.
If there are any of these ways that appear at odds with the theme of this blog related to Personal Development and Beyond do not be concerned. Behind these unrecognised Ways to the Wild and Precious Life are ways that will be revealed. I hope that you have fun imagining what some of these Ways might really invite. Why not bookmark this page to come back to it on a regular basis. Simply press ControlD.
101 Ways to Transform your Life
- Risk all for Love.
- Let the Beauty that you are be the Work that you Do.
- Follow you dreams for the Dreamed of Life.
- Listen to the still small voice within.
- Be practical – Meditate.
- Get on course.
- Turn your life around.
- Find your life’s purpose.
- Live from presence.
- Let the beauty that you are be the work that you do.
- Steal Away.
- Find your archetype.
- Become a hero or heroine.
- Trust the process.
- Watch spiritual cinema.
- Turn off the TV (best off all don’t have one).
- Be practical – Practice Divinity.
- Become truly attractive.
- Practice the Gentle art of Blessings.
- Understand spiritual life cycles.
- Understand levels of consciousness.
- Be Practice – Become a Disciple.
- Forgive your parents.
- Learn one poem by heart.
- Build a heart house.
- Learn to fly
- Give up addiction.
- Turn lead into gold.
- Be Practical – Retreat.
Give priority to your soul.- Give of yourself each day.
- Live a riddle.
- Go on a pilgrimage.
- Create ritual space.
- Be Practical – Judge not.
- Grow your own food.
- Find a community you can commune with.
- Tell your family story.
- Celebrate your birthday.
- Be Practical – Be Grateful.
- Be seasonal.
- Learn anger management.
- Take a walk on the wild side.
- Buy a Stairway to heaven.
- Go on a quest.
- Get yourself a life map.
- Understand time.
- Learn to breathe.
- Develop your intuition.
- Become an author.
- Feel your feelings.
- Engage in holy communion.
- Reclaim your projections.
- Come to your senses.
- Be Practice – Know what mental health is.
- Learn the Real Secret of the Secret.
- Be Practical – Live from your heart values.
- Be wild and dangerous.
- Learn what to do on waking.
- Build a monument and leave a legacy.
- Live with a symbol.
- Connect to a fairytale or myth.
- Become a person of notoriety.
- Don’t say there is no water at the well.
- Spend time in the timeless.
- Teach what you would love to become.
- Picture yourself.
- Go on a date.
Find a soul friend.- Become a revelation.
- Give up being a victim.
- Understand depression.
- Be Practical – Understand money.
- Contact your angel.
- Hug for life.
- Understand men.
- Understand women.
- Fight a dual.
- Find out who you are.
- Live beyond the personal.
- Find opportunity in crisis.
- Live from intention.
- Become a hunter.
- Commute a life sentence.
- Tune in and tune out.
- Use your hands.
- Be sensational.
- Spend time with children.
- Stop and stare.
Connect with an animal.- Become a talking point.
- Give up logic for bewilderment.
- Sing a universal song.
- Get drunk on wine.
- Wear a symbol.
- Let there be not regrets.
- Be Practical – Die before you die.
- Write a scared contract.
- Be awake when awake and asleep when asleep.
- Give yourself utterly away.
I wrote this list in about twenty minutes. I made the point of not censoring any idea that arose unless it was too much related to a previous idea. I will write an article on each and everyone of these items as listed When the item has an article attached to it will then the colour will change. Some items on the list may well become a series of articles. Some might be short and others are really the work of a lifetime e.g. men understanding women and visa versa.
Because this is an off the top of my head (and a kind of off the top of my heart) list I may well change one or two items. I will do this if I feel that the content isn’t of the quality I like to give to my readers. However, following having written this 101 Ways to Living a Wild and Precious Life I was so entranced by ideas that flowed that I began another list. That will be for another time.
I am not going to tie myself to a timescale other than make a commitment to honor the fullness of this list in the best way that I can and in the shortest period that I can. I would hope to do an item on a daily basis but there are items here that I would love to explore in more detail and in exploring such items share them with you over a longer period of time. If there is any particular item on this list that intrigues you and you would like to have it outlined in more detail then I might be able to share that item with you privately until such time as it follows the series as above. With each of these items I will try and link either a poem, a fairytale, a story of myth, a movie or a song. I might add any number of these items to anyone of this list items. I hope that this 101 Ways to Live a Wild and Precious Life becomes a resource for learning to live from an integrated way of being in the world.
I hope that we can have some fun together and learn in the process to live the Wild and Precious Life you are here to live and to utterly give away as the blessing in form that you are created to be. There are ways to ensure that you can follow the progress of these 101 Ways to Live a Wild and Precious Life.
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Feel free to share this blog post in anyway that you wish. I only ask that you keep it as it is written and make reference to this blog and its related website. I now have my work cut out but it is the work that I love and the work that I love to share with you. I hope that you are encouraged to stay and become the wild and precious revelation you are intended by Love to become and live a life filled with meaning and purpose. It is hoped that when you invite life transformation that you through such action of transforming you life that you then are able to give the gift of your one wild and precious life for the greater good of all. Let it be so.
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
SPIRAL DYNAMICS – Another map of personal and spiritual development for your consideration
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
The Stages of Personal Development from Midlife and Beyond
In order to live your full wild and precious life, from midlife and beyond into the 2nd half of life, you to be aware of the stages of personal development. You need to develop the persona or what is known as the ego. To live a life of meaning and purpose is to engage consciously with personal development to the point where the ego expands into what is beyond the ego. This expansion has been called by the mystic Joseph Benner “The Impersonal Life.” This impersonal life has nothing to do with the experience of emotional coldness. The fully lived life is the union with that which is both personal and impersonal. The paradox of the fully lived life is the extent to which you give your life utterly to that which is beyond your idea of the separate sense of self you call the personality.
There are many maps to guide you in through the stages of personal development and beyond that have been given throughout the history of human development. In this blog and its related website this Irish writer and storyteller will be concentrating on those stages of personal development life that hold such potential during midlife and the 2nd half of life. These are the stages of life from anywhere beyond the ages of your late thirties and early forties until the time when you leave the vehicle of the body that is within this time and space dimension.
There are many ways of viewing the work of personal development and beyond and I am going to begin with a very simple structure that has been recognised within various cultures throughout the world. This structure is more easily recognised in the lives of women but is no less important in the lives of men. This is a three tier structure that is an easy to follow stages of personal development map.
Woman Man
Maiden Master
Mother Father
Crone Warrior
The names given to the stages of personal development and beyond for men are names that this writer and storyteller has chosen. I have chosen them more as a reflection of the names given to the stages of personal development and beyond as reflected in the life stages of women. Throughout this blog and its related website the third stage of the human development cycle will be given more poetic names. The crone cycle in women will be referred to as The Dangerous Old Woman (DOW). This reference is taken from the audio recording by the storyteller and Jungian analyst Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes. This audio recording is available from the Sounds True catalogue of inspirational teachings. The warrior life stage in men I will refer to as the Wild Old Wicked Man. (WOWM). This is the title taken from a poem of the same name by the Irish poet W.B.Yeats. The word wicked in this context has nothing to do with being evil. The wickedness referred to here is the courage to become all that you are here to be.
There are many personal development blogs on the web. These focus, as the name suggests, on the development of the personal. These cover various topics that are important to what I will refer to as the first stage of life. This is the stage of personal development where the personality is being carved out of experience following adolecence. This is the age from around eighteen to twenty one years through to the late thirties and mid forties. For most people this is a period of career development and a full on working life. It is the building of a family and the acquisition of an identity that you learn to establish. During that time you acquire many skills that are needed to develop you in all kinds of ways.
The kinds of skills that are needed in the first half of life might include all or any of the following as being recognizable personal development skills:-
Time Management
Goal Setting
Positive Thinking
Financial Management
Organisational Skills
Relationship Skills.
Each job will have its own set of skills that one can develop and which in learning such skills will develop the personality. This development is encouraged by the media, the educational system, business and the culture. There is more than enough information available on these early stages of personal development on various personal development blogs and websites to give you material to develop the persona for several lifetimes. This is information that is to be valued and used.
This will assist you to in moving through such early stages of personal development. These skills are necessary to the first stage of life. For the woman that is the stage that transits late maidenhood toward the later stage of motherhood. Note here that you do not have to be a mother in order for this information to be of value. The first stage of life for the man transits the period of the late young master to late in the cycle of the father. Again you are not required to be a father in order that the material in this blog be of benefit to you.
I have concentrated the invitation from this blog and its related website on the stages of personal development called midlife and the transition from the midlife stage into that stage of life called the 2nd half of life. I have chosen to do this because it is a transition that our culture does not handle very well and this leads to much unnecessary suffering and can include the ending of long term relationships during these stages of life. It is my purpose and my passion to illiviate suffering in any way that I am graced to do so. This is essentially through writing and storytelling.
These stages of personal development are well mapped periods of transition within indigenious cultures. These periods of transition had recognised rituals and practices that ensured that the individual moved through these life stages into the fullness of the wild and precious life they were gifted to share with their community. The important thing to recognise for many of us living today is that we are all living longer. Future generations will, through the benefit of modern medical science, live to be over 100 years old. This means that the second half of life can become a wondrous opportunity to live a long and precious life. This will be a life that gives you the opportunity to live with the power and the expansiveness of the Dangerous Old Woman or the Wild Old Wicked Man dynamic.
However, while this powerful and expansive dynamic is available to each and everyone of us while living in a body of a certain age there is the issue of what is called the period of transition. This stage of personal development is often experienced as the midlife crisis. Beyond the midlife crisis there is the transition period called the menopause. This transition happens in the lives of both men and women. These cycles of life are driven from beyond the personality. The midlife crisis is a call from the soul as is the transition for the man or woman who is moving through the menopause into a different life cycle.
In each of these phases, or cycles, there are changes happening for the individual on many levels. These include:
Physical
Psychological
Emotional
Spiritual
Cutural
All these levels need to be taken into account in order to move from one cycle to another. In any given cycle there is going to be resistance. Resistance is a form of birthing. It is likely to be painful. This pain is to be acknowledged and not denied. The real problem is not the birthing of the new but the still brith of the new. This is because we are afraid of leaving what is known. To avoid this transition from one stage of personal development to another. We refuse to journey from the first half of life through midlife into the opportunity of a deeper stage of development. It is to avoid the opportunity of development of the persona into the radiance of being.
The focus of this blog and related website is to provide you with an awareness of the cycles and stages of personal development and the physical, psychological and other levels of change inherant within such cycles.
The other intention is to show you what kind of life is available to you should you choose to have the courage to move through such stages of personal development with conscious intent.
Then there are the practices that assist you in moving through these cycle. These practices are a different kind of technology. These practices that I will share with you are what I call sacred technologies. They work to reveal what is sacred within you and what will sanctify you and allow you to enjoy a real experience of sanctuary. This is a sanctuary from the rollar coaster ride that is often experienced within these periods of transition that most people resist.
Whenever it is appropriate to do so I will share with you my personal experience of these periods of transition. It is my experience that it helps tremedously to know that what you are experiencing is not something that makes you a terrible person. This can cause you to isolate yourself. By sharing my own experiences I hope to show that it is a natural stage of personal development and beyond. It just happens to be one that is not spoken of because of fear and shame. It is the loss of that which is known and thus is associated with loss of control. The good news is this. That which is beyond the persona is vast. It is infinite potential. It is the opportunity for the culmination and the harvesting of what is truly valuable within you. It has the potential to take you into dimensions of human experience that you cannot imagine but that you can be the knowing and the living.
One major aspect of the movement through personal development stages in the 2nd half of life and beyond is what I will call the contract. Personal development and beyond requires intention, commitment and practice. This is the holy trinity of the evolution of consiousness. These three are needed to prepare the ground for the wild and precious life that is intended to be lived through you in the 2nd half of life. This is not a luke warm commitment. It isn’t something that you fit in when everything else is accomplished and when you happen to feel like it.
The revelation of the wild and precious life that comes to fruition in the Dangerous Old Women and the Wild Old Wicked Man is not for those who are lukewarm. In this blog and its website I will be giving you practices and invitations that, if you pracitce them, will allow your life to be graced in ways unimagined. Such a grace requires solid ego boundaries and with such grace comes tremendous responsibility that is best exercised with humility.
You are a Dangerous Old Woman or a Wild Old Wicked Man in training. This training harvests the gifts and talents that creation birthed in you beyond the time of your birth into form. These gifts are not necessarily the same as those skills you learned in the first half of life. The skills that equip you in the first stages of personal development are not the skills that will assist you in the transition between midlife and the 2nd half of life. You might consider this writer and storyteller not as a personal trainer, but your impersonal trainer.
Through this blog I train you in the practices of transition. I train you to connect not to the finite within you but the infinite within you. I train you not so much in the practice of time management but the direct knowing of the timeless within you. I train in the practice of revelation. As an impersonal trainer I train you in directly knowing that you are not only loveable but you are Love incarnate.
The difference between a personal trainer and an impersonal trainer is that most of the work is not about gain but about letting go. There is one central aspect to this impersonal training. In a word, one that will be repeated through this blog, the central technique to learning to live a wild and precious life is the practice of trust.
I essentially train you in trusting the process of becoming who you are intended to become. Through this blog I will mentor you to trust the cycles within you and the deep heart’s core within you.
As an impersonal trainer, a trainer beyond personal development, I don’t add anything to you but share sacred technologies that reveal the power, the grace and the beauty of who you are already.
This grace, power and beauty is who you are and always will be. The quest I, as an impersonal trainer, invite you on is one of revelation. This revelation of who you are deepens as you integrate the various stages of personal development that life invites you to live and to Love. Are you willing to claim your birthright as a person and being of such grace, power and beauty? It is my hope that you make this quest a truly heart felt intention. It is my purpose and my passion to keep inviting you in full knowledge of the outcome. This is no better illustrated than in the words of my own impersonal trainer.
Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving — it doesn’t matter,
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow a hundred times,
Come, come again, come.- Rumi
Another key aspect of integrating the stages of personal development and beyond is the aspect of forgiveness. Even if you have broken your committment one hundred times you are still to come back again and again. This transition into the 2nd half of life is not a caravan of despair. You are being invited here into the beauty of who you are and ever will be. You are to forgive your so-called mistakes. This being able to forgive is an essential stage of personal development and beyond. You are to forgive the fact that you will resist the process. However, this is not a licence to indulge your resistance. Your work is to become an alchemist of love. You become a true magician. You learn to change the lead of doubt into the gold of trust, knowing the glory of who you are and who you are always becoming.
If you are so intent then one step you can take is to subscribe to the ‘Personal Development and Beyond’ Newsletter. This will keep you connected to the true potential within you. It will help ground you in the opportunity that is available in the second half of life. It will help your transition during the period of midlife that is often filled with more crises than is acknowledged.
It is my purpose and passion to assist in the flowering of the beauty and grace you are here to be. In that sense I am a kind of midwife. I assist in the birth of the beauty and grace that creation in its love of its creation (which you are) birthed you into form to celebrate in this time and space dimension called the human experience. This birthing and flowering happens within all the stages of personal development and beyond. However, it is important to know that what you love in one stage of personal development often becomes the very resistance to the movement into the next stage of personal development and beyond. It is this resistance that is necessary for the birth of the new within you. Understand this and it will go some way to your avoiding unnecessary suffering.
If the time is not right for you at this moment to make a commitment to your personal development and beyond then you might like to bookmark this page. Simply press Control+D and this will allow you to do so. Let me finish by saying thank you for taking the time to read this far. I hope that we might meet again on the pages of this blog and that together we can build a world where the Dangerous Old Women and the Wild Old Wicked Men can become elders to the young who so need inspired leadership and courage to become all that Love asks to be birthed within them.
Let it be so.
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.
midlife crisis
BLISSITATIONS – At this site they are committed to making it easier, more enjoyable and more effective with guided meditations, visualizations, affirmations and other goodness to help turn your meditation into Blissitation!
THE SOUL JOURNEY – Spiritual growth programs guide you on The Soul Journey. It and many spiritual ebooks will support your growth by developing more soul consciousness.
TIME OUT FOR TRUTH – This spiritual wisdom podcast and website explores the great truths of the ages, and authors like Vernon Howard, J. Krishnmamurti, Gurdjieff and Anthony de Mello.
Characteristics of Fairytales and The Wisdom Voice Within
The personal development and spiritual guidance available from fairy tales has been lost in our adherence to the logical linear mind. We have, both individually and collectively, lost contact with the wisdom voice within. As a consequence when we have life experiences that take us into our personal dark forests we are left without a guide. We are literally out on our own. However, the wisdom voice is never lost. In many fairytales and folktales from around the world we are instructed how to access this voice of destiny and its guidance in finding our life purpose. One story that tells about the power of the inner knower within is the story called Vasilisa the Beautiful. This is a Russian folktale also known as Baba Yaga. Baga Yaga is the archetypal Dangerous Old Woman.
In a far off Tzardom, there lived a little girl who was so lovely that she was known as Vasilisa the beautiful.
When Vasilisa was eight years old her mother became ill and no doctor could cure her. Just before she died, she called Vasilisa to her bedside and told her:
‘My dearest Vasilisa, do not weep for me, but listen carefully to my words.
I am leaving you this little wooden doll, which my own mother left me; you must never show it to anyone.
Always carry it with you wherever you go. It will help you whenever you are in trouble and comfort you when you have no one to turn to.
When you need help, go somewhere quiet and give it something to eat and it will tell you what to do.’
In the story of Vasilisa the Beautiful the heroine is lonely. This is often the case with those most in touch with the beauty of who they are. They are forced to live alone. This does not mean that they do not have a family, that they do not have a job or a career or are surrounded by friends. In this modern day culture of acquisition, and possession by acquisition, the one who lives from a sense of beauty is often left to experience this alone. The paradox is that they are connected to this beauty through a sense of All Oneness. Rather than feel alone they feel all one.
This extract from the tale of Vasilisa the Beautiful leaves out an important part of the mother’s instruction. This instruction is relevant to our own lives. It is relevant to the way in which we can develop, what this writer and storyteller refers to, as the knowing within. The mother, who is deeply connected to her child and to her ancestors, tells her daughter that she must give the little wooden doll some little food and some little drink. When this is done then her daughter will be able to ask questions that the doll will then answer.
Here we see the importance of tending what we feel is wooden within each of us. We are instructed within this Russian folktale to nurture that which might seem not alive within us. This gift from the archetype of the good mother, representing unconditional love, is wooden because we do not give her the attention she needs to be able to speak to us. The more attention we pay the knower within the more it can guide us through our personal dark forests. We all go into our personal dark forests at different times during our journey within time and space. Many of us, too many of us, perish there. This is not a literal kind of dying. It is the psychological death of meaning. The quest for meaning and purpose to life is at the heart of all fairytales and folktales that are read and told throughout the world.
The death of meaning is a major issue within our Western culture. It has been a major issue through the journey of humankind. Like Vasilisa the Beautiful we have to leave the domain of the good mother. We leave behind the world of the child and we venture out into the world of everyday existence. We are asked to grow up, and if we are fortunate, we grow into the beauty we are intended to be and to express within this world of form. If we have had some half decent parenting then we will have been encouraged to trust our unique sense of knowing. Then we are able to feel a sense of confidence in the intelligence that arises within us and which guides us to living with a sense of meaning and purpose.
The characteristic of this Russian folktale is the invitation to trust the still small voice within as represented by the wooden doll who knows the answers, would that we attend to its needs. Most of us have starved our inner knowing. This is in large part due to our present educational system. This inner knowing, however, never dies because the wooden doll cannot die. This inner knowing is not simply a question of acquiring more information. The small still voice within is the wisdom voice within. More information tends to be partial while wisdom, by its nature, is a way of seeing beyond opposites. It solves problems. It gives direction because it arises from a higher level of consciousness. As the scientist and mystic Albert Einstein said,
A problem cannot be solved by the same level of consciousness that created it.
The small still wisdom voice within accesses higher levels of consciousness provided you pay it attention and feed it through awareness. This means that you fill this aspect of your being with awareness and in this way honour its potential to guide you on the true way. This is best done on a daily basis. One of the best books that I have read about the characteristics of fairytales is entitled The Wisdom of Fairytales and is written by Rudolf Meyer. In this book Rudolf Meyer writes “The characters in fairytales lead us to discover the treasures of our own souls.”
Fairytale characters are representations of the journey to meaning and life purpose. The real meaning that gives life purpose is the ability to be able to express the creative and beautiful way in which creation intended you to be its expression in a unique way. Meaning and life purpose are found in expressing your gifts in the fullest way that you are able. This ability to give of the way in which creation designed you to express through you is what is beautiful within you and is your real treasure.
Another wonderful book that uses fairytales for personal development and spiritual guidance written by Lorna Catford PhD and Michael Ray PhD is The Path of the Everyday Hero. In this book we see the power of fairy tales used as strategies to finding ones true creative spirit. In this book we find how we can relate to the character of Percival who quests after the Holy Grail. We find how, in this story of the quest for the Holy Grail we can ask questions that give us our true meaning and purpose. In the fairytale of Beauty and the Beast we discover how this tale can teach us to create loving relationships. In Cinderella you get to explore the values beyond material wealth that will enrich your life and allow you to live your one wild and precious life.
This is the real invitational power of fairytales. They are great stories for spiritual guidance and personal development that most people overlook. They celebrate the imagination. They help you live your life with a path that leads toward greater joy and fulfilment. They are realistic. Even though many fairytales end with the words
and they lived happily ever after
that phrase has a different meaning than the one that we might associate with Hollywood movies. In fairytales and folktales you are always asked to travel the road of trials. This is not a punishment although it is a trial. It is the journey of the soul into the arena of higher lovemaking. At the end of the fairytale the hero or the heroine brings back the gift that they have found. This is a metaphor for the finding of the treasure that is within you and that you are heroically willing to gift to the world out of a realisation of Oneness.
Ashes and cinders in
fairytales are code words
for the ashy, sooty depressed
“out of time” experience. – Robert Bly
At the end of the story of Vasilisa the Beautiful returns with fire that flames from a human skull. This is the symbol of the fire of your creative imagination to light your way through the dark forest. This power can be frightening to those who live in the sooty, depressed out of time bound life. You meet with such people who will tell you that the work of the creative imagination is the devil’s work. You meet with the depressed and the sooty who will tell you that you are a sinner and that your life has no worth unless you become one who mouths some magic spell. Julia Cameron, the writer of the Artist’s Way, calls these ashy and sooty people crazy-makers. They will drown at birth any creative potential you care to share with them. This is why the mother tells Vasilisa not to show anyone the doll. This is why the poet Goethe advises in his poem the Holy Longing,
Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
because the mass man will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.In the calm water of the love-nights,
where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you,
when you see the silent candle burning.Now you are no longer caught in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher love-making sweeps you upward.Distance does not make you falter.
Now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.
And so long as you haven’t experienced this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth.- The Holy Longing - Johann W. Von Goethe
In the beginning, when connecting with the still small voice within, tell only the wise person or keep silent. This is a private and a tender flowering of your beautiful creative potential. Guard it from those who would criticize its unfolding and stay away from those caught in the obsession with the darkness of the separate sense of self and who are not insane for the light. Don’t give it to some religious group consciousness that will bind it and have you feed some other idea of who you should become.
Fairytales map the journey of most of the challenges that any one of us will face throughout the time we live in form on this planet and this dimension of polarity. Some tales include the whole journey into meaning and purpose. Such a story is the German folktale Mother Holle. Others cover the stages of Love as in Skeleton Woman. There are many stories told that show you the ways to integrate within you many of life’s challenges. These are not just stories for children but for the person who desires to find the treasure of living a meaningful life filled with purpose, passion and prosperity.
As a writer and storyteller I use fairytales and folktales for personal development and spiritual guidance. It is through their instruction that I practice listening to the knower within. This is the wisdom voice within me that I feed each day I feed it by trusting in it and nurturing its flow from within. There are characteristics within fairytales that hold true for all cultures and all times. This is why they remain as true teaching stories.
Your life story is not a fairytale. It is, however, a story that follows the characteristics of a great many fairytales and folktales around the world. Storytelling is the way in which we learned long before we were tied to a classroom. You are both the Beauty and the Beast. You are the one who has locked Sleeping Beauty in the tower which is the tower of the intellect. You are the one who keeps her asleep and you are the one who is invited to kiss this beauty within you awake. You are Visalia the Beautiful who is able to feed and nature those wooden aspects within you that come alive in a way that is beyond your intellectual understanding.
The choice is yours. You can choose to feed the wisdom voice within. You can learn to ask questions that guide you to a life of meaning and purpose. You can connect to the knower within that enhances the presence of beauty within you and allows you to follow true spiritual guidance and further your personal development and beyond. Otherwise you can leave the inner knower to starve to death. In various tales through the world the result is the experience of the wasteland. This is the metaphor for a life lived without the beauty of meaning and purpose. I invite you to take the path less travelled and learn to be the knowing that arises from the still small voice within.
Let it be so.
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.
inspirational storytelling
SPIRITUALITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION – The study shows student life is enhanced if students engage in “inner work” through activities such as meditation or self-reflection
STAGES OF PERSONAL GROWTH – This article describes four levels or stages of Personal Growth — social accomplishment, psychological growth, spiritual progress and transformation.
NIGHTINGALE CONANT – Dowload inspirational personal and spiritual development podcasts for FREE
Personal Development through Mystical Poetry
One of the unique aspects of this blog and its related website is its focus on personal development and beyond through the use of poetry. This is the use of mystical poetry to invite the experience of living the “wild and precious life.” It is the invitation to meet again the one who has loved you all your life and the one who knows you by heart. The one who invites you to feast on your life.
Ben Okri, Booker Prize-winning author of The Famished Land writes in A Way of Being Free,
The inklings of poets are the forgotten adventures of God.
It is the intention of this writer and Irish storyteller through this blog and related website that such inklings are not simply forgotten. It is my intention that this invitation from mystical poetry be a way of remembrance of the grace and beauty that is your essence. The intention is to provide a way to overcome the primary cause of suffering in this world of form. This primary cause stems from the individual and collective idea of separateness. This is the idea that we are human beings living lives separately from the Creation that is the movement of One Being.
Creation speaks to poets and artists. This makes them different but this is not to be confused with making them better than you. Their words are invitations to personal development and beyond. They invite you to the adventure of living as the divine paradox they know you to be. This is especially true of mystical poets who have at some stage been graced a glimpse of what is beyond this limitation of living in time and space. It is a glorious limitation for all that.
The language of poetry is the language of the heart. In this blog you are not asked to consider the structure of poetry. You are invited to learn how poetry can instruct you in being courageous enough, focused enough and committed enough to become the one who takes the journey of the Hero and lives from the power and grace of their one precious life for the highest good of all. Living the Hero’s Journey means being willing to live the revelation you are here to be and to surrender your will to Love’s purpose as it is intended to manifest through you.
Let me illustrate how poetry can invite a life life of purpose and spiritual direction. Here is an extract from a poem I recently discovered in poetry anthology entitled The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart.
Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt – marvellous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart
and the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.
from Last Night by Antonio Machado
translated by Robert Bly
The metaphor of Last Night is about our old life, which is a life of dreams and especially the nightmare that causes suffering. This is the suffering of the separate sense of self. This sense of the separate self in a very real sense is a marvellous error. It is the process in this dimension of time and space that awakens us to the sacred unity that is Love.
In this poem the poet is sleeping and dreaming. This is the sleep of the ego self dreaming of its separate existence from the one Self. Yet it is never truly sleeping. The heart is always awake to some degree. If this were not so then the body could not live. No matter how distant one feels from the All One, the All One is never distant from its creation and is forever creating for the joy of creating. This is the activity of making sweet honey from what is the experience of opposites. This is the work of aligning and healing the 2nd and 3rd chakras. It is the process of unifying what we identify as our old failures.
The beehive in the heart is the place of the 4th chakra, the heart chakra. This is where one begins to transcend, but not feel apart from the personality. It is where one begins to feel integral and the energy of the personality and the energy of the divine begin to make sweet honey. This is then made available to feed the parched mouths of those who are living in this world as busy bees but who are unable to taste the sweetness of their lives.
The work of the Way of the Chakras is the work of making sweet honey out of our old failures. At higher levels of consciousness we alchemise those old leaden failures, those old judgements, those old conflicting opposites within us, into a form of gold called honey. Writers, and others who work in the sphere of personal development, very often invite such alchemy. However, for this writer and storyteller, it is the mystical poets who occupy a very special place in his heart. These are the real honey makers of the world. These are the mystical poets who can invite you to live with life purpose and passion within the space of five short lines. They take me, and I invite them to take you, into the magic of what the poet Rumi calls The Heart House.
Take some lines from a poem and learn them by heart. This doesn’t simply mean learn them by rote. Rote learning was the way that I was taught poetry as a young man and the way in which I was turned off poetry until much later. This is the way that poetry is still being taught in local schools here in Ireland. Poetry is the language of the heart. It is the invitation to align the lower chakras with the higher chakras. It particularly aligns the 4th chakra – the heart chakra – with the 5th chakra – the throat chakra. This then gives you the ability to speak your joy and your truth. You are then able to articulate into form your hearts vision.
Intend that you become a golden bee. Not simply a worker bee who is always busy. The symbol of gold in storytelling is always an invitation to the golden child within you which is the revelation of your sacred unity with the divine. It is the realisation beyond the marvellous error of separateness. This sacred unity begins in earnest when you begin to realise that you have a beehive in your heart. You begin to feel that you are living in a promised land flowing with milk and honey. This is a land that exists, not in the outer world but within. The paradox is that this honey is made from the processing of all your old failures.
Personal development is not just about you. it is more about your inviting the unity of the personal and the impersonal. When this begins within you then you become the golden bee you are here to be. If you are looking for a sense of spiritual direction then you can feel a sense of safety by inviting those golden bees called mystic poets to come and pour honey into your dry mouth. This is the mouth that is dry because it lives in the desert of the separate sense of self and rarely, if ever, gets to drink from the living waters of true well being. These mystical poets come from all traditions and none. Let me conclude this blog post with a reading from one of my dearest soul friends who is constantly feeding me golden honey from the great Heart House.
Mystical poetry invites you to awaken at dawn for another day of loving and living the “wild and precious life.” Let it be so.
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.
mystical poetry
SPIRITUALITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION – The study shows student life is enhanced if students engage in “inner work” through activities such as meditation or self-reflection
THE SOUL JOURNEY – Spiritual growth programs guide you on The Soul Journey. It and many spiritual ebooks will support your growth by developing more soul consciousness.
STAGES OF PERSONAL GROWTH – This article describes four levels or stages of Personal Growth — social accomplishment, psychological growth, spiritual progress and transformation.
Levels of Consciousness – Heart Wisdom
Many people go to university but never get to know the experience that the original universities (wisdom schools) were designed to invite. This is the direct awareness of the universal Self. Professors were once those who had the ability to profess and the ability to prophesize. They were once seers who saw reality beyond this time and space dimension and initiated their students into this way of seeing and into the knowing of heart wisdom. The origin of the PhD doctorate was about the discovery of the new within the heart. Research was about connection to the eternal Source. It was an institution of learning, not so much about, but the direct experience of revelation from within.
You can spend your whole life within centres of higher learning and never discover who you are or why you are. You might learn much about a subject matter but never have the direct experience of what animates matter. You might never know the beauty, power and grace of how the universe moves through you and intends to create through you. The university of today is not the wisdom school of old but an institution designed to produce, not the initiated, but simply good corporate citizens who can do an effective job in the workplace.
University graduation suggests that you have a certain kind of intelligence. This is not to say that this intelligence is to be demeaned in anyway. It does help, however, if you are made aware that this intelligence is not the only form of learning and is not what would be called wisdom. In order to live the wild and precious life you need to be able to feel connected to the universal intelligence that creates form (meaning you as a body) from the formless. This is not achieved simply through more information but through inner knowing. Buddhists refer to this kind of knowing as insight. It is a form of revelation. It is a way of seeing and can include the physic ability of prophesy. Thus you become a real professor.
You are under a spell. This spell that you are under is wonderfully represented in the movie called The Matrix. The central character in this move is an individual who has an intuition that the world he lives in is not quite all that it seems. There are guards in this world referred to as agents who are on the look out for people who wish to escape the hold of the matrix. The matrix is a place were machines feed of the energy of humans. These machines represent the mechanistic linear logical mind. This is the mind that lives in the world of time that is believed to move only in one direction and that what cannot be proved by science does not exist. This linear logical mind is called rational consciousness. It is the level of consciousness that presently exists within our higher educational and political establishments in the Western world. It is a level above what most people in the world are now living. This is the mythic magic level of consciousness. This is the level of consciousness that gives rise to fundamentalism in all its forms.
Most wisdom teachers are inviting the direct awareness of what is called vision logic consciousness and above. More and more leadership in all sorts of fields are being driven by this level of consciousness. It is out of this level of consciousness that many of today’s seemingly insurmountable problems will be resolved. As the mystic, and father of modern science, Albert Einstein remarked,
Problems cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them.
Vision logic consciousness is not about more information. It is a way of viewing the world. Those at the vision logic level of consciousness have taken the red pill and awakened from the tyranny of thought and learned to dwell, if only for some little time each day, in the silence beyond thought and are willing to trust the way that still small voice within this silence guides their actions. This is the experience of the mind beyond thinking about. Vision logic consciousness is global in its interest. It is capable of grappling with global problems because its vision is beyond the limitation of the nation state. It is real intelligence in the sense that it is universal in its focus.
The vision logic consciousness is not so much about ideas and more information. It is more holistic. It is not focused on some idealism. It takes many view points and makes them one. More to the point it sees the whole. Vision logic is the result of the integrated personality. It is the integration of the first three chakras. It is the first level of consciousness where it can be said that there is integration of body, mind and emotions. This is a wonderful way to live in the world but like all levels of consciousness it has its downside.
Within this level of consciousness you can attain great worldly success because of this integral persona but you can also find that the world of success leaves you feeling empty of meaning and purpose. You are out on your own because for the vision logic conscious person there is no comfort in going back to the lower level of mythic magic consciousness. That way is closed and would, in any case, lead to despair. The only way out is up which is into what is called psychic consciousness or witness consciousness. This is the movement into the heart and into the consciousness that transcends the mind and offers peace beyond understanding. The practices that invite the opening of this level of consciousness are meditation and prayer.
This is not prayer to a mythic Sky God but contemplative prayer when you learn to be still and become the knowing of who you are. This is the experience of being universal Love that is not apart from you but is the knowing of who you are. When you are graced this direct knowing then you have truly graduated to the universal. You know beyond doubt that the universe is your home and that it is a friendly place. There is no program of learning this wisdom that exists within any higher educational establishment that I know. The reason for this is that such universal knowing threatens the matrix. It would break the spell of the separate sense of self. This wisdom makes you your own authority. You then cannot be controlled by religious, political or cultural authority.
We now live in an age where we have available to us all kinds of teachings centred around the use of sacred technologies of the mind. These were once only available to a few. Now they are readily available to anyone in the Western world who wishes to avail themselves of such real education. Avail yourself of some real universal education, which is the education from within, and which is beyond the sense of the personal self. You know you are accessing this universal wisdom when your heart begins to sing and there is joy in the experience of the discovery that is unfolding within you. In this way you become a true initiate rather than simply a graduate. The initiate is one who has glimpsed what is beyond the rabbit hole and begins to see (profess) the end of suffering. They become one who breaks the spell of the agents who maintain the matrix of separateness. The collective self then is threatened and the world as we know it ends.
This does not mean the end of the world in a physical sense but the end of the way in which the world is viewed as a collection of separate things rather than the sacred unity that is its essence. This is the end of time as we know it as the only dimension within which Mind is able to create. This ends the species called homo sapiens and heralds the arrival of homo luminous. The machines – the linear logical way of thinking – is expanded and is included in the wider view. This is the universal view of the world. This is what is on offer to those who would take the red pill and venture down the rabbit hole. Paradoxically speaking they go higher and dissolve their sense of separateness into the universal. This is universal education. It is the way of the initiate rather than the graduate. It is the revelation rather than the acquisition of more information. It is not only the Way of Love but the knowing that Love is who you are.
Let me finish with a lesson from a true seer.
Blessings and blissings.
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.
levels of consciousness
NIGHTINGALE CONANT – Dowload inspirational personal and spiritual development podcasts for FREE
TIME OUT FOR TRUTH – This spiritual wisdom podcast and website explores the great truths of the ages, and authors like Vernon Howard, J. Krishnmamurti, Gurdjieff and Anthony de Mello.
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