Chakra Balancing and Danger of Meditation
In a recent comment on this blog I was asked if there is a difference between chakra balancing and meditation? Let me say at the outset that I am neither an expert in meditation nor am I an expert in chakra balancing. However, I am a kind of expert with regard to both meditation and chakra balancing based upon my own spiritual journey. What I share in this article is from my own personal experience.
There are many forms of meditation. The benefits of meditation are vast and have been scientifically proven. I cannot recommend some form of meditation highly enough. There is, however, a danger in meditation. I base my caution upon my own practise when I was made aware of such a danger by a Buddhist teacher who came to teach meditation in the West. The danger is with the understanding of ‘detachment.’ I began early on in my life with the practice of meditation Vipassana. This is a very powerful meditation technique and has lead to more experiences of enlightenment than any other. The man who taught me this technique was not much older than myself. He seemed a strange young man. He was distant and aloof and also terribly thin. He had a kind of floaty presence which I put down to his being a practiced meditator.
The practice of Vipassana meditation lead me into feeling depressed. The more I did this meditation practice the more depressed I became. When I asked my teacher about this he simply said, “Keep practising.” He said nothing more. The depression didn’t move until I stopped this mediatition practice. I did not take up a meditation practice until many years later when I met another teacher. This was a man called Sangarachita who is the founder of the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order. He was an older man and had given his life to the journey of the spirit. He had travelled in India after the Second World War and stayed on, eventually becoming a Buddhist monk. Many years later he returned to the West. He recorded many talks on meditation and one I listened to, which warned of the dangers of meditation, fascinated me.
In this recording of a lecture on meditation he recalled a phenomena that he discovered when he first returned home to England from India and taught meditation to Westerners. This was the fact that many of those who engaged with the practice of mediation experienced depression. He himself could not explain it so he watched those he taught and over time he came to this understanding. Many people in the West, including myself, come to the practice of meditation to find a sense of greater peace and happiness.
I was unhappy because I was out of touch with my feelings. What theVipassina technique taught Westerners to do was to detach from feelings from which they were already extremely detached. In the words of the Irish writer James Joyce, “they lived some way from their body” and this lead to depression. I have attended various schools of meditation that produce individuals who are disembodied and floaty because they practice detachment from detachment. None of these people would agree with any of what I write here. The alternative to the practice of witnessing phenomena that arises in the mind is the warm meditation practice of the Meta Behavana.
This is the practice of Loving Kindness. One is a ‘cool’ practice and the other is a ‘warm’ practice. So what is the difference between meditation and chakra balancing? The answer is one that is given from my own personal experience. I use this chakra balancing technique because it is a full body technique. It is a practice of full embodiment and not simply a practice of silent witnessing. One can meditate on the light of a candle but be unaware of the body except that it is restless or aches in some way. This does not mean that you are able in the words of the poet Mary Oliver to
let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
The practice of chakra balancing is aligned with stages of personal and spiritual growth. It is a practice that invites the integrity of the personality through alignment of the conscious mind with the unconscious mind. This brings personal power (3rd chakra) and leads to the alignment of the will with Divine will and which in turn leads to what is called enlightenment. The way of enlightenment, as the modern mystic Ekhart Tolle has eloquently stated, is “through body and not beyond body.” In this blog site I emphasis embodiment and the love of the body This is not love of a body image but love of the body as an experience of aliveness and love of the form through which life is able to express through you in a very unique way.
Meditation will give you great benefits but it may not invite a love of the body. This, paradoxically, leads you to that which is within and also beyond the body. I have met with many meditators with body hatred and they use meditation as a form of distancing themselves from the body. Chakra balancing on the other hand is body focused. It is never NOT body focussed. It begins its focus with the fact that you are a body and that the body is the beginning point and the foundation into higher states of consciousness. It invites the love of the body which, I add, is not a love of a body image but the free flow of energy within the body that is the dance of life. You see this free flow in the play of little children.
When you are grounded in the body you are able to move higher. You move into the 2nd chakra, which is the movement into the unconscious. This is the area of relationship, the area of feelings and in particular those feelings that one tends to repress. It is the area of relationship and the area of sexuality and the area of opposition. In this process one does not deny their feelings but learns to integrate such feelings into the fullness of an integral personality. This is one of the first steps that one takes in learning to balance the chakras.
There are seven chakras. The first three involve personal integration of body, emotions and will. The fourth is the bridge between the personal and the impersonal of the Divine. The last three are the surrendering of the personal will to Divine will. All of these stages are best entered in full embodiment until you live the paradox that you are and you are not.
I leave you with what I think is an important quote on this topic from the modern master Ekhart Tolle from his book The Power of the Now.
The fact is that no one has ever become enlightened through denying or fighting the body or through and out-of-the-body experience. Although such an experience can be fascinating and can give you a glimpse of the state of libreation from the material form, in th end you will always return to the body, where the essential work of transformation takes place. Transformation is through the body, not away from it. This is why no true master has ever adocated fighting or leaving the body, although their mind-based followers often have.
Here is a video showing Eckhart Tolle. It is slow to begin with. Like myself, those of you who impatient might find they want it to move along more quickly. Simply notice this impatience. It is in fact an interesting exercise in awareness. The beginning of this video is interesting from the point of view of this post in that Echkhart Tolle immediately introduces you to the importance of being aware of the body and breathing. If you take nothing more away from watching this video then take this body awareness technique as a foundational techique for chakra balancing and especially a technique for 1st chakra balancing.
Eckhart Tolle – Finding Your Life’s Purpose
I invite you to learn more about this transformation through the body which I consider integral to chakra balancing and healing by enrolling in the following FREE course.
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The Spiritual Meaning of the Instruction Pray Always
In the Bible there is the great spiritual instruction that invites you to, Pray Always. This spiritual guidance seems to be a strange kind of invitation. For those individuals living at the level of consciousness that takes religious instruction in a very literal way, this spiritual instruction is one that is impossible to follow. In other spiritual traditions this practice of pray always is attempted by trying to constantly recite a mantra or religious phrase.
One can attempt to pray always be reciting words of prayer but that is not the meaning of this deep spiritual instruction, “Pray Always.” The invitation to pray always is not an invitation to engage with words and always be speaking to an idea of a God outside yourself. The meaning of pray always is the invitation to remain centred in a prayerful state of consciousness and has little or nothing to do with spending time in petitionary prayer to a God that might or might not choose to grant such a petition depending on the level of your goodness.
The Deeper Meaning of the Instruction Pray Always
The great twentieth century spiritual teacher J. Krishnamurti, (who was the spiritual teacher whose writings graced this writer the revelation from which these writings flow), toward the end of his life would ask his audiences,
Are you prepared to keep the perfume alive within you?
Religious, political and social organisations denigrate into relics without this sensational perfume of life that is available through the real understanding and practice of always being in a state of prayer. This perfume of this living presence is the connection that allows you to live your sensational life. The question, and the quest for living a life of meaning and purpose, moves from being willing to live such a great question. Have you ever smelled the perfume that the master Jeddu Krishnamuti invites you to keep alive? It is the perfume that the master Jesus refers to when he speaks the following words,
I have come to bring you life and to bring it more abundantly.
The Perfume of Presence
The choice is yours. It is the focus on the inner directed life that will assist you in keeping the perfume alive and allow you to always be in a state of prayer which to repeat is not about reciting words and phrases. The focus on this inner presence is what the spiritual instruction Pray Always is intended to invite you to practice. It isn’t inviting you into an non-ending dialogue with a God outside of you. Paradoxically speaking this deep spiritual instruction to pray always is inviting you into the deep interiority of a silence that is beyond words.
It is inviting you into what the modern mystic Eckhart Tolle calls the Stillness that Speaks. In traditional references to this Stillness that Speaks one uses the term the still small voice within. The perfume of presence is not something you get. It is, in essence, the very presence that your are. Paradoxically speaking, you are to walk a kind of middle way by making effort but in a kind of effortless way. The adoption of a feminine approach is the primary way to facilitate keeping the sensational alive within you. It is the way of surrender. It is the way that is invited by living the Beatitudes as outlined in the Sermon on the Mount.
Pray always, as it is to be understood here, is not the petitioning of God that one does in times of crisis and then ignores such practice when the crisis has passed. The prayer practice that allows you to live the sensational life is the prayer practice that is moving from the instruction to pray always. The wisdom teaching that instructs one to pray always is very often not understood. To pray always is more akin to the Buddhist practice of mindfulness. Pray always is inviting you to follow the deep spiritual guidance that arises from the invitation from the Bible,
Be Still and Know that I AM God.
The perfume that is alive is what is called the living God. However, don’t make the words into a law and a relic and then assume that because you know the words of the Bible that you then know the living perfume called the Word. Don’t make the words pray always guidance from a level of consciousness that is called by Dr Scott Peck the Formal/ Institutional level of consciousness. The living of this powerful spiritual instruction is understood only at the higher levels of consciousness as invited by the mystic invitation called The Cloud of Unknowing.
Here is what the modern spiritual teacher Deepak Chopra writes in “How to Know God - The Soul’s Journey into the Mystery of Mysteries,
There is no doubt that people resist the whole notion of God being an inner phenomenon. The vast majority of the world’s faithful are firmly committed to stages one and two, believing in a God “up there,” or at any rate outside ourselves. And the problem is complicated by the fact that going inward isn’t a revelation; it is just a beginning. The quiet mind offers no sudden flashes of divine insight. Yet its importance is states eloquently in the medieval document knows as “The Cloud of Unknowing,” written anonymously in the fourteenth century. This author tells us that God, the angels, and all the saints take greatest delight when a person begins to do inner work.
The perfume of presence is a perfume of the present moment. The world of the outer is always creating other sensations that hide the sensational within you. It is a silent praying always of that which is sensational within you.
Right here, right now is where you are. You are a presence within form. The real praying always is when you are surrenderred to the prayer that created you to pray itself through from the silence beyond words and from the stillness that speaks. Right here, right now is the power of the NOW which is the presence of God as it has its flow through you.
There is no petitioning here. You can pray in words prayer of St. Francis of Assisi (my own personal favorite) who prayed to be made an instrument of peace or the praying of Lords Prayer that asks that the will of Heaven be done on Earth. These are Christian prayers but there are many others that invite the heart into the presence of Love. These are powerful prayers in words but there is the more powerful praying always which is an abiding in presence.
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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
Attain Peace of Mind and Live from True Intelligence
Do you ever wish that you can attain peace of mind? Have you ever considered that you are a normal person with personal development (and maybe beyond) aspirations. What if you were to really take a look at the world of normal people. You might find that from a more detached view you would see that normal people are, not to mince words, kind of crazy. The modern mystic Eckhart Tolle writing in the Power of Now says of the human being
the human being is insane.
The Buddha who was one of the guides to the undoing this absence of peace of mind called this insanity suffering and outlined the path to the cessation of suffering. Suffering means different things for different people. To the man who cannot feed his children because of drought there is intense suffering. For the man who is attached himself to the idea of success and failure there is a different kind of suffering. It was interesting for me to read in The Compassionate Intention of Illness by Tony Humphreys and Helen Ruddle that one of the causes of heart failure is considered to be the addiction to success. Uncertainty is increasing dramatically in recent times. There is the constant invitation to fill our minds with the threat of terrorism. There is the worry of losing our employment and if we are sensitive we are also concerned about the future of our children within this uncertain day to day living. We all want peace but there doesn’t seem to be that much of it about.
Beatrice – Rosetti
There is, however, a way to attain inner peace if you are committed to such attainment. This is learning how to attain inner peace of mind beyond that monkey mind that is filled with restless thoughts and to follow what the poet Max Ehrmann writing in the inspirational poem Desiderata referred to as as the ability to
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
In a very real way you do not choose your thoughts. Anyone who has meditated, even once, will tell you that thoughts simply come and go. There is experienced, for the most part, simply internal noise. If you pay attention to the thoughts in your mind you will find that your mind is like a badly tuned radio and that there is little peace of mind. You will find that you have what is termed in Buddhism as a monkey mind. This means that you are not the master of your mind but that you have a kind of a monkey on a chain that simply jerks you around. What tends to happen is that the mind is often filled with worries anxieties, goals, things to do. Most normal people are enslaved by their thoughts.
The good news is that you can be free to attain peace of mind. This is not necessarily the absence of through but means that the coming and going of thoughts are simply allowed to be the coming and going of thoughts and in simply witnessing this coming and going the mind of its own accord begins to become calm. You begin to attain peace of mind not by trying to attain peace of mind but by using your witness consciousness to simply witness what is moving through the mind. Over time you will then become master of your own mind. You will find a magic that you might never have considered possible. This is the magic of being able to choose when to think and when not to think. Thinking is simply a habit but it is a habit that is driving the human race insane.
Calmness of mind is the most powerful of experiences. It brings inner peace and it impacts the collective mind of humanity. Out of this calmness there arises a stillness. This is the stillness that speaks but not in words. It gives you the ability to access true intelligence. Here are some of the powers connected to this wonderful sense of inner peace.
Attain Peace of Mind Through Stillness
True intelligence operates silently. Stillness is where creativity and solutions to
problems are foundDo you need more knowledge? Is more information going to save the world, or
faster computers, more scientific or intellectual analysis? Is it not wisdom that
humanity needs most at this time?But what is wisdom and where is it to be found? Wisdom comes with the ability to
be still. Just look and just listen. No more is needed. Being still, looking, and
listening activates the non-conceptual intelligence within you. Let stillness direct
your words and actions.
From Stillness Speaks
Stillness SpeaksStillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle
You can attain inner peace provided the proper training is undertaken. This training for inner peace of mind frees the monkey on a chain kind of mind from the compulsion of incessant thinking is True control the mind is not just the ability to concentrate on one thought and disregard other thoughts. It is the ability to cleanse the mind completely and make it silent. This silence brings peace, contentment, happiness and bliss. The first real step is to take some begin some form of meditation and make the commitment to work with the chosen practice for at least a three month period. There are any number of meditation practices available. It is preferable that you do this practice in a group to begin with because it is so much easier to remain motivated because the monkey does not want to give up its power to jerk the chain of your habitual thought processes.
Peace of mind is something we all seem to want, and want more of. There are so very few of us get to attain this peace of mind, and when we do it tends to be fleeting. Here are some suggestions as to how you might, not so much get peace of mind, but reveal that underlying sense of peace that arises from the stillness that speaks.
How to Attain Peace of Mind
- Give yourself time to be. This means that you simply spend time doing nothing other than witnessing the content of your mind without trying to change it.
- For some period each day give up the need to achieve something.
- When you choose to practice sitting still notice how you will resist. Your ego will fight you doing this practice. It wants to retain control and keep you distracted.
- Keep your focus on breathing in and out. Do not change your breathing but allow it to come and go. It too will become still.
To attain peace of mind and maintain peace of mind is a choice. That isn’t to say that it is an easy choice. The reality is that you are working against a collective mind called humanity that spends most of its time in distraction with the outer world. You are not separate from this collective and you have to work against this collective inertia that does not really want to do the work of changing the inner environment that then will be reflected in your outer world. If you do choose to make the commitment to attain peace of mind then expect resistance. When this experience of resistance arises then practice a meditation called the Meditation of Loving Kindness. Be kind to yourself. Learn to trust the stillness within that speaks from the heart. Remember inner peace is not something that you get but is more a state of mind that you reveal beyond the noise and chatter of your everyday thinking.
Finding that dimension (the dimension of no thought) frees you and the world from the suffering you inflict on
yourself and others when the mind-made “little me” is all you know and runs your
life. Love, joy, creative expansion, and lasting inner peace cannot come into your
life except through that unconditioned dimension of consciousness.If you can recognize, even occasionally, the thoughts that go through your mind as
just thoughts, if you can witness your own mental-emotional reactive patterns as
they happen, then that dimension is already emerging in you as the awareness in
which thoughts and emotions happen — the timeless inner space in which the
content of your life unfolds.
Attaining peace of mind begins with intention. That intention is then aligned with the will that will then manifests in action. Without the will to peace of mind and a committment, which is a daily commitment, then there is merely the normal mind which will then be mirrorred in the outer world. In choosing to attain peace of mind you are not only gracing your own life but the life of this collective called humanity. This is truly a win/win situation. Practice deep self interest and attain peace of mind and bless yourself and each and everyone of us.
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Reflections from a Drumming Circle – Finding a Home in Community
Pageant of Childhood – Thomas Gotch
A Drumming Circle and the Rhythm of Life
Visitors to this Personal Development and Beyond may not be aware that one of my joys in life is to belong to a Drumming Circle. Drumming has become a rhythm within my life. It happens within a circle within a circle within a circle. Having fallen out of what the mystic poet Jelalladin Rumi calls the Circle of Love deep into the Circle of Time, I have, ever since I was around the age of seventeen, had a longing to belong. Over many years I have journeyed within various kinds of groups looking for such a sense of belonging. Each of these groups and circles have held and supported me in their various ways. Each of these groups I have left. I have always left at a point when the group dynamic wanted to impose its group consciousness on the emerging individuality flowering within me. Now the group that holds that longing is a community drumming circle called Ruach Rhythms lead my master drummer Debbie Beirne.
Now at this point in my life I have come to a new community. It doesn’t ask me to believe in anything. It simply asks me to come along and learn what it is to play a drum. It is the most eclectic of groups. There are young and old, black and white, men and women, single people and married people and too many religious denominations to mention. All of these people gather around in a large or sometimes small circle. The circle is the most powerful of symbols. It has no beginning or end. In the middle there is an emptiness which is full. It is full of unlimited potential. We gather in a physical circle of time and space and form. In the centre of the circle there is space and there is timelessness. Inside that space is an invitation. It is the invitation from the eternal Circle of Love. It cannot be grasped by the intellect. You cannot own it. It cannot be bought. It can however be known and felt and shared. Such is the nature of a drum circle.
Community Drumming as a Circle
This circle is a communal drumming group. Its emphasis is on promoting a sense of community and it will, if you allow yourself, take you into a real sense of communion. You will learn to fall into your unique rhythm. This circle of community does not debate the rights or wrongs of the world. It simply plays rhythms that allow each individual to begin to sense a place of belonging and rightness within them. Out of this place they are then given the energy to become whatever creation intended for them. This place is a place beyond the judgmental mind. The rhythm of the drum takes you into an awareness of the body beyond simply thinking about. It takes you into the intelligence of the body that many people in our day to day Western society ignore. If they do not ignore it they are intent in pushing the body into some kind of conformity.
For many the body is in some way an instrument that they feel to be wrong in some kind of way. Mostly this comes from cultural and religious stereotyping. Many of us in our own way do not fit in. We are like the story of the dragon called Didnafitin who did not fit in. He was a square dragon in a world of round dragons. Except that most of the round dragons did not admit that inside each of them was a dragon who was, despite being round, all out of shape. Drumming does not ask the body to be a different shape. It helps you fit in. It awakens the body to its natural rhythm and balance. The first thing that is often noticed by a beginner is the fact that one hand is weaker than the other. In the beginning it needs practice to begin to awaken this non-prominent hand and bring both hands into balance. There is no judgment here. There is only the experience of the awareness that one hand is dominant.
This experience of dominance reflects our approach to life. Our dominant approach to life is one of doing. We do much of our lives until we are done in. We live in the rhythm of the do and do and do more which is pushing our species to the place of extinction much like the Dodo bird. The experience within a drumming circle invites a more natural rhythm. It invites the rhythm of do and be and do and be and do and be. This is the do-be-do-be-do rhythm of life. It is opposite to the rhythm of most people’s lives which is geared to doing rather than movement from being. The rhythm of the drumming circle builds to a crescendo. It falls deeply for a short time into silence. This is the rhythm of doing and being and the rhythm of harmony that brings together a sense of communality. There is a collective experience of joining in and creating together a communal dance of sound. Then following that there is the individual sense of returning to ones own centre.
In this experience there is no requirement for me to believe that I need follow some idea that does not speak to my heart. No one, I think, will throw me out of the circle simply because I no longer believe that a drumming circle should conform to some group ideal. If that should happen then it will be time for me to leave and move in a wider circle that my beloved Rumi invites when he says, “There is a field far beyond right doing and wrong doing. I will meet you there.” This is the field beyond the duality of ideas of right and wrong that allows you to experience the rightness of creation. In this experience there is no sense of you being someone who has ever been away from the circle of Love. You cannot leave this circle because it is who you are.
Out of this awareness of who you are as an embodiment of Love communion happens. It isn’t so much that you have to find some kind of rhythm that fits you. Out of this awareness you become what Creation has longed for you to be. It isn’t that you then do the dance of life but that you realize that life is the dance you are. The doing of your life becomes not the do do do rhythm of living your life back to front, but the movement of your life as Love in action. This awareness, if it is genuine, will wake you up to the injustice of a world based on the idea that we are all separate. When you find the real rhythm that you have come here to be then you will begin to serve. You will do this because there is so much you feel that you have to give that to do other than this means you stop enjoying and being in the joy of who you are.
Finding Communion and Finding a Centre
A drumming circle doesn’t ask you to become a master drummer although there is no reason why you shouldn’t if that is what you are drawn to express. A drumming circle uses rhythm to create the feeling of centeredness as a communal experience. The missing ingredient in our world of separateness is the direct experience of communion with that which is non-separate. It is that which is never born and never dies. It is that which we are and are here to be the knowing of. It is our true nature and our inheritance. I am writing this at a time when Ireland and much of the world is experiencing a time of financial crises. These crises, I think, mirror a more fundamental crisis. The system of regulation of financial institutions can be tightened but the regulation does not mean that the moral and spiritual bankruptcy at the heart of the crises will change.
Those who are in control of the major resources and who are living the so-called ‘good life’ are often divorced from the life of those who are working to make ends meet or on the margins of society. The real measure of a country is the level community and communion felt amongst its people and its relationship to the earth and all the creatures held within the circle of creation. One of those people who have inspired me is the English politician William Wilberforce. He had a circle of friends called the Clapton Saints. He, together with this circle of committed individuals over a period of forty years, brought an end to slavery in Britain. When he started out he was told by everyone that it could not be done.
He stayed true to the rhythm of a grace note given to him when he was twenty six years old. He never moved from that central awareness of sacred unity, the rhythm of sacred breath.. From that awareness he held his own centre. The person he came to when he was full of doubt was John Newton. We know John Newton as the man who composed the hymn Amazing Grace. A real sense of community is an amazing grace. It is what will and does make a difference. It begins with you and your intention. Often joining a drum circle happens because we want to find a group of people we can simply enjoy spending time with. We might join to learn how to drum. You might learn by going to a teacher but this will not be the experience of community that is available within a circle of people who start as separate individuals and within sixty minutes are playing as a community. They learn to do the rhythm and then come to be. They come to belong to a community.
In such a way time stops and one enters the empty space at the centre of the circle to find the amazing grace that it is always full and awaiting to give you true fulfilment. You become like the apprentice in the Disney movie called Fantasia, only you know how to pour away the beauty that you are and that is central to who you are and your ability to commune. Come into the circle of Love it is the only rhythm worth playing.
Come out of the Circle of Time
into the Circle of Love
Jelaluddin Rumi
Why not then join the Rúach Rhythms team for a New Years drumming circle which includes storytelling and acoustic guitar and singing around an open fire in comfortable chairs late into the night.
New Years Drumming Circle in Ireland
Time
Friday, December 30 at 7:00pm – Sunday, January 1, 2012 at 1:00pm
Location
Benwisken Eco Centre, Co Sligo.
Created By
More Info
New Years Eve Winter solstice celebration.
A time to gather together in community to celebrate the release of the old and welcoming in the new. Stepping into 2012 with community an unity.
Sharing our music our stories and our wisdom. Bring your voices, your drums, your stories, your instruments, your laughter, your recipies and your heart.
The venue is the Benwisken centre at the base of the beautiful Benwisken mountain outside Cliffony Co Sligo. The event is alcohol free, although we will be sharing a (mild) mulled wine over the weekend period.
This is a family event and children are welcome.
Cost of the weekend is €70 per adult and €20 per child. This includes excellent dormitory accommodation. A deposit of €20 is required to secure a place. If we get a full house then the cost will be reduced.
Concessions are available on prior request only.
To book contact:
Debbie (Rúach Rhythms) on 087 6326610 or email ruachrhythms@gmail.com
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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.
4 STAGES OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH – The stages of spiritual growth is sometimes not easily identified, and we’re all of us are undergoing a transformation down this path, even if some of us don’t know it.
PRINCIPLES OF SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION – Spiritual evolution is about growth of being, an ever brightening of the godspark that is your consciousness. Knowledge is the crucial cornerstone of this process, but a cornerstone alone provides no shelter. Unaccompa
Dreamwork – Using Dream Catchers to Finding the Meaning and Purpose
I am what might be called a dreamworker. I weave dreams by way of storytelling and song. I weave a way in which you can find meaning and purpose from following your dreams. I am having what I see as an interesting metaphorical experience. This is not an unusual experience, and on one level, it is an experience that many people will have in their day to day lives.
You might not have the exact same experience that I have had but there will be similarities appearing within your life. Any such experience becomes much more powerful when you become what I call a metaphor hunter. You get to become a seer because you begin to look at your life experience from a deeper more symbolic level. In this way you can become integral by weaving the inner with the outer as a kind of dream weaving.
“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.” Goethe
A metaphor hunter is one who looks and views experience, not simply literally, but at a deeper and more symbolic level. Symbol is the language of the unconscious mind and the language of the Universal Mind. It is the language that connects that which is unconscious in you to that which is conscious in you. It is the invitational language to the unity of opposites and the unity of opposition within you. It is thus the language of integrity and Oneness. It is a universal language and I invite you to discover the meaning and purpose of your life through learning to invite this language to be part of you everyday life. So what is this experience I am writing about?
I have two software programs that I am using to try and create an updated website. These programs have interesting names. One is called Artisteer and the other is called Dreamweaver. Each in their own way is a very sophisticated software program. One should in theory simply be able to use one web page created by Artisteer and make any changes one wishes within the webpage editor called Dreamweaver. Except that every time I load the Artisteer webpage into Dreamweaver that program returns the message “not responding.” So in a very literally sense the Dream weaver is not responding to the Artisteer program. In a deeper, metaphorical sense, the Dreamweaver is not responding to the Artist Seer.
Normally I would simply rant and rave about the unreliability of computers and software developers. However, I remember that I awoke that morning having thoughts of making a dream catcher in which I could imagine myself catching my dreams. To the linear logical mind dreams catchers don’t make sense. To the magical mind that has the sense of knowing, this sacred technology is beyond logic. It is a symbolic way of catching that which is invisible but longs to be dreamed through you and made manifest in this world of form. It is a kind of symbolic action that you are able to partake off through the creation of a dreamcatcher.
So I pay attention. The artist seer is the archetype of the Magician. It is a universal pattern within me. It is one I am particularly identified with. The dream weaver is the one who takes that which is given from the artist seer in me and creates the dreamed off results. Except that the dreamed off results are not happening. There is no response between the artist seer and the dreamweaver. That night following the experience of non communication between these two software programs I had a dream. In this dream the character who represents the magician spreads out on a round table the plans for a nursing home.
When I do the dreamwork of writing about the symbols in this dream the nursing home becomes a place of belonging where those in the second half of life are given soul nourishment. The word nurse comes from the root word meaning “to nourish.” Around this round table are a group of strange looking individuals who are all dressed in brown. I, who am the second in command of this new venture, don’t have confidence in this group and suggest that one of them is a spy. So I sabotage the plans of the magician who is the one backed by unlimited resources and I spread descent around the round table.
It is hardly any wonder then that the artist seer as represented by the archetype of the magician in me and the dreamweaver are not responding. The dreamweaver is the one who takes the vision (in my dream this vision is represented by the plans led out on the round table) and makes them manifest. The dreamweaver is the doer. Except in my case, as the dreamweaver, what I am doing is a very sly way is I am spreading mistrust. The new adventure of building a state of the art – state of the artist seer – a higher dimension of consciousness – is undermined by doubt. The home of belonging, where there is soul nourishment, is undermined by the allegation of spying and is done in a kind of passive aggressive way. In this dream the the nursing home becomes a home or a house divided against itself.
Notice here the correlation between the inner world and the outer world. The small still voice within communicates through metaphor and symbol but you have to discover what any particular symbol means to you as an individual. It is of no real help going to any authority outside yourself. I advise you not to use dream dictionaries. It helps if you understand the universal symbolism held within the collective vision that is the legacy of fairytales and folktales. It helps if you delve deep into religious texts but not simply in a literal way and certainly not by accepting the authority of someone who a collective religious hierarchy has stated has authority. Your unconscious is your own authority. Honour it by giving it the attention it deserves and it will give to you the wisdom it is trying to impart to you.
I wrote a letter to the doubter in me following this dream. I asked that he come into alignment with the artist seer. I advised him that he is the one who weaves the dreams caught in the dream catcher into a from that will then manifest in the world. I will burn this letter later because the element of fire is the element of transformation. The world needs a place, a higher consciousness that can nurture people and nourish their souls. My dreams, and the artist seer in my dreams, invites the building of this state of consciousness that will allow those in the second half of life to transition into a life where each and everyone of us becomes what is the Wild Old Wicked Man or the Dangerous Old Woman. We then become power houses of compassion, justice and creativity. We don’t just grow old and die. We grow and we die into the state of our forever young birthless deathless becoming. We come home to our ability to nourish ourselves and those who need nourishment of the soul.
At one of the festivals I recently attended a friend invited me to go on a workshop to learn how to build dream catchers. I now know what the intention will be as I am building my dream catcher. It will be to hold in mind the vision of the artist seer who knows how to plan the building of a new venture with infinite resources behind him. He has laid out on the round table before his assembled friends the plan for a house of nourishment for the soul in the second half of life. I am the one who is the dream weaver. I take what is caught by the Artist Seer within and I make it manifest in this world of form. I, as the doubter, am asked to come into alignment with a group of strange people sitting around a round table planning the vision of a seer man who has all the resources he needs.
I saw the Weaver of Dreams, an immortal shape of star-eyed Silence; and the Weaver of Death, a lovely Dusk with a heart of hidden flame: and each wove with the shuttles of Beauty and Wonder and Mystery.
I knew not which was the more fair: for Death seemed to me as Love, and in the eyes of the Weaver of Dreams I saw Joy. Oh, come, come to me, Weaver of Dreams! Come, come upon me, O Lovely Dusk, thou that hast the heart of hidden flame! – Fiona MacLeod – The Immortals
I haven’t yet gone back to try and make the two software programs work together. What is more important is that the software of the conscious and the unconscious mind are in alignment. This is the gift inherent in the technique called metaphor hunting. It leads to following your real dreams that arise from the inner and are then manifested in the outer. Then you are really following your dreams and in this way you are beginning to live a real life of meaning and purpose. This is a life in alignment with the true Self that you have access too through dream work. When you are invited to follow your dreams this is something I really do invite you to take literally.
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.
power of symbol
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.
SOUNDS TRUE – Tools and teachings to spark your inner evolution. Download FREE spiritual development podcasts from inspirational teachers
STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS – Video about the various states of consiousness.