A Spiritual Awakening Beyond Belief
In developing this personal development and beyond blog, that takes the reader through various maps and stages of spiritual awakening, I experience some highs and some lows. Yesterday was what I call a high day. I worked long hours and had such immense fun. At the end of the day my partner Bee said to me, “Your inner graphic artist has had lots of fun.” The answer was a resolute Yes. I could honestly say
Thank you God for this most amazing day – e.e. Cummings.
I was so thankful for the ability to create images that brightened up my day and I will be using these images, I hope, to brighten up your day. Those who are familiar with the postings on this website/blog will know that I love paintings with neo-classical themes. These are paintings that inspire me and invite within me a transmission of the energy of the symbols contained in such paintings. When I write a course on spiritual awakening I tend to introduce people to the power that is inherent in such art. This is because such art invites, and is intended to invite, your opening up to higher centres of beauty, grace and refined energy.
Yesterday I put together a cover for a book that I intend to write. This book is provisionally entitled, “Beyond the Purpose Driven Life.” The cover of this book will show the beautiful painting opposite that signifies a spiritual awakening. The invitation from this Beyond the Purpose Driven Life book is the living of a life beyond belief. This is both a literal and a transformational experience. Spiritual awakening is not simply a one time event. it is a process and it is a process that has been mapped in order that it can be followed but not simply in a literal way. The great teachers of humanity have mapped this process of spiritual awakening. However, their lower consciousness followers have, for the most part, cemented the map of spiritual awakening in dogma and blocked off the threshold places and portals to transcendence.
A recent statistic tells me that 95% of Americans believe in God. If that question were asked elsewhere I suspect one might not get such a high percentage. The interesting thing for this writer on personal development and beyond is why the question isn’t how many American’s (or others) are knowers of God. Addressing this question purely from a Christian point of view it might be asked in this way
How many seekers will become finders.
In a recent presidential election in Ireland this question “Do you believe in God?” was asked off all seven presidential candidates. Everyone of them affirmed that in fact they did believe in God although it had never been a key aspect of their presidential campaign. Not anyone of the candidates claimed that they were a “Knower of God.” I don’t have an issue about someone who claims that they do not know God. I do take issue with someone who claims that they believe in God as if it where some kind of sound bite in order to win over voters.
In the journey that takes you through stages of spiritual development you can remain a believer for all your life but the beyond aspect of personal development is not something you can believe in. There comes a point when your belief must go in order to know and experience the mystery that is beyond belief. In order to experience the fullness of spiritual awakening one has to cross various thresholds. What was the gift of one stage becomes the resistance to the next stage. At a certain stage your belief actually becomes the resistance to the mystery that is beyond belief.
The history of religion, and especially the dark history of religion, is not the history invited by the masters who have given their names to such religious teachings. Their followers, who are lower consciousness followers, turn the living stream of inspiration into the dead letter of the law. They make the goal of a purpose driven life into the that of missionary work and service to a church. This then becomes the highest aspiration of the spiritual life which from a mystical point of view is also a kind of spiritual death.
The anonymous writer of the classic text The Cloud of Unknowing addressed this issue of belief. The writer choose to remain anonymous because to be a writer of such a transcendent invitation would at the time have meant the person likely be charged with heresy. The question of disbelief is also related. Believers and disbelievers are simply on opposite sides of the same camp. The opposite of belief is not disbelief but knowing. To travel the path of spiritual awakening means that you have to travel your own way. The history of the church is the history of repression and murder of those who entered the Cloud of Unknowing and moved beyond belief into the knowing of the Oneness of Love as direct personal experience.
The modern teacher Jeddu Krishnamurti, who happened to be my teacher, when asked by a journalist who came to interview him, “Do you believe in God?” gave the answer, “Sir, what need is there to believe in God when one knows.” The psychiatrist Carl Jung replied in a similar manner when he was asked if he believed in God. The pastor and founder of Saddleback Church Rick Warren wrote A Purpose Driven Life. The culmination of this book, which has sold in excess of 30 million copies, is that the purpose of life is to give your life in service to the Lord. The highest experience of this service is to become a missionary and promote the teachings of the church.
My reason for beginning to write Beyond the Purpose Driven Life is to invite those who come to this so called high point of religious experience and find it turns to nothing, as it must. My intention is that the full mystery of revelation be lived, not as a system of belief in words, but as direct experience of knowing what it is to live within the Word. The Word as experience has nothing to do with words. Words are only pointers to that experience that is beyond words and certainly beyond belief.
This intended book Beyond the Purpose Driven Life might not sell thirty million or more copies. There will the those, however, who come to a point in their lives that is called a crisis of faith, or to place the experience in more secular terms, to a point that is called an existential crisis. Within such an experience people often feel they have nowhere to turn. I hope to invite them into knowing that such a crisis of faith, or existential crisis, while challenging in all kinds of ways, is an opportunity for spiritual awakening into an experience beyond belief.
I am allowing my inner graphic artist to create a book cover for this proposed work. It has on the front cover a painting representing the call to spiritual awakening. It has within the picture on the front cover a number of angels. This is an artistic representation of the direct knowing of energies beyond material form. These are energies, subtle energies that are creative and loving. If you have a fixed belief system then you might see this experiencing of subtle energy as some form of threat to that belief system. Spiritual awakening is a process of expansion. It is a process of many deaths and rebirths into life. Each time something dies there is the re-birthing into the new. The death of belief allows for the arising of that which is beyond belief.
Let me say here that I am not in the business of taking away someone else’s belief system. That would be a form of arrogance and a subtle form of violence. I will say this, however, I am in the business of inviting revelation beyond belief. The purpose driven life does not end in the service of the missionary church. Metaphorically speaking, this isn’t even half way through the spiritual awakening process. The purpose driven life doesn’t end except when you become at one with the Alpha and Omega and know that God has no beginning or end. Love has always been and ever will be. The process of spiritual awakening beyond belief is a process of forever becoming that cannot be reduced to words and certainly cannot to be followed in a literal sense.
There are lines from The Purpose Driven Life that I love. I started reading it with enthusiasm. Further into the reading it simply became disappointing. The invitation to a purpose driven life needs to be available from the higher centres beyond the personal sense of self. This is not some experience codified in a religious text. It has to be lived directly. In living it directly it is then known but this knowing is beyond the intellect. I wanted The Purpose Driven Life to be the invitation from mainstream Christianity that my heart often longs for but is rarely nourished by. Even though it has been read by over 30 million people and rising it will disappoint anyone who feels the call within them of the mystic heart.
There is a fuller invitation to spiritual awakening within the book by Jim Marion called Putting on the Mind of Christ: The Inner Work of Christian Spirituality
I have many more ideas for books, eBooks, guided meditations and courses that I intend to share with you in various ways. I am presently focused on writing 7 Ways to a Wonderful Life eBook which I will turn into a Kindle format and eventfully publish on Amazon. This eBook 7 Ways to Wonderful Life is an extension of the writings featured on this website and in the weekly newsletter Personal Development and Beyond which is available for free. You can sign up to receive this free newsletter that takes you through various maps of spiritual awakening at the top of this post. Or simply use the form I have provided here.
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SPIRAL DYNAMICS – Another map of personal and spiritual development for your consideration
Personal Development and the Way of Sacred Activism
Personal development happens in many ways. One way that I may well be drawn into is the Way of Sacred Activism. I attended a meeting yesterday close to where I live. It was held in my home country of Northern Ireland in the town of Enniskillen in County Fermanagh. This was a forum focused on community activism against the threat of Fracking in Ireland. This is a industry that is a threat to much that I hold dear in our locality and beyond. This threat to the environment may well call me into an area that I have never before been engaged with. This is political activism.
The great mythologist Joseph Campbell writing in his book entitled The Hero with a Thousand Faces recommends that each one of us follow our bliss. Joseph Campbell writes
If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you aught to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are – if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.
On the other hand the modern mystic Andrew Harvey writing in his book entitled The Hope – A Guide to Sacred Activism writes
I don’t say follow your
bliss; look where that
has gotten us. I say
follow your heartbreak.
Each of these wisdom teachings can, in a very real sense, become foundational to our living what the poet Mary Oliver refers to as, Your one wild and precious life. I will say at the outset that the advice from Joseph Campbell is the advice that I would prefer to follow. However, it is the advice of the mystic Andrew Harvey that is in many ways the more physical, the more emotional, mental and spiritually demanding path of sacred activism and community activism.
Having said that, however, we do live in a world of duality. We live in a world of opposites. We live in a world where one tribe thinks it is doing right and the other tribe, which is in opposition, is also sure that what they are doing is also right. This is the very nature of the polar energetics within this realm of time and space. This is the very nature of life on this planet. This tension, and this opposition, when resisted is called suffering. It has many forms. The Buddha, however, demonstrated the way out of suffering and the way out of opposition. This is what he called The Middle Way.
Let me suggest therefore that you embrace both of these invitations. This is both the invitation to follow your bliss and the invitation to follow your heartache. Many of us instinctively choose to follow our bliss. We pursue pleasure and avoid pain. However, pleasure is not the same psychological and spiritual state that is called bliss. Bliss is a high state of consciousness. We might at times glimpse this state but it takes one to travel the Hero’s Journey to be able to turn such a glimpse into what the Sufi’s refer to as a station. A station is where you have the ability to abide within a given level of consciousness should you choose to do so.
The paradox for those who follow the path of bliss is that they will come to the experience of heartbreak. In fact the way of bliss can only really be sustained once the true heart’s desire is known. Knowing the true heart’s desire takes you through hell, or what the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung referred to, as the City of Jewels (3rd chakra experience). To follow your bliss means that you are willing to follow the way that the life force within you designed you to express that life force through you. This means that you must learn to listen to the truth that your heart is able to speak through you. This requires a certain level of integrity. This integrity is the ability to rise above the opposition within yourself.
When you are able to reconcile that opposition within you through an act of conscious will then the power of the unconscious becomes aligned with the will of the personality. This is the beginning of real personal integrity but it is only the first step in the beginning of the journey into bliss via the heartache of opening the heart centre (4th chakra experience). Remember that this journey of personal development and beyond is not simply a linear logical journey. Although I might write about lower and higher states of consciousness this is still speaking in language of opposites. This is the very thing we are required to transcend. You may well get glimpses of bliss that arise from the opening the higher energy centres (chakra’s). You may well be blessed with a breakthrough experience that then becomes your North Star.
When the personality has been integrated to a fairly high degree then there is the call to the next stage of the journey. This call can, however, come at any moment. This is the call of the heart and it is in very many ways the experience of that has been called an existential crisis. It is a crises of meaning and purpose and this crisis leads to serious heartache and mental distress. This crisis of meaning and purpose then becomes a threshold place that begins the journey into beyond and the journey into bliss.
To follow your bliss and the journey through the heartbreak of a life lived without meaning and purpose is the journey that Joseph Campbell refers to as The Hero’s Journey. It is also of course the journey of the Heroine and in a very real way is more the Journey of the Heroine. Do not equate the words Hero and Heroine here with the words man and woman. The Journey of the Hero (or Heroine) is the journey of a sacred marriage within. This journey has been mapped in many ways. It is the journey from the narcissistic sense of self interest in all its myriad forms into the realisation of the One Self in service to all forms living on this dimension of space-time and form.
It helps to know that this is part and parcel of the personal development and beyond process. There are many, and in my opinion, too many spiritual seekers seeking bliss from a sense of self interest. I have been one of those seekers. The difference now is that I am much older. I have taken the journey the City of Jewels on various occasions. I have faced enough opposition within me to know that the seeking of bliss for oneself tends to heighten the sense of separateness that we are trying to transcend. Following one’s bliss is a process of alignment with the creative life force. This creative life force has many names but the name is never the thing. It isn’t the name God. It isn’t the name Tao. All those names point to an experience that is the Oneness of Life. This process of the realisation of oneness begins within this dimension of time and space within the body.
The physical body is the temple of the inner body. The state of bliss is known from within and expressed within the form of the body. You are, in a very real sense, the unique embodiment of God in form. Choose your own word for God. Choose a word that connects to your heart. Choose a word that works for you. If the word Oneness works for you choose Oneness. If happiness works for you choose happiness. However, happiness is most elusive when it is sought for the purpose of the individual self. It is found in service when that service is given from the heartbreak of separateness from Love. Bliss is not pleasure. Neither is bliss happiness. Bliss is a state of consciousness that one seeks to abide in. There is a paradox here. The more you are not, and the more that you are not seeking, the more available you are to this bliss experience. Bliss is simply the state of being that you are.
Let me invite you to take the Hero’s journey and the journey into bliss. It is a journey that has been mapped in many ways and distorted in as many ways by those who would have power other than Love. If you would like to know how to follow your bliss and follow your heartache into living a life of meaning and purpose then I invite you to sign up to receive my weekly newsletter entitled Personal Development and Beyond. This is a FREE newsletter which will take you week by week into the journey of a lifetime and beyond. It is the journey of expansion into the endless journey of Love within form and beyond this form of the body. It invites you into an understanding of health and well being in body, emotions, mind and spirit. This journey of personal development and beyond is a challenging road but it is a road that I believe we will all journey in our unique and wondrous way. My intention is to show you the pointers along the way and especially the pitfalls that you will encounter along the way.
The modern mystic Eckhart Tolle writing in his book The Power of Now starts this book as follows:
You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold. That is how important you are!
That really is how important you are. Do not underestimate the power that you have seeded within you. You are a unique flowering. You will never happen again in this form, although paradoxically speaking, you never cease to be this flowering because the real you is the birth less deathless experience of Love beyond the limitation of time and space. My intention here is, metaphorically speaking, to give you some gardening advice that will flower this unique potential within you for the greatest good of all. This, I firmly believe, will take you into the knowing of your true heart’s desire and into the bliss of knowing who you truly are.
I invite you to subscribe now to this weekly newsletter Personal Development and Beyond and discover some real spiritual education. You are able to unsubscribe at anytime. Included in this newsletter will be access to all the resources that I have discovered on my personal Hero’s journey. Join me now and let us each follow our bliss through finding our true heart’s desire. Simply complete the boxes below with your name and email address to accept the invitation to living your one Wild and Precious Life.
Other Resources for Personal Development and Beyond
For more information on Sacred Activism and also The Hero’s Journey see the following links
Sacred Activism - Following your Heartbreak
http://www.andrewharvey.net/pdf/sacred_activism_article.pdf
The Hero’s Journey – Following your Bliss
http://lifecoachesblog.com/wp-content/files/theherosjourney.pdf
Fracking Free Ireland
http://www.frackingfreeireland.org
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The Way of the Chakras and Personal Development
Persona – The Mask
Personal Development – the development of the persona, the mask, the separate sense of self – involves the balancing of the first three chakras
- The Root Chakra
- The Sacral Chakra
- The Solar Plexis Chakra
This is the first triad of chakras that are concerned with personal development and the integrity of the individual. The second triad of chakras is concerned not so much with development but the allowing of revelation. One allows the revelation of the impersonal or the universal.
- The Crown Chakra
- The Brow Chakra
- The Throat Chakra
These two triads one moving upward, which denotes the masculine and the other moving downwards denoting the movement of feminine energy are connected by the middle chakra -
When this process of personal development and beyond is complete then we have the integration of two triangles, which makes the sacred symbol of the star. This is a symbol of sacred unity – the unity of the personal with the universal within you. This is the Way of the Chakras. It is a complete physical, mental, emotional and spiritual integration. It leads to a sense of connection beyond the limitation of the separate sense of self, which is the cause of suffering in this time/space dimension.
It is the fullest expression of what is potential within you. It provides an outline that promotes a total sense of well being in all areas of your life and the life beyond the limitation of the person you think yourself to be. The Way of the Chakras develops the personality in the following way.
- Physical Well Being – I Am
- Emotional Well Being – I Feel
- Mental Well Being – I Think
This is a process of integrity. It begins in the body. This is not simply a linear process, meaning that you move 1, 2, 3 in a straight line. Well being in the body will lead to a greater emotional and mental well being. In this process you are using your will, the power of intention – to integrate your physical, emotion and mental energies. This is needed in order to be able to surrender the will you have developed to that which is universal.
It is only those who have strength of will that can allow themselves to allow the process to take them higher. This process moves through the heart. The individual will is developed to the point where they begin to feel the pull of the universal within them. Then the individual will is being invited to merge with the will of the Divine. This is the true desire of the heart and the purpose of life on this planet.
The Infant Samuel
This seven stage outline is the true spiritual education. It is the education that one should at least be made aware of even if you choose not to follow this particular way. It is a map that you can follow that leads to the revelation of why you are born. While this revelation needs to be direct it is more likely to be revealed to the individual whose mind is open to the invitation.
The experience of life lived from the opening of the heart chakra is in many ways the opening to the life of the miraculous. Most people on this planet are not living from this dynamic. By that I mean that they are not able to simply abide within the heart by an act of will. At best they are able to glimpse the state of heart consciousness but get pulled out of it by habitual attachment to lower levels of consciousness where they, for the most part, live.
Without at least a glimpse of this heart state, the desires of the heart will not be known as a direct experience and your life will be driven by ego desires, which are for the most part determined by the desires of the collective and, especially today, by media and commercial interests. This complete map of the human journey is really an experienced journey. It requires that you at the very least know the general direction and outline of the territory. This is a glorious journey because that in a very real sense is the dynamic you end up being the revelation.
My personal recommendation is that you at least learn the outline of the journey. I also add one proviso. Always remember that the journey begins in the body, the root chakra, and that you are to remember that to keep your feet always on the ground. Paradoxically speaking, this is the only way to fly. Whatever map you choose to follow in relation to what I call the Way of the Chakra’s, be it a book, a course, with a teacher, do not simple make this spiritual education process simple more information. This Way of the Chakra’s is 99% practice and 1% information. Don’t cling to the words but make yourself available to the knowing beyond words. This is the most practical of ways to live life for all your life.
Eternity Awaits You
There is a bonus in living this way. You expand in many ways. It is a journey into seeing beyond. You cannot yet know what that feels like. The breakthrough experience happens and you are revealed to be more than you ever thought you would imagine. The Way of the Chakras will, should you choose to venture on the Way reveal to you something beyond any worth. It is a paradox because it is not a thing that you get. It is the revelation of who you already are but not awake to. The poet R. S. Thomas says this wonderfully well in his poem The Bright Field.
The Bright Field
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.~ R. S. Thomas ~
(Another from the wonderful anthology,
Soul Food: Nourishing Poems for Starved Minds,
ed. by Neil Astley and Pamela Robertson-Pearce)
Don’t let your life simply be a hurry into a receding future without real purpose and meaning. This purpose and meaning is only recreated from the heart centre – the bright field. It is, as the modern mystic Guy Finley has so eloquently said
Your purpose is to allow Love to use you for its purpose
This can only happen if you are able to surrender your will to the Universal Will. This is, in essence, the one love choice. It is, in a very real sense, the choice between life and death. The Way of the Chakras ultimately leads you to the direct knowing, to the eternal birthless/deathless revelation that you are. My invitation through this blog is to say to you -
At least educate yourself to this glorious invitation.
You can take the first step. You can even, if you doubt the possibility, take the first step. This is a first step into the knowing of your full potential. As one proverb invites
The journey of 1,000 miles begins with the first step.
Personal Development and Chakra Balancing Home Training Program
Until that point when I produce my own Way of the Chakra’s program (which I am presently developing) I invite you to take the first step into real personal and spiritual development that will, in a very real way, lead to stardom. This is the star that you are here to be and to lighten up and brighten up the world. Let me introduce you to an extensive map of chakra balancing and healing that includes . This is a program developed by Carol Tuttle Master Energy Therapist. This program includes the following training:-
- Thai Yoga Therapy.
- Meditation.
- Visualization.
- Rapid Eye Technology.
- Crystal Healing.
- Emotional Freedom Technique.
- Reframing.
- Breathing.
- Affirmations.
- Chanting.
Take the first step.
Click this link to access this program
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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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Levels of Consciousness – Buying a Stairway to Heaven
Levels of consciousness are like a kind of stairway to Heaven. In any stairway there are gaps in between the stairs. These are the places of the unknown that one has to cross without certainty that the next step is in fact awaiting you to place your trust in it (or your foot on it). The stairs that I invite you to place your trust in are those placeless places called levels of consciousness or stages of spiritual growth. In every stage of spiritual growth there is one thing that should be expected and this is resistance to the growth that we wish to have and the wish to stay with that which is known. You have to take a step into the unknown. Here is a poem that share’s with you the fear and the resistance that one can well expect to experience on the journey through various levels of consciousness.
Come to the edge.”
We can’t. We’re afraid.”
Come to the edge.”
We can’t. We will fall!”
Come to the edge.”
And they came.
And he pushed them.
And they flew.Come to the edge
by Guillaume Apollinaire
Many of us during our lifetime will come close to the edge. This coming to the edge is a kind of reaching beyond the ego and the known self. It isn’t simply the movement of ideas around a limited self created identity called the ego but is the willingness to enter the heart. This willingness to enter the heart is an invitation that arises from beyond the personality and that then becomes the alignment of the personal will with the will of the Divine. This experience from beyond the personality is the practical application of the line from the Lord’s prayer that asks,
Thy will be done of earth as it is in Heaven.
At a certain level of consciousness – the mythic level of consciousness – Heaven is still seen as somewhere that is beyond the physicality of the earth. Heaven is not a place beyond the earth. It is an experience of deep interiority. Heaven is the highest level of consciousness available to a human being within this time and space dimension. This is called Christ consciousness and it does not imply that in order to enter such a level of consciousness that you need to be a Christian.
It does mean that you are willing to practice being faithful to that Universal knowing that is within you and which wishes to express through you. When I use the word faith in this blog post or in any other article I am not writing about faith in a set of written words authorized by some outside religious hierarchy. The way in which I use the word faith here is faith in a process that is the process of the movement of Creation through you. This process is forever creating anew. This creative process is skewed to go ever higher. It knows creating because this is what it is and what it does. It doesn’t do this mechanically but holistically. It doesn’t learn creation through knowledge about something but is the knowing of wholeness.
You are not apart from this knowing. You are in fact the knower within. This has been called the still small voice within. Most of your life you have been taught to trust in other people rather than trust the encounter with the still small voice within. The problem with the modern mind is that it is geared via cultural indoctrination to achieve instant results that can then be repeated. The cultivation of the knower within isn’t a time based phenomena. This knowing arises from the dimension of the timeless. This is a dimension outside time and space. While it is instantaneous your ability to receive that instantaneous transmission tends to be distorted by your ego desires. No one other than yourself can invite the knower within. It is a radical invitation because it invites you to claim your true power that is in alignment with Creation as that power designed you to be. It means your being willing to go to the edge and fly.
This knowing within is radical in the sense that you begin to trust it more than any outside authority. It is radical in that sense that it gives you an assurance and self confidence that is not dependant on outside circumstances. it becomes central to the one wild and precious life that you are here to live. The modern mind is a grasping mind. It wants and is expected to be in a continual state of wanting. This is a form of addiction. Rather than being in alignment with Creation it is in polar opposition to Creation. The result is that we as a collective destroy the planet because that satisfies the heart and gives joy in living is not acquired by getting more things. It is revealed through living in the dimension of no thing and no time.
The knower within, the still small voice within, the silent witness within is not outside in the world but is within the deep interiority of who you are and is who you are. It is the One who knows you by heart and knows your true heart’s desires. It knows fulfilment through you and you know fulfilment through it. In following the still small voice within you are following your bliss. The greatest spiritual teaching that is paradoxical is the practice of some form of stillness. This is the practice that is invited through meditation and prayer. Prayer here means contemplative prayer and not prayer that is a list of demands. This follows one of the greatest spiritual growth invitations ever given.
Be still and Know that I AM God.
The invitation to be the knower within goes against most everything you have been taught. If you spend time during your day simply engaged with cultivating the still small voice within most people will ask your if you are OK or ask what is wrong or ask what it is you are doing. The answer one might give is
I’m learning how to be.
To enter stillness and to cultivate the willingness to be available to the knower within runs counter to the energetic of this Western culture which is becoming the world culture. However, this movement has never been part of mainstream culture and in all likelihood might never be. The ability to come to the edge and fly is the real secret. It is the secret of silent interiority that knows what is needed in each moment. If you follow the culture of instant results or are impatient (as I am) then you are going to be challenged in developing this trust that this process demands. This demand isn’t some form of punishment. it is demanding rescues it opposes not only what is individual learning within you but the collective idea that the only way to advance anything in life is to do do do and do. This attitude has now gotten us as a collective into deep do-do.
The knower within marries the two sides of the brain. You open up that frequency of the brain that receives the knower and out of this knowing you are the action. This is the experience that I refer to as Love in action. This tends to be action that moves from a sense of calm. The result is known not as a list of stepped actions but as a free flow of action within the moment. This feels invigorating because there is no sense of resistance. The will of Love is being done through matter. Your will ,and the will of the stillness that knows how to create, are in full alignment. The process is peaceful and fulfilling. There is now a real sense of gratitude rather than a sense of achievement.
The Knower within is often represented by the dynamic of the Divine Feminine. She knows in ways that the masculine knowledge does not know. One is not better than the other. Each is needed. The knower within is the one who with a word can get what they came for because their power is not in words but in the Word.
There’s a lady who’s sure that all that glitters is gold and she’s buying a stairway to heaven. She is following signs on the wall and sometimes words have two meanings. Words always have two meanings. One time she will learn that you cannot buy a stairway to Heaven because it is already who you are and that you could never pay anywhere enough for the view that you get from the top. Does that not make you wonder?
And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our soul.
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold.
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last.
When all are one and one is all
To be a rock and not to roll.
And she’s buying the stairway to heaven.
If you cross the gaps that are the various levels of consciousness then it won’t make you wonder anymore. You will know and be that wonder. If it is the real stairway to Heaven then you will come back down to earth to lead the rest of us. That is the real grace of climbing a stairway to Heaven.
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.
stillness speaks
SPIRAL DYNAMICS – Another map of personal and spiritual development for your consideration
STAGES OF PERSONAL GROWTH – This article describes four levels or stages of Personal Growth — social accomplishment, psychological growth, spiritual progress and transformation.
CHAKRA HEALING – Articles on Chakra Healing by Energy Master Carol Tuttle
Spiritual Cinema–Travelling the Way
Last night I was privileged to watch what I call spiritual cinema. I enjoyed, in the company of friends, (with a large selection of chocolate cakes) a viewing of the movie called The Way. This is a gentle and inspirational movie about one man’s journey along the pilgrim’s way called The Camino de Santiago (the Way of St. James). This is the journey of the inner meeting the outer and the outer meeting the inner. It has the great tag line “You don’t choose a life, you live one.”
At the end of this spiritual cinematic experience I felt a great love for each of the four main characters who journey this pilgrims road together. Each is alone in their own way with the reasons and the pain they wish to heal along the way. Yet even when alone these four main characters become a small community. At the end of the movie there is a form of reconciliation within each of these characters. There is a kind of redemption, a kind of moving on from the past and the guilt of the past. They have forgiven themselves for who and what they are. The theme of forgiveness and redemption is one of my all time favourite movie themes.
Martin Sheen who plays the main character in the movie is interviewed in the extras feature that accompanies the DVD. He is asked in the interview if he believes in miracles. His replay is that life is a miracle. He affirms in his own way that being alive in this dimension of time and space is itself a miracle. He doesn’t say it in exactly this way but he affirms that the journey from no form into form and the return to the formless is a journey that we as individuals can know and live. This opportunity is in fact the miracle we tend, very often, to take for granted.
The tragedy for many of us is that we begin this miraculous journey and then we get stuck along the way. Everyone is born into this miracle of life but many never begin the journey of the stages of spiritual growth. Everyone is called to make this miraculous spiritual journey that is the journey of evolutionary consciousness but due to fear of the unknown choose to stay where they are.
The masters and avatars of all times have mapped in full the staged journey of spiritual growth. They have put signposts along the way that point the way into the fullness of the unknown but the knowable. Their lower level of consciousness followers, however, formed an organised religion around these signposts and gathered followers around such signposts. They then forbade such followers to take the journey and made them into believers. Believers are those who know the signposts rather than the experience of the journey of faith into the unknown beyond the written word.
At these higher stages of spiritual growth one walks the way alone but also in company. The company is not like a hierarchical church that say it knows how you should walk the way but is the inner guidance that is available from realms beyond the senses, beyond linear thought and beyond prescribed scripts.
For the most part hierarchical religion wants those who walk the Way to walk the prescribed way which is the way of their given belief system. The hierarchical institution is not interested in facilitating the glory of the journey but is more interested in maintaining the prescribed map that takes you only as far as the institution allows you to go. For the most part the hierarchy of religious institutions are at the level of mythic consciousness. They have throughout history fought tooth and nail the advance of science and spiritual freedom of the individual.
The real walking the pilgrims way begins when, metaphorically speaking, you take up a certain kind of walking staff. This walking staff is your personal authority in matters of your spiritual growth. This does not mean you are required to leave the church or religious community you belong to but it does mean that the church is not your authority in spiritual matters. Your authority arises from within. It is your still small voice speaking from within you. In the spiritual move The Wizard of Oz this still small voice is represented by the dog Toto. This is the representation of companionship and unconditional love. In the Russian fairytale of Baba Yaga and Vasallisa the Beautiful this authority is represented by the little doll given to Vasallisa by her dying mother. Vasallisa keeps this doll in her pocket as she travels deep into the dark of the forest. The little doll signals wrong turns by becoming animated.
The Way begins in earnest when you begin to walk your talk and not the talk of the group dynamic or some outside authority that tells you how to think. This beginning of the Way is beautifully illustrated in the Mary Oliver poem
The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.
In this poem Mary Oliver finally decides to risk the inner way. She is tired of listening to all those voices that clamour for attention and who are shouting all their bad advice. Finally she decides to recognise her own voice. She strides the Way determined to do the only thing that she is able to do and that is save the only life that she can save. This is her own life.
Where does your authority lie? Are you one who has integrated those aspects within yourself that are unloved and who can then as a consequence affirm your real sense of self and say, “I can.” This is the voice of your true authority. This is a pre-requisite for moving further along the Way. From this sense of integrity and the sense of your own strength you can, metaphorically speaking, move higher up the mountain where you will ascend into high states of spiritual growth that with practice become plateaus.
Or are you listening to the authority of your pastor, your priest or your guru who tells you that they know the Way. There are even those who have the arrogance to proclaim that theirs is the only Way and that it is the truth and the Life. It may well be that in reality but they are more often than not talking about an experience that they themselves tend not to have journeyed into and more often than not abort as a possibility in those who they profess to give spiritual direction to.
The Way is not easy. It is easier to cling to signposts along the way. It is easier to simply give one’s authority in matters of spiritual growth to someone outside yourself who seems more assured than you do. All true teachers of the Way point the pilgrim of the Way inward. All false teachers tie the pilgrim to the signpost. There are plenty of signposts along the Way. There is the Bible, the Koran, the Gita and the Dharmapada. All of these signposts where written from the direct experience of the Way. This direct experience is for the most part interpreted by those who talk about the journey but have never had the inward experience the signpost point to. They have never journeyed to that place where the knower and the knowing are one and not simply something that one knows about. This knowing is at least a sixth stage spiritual growth experience. It is a stage where one has at least, for one glorious moment, seen the end point of this journey that is invited in this dimension of time and space.
The miracle is that this is happening to each and everyone of us. It is happening now and it is happening forever. The tragedy is that the very invitation to this glorious journey has been so filled with signposts by other lower level consciousness authority figures that the poor pilgrim cannot even move into their own space. Nor are they even allowed to do so without great upset and resistance. The Way is a glorious way but you have to travel it alone. You have to become the one who truly authorizes the journey. This journey will take you to places where you will not know what to do or how to go on. The choice is then to cling to the signpost or move on and acknowledge that you don’t know where you are going but you are prepared to be faithful to the still small voice within. You have to choose to leave behind all the bad advice and finally discover that
there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.
This movie entitled The Way is for me a wonderful spiritual cinematic experience. All my friends who watched it with me agreed that it was a wonderful uplifting movie. If you watch it you might be inspired to find a new voice and recognise it as your own and stride out into the world and save the one life that only you can ever save. Enjoy this spiritual cinema experience with friends who you might choose to walk the Way with. Hunt out move spiritual cinema experience and make it part of your spiritual practice. It really is great fun.
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 awakening
CHAKRA HEALING – Articles on Chakra Healing by Energy Master Carol Tuttle
THE ENTHEOS ACADEMY – Online teaching that integrates everything you might have wanted to study: from old school philosophy and spirituality to modern day positive psychology, nutrition, creativity, conscious business and general self-development–all the
STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS – Video about the various states of consiousness.