Foster kinship with nature, even if only in some small way. You need nature, most importantly in the air you breathe. Everyone breathes and shares the air equally, and air is a most important aspect of nature and human life. Think of all the creatures, human, animal, insect, amoeba that share the air of life with you. Be amazed that every particle you breathe has been passed along from one life to another, from the heavens to the Earth, from the birds in the sky to the babes in arms. Remain in awe of this most important element with every breath you take, and with gratitude thank nature and your fellow creatures for the pure ability to simply breathe.
When our ruler of waking life, the ego, surrenders its totalitarian grip on waking life, as it dies to sleep, we are released into the underworld of the dream.
We emerge newly born each morning from this birth canal of dream to an innocent moment of new life before ego suddenly and pervasively snatches our wonder and reconstructs its familiar definition of life once again.
Every day we profoundly experience this death/rebirth motif. When we die to the day each night, we journey through the shadow of the day just lived, frequently in exaggerated compensatory dreams that insist we see and experience that which waking ego defended against and kept at bay with its array of defensive tricks.
Beyond these shadows, our soul ventures into holotropic states where we commune with helpers, guides, predeceased loved ones, and subtle realms of deepening revelation. When we awaken, we are sent back from these near-death experiences to remember our lessons and bring them to life in the birth of the new day.
Waking up in the morning is a sacred technology. The awe of first breath and first light greets us with our existential opportunity to exercise our free will in birthing a new possibility that transcends the limits of ego’s working definition of self. Seize the moment. Deepen the breath. Relive the dreams. Let them be brought to physical life.
The other day, as we walked in a parking lot, Jan suddenly recognized the outline of a heads-up penny, mired in the dirt. As she bent down to pick it up, she was immediately transported to shiny copper pennies on a marble floor she had excitedly picked up in her prior night’s dream journey. This synchronicity bridged waking ego with Soul, with the clear instruction to be led by its signs that would bring magic into the day.
Everyday synchronicities are moments of numinous communion with our truest soulmate, our High Soul. Be thunderstruck with awe and love as these magical moments of divine resonance unfold. Suspend the judgment of ego’s downgrading of it into mere coincidence. Allow yourself a moment of silence in your inner temple.
The shamans of ancient Mexico discovered that we construct and enact our lives each day through sets of movements they called magical passes. Everyday life is an endless repetition of the same physical movements that give definition to who we are. These include basics, like our posture, our way of walking, the cadence of our speech, how we breathe, and the incessant repetitions of our internal dialogue.
The shamans developed a technology to break the fixated trance of the archetypes we identify with through a practice they called not-doings. Not-doings are simply movements that break the pattern of the physical movements or habits we typically repeat to affirm our ego’s familiar fixated identity.
We might introduce the magical pass of inhaling our breath exclusively through our nose, or consciously changing our pattern of breathing to a different rhythm. For instance, breathe in to a count of 3 and out to a count of 4. We might eat an unusual breakfast, leave home at a different time, drive or walk in the world on a road less travelled.
The options for shifting patterns are infinite and each one of them provides divine moments of silence before the familiar chatter of the internal dialogue reasserts itself. In Carlos Castaneda’s book, Magical Passes, he shares many magical passes that shamans have practiced since ancient times to recondition their physical energy to enter holotropic states of awareness in waking life.
Keeping it simple, just make spontaneous small changes in everyday habits and experience a momentary crossing of the bridge to heightened awareness, where the divine empowers us to be the new life we long for.
Rites of Passage are formalized rituals designed to help us mature into the deepening challenges of physical life and beyond. Not-doings are magical passes that build the foundation for these crossings through accruing energy with the execution of each magical pass.
The death and rebirth of sleep, dream, and awakening—the spiritual audience of synchronicity where spirit meets matter—and the not-doings of our ritual and habitual magical passes are all sacred technologies fully in our grasp and capable of being exercised in everyday life.
Grasp them, though not too tightly! All habits, even the good ones, must eventually be broken.
Refine your attempts to evolve and grow each day by facing what keeps you away from your goals, addressing your concerns with honesty and an attitude of absolute truthfulness. Evolution and growth may at times come in slow steps, for with you, just as with nature, there are dormant times. But even during dormant times tremendous things are happening out of sight. Those are the times of inner work and contemplation, perhaps the most important and unique strategy in human evolution, the ability to go within and contemplate the self on a deeper level. If you can change yourself on the inside by deep contemplation and study you will naturally change on the outside as well. What’s going on inside you today? That’s the question to ask, to face, and to work on within.
You are connected to everyone, and to everything in nature too, and everyone and everything in nature is connected to you. There is a universal energy that flows to and through everything, including you. Even when you feel alone and out of sync with nature and the world this energy still flows through you. Slow down and you will feel it. Breathe and you will feel it. Hum and you will feel it. Close your eyes and just listen and you will feel it.
Find solace in knowing that your Soul invented you, finds you pleasing and is eager to engage in life with you. Find solace in the fact that you are loved, wanted and eagerly watched over with loving kindness. Your Soul is your greater Self who knows all and wishes only for your growth and evolvement through a life of learning, for when you grow and evolve your Soul also grows and evolves. The two of you are quite a pair! Don’t be afraid to give voice and expression to your loving, creative Soul.
