You are fully capable of doing life, but only if you let life do you! What does that mean? You and the energy of life are one and the same. All energy flows through you, the energy of the universe and the energy of the divine. You are not what you think you are. You are so much more and yet that “more” is energy alone. Your lesson today is to experience yourself as this universal energy, as simply a being of energy, just like everyone else and everything around you—powerfully divine!
Monthly Archives: February 2015
A Day in a Life: Living An Energetic Life
who came into our lives on February 1st, is still here!
Did she pick our yard at random or is there a reason?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel
Today’s Soulbyte, a channeled message, poses a most common dilemma. “Interferences happen,” it says. “Even the best laid plans may have to be canned as life, nature, and even death may interfere. Learn to flow with life, with what comes.” How do we learn to let go of control so that we will flow with the inevitable, yet still remain open to the joys of the improbable? That is the dilemma.
Chuck and I decided, quite a while ago, to let the energy of life, the universe, our higher selves, etc., not only guide us but connect us to our higher potential as energetic beings in human form. Acquiescing to this idea has often been a challenge, as we do often want to make something happen, or make plans that we think are best, either for ourselves or others. In acquiescing to the energy of the greater cosmos, however, we have learned to let go of control, to not focus on outcome but to live each day in the moment, allowing unfolding life to guide us.
We practice this in many ways. We don’t rely on anyone else. We do no advertising, no promotions, no soliciting. Our lives, work, and interests are fully funded by our intent alone. Things happen. Things arrive. Things come to us. We find or discover something in perfect alignment with where we are in our lives, as we continually seek out new and deeper experiences and knowledge.
We have discovered that the key to living an energetic life is, yes, to “learn to flow with life, with what comes,” but also in the choices we make. It has not been easy to always flow with life, but it has certainly been rewarding. Even in times of difficulty we have learned to find the jewel. We have no set practice to achieve this other than our attention to the details of our life, and a certainty that everything is meaningful. We have elected to live consciously, making decisions that are proactive and in alignment with spirit, with the awareness that we are here to learn something important about ourselves.
There are many practices that can aid us in experiencing life on an energetic level, the most common one these days appears to be meditation. Any number of practices exist to choose from, but the overall intent of a practice is to gain control, discipline over the mind, thoughts, all that they attach to and the stories they weave, which interfere with our ability to flow with life.
We hear some news. We spin a tale around it. We expect the worst, we spin a worse tale. We tell ourselves bad things, bad things happen to us. We make a wish, the wish comes true. We want something, we get it. We think and think and think, driving ourselves crazy with thoughts. But when we look closely at those thoughts we realize they don’t exist, they are mere stories in our minds. But in the spinning of our thoughts we have created a reality.
we gain a certain peaceful acceptance of all that is…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel
If we change our thoughts, actually let them go one at a time as they come into our minds, we free ourselves to exist in the moment. This is the practice that we have found is the most practical method of being present. It is meditation in action, all the time. The purpose being to examine the personal, the life we are in, as we live it consciously each day. Our sitting in meditation, our breathing, our yoga and other physical practices are merely tools to learn how to be in the moment and flow with what comes. But the real practice comes in implementing it, putting it to work in each moment of each day.
Once we set the intent to be in the moment, once we decide we want to live an energetic life, we must acquiesce to that intent. To do this we must learn to let go of our attachments. Attachments include desires, wants, needs, ideas that things should be this way or that way, that life should be a certain way. Letting go of attachments means letting go of our preconceived ideas, what we’ve learned about life and the world, and becoming open to new ideas.
Letting go of attachments means allowing everything to be of interest and yet attaching to none of it. If we are to live an energetic life we must allow ourselves to fully embrace the possibility that everything is possible, that nothing is impossible, that anything can happen. And when we do that we begin to have the experiences of an energetic life.
I think about my daughter. I should call her. The phone rings. It’s my daughter. “Oh,” I say, “I was just thinking I should call you and you called!” “Yes,” she says, “that’s how we operate!” It goes the other way as well. I will call her and she will say, “Oh yes, I knew I would be hearing from you because I’ve been thinking about you.” We operate on an energetic level.
We all communicate on this energetic level, with people we know and with people we don’t know. We might dream of each other, think of each other, run into each other and if we are aware we know that none of these things are coincidences, they are synchronicities, the intent of our higher self directing our lives.
If we can allow this idea, that we have another part of us that directs our life, and acquiesce to this higher self, then we are well on the way to leading an energetic life. I learned how to do this most assuredly during my recapitulation, as I learned to trust the process and found that everything that was happening to me was meaningful. It became the most important and most fulfilling journey of my life. Everything since then has been a continuation of that amazing process, as life since then has unfolded in a most magical, unplanned way.
Anyone doing deep work on the self is in alignment with energetic living, because deep work, the search for self-knowledge is the path that leads to discovery of the higher self. The higher self waits for us to find it and to trust it. But first we must discover and trust who we are in the lives we are living. We must first be interested in ourselves as human beings and how we really operate.
Many people have no interest in knowing who they are at a deeper level. Stepping into the deeper self is frightening, as often the first things we have to face are the things we have suppressed during our lifetimes, the things we consider bad about ourselves, the things we have done, the things we fear, the things that make us sad or pathetic to ourselves. But those things are our challenges to face, obstacles blocking access to our higher self.
– Photo by Jan Ketchel
In taking the path to self-discovery and self-knowledge we discover so much more about the world too. I am a big proponent of taking an interest in the self! Not in a selfish way, but in exploring the meaning of life.
Someone once said to me, “Oh, that’s such ridiculous stuff!” when I mentioned my interest in astrology. “You really believe that?” he asked, quite disturbed. “No,” I said, “I don’t believe anything, that’s why I’m interested in it. Anything is possible.”
We had two totally different perspectives on life, and although the guy was a very intelligent and warm human being, a college philosophy professor, he just could not ever get out of his head. That is really the first challenge. Can you get out of your head? Try it and see what happens! Think of someone and see if they call you, come into your dreams, knock on your door, or send you a text. Living an energetic life is about having experiences of energy in action.
As today’s Soulbyte also said: “Let the randomness of nature into your life, to be part of it all.”
On an energetic wave,
Jan
Soulbyte for Friday February 13, 2015
Interferences happen. Even the best laid plans may have to be canned as life, nature, and even death may interfere. Learn to flow with life, with what comes. Allow each day to have its moments of ease and loosening, to bring you something new, something special, an unforeseen surprise. In this manner will you learn that the unexpected is often more significant than all the best laid plans. Plan instead to be free flowing. Even as you make your plans for a perfect life, accept that imperfections are also part of the larger unplanned plan. Let the randomness of nature into your life, to be part of it all.
Soulbyte for Thursday February 12, 2015
Beyond today lies tomorrow and beyond tomorrow lies another day. But it is best to stay focused on this day alone, to remain consciously present rather than project ahead to what “may” happen. For in constantly thinking and planning about that which does not exist you are bound to miss out on opportunities that will arise in the present. Remain present in each moment so that you will be granted all that comes to meet you on your path. Turn the mind to awareness of now as you go through your day. Now is all that matters. There are too many things in the world that can happen to change outcomes and if all you do it focus on outcome you will miss the grand unfolding of your life in action, in the now.
Chuck’s Place: The Divine Power Of Sexuality
– Photo by Jan Ketchel
Human sexuality is the physical manifestation of a far subtler yet powerful cosmic energy whose guiding intent is union. At the highest level that union is oneness with God, or the cosmos. At the most basic level, in the human form, it is unconscious instinctive union that results in procreation. One of the greatest challenges for human beings is to reconcile this divine energy with its physical, emotional, and mental energies in the human body.
I opened the Huffington Post the other day to an article entitled: Saudi Historian: U.S. Women Drive Because They Don’t Care If They’re Raped. This somewhat bizarre argument, to justify the Saudi law that forbids Saudi women from driving, does shine a light, however, upon a worldview that acknowledges the power and dangers of sexual energy. The Saudi solution is to overly protect women from the dangers of male sexual energy that loses control in situations of rape. Their solution is an affront to modern sensibility and progress, yet it nonetheless openly confronts the power and potential dangers of sexual energy.
In the West, the assumption that rationality, maturity, love, and respect insure safety in sexuality is blatantly on trial in our age of internet revelation. Abuse of sexual power is evident in our most sacred religious institutions, our schools and universities, and in our homes. It is quite arguable that for all our technological advances we are extremely naive and underdeveloped in our handling of sex.
In old Tibet, children entered monastic life long before the adult manifestation of sexual energy. Celibacy and the refusal to engage in sexual pleasure, even in masturbation, are fundamental to nuns and monks seeking enlightenment. The Shamans of Ancient Mexico discouraged sexual activity, as the energy it exhausted is seen as critical to dream advancement. In these practices we see a respect for the power and vitality of sexual energy, and while it is sublimated it is still utilized, channeled into spiritual advancement. Freud went so far as to suggest that civilization itself was a by-product of sublimated sexual energy.
This scant survey of sexual management throughout the world highlights the power of and the challenge that the carnal and the spiritual dimensions of sexual energy pose. If we can allow the hypothesis that sexuality is of cosmic origin, a blind yet divine energy, sent from “God” to empower union in human form, then it is our greatest human challenge to reconcile this blind, divine energy with full human consciousness. Thus, we can ill afford to lock it away in protectionism, divert it for spiritual aims, or naively assume anything goes simply because we all have rational control.
– Trash Art by Jan Ketchel
As humans, we are charged with discovering the full depth and power of our sexual instinct, this divine energy from God, in all its manifestations—physical, emotional, and mental. We are all charged with actively uniting this side of our nature with our consciousness, that which, in our human form, is our ephemeral spiritual center.
This weekend we celebrate Valentine’s Day, a day appropriated to pay homage to love in relationship. The intent of this celebration is to merge love—union based on consciousness, driven by what is right—with sexuality, in its most instinctive form, in a harmony that symbolizes wholeness and oneness, as cupid depicts, in divine rapture.
Valentine’s Day is, not coincidentally, the opening day for the movie Fifty Shades of Grey. This movie is based on a highly erotic novel that develops the theme of dominance/submission, sadism/masochism in sexual practices. The novel, with all of its steamy sex scenes, has had unprecedented worldwide success. I suggest this success is due to its liberating effects on the exploration of female desire and sexual fantasy, which have been largely undervalued or “protectively” ignored. However, I don’t feel that this fantasy of female sexuality is fully accurate or comprehensive. It may serve for the release and exploration of a largely hidden topic—woman’s sexuality—but I think it actually mirrors the collective frozen states of women’s sexual pleasures and the relationships that reinforce them.
The storyline of the novel allows women pleasure in bondage. Bondage may indeed be a pleasurable experience, but it hardly touches the depths of real pleasure that a woman is capable of experiencing in a truly conscious, loving relationship. The true union of the primal sexual power with consciousness requires the containment of a safe, loving relationship where these primal energies can play and merge in full consciousness.
Bondage, by design, is the antithesis of true freedom. Nonetheless, bondage might be viewed as a more primitive form of commitment. In true commitment, however, a couple freely bonds themselves to each other in a love that allows the full meeting of two beings on all levels. This deep and freeing union, I suggest, is one realization of the divine intent of sexuality. Issued from the highest spiritual plane, it culminates in full realization of the divine in sublime human form.
Rape, in all its manifestations, is the consequence of an aberrant decision to not take up the challenge of humanness and instead to surrender control to the proclivities of the dark side. It’s inhuman. Bondage, in all its manifestations, is a rudimentary experience of trapping and controlling the divine energy. Conscious relationship is the exact opposite, as it seeks to responsibly unite animal and divine.
– Photo by Jan Ketchel
The ultimate challenge awaits us in death itself, where we, as individuals, must completely merge our human energy with divine oneness. Notice, this is not union with another person. This is ourselves, as individuals, uniting with the divine.
Our ultimate, full realization of divine sexuality is in the inner union of self, in the wholeness of all energies merged, physical and divine, transfigured into the oneness of all. Will we resist releasing our body and land in the bardos to continue to work through our attachments to physicality? Or are we ready to fully join with the divine light?
Happy Valentine’s Day,
Chuck