Soulbyte for Thursday April 23, 2015

A time of conflict is ultimately a time of resolution. A time of disturbance will eventually lead to a time of calmness. All things change and evolve. Even the staunchest opponent to change will eventually change as a time of life turns a corner into death, the biggest change of all. Yet how many people contemplate death?

Death is no more than a natural changing event, no different than one day’s folding into the next, one thought’s fleeting passing into another, one form’s merging into another. Just as everything changes so does the human spirit one day leave the human form and move on into another state.

In the meantime, there is much to do and learn, not the least of which is to activate the changing self. To become a changing being volitionally is an act of love and compassion, for in deciding to change the self, to grow and spiritually evolve, each individual changes more than the self—the whole world changes too!

Chuck’s Place: Finding The True Heart

Don Juan’s fundamental guidance to Carlos Castaneda was to choose a path with heart, for “a path with heart is easy—it does not make a warrior work at liking it; it makes for a joyful journey; as long as a man [or woman] follows it, he [she] is one with it.” *

We all have a two-part heart... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
We all have a two-part heart…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Here don Juan speaks to what Sri Aurobindo called being in alignment with the Divine Spark, the Psychic Being hidden in the cave at the center of the heart chakra. To realize the truth of this Divine Spark as one’s path in this life is to truly find and traverse one’s path with heart. And yet, the heart is of two parts, its emotional side offering “an obscure and often uncertain and misleading power,” as Aurobindo states, as well as behind that emotional heart, “a profounder mystic light which, if not what we call intuition…has yet a direct touch upon Truth and is nearer the Divine that the human intellect in its pride of knowledge.” ** This second, mystical heart, is the heart that is hidden in the cave at the center of the heart chakra, this is the true heart that seeks and recognizes a path with heart.

On a physical level the heart is the center of life and vitality in the body. There is no physical life without a heartbeat. The movement of the heart distributes energy to every cell of the body to enable all cells to act. This action extends to emotional life, where feelings spur human action and interaction.

Aurobindo states: “…there is in front in men a heart of vital emotion similar to the animal’s, if more variously developed; its emotions are governed by egoistic passion, blind instinctive affections and all the play of the life-impulses with their imperfections, perversions, often sordid degradations,—heart besieged and given over to the lusts, desires, wraths, intense or fierce demands or little greeds and mean pettinesses of an obscure and fallen life-force and debased by its slavery to any and every impulse.” **

Here Aurobindo refers to the heart’s action capacity as being under the dominance of the three lower chakras, animal instincts ruled by the archetypal governances or gods of the planetary being at its purely survival mode, as well as a mixture of ego-willfulness supplanting nature’s imperative to its own self-serving ends. (See last week’s blogpost for further explanation: Beyond Archetypal Bondage)

Here arises confusion at the heart center, for though the emotional heart dominates through much of life this irrational emotive center is incapable of guiding the true needs of the Self, the higher being that we all are. This part of the heart chakra, with all its powerful emotionality, provides the justification for the rise to order and reason of the rational mind, as it insists on its superiority and hegemony over the vagaries of the feeling heart.

Rationality is like a predator, constantly swooping in to reassert its presence... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Rationality is like a predator, constantly swooping in to reassert its presence…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Aurobindo comments: “This mixture of the emotive heart and the sensational hungering vital creates in man a false soul of desire; it is this that is the crude and dangerous element which the reason rightly distrusts and feels a need to control, even though the actual control or rather coercion it succeeds in establishing over our raw and insistent vital nature remains always very uncertain and deceptive.” ***

Unfortunately, attempts at rational control over emotive behavior, or cognitive behavioral therapy, rarely quell the base impulses raging in the heart. More often than not they are sentenced to the prison of the shadow unconscious where they lie in wait, scheming their next disruptive moves. The apparent calm after the storm is generally short-lived.

How many times couples find themselves immediately reignited in a conflict, after a voluntary break for calming and cooling, reflects the thin veil of control reason holds over the fiery energy of an ignited heart.

Though reason might offer a pause, it cannot settle matters of the true heart. For don Juan, reason would be a false path, not the path that could be guided by spirit. How then does one go about achieving the quiet heart, of locating “the true invisible heart hidden in the luminous cave” *** of the heart center, and truly find a path with heart.

Tibetan Buddhism has developed the practice of Tonglen breathing where the fire of emotion is allowed to burn off and transform in the heart center, through breathing in the fire that wants to attack or attach outwardly and breathing out a cooler breath of compassion. This is an alchemical process of transforming emotional heat into the steady flame of cool luminosity utilizing the heart chamber as the retort, or flask, to burn off the impurities of the lower chakras to arrive at truth and compassion. Once we find our way to true compassion, compassion that is not tainted with sympathy, empathy, or guilt, we’ve entered the cave of objective truth where the cool Divine Spark glows in all its luminosity.

Behind the known heart lies the cave of the luminous heart... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Behind the known heart lies the cave of the luminous heart…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The I Ching in the hexagram Ken, the Mountain, hints at the practice of yoga as a method to still the restlessness of the heart, another alchemical process. Regardless of methodology, the essence of an alchemical practice is to contain the energy of the lower chakras that would drive the heart to outbursts of emotive activity. Through containment of this emotional energy a transformation takes place whereby the cave of the hidden mystical heart appears. Then the Psychic Being, the true higher Self, is available to come forth and take the reins in right action.

In opening access to the true heart chakra where the Psychic Being resides, that inmost link to Divine Soul, only truth and compassion flow. As Aurobindo states: “It is as this psychic being in him grows and the movements of the heart reflect its divinations and impulsions that man becomes more and more aware of his soul, ceases to be a superior animal, and, awakening to glimpses of the godhead within him, admits more and more its intimations of a deeper life and consciousness and an impulse towards things divine.” ****

The path to unveil the hidden heart is truly the path with heart.

With compassion,
Chuck

References:
* The Wheel of Time, Castaneda, p. 19
** The Psychic Being, Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, p 26
*** The Psychic Being, Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, p 27
**** The Psychic Being, Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, p 27-28

Soulbyte for Wednesday April 22, 2015

All days should be considered Earth Day, for Mother Earth deserves not only respect at all times but appreciation and careful consideration of all that she is. All that Mother Earth provides is placed there for all living beings, yet human beings have taken, pillaged, and destroyed without concern for all living organisms. What has happened without is happening within and this is not good for Mother Earth or for the human being either. A lack of respect, a disregard of the truth of interconnectedness and interdependence and the delicate balance necessary for all of life to flourish has created a dire circumstance.

For change to happen, all must be in alignment and kept in balance. All must once again return to a greater alignment with all that is, with the nature of life and the life of nature. When alignment within is achieved, alignment with all that is without will naturally fall into alignment as well. As within so without.

Soulbyte for Tuesday April 21, 2015

Be careful. Not all angels are good, not all spirits are benevolent and helpful, not all entities are beneficial. Don’t be fooled. Know your own energy so that you may know compatible and wise energy, so that you may be guided and protected, not misguided and the life sucked out of you. Watch where you put your attention and your energy.

It’s important to amass good energy, to learn about energy, to connect with energy, but not all energy is good. Watch what you attach to. Take precautions to protect yourself and choose carefully and wisely what you become involved with, both in this world and in the spirit world. Not all energy is good. This is not offered to generate fear but simply as a reminder to be alert and to realize that not all that offers its dazzling wares is worthy of attachment.

Message for Humanity from Jeanne: Act Appropriately

For new fruit to grow there must be a shedding of that which is no longer appropriate... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
For new fruit to grow there must be a shedding of that which is no longer appropriate…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

This week’s message alerts us to a coming shift. Time to prepare appropriately, as Jeanne suggests in this week’s channeled message. Offered most humbly, that all may benefit.