A warrior knows that there is a distinction between having discipline and forcing something. A warrior knows that to have discipline is to hone a skill, gained by working at tempering the child self and maturing the adult self. A warrior knows that to overpower the child self is to force an issue, often resulting in the child self getting angry. A warrior knows that it is far better to work with the child self to mature and grow, while the adult self seeks alignment, stability and maturity in the world.
A warrior knows that alignment and balance will occur naturally and there will be fewer disciplinary and anger issues to deal with as this work takes place. A warrior knows that this inner work will result in a more naturally flowing life. Even discipline will naturally be present as balance between child and adult self occur.
A warrior knows, however, that there are outside influences that may interfere with even the most concerted and disciplined inner work, and so a warrior is always aware of entities seeking to attach, to force their way in and take over. A warrior is aware that balance is the greatest defense and so a warrior is not frightened of entities, for a warrior realizes that entities only gain entry through the door of imbalance. And so, a warrior studies imbalance, advancing the art of discipline so that eventually the entities fall away. And so a warrior never gives up the fight because a warrior knows that seeking balance IS the warrior’s work.
In ancient times, mountain dwellers regularly went down to the sea to get food from the nutrient-rich oceans. The body naturally knew what it needed, and instinct—along with knowledge accumulated over time—led them there. Likewise, during the cold season many ancient peoples migrated to warmer climates—they had summer settlements and winter settlements—also led by the true needs of the body. Tradition, habit and physical needs all worked in accord with nature’s imperative to survive and thrive.
We humans have come so far from such innate wisdom that we have totally lost touch with what we really need. Without the need to struggle to survive, as our ancient ancestors did, we have become complacent and greedy. Our needs must be met! With our natural selves turned off we’ve become addicted to things of this world, thinking we need something to reward, stimulate, calm or provide any number of physical placations to the demands and imperatives of life. We have forgotten how to survive and thrive.
Sort of the color of my blue rooms… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Last week I had a profound dream. I walked into a beautiful and serenely calm blue room. The room was familiar. I had been in it before in many dreams. It was always a room in my “house,” another living area that I was, for the most part, unaware of. One side of this big room was comprised of a huge curved bay window. Looking out over a beautiful ocean, this room was empty except for a couple of boxes that were packed and ready to go. To the left and two steps down was an adjacent blue room. This room was a little smaller. It contained no windows and was crowded with ghosts.
As soon as I entered this second blue room the ghosts came up to me, clamoring for my attention. “Oh, please make that delicious dish again,” said a round-faced man, smacking his lips. “That is my favorite meal!” They fought to get my attention. They crowded around me pawing at me, saying things they knew I would like to hear, buttering me up so to speak. There was a big party going on in this room. Every entertainment, every tasty food and drink was in this room, lavishly presented and greedily being consumed by all the inhabitants. Sexual innuendoes abounded.
At one point I noted, “Heck, I’m talking to ghosts!” Finally extricating myself from the ghosts I walked to the end of the room and, noticing that it did not have an exterior wall, stepped down another two steps out into a beautiful primeval forest. Here all was quiet and calm. I could be alone here.
As I walked in the forest, I noticed how enticing those blue rooms were, how comfortable and comforting, how strongly I was drawn to them, as well as to the serenity of the forest. As I stood in the lush forest, however, something didn’t feel right. “Am I in an old place?” I wondered. “I’ve been here so many times before!” With that thought I was immediately back in the first big blue room. I saw the packed boxes and realized it was time to leave. My son was there. I turned to him and declared that we were going to the mountaintop now.
The next thing I knew we were climbing up a steep mountain trail. Everything was pink now. The trail underfoot was dusty pink. It was lined with pointy pink spiraling boulders. There was no vegetation; the sun was beating down and barely a shady spot existed except every now and then in the overhang from a tall pointy boulder. It was a hot, dry hike, not an easy route, but I knew it was the only trail to take if we were to get to the mountaintop.
As we hiked up the steep switchbacks that were carved into the mountain, I talked to my son about trusting the psychic self, to not dismiss the magical things that occur in the course of everyday life but to remain open, that all would eventually make sense.
Eventually we will all get to the crystal mountaintop… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
The dream ended as we reached the sunny top of the mountain and a beautiful pink quartz crystal monastery. It was then that I looked back down the trail we had just come up and noticed that the mountain itself was made of the same pink quartz crystal. All that had appeared as dry and hot was now beautiful, gleaming and glistening in the brilliant sunlight.
Although the monastery building was imposing, I was aware that it contained the accumulation of a life’s work in accessing, trusting, and utilizing the awareness of the innate psychic and spiritual powers inherent in all human beings. Its doors and windows were closed, but I knew it was only a matter of time before I would find my way into the cool inner rooms of this castle on the mountain and discover all I needed to know. Like a giant library containing all the answers, it awaits us all.
My dream points out how far we have come from our own ancient roots, the innate wisdom and knowledge that could guide us out of the blue rooms, away from the ghosts—the entities that keep us captive in our addictions and mundane realities—to find our way to the mountaintop where all will become clear. How far we have come from the knowledge inside us all that is there to guide us to what we truly need!
The blue rooms and the primeval forest represent the three lower chakras. The first big room is the ego, the third charka. The second room is the chakra of sex and the desires of this world. The forest is the root chakra, nature from which we all come. I was so drawn to those rooms of my dream, as we are all drawn to stay in the lower chakra system, attached to the things of this world, as familiar and enticing as they are. We must all live in them as we come into life in this world, as they offer us the rites of passage, but eventually we are ready to move on.
After a while there is something else we want. And that will only be found by climbing the mountain, going higher up in the chakra system. We all have our own mountaintop to climb. Everyone’s trail will be their own, everyone’s journey their own, but we all have within us what the ancient ones had, the innate knowledge of what we really need to survive and thrive.
In my dream I was with my son. I am usually accompanied by my daughter in my dreams. If you’ve read my books, you know she represented my spiritual innocence and she has been my dreaming companion for years. This time I am with my son. He represents my rational self, my doubting self who struggles to balance life in two realities, that of spirit and that of this world. And so, it’s significant that I take him with me when I go to the mountaintop but not unusual, for at this point in my life I have already done the work of assimilating my innocence, my spirit. The part of myself that my daughter has always represented in my dreams is fully integrated.
It’s time now for all of us to leave the lower chakras and really make the journey upward into the higher chakras. As long as we are human, however, we will have to revisit the lower chakras, but once we begin the trek upward those visits will be in accord with what is right and naturally appropriate. As our ancient ancestors knew, there were times to go down to the sea to get what was necessary and there were times when it was necessary to move to a new settlement, but such needs were always in accordance with nature, within and without.
Our trails may vary, but the goal is the same… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
I know that if I am dreaming of this work that others are as well, because I know we are all dreaming the same dream. It is reflected in the world around us. Why else is there so much turmoil in the world? Why else does it seem that addictions are rampant? All of the turmoil and all of the addictions, the excesses, are entities of the lower chakras, enticing us to stay with them, to become slaves to them and to our comforts.
In actuality, we are less and less attuned to nature, to the nature of how our physical body speaks to us, and the natural world around us and how it speaks to us too. We are so busy serving the entities what they want that we have forgotten our true mission. The mountaintop calls to us, now more than ever.
Time to go to the mountaintop, Jan
Refer also to Chuck’s blog, posted earlier this week, along similar lines: Attachments Anonymous
When in doubt, pause. When in conflict, pause. When wondering how to proceed, what decision to make, or what action is right, pause first and wait. In waiting calmness arrives. In waiting turmoil recedes and clarity soon comes. Before action, before decision, allow stillness to reign. Stillness allows for sobriety to make itself known, for memory to remind, for that which is truly right and good to reassert itself. A moment of stillness might be all it takes for the right answer to come. Every day the moment for pause will come. And that will be the right action.
Remember to keep compassion in your heart for the struggles of self and others. Every journey is unique, every life equally so. It may not always be clear what your own life challenge is though that of others may clearly stand out. Find your own challenge in that which you despise or fear in others, in that which you find most annoying and most testy in life. The real challenge begins with reconciling with your feelings and discovering what they mean to you personally.
To discover one’s life challenge is to finally confront what lies behind one’s reason for living in the first place. Then one will also find one’s purpose, if one is intent upon it. Not all people, however, will find their reason for living this time around, and that has to be accepted. But if one decides that life is more than meets the eye then one will have found the true mystery of life, and a seed will have been planted.
In facing the mysteries of true reality one will discover that one’s life and one’s journey are most meaningful. And that’s a good place to begin. Remember, compassion begins with the self. And that’s a good place to begin too!
We are all students in Earth School! – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Earth is the Planet of Attachment. Earth School teaches us to securely attach our spirit selves to our physical animal selves—with its myriad of physical needs and desires—and, ultimately, to relinquish all our physical attachments as we return to our pure spirit selves enriched with the fruits of our earthly journey.
The crown jewel of achievement from that Earth School journey is attachment refined, transformed into its highest vibration: love.
Attachment and detachment are the themes of the curriculum of Earth School. Once we master those themes we graduate to new adventures, graduate schools of our liking in greater infinity, enriched and fueled by compassionate love in its eternal form, having been prepared, through our hard work in Earth School, to accompany us on our continued expansive journey in infinity.
Given these considerations, I feel justified in assigning Earth School the title of Attachments Anonymous, extending the twelve-step model to all sentient beings, as we are all on the same journey, seeking to achieve loving kindness, compassion, and detachment.
I recently consulted the I Ching around this issue and received hexagram #24: Return, the Turning Point. In this hexagram, one yang line sits beneath five yin lines. This preponderance of yin is the Earth, the dark solid planet of attachment, all things physical. Emerging from below is thunder, spirit that rumbles beneath the Earth.
The hexagram depicts the cyclical challenge of Earth School, life lived in the patterns of the seasons. We see in our own lives and behaviors the cyclical patterns of our attachments, such as to food, drink, sex, money, power, security, shopping, texting, fear, anger, sadness, carnal and dependent love, to name but a few.
All of our attachments manifest in cyclical patterns of seeking, obtaining, consuming, or lamenting. Even refusing is its own addictive adventure of control, as the “dry drunk” syndrome illustrates.
Spirit always finds a way to alert us… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
There is no escaping addiction, which is really a frenzied state of attachment that we all suffer from and are dominated by at some point in our lives. Addiction provides the core course material of Earth School. Save all guilt and self-blame; if you are here you are in it! Even Christ and Buddha had to go through Earth School.
Hexagram #24 teaches us that the cyclic pattern of attachments NATURALLY gives rise to one moment in the cycle when spirit, on its own, makes an appearance and shakes us from our attachments. Here lies the opportunity to advance beyond compulsion of attachment—this is the Turning Point.
The usual course of all habits is like the seasons, as they too return to the same patterns. But the spirit side of ourselves, in consort with our consciousness, through collaboration, can actually transform an attachment into spiritual advancement. For example, a compulsion might find a new home in loving compassion.
This is why the twelve-step program suggests turning to one’s higher power for help, to enrich one’s struggle with grace and lift the compulsion to a positive level. The I Ching describes this process in the moving line in the third place in hexagram #24, as follows:
“There are people of a certain inner instability who feel a constant urge to reverse themselves. There is danger in continually deserting the good because of uncontrolled desires, then turning back to it again because of a better resolution. However, since this does not lead to habituation in evil, a general inclination to overcome the defect is not wholly excluded.”
The suggestion here is that the usual course of affairs—becoming buried in hungry desirousness—has the possibility of being transcended, if one can access one’s spirit at the turning point.
We can all rise up! – Photo by Jan Ketchel
The turning point offers the opportunity of renewal through rest (compulsion lifted), tender care (compassion for all parts of the self), and flowering, as the spirit of kundalini energy naturally rises to the level of the heart. This is not hungry heart, but a heart full of loving compassion.
Spirit rising to the heart center is the spiritual refinement of the earthly self, the body self, which is granted enhanced life beyond its time in earthly form, in the formlessness of pure spirit love.
This is graduation from Earth School with the highest honors!
