The Soul is a part of the whole, yet it is more dominant than you realize. It houses and guides you, your greater Self who knows all. It is time to live your life in not only awareness of this greater wholeness but more fully utilizing it, becoming it in everything you think and do. Your feelings of being stuck are mere fiction, for in truth your Soul, your Spirit, is in constant motion. Time to live from this greater Self, the Psychic Self, the Spiritual Self, the unattached Self who is naturally gracious, kind and loving. What is it you seek? No need to look any further. What you seek is you, in you, of you—You!
Monthly Archives: May 2015
Lessons in a Life: Selfie-Self
There is still a very small part of me that struggles with my old friend and nemesis Unworthiness. We have been companions on my entire life’s journey. If I have anything left in me that holds me back I’d have to say this is it; the last vestiges are tenacious. And yet, I am well aware of it and how it works within me, of how I have also worked with it and used it to my advantage, how interwoven we are in the unfolding of my life. We’ve become very accustomed to each other.
– Photo by Jan Ketchel
At this point in my life, Unworthiness has the least amount of control that its ever had, the least impact, and is seldom a visitor. But when something arises, an issue perhaps, something I don’t want to do or feel intimidated by, I just have to sit for a minute to know that my old enemy and cohort is sitting right there, waiting for me to notice. I can almost hear a gleeful laugh as I go about my inner inquiries.
Over the past week the energy has been a little strange. I’ve felt it and Chuck has too. Perhaps others have as well. The daily Soulbytes have been stuck on one theme—to sit and wait. Chuck wrote about it this week in his blog, Activating Change—Staying Put. But it’s spring, a time of bursting forth, a lot going on in nature, activity all around, and so the urge is to do quite the opposite.
My own energy has been in keeping with the sit and wait energy this week, not by choice—it’s just the way it’s been. I’ve noticed that my normal busyness has been replaced by a slower pace as I’ve naturally fallen in step with the advice of the channeled messages. It doesn’t feel as if I’ve accomplished any less than had I expended a lot of high-strung energy, running around feeling like I’ll never get done all that needs to be done. My old friend Unworthiness was strangely absent and silent this week too, I noticed.
Could the slower calmer energy I’ve adopted have anything to do with that? I wonder. I am usually not a high-strung or nervous individual, but I like to get things done and often push myself, perhaps expending a lot of energy unnecessarily. This week I let my mood, my body, and my sense of the importance of taking it slow dominate and decide. Without a sense of having to rush around or push too hard I’ve noticed that I am calmer overall and, as I said, things have certainly gotten done.
It makes me wonder if I’ve unwittingly encouraged old friend Unworthiness to stick around, far beyond its necessary lifespan. I have indeed continued to question my worthiness in so many areas of life, but the noticeable lack of doubt in my thoughts this week raises that question as much as anything else I’ve experienced.
I recently heard someone speaking about “selfie” this and “selfie” that. At first I thought, “Wow! People are so focused on themselves, taking selfies, posting selfies.” I got worried about what all this focus on the outer self would result in. A self-absorbed generation too self-interested to care about the world? But then I realized we all do it! We’re all concerned with out own selfie image, including me with my Unworthiness/Worthiness selfie issue! All of those internal machinations that circle through the mind are nothing more than grand selfies!
I noticed this week, however, as I’ve allowed myself to slow down, to put off a few things and wait, that my own selfie talk has diminished to almost nothing. I’ve gone about life with little attention paid to my usual inner selfie stuff and been focused on the energy instead. The instruction to engage in the energy of waiting has relieved me of a lot of usual mental stuff, and the normal worry and doubt—am I good enough at this or worthy enough of that—has naturally dissipated. This is the true meaning of doing recapitulation, letting the energy of the process guide and instruct, rather than push to make something happen or to process too quickly, going out of alignment with the natural flow of one’s own process. Deep inner work, when undertaken in this manner, is not selfie-selfish but liberatingly self-revealing and self-transformational.
– Photo by Jan Ketchel
In keeping pace with the natural energy of each day this week, I’ve felt more naturally aligned myself. Sitting in stillness offers quiet inside and outside. My own selfie-self can attest to that, as it has acquiesced to the energy of sitting in stillness all week and felt truly calm and in balance.
And so, I have no fear for the “selfie” generation. Perhaps all the self focus will have a similar selfless experience. Perhaps sitting in stillness, with all the “selfie” paraphernalia put aside for some quiet time, the beautiful warm spring days we’ve had lately in the Northeast can really be enjoyed in calmness.
In sitting in stillness you might notice that you too shed some of your usual anxiety or concerns. In alignment with nature only what is naturally of concern exists, as I found out. I learned that I had a lot of “selfie” stuff that was just not part of my own true nature, the self I truly am. It’s been a calm but strangely enjoyable week. I wish the same for you.
Unworthy no more,
Jan
Soulbyte for Friday May 8, 2015
Alignment is achieved when all is calm. Alignment is maintained when all is calm. A warrior seeks calmness knowing that it brings not only alignment but peace of mind and that only with peace of mind will right action be possible. A warrior knows that thoughts, ideas, attachments, and desires are interferences in alignment. And so a warrior strives always to maintain peace within and peace without.
Soulbyte for Thursday May 7, 2015
Remarkable people are no more remarkable than you. Some people are driven by ego, others by heart. Ego driven people often appear remarkable in the eyes of others while heart driven people are barely noticed. To be heart driven is to crave nothing, neither remarkability nor noticeability. To live a life of meaning and purpose from the heart center is knowing that nothing is more important than being loving, kind, and compassionate. That is being remarkably heart driven.
Chuck’s Place: Activating Change-Staying Put
I woke up contemplating the topic of my blog. The image of a turtle on a stump in the middle of Tivoli Bays, encountered on a canoe trip the other day, had stayed with me. I sat quietly and still while Jan channeled the Tuesday morning Soulbyte. The message she wrote sealed it, the topic of my blog became clear: change through stillness—the molting turtle.
– Photo by Erica Ketchel
It’s early spring in the Bays. All prepare for new life. Our trip was somewhat disruptive to the busy beavers, hunting eagles, wading herons, and the nesting geese. Most astonishing was the sighting of a statuesque, prehistoric looking turtle, perched on a log barely peeking above the water at low tide. At first, the question was: Is it really what it appears to be? Or is it simply a projection, the mind’s misinterpretation of matter that frequently shape-shifts things in this magical place?
Sure enough, it was what it appeared to be. As we approached, the turtle’s head appeared shiny and alive. Amazingly, it remained frozen, so contrary to the escapist behavior turtles usually employ when encountering human curiosity. The canoe drifted closer and the turtle form became increasingly evident, but still the questions arose. Could it really be alive? Is it somehow impaled on the stump? Then the canoe bumped right into the log; I could not control it and was frozen myself, not wanting to push off from the log and disturb this perched creature.
It was an amazingly powerful scene. What sat before us was a turtle whose outermost shell was molting, the sun’s deep rays hastening the peeling and flaking of its outer crust. Unfortunately, our closeness eventually overwhelmed its powerful intent to submit to the sun and it dove into the water for its own protection, in search of solitude to continue its transformative process in privacy.
The turtle’s journey of change so simply and eloquently mirrors our own, though we humans must employ consciousness to enact this ancient archetypal program of change.
The sun is our spirit energy, the kundalini energy of our energy body that infuses itself in our physical spine. In the first half of life that spirit energy must find its footing in the physical world, first lodging in the sacrum.
As we grow and mature the kundalini energy rises to our reproductive center where nature claims it for its own survival needs.
As we make our way into the world we need the confidence of autonomy and so the kundalini funds our ego stability at the level of the solar plexus, where we experience confidence and the extreme challenges of power and competition in this world.
As we approach the chasm of midlife—or in many instances much younger in today’s rapidly changing world—we approach the great ocean that must be crossed to reach the level of the heart, where truth, love, and compassion extend to all interdependent life.
With each of these rising changes we are challenged, like the turtle on the log, to stay contained, as the heat of kundalini rises in its upward ascent. If we can provide a sealed channel to the rising energy, it will ascend to the next level. But this does require stillness and containment, especially when the energy of the full moon beckons us to release and attach to the pleasures of the world.
If, for instance, the sexual urge of the second chakra is always catered to as it demands and beckons, how can we advance a relationship dominated by the compulsion of more? How, at the level of personal power, are we to advance if we allow the kundalini to leak out and attach to more possessions or conquests, as it so desires? Without the choice of containment that the turtle exemplifies, our spirit remains imprisoned in the dense desires of this world.
– Photo by Jan Ketchel
When we, as we must in our journey upward, explore and indulge in the kundalini attachments at the various stages, we are like the turtle that dives into the water, offsetting the drying-out transformation, as we binge in some form in this world. The process of absorbing and bearing the heat of containment, for our spirit to rise and change our focus, and for appreciation of our greater reason for being in this world, we must wait for another sunny day, beyond another Groundhog Day, when we are ready to steady for change.
I thank that turtle for so bravely bearing the tension of our intrusion, while also sharing one of life’s simplest yet most challenging of lessons: Activating change requires staying put and bearing the tension, as our defensive shell molts and sheds and our spirit rises to greater truth.
Seeking a new log for molting,
Chuck