Be honest, especially with yourself. Don’t hide from the truth or uphold a dishonest opinion simply to not lose something. If you are living a lie then you have already lost. There is a saying—Live Your Truth—and that means coming clean and being honest with yourself. Honesty requires a fierceness that dishonesty lacks. Consider how you are living your life now. Are you being honest with yourself? If not, what will it take for you to turn in that direction and be utterly open and honest about everything with a fierceness that you have never tapped into?
Focus on staying upon your intended path, the one that your spirit has pointed out to you, that feeds not only your ego but also your soul. It’s easy to follow ego alone, to go for what it wants and to forget that you are more than that or that anything else matters. But when you turn from ego, what else is there? Only the most important aspect of your makeup—your spirit that longs to connect and live life with your ego, to share in the glory and the defeat, the highs and the lows, and to grow by experience. Turn more often in your spirit’s direction and ask it for guidance as you seek balance and as you yearn for something new. It will not disappoint you!
It begins with deep calm in the body, the soul’s physical extension into this life. The true father of all modern somatic therapy, Wilhelm Reich, brought intimate attention to the opposition between natural impulse and defense in human musculature.
The suppression of sexual and aggressive energies, as well as powerful emotions such as sadness, is executed through what Reich called bodyarmoring, the tensing of muscles that freeze the free flow of instinctive and emotional energy.
A tense throat constricts the vocal expression of emotion. A tense belly and solar plexus create a wall that short-circuits the natural energetic current of tender emotion, natural reflex, and instinctive movement that issues from the lower half of the body.
Love is the energy of union and wholeness, the glue that binds together all of creation. To embody it we must soften our armored muscles.
The standoff between impulse and defense creates pools of charged energy, which in turn generates fears of an uncontrolled tidal wave of chaos and eventual loss of control. Indeed, a cathartic release, such as a deep cry or scream, might be necessary before a natural balance between expressive and receptive energies can be established.
One can directly speak to the body and receive a response. “Stomach, relax and release tension,” or “Shoulders, let down, release tension,” are suggestions to the body subconscious that result in immediate relaxing of rigidity.
Be gentle and accepting of small increments of release with each suggestion. Allow the body to gradually let go and adjust to the influx of freed energy. As the body musculature releases, invite and allow the breath to flow gently, expanding and opening new channels. The key word here is gentle. Follow each gentle breath with a slightly more deepening next gentle breath. Force nothing; gently widen the channel over time.
On the mental plane, Carlos Castaneda’s suggestion to suspend judgment is foundational. When we judge we create separation; this is good, that is bad. Thoughts, feelings, sensations and intuitions that are ‘bad’ are suppressed, and the body responds by rigidifying against them; they are not allowed.
In a shamanic recapitulation, or in an end of life review, as reported consistently by many who have experienced near-death experiences (NDE’s), the salient feature is total acceptance of every experience and every person one has experienced in life, regardless of their abuses and failures. This is the mood of love embracing everything with equanimity.
Boundaries may be absolutely necessary in this life but love knows no boundaries, all is accepted. Love and boundary can coexist. That was Christ’s golden message: Love All!
Total acceptance of self and other, of every aspect of life lived, and lost, is the path to embodying the mood of love.
Without malice face what comes to disturb your day and let a new perspective guide you. Nothing is too great to face and nothing will get the better of you, especially if you decide to look upon life as a great mystery with its own purpose and its own direction. How life unfolds may never be understood while it is unfolding but hindsight offers the gift of truth, for in looking back one is granted the long view that surely explains everything and leaves one in awe. Be in awe.
Find the right balance for you. Follow the guidance of your own body and your own spirit. It does not matter what anyone else does, it matters what you do according to what’s right for you. There is no one else to please or blame or hold accountable. Find the right balance within yourself to know and understand this, to know that you are the only person who can make you whole. Find your center each day and find your Self there, in all your glory.
