Today, Tom asks a question.

Dear Jeanne,
During the last year I have come to your guidance as a great change in my life had been taking place. It began with taking better care of my body, then with an awakening of my heart.

I have been working in therapy with Chuck for several months and my evolutionary growth is the primary focus of my life. It has provided me with much joy and some pain as I have struggled to understand and grow. In addition to your messages and “The Book of Us”, I have particularly been inspired by the writing of Robert A. Johnson and, to the limits of my ability to understand the terminology, C. G. Jung. I trust that I will be led to what I need for growth and I believe I have achieved a patient acceptance that my evolutionary growth will unfold in time, as it should if I maintain a steady focus. The use of heart centered breathing helped me this weekend with a long standing resistance to the work I need to do to put my physical surroundings in order and I am thankful for all that I’ve been blessed with this past year. Can you offer guidance regarding understanding of the projection of my anima in the relationships in my life and how doing the inner work with my dreams and active imagination will bring me to a more balanced and expanded consciousness?
Thank you for your love and guidance,
Tom

My Dear Tom, you are a seeker, and as all seekers must you turn to your self for the answers. To continually look outside of the self will result in refusal to contain the issues and tackle them in a manner that is appropriate for an evolutionary being. In other words, you must turn inward at all times now in order to grow. For I see that you have evolved to a point of acceptance, acquiescence, and exploration, but you are in further need of inner work. By this inner work do I mean solving the questions that arise in your inner magnifying glass, your inner microscope, rather than putting on your binoculars and looking for distractions, loves, and attention outside of you.

You Tom, and all of My Readers and your fellow seekers, in order to understand the self must you first experience this anima/animus aspect of the self that this man does bring up, for it is the most profound recognition of the self, that the self projects outward all that one has hidden inside. At first may this appear to be an incorrect statement. But without judgment is it possible to acknowledge that outside of the self is it much easier, and perhaps safer, to place these inner problems and prospects for growth. The inner self, until it is ready to allow truth to emerge, is happy to project, to judge, to find fault, disgust, stupidity, and simplemindedness outside of the self, especially while the ego is in the process of building.

There comes a time in life when the ego becomes overladen with its own need to have more, and then is it desirous of unburdening itself of all that it carries, the burdens of the inner self, sitting upon its outer shell, heavy and constantly doing battle with what it perceives as interferences from outside. Interferences may be love interests pointing out the possibilities of the inner self, projections of desire that will go unfulfilled until the inner self learns love and compassion for the inner child that exists inside everyone. The outer self, the ego self, maintains such strict standards! But to what end? In order to uphold some old ideas, some old lies, untruths, and long ago developed ideals that wish to be uncovered and rediscovered as truths waiting within the spirit self, and the child self, for that is where all secrets to the self lie, not outside of the self.

So, that being said, as an evolutionary being is it this process of detachment that I speak so often of that now must be started in order to cease the old habits. Detachment requires turning the binoculars inward now, switching over then to the magnifying glass, and eventually getting out the microscope as you do your inner work. Ask constantly, “Why?” as regards the self. And then wake up the inner child self and ask for an answer. I can guarantee that there is where the truth lies. But do not do this in a demanding, accusatory way, as perhaps the adults in your life once did, but ask gently, with the love and compassion that you are learning as you practice detachment, and as you learn what it truly means to be evolutionary.

Perhaps what you thought was an enigma, a goddess, a perfection of everything you were not, is but an energetic being like your self. As energy are you all the same. As energy is no one grander or more perfect that another. All are equal in shape, in form, in beauty, in characteristics, in intent and focus of growth. As energetic beings is there no man and no woman, no sex, and no sex appeal. But at the same time, is energy the ultimate of all of those things, for it takes everything and encompasses it in the intensity of truly vibrant, energetic, and alive love. Each of you have this within, and this you must recognize when you look outside of your self for fulfillment. You will not find it until you have tackled the challenges that your anima, or animus poses to you.

Your anima, My Dear Tom, is simply your best, most honest friend and companion, pointing out your path, your inner path, your direction for how to get to the truth of the inner self. Turn inward. Look to the self. Put aside your books now for a time. You have already learned enough dogma, enough terminology, and enough definition to last you several lifetimes. Turn now, with your reading glasses on, to the small print that you have barely noticed inside your self. Turn inward, and read the inner words of truth. Listen too, for that inner voice would like you to hear what it has to say to you after all these years of ignoring it, with your ears taking in so much of your outer environment.

This is how you will be able to process what you have learned, and find what you seek. It is all inside you. That is where you will find all the answers to love, to caring compassion for the self; the one you must learn to love the most, but with utter honesty, humility, and detachment.

See what happens as the energy outside of you continues to also point you inward. That is what this time on Earth is really all about. You Earthbound Ones must learn to stop reaching for things outside of you. They are not attainable. You are looking in the wrong places. Everything is inside you. Begin to look there now more often for your answers. You’ll find them, I guarantee that!

For this question I thank you, Tom. And for this day I request that you do not pick up another book, or read another word about what you should be doing. Instead, go innerly and ask your inner child what should be attended to first. This is good advice for all of you Seekers and Evolutionary Beings. You might be surprised at the answer, but I suggest you pay attention to it and truly take the evolutionary path. Good luck!