Find your way to reconciliation within yourself, to peace of mind and calmness of heart. In so doing, find your way to reconciliation of all that you are; human in this life, spirit in another. Accept your humanness and your journey now as one of learning. As you live this life accept that you will make mistakes, that you will not get everything right. It is often the best way to learn. But keep in your human mind and human heart the truth that there is so much more to who you are. Seek to connect with your spirit too, for that also is part of your life’s learning experience, the reconciliation of your human side with your spirit side, gaining knowledge of and joining these two separate parts. You see, these two parts of yourself really do want to find each other again. Will you let them?
We search for love in the solid… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Someone shared with me, rather uncomfortably, a dream that they’d had where it was revealed that Jan and I were breaking up. My immediate reaction was to smile and say, “We already know that.”
Of course, I clarified that we are deeply in love and compatible partners, with no plans to break up, but we both know that change is the only real constant.
I had the same experience of utter love, fulfillment and compatibility with Jeanne in this world, yet she flew off without me into new energetic form. Beyond the veils of this life she has merged with her fuller self—a being far more comprehensive than the Jeanne Marie I knew in this life.
In the final analysis, all relationships break up because in becoming our complete selves we must surrender our attachments of permanence and acquiesce to the fuller nature of reality: Everything changes form.
I remember, as a young man steeped in the existential encounter movement of the 60s, confronting Jeanne with the reality that our relationship, as we knew it, would end in death. She would cry. I felt it was a necessary encounter, this truth.
Little did I know how relevant that confrontation would be for us a few decades later. Though I must say, when Jeanne did fly away I was steeped in joy, love, and utter calm. I have never wavered from those feelings and my love for her has only deepened over the past 14 years since she left.
Jan and I know that love transcends all change, and in fact can continue to grow if it can ride the waves of impermanence, the ultimate reality.
We are all in Earth School to suffer the illusion of permanence. And the solid Earth reality has offered a pretty predictable source of permanent security! But it does not provide all we truly need or want.
The gift of our time is that the Earth is revealing its own impermanence, as it struggles to survive mankind’s hubris. The challenges faced by our planet force us all to grapple with the true nature of reality all around us, that nothing is permanent. Actions taken from this knowing have the potential to be evolutionary, if we respond to the true needs of our planet, our human species, and all living beings.
The truth is, only Love will save us all. And the true nature of this Love is an ever-expanding love that transcends me and mine and includes everyone and every living thing in our interdependent whole.
Ready to ride the waves of impermanence? – Photo by Jan Ketchel
To graduate from Earth School, we must solve its most challenging question: Can love grow and expand in spite of impermanence? Only through solving this question are we really ready to enter more deeply into the ever-changing nature of infinity.
Until then, we grasp for the security of love in permanence, as we glimpse its many dimensions in this world and seek fulfillment here. But “here” is only part of the story. Earth School isn’t all there is, though it offers us all the necessary courses, preparing us for our final exam: to love in impermanence. And then it’s on to graduate school in infinity!
Who am I? Why am I really here, for what purpose? Where am I going?
Such questions plagued me during childhood and well into early adulthood. Turmoil within and without kept me going, focused on getting on with life, getting away and out into the world. I couldn’t wait to be on my own, taking responsibility for myself, and yet at the same time another part of me was viscerally frightened. That fear manifested in my physical body.
Most of the time I felt so dissociated from what was going on outside me, so singularly solitary, not really part of life. It wasn’t until I began exploring the deeper issues that lived inside me, like alive beings just waiting for me to find them, that some broader answers and new perspectives began to appear. As I relaxed my physical body, letting go of my fears, I gained access to so much more of the world, and beyond this world. My whole viewpoint expanded as a result. I discovered that I was so much more than my physical self.
As renowned out-of-body explorer Robert Monroe contends: You are more than your physical body. Remember this always, he says: You are more than your physical body.
Life is not all that it seems, as it appears or as we think of it. There IS so much more. We are ancient beings, living in the present, searching our pasts for clues to those questions. Who am I? Why am I really here, for what purpose? Where am I going?
To truly become a full-fledged student of Earth School we must take on characteristics of a student warrior, becoming strong in mind and body while simultaneously becoming kind and gentle beings. We learn what it means to become a warrior as we study ourselves in our lives, the past, the present, and as we face what we want our future to look like. That part is totally up to us, to carve out what we will. We have the power to do that right now. The power lies in the decisions we make every day.
A warrior takes full responsibility for the self, recognizing the self as being more than a physical body, as being a participant in life on earth to learn something. We each have something to learn during our lifetime, a singularly personal issue to figure out and resolve. Our time in Earth School, if we are to see it that way and meet the challenge of our issue, requires that we become good students, eager to learn all that we can while we are here.
At some point in our lives we are given the opportunity to wake up. In fact, wake-up calls come all the time. We will answer when we are ready. When we do, we begin to discover that, indeed, we ARE so much more than just our physical bodies. And then the real adventures in Earth School begin.
I propose that Monroe’s directive become a personal mantra. Keep saying it until it makes sense. “I am more than my physical body.” You are more than you think you are. Your thoughts may have shaped who you are now, but you have the power to reshape yourself.
Something is waiting to blossom… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Earth School isn’t such a bad place to be if you take a Warrior class, if you decide that you want to find deeper meaning and purpose, if you decide you really do want to evolve. You can be your own teacher. All you need is your determination and intent to change, and your new mantra: I am more than my physical body!
Start with that and see where it leads. You never know what you might discover about yourself as you begin to experience life outside of the physical. The door is always open to Earth School. It must be experienced to have true impact. Full participation required! You just have to decide to walk through, open up, and enjoy the lessons!
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!
