All the days of your life have added up to today. All the events in your life, all the trials and tribulations have brought you to this point in your life, to this very day and to this very person that you are now. Does that not thrill you, knowing that everything has been a part of your journey? Every single day of your life and everything that has happened to you has shaped you into YOU! Look back in amazement! It has all been for this moment of realization that you have made the choices that have spurred you on in life, that you have followed the path that was shown to you. And whether you did so fully aware or fully unaware does not matter, for you are where you are now and nothing else matters. But, where do you go from here? Are you going to stay aware of yourself as a determining factor in your life, as the spiritual life force, the choice maker and director of your life? Or are you going to go back to the old way and let blind faith lead you onward. The choice, as we say, is always yours.
When things get tough, whether in your inner world or your outer world, remember that you are a spirit inhabiting a human form that can only operate because you exist in it. Without you, without your spirit energy, your human form would be nothing but an empty set of clothes. Turn more often to this truth of yourself and you may soon find that what is going on in the world outside of you is not so important. On the other hand, you may discover that what disturbs you on the inside is something most important, for that something on the inside is something that your spirit is trying to alert you to. It’s trying to get your attention, because something is blocking its fuller expression. What is it? Only you can find out.
Life asks you to take outer risks, to be daring, to allow yourself to have experiences that will help you navigate into and through life, that will mature you as you journey into the world around you. Life also asks you to take inner risks, to be daring in your spiritual practices, to question how you think about and perceive the world within. Are you a spiritual adventurer? Do you like to ponder the meaning of life and your purpose in it? Are you open to finding out? Are you open to exploring some new ideas? Are you ready for change? You may think that the world outside of you is the most challenging aspect of human life, but we are here to tell you that it is the inner world that will challenge you the most, the inner world that is full of mystery and confusion, that presents itself in so many ways, through the body, mind, emotions, and the spirit. Look inward today and try to connect to a new part of yourself that you have never visited before. You might be surprised at what you find.
Spirit and Matter are inseparably One. Yang, the creative, finds its physical expression in Yin, the receptive. In this moment, as I write, a son of mine texts me that while driving his car last night the word star unthinkingly escaped his lips, and suddenly, a falling star appeared before him!
Every word we say, positive or negative, is spirit, which is then physically expressed, like my son’s falling star. The star is the radiant spirit of pure truth, expressed through the matter of the star, the anima mundi, or the soul, of the world.
Everything that happens in our lives is of divine origin, that divinity being both the mental thought and the subconscious substance that brings it to physical life. We might indeed object to the suggestion that we intend negative events in our lives. In fact, we might argue that we consciously intend only positive occurrences. Yet, we must face the fact that like attracts like, and only what we attract will materialize in our lives.
This brings us to the question, when things materialize not as we intend, “What is the matter with me?” The matter, of course, is what we physically manifest.
If we begin by suspending the judgment of blame and instead assume the innocence of Dorothy, in the Wizard of Oz, we next pull back the curtain within and identify the true wizard/spirit behind our current manifestation in matter.
Very often, we may then discover that a very old thought that we have long forgotten has taken up residence in the habit section of our subconscious mind, and continues to automatically shape our physical lives according to the instructions imbedded in its belief.
This now unconscious belief acts as interference to the conscious suggestion we are currently seeking to manifest in our lives. Once we are aware of this blocking belief, we become enabled to defy it!
One approach to defiance is to engage the old belief and express gratitude to it for its necessary role in our past, when it shaped our reality to best protect us and secure our growth, however constricted. This belief is then awakened to the changed circumstances of now, where we are ready to advance beyond an old construction of self into new vistas of creative fulfillment.
This approach may neutralize the energy of the blocking belief, which now excitedly joins in the present suggestion of change to the subconscious mind. However, if it remains reticent to change, the conscious mind might aggressively flood the subconscious mind with emotionally charged positive suggestions that, once the energy accrues to the necessary level, causes the subconscious mind to abandon the old habit and manifest the new.
Beyond the issue of blocking belief, is a more basic relationship issue, what I call the Gemini Challenge, as Geminis foundationally confront reconciling polarities, particularly the ultimate relationship between spirit and matter. This is, of course, a challenge presented to all of humankind, but for Geminis this may be the central challenge of a lifetime.
If we favor the spirit personality in the fundamental bipolar oneness of spirit and body, we tend to be dominated by mind, and can tend to live outside the body, in illusory states of inflation or, at the opposite extreme, in deflated states of mental rumination. At times this can devolve into a state of intense mental cruelty, where the spirit weeps for its supposed failures in physical form.
When identified more with the material side of the dual personality, we might be drawn into obsession with physical concerns, or imagined limitations generated by spirit thought. These, of course, are very likely to physically manifest, as body is governed by thought. The Gemini challenge is heightened by, at times, abrupt shifts to opposite perspectives that question what is real and right.
The resolution to this unsettling marital relationship between mind and body lies in mutual respect and equanimity. Spirit is not superior to body; they are full equals, reflections of each other. Matter exists and is real, even if it is ultimately but an interpretation of energy. Beneath a solid interpretation of matter is simply free-flowing energy, without definition. Divinity is dormant if it can’t be experienced in the adventure of form.
The answer to the question, “What is the matter with me?” is ultimately the question of, “What spirit am I manifesting?” If I am under-appreciating or negative toward either my spirit or physical self, I will constellate the spirit of aggression and the matter of an inner civil war.
If I direct my spirit’s attention outwardly, toward the star, and engage my spirit for the greater good of self and other, my physical manifestations will happily reflect such love, for self and other. The matter with me is then confidence, contentment, and fulfillment in the full radiance of physical form.
One of the truths that will leave its permanent mark upon the human mind, as the Aquarian Age we are currently in matures, is that divinity is an inside job.
We all possess a divine directive conscious mind that wields the power of suggestion, as well as a divine receptive subconscious mind that exercises the power of physical creation itself. The conceptive intercourse between this divine couple, more than any other factor, will determine the course of the life we manifest.
The divine conscious mind, given the name ego, is hardly aware of its royal heritage and power, yet it nonetheless exercises its divine prerogative of free will in the expression of its thoughts, beliefs and desires. In response, the divine subconscious mind dutifully manifests these suggestions while independently managing the operations necessary for the survival and growth of the human body.
From the place of transcendent truth, the state of our personal lives, as well as the current state of the world, is wholly the result of ego suggestions to the subconscious mind, both individually and collectively. From the knowing of transcendent wisdom, these suggestions are largely in error, as they threaten absolute destruction of self and all.
Why then, would our divine progenitors, our inner divine parents, allow such dangerous choices? Furthermore, why would these divine parents fund—that is, provide the energy for—such errant decisions?!
In the recent George Clooney movie, Jay Kelly, on Netflix, Timothy, the child therapist character, makes the tragic point about parenting that, “We are only successful once we’ve made ourselves irrelevant.” In order to become irrelevant to our children, they must truly not need us, even if, from a wisdom perspective, they still do.
To not need us means they are assuming full responsibility for their lives. It truly matters not what their choices are, good or bad; it matters that they learn to assume responsibility for them.
How could any of us learn to think and grow if we simply obeyed all the rules? The rules, great and small, are all products of the habitual mind passed down from others’ experiences. They don’t truly become meaningful until they become alive as a consequence of our personal experiences.
Parents do well to defer to the ultimate parent of all, the Law of Cause and Effect or the Karma of our actions. All decisions, good or bad, have their consequences. We grow by suffering the consequences of our decisions.
Our divine progenitors are interested in us becoming truly mature. Hence, they remain present but dormant, unless earnestly consulted by our student ego, at which time they will tell us the truth, from their perspective. They always allow us the full freedom of our choices and the consequences of those choices.
Even in a Near Death Experience (NDE), many souls are, at the ego level of consciousness, asked to assume responsibility for their choice to continue in their current human life or to move into life beyond the human form. Sometimes it is Karma that commandeers that decision.
We are the judge and jury of our own lives. We are not punished for our actions. Karma is simply the natural consequence of our decisions. Of course, if we solicit the guidance and feedback from our inner divine parents, they will respond with their thoughtful wisdom. However, they will not assume responsibility for our own answers to life’s challenges—this is an impossibility.
As Kahlil Gibran, the Persian mystic, clarifies in The Prophet, regarding our children: “For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.” [p. 21]
To be sure, our children must forge the virgin territory of their future with support, but, ultimately, on their own. And we must let them go, even to let them suffer the inevitable woundings of life.
Truthfully, we are all forever divine children. And if we abandon the innocence of curious openness to the unknown, our journey ends. And then we must live in the boring prison of “knowing it all”, until we are ready to resume the hero’s journey of new discovery, now, and beyond this life.
All journeys involve woundings, those of our children and our own as well, but those woundings are the doors through which we change and grow, allowing us to mature into our full potential.
The challenge, through our repetition of our many errors, is to comfortably retire our illusions, and allow our ego to become the mature child that lives its innocence while it also serves the truth of the Divine Self, which funds all its whims, that it may more fully awaken to the splendor of the truth of its divinity.
No shame for any and all sins. They are all divine errors, way stations on our definitive journey. And there is no one, or nothing, to forgive, except perhaps the ego, for all its divine errors. Our ultimate challenge is to assume responsibility, with equanimity, for it all.
