Remain upon your path of change, and your path of heart, no matter what comes to distract you, to test you, to tease you. Your commitment to yourself, to your wholeness, body and spirit, is of utmost importance, even though there are many other important things to consider. If you are not okay, the world is not okay. That’s the bottom line. If you are unstable the world is unstable, for you and your energy effect everything around you. It’s good to remember this. When you are sad and depressed, sadness and depression find you. When you are in a state of joy and elation, notice how joy and elation naturally greet you in return. Find balance and equilibrium within yourself and discover that there is balance and equilibrium in the world outside of you too. Find peace within and discover that it naturally surrounds you wherever you roam. Life meets you where you are. If you want change, make it happen. All power lies within. Take that first step, and then another, and another. It all begins with you.
A simple way of understanding the need to reincarnate is to appreciate the very human reluctance to leave the human form. Humans are bipartite beings, humanly attached to the physical world, and energetically attached to infinity.
Beyond indulgence lies the magic of the energetic self… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
As energetic beings, we have a living connection to everything in the universe. However, as human beings, we limit the scope of our connectedness.
Carlos Castaneda writes in The Power of Silence:
“Don Juan had asserted that our great collective flaw is that we live our lives completely disregarding that connection. The busyness of our lives, our relentless interests, concerns, hopes, frustrations, and fears take precedence, and on a day-to-day basis we are unaware of being linked to everything else.”
We come into this world equipped with a sensual body that is granted a finite life to experience, in magnified form, sensations and feelings of pleasure, pain, love, and hate. Indulgence can be defined as the intensity of attachment that we give to these transitory experiences, which we unconsciously maintain throughout our lives.
If we’ve yet to fulfill our experience of these states, or simply can’t get enough of them, our indulgence is tenacious. Mastery of these sensations and feelings could be defined as sobriety, a readiness to let go and deepen exploration, beyond the limits of indulgence.
Human exploration inevitably fixates on excess. The greater the excess, the more powerful the experience. Part of the exploratory process drives us to extremes to discover the boundaries of the human form. This drive to push, even beyond those boundaries, is often fatal, yet at the same time it is at the heart of our evolutionary imperative.
Even now, as the Earth dramatically reveals its limits to our human indulgence, humanity insists upon more, more, more. We can see the fatality of this attitude on the very near horizon, yet indulgence still dominates. At the same time, this indulgence is delivering us to our evolutionary destiny: the discovery of our energetic core.
We are being guided to discover our energetic selves out of survival necessity. At an energetic level, we are collaborative beings, all parts of the same whole. Survival requires a unity and an equanimity of our species that puts the needs of our wholeness over the specialness of our separateness. At present, despite the disintegrative signs that abound everywhere, we are still able to indulge in the excess of our specialness.
However, intuitively and viscerally, we know that our current level of overindulgence is unsustainable. This knowing is constantly under attack by the heightened concerns of everyday life, that which hypnotically showers upon us daily.
Our propensity to seek refuge in the worry of self-reflection—that is, in perseverating about our personal standing—keeps at bay the full impact of the direct knowing of our energetic selves. If we can luxuriate in the luxury of pure reason the full truth isn’t necessary, or so we surmise.
Nonetheless, we are precipitously close to abruptly awakening to our energetic selves, as the Earth, that great sentient being, moves closer to shutting down our viral overindulgence. The introduction of the interconnected energetic self is critical to survival after the fall of our current overindulgence.
Individuals can begin to experience their energetic selves through connection to their dreaming selves. The practice of not doings promotes the inner silence that allows for encounter with the energetic self.
Specifically, one can introduce the not doing of reversing one’s dependence on their dominant side, inviting their non-dominant side to take part in daily life. The intent behind such controlled folly is to cross the bridge to one’s energetic side and more fully experience the contributions of both sides of the self, beyond human indulgence.
Another simple gem, from the shaman healer’s world, to connect with one’s energetic self, concerns the use of water. Pour a glass of water. Then vigorously rub your hands together until they become hot. Next, place your hands upon the glass and allow the heat to transfer to the water. At this time, state your intent, then drink the glass of water. Be careful, however, to not overindulge this drinking practice! Once at night and once in the morning is all that is recommended. Then, see what happens.
Non-dominantly typing,
Chuck
Quote from: The Power of Silence, Carlos Castaneda, p.103.
When it’s time to make a big change you will finally know. You will have no doubt. Set your intent, firm up your will, and declare to yourself alone that it is time. And then take your first step. It need be only small, but even the smallest step in a new direction will bring on more than you know. A whole new journey awaits you. Let it begin.
There comes a time in every life when there is no other choice but to let go of that which has been most important and to shift into a new phase of life, because there is no other option. Whether change happens by known circumstance or by sudden happenstance does not matter. What does matter is how you choose to deal with this inevitable choiceless change. You can refuse it, but to no avail, or you can accept it to your advantage. Inevitable change is natural, inherently positive in its intent, and invariably will lead to some kind of new life, new energy, new direction. Embrace your own inevitable change with passion, love, and heart centeredness so that your journey may proceed with balance, eagerness, and joy. It’s never too late to renew a love for life, to exude a vigor for what it offers, and to enter a blissful state, for your spirit is always young and eager for you to enjoy life to the fullest. Don’t be afraid. You really have nothing to lose and everything to gain, for life, in all its forms, only wishes you the very best.
Opportunity is pounding on your door. Open the door. No one else will do it for you. Do not allow old behaviors to rule at this moment of change. Take responsibility. Take control. Seize the new door of opportunity and open it. Walk through it. You may not even see it, but it is there. You know it by its breath of fresh air, by its strange light, by its calling voice, by its tug at your heart. Listen, feel it, allow it to influence you with its newness and its strong urging. Like a new day dawning, opportunity to change comes uncalled; it just is.
