Let change into your life in small and incremental ways so that over time you will be acclimated to how change effects you and your world, and so that you will be better prepared for the big changes that are sure to come unexpectedly and suddenly. Small changes are practice for being able to handle the inevitable. Accept change as part of your life’s plan, bringing you lessons and challenges that are necessary for your spiritual growth and development. Get comfortable with change, for it is the truth unfolding in everyday life, but not so comfortable that you neglect yourself or forget to enjoy life as it unfolds in every fascinating moment.
When I look out at the world, I see reflections of the human Body and Spirit. The Taoist guidance—as within, so without—guides my perspective. Synchronicity, the meaningful co-occurrence of events, supports the parallel interpretation of world events and events within the individual.
Oceans, rivers, and roads are the Earth’s circulatory system. Vessels and trucks are the carriers of the world’s supplies, distributing, where needed, the nutrients and material building blocks for modern civilization. These are equivalent to the red blood cell truckers of the human circulatory system.
Recent truck blockades have interfered with the normal free flow of the world’s supply chain. What might this blockage reflect in the human body and psyche?
The adrenal glands are the body’s first and primary centers of response to real or perceived threats to survival. Typically, the hormone adrenalin is secreted by the adrenal glands to increase blood circulation to the muscles in order to respond to a perceived threat via flight, fight, or freeze.
This survival response, when maintained over time in a constant state of readiness and vigilance, creates an over-concentration of blood flow to the muscles, cutting off the supply of vital nutrients to other organs and cells in the body. This blockage in the supply chain can lead to vascular collapse as the roads to these other vital centers are blocked.
The human mind is intimately implicated in this toxic predicament. The survival response itself is an inherited instinctual reflex habit stored in the subconscious. This program is triggered both in response to actual sensory stimuli that communicate real danger, as well as imagined danger that might be generated from one’s internal dialogue.
The subconscious does not discriminate between real and imagined danger; it responds equally to each. Thus, the thoughts and stories that we attach to in active thinking directly contribute to roadblocks in our circulatory system, which both overstimulate the musculature into constant rigidity and deprive the rest of the body of nutrients and avenues for waste management.
The ability of the mind to release itself from the toxicity created by negative thinking is fundamental to adrenal care and smooth sailing throughout the circulatory system. To this end, the I Ching recommends that, rather than battle negativity directly, to instead make energetic progress in the generation of positive thought and action.
Practically speaking, this could mean feeling compassion for one voicing pessimism, hatred, and blame. For myself, I seek to find within my own self the qualities of the one who so offends or threatens me outwardly. I then appreciate that internal part of myself that holds that same point of view. This defuses inner turmoil and often broadens my perspective. Outwardly, I send love to the other that they might find calm and resolution as well.
Physical action also provides a release of energy prompted by adrenalin, as well as through deep breathing, where fresh oxygen binds with adrenalin, reducing its presence in the musculature.
Listening to heartfelt music can also shift one’s emotional landscape, as feelings of love, awe, and reverence begin to circulate throughout one’s being. As well, devotional actions of mantra, prayer, and intent guide the subconscious to call off the adrenal troops and return to calm.
I appreciate the image the truckers have provided as a diagnostic x-ray of the blockage in our current human predicament. I encourage that we all find our way to the positivity of compassion, love, and gratitude that we might find ourselves, flowingly, on the road again.
Individuation is a process of discovery, finding out who you are, why you are there, and what purpose life has in mind for you personally. Will you discover who you truly are and what you are capable of in this lifetime? Will you follow your dreams this time around? Will you allow your spirit to fully live through you, so that you may know this ethereal self? It’s up to you. Individuation is the unfolding journey that leads to the discovery of all that you are, your fuller potential unleashed, so that no part is left behind or unlived. Life, it’s quite a wonderful journey, especially when all of you gets to live it!
The Garden of Eden myth imagines the birth of human consciousness. Adam and Eve chose to break the law by eating the apple. Consciousness is the awareness of having a choice.
Nature’s laws do not require consciousness in order to be obeyed. They come in the form of archetypes, the programs that automatically determine the actions of sentient beings, and the entire cosmos, without any need for conscious deliberation in order to activate.
The archetypes are nature’s commandments, constructed through many painstaking trials of evolution, that become encoded in the genes and developmental patterns that govern a species. The introduction of the possibility of choice in the Garden, prompted by the snake offering the apple, was the birth of the ego, a center of consciousness having the power to override instinct, as it thinks and chooses for itself.
As a consequence of their disobedience, Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden and thrown into the desert, left to fend for themselves, with their naive and inexperienced egos in charge of making decisions that would impact their survival. This predicament forced the ego to become an imposter of competence, as the responsibility for leadership fell upon an inadequate ego, which had to pretend to be competent.
Before we get too down on the ego for all its inflated pretense of ability or disability, perhaps we should have compassion for this little prince, abandoned in an unknown world. What other choice is there really but to fake it until you make it? The ego never asked to be born without knowledge; it truly is the recipient of its ancestor’s original sin of skipping over nature’s laws and acting through conscious choice instead.
Ironically, the birth of the ego, with its ability to make decisions, was actually nature’s plot to advance humanity to consciousness, an evolutionary trial to improve on nature’s decision making speed and efficiency. After all, Jung would often ask, who put the snake in the Garden?
The coldblooded snake of Eden is indeed kundalini at the root chakra of the human body, pushing itself upwards toward union with higher consciousness at the crown chakra. To be in human life is to experience the trials and tribulations of growing consciousness as it journeys back to the Garden, the crown jewel. The ego is kundalini’s plaything, companion and student on this adventuresome path called human life.
Currently, the ego has become the number one culprit in planetary mishap. The ego is currently mired in narcissism, caught in the lower chakra dramas of self-importance, possession, competition, and domination. This is mirrored in our polarized world with its charismatic leadership.
Within the individual the ego struggles with nature in the form of powerful needs and emotions, as it worries about survival. The higher spiritual chakras of refined love and interconnectedness are far from the consciousness of the needy ego at this stage, consumed as it is with the challenge of its own survival.
Nature, at this current time, is depositing new snakes in our messy garden, in the forms of viruses and climate crises, to prompt the world ego to rise to new heights, particularly to the heart center, where it can shed its narcissistic wrappings through the fire of love. The ego’s work, at the heart center, is learning to make decisions of right action that then rise to expression through word and deed at the throat chakra.
If nature’s experiment of making the conscious ego the agent of prudent decision making is to advance planetary survival, the ego must arrive at a place of humility, able to acknowledge both its innocent ignorance and its narcissistic leanings.
Fortunately, higher levels of consciousness are readily available to guide a humble seeker. Our time is replete with ethereal bodhisattvas, channelled by earth angels throughout the world, sharing their wisdom and guidance to receptive heart-centered egos.
In any moment, ego can ask spirit guides for signs and affirmations in nature, as it contemplates the right direction of a decision. This includes asking the body for guidance as well, where sensations of all kinds might suddenly respond to a thought, offering either affirmation or cause for deeper reflection.
The body also presents itself as nature, ready to evolve under enlightened leadership. An ego that has lost its self-importance, and incorporates the principles of right action, can suggest to the body new rules of functioning that both heal and lead toward deeper fulfillment.
Acknowledge not-knowing with awe versus shame. Assume full responsibility for leadership despite innocent ignorance. Humbly ask for guidance from the crown, then act in full consciousness with refined love.
Trust that you have within you everything you need to form a life, that you have the strength, the perseverance, the knowledge and wisdom that will attract all that you need to create your own destiny. And then, once you trust yourself, express gratitude for the life you are in, for the simple pleasure of sunlight on a cold day, the song of a bird heralding spring, the stars looking down on you at night. Be grateful for what is, and be grateful for what is to surely come.
