Behold the beauty and majesty of nature in its slow progress toward evolution, one day at a time, one season and one year at a time, making its way forward toward its ultimate goal. Take a hint and find the same beauty and majesty within and work toward the same goal of evolution within your own life, one day, one season, one year at a time. For you also are nature, assigned the same evolutionary purpose, with the same principles of beauty and majesty inherent in you. Align with nature, and may “Change” be your mantra.
Every time we change we move into a new life. This coming December 9th will mark the 20th anniversary of my wife Jeanne’s definitive departure from human life. Since then, though we remain connected in a different configuration, I have moved into a completely new life. I experience myself and the world from a very different perspective. Though I remain connected to what I once was, I have grown into a totally different person.
I would characterize my change as my soul reincarnating further into its latent potential. Even my body has reshaped itself to support my soul’s current journey. The great Hindu Guru, Sri Sivananda teaches that the physical body is actually the expression and creation of our soul. As our soul ventures into new life it shifts the body to serve that change.
Carlos Castaneda was emphatic that shamans should avoid looking into mirrors. The trap of the mirror is that it literally catches one’s self reflection. Such was the fate of Narcissus, the namesake of narcissism, who became frozen in his gaze, unable to see beyond his own physical reflection.
For shamans, the trap of self-importance is the greatest impediment to human evolution, as is mirrored in the greed apparent in our world’s energy crisis. Despite their contribution to the climate crisis, fossil fuels continue to dominate our energy demands, as we place our self-interest above the true needs of the world. Similarly, our ego’s fixation upon receiving validation of its personal importance absorbs the lion’s share of our personal store of energy, severely underfunding our evolutionary potential.
Practically speaking, the mirror can also serve to reinforce a static view of ourselves that does not allow for the possibility of change. Like the monotonous internal dialogue, the image in the mirror may be typecast to deliver the same old message, i.e., “You’ll never be good enough.”
Of course, we need mirrors to reflect to us the orderliness of our outer presentation. The shamans would suggest only cursory glances to achieve this, avoiding the judgment of sustained viewing. I am actually fascinated with the changes glimpsed in these brief glances. I ask, “Who is that being; he keeps changing!”
Don Juan Matus warned that we should pay scrupulous attention to the agreements we enter into as to who we are, consciously or unconsciously, when we fixate on socialized beliefs or frozen images in the mirror. Transpersonal psychotherapists recognize the power of heredity and archetypes to shape our physical bodies when we believe their influence to be sacrosanct and irrevocable.
Hypnotists stress the power of suggestion to manifest what we become. In fact, the subconscious mind is both the storehouse of all inherited and acquired habit but also the home of every individual’s personal genie. As the body is constructed by the intent of the soul, everyone has the latent opportunity to assume full control of who they will become. It’s all in what we believe and what we choose to tell ourselves.
Even if it be the case that our present life was chosen as expiation for choices made in past lives, we all have the free will to change the course of our development. Once we’ve squared with the reasons for our fixations we are truly freed to release them. Freeing the ego of its self-importance, its routine judgments, and its unnecessary agreements allows it to consciously direct its subconscious companion genie to manifest positive and evolutionary changes in the self.
Our world now mirrors how the power of the beliefs we attach to generate the reality we live in. We live in a virtual marketplace of suggestion, where we see dear family and friends become beings we hardly recognize. The sublime gift of such manifested polarization is absolute proof of the power of suggestion. We can choose to use it for the advancement of self and the greater good.
As don Juan Matus wisely advised, enter into no agreements you have not consciously chosen. As well, freely choose to make new conscious agreements and retire old agreements that are no longer necessary or helpful to your evolutionary Spirit. Join your personal intent with your Spirit’s intent for the ever-unfolding journey of fulfilling life.
Speak the truth, learn the truth, know that the truth is what matters, within and without. To hold silent when the truth will heal is neglectful. To avoid the truth is dangerous. To prevent the truth from being known is devious. In times of trial and tribulation the truth must rule for the needed changes to prevail. Within the self know the truth so that your personal life, actions and thoughts may be guided by and based in truth. In this manner, so will you prevail through all your own trials and tribulations and good will return to rule.
Take good care of yourself. Talk to yourself with the utmost care so that you do not give yourself the wrong messages. Make sure what you say to yourself is kind and loving, the same things you would say to someone you love deeply. For kindness and love begin within and if you want to be kind and loving to others you must begin by being kind and loving to the self. As within so without.
Seek freedom from the web of human bondage… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Jan, in a recent communication with Jeanne, received this essential download: “You and Chuck have learned things about the relationship between the mind and the body that I had not learned while still in human form. I focused more on healing from without and not on the importance of thought and belief within. Had I known that then, my outcome may have been very different. Now, I do know that.”
This blog is dedicated to passing on what we have learned, that those seeking such guidance might profoundly change their lives and the direction of the world.
Animal magnetism is a term coined by Franz Mesmer to explain the mental influence exerted upon a body to shape it and attract to it the object of its intent. Animal has its root in the word anima, which implies a soul body that breathes, thus a sentient being that has life. Animal, then, designates a living, breathing physical body.
Magnetism is an energetic force that influences the structure and organization of a body through the power of what it attracts to it. That power emanates from the mind. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word became flesh,” begins John’s gospel. The mind produces the Word, which attracts to it the matter that creates the flesh it inhabits.
We become what we think. Our thoughts and beliefs are the primary suggestions delivered to the subconscious mind, the part of the soul body where the blueprint of mental suggestion is transformed into physical reality.
The shamans of ancient Mexico called this meeting place of mind and matter theassemblage point, where energy is molded into specific forms. Thus, the human form is a solid physical configuration of energy, an energetic alternative, among others, for human beings.
Don Juan Matus called human beings Magical Beings, due to their innate ability to exist simultaneously as both physical beings and energetic beings. Unfortunately, most human beings have forgotten and lost access to their energetic potential. They only know themselves as beings frozen in their ways, creatures of habit. As Carlos Castaneda put it, “Our wings have been clipped.”
This loss of freedom is human bondage. Human represents our classification as people in a physical body. Bondage has its root in bond, which means to confine, to dwell in a fixed state. Human bondage is thus a fixed confinement of our energetic potential into a solid physical mold, with limited awareness of options beyond its current fixation. Fixation represents the beliefs we attach to, which become molded into how we know ourselves and the world we live in.
What maintains this fixation of the assemblage point, in its generation of our rigid selves and the physical world we know, is the power of intent. Intent is energetically comprised of our thoughts and beliefs, the words we tell ourselves that become the automatic internal dialogue that suggests constantly to the subconscious the very definitions of what we are and how we are to manifest.
I am and become what I believe. The words I use to know and describe myself are the instructions delivered to the subconscious to fashion my existence. Typically, those instructions come from unchecked default programs unconsciously transmitted through genetics, instincts, and the humanly nuanced archetypes of the collective unconscious. Nobody has to think to breathe, the subconscious automatically runs that program.
Other programs are derived from suggestions internalized through socialization and the course of human development. Jeanne realized that from the first moment she received her cancer diagnosis, she believed she was going to die. Despite her heroic cancer journey, as detailed in The Book of Us*, she never fully overturned this strong suggestion to her subconscious mind. As mentioned in the opening paragraph of this blog, she has since learned the vital importance of reprograming and reshaping our ingrained beliefs if we are to change our lives.
Though extreme in her dogma, Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, suggested that human beings cannot be ill, as a physical body is merely an illusion. Like the shamans of ancient Mexico, she encouraged people to return to their energetic essence.
To apply animal magnetism to the state of our human bondage is to assume conscious control of our intent. The materialistic dominance of our consensus reality is what gives rise to our sense of helplessness in the face of our current planetary apocalypse. This condition is aptly diagnosed by the title of a book that Jung wrote long ago: Modern Man in Search of a Soul.
To retrieve the Soul one needn’t take a hallucinatory shamanic journey. To retrieve the Soul one need merely take back the power of the mind, which is held in the prison of limiting materialistic beliefs. “Yes!” Don Juan Matus emphasized to Carlos Castaneda, “We are solid physical beings, but we are energetic beings first.”
Physical reality exists. Modern medicine can offer a cure. But beyond our human form is the mind of the Soul, whose energetic intent, expressed in words and beliefs, can work miracles. This is the power of placebo, and the power of thousands of faith healings at Lourdes.
As mothers often say to their children, “Use your words!” In a state of true faith—a hypothesis without prejudice—use your words to suggest to the subconscious that which you would become. Use your animal magnetism to overcome human bondage. See what happens!
INTENT,
Chuck
*A new version of The Book of Us, on the 20th anniversary of Jeanne’s entry into the afterlife, is scheduled for release in December 2021.
