Center yourself in knowing that you have within you all that you need to live a life that is fulfilling, meaningful, and stable. You might not figure everything out at once but the capacity does lie within you. Learn from your own life, and from the lives of those around you, what you want to do and how you want to spend your time. Look to nature to guide you as well, to its unfolding seasons, to the coming and going of night and day, to the play of light and shadow. You may not get everything right at first, but give it your best effort and before long you will find your way to what is right for you.
The appearance of a penny on the street in a dream is a healing trail marker. Follow that coin! A four-sided rectangle, a box, or simply the number four showing up in waking life, or dream, may be another communication from our High Soul that we are involved with something that furthers our intrinsic unfolding of Self.
The circle and the square, separate or in combination, form a mandala, the archetype of wholeness. Our individual mandala blueprint, at the core of our Soul, attracts to us the raw material circumstances and relationships needed to fully realize our wholeness in this life. The mandala archetype is the central organizing archetype for all life.
Jung pointed out that the primary atom for all organic life is carbon, whose outermost ring has a valence of four electrons that form the chemical bonds to create the basic building materials of life. Thus, at the material level of existence, the mandala is the central organizing blue print for physical life.
Our inner mandala, operating at the spiritual dimension of our life, accentuates activities we are engaged in, with synchronicities or images of mandalas, as suggested in the dream images mentioned above, when we are heading in the right direction or when we need a course correction in our decisions and behaviors.
Sometimes a broken, messy, round public toilet of a mandala appears in a dream. In this case, we are shown that our path to wholeness requires that we face that which we seek to flush away and be rid of. Our mandala of wholeness forces us to face that which humiliates us, as it refuses to allow us the release of repression. The mandala will insist that we claim and own all of our wholeness, regardless of how bad it smells!
The precursor to the number four, on the number line, is three, which, as a geometric image, forms a triangle. A triangle has integrity but is a volatile energetic force of change, like the Bermuda Triangle.
In the shamanic lineage of Carlos Castaneda, the leader, or Nagual, was always a human being with four energetic compartments, until Carlos came along. Though he was pointed out as the next Nagual, he had only three energetic compartments, foreshadowing the coming of great change for his shamanic line.
In fact, Carlos ended his shamanic line’s traditional transmission of knowledge to simply a new generation of selected leaders and apprentices. Instead, he unwrapped the secret, sacred technologies of his lineage and freely offered them to anyone interested in learning them. In Carlos’ new world, everyone needs to become their own personal shaman, taking the soul retrieval journey of their lifetime.
Carlos correctly read the energy of the need for total transparency as our evolutionary destiny. The days of the witch hunt and the need to hide shamanic knowledge from the Conquistadores has ended. The modern era needs all the sacred knowledge of yesteryear to correctly navigate the profound changes of our time.
Carlos’ decision allowed me access to the practice of recapitulation, with its ancient shamanic roots, as a complement to the use of EMDR in modern psychotherapy in the treatment of PTSD. Carlos, with his energetic configuration of three, freed ancient shamanic wisdom, allowing it to find new manifestations in the healing of our world.
The number three seeks its mandalic completion. The Christian male God triangle of Father, Son and Holy Spirit points to the need for Mary, as Goddess, to square its mandala. The struggle to achieve this configuration, in many spheres, is the story of our time.
The Catholic Feast of the Assumption never granted Mary true Godly status. The best it could do was offer Mary continued existence in physical form in heaven. The masculine gods of our time continue to devalue, control and exploit the feminine.
The feminine, in the energetic manifestation of the energies of Kali and Isis, are agents of change, using nature and climate change to point humanity toward squaring the mandala, with the inclusion of the feminine principles of relatedness and interconnectedness, to restore order and balance to the world.
Masculine and feminine energies are present in all life. Jung called the feminine energetic compartment in men the anima and the masculine energetic compartment in women, the animus . As individuals, we are all tasked with squaring the mandalas within ourselves by integrating these primal masculine and feminine energies within our own psyches into fruitful evolution.
Women can be animus dominated and as devaluing of the feminine as abusive, controlling men. Men can be anima dominated, overwhelmed by moods and resentments that dominate impulsive decisions.
All people are charged to follow the way of the mandala now, as it seeks resolution, inwardly and outwardly, in true integrated wholeness.
Find solace in knowing that just as nature finds its way to new life each spring, changing and evolving out of the dead of winter, so too will you change. Plant the seeds of spring now within the self, the hopes, dreams, and intentions for change and new life, and tend to them so that all is prepared for their fruition. Hold yourself responsible for nurturing and supporting yourself through whatever matter arises that needs attention. If you remain steadfast upon a path of change that is loving, compassionate, kind and honest, your intentions will flourish.
Let your heart be calm as a new day comes into being. Let your heart be as still as the windless sky, as present as the bright sunlight and yet fully alive in its natural beat, beat, beat. With equilibrium achieved everything is in its natural state and there is time for contemplation of the Self. What truth arises in such a calm heart-centered state? What does your own natural state tell you about yourself today? Can you accept it and love yourself compassionately, unconditionally? Breathe and accept all that is.
Fear is the greatest blockage to self exploration, self-knowledge and evolution. Fear keeps one in a state of suspension, afraid to move up or down, forward or backward, afraid to seek or know the truth. When fear reigns there is little that can be done from without, for the work to be done lies within the self.
The antidotes to fear are nerves of steel and a ruthlessness that transcends all emotion. Tackle fear as a mortal enemy so that you may finally be free to be and explore who you really are, so that you may be available to experience the fullness of your emotions, especially the most valued, that of love, and so that you may be available to experience and explore all that truly is, a life without restraints.
