Let nature inspire you. In her everyday glory let Mother Nature show you how to live, how to breathe, how to prosper. Follow the path of the sun as it rises, shines equally upon all and then sets at day’s end. Follow the wind as it blows, ruffling everything and everyone, touching all in its path. Examine how you shine and whom you touch. Allow your brightness and your wisdom, your warmth and your compassion to be felt by as many as possible so that you too make the world a better and more beautiful place.
The typical splitting of body and spirit into a pair of opposites, though useful in contrasting gross and subtle expressions of energy, reinforces a spiritual prejudice against the body, encumbered with its instinctual life. Most spiritual traditions, while tolerant of life in a physical body, place a premium on sacrificing carnal life for the betterment of spiritual evolution.
Furthermore, the physical world is typically associated with feminine energy, which is equally devalued or seen as subservient to the superior masculine spirit. The body, with its instinctual inclinations, is associated with evil and passions, that which must be sacrificed to achieve spiritual advance.
This stripping of the physical body and instinctive mind of divine association has been the prerogative of ego consciousness, which has the ability to exercise its will over instinct and the archetypes of the collective unconscious. Most profoundly has been the explosive growth of the rational mind, with its associated prefrontal cortex, which claims absolute power over the belief systems of modern humans.
It can certainly be argued that the one-sidedness of modern ego consciousness matches the one-sidedness of our early ancestor’s absolute dependence on instinctual guidance. However, this modern one-sidedness has clearly reached the tipping point, as the world is currently being reshaped by the breakthrough of repressed instinctual forces of destruction.
Marie Louise von Franz, Jung’s most valued associate, reflected on a Romanian fairy tale about a 17-year-old princess who was turned into a cat via a curse from the Virgin Mother, Mary. The curse required that both her cat tail and cat head be cut off by a prince for her to be restored to her human self.
This association of witchy behavior with the Virgin Mother is highly unusual. Von Franz believed it represented the repressed state of the feminine by the Catholic Church. Mary’s shadow delivered a curse intended to fully redeem the feminine.
Von Franz associates the cat’s tail with its dominant animal instinct. Symbolically, the cutting off of the tail represents a humanizing ability to successfully handle the threat of being overpowered by one’s instinctual feelings and sensations. Feelings and sensations are a divine gift, but to be received in a fully human way they must be refined from their overpoweringly compulsive control and integrated as part of a balanced self.
Men who struggle with premature ejaculation learn to breathe and get calm to be able to tolerate and savor the feelings and sensations associated with sexual activity. Divine union must include the wholeness of feelings and sensations.
Cutting off the head addresses the one-sidedness of mental control by ego or the archetypes of the collective unconscious. Most times, the experience of anxiety is the consequence of the projection of an archetype onto a person or situation one is confronting. Thus, if one’s boss evokes anxiety, it is likely that one is dealing with the image of the destructive side of the Great Mother, or wrathful Yahweh, which must be cut off before one can have a human interaction.
Shamanic journeys, active imagination, and dreaming all offer venues to heroically confront and ‘cut off’ the influence of these archetypes that overshadow human interaction. Breath work, yoga, and meditation provide pathways to gain control over the central nervous system to again cut off the power of the archetypes to possess human life.
Similarly, romantic relationships can’t progress to true connection if one can’t cut off the control of an Adonis or Aphrodite mental projection onto one’s human partner. One will always feel less than when their partner is experienced as divine. Mythology is very instructive in pointing out the pitfalls of human and godly union.
While fully appreciating the attraction and beauty of each other, a couple can truly communicate in a real, down-to-earth human way. Thus, the intensified experience of a divine connection with another human being is truly possible if one communicates directly with the actual person they are with.
Mental presence, unencumbered by divine projection, in combination with matured feelings and sensations is the key to divine bi-spirituality. Our spiritual essence is both body and spirit equally engaged, equally valued, equally matured.
Our collective world shamanic journey of now beckons us to retrieve the lost and captured parts of our wholeness, in particular, our feminine and animal selves.
The body is as much spirit as the spirit itself. It must be granted its true value and raised to its highest spiritual potential. This is the essence of divine bi-spirituality: as above, so below.
In quiet meditation, when the mind and heart are calm, when the breath is long, slow and deep the body has the opportunity to reset, readjust and return to a state of pristine awareness when all that is normally unknown swims up to consciousness. And then one is granted knowledge that in an ordinary state of everyday consciousness is unattainable. Find time to sit in quiet meditation. It will do your body, mind and spirit good and your life will be less frantic and driven. With a calm heart it is much easier to face the busy times you live in.
To be generous and truly giving, without needing anything in return, one must mature the inner child self into an adult who needs only the pleasure of loving and giving unconditionally, who wishes only to see the delight on the face of another and to, without judgment, experience the needs of another being met, even in simple ways. To truly love unconditionally is one of the greatest achievements of a lifetime.
Retain awareness of your spirit, your inner self and your physical self, your wholeness, throughout the day, for you are more than just matter and your wholeness matters. To forget that you are more than matter leaves you in a state of disconnection and fragmentation, far from the truth of who you truly are. You need awareness of your wholeness if you are going to follow your own inner spirit, your spirit guides, and the signs and synchronicities that come to guide you. Not only be aware of your wholeness but pay attention to how you are guided to make choices and live a good balanced life. Your life is your responsibility after all. How are you going to navigate life to your own satisfaction if you forget about your wholeness?
