It’s a good time to move beyond that which no longer works for you, that which keeps you stuck, and that which inhibits progress. Keep in mind that fear, the biggest overall blockage to growth, is often accompanied by other habits and behaviors that reinforce feelings of hopelessness, worthlessness, and the inability to move on in life. So be prepared to go to battle against that which has held you up for so long but is obviously detrimental, not only to your life’s progress and your spirit but to your health and well being as well. The time has come to really take the next step.
The blog I intended to write this week is not this one. This blog is the result of a profound synchronicity that Jan and I experienced and that I feel is my responsibility to share. My intent is to present it as it occurred, leaving all interpretations to the mind and heart of the reader.
In recent months, someone had sent me the book, Breath, by James Nestor. Jan started to read it alone and then informed me that we should read it together because, as she said, “it is a book that will change our lives.” That suggestion caught my attention!
We read the book eagerly over a couple of week’s time. One chapter was particularly challenging, dealing with the potential health benefits of carbon dioxide retention via slow exhalation. Though I regularly practice breath retention, as prescribed by ancient pranayama techniques, as well as practices suggested by Jack Schwarz, I never connected its benefits as stemming from the retention of carbon dioxide in the body.
A major collaborator of James Nestor in the exploration of breath is the Swedish researcher, Anders Olsson. Both have spent more than ten years researching the effects of breathing on the human body.
Independent of my knowing, Jan researched Olsson’s website and discovered and purchased a pair of breathing devices called the Relaxator. She presented me with one. It looked like a plastic whistle or pacifier, and it cost $35! Needless to say, I was not impressed. Jan said, for the second time, “it’s going to change our lives!”
In spite of my doubts, I began to experiment with its protocol, which is to place the Relaxator in the mouth, breathe in deeply through the nose and then exhale slowly through the Relaxator, which constricts the breath and elongates the exhalation.
After the first 15-minute session I was deeply calmed and, yes, hooked! Jan and I have been deepening our practice ever since. During our last shared breathing session, I had the thought that when we finished we’d reread the chapter in Breath that dealt with carbon dioxide, to further grasp its action in the body, and then move on to an unrelated spiritual book, entitled Letters From The Afterlife, which we had been reading.
To backtrack a little, when we had previously finished reading Breath and pondered what to read next, Jan quickly breezed through our library and knew that Letters was the book we should read. She plucked it off the shelf and declared that we hadn’t read it yet. It’s part of our modest collection of Spiritualist books from the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries.
Letters is a channelled book by Elsa Barker, published in 1915. The character she channelled was the prominent judge, spiritual seeker and noted author, James Patterson Hatch, whom Elsa had known while he was alive in human form. From his place on the other side of the veil, he made contact with Elsa and asked her to write Letters, which documents his discoveries of life after death, which he desired to share with humanity.
So, when Jan and I had completed our breathing session, instead of picking up Breath, as previously planned, I unthinkingly picked up Letters and opened to the next chapter to be read: Letter 31, A Change Of Focus. In this chapter, Judge Hatch quite abruptly describes a methodology to heighten one’s psychic powers by raising one’s vibration through the practice of breath retention! This discussion was completely out of context from all the letters we had previously read.
Judge Hatch states that he has met with yogis in India in meditation who are aware that the retention of the breath causes a buildup of a poison (obviously carbon dioxide) that acts upon one’s psychic nature, raising one’s vibration and psychic powers. He suggested that at the level of gross matter—the physical body—many illnesses are cured as well. Judge Hatch mused that for all the volumes published on Yoga, none of them had described the physiological roots of the retention practice.
Well, as I realized that I had picked up a book written in 1915 that out of nowhere answered the question I intended to receive from one published in 2020, I knew, in that moment, that Judge Hatch is a teacher still! Though living in the astral dimension beyond this world, he continues to be very much focused on supporting spiritual evolution in the modern world, through the use of an extremely practical method—the retention of breath, the very method that I had recently been learning about myself. I further realized that a trickster spirit had crafted an amazing set of circumstances to captivate my attention!
I feel a deeply grounded imperative to pass on Judge Hatch’s synchronistic affirmation of Anders Olsson’s research. Of course my intent here is not to prescribe or recommend the Relaxator. My intent is to share a most vibrant synchronicity and, for me, a clear interaction with a spirit seeking to benefit humankind.
Links are provided below to the works cited, in case one is interested in taking the journey of this synchronous happening for one’s self.
Synchronicity provides a meeting place for different soul dimensions, both within and outside the self. Anyone who might choose to engage in a practice with breathing should consult with their medical practitioners to obtain medical clearance. This blog is simply informational, not prescriptive.
Gratitude for the gift of Breath: The New Science Of A Lost Art. Love for all the souls engaged in this fantastic voyage of ever-evolving consciousness.
Times change, the Earth changes, the seasons shift, and yet often people don’t; they stay the same. Yet nature shows how beneficial it is to change, and to do so regularly. Evolution, exhilaration, enjoyment of life are all part of a process of change and growth. Why not give it a try?
You will know when it is time to make a change. A certain amount of uncomfortability will plague you. Your spirit will be restless and your mind will be unsettled. Your body may have something to say as well, letting you know that things are not well. The first step is to acknowledge that there is a problem. The second step is to embrace the need to change. And the third step is to begin the process by changing one thing at a time, one day at a time. With consistency, and attention to the process of change, your progress is assured.
Belief is a mental, not physical, process. We could say that belief, in its insubstantial state, is a spirit, comparable to thought. In fact, we could define belief as a fixed, determined thought whose spirit energy arranges perception and physical matter to conform to its expectations.
Spirit is our active Mars/Yang energy, the energy of intent that engages our Yin/Venus energy, the energy of attraction, to manifest our spirit beliefs. Beliefs become the seedlings of the events of our lives via intent and the law of attraction. All beliefs become true in their ability to attract the very gross matter circumstances that substantiate their validity.
Our subconscious mind is the home of our Yin energy. All of our spirit beliefs are endowed with our Yin energy in our subconscious minds to attract and manifest most of the events of our lives. Indeed, some untoward events passively happen to us, independent of our intent, yet even these apparently random happenings might reflect a deeper intent being housed at an unconscious level.
For example, a conscious intent for change and new life might be thwarted by a blocking belief at an unconscious level that far prefers the security of the status quo. In this case, blocking beliefs override, or, at the very least, weaken, the spirit of desired change.
Karma could be defined as our inherited belief state. Our astrological birth chart is the blueprint for the manifestation of the core beliefs we have accumulated from the various milestones of our infinite journey.
The moment and circumstances of our birth reflect the intent of our high Spirit, in concert with the cosmic Yin energy of the universe, to reflect our previously accumulated level of karmic development in a life on Earth, which offers us the opportunity to deepen our knowledge and advance ourselves to a new level of karmic clarity, challenge, and release.
Individuation can be defined as discovering and squaring with all the opposing beliefs we house in our unconscious karmic warehouse. Typically, we define ourselves at the level of ego consciousness. For the sake of consistency, the ego defends against knowing or owning alien thoughts and feelings dystonic to its working definition of self. It likes to stay in its comfort zone.
As a consequence, much of who we are is suppressed in the shadow dimension of our unconscious, or is simply kept from ever emerging from the deepest transpersonal levels of the collective unconscious. The current renaissance of psychedelic therapy reflects the impetus to force open the knowing and experience of these hidden levels of being.
Although transpersonal exploration is the wave of our evolutionary times, we must be careful to realize that we are here, in the gross matter form we inhabit, to fully live and solve the karmic riddle of the personal sphinx we came here to advance. To be overly seduced by spirit encounters and communion with mythical beings and archetypes can be the ultimate distraction from our core, grounded Earthly mission.
If we can suspend judgment toward our own beliefs, as well as the beliefs of others, we are freed to more deeply enter their vortex and discover their etiology. For instance, an adult’s inner child’s belief that it is responsible for the abusive treatment it received can be understood as issuing both from its young narcissistic, cognitive developmental level, as well as the defensive action of its instinct for self-preservation.
If we can blame ourselves for the shattering behavior of others, we can protect those who harm us, for we may need them in order to survive. As well, if we are to blame, we can maintain control over the world, believing we are the cause of everything that happens to us. However, if we respect our inner child’s belief by confronting it, feeling it, and interacting with it, the child might crack the nut of its fixated belief, freeing itself to experience new life with its adult self.
Therefore, what we believe is indeed our destiny. Destiny means we MUST live it, at least in some form. If we refuse to know about it, it will need to continually reappear in gross matter, or physical life circumstances, to give us new opportunities to crack the nut. This is our true karma, to crack the nut of what we are truly up against now, in this life.
However, if we are willing to suffer the fullness of our beliefs by owning and getting to know them on a deeply inner level, without having to act them out to get to know them, we can truly free ourselves from their limitations and journey into new life in our infinite journey.
