Forget about yourself for a moment and tune into someone else, even someone you don’t know who is having a bad day, a bad week, a bad year. There’s always someone worse off than you. Notice how fortunate you are in comparison, how much you have and how much you don’t need. Turn your frown into a smile and see how that feels. Sometimes a bad mood is just that, a mood not related to anything real except your false self-perception that something is wrong when obviously it isn’t. The more you smile the better you’ll feel.
It’s never too late. Notice how you tend to give up, how negative thoughts so easily slip in, how all your hard work on yourself can slip away in the blink of an eye, how a swift thought takes hold and you’ve lost your way. Regain your balance and stand firmly in place with a commanding counteroffensive. NO! You are not lost at all. You know who you are and what you need to make it this time. Stay focused on the goal, even if that means wearing blinders and earplugs to block out the negative thoughts and ideas that come to test you. Remember, you are the one with the power. You are the greatest creative force in your own life. Use it to your fullest advantage.
Continue your search for meaning, balance and purpose. Stay attached to the idea that you are a continuously evolving being and that everything in your life is leading you to clarity, to knowing, and to the unity of self that is the ultimate goal of all. Unity of self is the integration and balance of all that you are. Some days you are there and you know the feel of it, on others not so much. But knowing what it feels like helps you to know what you seek. Keep that feeling in mind and know that it is possible again, or even for the first time. Everything is possible.
Find your way to a new kind of balance that allows for the integration of all that you are—mind, body, spirit—that encompasses your dreams and desires in a way that is nurturing and sustaining rather than in old ways that may be depleting and draining. To overdo anything sets your balance out of whack. Remember this as you make choices and go about your daily routine. Perhaps the best approach is to be open and expectant each day, looking always for the opening that will offer the good change that you seek, a doorway to something new.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was made flesh.” – St. John
“Thou shalt not Covet thy neighbor’s wife.” – Tenth Commandment
What do the words Word and Covet have in common? Both are insubstantial. Both issue from the creative action of the mind’s imagination. Imagination is the causal dimension of physical reality.
The mind’s imagination produces the energetic blueprint that draws to it and manifests all material creation. The major attractive energetic activity implied in to covet is judged equal to, if not more sinful than, the action of an actual physical affair itself. Imagination is indeed the primal force of creation.
Be responsible for that which you wish for. Be responsible for that which you think. The mind’s imaginative thought is a living entity, brimming with energy. Thought is a seed that once thought must take root and find completion, somewhere, in some form, somehow. Many a fiction novel is an outlet for the karma of unlived thought.
What does a conservative Jew, devout Catholic, faithful Muslim and evangelical Christian have in common? The answer is, reverence for the Law: the written Words in the sacred texts. This reverence for upholding the Law has animated the behaviors of humankind throughout the centuries. Sacred words originating from the thoughts and images in the imaginative mind are the guardians of that which must be obeyed.
In modern psychology these sacred laws and words are the archetypes of the collective unconscious of humankind. These dominants of our shared human psyche govern the unfolding and autonomous functioning of our physiological being, as well as the species specific behaviors involved in mating, parenting and surviving. In fact, all behaviors available to our species are, at core, latent archetypal potentials.
As conscious beings we’ve been granted the free will to obey, innovate, deviate from, or fully ignore the laws of the archetypes. Clearly, the transgender explorations of our time reflect promptings to express new permutations, beyond the limits of established archetypes. One only need consider the pivotal role that the Tenant, a death defier, had on the evolution of Carlos Castaneda’s shamanic lineage. The Tenant was equally facile at manifesting physically either side of humanity’s inherent androgynous nature.
This, of course, gives rise to clashes with conservative upholders of primal archetypes, who feel it their duty to uphold the Law as once imagined and laid down.
Others would argue that if we allow the archetypes to press us into their molds we don’t exercise our obligation to evolve and create. The truth is that archetypal patterns are fixed. The phases of the moon never deviate. However, though the waning phase of the moon may urge that new enterprises not be initiated during this phase, a rogue adventurer might launch a successful enterprise anyway, though lacking the moon’s archetypal energetic support.
Typically, archetypes are nature’s best course of action, but humankind was issued consciousness to steer life into new possibility with greater efficiency. For example, to love one’s enemy is an innovative advancement from an eye for an eye, which seeks a new solution to conflict and opposition. So, sometimes archetypes in their primal form fit a need, but at other times, archetypes must evolve to ensure the present survival of the species.
By understanding and respecting the dominance of the archetypes upon life, we are freed to innovate in the magical world of the imagination. In this subtle realm of thought and image we become the weavers of our own lives. While accepting the concrete facts of our material existence, we are freed to suspend our attachment to the belief systems that manifest and uphold our physical lives and imagine a new and changed reality. The imagination has its own facts of reality.
The often laughed-at placebo effect is the greatest proof that what we imagine can indeed become our physical reality. The more we exercise our imagination to create what we want, the more we become the architects of our lives, drawing to us the material manifestation of our imaginal blueprint. The subconscious mind, the factory that converts imagination to materialization, will respond to suggestion.
Realize, however, that if we depart from an archetype we will be tested; archetypes are fierce warriors. We must be prepared to go it alone, as nature guards her established patterns. We must also be humble in our search for new frontiers, and accept that perhaps our ego is deluded by an inflation that is unsupported by the true needs of the Self.
On the other hand, we were granted the power of imagination to exercise the divine right of our existence to create and innovate, so we have every right to take life forward into new possibility.
We are all granted the freedom to square the facts of our own life with the power of the imagination.
