With gratitude, keep your heart open and receptive, not only so that you may receive but so that you may learn to be giving and loving. Observe how Mother Nature gives so lovingly, her bounty available to all. With gratitude, learn how to be bountiful too. Learn what it means to nourish and provide, to gift in everyday life the little things that bring life, joy, and sustenance. Notice the air you breathe, the water you drink, the sun that gives life, the night that brings rest, the soil that grows your food, and the rain that brings life to all living creatures. On this day, walk the Earth with gratitude and thanks, and then do the same every day of your life, for that is how it should be. Happy Earth Day!
The calmness you seek is all around you… and within you… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
The intent of the warrior’s spirit is freedom. COVID-19 is a predatory virus that has taken control of the world, vastly limiting freedom. The human spirit is currently gathering steam to blow through the bottleneck of this quarantine retort.
This is a natural reaction of spirit, to push beyond all limitations. Some explorers push beyond the limits of the physical body to explore their spirit potential. Others stay focused on transcending all supposed boundaries and limitations imposed by the physical world.
The warriors of Carlos Castaneda’s lineage discovered that the most valuable practice to obtain freedom was not in great feats of power in this world, or in any other. Freedom can best be obtained through the tempering of spirit, they discovered, through encounters with a formidable tyrant, such as COVID-19.
The first lesson in such an encounter is to willingly accept COVID-19’s power to infect us all. Our human self-importance has been greatly checked, in respect to the deadly power of this smallest of microbes. Our entire world’s familiar way of life has had to be tabled, denying us the basics of human social interaction.
Losing self-importance enables us to more objectively see what we are up against. To be offended by the predator costs us cascades of emotional energy, spent to no avail. The predator thrives on our offense, both in terms of the emotional energy we deliver to it, and in the co-mingling we may engage in, in defiance of necessary limitation, whereby providing potential new hosts to the predator.
Humbling of the warrior spirit equips the warrior to face the unknown, without the veil of self-importance. Freed of prejudice, the scientist in all of us is on the road to solution. However, great detachment is required to not fall prey to the battle cry of unfairness. In a predatory universe, unfairness is a dominant of reality.
The battle with unfairness is formidable. It is our core human predicament. We are all saddled with the reality that we must attach to this world to survive, yet we must fully release it in death. Where is the fairness in these diametrically opposed demands?
The greatest obstacle to our freedom is the emotional energy the predator can drown us in. When we become emotionally activated by the limits imposed by the predator, we may become possessed by fear, sadness, and rage. The warrior, on the other hand, becomes attuned to the triggers of these emotions and, while not denying them, actively refuses to attach to them.
Fear is a natural reaction to perceived threat. Fear, however, is generally greatly augmented by attachment to thought and imagination. The practice of taking charge of the mind, specifically where it exercises its focus and attachment, can keep fear in modest proportion. Thus, a warrior does not let fear take over the mind.
Sadness is a legitimate emotion, however, a bottomless pit of sadness is inhuman. One caught in this place is likely channeling an entity, such as an archetype, that seeks expression through possession of a human life. To dis-identify with such an archetype is to maintain one’s humanness. Thus, a warrior refuses to relinquish personal power.
Rage is the extreme of anger, often sparked by being overwhelmed by feeling offended. Beyond the affront to self-importance, it’s natural to want to take an action, such as setting a boundary, or acting in self-defense during an objective attack. A warrior strives always to act as fits a situation, devoid of feeling offended.
The world’s encounter with COVID-19 offers all warriors on the path to freedom the opportunity to temper their spirits, in preparation for a successful journey into the unknown. The pitfalls of self-importance and emotional extremes are tempered, as clarity, sobriety, and practicality guide the warrior’s journey instead.
Use this opportunity to go with the flow, and restore the magic of being a warrior in this wonderful world at this awesome time.
Guard your energy like a miser. Like someone with a secret, keep it to yourself as if it were all you owned, for indeed, it is all your spirit does have to offer. Keep it safe from harm. Protect it so that it may grow and enable you knowledge, wisdom, and understanding, so that you may gather enough of it to adventure beyond the body and discover what it can really do. Your spiritual energy is as real as you are, and yet it is more than you are. It is eternal.
“Pay attention” is a frequently delivered command. Indeed, when we pay with our attention we deliver our energy to the object of our focus. Attention is a powerful energetic currency.
Notice, for instance, the impact on your personal energy when you tune into the news, or some form of social media. The impact can be either depleting or empowering. Either way, we spend our energy in our emotional reaction to the news. That expended energy is delivered, on a subtle level, to the person we are reacting to in the news.
Children, most dramatically, seek our attention. Child educators know that getting attention is the child’s goal, good or bad. Once the child has our attention, they thrive on the energy of our focus, as well as on our emotional reactions. Tantrums are energetic goldmines for the tantruming child.
Even inanimate objects can absorb our energy. A trip to a museum is a case in point. Though fascinating and educational, objects of art demand our attention and can deeply drain our energy. We could say that a sculpture at a museum is imbued with self-importance. Were it not so, it wouldn’t be on display. Be careful how much attention you give it!
Self-importance measures the quantity and quality of attention we are paid for being alive. The ego, as the orphaned ruler of the personality, seeks the attention of others to validate its worthiness. This extrinsic dependency is the consequence of the ego’s separation from its wholeness, at the time of birth into this world. A blank slate seeks the approval of others to find its worth.
Shamans have astutely addressed this energetic stalemate. The fragmentation from Spirit-self, that accompanies finite life in a physical world, has led to obsessive dependence upon the attention of others to replace one’s lost Spirit. This attention-seeking behavior is considered by shamans to be humankind’s greatest energy drain.
Shamans discovered that a shift in focus, like the social isolation the world is currently experiencing, can result in the accrual of vast sums of energy within the self. That energy, combined with the intent to reconnect to one’s Spirit, can result in a deeply healing, inner soul retrieval.
To be connected to the life of one’s Spirit is to become guided by omens, the synchronicities from infinity that guide and inform life; to be in the world but not of the world, at an attention-seeking level. Attention-seeking is then completely replaced by the pursuit of right action, the best decision to be made under the presenting circumstances.
To dance with omens is to feel constantly renewed by participation in a fuller life, one that includes one’s essence, at a cosmic level. Attention received is not attention sought, but it is attention provided to guide the way to right action.
Save the currency of your attention for that which truly guides you to your wholeness. This is the world we are morphing into, a world of interconnected oneness. Let’s attend to that!
It’s a good time to decide what is essential, what is really necessary in your life. What do you want that is most important, practical, doable, and primarily essential? Is it love? Honesty? Kindness? Or is it things? Objects? Money? Are you on a spiritual path, a path of heart? Or are you more interested in the human path, a path of materialism? No matter the path, it’s time to get down to bare essentials and decide just what it is that you really want, how to get it, and how to be satisfied with just that, the essentials, because it’s time to share, to spread the wealth, to give as much as you take, to treat all with equanimity, no matter the path you choose.
