Find your path, your spiritual intent, and stick to it, but do not be afraid to explore beyond it, for when on a spiritual journey it is important to be open and expectant, to experience new things. For it is only in having experiences that one truly learns and truly knows something. A decision to follow a certain path does not make one an expert. Only experience allows one knowledge, and knowledge gained eventually leads to wisdom. This is true in all walks of life. Seek experience, be open to experience, let experiences come to you and then decide if they are right for you and your spirit to engage in. Some will be right, some will not be right. You decide. But whatever you decide you will learn something of value, and that is what having an experience is all about.
Always dream with awareness. Prepare yourself each day to dream yourself awake and prepare yourself each night to dream yourself to sleep, but dream always with awareness, day and night, taking the dream that is you a bit deeper, a bit further. With awareness wake to the day dream that is yours to dream and with awareness sleep the night dream that is yours to dream. These two aspects of self, waking and sleeping, are a continuation of the same dream. So, if you treat them both with equal respect and give them both your utmost attention you will achieve all your dreams, day and night. Dream on with your awake body and your dream body in synch, dreaming the same dream all the time.
Dreams are more than just imaginary wanderings, they are lights in the darkness. Keep your dreams in mind at all times. With intent throw out a line to your future and make your way toward it. Even as you must live your current life, supporting and upholding the needs and duties of your current self, keep in mind that dreams are not just meant to be dreams. They are future potentials, inklings of what can be, and as such they are more than possibilities. They can become realities if you don’t lose sight of them. Dream your way forward to a new you, a different situation, a longed for something, to a focused intent that will not leave you until you live it. If you can dream it, you can live it.
Adopt a patient attitude. In Tao all is patient, in alignment with waiting for all that is right to come into balance, for everything to get into synch, within and without. In Tao all is as it should be, without stress or yearning; it is what is, acceptable for the moment because the moment is all that is. What is to come at another time is not important, for it is not in the moment. In Tao each moment is rich, each step is vital, each breath the only breath, each moment all there is to life. In Tao patience finds its natural place among the many other riches of the moment. It just is and it is right, a part of each moment. Adopt patience, breathe patience, and live in the richness of each moment, knowing also that in the next moment everything can change. This too is Tao. Be in Tao, patiently ready for anything.
As a clinician, I would diagnose the world as currently suffering from Acute Stress Disorder. This diagnosis differs from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder only in time: we are currently encountering the overwhelming stress, and reactions to stress, well-known in PTSD, most acutely in our daily encounters with oncoming world events.
On a psychological level, acute stress is met by the activation of the survival instinct, which manifests in reactions of fight, flight, or freeze. These reactions are archaic responses, universally programmed in all humans, that generally override the thinking, reflective, choice centered part of our brains, the neocortex, which generally goes dormant when we feel threatened. Thus, our behaviors become instinctively, versus consciously, directed reactions to stressors.
We see the fight reaction in the political and social media battles throughout the world. We see the flight reaction in the mass migratory patterns of human populations fleeing the earthly disasters and dangerous political conditions of their familial homelands. We see the freeze reaction in withdrawal into depression, as well as into the numbness of addiction.
Although instinctive reactions are nature’s time-honored survival strategies, they are not always the most efficient or appropriate responses to a crisis, nor do they really penetrate the true depth of an issue. Deeper levels of consideration require the ability to reflect objectively, which cannot happen when the neocortex is offline. Thus, the ability to restore the thinking function to normal capacity is critical. But how?
Breathe. Mindful breathing has the physiological effect of blocking stress producing hormones and inducing a relaxation response to the body. From there, thinking comes back online and can provide a broader perspective. The greatest challenge to breathing when stressfully activated is to separate from the actions dictated by the fight, flight, freeze instinctual program. Sometimes a vigorous walk, run, or private scream is a helpful release before breathing. When battling another person, it is generally best to separate for awhile, rather than try to force a resolution. Not to do so often results in a continued and escalated battle.
Although the neocortex is the biological thinking center of the brain, the mind and consciousness itself are actually part of the soul or energy body. This is most evident in the mind’s ability to act in opposition to its biological programming. When we choose to breathe when deeply stressed, we are acting in opposition to our biological programming. We rise above our animal nature to access spirit consciousness and choice.
The heart center in human beings has its energy body connection in its interconnected relationship to all of life. Thus, from the heart center we are able to feel love, which enables empathy, care, and support beyond one’s instinctive survival drive, which cannot extend beyond the narcissistic province of me and mine. This spirit center elevates the human being from the dominance of the survival drive at its animal level, which we witness pervasively throughout the world at this time.
As Mother Earth continues her drastic reformation of the globe, a major healing crisis, we are likely to see all animal species, particularly the human, responding through instinctual survival programs. For humans, these instinctual survival programs will increasingly pit human against human. These instinctual survival programs lack empathy, love, and a greater understanding of the changes we are all being confronted with.
In spite of the dire state of world affairs, it is possible to consciously rise above these instinctual survival programs and maintain and increase greater love and understanding. The ability to be empathic truly does lie at the heart of the evolved human being. With intent we can find our way to higher ground.
Seek sanctuary in heart-centered breathing to counter pure survival behaviors that lack soul. Find the higher ground of love and understanding, even as our species grapples with major change. As individual cells of this great body of Mother Earth, we can, individually and collectively, introduce soulful healing energy into our planet’s current major healing crisis.
