As the world churns along, doing its daily task of keeping everything going in the direction that it has determined is the path to take now, you personally can step off that path and take your own individual path. A solo journeyer may find that their path is often lonely but it is also extremely satisfying and gratifying. There is no better journey than the journey into the self, the journey of self-exploration and the journey of creative expression that lies outside of the norm. Allow yourself to step off the mundane path of existence that everyone is on, often called the rat race, and take in the beauty that is right beside you but so hard to see and experience when you are running the race that society dictates as the one and only race to run. There are many other paths to take, and most of them do not involve running! Instead, you will be filled with a calm knowing and a certainty that there is so much more to life, and that you are capable of so much more too.
When you give something away you make room for something new to come into your life. When you let go of something in your mind you open up for new insights to come to you. When you say goodbye to old habits and behaviors that no longer have purpose in your life, you say hello to new and beneficial, healthy habits. When you let go of something that no longer is necessary, on all levels of your being, whether thoughts, habits or beliefs, you allow something new and fresh to approach you. With more room inside you for something new, and awareness that you are only going to let in that which is beneficial to you, you begin to take back your power and to own your own life once again, or perhaps for the first time ever.
In a dream, Jan was given valuable, museum-quality antiques. They were in a white box truck, parked by our orange barn. We were preparing to bring them to a climate controlled storage unit.
Suddenly, though the engine was turned off, sparks shot up from the engine and the truck exploded, destroying its contents completely. The fire trucks arrived, but all was lost. From an indifferent mindset, Jan wondered if insurance might cover the loss.
The fire was ignited by a spontaneous combustion from within the engine itself. Shamans from Carlos Castaneda’s lineage typically, or metaphorically, left this world, at death, through what they called the burning of the fire from within. As their physical body ignited into nothingness, their energy body, or soul, launched into infinity.
In the shaman’s world, this burning from within marked the culmination of the life of an impeccable warrior, one whom had risen above the dualism of this world and was fully prepared to continue the adventure of truth in the next plane of existence.
Our inner fire is generated by our mind’s intent. Though mind is invisible, its thoughts, beliefs, emotions and karmic threads ignite the subconscious mind to transform our lives. It remains for our conscious ego to take command of and direct the subconscious mind to align with the truth of its High Self.
The white color of the truck that contained the antiques suggests purity, innocence and new beginnings. The orange color of the barn foreshadowed the unavoidable fire. These symbols suggest the alchemical operation of calcination where the substance, or prima materia one is seeking to transform, is broken down by fire, leaving behind a purified residue.
The prima materia of a human life is comprised of the karmic threads, desires, beliefs and emotions that bind and define one’s life and obscure access to resolution beyond the fray of the polarities, which dominate earthly life. This dream fire was not a fire of neglect. This fire was a necessary stage in the realization of an intent to grow.
The actual fire consumed the physical form of the treasured antiques, transforming them into spirit movement, as the gasses were released into the air. The risen spirits of these antiques were released from encasement in their solid matter to become active energy forces, made available to address the issues of now.
Antiques may be equated with ancient habits or beliefs that have shaped our attitudes and controlled our lives. Antiques might also reflect the values we admire and strive to live by. However, as antiques, these reflections of spirit remain outside of the self, possessed superficially as owned material objects. To bring them into life, we must take them on as parts of our own self, bringing them inward, reckoning with them, and allowing them to finally be calcined by the flames of our own inner fire, our desire for new life. No longer solid projections, their energy is liberated for other usage.
Tibetan meditation of the Bön Buddhism tradition asks us to neither suppress nor repress the inner fire of our triggers, with their powerful negative emotions. We are asked to remain with the thoughts, emotions and sensations in our mind and body, such as that which is contained in the white truck in Jan’s dream, with the goal of reaching compassion for self and other. Compassion, when reached, causes the energized emotion to fly off like a freed bird, leaving behind full acceptance and neutrality.
Compassion is achieved as we disengage from being possessed by the flame of blame and judgment of self and other. As we burn with the polarities that feed our inner fires, we learn to see all behaviors as part of All That Is. We recognize and own our shadow, as projected onto our neighbor. We now know that we share all the traits of our neighbors and are thus able, as Christ suggested, to “Love thy neighbor as thyself”. We become detached, compassionate beings.
As we enter the fiery month of Leo, in the midst of Mercury in Retrograde, our container is the Earth itself, stuck in the grip of a heat dome of smoldering negative emotions and actions. The threads of the karma of a holocaust are completing in the generation of another human holocaust. On a more comprehensive level, the karma of humankind’s predilection for materialism, with its ever-growing attempt to possess and enslave the Earth, is reaching its own karmic balance in the holocaust to all life on the planet. This manifestation of powerfully destructive forces is being brought to bear upon the antiquated pillars of a civilization that has controlled and defined us for centuries.
We are being shown that the progressive forces that might have been empowered to take us in a positive direction have been denied, because they too would likely become unwitting partners to the antiquated ways of yesteryear. Cosmic Karma is insisting upon a major conflagration of total breakdown before releasing the buds of new life. To arrive at this, it is time to rise above the prejudices of polarity into the clear view of Oneness. We are being delivered to the necessity of a new spiritual attitude to take us forward into new life.
I am convinced that this new spiritual attitude centers on our valuation of, and exercise of, the power of the subconscious mind. Our greatest powers, individually and collectively, are the suggestions we imagine and state, filled with the emotions and passions we deliver to the subconscious mind. Humankind is finding its way to the positive use of this inner power, largely because of the inevitable conflagration of the Earth itself by humankind, already underway, that will require inspired and responsible spiritual leadership to transcend.
The antiques of materialism and narrow rational thinking must now be calcined, as the Age of Aquarius ushers in the power of the imagination and advancing spirit to manifest and direct new life.
Jan’s dream ended with total detachment from the loss of the valuable antiques. Furthermore, there was no attachment to the thought of possible reimbursement from the loss.
We are entitled only to the reactions to our actions, our karmic threads. If incinerated antiques are transformed into money, or available energy, so be it, but no attachment to the outcome.
In the dream, all was purified and fully released to new life. This is the spiritual prize of submitting to the burning of the fire from within: Our purified non-dualistic selves become capable of delivering, to the subconscious mind, the suggestion for new life, led by truth.
Thoughts of Carlos Castaneda recently came into my mind. Back in 1998, Deepak Chopra wrote of Carlos, on the jacket of his new book, The Active Side of Infinity: “Carlos Castaneda was one of the most profound and influential thinkers of this century. His insights paved the way for the future evolution of human consciousness. We are all deeply indebted to him.”
But with the publishing, in 2003, of Amy Wallace’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice: My Life With Carlos Castaneda, which revealed her experiences within his inner circle, the final nail was put into the coffin of Carlos ever again being considered a true man of knowledge, or worthy of any legitimate consideration. Instead he became categorized as a typical New Age guru who abused his disciples. I suspect that Carlos made sure that Amy Wallace wrote that book, which ensured he’d be all but forgotten. It shocked not only his followers but the world at large.
Comparable to Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, founder of Naropa University, who also fell from grace, Carlos has been, at best, deemed a teacher who employed the cognitive dissonance of crazy wisdom. At worst, he’s been categorized as the greatest fictional trickster of the century, whose shenanigans fooled an entire generation of spiritual seekers. Once branded the Godfather of the New Age, today Carlos Castaneda is essentially a forgotten, discredited man.
Having spent a significant part of my life immersed in his world, I view his current status and exit from this world as a masterful shamanic move, a stroke of genius. I say that because shaman’s recognize self-importance as the number one scourge of humankind, the most negative human characteristic that significantly waylays our ability to spiritually advance. Could the self-importance of world leadership, and the pursuit of likes on social media, which dominate the world at present, not be more validating of this truth?
Carlos wrote 12 books, leaving behind the fullness of his shamanic knowledge, should one be called to it. Yet, should anyone be so called, it would be for the knowledge alone, with no attachment to Castaneda himself. That was his great shamanic maneuver, to ensure that the knowledge be separated from him personally. His reputation aside, he succeeded in delivering his messages, and with no self-importance following him, he sealed the door behind him as he exited human form. How many of us can do our good deeds in the dark, never sharing the knowledge of them with anyone?
When we shed self-importance from our identity, we disconnect from needing to be fortified by the attention of outside energy. Untethered, at death, from the thoughts and feelings of those left behind in human form, our Spirit is completely freed to move deeper into the exploration of infinity. Becoming untethered to the need for outside validation, while still in this world, frees us to follow, impeccably, the intent of our own Spirit, NOW!
Such was the lesson I was taught when my first wife, Jeanne, left this world and I sought our reconnection between worlds, as per our pre-agreement. Ultimately, she informed me to take my attention off her so that she could fully focus her attention upon learning the parameters of her new body and her new world.
Of course, the ultimate irony is that she has talked to my wife, Jan, every day for well over 20 years, in her soul sister messages. Her channelings, however, are not burdened with personal attachment to me. What is delivered is what she deems relevant now, for everyone, from her perspective in infinity. The opportunity for me has been to step up to the refinement of impersonal love.
Both Carlos and Jeanne teach the value of completely losing self-importance through non-attachment; no need for the validation of likes and attention from others. Freed of this imprisonment, we can focus all our energy on the greater good of self, and all others as well, uncompromised by the need for personal recognition. Validation of facts by others is a helpful and a necessary compass as we navigate our spiritual journey, but validation for the sake of self-recognition alone is a path of ego, not a path of heart.
When infinity recently sent me the suggestion to write about Castaneda’s teachings, I pondered which of his books to choose. Ten minutes later someone told me they found a giveaway copy of Carlos’s 1974 book, Tales of Power. Following this synchronistic prompting, I reread the first chapter to see what spoke to me now.
When still in this world, Carlos cautioned us to not attach to the shamanic practices employed upon him during his apprenticeship, which he documented in his three earliest books. Yours is a different time and your journeys are colored by the circumstances of your new age, he said. His suggestion was for us to be guided by the intent of ancient knowledge but to assume full responsibility for formatting its essence into addressing the needs of our time.
The essence of the first chapter of Tales of Power is that we are all double beings, both rational beings, with a solid physical body, as well as lighter energetic beings, with a soul body. Life presents us daily with appointments to obtain knowledge of this true wholeness so that we might more fully realize our fullest potential, while still in human form.
Carlos quotes the Nagual, don Juan Matus: “The only thing we all have in common is that we play tricks in order to force ourselves to abandon the quest. The countermeasure is to persist in spite of all the barriers and disappointments.” (Tales of Power, p. 20.)
Those tricks issue from the rational ego mind, terrified of ego death as it encounters the immensity of, and the powers of, its greater Soul. How quickly ego judges and dismisses its encounters with its soul in the mysterious and often puzzling synchronicities and triggers of daily life.
Synchronicities are creations of the soul of the subconscious mind, offering the ego encounters with the greater knowledge of infinity. In such encounters the subconscious mind is truly manifesting the ego’s intent to evolve, yet the ego often misses its appointments with such knowledge by its counter-intent, which is to survive unscathed the sometimes ruinous demands of greater truth.
The challenge for the ego is to suspend its judgments and refine its reason, to include the parameters of the greater truths of the soul. Reason is essential to navigating infinity, but it must get beyond the stumbling blocks of a solid world that clings tightly to its materialist prejudice.
Triggers are guides from infinity that summon the ego to retrieve its soul through honest recapitulation of its personal history. Typically, the ego gets drawn into self-pity, as it wallows in the offenses committed upon it by others. It holds tightly to the entitlement of retribution before it can forgive. This is a fixation of energy on self-importance, a sidetracking of attention from true knowledge.
Alternatively, the ego can accept all its experiences in life as reflections of all that is. The task is not about forgiveness; there is nothing to forgive. There is only the full retrieval of all of one’s energy, in the full acceptance of one’s life. With this equanimous acceptance of all the acts of one’s life, one is elevated to the highest level of love for all that is.
The barriers that don Juan references, in the above quote, are largely the habitual patterns we live by, as housed in our subconscious mind. Whether they issue from personal history, genetic history, the soul’s intent for this life, or from our ego’s defenses, new habits can manifest, through the persistence of intent and the positive suggestions we consciously and persistently impress upon the subconscious mind.
Persist, persist, persist in lightness and utter calm, and keep those daily appointments with knowledge.
Beware of energy drains, where you put your attention and what you get drawn to. It is highly likely that you will be pulled to examine the world around you, and that is good, but it may cause you to lose too much of your hard-earned energy. A better practice would be to read about the world around you with a detached aire, knowing that it cannot affect you if you continually pull back into your inner knowing of all that is, your awareness that everything has a rightful place in the world and thus whatever is happening in the world right now also has its place. In so detaching, you allow yourself to be informed but not deformed by anxiety, depression or dysregulation. In so doing you remain in control of your thinking, your emotions and your mental prowess. Hone these qualities every day, even as you confront what is going on in the world around you. You, by your own strong will and your own strong thinking and your own strong wisdom, have the power within you to remain detached yet compassionate toward all beings, even those who do the most harm.
