Participate in life as much as possible, but at the same time do so appropriately so that your energy is not depleted, stressed or neglected. Take care of yourself, even as you must care for others, for you are important to yourself in the life you are in, sent to fulfill whatever you are destined to fulfill by the challenges and encounters you have during your lifetime. Your spirit asks a lot of you, but it is for your own benefit and evolution. So don’t neglect yourself, even as you seek to live life to the fullest. Seek balance in all you do.
Look to nature for answers, for nature is as pure as it gets. Her processes prove how adaptable she is to change, how she snaps back to life after a storm, an avalanche, a flood. She adapts to the changes and new life springs forth in the changed environment. Learn to go with the flow of change in your own life and your own world, within and without, keeping constantly in mind the ultimate purpose of life, which is to evolve into the spiritual being you truly are.
Sometimes we simply can’t believe, can’t accept something on faith alone; though spiritually driven we may need more than faith alone.
Jan has shared with me that the nuns of her grammar school called such spiritual candidates “doubters”, confused souls held tightly in Satan’s grasp of doubt. From their dogma, faith alone is the necessary bridge to spiritual ascent.
From my own earliest childhood inner experience, I qualified as a major-league doubter. In deep shame and horror, my truth was that I did not believe in God. I needed absolute proof, through experience, before I could believe. I challenged God to prove His existence to me.
That challenge was met with an experience that left no further room for doubt, for now I knew. Belief now rested upon the solid foundation of knowing, which has guided my life ever since. I thank doubt for setting the stage for the experiment and resulting numinous experience that has inspired my entire life.
Nonetheless, those Sisters at St. Mary’s knew of the perilous quicksand that doubt becomes when it dominates one’s attitude toward life. Doubt can indeed cast a heavy shadow over the brightness of life. Excessive doubt breeds cynicism, where the interpretation of life events derives from an acute tunnel vision that sees only the negative side of everything. Doubt readily identifies the hidden, self-serving motive behind everything and everyone.
So convincing is the cynic’s perspective, as it casts its shadow of doubt upon the supposed altruism of others, that its resulting negativity is quite infectious. In fact, one can easily lose faith that anyone is truly trustable, and firmly believe that any supposed loving action is really nothing other than a Trojan horse of self-serving narcissism.
Faith then, could be defined as remaining open to the hypothesis that anything is possible, at least until proven otherwise. Life, from this perspective, is sprinkled with optimism and positive thinking. Rather than dismiss a possibility outright, based upon a dogmatic or fixed perspective, we actually allow ourselves to remain open and see what happens.
In a relationship, a doubting attitude might easily judge the behavior of the other to be fraught with self-serving intent, despite their loving persona. This may then lead one to harbor resentment and distrust that precludes any possibility of a deepening intimacy.
If, on the other hand, one were able to suspend their doubting judgment and allow their faith to remain open and see what happens, they might be rewarded with the discovery that indeed, this flawed human being is actually reaching out to truly connect.
On the other hand, one might be led to the discovery that their doubt was actually well informed. They might be led to the fact that their companion is not ready to love another, as their gaze is solidly fixed upon love that is limited to their own reflection. Despite one’s disappointment at this, the outcome of this experimental relationship has proven its untenability, and so, it’s simply time to move on.
Faith allows us to suspend judgment and remain open to possibility. Doubt forces us to refine our relationship with the truth. Faith and doubt are thus a pair of opposites, which, when properly integrated, serve the deepening of our relationship with life, truth, and love.
If we are too one-sided in doubt, our relationships are sterile, calculated and fear based. If we have too much faith, we are easy targets for the con-artists, the prana suckers, and the devious.
The truth is that at different levels of our being we are all both devils and angels. We have good reason to doubt our own authenticity, at all times. We also have good reason to have faith in everyone’s capacity for deep altruistic love, including our own!
The fact that we are both devils and angels makes us human—beings who reflect a composition of both the left and right hands of God. Our challenge in this life is to weave both sides of ourselves into a functional unit that takes us deeper into the truth and love of this amazing journey: Life!
Your life in the world is a spiritual journey of the utmost importance whether you recognize it as such or not. Life on Earth is a wake up call. Simply being there now, being alive in a human body, is a wake up call from your spirit to recognize it, follow it, and learn from it. You are so much more than you think you are and it is your challenge to find out, every day of your life, just what that really means.
In Egyptian mythology, Anubis, the guardian of souls and lord of the underworld, appears with a human body topped with a jackal’s head. The jackal, in physical reality, is an earthbound wild dog who, like a vulture in the sky, feeds off the flesh of the dead. This is the likely root of Anubis’ symbolic and solemn association with death.
The jackal, in the tripartite human being dimensions of mind, body and spirit, is the physical body, the mortal component of this human trinity. The physical body is also the subconscious dimension of the human being. The subconscious houses the raw materials of all that we are, as well as all that we have ever been.
When the superconscious dimension of our Spirit decides to incarnate in human form for a particular mission of self-actualization in time and space, it must forget its immortal existence to accomplish its goal. If we were to be born with a distinct knowledge of our soulful existence beyond death, it would trump the experience of mortality, which is crucial to creating the necessary growth environment, or experimental/experiential conditions that our Spirit requires to advance its mission.
The jackal, as accomplice to Spirit’s intent, is the guardian of Spirit knowledge housed in the shadowland of the subconscious and stored in the human body. The paradox of this contract is that the jackal becomes Spirit’s greatest opponent in life. While Spirit seeks the spiritualization of our sojourn as material, mortal beings, jackal seeks to consume all of our spiritual stirrings that threaten to bring into the light of consciousness the truth of our hidden potential and immortality. The psychological tool to keep things hidden is suppression.
The jackal accomplishes its mission through preoccupying us with concerns of physical survival. We become obsessed with our income and resources to assure food and shelter. Our preoccupation with creature comforts renders us inert, as we sink into the malaise of semi-conscious existence. Ultimately, these obsessions evoke anxiety and fear and breed selfishness.
The world is currently caught in such a survivalist drama, as fears of scarcity fuel war and hate of neighbor. These fixations lack the deeper spiritual knowing of interconnected life beyond mortal existence. The challenge for the world now is to ascend to this spiritualized position of love and care for all of life. This is indeed the Great Spirit’s intent for the entire human race in its current incarnation: to ascend to love amidst threat to mortality. But how to accomplish this?
The shamans of ancient Mexico reminded themselves each day that they were “a being who is going to die” to counter the jackal’s distracting efforts to mire their Spirits in materialism. With death as one’s adviser, one is mindfully present, with Spirit, to the opportunity for fulfillment in each mortal moment.
Between the superconscious domain of Spirit and the subconscious domain of the jackal—the body—is the mind. The mind is actually another orphaned dimension of Spirit, known as the ego. Like the body, the mind is a victim of brainwashing, that is, amnesia of its true origin: Spirit.
However, despite its ignorance, ego stumbled upon the tree of knowledge and free will. On the downside of this discovery is ego frequently colluding with the jackal, advancing its power aims and survivalist agendas. On the upside, ego has the potential to calm the jackal, whereby opening the channel to Spirit’s guidance and resource in its Earthly mission.
When ego chooses to meditate, it calms the body with positive suggestions, which in turn provide reassurance. This is where ego learns voluntary control over the jackal’s autonomic nervous system. When the jackal gets anxious, the ego can lead it to the calmness of its safe place. Once the jackal feels safe, and sees that its truephysical needs are being met, it allows its hidden treasures to come into the light of consciousness.
This allows ego to recapitulate the repressed traumas of this life, or the issues of past lives, previously hidden and stored in the dark storage of the physical body. This allows access to one’s true karma, one’s mission in this life, allowing it to be revealed and fulfilled. Ultimately, this spiritualization process allows for the full merger of mind, body, and Spirit in love, the collective Spirit intent for the lifetime we are all in.
Interestingly, it is Anubis who presents the human heart to Ra at the time of human passing, as the actions of one’s just-lived life are weighed and future karma assigned.
We begin our journey of spiritual return through befriending the jackal, who in turn opens the door to the gems of our true heritage, presenting materials for advancement. And, ultimately, as our worthy opponent through life, the jackal returns us, upon passing, to our full-fledged Spirit in infinity.
