In today’s audio channeling we are all advised to work on shedding our belief systems and being open to those moments of awakening, when what we experience changes us. Remember to stay awake! That’s the key.
Have a wonderful week!
The Shamans of Ancient Mexico make an important distinction between will and intent. Will is automatic, intent requires consciousness. Will issues from the land of participation mystique, where individuals or whole nations unconsciously follow the leader. With intent, consciousness taps into that same underlying energy as will, but assumes control of its manifestation.
A concrete example of the distinction between will and intent is a Yogi who is capable of assuming conscious control of the autonomic or involuntary nervous system. Thus, bodily functions such as breathing, heartbeat, and digestion—generally controlled by the ‘will’ of the body—can be co-opted to function according to the conscious ‘intent’ of the yogi.
The Shamans of Ancient Mexico discovered that the underlying energy and power of manifestation of both will and intent come from the same source, the greater energy of intent in the universe that manifests all things. The only difference between them is simply who is in charge: nature’s archetypes or consciousness? Like the yogi, the shaman cultivates the power of intent at a fully conscious level, assuming control of what ordinarily happens when we function at the level of participation mystique.
The greatest obstacle to mastering intent, according to don Juan Matus, is limiting beliefs. We simply do not believe that we can manifest simply through intending a change. Abraham, as channeled through Esther Hicks, taught the law of attraction. Simply put, what we think is what we manifest. Thus, if we intend a change but constantly doubt our ability to manifest it the energy of our intent receives an ambiguous message: “change but don’t change, because I can’t change!” This compromised intent manifests a stalemate, no change.
The simplicity of simply stating an intent, of holding an intent as an agent of change, just seems too darned simple to our modern rational sensibility. We either argue about its impossibility, defeat it in doubt, or too meekly state it for it to be heard by the greater intent of the universe, which we personally tap into when we intend.
To not assume conscious responsibility for intent is to largely leave the direction of our lives in the default position of will, where we mystically participate in the rule of the archetypes. These archetypes are then projected upon the outer world where they organize perceptions and mental judgements, in essence manifesting the world we live in.
The incessant voice of ongoing commentary within the mind, what the shamans call the internal dialogue, essentially reinforces the will of the archetypes, which becomes how we experience life. Thus, when the world leader presents his view of the world in a state of the union address, world citizens are unconsciously drawn to project the archetype of the king upon him and assimilate his words as their personal intent or worldview.
The phenomenon of hypnotism illustrates the power of a message to manifest an outside intent. Suggestions from outside of us, like the suggestions we give ourselves, unawarely through our internal dialogue, become the commands we automatically manifest in our beliefs and actions.
Intent itself is impervious to morality. Intent is a pool of energy awaiting a command, a direction to manifest. Thus, for instance, there are ‘good’ shamans and ‘bad’ shamans, as Star Wars so eloquently demonstrates. If the force is equated with intent, the crucial question is, who will command the force, the light or the dark side? Intent can manifest either way, for purposes of good or evil.
It rests with the individual to decide the fate of intent, in fact, the fate of the world. Consciousness itself is the first rupture with the automatic adherence of the individual to the will of the archetypes. The Pope recently pointed to the apple in Eden as the first example of fake news. From this perspective he acknowledges that the intent of consciousness ‘sins’ against the will of the archetypes, or perhaps what he would call the will of God, as the individual is freed to engage in the ‘fake news’ of consciousness and offered the opportunity to act with intent. His concern is duly noted given the current state of affairs in the world.
With freedom comes responsibility, what the world is faced with assuming right now. It begins within the individual. How will I use my personal power of intent? Many entities have a powerful interest in commandeering my intent for their own ambitions. As malevolent as this might sound and be, simply watch nature; watch the birds. All life feeds upon life. The dark side is part of life.
Nonetheless, with consciousness we are freed to intend balance within ourselves and balance within our world. Balance, like the Tao, finds a place to incorporate all that is, light and dark. Of course, consciousness can equally choose to align itself solely with the dark side, thereby delivering to the light side a great challenge for growth. Here we see the value and necessity of the dark side.
Intent is the message you choose to deliver to the greater pool of energetic intent to manifest in your life and your world. Keep it simple, repeat it often. Grapple with your ambivalence, face the shadow of your intent, incorporate its truth into your intent. When doubt seeks to sell you its wares acknowledge it then shift to stating your intent, incessantly. Don’t attach to outcome, free intent to set the course of the journey, wherever it takes you. Suspend judgement of the current state of manifestation of your intent. Remain persevering. Hold your intent with the lightness of a feather as you gently send it off on the wings of intent.
Peace,
Chuck
Good Morning! Our audio channeled message this week advises us all to get to the bottom of who we really are, as opposed to who we think we are. There is a difference that only we can find out and know for ourselves. Take the opportunity this week to free the self from some old limiting beliefs that are probably not even true! Know the self!
Beliefs originate in the mind. The mind is the outermost wrapping of the spiritual plane in human beings. In Hindu science the spiritual plane has many increasingly subtle dimensions or sheaths.
Using the Hindu analogy, we can compare the familiar mind that we call the ego to a rocket booster of a spaceship, which propels the spaceship, but as it rises higher in the atmosphere sheds itself of the outer layers or sheaths surrounding its core. Hence, when we depart from this world at death, on our definitive journey into infinity, we will shed the outer wrapping, the ego mind we operated with in this world, and open to the more subtle, spiritual dimensions at our core. At this point we will become fully energetic beings, no longer sporting the outer casings of the human form. This is the energetic body from which Jeanne communicates her wisdom to Jan in daily Soulbytes.
The ego and higher levels of spiritual agency represent the Yang or thought dimension of human existence. The body and all material manifestations in the world represent the Yin or material dimension of human existence.
Ideas, thoughts, beliefs, or intents are all non-substantial possibilities issuing from the spiritual dimension that require physical substance to become what we might call real, substantial, or manifested. Thus, spirit Yang lacking union with material Yin is simply a hot air possibility lacking substance.
Limitations are the necessary boundaries that birth a spirit into substantial reality. Thus, if I have an image in my mind it exists only as a spirit entity, a potential lacking substance. If I then draw and color the idea on paper, my spirit and physical selves have united to create a definite impression. Yang and Yin are conjoined in the process of creative manifestation.
For a Yang impulse to become real it must accept the limiting containment of physical reality. Without limits we don’t exist in a substantial, time and space, way. An idea lacking written or verbal expression is just a roaming, floating thought, a seed seeking earth to germinate in and become real.
Limiting beliefs are the basic building blocks of our world. If we did not collectively agree to believe similar things we could not manifest such a cohesive reality, i.e., the world as we know it. From a shamanic perspective all worlds are consensus realities. Consensus, meaning shared beliefs, is the intent that congeals matter into a specific world.
By exercising the shamanic technology of intent we can shift the world we live in, literally, into a new consensus reality or, put differently, into a whole new world. However, that new world also requires a new set of limiting beliefs to achieve the consistency necessary to become a substantial reality.
If I pick up my metal spoon and it suddenly bends in half my belief in the solidity of the world may be greatly assaulted, sending me into quite a spin. Fortunately, the very powerful belief that the world is rational might quickly reassert itself, providing probable explanations for the bent spoon that can then shore up the shaky assault to my sanity!
Of course, as much as we enjoy the calmness of a predictable world, well-constructed by limiting beliefs, the downside of limitation is limitation. Many more options of experience and manifestation may be available to us that might much more fully allow us to experience both our spiritual and material potential; things that we simply can’t access, as the guardians of our sanity that maintain the consistency of the world as we have known it vigorously encourage us not to stray beyond the boundaries of our limiting beliefs.
It really is a profound consideration to stray beyond the boundaries of rationality, which is currently (though greatly challenged by world events this past year) the major building block of human stability. In general, mental health has been predicated upon the security of a predictable world constructed by agreed upon limiting beliefs. Nonetheless, often at the spirit’s insistence to open to possibilities beyond the known, or as a matter of material necessity, we are compelled to take new spiritual/physical adventures beyond the known dimensions into the deeper interior of our fuller selves.
In fact, one thing is clear about the present state of reality in the world: the limiting beliefs that have defined the world at the highest levels are currently crumbling in full public view. Rather than calming and solidifying the basic tenets of our consensus reality, our leaders function like tricksters shifting gears with pure abandon.
The deeper reason for this dissolution is that our world is in the midst of major transformation. Fear not the transitory extreme new worlds we are confronted with daily; they are untenable as they do not support the deepest needs of our world as it undergoes its very deep and necessary transformation.
We are being pushed into a world that opens us up to our greater energetic potential, a world which greatly expands the limiting beliefs that have so long defined what we believe and experience as reality. This new world of greater entrée into our energetic potential frees us from the limiting beliefs of fixation on materialism as the source for fulfillment. The technology of that limiting belief has clearly exhausted the planet and, despite its current escalation, has little future.
The new technology of a metaphysical world, a world of energy beyond strict rationality, utilizes psychic powers, intent, inter-dimensional exploration and the experience of love as its guiding limiting beliefs. This is a far more stable and exciting consensus reality in the making. That is the New Frontier we are privileged to participate in beyond the boredom, frustration, depression, and hardship of this tumultuous time of transition.
The limits of that New Frontier are the kind of limiting beliefs I can sign up for!!!
To our greater energetic potential,
Chuck
I had been given my first skis for Christmas when I was five. It was a big surprise and I remember being very excited about learning to ski. I imagined gliding effortlessly over the snow. They were wide wooden skis, painted blue, that I strapped onto my snow boots. My boots slipped out of them all the time and I found them heavy and cumbersome. At five I was not a good skier. I would take the skis out every winter for a few years after that and try them out, but I never got the hang of it and was always disappointed in how difficult it was. I preferred sledding or ice skating.
At 12, I got another pair of skis for Christmas. This time it was not a surprise. One evening my father took me and my two brothers, one a year older and one a year younger than me, to get fitted for skis. This time they were real downhill skis. We got outfitted with boots, poles, and even snazzy ski pants with heel straps so they didn’t ride up out of the boots. This time I was not so very enthusiastic. I kept asking my father why I was getting skis, I didn’t want skis. He insisted. I got the skis. My brothers really wanted their skis and they both became good skiers, in fact my younger brother became an excellent skier and even went to Europe one year and skied in the Alps with a friend of his whose family was living there for a year. I remember one of his skis broke on the return trip, in the cargo hold of the plane.
I tried skiing in those new skis, mostly around the neighborhood with friends, on hills in my backyard or other people’s backyards. I’d occasionally go to a nearby ski area with friends, a little mountain where there was a small beginner’s slope and a much larger expert slope. I spent my time on the beginner’s slope. I was the person going down the hill screaming, arms flapping and poles akimbo, crashing into the flimsy fence at the bottom of the hill in order to stop. I did take a few lessons and learned the “snowplow” to stop so I didn’t have to crash land. But I was still pretty bad, had little control, and often rode down the hill sitting on the back of my skis. I’d end my ski adventures bruised, with bumps on the back of my head, snow down my neck, and my ankles aching where the boots dug into them. I was just not a good skier.
When I was 14 I got convinced by a friend to go down the big hill at the ski area. My first challenge was getting up to the top of the hill. As soon as I grabbed onto the rope tow lift I found that the rope just slid through my hands. My mittens were fake red fur on the tops with palms made of a heavy plastic material that the frozen rope just slipped right over. I grabbed as hard as I could, but no luck. I was asked to get off the rope pull as I was causing a back up, people piling up behind me, yelling, “Go, go, go!” My friend and I moved over to the T-bar lift. I had never used a T-bar before.
“Just stand in the tracks, and grab onto the T-bar as it comes up behind and let it basically drag you up the hill,” said my friend, a much better skier, as we prepared to ride up the hill together, one on either side of the upside down T. Sounds easy, right? Well it wasn’t. For some reason I kept falling down every time the T contraption came at us. Finally after many attempts, the lift guard yelling at me to give up, I managed to somehow grab ahold of the dang thing and stay on my feet and up we went. Next problem, how to get off! My friend and I discussed this on the way up.
“Just ski away from the lift as we get to the top of the hill,” my friend said.
“Okay, right,” I said.
Luckily I always had a good sense of humor and could laugh at myself, so there was a lot of laughter as we went through the process of getting to the top of the mountain. Taking a big breath, I was able to “just ski away” from the lift, but even so there were other people coming up fast behind me yelling, “Move! Move!”
At the top of the hill I looked down and said, “No way! I am not going down that hill,” a frightening sheer drop. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” my friend said, and she explained how to go down by slalom skiing back and forth at the steepest part and then skiing straight down where it evens out. Sure. And then she took off, leaving me to fend for myself. Shit! I guess she thought I was just going to follow right after her!
I hemmed and hawed for a long time, getting up my courage, and then I went for it. It did not go well. I started out okay, basically skiing across to a spot on the other side, trying not to get in the way of other expert skiers who were shushing past me at incredible speeds. I went back to the other side, down a little further, and that went okay too. But then I fell and I kept falling. I could not stop.
Like a turtle on its back I went spinning down the hill, my slick ski jacket skittering over the icy surface of the mountain, my skis and poles flailing in the air as I passed everybody, going at such speed that I could not tell what was up or what was down. I barreled along like a bowling ball knocking down pins as all the people at the bottom of the hill, waiting on line to take the lift up to the top, scattered as I sailed past them and crashed into the fence beyond. It was mortifying. A woman asked me if I was okay. I said I was, as I pried snow out of my neck, from inside my jacket, and from down my pants.
My friend was nowhere in sight. I finally found her and said I’d wait for her in the lodge. When I asked her, she said she hadn’t seen me go down. Luckily! That was one humiliation I would not have to live down!
A few days later I was on the school bus. Two girls were sitting in the seat behind me. Cheerleaders. They were talking, giggling. I didn’t really tune into what they were saying until I realized that one girl was telling the other about going skiing over the weekend.
“She went down the whole slope ON HER BACK!” I heard her say.
It suddenly dawned on me that they were talking about me. Oh no! Mortification! Someone I knew had seen me! Did they not know I was sitting right in front of them? Of course they did! More mortification! How will I ever live this down? I slunk down in my seat and finally accepted that I was a bad skier. The humiliation was just not worth it. I don’t think I ever skied again after that.
We take on “badness” and it manifests somewhere in us, psychologically, physically, emotionally, even spiritually. Not only did I take on being a bad skier, but I took on the humiliation and mortification that came with being a bad skier. It inhibited me from trying other sports, as I was sure I would be bad at them too. I stuck to what I knew I could do. I limited myself.
Years later, I was in my twenties and had moved to Sweden to live with my boyfriend, a very nice young Swedish man. One day he announced that we were going skiing. I explained that I did not ski. That I was a really bad skier. He explained that it was not downhill skiing, and everyone in the country basically did it and I was going to do it too. No backing out. The whole family was going, meaning his parents and sister, aunt and uncle and numerous cousins, most of whom I’d yet to meet. Oh boy, here comes the humiliation and the mortification!
I was nervous all week leading up to the winter break when traditionally all families got together for winter sports, the most popular being our equivalent of cross-country skiing. When I lived in Sweden during the 1970s, literally everyone skied.
By the time the day came I was ready, outfitted with a set of boots, skis, and poles and ready to go. I decided to just relax and enjoy, pretend I’d never been on skis before in my life, and just have fun. Like it or not, it was time to get beyond my ingrained idea that I was a bad skier. We set out into the wilderness, newly fallen snow on the ground, backpacks filled with thermoses and food, skis strapped to our feet. I got a quick lesson and then off we went. There was no time for hesitation. There was no time for limiting beliefs. I just began to ski because I had to; it was time to go and I had to keep up with everyone. But from the moment I started I loved it!
There I was gliding along, just as I had imagined doing when I was five and got my first set of skis. It was magical. I watched carefully how everyone else skied and started to add little techniques to my own process as we went along. There were no judgments, only kind encouragements, everyone just out to have a glorious day of fun in the snow. Over hill and dale, through woods we went. It was magical, and by the time we stopped for lunch on the edge of a forest, sheltered by large boulders, I was hooked. When asked if I was enjoying the skiing I declared that I loved it and everyone agreed that it was a marvelous sport.
A fire was built, hot dogs were pulled out and stuck on sticks, hot milky sweet tea was poured, and we all sat down in the snow and had a marvelous, delicious picnic. It was just the first of many such skiing trips I was to enjoy with those lovely Swedes, all of whom congratulated me on skiing so well for someone who had never done it before. I did tell them that I had done downhill skiing before, but nothing like that.
I learned something about myself that day, how an idea can be so limiting, how we plant ideas about ourselves in our minds and live them out, to our disadvantage. I really was mortified that day on the slope when I fell onto my back and the day I heard those girls talking about me only increased my mortification. But I learned that in order to get beyond our limiting beliefs we have to dare ourselves to override them, to live them down by facing them and daring to live beyond them. Limiting beliefs keep us away from having experiences that are life enhancing, that help us grow and change. That day in Sweden I discovered that I was no longer a bad skier, but a competent one, and have enjoyed many skiing adventures since.
We never really know who we are until we push ourselves beyond our perceived limits, beyond what we believe about ourselves. In the process of challenging those beliefs we not only discover more of our potential but we allow unforeseen joy to enter into our lives.
P. S.: There are plenty of hilarious Youtube videos of people trying to ride T-bar lifts. I was just like everyone of them that first and only time I ever rode such a lift.
A blog by J. E. Ketchel, Author of The Recapitulation Diaries