Be aware of how easily the mind can slip into an old routine, how easily an old habit can pop up, how the slightest hint of an old nostalgia can trigger an old desire. But as easily as the mind can slip back into an old place so can your spirit slip in and tell you a different story, give you a different idea, shift you into a different state. When the mind conjures call upon the spirit. Find it in a deep breath, in a heart centered, loving thought of a new day’s unfolding and all the possibilities it holds. As the sun rises let its light shift you into a creative, loving and kind place. Think of someone else with kindness and compassion, let the old conjuring mind go, and move onward now. It’s the most responsible thing to do, for self and other, but do it with love in your heart and all will be well.
The most challenging problem of my youth was my doubt in the Catholic doctrine to which I was exposed. My lineage and early socialization no doubt confounded my smooth sailing into Christian soldier hood. My maternal grandmother was Lutheran, and I recall some experience in the toned-down secular milieu of those Protestant services.
I was introduced to Catholicism, my true birthright, rather late for communion age, out of sync with the rhythm of no question, memorize, and repeat the hermetically sealed catechism. My mind was too influenced by the powerfully rational mind of my secular Jewish step-father: I asked questions, faith alone couldn’t work for me.
I soon realized it best to keep my questions inside myself where they only intensified in urgency. One Good Friday evening, I had it out with God, insisting on an experience, not a belief, that could give some legitimacy to a core premise of Christianity, Christ’s crucifixion. I was met with an overwhelming experience that baptized my spiritual life.
My birth father, whom I never knew, hailed from a very Catholic Irish family where he was designated by his mother to become a priest. His refusal to her call sent him into alcoholism and violence against women. Clearly, his unrequited call to the priesthood was passed along to his biological son, me.
I have never found comfort in the Christian story and cast of characters; I simply never felt a personal connection. Communion never performed any magic for me. However, I was introduced to my spirit self, and God, experientially, and that truth could never be erased. I took my vows as a priest by becoming a psychotherapist. I have spent my career helping people to heal through connecting with their Spirit.
Lately, I’ve come to more deeply appreciate the Christian story, though my interpretation would likely be branded heretical, or at the very least, too muddled in New Agism. Nonetheless, I offer my understanding as part of my obligation, or folly.
Christ knowingly agreed to his fate in incarnating as a human being. The suggestion here is for all to contemplate their own agreement, as spirit beings, to enter a physical life, with a choice of their human fate. The suggestion that we choose the life we will encounter assigns us ultimate responsibility for the fate that befalls us.
Christ does not blame anyone on his cross; he is not a victim, for he knows he chose to be crucified. So, “forgive them father, for they know not what they do.” And what they did, was to help him fulfill his destiny. All must figure out their mission for the life they are in, and how all that they encounter is part of helping themselves achieve this goal, however obscured it might be from consciousness.
Christ was crucified. Christ reveals that life in human form is a crucifixion. Uniting an eternal soul with a temporal body is a death warrant; human life, by design, is a crucifixion. One part of the human being will die, the other will live on. All that we attach to in human form will perish, and we will be crucified by those losses.
Christ resurrected in spirit form. Christ models the fact that physical death results in the consolidation of continued life in the astral body, or in Christian terms, the soul body. Christ’s example validates the current science of out-of-body exploration. Indeed, we are more than our physical bodies.
Christ’s central message was unconditional love, even in the face of crucifixion. This perhaps is the most helpful message. Human life offers the opportunity to refine love to a very high degree of clarity. And that purity of love is the fuel to reenter infinity with the fortitude for deep exploration.
The veils of attachment that define, and are critical for human sustenance, are all challenged and lifted by the temporary nature of human existence. We must attach to live and truly detach to leave. And the detachment factory truly is the assembly line of love’s evolution.
To open to love in the flesh, to remain open to love beyond physical life, to open to new love in human life without cancelling old love of human life, to love neighbor as self, to love enemy as self, to love all with equanimity, to possess not—these are the stations of the cross of human existence. To achieve these stations is to open to truth and love at the most refined levels. Perhaps that is the essence of why we came here, and chose the life we are in.
Jan’s final book of The Recapitulation Diary series, Dreaming All The Time, ends with a shocking finale, a very deep challenge. Can we love and be thankful to everyone we have encountered in our human sojourn, no matter what? That, I believe was Christ’s most profound message. Love knows no limits and is only strengthened by our mastery of our greatest challenge, our very human condition of crucifixion.
Remain open to all that life offers. Make each day important and give yourself thanks for all you have done to fulfill the life you are in. Allow yourself to each day begin anew with renewed intent and a fresh attitude. Trust that your spirit has your best interests in mind and that it will guide and protect you as you forge ahead with determination and gratitude. Turn on the love within you and let it too lead you into each day, for with love in your heart everything is possible.
There is no danger in being loving, in letting the heart lead or in expressing love, even for those most contentious, despicable and evil, for love can do you no harm, and it might even help another. Love is the curative energy afforded free of charge to every human being. Do the right thing and spread the love, silently and with compassion, out loud with kindness, or simply in every breath you take. Make love a priority.
We are living in a time of great splintering. The energy of the many fragmented voices is fast and furious. The single-mindedness of independent parts, warring against any challenge, vying for supremacy at any cost, is the energy of now. We are a world that has dispersed its wholeness, and those independent parts are not presently interested in finding their way home.
Ironically, when wholeness is achieved boredom eventually sets in. It’s as natural as the fullness of an inhalation alternating with the dispersement of exhalation. When fullness reaches the condition of completion the spark to adventure splinters the wholeness, as points of curiosity launch to scout out new possibilities.
We live this process individually every day. When we close our eyes to our solid waking dream of daylight, our constrained wholeness splinters into a host of adventures in the infinity of our nightly dreams. When we awaken in the morning our nightly indiscretions from the limits of rationality dissolve quickly from memory, as waking consciousness clothes us for another day in the limits of solid time/space reality.
Nonetheless, the gifts of our nightly adventures innervate our daily lives, as synchronicities of knowing seek to jar our consciousness to remember; to remember the dreams, to remember the lessons, to integrate the nightly knowledge gained that opens up a broader perspective of who we really are and all that is possible.
It’s all about remembering. Remembering is the technology of wholeness. Trauma fragments, yet also sends scouts of us out into infinity. Recapitulating, retrieving the parts of our fragmented whole, brings us into greater reality. That greater whole restores innocence, but a greater reconditioned innocence, tuned to navigate the dark, as well as the light of reality.
The goal is hardly the restoration of lost innocence; it’s the birthing into matured innocence, prepped for new adventure. Like the flip side of a divorce that on the one side shatters the security of the archetypal family, on the other side launches all members of a family into a new world of knowledge beyond the myths of the nursery.
The blank slate of our birth is just another nursery myth to securely swaddle our awakening, alienated scout into a new life. When will we awaken to the deeper truth that our longing for soulmate is actually a protective cover from the impact of the accumulated love of our many lives, those whom support us from behind the veils of this earthly sojourn.
Jan, in her recently published final book of her five-volume Recapitulation Diaries Series—Dreaming All The Time—takes us even deeper into the mystery of our birth, as she discovers that she’d agreed to the challenge of her life before she arrived in her blank slate innocence of birth. Why would anyone agree to such a traumatic life?!
When I ponder Christ’s knowing fully of, and agreeing to, the traumatic fate that awaited him when he fragmented from the Mothership to be born in human form, I ask, why? Really? And then the answer comes: What was his greatest message? Love! Love thy neighbors, whoever they may be, whatever they have done to ye! Love thy petty tyrant and you will truly refine love, the prerequisite to advance into the greater wholeness of infinity.
When will we be ready to drop those veils and bring to our wholeness the discoveries of this fragmented life? Once again, it’s all about remembering. Remembering is the road to wholeness. Remembering is the great inhalation.
But, to answer the question, as to why we fragment? We fragment to explore whole new worlds, to satisfy our deepest curiosity, to learn, to discover, to adventure, to grow, to augment our wholeness, to change, to deepen our love, and yes, at times to avoid the challenge of integrating all of our selves, all of our experiences. The list is endless, the challenge great.
But do remember to breathe! Completely exhale, then breathe in a full inhalation. Hold for a few moments, deeply appreciating the wholeness encased within. Then let go, in exhalation, freely releasing the wholeness of the breath to disperse and travel freely, until we meet again, new and renewed, imbued to the fullest with the prana of the journey.
Breathing in and exhaling outwards, ever outwards,
