In our audio channeling this week, we are advised to get into good alignment with what our bodies need, our vehicles through life. We seek spiritual experiences and in the process sometimes forget that we are physical human beings too. Don’t forget to take care of the body.
Have a wonderful week!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel
The body self is a finite creature; it will die. The spirit self, the energy body, houses the infinite part of ourselves, that which separates forever from the earthy host, the physical body, at the time of its death.
The relationship between the host (the physical body) and the guest (the energy body) during our lifetime is our most important and challenging relationship. The physical body knows its days are numbered and seeks fulfillment of its instinctive nature in the physical world during life. Fulfillment in physical terms is connected to security, sex, and power in the material world of people and things.
The energy body enters its host, the physical body, with its intention to sow its karmic seeds through the drama of human life by which it has the opportunity to advance its ongoing journey in infinity at the death of the physical. The truth is, the body is not that interested in soul work. The body, like all animals, is here and now, in its instinctive life, which it so covets. Enjoying and experiencing the joys, pleasures, and triumphs of this life is the sole intent of the physical body; there is nothing more.
The energy body, in contrast, is far more expansive. The energy body is comprised of mind and feeling, and though both become active in the physical brain and heart, they are, in spirit form, of a far more ethereal nature, capable of a far greater expansiveness and abstraction way beyond human boundaries. For instance, love, at the energy body level, can expand to include all interconnected life. At the level of the physical body, however, “love” does not extend beyond me and mine.
At this point, I nearly abandoned this blog. I had drawn a blank as how to illustrate the challenge of the conflicting intent of the physical and spirit selves. I went to sleep and awoke from the following vivid dream experience:
A gangster had seriously threatened a woman. He came to my home to discuss it. I let him in with four of his cronies. I directly confronted him. “You have to go to her and make it right; begin by apologizing,” I said. Then I noticed over my right shoulder that one of his men was holding a bungie cord, awaiting the signal from the gangster boss to strangle me.
– Photo by Jan Ketchel
I looked into the gangster boss’s eye and said, “So, you’re going to kill me.” A moment before I had seen an expression on his face that was acknowledging the wrong he had done, a glint in his eye. I thought there was a genuine moment of redemption, but now I saw he was really lazy. It was easier to simply snuff out any possible threat to his operation, rather than risk change.
Oddly, I wasn’t afraid of the confrontation, more observant of the true predicament. I somehow knew I would subdue the group of them, though at the moment I wasn’t sure how. It wasn’t the threat that consumed me, it was the disappointment in his refusal to acquiesce to the light of the truth that shone in our encounter. He was choosing to remain cold-bloodedly instinctual, snuffing out the light of spirit, change, and growth.
Awakening from the above dream, I thanked my unconscious for the dream. The dream typifies the inner drama we all must confront with our physical, instinctive body host who remains governed by the archetypes of power and self-centered survival. This is the body self that wants survival, food, sex, and power at a purely instinctual level. This self will cold-bloodedly execute any spirit that asks it to transmute its own instincts in service of a higher cause.
On the other hand, the spirit self, with its own agenda for life in this world, can be a completely ungracious guest, treating its body host like a slave and servant, completely in bondage to the proclivities of the spirit. I defer to Arianna Huffington’s commencement speech at Vassar College, linked HERE, to expand upon abuse of spirit power inflicted not only on the body, but also on the world body that now finds itself in mass revolt at the misguided governorship of humankind.
The symbiotic relationship of spirit and body self while the spirit resides in human form requires responsible leadership based on right action. Right action flows from love centered in the heart chakra. The body is a conservative host to a liberal spirit guest whose quest is evolutionary advancement.
As my dream points out, the body, in its conservatism, would kill off any attempt to elevate its spirit above its instinctive rigidity. On the other hand, a spirit guest that exploits its body host for its desirous intrigues is a leader that breeds revolution and assassination.
– Photo by Jan Ketchel
Spirit self must acquiesce, from the heart center, to leadership in accordance with truth—that which is all-inclusive love. Spirit that acts from this place offers a path of evolutionary advancement to its body host, who in turn can acquiesce with support to fair leadership from its guest. A tenuous balance indeed, but not unachievable.
The challenge is to become the gracious guest who leads its willing servant to new heights so that, in the end, guest and host dissolve their apparent distinctions and join in consciousness, as optional expressions of the same oneness, e.g., as body and energy body, spirit and matter, sun and moon, particle and wave.
And so, the journey continues,
Chuck
Here is Chuck’s blog for this week. The dreaming Soulbyte we published this morning on our Facebook page reflects one aspect of aligning with our multidimensional self!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel
I pause in this moment to connect with my multidimensional self. The sound of energy is steady in my ears. High pitched vibrational tones deepen and intensify as I give it my awareness. I intend it to spread. The vibration begins to radiate throughout my entire body, a unison of sound and vibration.
I reassert my physicality with a deep breath and notice my musculature at rest. The vibrational state recedes from my body at large but intensifies in my inner ears, reminding me of its ever-presence. At night the situation is reversed. The physical body goes increasingly dormant to a state of catalepsy, a temporary paralysis, as the higher vibrational self lifts off to worlds of adventure and discovery.
We are multidimensional beings with a variety of energetic possibilities. The physical world is the outer crust, the densest of our energetic possibilities. In that world our senses govern our experience. This is “in-body experience,” the full presence and sensory awareness of being in our body.
The mind is the energetic experience of abstraction. The mind operates in the field of thought, a non-substantial subtler energy that constructs its own world separate from the physical world. We indeed can find ourselves lost in the stories of our thoughts, worlds apart from the world of our physicality. Even thought completely focused on the physical world is still a mind of abstraction, creating models to approximate the denser physical world it observes.
Emotion is another dimension of our energetic being. Emotion is a magnetic energy that attracts and repels. It draws us to deep union, keeps us in seclusion, or mobilizes us to change. Emotion is a world of energetic intensity, the fuel of rapture. How often the world of emotion can misalign with the physical world! Emotional worlds of extreme intensity are often projected onto others who feel nothing in return. In this case, we are fully enraptured in our own emotionally vibrant world, devoid of actual connection.
Our evolutionary challenge in this life is to align with and deeply realize our multidimensional self. It is our higher vibrational self that journeys into transpersonal realms.
With intent we can extend our dreaming awareness, training it to stay present during those nightly journeys into infinity. When we write down our dreams upon return, we open the door to recapitulating those infinite journeys, good practice for future adventuring.
When we practice mindfulness in the waking state of the physical world we extend our awareness to be fully present in the journey of our physical everyday lives.
When we meditate we teach the mind to be calm, to allow for thoughtful presence that we can extend into other worlds, rather than stay encased in abstract stories.
When we bring our awareness into full alignment with our emotions, we allow ourselves the richest experience of life’s intensities. However, adult presence is required as we must learn to ride the waves with both awareness and detachment. Here detachment means being open to the fullest experience yet separate from it at the same time. We must become the observer who will not get overly attached to anything.
– Photo by Jan Ketchel
The common thread to deepening and aligning our multidimensional self is the intent of awareness. We must intend our awareness to be fully present in our physical body, as well as fully present in our thought body, emotional body, and ethereal body simultaneously. Once in alignment, we are set to fluidly experience the fullness of multidimensional living and we open to being fully present to our evolutionary journey as well, both in this world and beyond.
True multidimensional living is really all about preparing for the definitive journey when all of our energetic bodies consolidate for the last time, at death, and leave the physical realm. Death is the unifier of all those energies. As we take the journey into infinity we “burn from within,” as the Shamans of Ancient Mexico say, all our energy combining in a single energy of fire. On to new life!
Happy Beltane!
Chuck
but they can be taken down…
one breath at a time…
-Photo by Jan Ketchel
When we are met with a smile, a nod, or a gentle welcoming gesture, we are programmed to soften, feel safe, relax our defenses and breathe freely. This innate archetypal bodily response to accepting supportive validating gestures may be inhibited by a history of traumatic interruptions that threatened safety; however, these bruises in human interactions can heal and, over time, allow us to relax into our innate capacity for love. We never lose our innate capacity to give and receive love.
The journey to freeing our innate capacity to receive the world, and express our full presence in it, is multilayered but largely physical. The bruises of trauma generate archetypal bodily defenses far more ancient than the archetypes of human interaction.
Failures in human interaction trigger an intrinsic self-driven defense system that functions independently of the behavior of others. If others cannot be trusted then the self alone becomes the source of safety.
The body turns on its own vigilant guard to protect the boundaries of the self. Sleep may be light or infrequent as a result of such vigilance. Muscles remain taut, shoulders tight, breathing shallow. All bodily systems, in fact, stay on heightened alert to possible danger, cautiously anticipating, planning, and avoiding potential trouble. This completely self-reliant defense system is ancient and highly useful in times of real danger. In our evolutionary history there was a time when it alone insured survival. Though less necessary in the modern world, it can be activated in a heartbeat should we be confronted with serious danger.
A major challenge in healing from trauma is turning off this ancient defense system when it has been activated unnecessarily. Here the human ability to reflect and choose a new action is particularly useful.
We can employ the mind, with its ability to observe and reason, to assess whether we are indeed really, in the here and now, in danger. The realization that we are not in danger in no way lessens the grip of this ancient defense that protects us through its control of our body, but it does give us a point of awareness, within our body, that alerts us to where the true work lies.
Reason alone has little to no impact upon the body’s defenses. We can, however, intentionally direct our awareness to our body and notice the state of our muscles and organs—heart, stomach, throat, etc.—as well as our breathing. We can, with awareness and intention, begin to direct our breath to various parts of our body that we notice to be clenched or shut down. We can, for instance, progressively soften and loosen our solar plexus or heart as we gently direct our breath into it. Similarly, we can begin to release tension in our shoulders and legs, or wherever we find tension in the body, by intending ourselves to do so. The body quite obediently listens and responds to our intentions.
As we consciously release the grip of vigilance in our body, our brain receives different messages from our body self that lies separate, beneath the head of reason. If our muscles and organs are relaxed, our brain concludes that we must be safe. The brain is then freed to stop its own vigilant story making that had given definition to the worrisome messages that it had been receiving from a tense, defended body.
Every time we release the tension of a clenched part of our body we change the message to the brain and the brain, in turn, changes its message back to the body. Over time, the brain can send the message that it’s okay to relax; we are safe. With safety comes receptivity, and our inherent archetypal ability to engage in deeper human connection opens. Smiles, nods, and warmth are able to be more safely received and expressed. We open.
This process of opening is indeed multifaceted and includes the journey of recapitulation, but it can be supported and enhanced, at any time—even in this moment—with one gentle directed breath.
Breathing away,
Chuck
Today, I switch from the subject of nature outside of us, which I have been writing about for the past few weeks, to nature inside, as it exists in its many forms inside our physical bodies. I define nature as that which is simply present, that which we are born with, and that which we cannot stop.
As I wrote about a few weeks ago, while watching a doe and her fawn in my backyard, I see nature as unstoppable. It lives and it dies and it lives again. I also feel that we humans have this same unstoppable force of nature inside us. Much as the seasons recur, we are positioned, over and over again, to encounter things about ourselves. Often these are things we do not like about ourselves but know we must confront in order to change. They may be well known issues, perhaps already acknowledged but conveniently ignored until we are ready to go more deeply into them, or they may only exist in our subconscious, blocked, suppressed, and left to smolder. In either case, nature has a way of revealing them to us, in ways that are really quite personally relevant.
First I must state that I believe we are all born with a core issue, one core issue, and although there may be many surrounding and resounding issues, each of us is challenged in our lifetime to resolve this one issue. It may even be an issue or challenge that we have carried over many life times. I feel that nature, our inner nature, in collusion with the forces of nature outside of us, is bound and determined to challenge us to confront this issue, teach us how and why it belongs to us, and ask us to evolve beyond it. This is the basic tenet of recapitulation, to recognize the core issue that is holding us back in life, to confront it, to leave it behind without regret or attachment after being fully relived and resolved, and to move on to new life.
At this point, I must make note of Chuck’s recent blog regarding the contention of the seers of ancient Mexico that everything resides within the human body. This is what I write about today, how our bodies tell us, over and over again, just what our core issue is. We can find out everything we need to know about ourselves by contemplating, studying, and paying attention to our own natural state, our physical body. Our bodies contain all the answers, in our physical, in our psyche, in our energy. Our bodies can tell us where we are blocked, why we are afraid, what our spirit asks of us, and why we are here. Of course, it is much easier to see where others are blocked, to guess at their core issues, and wonder why they so stubbornly refuse to change. I will give some personal examples.
In my family, I am dealing with two very old women, one in her eighties and the other in her nineties, who are nearing the ends of their lives. One of them is in denial, stubbornly pretending that everything is fine; this has always been her way. The other is curious, eagerly attentive to anything she can find that may help her understand where she is going; this has always been her way. When I look at them I have to admit that I see myself in both of them. In the stubborn one, I see my own potential to dig in my heels and kick and scream that I don’t want to go; essentially I see my own fear. In the curious one, I see my enlightened self, eager for the adventure ahead, because this side of me has always known that there is something exciting beyond the veils of this world. In these two women, I see the duality of nature, two very powerful forces in a grand tug-of-war, and they are inside all of us.
It’s natural to be afraid, to fear the unknown, but it’s equally natural to be curious. As I watch these two women struggling through old age, maintaining their dignity while confronting their natural and inevitable physical deterioration in their own ways, I know that nature will win out, but I also know that nature is both sides of this process. In spite of the strong desire to remain in control, nature does not allow us to hold onto anything, it forces us out of the physical body. However, nature also gives us the option of capitulating to our energy body, to finally evolving beyond our need to continue reincarnating in the physical human form with our core issues. It offers our curious selves the option to remain alive, vibrant, and engaged in learning about the possibilities that lie ahead. Energy too is the natural way of things, if we care to engage it.
So who wins the tug-of-war? Well, that is up to each of us; it is an individual choice. Do we allow the tug-of-war to hold our energy in eternal conflict, or do we reconcile the opposing forces, confront our core issues this time around, and evolve? Once we recognize what our bodies are trying to tell us, in all our aches, pains, and tensions, and what our psyches are trying to tell us, in our fears, and embrace the experiences that these two opposing natural forces offer us on a daily basis, we come into alignment with nature, with the opportunity for the stubborn and the curious to finally be reconciled.
If you wish, feel free to share or comment in the Post Comment section below.
Sending you all love and good wishes as you take your journeys to reconciliation,
Jan