Hold yourself as accountable as you hold others. Take responsibility for yourself and your actions, just as you expect others to be responsible for themselves. Individuation, coming to the fullness of who you truly are, requires that you take on the tasks of life in all forms, including losing your self-importance around being owed anything or being special. It is only through fully owning your own life and what has happened to you as part of the bigger plan to get you to your wholeness that you will truly individuate. Accountability and responsibility lead to fulfillment and fulfillment leads to freedom. And freedom comes not from others but only in freeing the self from its steadfast ideas. Letting go of the known self and discovering the unknown, true self is what freedom is. Stalk freedom.
A warrior does not allow negativity to overshadow a path with heart. A warrior stays positive and innerly alert to any tugs of self-importance—feeling offended, taking things personally, or finding fault with the way things are going—because a warrior knows that nothing is personal. Self-importance is just a sign that something needs to be addressed so that vital energy is not lost in issues of no real value. A warrior self-examines for energy drains and makes sure no energy is wasted. A warrior does this with laughter not sorrow, with delight not pain, with happiness not regret, moving on freer and more determined to walk the path with heart, the only path worth taking.
The coming of night affords a natural break in continuity… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Most simply defined, the quality of our mental health reflects the degree of continuity we can maintain as our known selves, the familiar, separate human beings that we are. Familiarity rests upon a predictable world and a predictable self that interacts with that world. When our normal expectations of ourselves and the world are disrupted, our security and sanity are threatened, as reflected in psychiatric symptoms in response to this break in continuity.
Our notion of ourselves as separate beings traces back to the birth of consciousness, or the coming online of our ego. In biblical terms, this was the moment we were separated from the Garden of undifferentiated wholeness, Eden, and were cast into the world as separate, thinking beings, capable of our own decision making.
Alienated from our true energetic oneness with everything, where knowledge of what was right to do came as unthinking knowing—what the Shamans of Ancient Mexico call silent knowledge—our orphaned separate selves were challenged to find a way to successfully navigate life.
Thus began our history as thinking human beings, alienated from our original connection to direct silent knowledge. Knowledge obtained through thinking is grounded in rational cause and effect, observation and interpretation. Direct knowledge is channeled from the source through our greater energetic self, whom we lived more fully and intimately before the fall.
Ego, as a defined separate self, creates boundaries to ensure its unique integrity. These boundaries have the secondary effect of severing the ego’s connection to its greater energetic self, which lacks such defined boundaries. As a separate self, ego is constantly focused on its own importance as the means to maintain its integrity as a functional unit.
Nonetheless, the cynic in all of us sees through the falseness and limitations of the persona, or mask, that ego presents to the world. Underneath it all, ego is a fragile, inadequate part of the self, trying to hold its own in the world. Hence, its constant obsession with self-worth, self-esteem, and the positive attention of others, in order to bolster its fragile existence.
Our evolutionary destiny is driving us to regain our wholeness, the energetic self we left in the garden. To get there, we must break from our obsession with maintaining the self-important defense of our ego as a superior separate entity. In essence, we are all being called now to break the continuity of our ego’s stand as the one and only self.
Trauma could be defined as a break in the ego’s continuity, which forces it to confront the irrationality of power exercised beyond a rational world. Trauma levels ego; ego is completely humbled by a rupture that transcends its ability to assimilate. Lucky are those who have had the opportunity that trauma affords! And yet, we are all confronting the trauma of now!
The full assimilation of traumatic experience requires fluidity, the ability to go with the flow of what is or was, not the limits of what the ego expects the world to be. Healing, for the ego, requires an expanded ability to acknowledge power and forces that exist beyond its rational expectations.
Achievement of this expanded ego state is fundamental to ego discovering its true home, as an energetic being, first, and as a separate solid being, second. Ego is then positioned to accompany its energetic foundation on journeys in this world, and beyond, with access to the full library of silent knowledge.
Our time might be defined as a major break in continuity. Our world leaders are tricksters, who are unapologetically rupturing our expectations, throwing us into the thrill and the chaos of a tidal wave of unpredictability. From this perspective, they function like teacher shamans, recklessly opening a door, exposing us to our fuller energetic reality.
At the same time, they threaten the stability of mental health, which is dependent on a predictable world. And we see the casualties of this break in continuity in the shootings that abound daily. We are confronted with a collective PTSD of a world ego under fire. Nonetheless, healing can only be achieved by ego achieving the fluidity needed to navigate the greater energetic world that transcends rationality.
Our trickster leaders, ironically, mirror our greatest stumbling block to achieving that needed fluidity: self-importance. In fact, world leadership boldly embodies its separatist self-important superiority, ego’s greatest defense. We could say, that our leaders both deliver the punch and mirror the culprit that must be transcended if our ego is to truly find its way back to the garden of its energetic oneness with everything.
We have no choice now but to ride this train of break in continuity, as that train has already left the station without brakes. Change the metaphor, to that of the Tao, of the river that flows. Rather than try to push the river, as the ego used to do, become a riverwalker, one who knowingly walks with the flow.
A simple way of understanding the need to reincarnate is to appreciate the very human reluctance to leave the human form. Humans are bipartite beings, humanly attached to the physical world, and energetically attached to infinity.
Beyond indulgence lies the magic of the energetic self… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
As energetic beings, we have a living connection to everything in the universe. However, as human beings, we limit the scope of our connectedness.
Carlos Castaneda writes in The Power of Silence:
“Don Juan had asserted that our great collective flaw is that we live our lives completely disregarding that connection. The busyness of our lives, our relentless interests, concerns, hopes, frustrations, and fears take precedence, and on a day-to-day basis we are unaware of being linked to everything else.”
We come into this world equipped with a sensual body that is granted a finite life to experience, in magnified form, sensations and feelings of pleasure, pain, love, and hate. Indulgence can be defined as the intensity of attachment that we give to these transitory experiences, which we unconsciously maintain throughout our lives.
If we’ve yet to fulfill our experience of these states, or simply can’t get enough of them, our indulgence is tenacious. Mastery of these sensations and feelings could be defined as sobriety, a readiness to let go and deepen exploration, beyond the limits of indulgence.
Human exploration inevitably fixates on excess. The greater the excess, the more powerful the experience. Part of the exploratory process drives us to extremes to discover the boundaries of the human form. This drive to push, even beyond those boundaries, is often fatal, yet at the same time it is at the heart of our evolutionary imperative.
Even now, as the Earth dramatically reveals its limits to our human indulgence, humanity insists upon more, more, more. We can see the fatality of this attitude on the very near horizon, yet indulgence still dominates. At the same time, this indulgence is delivering us to our evolutionary destiny: the discovery of our energetic core.
We are being guided to discover our energetic selves out of survival necessity. At an energetic level, we are collaborative beings, all parts of the same whole. Survival requires a unity and an equanimity of our species that puts the needs of our wholeness over the specialness of our separateness. At present, despite the disintegrative signs that abound everywhere, we are still able to indulge in the excess of our specialness.
However, intuitively and viscerally, we know that our current level of overindulgence is unsustainable. This knowing is constantly under attack by the heightened concerns of everyday life, that which hypnotically showers upon us daily.
Our propensity to seek refuge in the worry of self-reflection—that is, in perseverating about our personal standing—keeps at bay the full impact of the direct knowing of our energetic selves. If we can luxuriate in the luxury of pure reason the full truth isn’t necessary, or so we surmise.
Nonetheless, we are precipitously close to abruptly awakening to our energetic selves, as the Earth, that great sentient being, moves closer to shutting down our viral overindulgence. The introduction of the interconnected energetic self is critical to survival after the fall of our current overindulgence.
Individuals can begin to experience their energetic selves through connection to their dreaming selves. The practice of not doings promotes the inner silence that allows for encounter with the energetic self.
Specifically, one can introduce the not doing of reversing one’s dependence on their dominant side, inviting their non-dominant side to take part in daily life. The intent behind such controlled folly is to cross the bridge to one’s energetic side and more fully experience the contributions of both sides of the self, beyond human indulgence.
Another simple gem, from the shaman healer’s world, to connect with one’s energetic self, concerns the use of water. Pour a glass of water. Then vigorously rub your hands together until they become hot. Next, place your hands upon the glass and allow the heat to transfer to the water. At this time, state your intent, then drink the glass of water. Be careful, however, to not overindulge this drinking practice! Once at night and once in the morning is all that is recommended. Then, see what happens.
Non-dominantly typing,
Chuck
Quote from: The Power of Silence, Carlos Castaneda, p.103.
Not doing is a practice developed by the Seers of Ancient Mexico to break the fixation of habitual behavior. The most powerful reinforcer of habitual behavior is the internal dialogue, the things we tell ourselves, over and over again, about ourselves and the world we live in.
The ultimate not doing of the internal dialogue is inner silence, the springboard into unfiltered perception. Inner silence is a coveted state, achieved through an arduous unbending intent. That intent might include the not doing of a new internal dialogue, such as an oft-repeated statement, like, for instance, “I am silent.”
What makes this mantra a not doing is that when we say it we are not doing what we usually do. Our typical inner dialogue might say
“that won’t work” or “that’s not the way my mind works.” Thus, to state “I am silent” requires volition to oppose the limitation imposed by the default position of our internal dialogue.
The trick with this, and all not doings, is no attachment to the outcome; simply perseverance in performing the prescribed action. Attachment belongs to the inventory of the standard internal dialogue that insists reality be what is prescribed.
In that case, if our not doing is not quickly realized through our new internal dialogue, we can suffer the emotional energy drain of failure, which becomes defeat. Defeatism reinstalls the primacy of the familiar internal dialogue, which quickly shifts us back into our habitual self.
Not doing is a volitional action that forces our consciousness to be present in new ways. To eat or write with one’s non-dominant hand is an unfamiliar behavior. Energetically, a not doing explores untapped energy potential, as it ventures beyond the known boundaries of the habitual self.
While at a practical level, a not doing interrupts the habitual flow of our energy into repetitive thought and behavior, at a truly sublime level, we are learning the fluidity to fixate upon new worlds of possibility. This includes a very different experience of self and the world that we can fixate upon or hold onto at will.
Suspending all moral judgments, both nature and world leaders are introducing global not doings that are generating new worlds of possibility that we might fixate upon. Of course, there remains the not doing of not tracking world events, but none of us are immune from their impact on the ultimate, interconnected energy we are all a part of.
As I began writing this blog yesterday morning, a Monday, Jan was simultaneously channeling Jeanne’s spoken message for the week. Synchronistically, Jeanne prescribed a not doing breathing technique, to cancel the internal dialogue and experience a moment of inner silence. When I heard the message, I realized I must continue this blog, as it was prompted by the Tao of now.
What makes the prescribed breathing technique a not doing is the fact that it interrupts the natural flow of unconscious breathing, as one must consciously remain present to monitor the steps of the in breath, the pause, and the out breath. This not doing opens up new assemblages of energy, as it ventures beyond the narrow frame of automatic behavior.
Our automatic internal dialogue rests upon a very narrow set of beliefs, which limit our access to our true potential. Even nonsensical not doings, like wearing unmatched shoes, sends our awareness into uncharted territory, as it breaks its typical habitual fixation.
The intent of such a not doing, as wearing unmatched shoes, is quite private, loosening one’s tendency to fixate, unconsciously, upon the same things. The intent is not to feed the self-importance of being seen as an oddity. Not doings might be quite public actions, but not for the purpose of attracting attention. Such a motive would defeat the intent of not doing, which is to open the door to energetic possibility by learning to fixate on new behaviors.
Training awareness to be fluid, through the practice of not doings, hones our ability to navigate the unknown, particularly the unknown sides of ourselves waiting to be actualized. Not doings also promote the inner silence that leads to discovering our dormant potential.
As Jeanne suggests, take a breath of fresh air. Out with the stale breath of the internal dialogue, in with the not doing of new life.
