Here is our weekly audio channeled message suggesting that it is high time to get focused on now, staying in the moment, in the life we are in, and reaping the benefits of all that this life affords. You never know, it may just be the most important life ever!
Have a lovely week!
To own is to take full possession of that which truly belongs to oneself. If a child dreams of her enraged father at her bedroom door with a club in his hand, this dream originates in her own psyche; she completely owns the dream, it is her dream and nobody else’s.
Regardless of the meaning and outer causes of the dream, the dream, with its inner impact upon her, is her personal experience, constructed and completed within the boundaries of the self. The child must assume full ownership of her dream. The experience of the dream may take her years to fully integrate, but the experience is forever a fact of her life, a part of herself which must be reckoned with and given its rightful place within the inner boundaries of herself.
If, in a waking state, that same child is confronted by her enraged father at her bedroom door in reality, her inner experience of this rattling intrusion is hers and hers alone too. The experience is fully recorded within herself and lives on within herself as a psychic content that beckons a legitimate place among the many other psychic contents of experiences that reside within her. Though in both cases a person beyond the boundaries of herself is implicated, that is her father, and indeed some outer actions and interactions may be necessary, her actual experience in both situations and how it is represented within herself is hers and hers alone. No one can tell another person what their inner experience is or should be; it is fully what it is within the person who is having or has actually had that unique inner experience.
Experience is. It happens. Like nature, experience takes us into the unknown, the unexpected, the dangerous, the terrifying and the spellbinding. Experience leads us into the unfathomable depths of our own nature, to places, emotions, sensations and thoughts we may have no preparation for. In one instance we may experience bliss, in another serious loss. Experience itself is unconcerned with whether something is good or bad, right or wrong—it simply happens. We of course must apply a judgment dimension to our experiences in an attempt to make sense of them. Without sense we have no order, and without order there is no definite self, and without self there is chaos. Chaos within the psyche results from a logjam of undigested experiences.
We must decide if an experience is right or wrong, good or bad, appropriate or inappropriate, acceptable or unacceptable. All these parameters help us to quantify and qualify an experience, to truly ‘know’ our experience. These are the operating tools of the rational mind, the foundation of our consciousness. Unfortunately, as helpful as these conscious tools are, helping to stabilize and navigate our consciousness, they can have the unfortunate side effect of distancing us from the fuller impact of the experience, which transcends the ordering function of the rational mind and continues to haunt the self in some form of psychic or physical symptom.
We must reckon with the full impact of an experience to be freed of such antagonistic symptoms as anxiety and fear, which may actually be placeholders of our disowned experiences, discontented prisoners within the self.
The psyche might also be riddled with obsessive anger and blame as it locates the responsibility for its experiences in the person of an outside perpetrator, or some permutation thereof. Of course responsibility must be assigned where it is due and appropriate action be taken to address or redress an act, but inner reconciliation with one’s experience requires full ownership of one’s experience as one’s own, regardless of the sources or players involved in setting the stage for one’s inner experience.
Shamanic recapitulation and EMDR are two practices that enable one to fully assimilate and own the deeper impact of an experience. Both techniques incorporate psyche and body to facilitate assimilation.
C. G. Jung observed that we internalize the soul of the land we inhabit. For America, that means that the American soul is Native American. Carlos Castaneda gifted us the practices of the shamans of the Americas, in particular the breathing practice of recapitulation. Francine Shapiro, founder of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing), discovered the bilateral movement of recapitulation, I imagine, through the Native American soul of America that projected itself onto her unique discovery process.
Reliving one’s life experiences while bilaterally breathing from side to side is the simplest gift from the native soul of America. With this simple breathing practice we consciously put our houses in order, fully own our experiences and, relieved of the tension of them, we are prepared to fully engage in new life and new experiences, all energy on board for new adventures.
Assuming full responsibility for one’s own experiences provides a most powerful container of self, from which we are empowered to reconcile life lived and release the self to fully enter new life unburdened, with fluidity, totally freed and ready for new adventures!
Owning the experience,
Chuck
Change is cyclical, the urgency and desire for change natural. Like a farmer preparing the soil for planting, prepare the self for planting new seeds of change. Get the self ready to bring forth new ideas and new energy to support a changing self, for all of nature seeks change, evolution, and new growth and you are no different. Like a tree firmly rooted, reaching its branches to the sky, so does a new seed seek both the nurturance of the soil and the sky, the dark and the light. A human being is no different from the rest of nature, for some part of you seeks always something new. Even if you won’t admit it or don’t allow for it, there is a part of you always seeking something new. And what is that? Well, it’s You of course, a deeper, higher Self, and you don’t even have to leave home to find it!
-From the Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne
Today, Jeanne invites us to know ourselves, connecting to all that we are, in a different way. A new way of thinking and being, to be exact. Try it and see what happens. You might be pleasantly surprised at what you learn about yourself! And not a bad way to start off a new month!
Have a nice week!
I recommend a viewing of Netflix’s The Crown. This modern exposition of the sacred transformation of the human being, anointed and born again as the divine queen in the cathedral, portrays the rich and basic archetypal substrate of the human psyche; the same archetypal substrate that has us project onto our president the ordering of the life of our nation, believing the presidency to be the design, for us, of the divine.
America, of course, long shed itself of the silliness of the monarchy, but we could not erase our psychic predisposition to find sacred order and balance in our president. Our coronation at the cathedral is the ballot box, our king is our president, in whose presence we are equally predisposed to encounter the awe and the awful.
With President Obama, the earthy black shadow rose to kingship and he glowed with progressive intelligence. America, having apparently valued its shadow, appeared to be on the cusp of anointing the feminine to her goddess rank, just in time to rescue the ailing Earth. But alas, America was unexpectedly charmed by the Trickster King, Donald Trump.
What becomes evident is that America did not resolve its shadow by electing Obama. The shadow was stored beneath the surface and the trickster took full advantage of exposing it and tapping into its energy. We were not ready for the goddess. We hadn’t truly reckoned with the shadow.
The Trickster King is the full embodiment now of that shadow, and we must reconcile with it. In a nutshell, that shadow is the ultimate ego self who exalts itself in godly towers. This is the ego that truly only cares about itself, its needs, its wants, its security, its power. This is the ultimate individualistic ego that feels no responsibility for the safety and needs of the world, only insofar as it impacts its own interests. It’s alway only about “me and mine,” it says. In fact, “me” has become extremely narrow by definition, as the impetus now is on a “pure” America, where only those truly entitled to the Kingdom may reside.
As a psychotherapist, I have experienced marriages, families, friendships, business relationships, and relationships within the medical caregivers community experiencing major earthquakes as the fault lines of greater connection have been shattered and threatened by the divisiveness of this election. The grassroots impact of this election has indeed infiltrated even the sanctuary of the bedroom.
America is forced to face and reconcile with its huge shadow in all relationships in daily life in order to find its way to genuine connection where the ground will be properly prepared for the election of the feminine. We have a lot of work ahead of us.
We must face the truth, that though we have long espoused in our faiths and politics heart-centered compassion, the truth is, we mostly live at the level of self-centered survival. Apparently, it is necessary for this to be acted out and lived under our current kingship. Let us not make the mistake of an earlier generation that projected as a nation their divine center onto their divine king: “Adolf Hitler is Deutschland, Deutschland is Adolf Hitler.” *
It is not my intention to identify Trump as Hitler but to draw attention to the human tendency to invest leaders with the divine and follow them blindly.
We must thank and respect our trickster president-elect for mirroring our truth to us, but must individually, as true Americans, secede from the monarch, withdraw the projection from the Trickster King and face the truth of our own inner kingdoms. We must face our own ego king self, and ask: Who will rule the personality? The ego, or the the divine Self within us?
The Self is the divine spark within us all who rests in the truth of our heart center. Our ego’s task is to realign and truly embrace the rule of this heart center and in so doing release us from its own egocentric worldview.
As we succeed in this individual effort we become like the ancient Taoist rainmaker who in restoring balance within triggers the restoration of balance without. As the rains return, the crops are nourished and life thrives anew. Sometimes those rains must provide great floods for life to truly be renewed. Never lose sight of the ark of the heart. It’s near, dear, and a definite lifesaver.
Remaining heart centered,
Chuck
* Quote from C. G. Jung’s Visions Seminars Volume 2, p. 1332