Stay grounded by refusing the call to go outside the self in too many ways. There is much outside of you that draws engagement, that wants your energy. Far better to limit outside interference so you can focus on what is going on inside and causing issues within. Inner work is as important as outer work. How you attend to yourself is as important as how you attend to others. What’s really going on with you? Only you know for sure.
Sending you love,
The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne
Lessons come in so many forms. Pay attention to how they come to body, mind, and spirit, each in their own unique way. Pay attention to what they mean and what they indicate you should do and what you should not do. Listen to affirmations from body, mind, and spirit when you understand the lessons and how they persist when you don’t. Sometimes lessons are subtle and sometimes strong, but every day they show up, asking you to change. Begin to change by first paying attention to what’s happening within the self.
Sending you love,
The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne
I am deeply optimistic about our world’s survival. The challenges we face represent a grand adventure in the evolution of consciousness and the refinement of love.
Currently we are in the grip of a global mental virus that has undermined the cohesion of our consensus reality, evident in the extremely polarized interpretations of reality competing throughout the world. Conflicting views on the treatment of the physical virus, Covid-19, clearly illustrate this point.
The mental virus that is afflicting us has even fatally wounded many intimate family relationships, the bedrock of civilization. Most disturbing has been the failure of communication even between friends and family to bridge this deep divide.
As a therapist, I have experienced this failure of reconciliation with even the most caring of relationships. At this stage, calm, rational communication is trumped by this mental virus. Individuals are so sure of their interpretations of reality that communication is limited to argumentation and the intent to convince.
The time for successful communication to promote communion of polarized opposites has not arrived. Indeed, communication, however well intentioned, is simply not effective at this time. Other processes are currently in motion that must be completed before the ingredients for effective communication can be joined.
Earth itself is engaged in a major transformational process. Transformation requires first a course of breakdown of what is before a reformation of those materials can be accomplished. In alchemy, two major operations that accomplish breakdown are calcinatio and solutio.
Calcinatio is the destructive force of fire. Currently we have a winter fire burning in Big Sur. Last week we had the volcanic explosion that devastated the island of Tonga and was felt around the world.
Solutio is the dissolving power of water as it floods the Earth. Currently, Iran and Zambia are dealing with severe flooding. January 2022 has already seen flooding in South Africa, Madagascar, Uruguay, Peru, Brazil and France. Will Russia dissolve the autonomous country of Ukraine, with its military might swelling at its border, portending the flood of invasion?
The operations of calcinatio and solutio, in human terms, are the expression of passionate emotions that seek to break down the status quo through heated verbiage and flooding of emotions. Humans, physically constructed of the materials of Earth, are behaviorally reflecting her transformational process, currently in the destructive phase.
Separatio is an alchemical operation that separates the broken down materials into their component parts. This is a process of differentiation that values the purity of unique ingredients. On the human front, these are the separatist, or xenophobic, movements that seek to cleanse their enclosed borders of those who seem different from themselves.
In human relations, all three of these operations are concurrently active. These forces of breakdown and separation are all precursors to coniunctio, the alchemical stage of union, where all previously broken down and separated elements are rejoined in a new chemical bonding.
The forces currently active in nature, and human nature, will eventually reach this stage of union. However, that stage has far from arrived as we are still in the midst of breakdown and differentiation. How does one then hold together, with self and other, in such a time of disintegration and separation?
Do not try to force union. Reason cannot contain the forces of destruction and differentiation. Nonetheless, love—the ultimate glue that holds together the oneness of everyone, and everything, at the subtlest energetic level of being—is ever-present, regardless of the alchemical processes currently dominating the world stage.
Rather than bad rap, laugh at, marginalize, or hate those who passionately oppose me, can I see myself in all others? Every attitude, emotion, thought, and belief that I see expressed by another, that I personally differentiate myself from, is actually in me too, somewhere, however dormant. Can I find it, examine it, value it, and include it in my own wholeness? This, I can certainly accomplish within myself.
Though we may not be at the place of union without, can I hold onto the most subtle truth of our oneness within? In wholeness, all belong, none can be eliminated. This ultimate truth is expressed clearly in the revelations of transpersonal psychology and subatomic physics.
Thus, those who heap aspersions upon me are as much a part of me as those I asperse against. Though we might at present be quite separated and unable to communicate, I can still feel love and compassion for all in our interconnected oneness.
Union, like separation will have its day. In the meantime, hold onto love, especially for those you must now oppose.
Love always,
Chuck
If we contemplate the oft-cited metaphor of an individual human life being but a drop of water in an ocean of its greater wholeness, we might come to another apt metaphor: Is the glass half empty or half full? Being half empty is the deflated perspective that a mere drop of water is so minuscule as to be essentially insignificant.
From this perspective it’s hard to imagine that anything we might do could possibly positively impact the greater world, especially in this time of such obvious great upheaval. A mere droplet of water could hardly reverse the tidal wave of energy impacting Earth’s many shores.
From the more optimistic glass half full perspective, we might appreciate the holographic perception of that drop of water as a fragment that in fact mirrors and contains the entire ocean. Transformations within that single droplet inevitably impact the entire world.
The challenge is to claim ownership for the entire world within the province of the self. Nothing that exists without does not exist within. On some level, in some form, we are, each of us, as individuals, also the world.
Outwardly, societies have struggled to create civilization—a humane interconnectedness that eliminates the extreme cruelty and brutality of barbarism. Regardless of a given civilization’s progress in actualizing its civilized intent, greed and self-interest remain part of the self and part of the world.
Wars, at their root, result from the breakthrough of these shadow energies, previously held in check by a civilized container. The explosive release of these powerful energies leads to great destruction of the Earth and human life. Postwar optimism and renewal of life become possible once the deployed energies of destruction are on the wane, and as good once again begins to assert itself.
The inefficiency of this war and peace cycle is obvious, particularly at a time when modern weaponry can destroy the Earth. Quite simply, humanity must develop a new technology to harmonize the bipolar energies within itself. Rather than simply repress and imprison its unwanted self, humanity must own and integrate all parts of itself.
This brings us back to that droplet of self we know ourselves to be in this life. Within that droplet is every person, every act we see perpetrated in the world. Firstly, can we own that behavior out there that we so disdain? We can believe that we would never do some of the things we see happening in the world, but can we own the fascination, rage, joy, contempt, or hatred we might be inwardly experiencing that vicariously activates and releases like energies in ourselves?
Own your shadow. Jung believed this to be the greatest challenge and necessary next step in human evolution. Carlos Castaneda left us the technology of suspending judgment of others to own our own shadow. When we judge, we put ourself above the person we are judging. This separation of self from other is actually a disowning of the part of ourself activated by the other’s behavior. When we suspend judgment, we are freed to face honestly all we discover in ourselves, good and bad.
The Buddhists highlight the technology of compassion to reconcile with the unwanted within the self. Every time we find ourselves triggered and enraged by the behavior of another, feel loving compassion for that human being in deep struggle with the forces within themselves. Use such moments as teaching moments, asking the self, “What am I supposed to learn from this experience?” In this manner, everything becomes personally meaningful and part of our own journey to reconciliation and wholeness.
This in no way means to deny the rage and hatred experienced at the barbarism on display, but to reach a feeling of deep compassion is to absorb and transmute those warring energies, creating deep acceptance of self and other. True love requires that we love all.
Our holographic droplet of water self that achieves both a suspension of judgment and compassion for the other is in such a state of advance that its greater wholeness, the ocean and humanity at large, can’t help but be changed by it, within and without. Do not doubt; this is the power of the humbly small.
Half full with compassion,
Chuck
If the equation that is the title of this blog is accurate, then the world, as it is currently energetically distributed, would seem to be on a grand trajectory of achieving harmony. In need of immediate clarification however, is the understanding of (+) and (-).
(+) and (-) are not to be confused with good and bad, as commonly assigned. (+) and (-) are instead the primal energies that make up everything. Thus, for example, the primary building blocks for all the hexagrams in the I Ching are Yang and Yin, the masculine creative (+) and the feminine receptive energies (-).
Yang as spirit and Yin as matter are the primary equal sources of all that is. Thus, man and woman are composed equally of Yang and Yin, spirit and matter. However, when focusing only on outer appearances, the sexes have been innacurately pigeonholed into polarized opposites. The current questioning of gender categories reflects an effort to break the blinding power of these stereotypes when applied to people.
To be in a state of total polarization is the precursor to union. When the positive and negative poles of magnets face each other, a powerful attractive force draws them to unite. When a negatively charged electron meets with a positively charged proton, they are, once again, powerfully attracted to unite. This is the essence and energy of electricity.
The social polarization that currently dominates our world reflects a repulsive vs. attractive force. This occurs in nature when two like poles face each other. If the like poles of a magnet are brought in close proximity they exert a powerfully repulsive energy that absolutely refuses union.
This energetic likeness, in opposition, suggests that what actually underlies the apparent polarization of now, is actually the animus of like energies vying for supremacy and separateness. Thus, the very active energies of Yang are battling for supremacy. The receptive energies of Yin, that would lead toward union, are in very short supply.
Nonetheless, repulsive power is an energetic fact of nature. It serves the function of energetically maintaining distance from another. Within the tension it generates, consciousness has the opportunity to examine rejected and underdeveloped potentials within the self.
This would be what Jung identified as shadow work. This is where ego encounters unknown and unowned parts of the self in a state of opposition. Though repulsed by each other they are nonetheless bonafide parts of the self. These are the male figures that men struggle with in dreams and the female figures that women struggle with as well.
To achieve inner harmony, Yin must be introduced into shadow work. Though the repulsive force of Yang upon Yang energies is powerful, it is also unstable. Again, just try holding the same poles of opposite magnets steady; it’s nearly impossible. The instability of this potent opposition will require the introduction of Yin to achieve the stability and necessary attraction for the harmony of greater unity to occur.
Yin, as the receptive, receives all things. The energy that is capable of complete receptivity is none other than love. Love is the ultimate energy that receives and rejects nothing. Thus, shadow work ultimately requires fully loving all parts of one’s repulsed shadow self. Loving one’s shadow neighbor neutralizes repulsive energy, as the shadow consolidates in wholeness with ego. This sets the stage for the greater union of Yang and Yin, the true equation of harmony.
In recapitulation, one actively engages Yang and Yin energies to arrive at a state of inner harmony. In trauma, the energy of Yin protectively freezes all the aspects of the traumatic experience into a consolidated mass that is then generally stored somewhere in the physical body. This chrysalis of separated energetic experience awaits the action of Yang to free its energy and to ultimately be transformed and integrated into one’s living wholeness.
The ego, the conscious active Yang force, must embark upon the hero’s journey to find and free its imprisoned Yin. Thus, with intention, the ego scans the body in search of its lost Yin. Yin sends out sensations of appreciation and often pain, signaling the greater experience frozen inside it. As well, feelings of fear and anger might emerge to defensively keep one at bay.
Here, Yang might employ the recapitulation breath to bring the Yang and Yin forces into active engagement. As the head moves from side to side, or pole to pole, the breath accompanies it, actively mixing and releasing these opposite energies of matter and spirit. The full experience of frozen Yin is experienced by its partner Yang, as they, as a couple, dissolve the frozen energy in the chrysalis, which re-forms into the butterfly of liberated energy within the self.
Subjectively, one applies loving acceptance toward every aspect of the experience once lost to one’s greater wholeness. Everything and everyone is completely emotionally neutralized by this all-accepting power of love. Nothing remains that has the power to trigger. The full truth is known, fully appreciated, accepted, integrated and transformed into wisdom.
Recapitulation advances harmony through intentionally bringing (+) and (-) energies into active engagement and passive receptivity. As holograms of the whole, every time we recapitulate we advance the cause of outer harmony. May these efforts accrue to lead the world back into harmony.
Begin the reconciliation process within to further the intent for harmony without. To come home for the holidays is to find this harmony at home, within the self.
As within, so without,
Chuck