Begin and end each day with grateful thanks that express love, gratitude and kindness, that recall the good that continually comes your way in whatever form it takes, for there is indeed good in every life. Turn eyes to the sky every now and then, noting its beauty and its mystery, grateful to have such play above your head, the play of light and dark, of brilliance and beauty, of dreams and yearnings. The vastness of the sky is equal to the vastness of your own soul, ever-present and yet still mysterious, until you study it and know it better. Each day is an opportunity to know your world and yourself in a new and deeper way. Where are you in the process of knowing? What mysteries have you just discovered? Let gratitude for life itself be your beginning point and your end point each day.
Unearthing old feelings brings up more than just those old feelings. Everything attached to them is unearthed as well. Healing takes time and investigating what has been unearthed thoroughly and completely brings one closer to healing old wounds, old thoughts, whether true or not, and old feelings that may or may not show themselves repeatedly throughout life to be more cantankerous than supposed. To heal from the old is to heal deeply, and to heal deeply is the good work of the soul, for it is the soul’s journey that is just as important as the one physical life you are currently in. Healing is a multidimensional process best engaged in one step at a time, one day at a time, one issue at a time.
In a conversation, I joked that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen a doctor. I knew immediately that the die had been cast. Send out a message like that and you’ve invited a stream of subliminal thought forms, with contrary suggestions, to compete with your own intent. What inside me was being so careless, or so determined?
Days later, I noticed a tickle and niggling cough throughout the day. By the end of the day a dizziness set in, an intense vibratory disorientation, coupled with a chill that had me wear a wool vest and wrap up in a blanket, despite the 80 + degree temperature of the day.
I consented to a thermometer, which revealed a heightened temperature. Suggestions of covid, flu or, at the very least, the onset of a course of a lengthy cold emerged. It was clear to me that these were all genuine possibilities.
A chain of associations began to present themselves to support and prepare for a healing process of several days. Although this would be a quite legitimate course of care, I seized upon this unusual opportunity to test my soul’s ability, via autosuggestion, to alter the natural course of my recovery. And so, I’ve decided to share how I practice what I preach!
My stated intent was to completely resolve these symptoms so that I would be present, in optimal physical health, with maximal clinical and intuitive acuity, for a full day of meetings starting at 7 am the following morning.
I instructed my subconscious: “My body is healing, my body is healed.”
I repeated it incessantly, coupling it with an eight count breathing pattern, saying the first part of the phrase with a four-count in breath and the latter part with a four-count out breath. By 7 pm I was so tired and disoriented that I collapsed into bed.
A restlessness slowly crept in and I knew there would be no rest if I remained in the bedroom. I relocated myself to the living room, which was quite warm, yet I shook with chills and knew that air conditioning was not an option. I considered an ibuprofen. I flipped a coin and got tails: No, to ibuprofen. If I was to be sincere in my commitment to a clean experiment, my only intervention could be: “My body is healing, my body is healed.”
I began to experience a throbbing headache that came and went, seemingly for hours. I did allow myself to utilize a well-anchored healing suggestion: “My headache is healing, my headache is healed.” Though effective immediately, the duration of relief was no more than a couple of minutes before its vicious return. I finally decided to recite only my eight count breathing and body healing suggestion.
I attempted to lie down but was continuously bombarded with a smorgasbord of pain sensations and dizziness. I could not find my calm center. I felt myself on the acute edge of annihilation. My only momentary glimpse of a potential grounding was noticing the autonomous playing of the synchronous rhythm that had been established by my incessant eight count breath.
For the next four hours I caved to the relief of restless shifting: laying one way on the couch, then the opposite; changing pillows, throwing pillows, no pillows; collapsing onto the floor, turning over, feet up on the coffee table, the contents of which became strewn about the room. I’d sit momentarily in different positions, in different chairs; nothing offered a moment’s peace.
A sensation of nausea flirted in the background. It invited the suggestion of immediate relief through facilitated release. I refused. “If that is to happen, let it happen on its own,” I insisted. Despair and futility dragged me into the underworld of self-pity and fraudulence. I began actually to wonder if I needed the rescue squad to bring me to the ER. Thoughts of physical death seemed a genuine possibility.
Eventually, I was so despondent that I sat and silently cried out to my High Self and teachers for help! No one came. I sank to the rock bottom depression of, “Why have you forsaken me?” I was sitting curled up in a chair when I noticed that I might have dozed off for a moment. An inkling of constancy of presence appeared. “Might I be able to sleep?” I pondered.
It was 1:30 am. I knew that in order to be able to practice in the morning I’d have to be 100% healed by 3:15 am. This seemed utterly impossible. I hadn’t slept at all, my symptoms were all still fully present, but I had had a calm moment. I closed my eyes. I awoke at 2:30, no change. I told my subconscious, which never fails at a wakeup request, to wake me at 3:15. I drifted off immediately.
I next awoke to Jan checking on me at 3:30 am. Wow, my subconscious had not responded to my 3:15 am suggestion! I let it go. The room was a mess, but I wasn’t! No temperature. No headache. No dizziness. No nausea. No vibratory shakiness. Full calm breaths. Utter clarity. Well rested.
We went for a walk, did some reading. My thinking and intuition were clear as a bell. I showered, had some breakfast and started my day at 7 am, finishing at 5 pm, without a glitch. Subsequent days were equally symptom free.
My medicine journey, initiated by the active substance of my self-important comment, showed me how far the soul could potentially go to accelerate the action of the innate healing archetypes latent in the physical body.
I arrived at the experience of total transformation, as my subconscious led me rapidly through the stages of healing at light speed to meet my stated deadline intent. Mine was but one dark night of the soul.
The physical body is its own entity, separate and distinct from its companion soul. Often, when the soul has decided it’s time to leave this life, the physical body resists, clinging to life for extended periods of time. The soul cannot fully break the cord and be free until the body acquiesces to its own physical death.
The soul body entered and attached to the physical body before birth. Both bodies agreed to a relationship for a human lifespan for reasons which benefit each individually. For the body, the conservative evolutionary archetypes that rule it are introduced to new possibilities through the soul’s suggestions. For the soul, the depth of its experience gained through a drama lived in a physical body deeply enhances its knowing of all that is.
The body has a powerful set of rules that independently govern the course of physical life. The body is prepared to live the stages of life, grow old and die. The soul, through its subconscious mind, assumes full control of the human body, though it generally acquiesces to run the body’s evolutionarily established healing programs.
However, the soul, which operates under different rules than the physical body, can think and suggest outside the instinctive box. Thus, the soul knows that beyond heredity and the rules that govern physical life, a suggestion such as I made, to heal from an infection, within hours as opposed to days, is possible.
Of course, the soul cannot change the fact that, ultimately, the physical body will die. Some shamans, called death defiers, have been able to delay death for generations, but ultimately have had to eventually surrender their physical counterparts to death.
Nonetheless, the soul can contribute greatly to the health and healing of the physical body, particularly through the use of autosuggestion. At times it can indeed achieve miracle cures. Modern medicine has yet to discover this healing potential, as it remains almost exclusively focused on the material workings of the physical body.
The most important variable to approaching the subconscious mind with healing suggestions is to have faith that anything is possible, to swiftly release any doubt and stay focused on the intent. This guarantees nothing, but without it, suggestions lack the potency of conviction needed to attract the subconscious mind’s attention.
No attachment to outcome. No shirking of the responsibility to also explore the best that mainstream medicine has to offer. Assume full responsibility for life. Explore your fullpotential. See what happens!
The question arises: “Who is the You, that never disappoints your Soul?” That you is your personality. And what is the personality?
The personality is a combination of the ego self, which is largely identified with life in the physical body; the subconscious mind, which stores the wisdom of many lives lived; and the High Self, which supports the intention for growth in this life.
The Soul itself is the subtle body that has spawned many lives and many personalities. Each of these has collectively gathered experience and knowledge that contributes to the Soul’s growth. Those prior lives are all connected to the subconscious mind and are reflected, as well, in various ego states and characteristics of the physical body.
The personality’s life in a physical body is the Soul’s investing of its energy in the quest for growth. For growth to happen, the personality must have the free will to set up its own experiments and make its own discoveries in the life it is in, all of which ultimately contribute to the growth of the Soul.
The Soul grows through life experience, not through a personality seeking refuge in simply being good, whereby suppressing into its shadow the fuller spectrum of life’s desires. Although, even such an attempt at a virtuous life is a life of experience that benefits the Soul.
In this case, the Soul discovers that such a one-sided life creates the karmic necessity of another life that can more fully experience the shadow held in abeyance. The Soul does not judge any life to have been a wasted or failed life. All experience is golden and treated with equanimity by the Soul.
Critical judgment issues from the personality. Perhaps its value is to create a restlessness that spurs the personality to stay on point with its core mission in this life.
The ego, however, with its limited knowledge of, and limited connection to, the subtler dimensions of its being, as well as its reason for being in this life, tends to overly judge itself in the context of its achievements and failures in this life. It lacks the richer perspective of its Soul, which appreciates equally all experiences in life.
Growth for the personality requires the maturation of its judging function. The shamans of ancient Mexico were particularly helpful in this respect, in their dictum to suspend judgment. They discovered that self-criticism had the effect of immobilizing one’s vital energy, which is essential to achieve expanded awareness.
It’s not that shamans don’t face the truth of their actions and their consequences; they are in fact ruthlessly insistent upon facing the truth. However, shamans do not define themselves as failures, or as good or bad people. They acknowledge their faults and mistakes and make adjustments in their life to avoid repetition. Or they continue to repeat the same behaviors, accepting the need to finish with a “bad” behavior so that they can then be freed to move on.
Shamans laugh at themselves and are in awe of their blind spots and sheer stupidity. Shamanic wisdom knows that the key to spiritual advancement is complete acceptance of self in every action, thought, and feeling experienced through an entire life. How can we advance to new life if we cannot fully accept ourselves and our entire lives lived?
That acceptance must equally extend to every person who has harmed us in our life. Refusal to accept anything that has happened to us will automatically generate a seed of karma that will attempt acceptance again in another life. Refusal to accept freezes our energy and blocks our advance.
To advance we must free ourselves of any notion of victimhood. Although we may have been victimized, the key is not to freeze ourselves in the self-definition of victim. Acceptance requires full mastery of every fact of our life, however tragic. The Soul does not judge. The Soul values every experience equally. May the personality be guided by this wisdom.
Carl Jung established that there are two ego functions that judge in order to navigate this life: thinking and feeling. Thinking employs the rational mind, and logic, to determine the truth. Feeling uses feelings to actively determine the worth of something. Both of these functions support the ego’s understanding and valuing of life experience.
To exercise these evaluative functions is necessary to navigate life with objectivity. But the emphasis in these functions is to understand and make decisions, not to condemn and define the self with judgments of inferiority, inadequacy, and unworthiness.
The Soul is never disappointed with us. Can we internalize this insinuation from above, and rise to the level of never being disappointed in ourselves and others? This erases no facts or responsibility but does advance us fully in love, through total acceptance of everything.
Most of what we are is either inherited or molded by our formative social experience, essentially, what we brought in with us into this life and how we were greeted when we arrived. The force of these influences can make a strong argument that the course of a human life is predetermined or mechanistically determined.
Nonetheless, as noted existential thinkers and authors Victor Frankl and Edith Eger have demonstrated: Regardless of circumstances beyond our control, we always retain the free will to choose the attitude we will take toward our reality. And attitudes, it turns out, are powerful suggestions that we, as creators, present to our subconscious minds that can completely shift the reality that we live in.
Some of those inherent programs, however, are so powerful that they simply cannot be overridden, like the one the shamans of Ancient Mexico emphasize: We are beings who are going to die. Ironically, this is the one inherent program that human beings refuse to acknowledge and, in fact, spend most of their lives living as though it will never come true!
Of course, the argument immediately arises that to focus on the inevitability of death is morbidly negative and casts too depressive a shadow over opening up to the fullness of life. So what could possibly be the positive side of death?
Death advises us that our time in human form is limited. This impact of limitation allows for a legitimate scientific experiment in the living of a human life. Science insists upon a beginning and an ending to assess the truth and full knowing of something. The awareness of inevitable death keeps us positively on track to discover and test the core hypothesis of our lives. But what is our core hypothesis?
Carl Jung would identify that hypothesis as one of individuation, which entails successfully bringing into realized wholeness the unique combination of opposing parts that we are. Frederick Myers, from his advanced perspective in infinity, would identify that hypothesis as an incarnating soul’s mission, assigned by its Spirit, to answer a question through the trajectory of a human life, which ultimately allows one’s soul group to further refine and thus to advance on its ever-unfolding journey in infinity.
Wholeness must include light and shadow. Individuation is the ability to accept, with equanimity, all parts of self and all parts of the world. Buddha, during his enlightenment, remained utterly calm, as he saw the illusory and transitory nature of all forms. Carlos Castaneda suggested that, as one discovers the specific role one has been assigned in this life, one suspend judgment and live and appreciate it to the fullest, whether it emphasizes the light or the dark side.
The power players on the current world stage are truly playing their parts to perfection, both those who reflect the light and those who blatantly reflect evil. The collective individuation challenge of our time is well represented, with worthy opponents whose interplay is critical to advancement of the soul group of planet Earth’s dream.
Closer to home, we all struggle with these opposing forces within ourselves. We all contend with genetic consequences, which both limit and promote our physical structure, health, and attractiveness. If we can see these effects, no matter how undesirable, as critical factors to our individual and soul group’s need to master, we can embrace the positive side of the negative.
At the level of the psyche, we all deal with forces that can be extremely critical, deprecating and incessantly negative, generating depressed mood states and compulsive behaviors. If we can understand the necessity of these negative forces in our journey of mastery, we can see the positive value of these petty tyrants to help us emerge from the captivity of self pity.
Self pity shapes our vital flowing energy into a rigid negative form that completely clouds the positive potential latent in the present challenge. It’s a dream where many of the stone steps of a narrow circular stairway are missing, as we feel hopelessly barred from ascent to higher ground. Our energy is fully spent on body armor, condemning our innocence and unlived self to the isolation of solitary confinement.
The shamans of ancient Mexico always included powerful petty tyrants in their lives to help them stare down the imprisoning bars of self pity. Being challenged by ruthless petty tyrants frees our energy from the confinement of defending our hurt selves, allowing it to be deployed in focused action in full conformity to what is needed to master the tyrant’s labyrinth.
To achieve this mastery we cannot afford to spend an ounce of energy on being offended. Here, the petty tyrants of this world offer us the greatest opportunity to break through the narcissistic shell of self pity and entitlement.
The success of individuation in the limits of a human life is the achievement of acceptance; complete acceptance for every experience and character one has ever encountered, as well as complete acceptance of one’s self.
The fruit of this acceptance is an even more refined purity of love. And that refined love is what fulfills our lives and advances our soul group another rung on the infinite ladder of love.
Always find the positive in the negative; it’s the truly soulful thing to do, Chuck
