Everything is pushing toward change now. What are you doing in your own life to change yourself? What are you resisting? What are you still making a big deal about that doesn’t really matter? What are you holding onto as if you could not live without it? Is it time to finally move on, to change? Like the phases of the moon things naturally wax and wane. When the moon is full it releases its fullness immediately to begin a new cycle. Nothing in nature stays the same for very long. Everything changes constantly, except the human, with its proclivity to be stubbornly unyielding. Such behavior proves nothing. And in the end the human is left behind wondering what happened. Embrace change. Make it a natural part of your life and then be like the moon and do it again and again. You won’t be disappointed. Begin a new phase in your own life today and mark it with thanks to the great Moon Goddess who shines upon you, lighting the way.
-From the Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne
What does it mean when you simply can’t get it out of your head? It might be a thought, a desire, a hunger, a person, an object, or an incident.
The energetic charge of our fixations is experienced as strong emotion and mental perseveration. This is the fire of an activated archetype outwardly projected and inwardly fixated. Some deep need is stirring and we are drawn involuntarily to its projection, the flame of our fixation.
Projection is automatic, that is, unconscious. We don’t choose to project, it happens to us. We are not at fault, for instance, if we are attracted to the wrong person. Attraction happens. Nature is ruthless in pursuit of its aims, in this case, blindly bringing a couple together for union.
Caught in the flame of desire the ego is overwhelmed. The intensity of the energetic charge may at once be both threatening and exciting. After all, archetypes transcend our civilized exterior; they reach down to the primordial core of our being and flood us with bursts of living energy. How do we keep ourselves afloat in such a precarious state?
In the hexagram of The Well, the I Ching makes clear that we all need to partake of the living water that lies beneath the surface of the Earth. The well is the human connection to that living energy below. Humans must build the well. Psychically, the ego is the well. As humans we are charged with building and managing our relationship with our archetypal core, what Jung called the collective unconscious.
In the case of fixation, the ego builds its well through its response to archetypal activation. A hasty reaction may be equivalent to jumping in the well and drowning! An overly suppressive reaction may refuse the bucket that brings up the living water from below.
Often the ego lends its mental manipulative powers, such as through rationalization, to further the aim of the archetype while naively assuming it is doing ‘the right thing’. Only deeply contemplative inner truth will reveal the right action called for.
Often the ego protects itself from rejection and defeat through rationalization turned against the self in some cognitive permutation of unworthiness. Perhaps this is a necessary defense, as the ego hones its ability to regulate the impact of archetypal energy.
We too easily forget that the ego, with its consciousness, is a very recent acquisition for humankind. Before its arrival we shared, with all other animals, life completely directed by archetypes, with no conscious choice available. No wonder we are so flustered when an archetype is activated. How fragile our conscious footing amidst such intensively charged directives!
The ego can choose to bear the tension of the archetype. In recovery programs guidance is given to examine people, places, and things. In early recovery, particularly, the archetypal energetic power of the desired object is respected by avoiding known associations to it. Further, one turns to a trusted sponsor, the program, or a higher power to strengthen one’s resolve to bear the tension vs succumb to habitual addiction.
Spiritual traditions all stress restraint, sacrifice, and detachment as the technology to manage archetypal fixation. Unfortunately, this technology, valuable as it is, does not address the need to fully partake in our humanness while in human form. Yes, we are spirit beings, but we are spirit beings in human bodies with deep archetypal roots in this Earth. We must build our wells to draw our nurturance from that underground river of living energy.
If we can’t bear the tension and either jump into the well or refuse the call we needn’t judge ourselves negatively. All experience accrues, adding to eventual ego enlightenment. When we are ready, when the ego has been sufficiently moulded to be in the truth, we can align our intent with that of the heart, our personal conduit to our higher spirit.
From this place of heart centeredness we know the truth and allow ourselves to be in the Tao. Being in the Tao means knowing that our lives are unfolding to express and fulfill all that we are and that projections are stirrings to find outlets for that fulfillment. However, often projections are simply reflections, not what is actually needed. The heart, in its quiet calm, will tell us the truth.
Aligning with this truth we have the certainty that life will bring to us the real deal. And with that we will be led to draw the water from our living well, our fixations realized in their highest form.
Constructing the well,
Chuck
What really is fate but the unfolding of a dream, one of infinite possibilities moving to completion.
Outside of time and space is everything; past, present, and future all bundled together in ultimate oneness. Inside time-space are the parts of that oneness fully exploring themselves in the spirit of our individual lives.
Of course there is free choice, but what is free choice but the exploration of a possibility, and all possibilities want to be explored. How else could we find our way back to ultimate oneness if we didn’t know all of our parts?
Life in this world is the active side of infinity where God/Goddess, ultimate oneness, experiences its infinite self through the many varied lives of all sentient beings. There is no judgment, there is no good and evil in wholeness, there is simply all that is.
The Tao of our lives is the river of our particular being. We are who we are. If we are to truly know ourselves we must align with the central current that flows through our being. This is the voice of our true self that seeks to manifest and illuminate our uniqueness as well as our interconnectedness to all that is.
When in alignment with the self we greet oncoming time as it presents, accepting and assembling its unfolding pieces one at a time. Choices are really acquiescences to the true path of the self already lived. For yes, from the point of view of the oneness of infinity, all has already been lived, though we are fully recapitulating for infinity the experiences of our unique possibilities as we go about our daily lives. And this is how the great oneness can truly know itself, in the fullness of all its lived possibilities that we deliver to infinity through our senses and consciousness every day of our lives. And for those who know the experience of traumatic recapitulation, recapitulation is a fully lived, not simply remembered, experience.
We know we are in good alignment when we accept the unfolding of the miracle of life in such an integral way, senses and consciousness fully on board, fully aware and fully active. The next needed item or happening appears; it is recognized, incorporated, and lived. This does not mean we won’t encounter great challenges and unexpected experiences; they are part of the unfolding dream. Nonetheless, there is great solace in those difficult moments when we can accept and know that all has already happened, that we are simply in the living experience of our great unfolding dream.
So get calm and observe. What’s going to happen next? Know that, as you flow through this recapitulation of your life, you have already made it. The intent of the self is unfolding. Live it to the fullest!
Unfolding,
Chuck
You are a creature of the earth, so get grounded. You are also a creature of the heavens, so reach for them. But you will neither be fully grounded nor fully able to grasp if you are not grounded in your life upon the earth. Find yourself in your body, your feet upon the ground, your breath inside you bringing life, meaning, and purpose within the body. Let your spirit anchor in your body, but also let it explore the realms outside of the body, secure in knowing that you have your body in control, in health, and in preparedness to receive the wisdom and insight it brings to you. Let yourself be all that you are, body and spirit, heaven and earth, and with feet firmly planted seek fulfillment in both so that your life may truly be fulfilled. In this manner, be a true journeyer of all that is.
-From the Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne
