Don’t forget that the world outside of you is there to help you on your journey. The people you meet, the encounters you have, the obstacles you face, all of those things are put in your path to help you. If you seem to have a lot of obstacles in your way, perhaps you are going in the wrong direction. Perhaps you are not meant to have what you want in that direction, and you might remove those obstacles by simply heading in a totally new direction. Perhaps you have a lot of unhappy or angry people in your life. Maybe they are letting you know that they aren’t good for you and that it’s actually time to let them go, rather than trying to change them. Maybe you just can’t get over some sadness in your own life, but the Universe might be trying to let you know that you can’t ever really move forward with something that heavy weighing you down. Find the bigger picture in all of your issues and figure out what is the best next step, based on what you truly want in life. Are you really ready to move on, to change and transform?
Just as you took into consideration the possibility that you could change yourself and your life in some way yesterday, so is the same possibility with you today. Every day holds the same promise, the same possibility, the same opportunity as the day before and the day yet to come. Let your heart be open today. Try something new and see what happens to further you along on your journey of change and transformation, for that is the journey you are on, one of change and transformation.
At the level of the physical body, karma is simple cause and effect. For instance, if, during dental work, a nerve is touched, pain is the default effect. I discovered, however, that pain is only one interpretation of energy, and so, during dental work, unaided by anesthesia, my mind interprets pain as a sensation that signals me to go deeper into calm. The typical karma of pain associated with dental work has transformed the once dreaded treatment chair into a place of deeply calming meditation.
The ability of breath guru, Wim Hof, to sit in an ice bath for nearly two hours is a very similar phenomenon. Wim visualizes an inner fire, which he then directs to different parts of his body to arrive at warmth rather than frozenness. The default karma of freezing, in response to lying in a tub of ice, is transformed into warmth and comfort by a strong mental impression delivered to, and manifested by, the subconscious mind.
These experiences validate that the threads of karma, which we have generated through beliefs and actions, can be fully transmogrified into positive outcomes. Typically, we manage the discomfort of karma through suppression or repression, which results in the physical body storing a charged experience by restricting the muscles or the breath. Many physical conditions we suffer with are karmic conditions, held in the body, restricting the free flow of our vital energy.
We can unravel these energetic knots through the conscious mind’s imagining, feeling and believing that its intent to heal is possible, as it delivers it to the subconscious mind, for manifestation. Of course, one’s suggestion must be directed toward the purest and highest good for self and other to truly balance out a karmic thread. Suggestions that merely silence a symptom, but don’t address it, actually continue to store it in the physical body with its original karma perhaps more remote, but remaining charged and intact.
Many spiritual practitioners, such as Buddhists, focus most of their days repeating positive suggestions such as loving kindness and compassion to constantly generate positive karma and release negative karma. Such a practice enables instinctive reactions, such as anger at a transgression by another, to be quickly transmuted at a higher energetic chakra, such as the heart center, into genuine compassion for a fellow flawed human being.
The instinct of the heart is to tell the absolute truth. The ultimate truth is that we all share in the oneness of everything. Such a genuine compassionate feeling unburdens one from mentally and physically carrying a charged karma of hatred. One’s vital energies flow freely and radiate a loving energy, to the benefit of self and the greater world.
Of course, if we are fearful of feeling and expressing our instinctual reactions, we must thoughtfully and creatively allow these primal karmic reactions, imprisoned by the body armor, to be safely expressed. Primal screams in the ocean or forest might serve such a need. However, as the energy lodged in these lower chakras is released, our vital kundalini energy moves up the spine to higher energetic chakras for spiritual processing. Our soul is released from the karma of negative emotions by the dissolving power of love and acceptance of All That Is at these higher subtle energy centers.
Though the conscious mind has the power to suggest, it has no power to direct the healing strategy that the subconscious mind will choose to employ. The expression, “let go and let God” is particularly relevant in this context. The conscious mind must have no attachment to the outcome; it must completely surrender control to the wisdom and way of the subconscious mind.
To transmute karma beyond the default effects of karma, the subconscious mind may take us through an energetic journey of squaring with memories we have avoided, or old habits we still cling to. The way of the subconscious mind may take much longer than we desire. We are challenged to remain positive, truly having faith in the power of the subconscious mind to manifest the intent we suggest.
As we master the challenges presented to us at various chakra centers, our energetic viewpoint is broadened widely as we approach the greater truth of our interconnected oneness with all things. From this position we are likely to accumulate mostly positive karma. Negative karma usually stems from stuckness in the polarity of the lower chakras that leaves us feeling offended, victimized and entitled.
Ultimately, we arrive at the awareness that there is nothing to forgive. We take full responsibility for all we have experienced in this life and appreciate fully all those who have accompanied us on our journey, with equanimity. The karma of such a perspective is total freedom, particularly from old default karmic reactions.
In a dream, Jan was given valuable, museum-quality antiques. They were in a white box truck, parked by our orange barn. We were preparing to bring them to a climate controlled storage unit.
Suddenly, though the engine was turned off, sparks shot up from the engine and the truck exploded, destroying its contents completely. The fire trucks arrived, but all was lost. From an indifferent mindset, Jan wondered if insurance might cover the loss.
The fire was ignited by a spontaneous combustion from within the engine itself. Shamans from Carlos Castaneda’s lineage typically, or metaphorically, left this world, at death, through what they called the burning of the fire from within. As their physical body ignited into nothingness, their energy body, or soul, launched into infinity.
In the shaman’s world, this burning from within marked the culmination of the life of an impeccable warrior, one whom had risen above the dualism of this world and was fully prepared to continue the adventure of truth in the next plane of existence.
Our inner fire is generated by our mind’s intent. Though mind is invisible, its thoughts, beliefs, emotions and karmic threads ignite the subconscious mind to transform our lives. It remains for our conscious ego to take command of and direct the subconscious mind to align with the truth of its High Self.
The white color of the truck that contained the antiques suggests purity, innocence and new beginnings. The orange color of the barn foreshadowed the unavoidable fire. These symbols suggest the alchemical operation of calcination where the substance, or prima materia one is seeking to transform, is broken down by fire, leaving behind a purified residue.
The prima materia of a human life is comprised of the karmic threads, desires, beliefs and emotions that bind and define one’s life and obscure access to resolution beyond the fray of the polarities, which dominate earthly life. This dream fire was not a fire of neglect. This fire was a necessary stage in the realization of an intent to grow.
The actual fire consumed the physical form of the treasured antiques, transforming them into spirit movement, as the gasses were released into the air. The risen spirits of these antiques were released from encasement in their solid matter to become active energy forces, made available to address the issues of now.
Antiques may be equated with ancient habits or beliefs that have shaped our attitudes and controlled our lives. Antiques might also reflect the values we admire and strive to live by. However, as antiques, these reflections of spirit remain outside of the self, possessed superficially as owned material objects. To bring them into life, we must take them on as parts of our own self, bringing them inward, reckoning with them, and allowing them to finally be calcined by the flames of our own inner fire, our desire for new life. No longer solid projections, their energy is liberated for other usage.
Tibetan meditation of the Bön Buddhism tradition asks us to neither suppress nor repress the inner fire of our triggers, with their powerful negative emotions. We are asked to remain with the thoughts, emotions and sensations in our mind and body, such as that which is contained in the white truck in Jan’s dream, with the goal of reaching compassion for self and other. Compassion, when reached, causes the energized emotion to fly off like a freed bird, leaving behind full acceptance and neutrality.
Compassion is achieved as we disengage from being possessed by the flame of blame and judgment of self and other. As we burn with the polarities that feed our inner fires, we learn to see all behaviors as part of All That Is. We recognize and own our shadow, as projected onto our neighbor. We now know that we share all the traits of our neighbors and are thus able, as Christ suggested, to “Love thy neighbor as thyself”. We become detached, compassionate beings.
As we enter the fiery month of Leo, in the midst of Mercury in Retrograde, our container is the Earth itself, stuck in the grip of a heat dome of smoldering negative emotions and actions. The threads of the karma of a holocaust are completing in the generation of another human holocaust. On a more comprehensive level, the karma of humankind’s predilection for materialism, with its ever-growing attempt to possess and enslave the Earth, is reaching its own karmic balance in the holocaust to all life on the planet. This manifestation of powerfully destructive forces is being brought to bear upon the antiquated pillars of a civilization that has controlled and defined us for centuries.
We are being shown that the progressive forces that might have been empowered to take us in a positive direction have been denied, because they too would likely become unwitting partners to the antiquated ways of yesteryear. Cosmic Karma is insisting upon a major conflagration of total breakdown before releasing the buds of new life. To arrive at this, it is time to rise above the prejudices of polarity into the clear view of Oneness. We are being delivered to the necessity of a new spiritual attitude to take us forward into new life.
I am convinced that this new spiritual attitude centers on our valuation of, and exercise of, the power of the subconscious mind. Our greatest powers, individually and collectively, are the suggestions we imagine and state, filled with the emotions and passions we deliver to the subconscious mind. Humankind is finding its way to the positive use of this inner power, largely because of the inevitable conflagration of the Earth itself by humankind, already underway, that will require inspired and responsible spiritual leadership to transcend.
The antiques of materialism and narrow rational thinking must now be calcined, as the Age of Aquarius ushers in the power of the imagination and advancing spirit to manifest and direct new life.
Jan’s dream ended with total detachment from the loss of the valuable antiques. Furthermore, there was no attachment to the thought of possible reimbursement from the loss.
We are entitled only to the reactions to our actions, our karmic threads. If incinerated antiques are transformed into money, or available energy, so be it, but no attachment to the outcome.
In the dream, all was purified and fully released to new life. This is the spiritual prize of submitting to the burning of the fire from within: Our purified non-dualistic selves become capable of delivering, to the subconscious mind, the suggestion for new life, led by truth.
Please Note: My next weekly blog will be published on July 8th, as I am taking time off from my writing schedule. Jan’s Soulbytes, however, will continue to be posted daily.
Recently, I consulted the I Ching to provide clarity and guidance for my readers as they navigate the next couple of weeks of these uncertain times. I was presented with hexagram #50, The Caldron, with a moving line in the second place. The future of this configuration is hexagram #56, The Wanderer, or the state of being in transition.
A caldron is a cooking vessel used to prepare food over an open fire. In ancient China, huge metal or ceramic caldrons were used in temples to prepare food offerings to honor the ancestors, as well as heads of state and those of wisdom, who contributed their guidance on such an important occasion as the birth of a new dynasty. This huge cooking vessel served the spiritual transformation of a nation, a metaphor quite apropos for our time.
The Caldron is also an alchemical vessel that contains and transforms a volatile mix of opposing energies into a delicate balance. The elements that build the pictogram of The Caldron are fire beneath water. Fire is the active, heated masculine energy that is absorbed and tempered by the calm, receptive feminine energy of water. This artful womblike handling of polarity gives birth to new life in the form of steam.
Steam is the resultant transformation of water into a new state of energy that can power an engine or provide cleansing in purification practices. Psychologically and spiritually, the water of the subconscious mind, heated by the fire of suggestion—coming from the masculine ego of the conscious mind—provides the energy and construction materials for new life.
The Caldron is an apt symbol for the subconscious mind. All knowledge and wisdom is contained in the subconscious with its additional ability to divinely manifest into the flesh any suggestion it absorbs. The collective caldron of now is manifesting extreme volatility, at the behest of the dominating masculine ego, whose powerful suggestions it absorbs and dutifully produces.
But these manifestations cannot cancel the karma they generate. Regardless of how things play out on the surface, the karma of now is irrevocably to become the greater good for all, the absolute consequence of the unbounded narcissism and one-sidedness of now.
The existence of this karmic shift is fully formed at the subtle, purely energetic dimension of reality. Physical reality is always preceded by mental activity that, when fully complete, delivers its dictum to the subconscious mind for physical manifestation. The transient revolutions and chaos of now are simply the later stages fueling the coming karmic shift.
The moving line that presents in the second place of The Caldron, as well as its resultant hexagram of The Wanderer,contains powerful guidance for now: While we are in a fine position for good and necessary change, we must exercise caution and avoid arrogance. Humility and proper conduct cannot be overstressed.
The Wanderer depicts the state of a journeyer who arrives as a stranger in a strange land. Firstly, the journeyer should maintain integrity and clarity in interactions with others. Humility and modesty dissuade distrust and aggression. The journeyer does well to suggest to the subconscious mind that it be provided signs to direct right action, which enables the journeyer to be adaptive and go with the flow.
The journeyer has clear thoughts and the resilience to patiently wait for the world to transform for the greater good. The journeyer is nourished by the wisdom provided by The Caldron, and submits willingly to the containment and refinement of heated transformational processes that must be endured for transformation to complete. The Wanderer maintains loving compassion for all as the world is born anew.
In summary, take solace in knowing that the stupendous change toward the greater good is but a step away. Of course, cosmic time is a bit more relative than our earthly clocks! Be patient, humble and full of gratitude. Believe, believe, believe! Throw your intent daily behind the absolutely inevitable karmic shift to the greater good destined to befall us all.
