Tag Archives: wholeness

Soulbyte for Wednesday March 28, 2018

Let the light in your heart show you the darkness it hides. Let the darkness reveal the light it conceals. Let your heart be your guide in the dark and the light and let be revealed the truth of your being, that you are both light and dark, revealing and concealing, and know that this is your wholeness. At the same time that you accept these two sides of the self, seek to know yourself in all aspects, light and dark, so that your wholeness may be fully explored and understood. For if you do not fully know yourself, how can you truly know and understand anyone else? Seek knowledge of self. That is where contentment lies.

-From the Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Chuck’s Place: Separation & Integration

The perfect cake…
Art by Jan Ketchel © 2002

Separation and integration are necessary operations in the growth of our wholeness. Before the cake batter can be mixed the ingredients must be carefully separated and measured. Next comes the stirring of all the ingredients as they are prepared to be baked into an integrated whole and delicious cake!

The human being is comprised of many separate parts that must be integrated for effective functioning. Take for instance an emotion, be it love, anger or sadness. The river of the bloodstream carries the energy of these emotions as they flood the body in an activated state. If the psyche is uncomfortable with the intensity of these emotional energies it likely stiffens the body’s muscles to dam up and contain this heightened emotional state. This results in a loss of integrated functioning of mind and body.

This in turn can lead to chronic muscle fatigue and depressed mood as the vital energy for life is dammed up in the musculature while what little energy is available is spent largely in a separative defense rather than in a wholistic pursuit of release, joy, and satisfaction.

Yoga and mind/body modalities highlight the use of the breath to support the metabolic processes of the body but also to allow the free flow of dammed emotions and traumatic memories that  restrict integrated wholeness and an enlivened spirit. Deep breathing promotes calmness and the ability to release powerful emotions safely. A simple practice of taking a deep abdominal breath several times a day can initiate mind/ body integration.

The Shamans of Ancient Mexico point out that the lion’s share of energy in modern humans is spent on the presentation of the self in everyday life. Thus the ego, with it’s separate concerns about how it looks, how others validate it, and its overall craving for attention, is the largest ingredient of modern life. We readily see this modeled in our current world leaders.

The Shamans recommend that we identify and largely separate out this preoccupation with self-importance from our daily routines and habits to better integrate our energetic reserve for the practices of intent, dreaming, and manifestation.

Those Shamans literally make a written inventory of their typical daily behaviors, eliminating unnecessary attention-seeking energy consumption. If we allow ourselves to reflect on our day, we are able to separate out that which facilitated and that which interfered with a greater integrated functioning of self.

Although I find it disheartening to see the disintegration of the world as we have known it, I am convinced it was unavoidable. I think it is fair to say that the election of Donald Trump was as surprising as the election of Barack Obama. I am still amazed that we saw the election of a black person to the presidency in my lifetime. I am equally amazed by the election of a character like Donald Trump to the world’s highest office.

On the one hand, the Greek principle of enantiodromia was clearly at work here. That principle simply states that one extreme will bring forth its exact opposite. The classic example of this is Saul on the road to Damascus. He begins on a mission to persecute Christians. Suddenly he has an extreme conversion where he becomes Paul, the devout Christian. Trump has defined himself as the exact opposite of Obama.

On the other hand, I think, like Jimmy Carter, that Obama was ahead of his time. In fact the stage was next set for the raising of the feminine to royal status with the election of Hillary. Although this portended the greater integration of human wholeness, it too was ahead of its time. The ingredients for that cake were simply not properly measured nor were they ready for mixing. Instead, we were thrown into an incredible time of separation, worldwide.

A word like immigration has become a four letter word in our time. Nonetheless, this extreme separatism of now allows us to clearly see our differences, which must be faced and reconciled in a very real, not fake way, if we are to once again be able to approach the integration and elevation of the feminine to its rightful ruling authority, Yin and Yang as a balanced whole.

The truth is, America rushed the making of the cake with Obama and nearly did with Hillary as well. But fate intervened, for America had truly not faced nor reconciled its shadow yet. Well, it is reckoning with it now!

You simply can’t force wholeness prematurely. We are in the time of separation and we must accept that. Inwardly we can use this time to face our divided selves and set into motion practical behaviors to shore up our greater integration and evolution into wholeness. Elmer Green,* who recently died at age 99, left us with the vision that in 125 years we’ll be there. Let’s all do our part to make it happen. Begin with the self!

Chuck

* Elmer Green, PhD, noted biofeedback pioneer is also the author, among other books, of The Ozawkie Book of the Dead: Alzheimer’s Isn’t What You Think It Is

Soulbyte for Monday March 19, 2018

Face yourself. Turn to your heart and ask it to guide you. Turn to your mind and ask it to remind you. Turn to your body and ask it to abide you. Turn to your spirit and ask it to provide you. All that you need you already are. Look to yourself in your wholeness and gently and kindly accept who you are now. And then set out to become who you have not yet become, the one you dream of, the one you know you truly are. Remember, everything is possible, even this seemingly impossible you!

-From the Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Chuck’s Place: My Luminous Other

We come from the light and return to the light…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

In our energetic origin and essence we are but a glow of awareness. We come from the light, we return to the light. From our origin as a  glow of awareness we sink and are born into the dark heaviness of our human physical form and begin to perceive the world like our solid selves, as a world of solid objects. Our energetic luminescence is lost to us.

In our human form we are drawn to luminescence wherever it is reflected, a spark reminder of our lost energetic essence. This longing is the craving for union that underlies most human activity. The luminescence of our ethereal light is reflected materially in all matter of precious objects in our material world, most especially in gold and diamonds, symbols of great wealth and value, symbols of the divine that adorn the crowns of kings and queens, and closer to home in rings of commitment bestowed upon a beloved.

In the beginning, parents mirror a golden glow in their reactions to us. This loving smile validates us, gives us value. We seek out that which shines and enlivens us. Some of this mirroring validates us, some however is so powerful we see it as existing only in the person outside of us, never in ourselves. Thus, the other person is seen as the gold. Attention flowing from this luminescent other fills us with a glow. We become compulsive seekers of outside attention to merge with this experience of numinous luminescence.

Our lives on Earth have as our central mission, like the Olympian, to bring home the gold. If we can achieve perfection or notoriety we will be filled with the glow of grand attention, golden indeed. Thus perfection becomes the coveted gold, the golden standard of our worth.

Most often our vibrant energetic essence projects itself upon a golden other whom we seek to possess to recover our lost wholeness. Oftentimes the glow of this mysterious other is so powerful we are overwhelmed with anxiety in their presence. We feel unworthy of their attention or paralyzed by the glow of their beauty and majesty. An attraction of this magnitude can secretly dominate us for years.

For those able to connect with their mysterious other a magical period of glowing oneness, total blissful contentment, may be granted, if just for a little while.

In our day these romantic projections come and go rapidly as we are technologically opened to a very wide pool of possibility. Ah, what shining pearl might I find and meet tonight!

If a more lasting union prevails the shine inevitably begins to fade in the dullness of everyday life. Generally, disappointment results in expectation that the other change to restore the shine. Underneath we retain our childish experience of entitlement, wishing that the other refill our glow with their attention.

“I’m speaking, you looked away. I’m angry, deflated. Why? I was speaking; my story, my idea is golden. If you are not transfixed by what I bring it is not worthy, or you are too self-absorbed to appreciate it. I must see REFLECTED in your reaction the presence of my luminosity. Your attention verifies my worthiness.”

And what happens when a relationship ends, perhaps by death? Mourning is lost contact with our glowing other. Herein often begins a new journey, the journey to discover and recover the pot of gold at the end of our inner rainbow, our own soul, our energetic essence.

This is the journey we’ve all been on as we seek to obtain our true fulfillment, reflected as it has been in the gold of a million illusions of our materialistic accumulations, perfectionistic achievements, or soulmate relationships.

Ultimately, our definitive journey in infinity requires us to restore and become the original glow of awareness of our energetic essence. To prepare for this journey we must recapitulate all our magical experiences in this life and restore our energetic wholeness, nothing left projected upon others. And with this we become our luminous other.

Chuck