Soulbyte for Monday July 22, 2024

-Artwork © 2024 Jan Ketchel

You can only resist the call of spirit for so long; eventually you will have to pay attention. Resistance is futile when the body can no  longer uphold its defenses, when the mind can no longer deny, and when the emotions can no longer hold back their inevitable flood. There comes a point in every life when the calls for change, long coming, can no longer be denied. When that time comes the best resource is to turn to help from your spirit self, your High Self. Ask for guidance in how best to proceed. Keep your heart and mind open and acquiesce to the truth that something else is pushing you in a new and different direction and it’s time to embrace it.

Sending you love,
The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Soulbyte for Friday July 19, 2024

-Artwork © 2024 Jan Ketchel

Keep your energy contained for your inner use, to broaden and deepen your inner work. Get to know yourself more fully each day so that your defenses may be dismantled, your wounds healed and your spirit freed. Without defenses, blockages and obstacles getting in your way you will be freer to accept the bounty offered, able to manifest what you desire and live a more fulfilling, happy and healthy life. Do the good work of knowing and loving yourself so that you may do the good work of more fully knowing and loving others.

Sending you love,
The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Soulbyte for Thursday July 18, 2024

-Artwork © 2024 Jan Ketchel

Stay informed about the world you live in, the reality that you occupy and uphold with the citizens of Earth, but learn about other realities as well. A well balanced being keeps tabs on everything, on all that is, the so-called real, the so-called unreal, the so-called rational, the so-called irrational, the physical and spiritual realities that you exist in simultaneously. That which you cannot see is as real as your thoughts, which you cannot see either but which you take so seriously. The unknown has as much power as the known. Allow time for meditation, for calming of your busy mind so that your heart may grow calm as well, so that your physical body may become light and your energy body, your spirit, be experienced more fully, and so that you may learn more of what and who you really are, a multidimensional being experiencing multi dimensions simultaneously.

Sending you love,
The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Soulbyte for Wednesday July 17, 2024

-Artwork © 2024 Jan Ketchel

When you monitor your thoughts and make a concerted effort to think more positively, prosperously, and successfully, things begin to happen to reflect your new thinking. Soon you notice that a change in thought patterns results in a change in reality. If how you think really does have the power to create life in a new way, why not change your thinking? If thought alone has that much power, imagine what a consistently changed pattern of thinking can do, if every thought was newly formed to be more positive, hopeful and open. If you do truly create your own reality by the way you think, by what you concentrate on, it stands to reason that by changing your thinking you can also change your life. When change is desired begin first by changing your thoughts. See what happens!

Sending you love,
The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Chuck’s Place: Anatomy Of Lust

Be illumined…
-Artwork © 2024 Jan Ketchel

The Latin root for lust is lustrare, which means to illuminate, to brighten. Like a moth, irrevocably attracted to a bright flame, lust is an overwhelming desire or craving to merge with or consume an object that shines with the promise of deep satisfaction.

Lust is most frequently associated with sexual passion, which comes online at puberty, fueled by hormones whose biological urgency is ultimately the intent to bring forth new life. Typically, one becomes sexually attracted to the shine or glow one sees in another, and lusts for some kind of sexual release with them.

The overwhelming power of lust challenges deeply the ego’s reasoning ability and will. The emotion of lust is so binding and blinding one often feels powerless to not acquiesce to it. Despite very negative consequences for acting it out, lust, due to its compulsive power of attraction, can frequently defeat the ego’s best of intentions of restraint.

Interestingly, the guidance upon dying is for the soul to travel directly toward the light. That which most powerfully Illuminates is the ultimate Creator. Union with God is union with the light. Passion is the energy of creation.

Lust imbues the human experience with creative energy from the most primal levels of biological desire to the highest form of spiritual love. Lust is the energy that the subconscious employs to draw to it the materials for its creative activity as it embarks upon the task of fulfilling a suggestion.

Lust is also the energy that feeds addictions. Addiction is a spiritual disease that achieves the momentary satiation of calm through union with an object, substance, or behavior that shines with the luster of promise. Addiction binds one to the repetitive habit of seeking union with the mana of its substance, usually with diminishing returns of satisfaction, generating greater dependency and despondency.

Lust is an essential energy of life that is so powerful that it can destroy life. The desire of lust is an essential component of intimacy, yet, if it is too dominant, can forestall the development of true relatedness and connection, qualities essential to enduring relationship.

Perhaps the greatest challenge in human form is the mastery of lust. To avoid lust is to forsake the creative and emotional dimension of one’s divine birthright. To give over one’s life to the compulsions and mismatches of lust is to lose control of one’s life.

Oftentimes, a repetitive cycle of doing lust’s bidding can accrue to its loss of luster where the spark of illumination can then transfer to a true path of heart. The Buddhists call this avidya , the long path of ignorance that eventually accrues to enlightenment.

If we recognize that the true source of lust is within our own soul, which is then reflected outward to ‘catch our eye’, we might then take hold of our creative energy within ourselves. If we align our desire with the realization of our true self we present to the subconscious the intent for fulfillment.

Shine on,
Chuck 

Chuck Ketchel, LCSWR