Soulbyte for Friday May 1, 2015

A warrior has no regrets. A warrior is aware that everything is meaningful, everything is part of life’s lessons and for everything that happens there is a reason. A warrior knows that the answers to life’s questions and the quest for clarity and meaning may only come at a later time and so a warrior does not regret anything but holds close to the knowledge that eventually the answers will come and meaning will clarify. A warrior lives life to the fullest and moves on with what is, without regret, knowing that a path with heart is the only real concern.

Soulbyte for Thursday April 30, 2015

To think that you have control of anything is a fallacy. Your sense of control is alignment with what is necessary for you to experience at the moment and often that is to have the experience of utter control. And yet, there will come a time when you will have to let go, for that is the law of nature. Nature will let you have your way, but in the end nature will always have its way. And what will you do then?

The only thing to do is acquiesce, in one way or another, to change; for that is the ultimate and final challenge for all of life and all of nature, to change, to transform, to evolve. It is the path of all life. So why are you still so afraid?

Don’t just let change happen to you. Be the changing being that you truly are and with open arms embrace the opportunity for new life. Nature will wholeheartedly embrace you back. There is nothing to fear except the loss of something that you do not control to begin with.

Chuck’s Place: Buffalo Soldier

Life reflects the dilemma of our energy body... - Photo by Chuck Ketchel
Life reflects the dilemma of our energy body…
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

The human body is an animal. The human animal is the host of the energy body, the mental and emotional part of ourselves that generates the thoughts and desires that largely determine the fate of our physical, animal body.

It is the energy body that leaves our physical form upon physical death. Yet, while in physical form, this separate energy body—or soul—controls, like a dog on a leash, the activities of the physical body in daily life, determining its health and care.

Our food choices are not made by the physical body; they are made by the desires and rules of the energy body. Our sleep patterns too are largely determined by the wants and interests of the energy body.

Our obsession with pets is largely a projection of empathy and love for our animal physical body selves, largely dominated by the whims of our energy body. Our energy body is a more subtle body that tends to use the physical body to experience its wants and ideas through the sensory systems available in the human body, thus the pleasures of excitement can be played out in the sweets and spices we consume in our food and drink.

Left to its own natural predilection, the human animal self might select food that it really needs to remain in optimal health. Mental constructions, however, result in behaviors that often override the body’s true needs, either through restriction or overindulgence. Rarely is the human animal body ever included in decisions that reflect its wellbeing, rather it simply goes along with the dictates of the subtler energy body.

Last week, fifteen buffalo herded together and broke through the confines of a ranch in Rensselaer County in upstate New York. They swam across the Hudson River and then sauntered across a major interstate highway until they were finally slaughtered in nearby woods. They utilized the power of their innate archetypal herding instinct to break through their condition of servitude. I can’t help but applaud those buffalo soldiers as they danced their final dance in this world in utter freedom.

Two days later, Gaia herself violently shook her body self as thousands were swallowed in Nepal, that most ancient holy country. What is the message here, in these two recent examples of energy gone wild?

We are all energy beings entwined with physical animal bodies, our hosts while in physical life, charged with treating the earth with spiritual leadership. When we tyrannize the earth, the animals, and even our own animal selves, treating them as playthings for our ethereal pleasures, then Gaia, the buffalo, and our own physical bodies rebel and refuse to be partners on our spiritual journey.

Our mission as energy bodies entwined with our animal host selves, on a spiritual level, is to resolve our karmic challenges with the materials that life on earth offers us. Our gift to the earth in exchange is to enliven the spirit potential of this physical world to evolve itself in new directions.

The sketch Jan made in her journal as she contemplated her dream...
The sketch Jan made in her journal as she contemplated her dream…

The problem for humans is that their purest spirit intentions, as they come into physical life, get clouded over in the rich darkness of earth’s soil. It’s our journey in this life to release our karma as we journey from the darkness to find our way back to the light of spirit—pure consciousness of the truth. This morning Jan awoke with a dream that clarifies and illustrates the drama of this dilemma.

Here is Jan’s dream as she described it to me: “Come on, I said, let’s take a walk. I thought I was walking with another person. My observer self, who hovered behind and above me, however, pointed out: It has no legs! As I turned to look at the being beside me, I saw that I was walking beside a large paper-thin black square out of which hung a tendril of root. The root almost touched the ground as the sheet of blackness floated beside me. I realized that this black shadowy figure was my ego. Then I realized that everything that I am and seek to be is inside me; I am all I need. Ego was a shadow entity that inhabited me, clearly not human. I realized I no longer needed it. I knew that I just had to follow the Tao.”

The shadow square of Jan’s dream is a mandala, the representation of the spirit embodied in the energy body who then projects its ethereal self into the physical body as an ego. The ego is the spirit, or energy body representative, rooted in the physical body. But the truth is, it has no legs. It’s really an empty shadow. However, in human life it becomes the active force, the ruler of life. In its shadow state it is not oriented to spirit and uses the energy body for its own desires and appetites. This exploitation has resulted in the protests of Gaia and her buffalo, who bravely contest our inferior leadership.

The resolution of our human karmic dilemma is for the spirit’s energy body representative in human form, the ego, to find its way and eventually acquiesce to the dictates of the heart chakra, where the true intent of the spirit resides in what Aurobindo called the Psychic Being.

The quest for freedom requires that the ego self, like the buffalo, must lead itself out of the confines of servitude to the physical and into the light, graciously giving up its life for the evolution of the spirit. In the final analysis, the march for freedom is always death of the physical, ego included.

The heart chakra center of the energy body is grounded in the Tao and knows only truth, compassion, and right action. The Tao elevates everything to a spiritual level. Humanity elevated to this level sheds its shadow ego and aligns with the light of spirit, burning through its karma and leading earth into proper balance and evolution. It is the goal of all our spirits.

Chuck dancing with the spirit of the buffaloes... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Chuck dancing with the spirit of the buffaloes…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Our dear animal friends, the buffalo, teach us that tyranny is wrong action and that the quest for freedom is all that matters. This is spirit lived at the highest level, life shedding the tyranny of illusion, marching forward into the unknown, bringing light into new frontiers.

I honor those mighty Buffalo Soldiers, as did Bob Marley: Buffalo Soldier.

Dancing with the buffalo soldiers,
Chuck

Soulbyte for Wednesday April 29, 2015

Decisions matter. What you decide to do and how you go about doing it matters. There is a certain responsibility that comes with declaring that you will do something. There is expectation and resultant outcome. Words matter. Actions matter. Followthrough matters. If you decide to do something, make sure it is the right thing to do and then set about undertaking it with honesty, humbleness, and good intentions.

A warrior does not make flippant decisions but calculates how best to use energy for self and other. Without being withholding, yet aware of energy usage, a warrior knows how to be generous and giving. A warrior’s decisions are always in alignment with what is right from all angles and for all involved.

A warrior’s actions are honed over time so that eventually a warrior acts decisively without need of much contemplation. A warrior simply knows what is right and right action comes swiftly and naturally.

Soulbyte for Tuesday April 28, 2015

To be generous of spirit is a given, but generosity must be kept in balance, for it tends to spill over into overdoing and overindulgence and then it is out of whack. To remain in balance is the key to a modest and generous life filled with the giving and taking that is naturally part of existence. But there is a thin and slippery line between what is good and what is right and generosity rides that line, oftentimes quite sensibly and at other times out of control.

Reign in compulsions and desires for self and other, tow a tight line so that all may be responsible beings, and with kindness and goodness let your own generous spirit live within and without. Indeed, to be generous of spirit is to have a spirit that is generously present and active in life, but always act with a modicum of restraint. Sometimes to have restraint is the most generous thing you can do, for self and other.

Chuck Ketchel, LCSWR