Contain love. Release anger.
Keep kindness. Let go of bitterness.
Bear compassion. Allow fear to escape.
All beings are on a journey of the Soul. Even those lost in the darkness seek the light. They just haven’t found it yet. May it one day be theirs as well. In the meantime, send them words of encouragement to find the first ray of light within themselves. If you do that you are a loving, kind and compassionate being using your own light to light the way out of the darkness. It is a most worthy and appropriate use of your energy, of your stores of love, kindness and compassion, for you too at one time had to take your own journey out of the darkness and into the light. Share your light.
“Our only sin is to say no to evolution.”-Obadiah Harris, Ph.D.
Signs of change are so clear now… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
In the Tao all things are equal, all things have value, all things are necessary, and evolution is par for the course. Of course we will evolve, it’s natural. We see evolution in nature all the time. We see it now in the drastic changes that global warming has imposed upon us, that we have imposed upon ourselves. Even those individuals who refuse to change, who steadfastly hunker down and won’t budge an inch, are being forced to change because nature is always taking its natural course. In the process, change is being imposed upon us all.
Many people simply fear change, the great unknown frightening. There is the specter of death in change, and truly there must be sacrifice for evolution to occur.
The other day our backyard was bustling with activity. I could hear the sharp calls of several hawks piercing the quiet morning. KEE! KEE! I could hear a rush of wings. Going to the deck I saw what was happening. A pair of hawks was attempting to push their babies out of the nest. I had seen the hawks earlier in the summer and knew they were nesting in the tall trees in our yard. I’d heard them often enough, seen them circling above the yard, even occasionally swooping down upon our songbird neighbors.
The amount of noise and activity was astounding as the parents attempted to get the babies to move on! They had raised them so diligently, with care and protection, but today was the day. All that was over. It was time to move on!
There was an awful lot of shrieking going on! The babies seemed to be saying, NO! I watched as the large adults swooped in upon their smaller offspring, moving them along from one branch to another, pushing and shoving them away from the nest. Once out, they were not going to be allowed back in! It looked almost violent at times, but I realized how necessary it was.
If the babies didn’t go, the parents would be forced to leave them behind. It was time, and the idea of turning back was not part of the plan. The plan was set. It was a day of sacrifice.
The mother, especially, was faced with having to sacrifice, for whether her babies left or not it was in her nature to leave them behind. She could only hope that her babies would take the leap and fly off too. Finally, there seemed to be only one last recalcitrant child. The screaming intensified. Calls were coming from many different areas in the yard, both parents calling and calling, the other babies calling too. All seemed to be saying: Come on, you can do it! It’s time to go! Hurry, not much time left!
Sometimes it’s just time to cross that bridge! – Photo by Jan Ketchel
They gave it their all, but in the end, had it been necessary, they would have left without their child, sacrifice made, nature’s call to evolve too powerfully ingrained to refuse.
We humans are constantly called to leave the nest too, to move on into new life. A relationship ends, we lose our job, someone close to us dies, illness comes, we are forced to change by outside circumstances, or by inner decisions we make. It doesn’t really matter how change approaches us, the main thing is to recognize that it has arrived and that our moment of sacrifice is upon us.
We, however, have come far from our natural instincts. We don’t seem to have that powerfully ingrained stamp of nature in us anymore. Now we tend to make excuses for ourselves, choosing to pamper and baby ourselves when the truth is that our own time of sacrifice is trying like heck to get our attention, trying to reconnect us with the nature lying dormant inside us. And that nature knows how to act appropriately, for it is truly the Tao, just as the hawks in our backyard are.
Just as the hawks signaled to their young that “today is the day we are leaving the nest,” so does life tell us the same. Many times during our lives the calls come. If we don’t answer the call we won’t evolve. Our lives will stagnate and we will set ourselves up to become prey for other energies, entities seeking to live off our refusal. And then, as Obadiah Harris stated in the introduction to Elmer Green’s The Ozawkie Book of the Dead, we have sinned. We have decided not to respond to the call of the Soul of the Earth itself, telling us that we must evolve so she can evolve as well.
The hawks know they must evolve. Nature does not question that. Nature sacrifices and, without looking back, moves on. I could hear the franticness in the calls of the hawk parents. They did not want to leave their baby behind, but they would have. Nature is that direct.
The hawks finally gave their baby one last chance. I watched as one of them, perhaps the mother, rushed the baby who was sitting on a low branch. She crashed into it and knocked it off its perch. It worked! I watched as they both flew up and away. After that, the calls of KEE! KEE! echoed overhead more joyfully, until the whole family flew off, never to return. Mission accomplished!
Like the baby hawks we are all afraid of change too, but change is not afraid of us. It comes knocking at our door every day. We, unlike the hawks, have the power of choice and we can fend for ourselves once our parents are gone. Perhaps we choose to say no, to hunker down. And yet such a choice, more often than not, leaves us sitting alone in our nest, wallowing in the scent of past memories, thinking we are saving ourselves from the pain of change but in the meantime all we do is wallow in our pain. Our only saving grace may be that eventually we get bored with ourselves and our circumstances and opt out of the smelly nest and onto fresher air and wider skies.
Everything flows along nicely in the Tao… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Perhaps it is our lack of true connection to nature that keeps us wallowing. If we were really connected and in alignment, living in the sacred world of the Tao, flowing with what comes, we would move on when it was time, because we would be fully aware that it was time.
If we stay nesting in our fantasies we lose our connection to reality, and then we miss out on the real opportunities to change and move on into new life. We are often so immersed in our fantasies that we don’t hear nature calling as loudly as the hawks. KEE! KEE! KEE!
If we are to evolve the planet, we must evolve ourselves first. And that means we all have to sacrifice something, someone, some fantasy, some idea about ourselves, and embrace the truth that we are responsible for our own nest-leaving, while we still have a choice.
To work toward loving kindness and compassion is as much the warrior’s goal as is being strong and focused enough to navigate through life with decision and precision. A warrior is soft and tender when appropriate but also knows when it is time to take a stand and be strong. A warrior is loving and gentle and yet is always keenly alert, aware that there are predators nearby seeking attention and attachment.
A warrior is full of gratitude, thankful for every day of life, yet a warrior does not fear the end of life. A warrior strives to accomplish great things in life, yet constantly seeks to shed the ego and the trappings of too much of the world, for a warrior knows there is nothing of this world that will last. It is all an illusion, but solid nonetheless, every day a test. And yet a warrior also knows that the biggest test is yet to come.
And so a warrior is always mindful to learn as much as possible in the flow of everyday life, keeping energy focused and aware at all times. A warrior is always ready to move on when the time is right, thankful for the opportunity to embrace new adventures and new life, thankful for the journey taken, ready for the journey ahead.
A warrior is always responsible. A warrior does not leave others wondering or let people down. A warrior shows up. A warrior is committed, on time, and on the ball. A warrior seeks to be impeccable. If a warrior slips up, a warrior does not shirk from owning that fact, but states the truth.
A warrior knows that awareness is equally as important and valuable in reality as it is in spirituality, so a warrior uses the world to practice, hone, and carry out the attributes that are necessary for evolutionary growth, for a warrior knows that the world is but a mirror image of other worlds. A warrior is not fooled into thinking that this world does not matter or that once death comes there will be no more challenges.
A warrior knows that everything matters and everything counts, and so a warrior takes full responsibility for every word, action, and deed. A warrior is always practicing the art of being a warrior, day and night, inwardly and outwardly, in reality and in spirit. Always.
The human body perceives the world through its five senses. Beyond the sensory inputs of touch, smell, sight, sound, and taste that operate through the physical body, there are the faculties of thought and feeling, which operate separately from the physical, through the energy body.
The energy body is attached to the physical body. It downloads its inputs through the chakra points of entry in the physical body, which are then interpreted through the central nervous system and the brain.
What Chuck saw first: the physical tree… – Photo by Chuck Ketchel
The energy body and the physical body operate as a single unit during the day. However, at night they separate. As the physical body sleeps, the energy body leaves. It remains attached to the physical body by a cord, while it goes off into other dimensions of experience, i.e. into the astral world, where it interacts with other energy bodies also operating on a similar frequency. Dreams may often reflect the residual memory of these beyond-the-physical-body escapades.
We experience the separateness and autonomy of the physical body and the energy body, very distinctly, when we drive a car. As we drive, the physical body perceives the physical stimuli of the road; stop signs, other cars, pedestrians, weather conditions, etc. Meanwhile, the energy body may be miles or dimensions away, as it lives or relives experiences in its thoughts and feelings.
Accidents are frequently caused by too great a separation of these two bodies. Disasters can occur if the consciousness of the energy body, off in another world of thought, is suddenly required by the physical body. More consciousness than simple body memory is often required to navigate through some driving situations.
This bilocation of physical body and energy body is actually evident in all of waking life. If we pay attention, we might notice our thoughts and feelings taking us far away from our physical reality, as we drift through the day, in and out of virtual daydreams.
Under waking conditions of shock or trauma, the separation of physical and energy body may occur spontaneously. In such cases, this abrupt dissociation of bodies offers a protective measure to modulate the full impact of the trauma in vivo. The fuller integration of consciousness—seated in the energy body—with the events experienced by the physical body, may need to be postponed until the two bodies are ready to absorb and process the full truth of the traumatic experience. Thus traumas may be completely forgotten, only to emerge later as buried memories and/or psychosomatic pain.
In contrast, Shamans, Buddhists, and Hindus, as well as out-of-body explorers, cultivate the conscious use of Intent to willfully explore in the energy body, volitionally entering into the astral realm to prepare for a smooth transition beyond human life when the cord is cut between the human and energy body, as the physical body dies and the energy body moves on its own into infinity.
What Chuck saw later: the energy body of the tree… – Photo by Chuck Ketchel
We can all cultivate a volitional exploration of the energy body in everyday life. Thoughts and feelings are energetic entities after all, messengers from our energy body that extend way beyond the confines of the physical. Everyone has had the experience of thinking of someone and then suddenly hearing from them or running into them. On Saturday, I ran into two people I hadn’t seen in years, but had thought of less than an hour earlier.
To put it simply: thoughts and feelings are magnetic energies that attract physical realities. This is the operating principle behind the Law of Attraction and Intent. All the major religions advocate this same principle in the use of prayer. Prayers are codified energetic intentions that attract energetic reactions from one energy body to another or to energetic entities residing at a much more sophisticated energetic level. Some people call this magnetic attraction, contact with God.
When we send out loving, compassionate intentions to others in the world, they are receiving, at some energetic level, the support of our messages. We are told to avoid the trap of attaching to outcome, to expectations for our prayers and intentions, but we must remain aware that these practices do have impact at some level. Even though we may not receive the desired outcome of our efforts, we must know that the intent has landed on target and will work in a way that is most appropriate.
Thoughts and feelings are subtle energetic messengers, as alive as you or I. They travel on an equally subtle interconnected highway of energy, much like the interconnected transmission of messages on the internet. The ability to hone where we place our attention and intention, as developed through the practice of meditation, develops our ability to take in thoughts and feelings with choice and to be equally choosy in how and what we transmit.
In other words, just as we can choose to explore with our energy body in dreaming, by intending to become aware, we can also choose to be equally focused and responsible in the use of our thoughts and feelings while awake, honing the messages we transmit along the energetic superhighway of our everyday world.
What Jan saw later at the same spot: It’s all energy in the universe… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Am I sending a good and helpful message to so-and-so? Am I sending a positive message to myself? Is that a harmful thought? Is that a necessary or appropriate feeling to have right now? How will that thought or feeling impact everyone else in the room?
Knowing that our thoughts and feelings are energetically alive offers us entry into the energetic world of true reality, as well as a myriad of possibilities in the world of our energy body beyond this world. Subtle though it all may be, it’s not that hard to test. In the end, what matters most is deciding to use our thought and feeling energy wisely, responsibly, and compassionately, for ourselves and others.
