Find what you need in your own wholeness. You are enough. Part of you would like to point to the outside world and say that all of your problems are because of it, but there is another part of you that knows this is not true. This other part knows that you contain the whole world within you and that this inner world is the true one. Within lie all your comforts and discomforts, your fears and your calmness, your likes and dislikes, your trust and your security. Gift yourself of this wholeness, the structures of the self that are just waiting to wrap you up and receive you.
Take time today to connect with this world of you, unique and beautiful; like the heavens and the earth perfectly matched, like the moon and the stars perfectly aligned, like the sun and the waters perfectly reflective of who you truly are. Give yourself the gift of you today, and thoroughly enjoy and explore this most unique self. Be open to receive, even as you wish to give, allowing the self to be both giver and receiver.
Almost every morning, as Jan channels the Soulbyte for the day, I go off and open a book at random to let the divine deliver its message to me.
The other day, I opened Autobiography of a Yogi to an interaction between Yogananda and his master Sri Yukteswar. Yogananda had just experienced a great physical healing, which he thanked his master for. Sri Yukteswar craftily worded his response to suggest that the healing was actually effected by a change in Yogananda’s own thought process. Yogananda anxiously sought to disavow this power and the next day awoke completely unable to physically get out of bed, restored to the comfort of the familiarity of his old weakness. Sri Yukteswar then instructed: “The human mind is a spark of the almighty consciousness of God…whatever your powerful mind believes very intensely would instantly come to pass.”
Can we take ownership of that Divine Spark, that God within us all? Can we wisely direct our thoughts toward greater union within ourselves, within the world? Are we ready to take full ownership of our power?
On another recent morning, enveloped in a mood of despair and stagnation, as Jan channeled, I turned to the I Ching for guidance. Not surprisingly, hexagram #12, Stagnation, appeared. Here heaven and earth are flying further and further apart, deeply out of alignment with each other.
It’s hard now to not see the signs of this dissociation every day, whether it be beached whales, fish fleeing the too warm waters of Maine, children slaughtered at school, women brutally raped, and the stories go on and on. We are in a time of total disintegration as nature and spirit dissolve the world as we have known it and move toward a new position, rebalancing into a new and sustainable format.
The I Ching tells me (nine in the fourth place) that the time of stagnation is nearing the point of change into its opposite. And finally, nine at the top, that though this time of standstill does not last forever, it does not cease of its own accord either; the right leader is needed.
Here I am led back to my opening quote, stating that the spark of God resides in every person. Every person is and has the power of God within, and that power lies in the power of intent. But we must truly embrace that power and believe it to effect the change we seek. One danger, of course, is to misuse that power. This has been the mistake of our human race to date, to exploit our Godly power to our own advantage: narcissistic greed. That mistake has brought us to this edge of oblivion.
Yesterday morning, I opened Autobiography of a Yogi again, to this quote regarding how to use our power: “Don’t do what you like, then do everything you like.” The guidance is clear. Ego must first check its narcissistic impulse to act. This impulse is cut off from the needs of the interdependent whole, just as the I Ching suggests that the earth and the heavens are cut off from each other, each swirling in opposite directions away from unity and wholeness. It’s all about me, me, me. If we pause, we give ourselves the opportunity to realign, to become the interdependent whole that then is freed to act with abandon, offered the opportunity to achieve true unity based on right alignment, with ego serving the Spark of the Divine.
We are all responsible for the unity we seek… for returning the world to wholeness. – Art by Jan Ketchel
Synchronistically, I turned on the news the other day to hear that two leaders have acted as real leaders, serving the interdependent needs of the whole, Cuomo and Obama. New York Governor Cuomo refused the interests of the fossil fuels industry to value Mother Earth and our true needs. NO FRACKING in New York. Bravo, Governor Cuomo! President Obama has established diplomatic ties with Cuba, ending a long divide. Bravo, President Obama!
Let us all be our own Godly leaders, exercising our own Spark of the Divine. Let us all have pure thoughts of greater union, of care of the true needs of the whole, of heaven and earth, of self and other.
Embrace the self in all that you are. Without judgment or faultfinding simply love the self for the journey you have taken, the journey you are now on, and the journey yet to come. In such simple embracing of the self that is, acceptance of and release of all that you were, are, and will be allows for growth that is without regret.
To live without regret is a great accomplishment. To move forward in life freed of your past opens you more fully to the present and the future. Do not run from your past, but reckon with it, kindly and with compassion for the self, as you would the past of another. See the self as you would a dear friend and without judgment offer love to the self as you would another. Before you move on check that you have not left any scraps of discontent behind you. Move on only when there are no ties that bind. Only then will you be freed to experience the self that is and the self that is to be.
Be observant. Notice the world around you. Notice the people you come into contact with. What is it about them that you admire? What is it about them that disturbs you? Ask yourself to take in these observations as truths of the self, both that which you admire and that which disturbs. Discover why and how these qualities pertain to you. Send love and compassion to the people you come into contact with, thanking them for being your mirror. Send them good energy as they continue their own journey and you yours, seeking to know the self and to be fully present and aware beings. This is what life offers you, the give and take of energy, the ability to observe, take in, accept and utilize all the gifts you are given. Everyone you meet is a gift in disguise, yours to discover.
Fog is depressing. That’s a thought that has power. – Photo by Jan Ketchel
It’s raining and foggy today. I could be depressed, but my spirit is not depressed and so the weather outside is not having the effect on me that it might once have had, when I was clinically depressed. Back then the weather would have made me feel even more lifeless and given me a good excuse to stay in, vegetate, and feel sorry for myself. Today I take it in stride, knowing that the outside weather will nurture me in some necessary way, perhaps not clearly revealed until later in the day. I am certain that my spirit and my own nature will find the appropriate alignment that will lead to this nurturance.
Why is it raining? Nature says it’s time for rain. The conditions outside—cloud cover, temperature, humidity, etc.—produce fog, everything working together to produce this grey and rainy morning. We might look outside and wish for some sun perhaps. What we get, however, is nature saying, “no, I need the rain and everything is set up for rain to happen so this is what you are getting today.” This is the spirit of nature, nature and spirit as one, creating appropriate conditions for the planet.
Sometimes nature produces extreme weather conditions, fires, volcanic eruptions, melting ice caps, flooding rivers. Sometimes nature produces aberrant behaviors in human beings, rapists, murderers, terrorists. I can only surmise that nature knows what it is doing, that all of these extreme and seemingly destructive elements and events are actually necessary correctives. I trust nature. I know I cannot control it, but I can study the lessons it seeks to teach me.
We have similar goings on inside ourselves all the time, our nature and spirit work as one too, producing exactly the conditions that we need at this time in our lives. Sometimes the conditions within our bodies are extreme too, such as catastrophic illness, accident, or unexpected deeply emotional situations that send us spinning. Perhaps we also have a terrorist inside us, seeking to rout out some aspect of ourselves that we have not acknowledged or cared to deal with.
How we react to what is going on, both outside and inside ourselves, will tell us a lot about how in alignment we are with our own nature and spirit. Do we ignore the real reasons behind our challenges? Do we pull up our usual defenses, shift right into our ingrained habits and behaviors, the things we normally latch onto when we don’t want to face what is actually happening in our lives? On the other hand, we can turn inward and ask our own spirit and our own nature to come forth and communicate, to tell us the truth, to show us what is really going on.
We can take a scientific approach as well as a psychological approach to any situation we find ourselves in. In fact, viewing a situation from all sides is pragmatic, so that we have all the information we need to make a good, healthy decision for ourselves. Facts might be presented that explain what we are dealing with, alternative approaches to healing suggested, imperatives presented, but then it is up to us to go deeper into what is happening to us, if at all possible to invite our own nature and our own spirit to weigh in. Often, if we are to not only alleviate but fully resolve our inner conditions, we have to go beyond the facts and venture into feelings and emotions, and confront the deeper issues and circumstances of our inner psychological and spiritual makeup that produce our outer symptoms.
If we sit and go inward we might discover something we didn’t see before, like the nurturing sage growing right beside us! – Photo by Jan Ketchel
For instance, if I’m depressed, my nature and spirit are telling me there is a reason, that it’s time perhaps to go deeper into old feelings about myself that need to be attended to. I take the view that my physical body is my personal planet, and in knowing that my spirit resides in my body I understand that they are one unit. This body unit is my personal “Nature.” Just like the nature of the planet outside of me they are always in agreement, constantly working together to alert me to my deeper issues, offering me the guidance I need to heal my mind and body so that I may take my place in a new and brighter world.
It’s sometimes easier to look outside of us and see how other people are in conflict with their own nature and spirit, but much harder to see it in ourselves. It’s much easier to look to the earth and see how we humans have been, for centuries, slowly destroying the planet we live on, but much harder to realize that what is outside is only a reflection of what is going on inside and that we personally are as responsible as anyone. It’s so easy to blame others, to rant about what they have done to us. It’s so easy to point out how others are so greedy and feel so entitled to take and to destroy. We are above it all, we say, but the world around us is telling us that we are all responsible for the state the world and the planet are in now, just as we are responsible for our own bodies and spirits.
As the rain pattered outside this morning, Chuck and I sat and spoke about our dreams and what we had been reading. The conversation came around to how to begin a process of healing that is practical, offering the most basic of principles: Change our thoughts; change our personal world. Yes, thoughts do have power, a lot of power. Negative thoughts powerfully effect us negatively. Positive thoughts have powerfully positive effect upon us.
Our thoughts set up our natural environment. They bring us rain and fog, or they bring us sunshine. If we say that we are sick, then we will be sick and we must take full responsibility for feeling sick. If we say that we feel great, we must take full responsibility for feeling great too. No one else, outside of us, has the responsibility or the ability to fix us or heal us. Just as we are all on our own journeys—responsible for all the decisions we make in our lives, offered the opportunity to take what happens to us to new levels of growth and understanding—so are we responsible for our own thoughts. And beyond that we are equally responsible for our own healing.
If we have negative thoughts running through our head we should pay attention to them. They are there for a good reason. They are our spirit alerting us to them, asking us to question if they are really true, hounding us to let them go. We will not be left alone until we do. We will suffer depression and inadequacies until we feed our nature and our spirit some healthier alternatives. This is how our nature and our spirit are in alignment.
How we decide to nurture our minds, bodies and spirits is up to us! – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Are we polluting ourselves the same way we pollute the earth? Are we taking too much, giving too much, overdoing, thinking negatively? How are we using our power? Where are we out of balance in our own lives and what can we do to correct the imbalances?
It’s not really that hard to take the first steps in a healthy direction. But it takes a commitment to really taking up the challenges that are imposed upon us as we face what we need for healing. To bring our own personal planet into alignment we must let our own nature, our spirit and our body, drive us to the necessary balance.
The world outside of us is the perfect environment for our inner process to grow and evolve; as within, so without. In gaining inner balance, outer balance will also be achieved and our lives will advance. A rainy day will not be depressing, but the perfectly necessary environment that it truly is.
