Here is a new conversation with Saleph. She answers a question asked by a dedicated reader and listener as well as a few questions from Chuck. It’s about 35 minutes long. We hope you enjoy it!
A Day in a Life: Softening Body, Lightening Mind
– Photo by Jan Ketchel
As we finished our early morning walk and stepped through the door, I was telling Chuck that my blog today was going to be about talking to the body in a soft manner, because the body likes to be talked to in this way; it responds to softness rather than hardness. Within seconds Chuck called excitedly. He had just opened the great master yogi B. K. S. Iyengar’s book Light on Life to the following paragraph: “When there is softness in the body and lightness in the mind, the asana is correct. Hardness and heaviness mean the asana is wrong. Wherever there is tightness, the brain is overreacting, and you are caught and trapped there; so there is no freedom. Performance from the intellect of the heart, with lightness, firmness, and at the same time softness means it is a total stretch, total extension, and total expansion. Asana done from the brain makes one heavy and done from the heart makes one light.” With that synchronicity our day began!
I recently asked Jeanne/Saleph for advice on how to better connect with her when speaking for her in a channeling session. I had felt her to be far away. She responded that really all I needed to do was relax and let the words flow through me. She was telling me that a softened body and light mind, freed of worry and thought, were the key, just what Iyengar stressed in order for the energy of a yoga pose to flow through one.
Saleph’s answer got me thinking, not so much in a heady way, but I began to pay attention to my body, especially when I wanted something from it. I noticed that if I spoke gently to it, rather than in a commanding manner it immediately responded. Easily and without fighting back it gave me what I asked for. This, I thought, is the key to everything! This is the same thing that Iyengar discovered.
If we are energy then we must learn how to relate to ourselves as supple and flowing energy rather than as tough and rigid matter. We might think it’s important to be tough and rigid sometimes, but as Iyengar goes on to say: “When should an asana be soft and when should it be rigid? In motion the whole muscle should be like the petals of the flower, open and soft. Never be rigid in motion; only be rigid after you have acquired the position. A farmer ploughs a field and makes the ground soft, a yogi ploughs his nerves so they can germinate and make a better life. This practice of yoga is to remove weeds from the body so that the garden can grow. If the ground is too hard, what life can grow there? If the body is too stiff and the mind too rigid, what life can live?“
Synchronistically, this was the message from Saleph that percolated inside me all week. The body will not respond to harsh commands. It will, however, open like the petals of a flower if we relax, allowing energy to channel through us.
but it is the softening that allows us to be there in the right way…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel
As I relaxed my body, my mind automatically followed suit and relaxed too. As I began to gently speak the following words, “Relax your body, relax your mind,” I noticed an immediate reaction—I got extremely calm. Aside from the physical relaxation that I sought, I noticed other things as I spoke differently to myself. As my mind relaxed and got out of the way I began to look and feel different. I noticed how much lighter I felt and how normal worry and stress released. Things that might have plagued me were suddenly not so important.
“Relax your body, relax your mind,” became the mantra of the week. I have used this mantra before to go into light self-hypnosis and I’ve always found it very effective, but this week I took Saleph’s suggestion to heart. I put the mantra to the test and watched what happened as I intentionally and repeatedly relaxed my body and mind throughout the week. In the softness of the suggestion, I began to experience how right she was. My energy flowed better and calmer. Even though I spent a great deal of the week around workmen doing some work at our house, the calmness in me flowed and the workmen responded in kind. It was a most energetically serene week, without incident or conflict; everything went perfectly.
I realized that the way we talk to our body really does effect how it talks back to us. If we are harsh to it, it will not budge. If we are rude to it, it will be sad. If we are disgusted with it, it will not change. If we are angry at it, it will not respond to us but turn its back and ignore us. On the contrary, if we ask it nicely and gently and lovingly to help us change it will be right there, ready to assist. We are energetic beings and energy is fluid, not rigid. As Saleph was letting me know, energy responds to softness.
I began to think that this relaxed and positive way of talking to the self could offer real help and good results in all kinds of issues. If I gently suggest to my body that I would like to lose a few pounds, will it respond in the affirmative? I think it will. If I set the intent to treat myself lovingly, will my body come to aid me in learning how to love myself? I think it will. If I want to let something new into my life, will simply talking about it gently with my body yield results? I think it will. I’ve already seen the results in my own body as I’ve gone through the week.
– Photo by Jan Ketchel
The synchronicity of Chuck randomly opening a book to exactly what I had spoken to him about a second before is part of the energetic flow of which we are all a part. I cannot deny that being in a flowing energetic state has brought good physical and mental results. In addition, it brings home in this morning’s synchronicity how connected we really are to the magic of the universe; how in fact we are it.
Saleph’s answer to me was perfect. The more relaxed I became and the more I spoke in gentle and loving tones to myself, my usual doubts and worries about my channeling process fell away and my body became soft and my mind became light. My body seemed really happy to immediately respond with good feelings. It even gave me good advice. It told me not to worry so much, that it knows exactly what to do; I just have to let it!
Perhaps my experiences of gently speaking to the body will be helpful. Why not give it a try too?
Sending love and gratitude,
Jan
Soulbyte For Friday August 8, 2014
The week has been charged; energy has flowed.
Now is a time of pause and consideration.
Taking what you have learned about the self over the past few days, adjust and refine, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and in the world. It is a time of making decisions regarding how you want to look, how you want to feel, and how you want to experience life. It is a time of reaching toward that which lies within your grasp, with determination to move forward now without the usual interferences so that the abundance and success you envision and feel at your fingertips become reality.
The magic is here. How you finally attain it is up to you.
Your choices and decisions really matter.
Proceed with determination and do what feels right for you. Your body will tell you what to do and your spirit will knock on the door of your heart with a Yay or Nay. That is how you will know what to do. Will you listen?
Soulbyte For Thursday August 7, 2014
You have come far.
It is time to stand firmly in your power, knowing that you can handle anything.
Take up your sword and cut through any fears, worries, and disappointments so that your true virtue may shine through. With integrity and groundedness, with self-knowledge and honesty, with clarity and knowing that your journey’s next step is about to be taken, continue on your path of heart.
A warrior knows how to act as the journey unfolds. Wait for the signs that will show you the way. Then act from a place of heart. This is where you are today.
Chuck’s Place: Coming To Meet—Copulation
– From The I Ching, translated by Richard Wihelm
Five yang lines stacked together revel in their ordered, controlled, clarified mastery of life, life as idea. Suddenly, a coy innocent yin line enters from below, an impulse from nature, life in its utter sweetness and rawness. The yang lines are shaken at the vibrant appearance of yin, while at the same time they are magnetically drawn, their number and order shattered by the encounter.
Richard Wilhelm’s translation of the I Ching reading of hexagram #44, Coming to Meet, cautions: the maiden is powerful, do not marry such a maiden. Deng Ming-Dao, in his interpretation of the I Ching, goes further, naming Hexagram #44 Copulation. He takes us to the depths of human nature itself.
The urge to copulate is nature’s urge that will not be denied; it’s at the heart of nature’s imperative to survive. At that level it is an amoral force. Dress up “relationship” with romance and commitment if you will, but behind the scenes nature exacts its intent; copulation will occur, there will be offspring to continue the species. Nature has no regard for relationship, commitment or childrearing arrangements, it simply wants offspring.
In a recent channeling discussion (linked Here), Saleph pointed out that the disowning of nature—the ape in man—is at the core of sexual abuse. The disowning of the sexual instinct, and lack of respect for its power, has allowed for mass incidences of coming to meet in copulation—completely unregulated and dissociated from consciousness—to erupt in the most historically sacred countries, in the most sacred institutions, as well as in the most sacred place of all: in the family home.
Our distant ancestors were far more advanced at the regulation of this primal energy in their initiation rites and rites of passage. The modern world, having disowned its animal self, revels in a technological self image, with a rational brain machine that can replace all of nature’s parts, or so it thinks. This naive assumption has left the animal in man dissociated from its archetypal roots, as well as from its ego master. The instinct, in such an abandoned, neglected, manipulated state has gone off on its own, preying particularly upon the young. This is not nature’s program but an instinct gone awry, dissociated from even its own archetypal program. Copulation with the young will not fulfill nature’s imperative; it’s not in the archetypal program.
– Photo by Jan Ketchel
Love, commitment, and relationship are only possible in a full integration of the sexual instinct with consciousness. Lack of integration leads to splitting, affairs, and the inability to commit. Consciousness must grapple with the fullness of nature’s imperative, but it must also be a worthy conduit for nature’s energy, able to both handle it, regulate it, and join with it in a deeper merging of consciousness, nature, and an other.
Richard Wilhelm also points out that the time of coming to meet is dangerous and yet, at the same time, is the meeting that brings forth new life. With respect to furthering this aspect of nature’s imperative, the door to delivering relationship itself to a new evolutionary birth is opened in full consciousness, offering the opportunity for the union of opposites, in playful cosmic dance, all elements fully present.
Committed to full consciousness,
Chuck